James Smith and Robbie Bernstein dissect the Kentucky Libertarian Party's vaccine passport opposition, contrasting it with Dr. Lena Wen's "carrot on a stick" framing of freedom versus inherent rights. They critique CDC transparency regarding liability for healthy individuals under 60 while analyzing how corporate interests co-opted liberal values to marginalize genuine leftists. Citing Glenn Greenwald's departure from The Intercept, they argue that modern liberals abandoned free speech and due process to protect military-industrial complexes, effectively allowing corporate agendas to dominate the cultural conversation under a veneer of progressive ideology. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Anti-Semitic Interview Justification00:13:34
Fill her up.
You're listening to the Gash Digital Network.
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You're listening to part of the problem on the Gas Digital Network.
Here's your host, James Smith.
What is up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
I'm the libertarian Tupac, the most consistent motherfucker you know.
And he is slightly off to his left side.
Robbie the Fire Bernstein, king of the cocks.
What's up, my brother?
How you living?
I'm all right, Dave.
How are you?
Very good.
Very good.
Sure, everything's okay?
I didn't like it.
Long week.
I made the mistake of working too hard this week.
But now it's Friday.
I'm cracking open some beers.
And you know what?
Next week, I won't make that mistake again.
Yeah.
Well, you live and you learn.
That's what's important.
You live and you learn.
So you were mentioning that you saw on Twitter.
I just had a conversation with a rabbi.
I haven't talked to a rabbi in quite a while, but I had a conversation with Rabbi Litvin on David Feitz's show.
And I thought it was interesting.
And I appreciated the conversation.
He was very offended by the Kentucky Libertarian Party.
They're almost more annoying than you remember them because at least as a kid, you're used to someone talking down to you and telling you how you should be a fan.
And like, you think that's just part of life is being a kid.
And then you're an adult and they still try pulling that shit.
And you're like, I'm your age.
I'm not listening to this from you, dude.
Well, look, I felt like in the conversation, the tone changed a little bit.
And I thought he came in a little bit more closed off and then left a little bit more opened up.
And I tried to make it clear, you know, that I was like, look, I'm coming at this from a good faith position.
It's not like we're together.
We both think the Holocaust is really awful, you know, and like, and no one's like, and no one's saying that like what's happening now is every bit as bad as that.
I did, you know, there were, we left it on good terms and, you know, talked about the possibility of having future conversations and all that.
But it is, to your point, I know as somebody who grew up Jewish, there is a certain type of argument that rabbis tend to make.
And it's almost like I had forgotten what that was like.
And then I was almost like, Ezra, you're like, oh, yeah, okay, that's right.
This is the rabbinic, what's the word I'm looking for?
Talmudic?
I don't know.
Talmudic.
Whiny?
I think the word you're looking for is whiny.
Well, I found, I thought there were a couple holes in the argument that he was making, but I did appreciate some aspects of it.
Like I really appreciated that he was consistent and at least consistent in the sense that he also condemned everyone who compares Trump to Hitler, everyone who compared Obama to Hitler, everyone who compared our immigration policies to Nazi policies.
Like he condemned all of it.
And I appreciated that.
So I was like, okay, well, at least you're not, you know what I mean?
Like you don't fall into the category of all the other people who I was blasting on our last show.
So I grant him that.
The issue I had was that, well, there were a few that I thought, you know, he was his criticism was that the tweet was minimizing the Holocaust.
And I said I didn't agree with that.
And he also called it anti-Semitic.
And I was like, no, but it's not anti-Semitic.
And then he did a very rabbi thing where he was like, well, it may not be anti-Semitic in intent, but it's anti-Semitic in effect.
And then it's like becomes this whole other thing where now you got to, anyway, it was just stuff like that that I just didn't really agree with.
But he basically at one point said that it was okay to compare it to the Soviet Union or to China, but just not okay to compare it to the Nazis.
And that struck me as a bit inconsistent.
You're like, see, see, you can't.
He doesn't care about death or civil liberties.
He just cares about the Jewish cause and that people shouldn't offend Jews.
I just, I think it's a little bit, you know, unfair.
And I have this, you know, like, I don't know.
I have this, like, I'm compelled to be consistent because I'm not going to be able to do that.
Well, he doesn't care about the pain and the suffering of millions of Russians or millions of Chinese people.
It's not about pain and suffering or.
Well, he did bring up at one point how the Jews were treated in Russia.
So like he did care.
But I think that it's pretty unfair for Jews, and we're a couple of Jews here ourselves, to say to other people, no, no, no, no, you can't compare anything to our tragedy.
Other tragedies, like whatever, have fun with that.
And at a certain point, I was arguing with him about what anti-Semitism is.
And he said that this has already been decided by the Jewish community and that Jewish leaders have already come together and made these decisions.
And I was like, yeah, but that's just an argument.
That's an appeal to authority or appeal to popularity.
I was like, I don't care.
It doesn't matter what, if there's a vote among the people.
They should at least give out the report so that we can have the clear guidelines and see if they hold up or if there are any flaws in it.
Yeah, I mean, it's like, but it just seems to be a weird thing to me where I'm just like, well, no, I don't, I don't care.
And truthfully, I, you know, obviously I know that when I have these conversations and I'm like, okay, well, look, I'm Jewish and my, you know, my family was killed in the Holocaust and all this stuff.
I know that there is something about that that inoculates me to some of what the obvious criticisms could be, right?
So like it's, it makes it a lot harder for someone to say, oh, you're an anti-Semite or you don't care about the Holocaust.
Because like, well, obviously that's not true, right?
Or seems pretty likely that that's not true.
But actually, you know, when I made this point, I go, you know, it doesn't really matter that like that shouldn't matter.
If someone who's not Jewish has a different opinion on anti-Semitism, they're not just, their opinion isn't inherently wrong because they're not Jewish.
Like you don't, the correctness of your argument doesn't come from a majority agreeing with you or from your religion.
Like that's just, that's all silly.
Excuse me, I've listened to the vice president and she's right because she's both a woman and because she's black.
So I don't know if you understand how being right works anymore, Dave.
I really, I really seem to be behind the times in this.
It's a very archaic view that I have here that you can.
I'm being correct.
Yes, yes, I'm being correct.
Yes.
There's obviously truth is a whole different thing these days.
But anyway, we, you know, he ended up, I think what happened was that, if I suspect, that I think some of the loser brigade were throwing info at him.
Like, well, he did this and he did this.
And so he came in kind of like, okay.
And then I think I had pretty good responses for what he was saying and things opened up a little bit more.
At one point, he, you know, we were discussing the idea or the justification for me having, you know, people who he deemed or maybe somewhat accurately deemed anti-Semitic, who I've interviewed on my show.
You know, I brought up Richard Spencer and Nick Fuentes and Jotep Jesus and all this stuff.
And he had mentioned specifically the interview with Richard Spencer.
And I was like, well, look, I don't know.
Like, I, you know, I said at one point, I go, like, well, look, a lot of these guys, their fuel is that people are so outraged by them.
And so I try to take that away and go, well, forget about all the outrage.
Let's have a conversation and see if your ideas can stand up.
And he was like, okay, well, I didn't think about it that way.
That's a different approach than I thought.
And I found it really strange where I was like, wait, you never thought of the approach of let's try to win the argument or let's try to like expose their ideas and I don't think they'll stand up to the test of light.
Like this.
Isn't that what he's doing and having a conversation with you?
This is literally exactly what's going on here.
You want to talk to people because you think there's an audience here and you want them to hear from you.
And so like, how is this hard to understand?
I always like, it always, like, I think a lot of people who, like, my critics in the Libertarian Party, a lot of them are coming from a bad faith position.
I'm sure some of them are coming from a good faith position.
But it always, it always just seems so obvious to me that you're like, okay, well, if I'm talking to Richard Spencer or Nick Fuentes or any of these guys who you guys don't like and don't think I should talk to, it's like, okay, if I were to just say, I'm appalled and outraged and you're horrible and I denounce you, then, okay, I guess what?
I cover myself to all you guys who are already libertarians and already on board with this thing, but I lose the argument and I lose any reasonable person who's on their side listening is going to be like, what?
Oh, okay.
This guy's like, but if I go, like, okay, listen, I'll treat you with respect and let's have an exchange of ideas, then I have a chance of winning the argument or having a more productive conversation or getting some of those people, which I ended up doing quite a bit of, to go, oh, okay, this libertarian guy's got some points.
Maybe I'll listen to what he has to say.
Why would that be bad?
Why wouldn't you want someone preaching the non-aggression principle to maybe be able to persuade some people?
Whatever.
Anyway, it was a worthwhile conversation, but I was glad to do it almost so we could be like, hey, listen, I did this.
I spoke to a leader in the Jewish community about his concerns.
Now let's refocus on what was actually the subject of this entire thing, which was opposing the COVID passports.
Now we're back to that.
All right.
So that was my attempt to refocus back onto what matters.
And I think it went reasonably well.
So yesterday at night, I was very, very pleased to see.
And I will say that I think this pretty much proves the point that whatever issues you may have had with the way people did it, I think it was more than worthwhile that we went on this campaign to push this issue because the Libertarian Party came out and they posted on Twitter that they have passed a resolution condemning the vaccine passport.
Quote, we oppose vaccine passports and any government-mandated document and any government-mandated documentation, surveillance, restrictions, mandates, or laws which tread on the rights of the people.
Thought that was great.
Really great.
Listen, I knocked the Libertarian Party quite a bit when I feel like they're getting things wrong.
That was fantastic.
It's great to see that they're on the right side of such an important issue right in real time when it matters.
Bravo Libertarian Party.
And I think it's, I think it just, that was a little demonstration of the fact that we can influence this party and really push them to live up to their name.
If we can just reference the Holocaust more often.
Apparently, that's what it takes.
Yeah.
So more Holocaust references.
Oh, yeah.
It lets people know the urgency.
Otherwise, they don't realize.
In fact, sales tax.
Exact moment.
We should have brought it up.
I just go like, just everything now.
Whatever it is.
You go, driver's licenses.
Okay, Adolph.
Libertarian Party.
What are we doing here?
Yeah, so I really do think this was like an incredible moment.
And I don't think that the Libertarian Party of Kentucky has anything to be sorry for.
And I think that, you know, it's like, look, it's just, it's so obvious to me what they were saying with that tweet.
Like, I just, I really do struggle.
And again, I say this, I'm a Jew.
I got family who died in the Holocaust, all that stuff.
I struggle to understand how anyone could look at that.
And I completely get if someone looked at that and went, I'd rather you don't make the Holocaust analogy.
You know, I'd rather.
You can honor their memories.
But you know what I'm saying?
Like, I get if someone was like, eh, okay, I don't, I don't love that.
But it's so obvious what their point is.
Their point isn't the Holocaust wasn't a big deal.
Their point is, no, this was a really terrible deal.
And this is really scary because we're moving toward that.
That's the issue.
So I, anyway, I just, I think they have nothing to apologize for.
I hope they don't apologize.
And I think it's great that we got the Libertarian Party on record on this issue.
Vaccine Efficacy Reality Check00:16:41
I really do believe that this is no joke and we can still stop it.
So this is important, as I've been saying, the real one.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
Anyway, speaking of all of this, you know, talk of the COVID regime and the vaccine and the concept of basic human liberty, there is this clip that is going pretty viral.
One of these delicious moments that we always love here on this show and part of the problem, we love the rare moments.
And let me tell you, I've consumed a lot of cable news in my day.
You can watch cable news for five straight days and get not one moment of like interesting or honest or revealing anything.
But every now and then, there are these moments when the mask slips and it's really fascinating.
It's really interesting to watch.
So here was one of those moments.
And this is Dr. Lena Wen.
She was on with Grandma Murderer's brother, Chris Cuomo.
And this was her comments.
It looks like he's looking at his own brother.
Clear to them that the vaccine is the ticket back to pre-pandemic life.
And the window to do that is really narrowing.
I mean, you were mentioning, Chris, about how all these states are reopening.
They're reopening at 100%.
And we have a very narrow window to tie reopening policy to vaccination status.
Because otherwise, if everything is reopened, then what's the carrot going to be?
How are we going to incentivize people to actually get the vaccine?
So that's why I think the CDC and the Biden administration needs to come out a lot bolder and say, if you're vaccinated, you can do all these things.
Here are all these freedoms that you have.
Because otherwise, people are going to go out and enjoy these freedoms anyway.
Clear to them that, dude, I don't even know where to start on this one.
That's it, dude.
All these years, however many years, however many hundred episodes we've done together, that might be the one that I just go.
I don't even know.
Do I have to add anything to that?
Or can she just she basically just did my job for me?
What do you want to say?
Your freedom.
I know a lot of you guys, you might be existing under this kind of like Jeffersonian worldview of natural, unalienable rights that are given to you by God.
That, you know, the kind of the idea of a right, like that you have a right to do something and no one has the right to take it away from you.
That might be the conception that you're living under.
But no, no, no.
According to this doctor, freedoms are actually carrots to be dangled in front of you.
Of course, I believe you're the mule in this analogy.
So the carrot is to be dangled in front of you so you do what she wants you to do.
And then you get rewarded.
Here you can have some freedom.
But there's a real danger here because they're about to just give people their freedoms and we didn't even get them to do nothing.
So what are they just going to give them to them?
I mean, this is our opportunity.
And she is dead right.
Just like she said, this is their opportunity.
And that's what I've been saying for the last week.
And that's why this is our time to take a fucking stand because there is a small window.
She's right.
It's so funny.
The fucking CDC comes out today.
Did you see this?
Their new fucking, you know, recommendation guidelines or whatever.
And they go, oh, you know, if you have the vaccine, you can travel.
But we still recommend you wear a mask and social distance.
What fucking living is?
Are they down to one mask though?
At least that's an improvement.
Just one mask, you know, you're only one mask away from no mask when there was teenagers.
They go, one mask.
We're happy to be back down to a mask.
Like, woof, you have me up to four masks there for a little.
No, but it's like, what world are they living in?
We've all been traveling.
We've all been traveling for months.
But we were traveling for months before the vaccine came out.
Who do you mean?
Now we can travel.
People are traveling if they want to.
Airlines were one of the few businesses that are so ingrained with government that while mom and pop shop was closed down, you could sit in a closed cylinder.
No problem.
That business wasn't shutting down.
Yeah, you know, you can't go to church and you can't go to temple, but you could sit in an airplane because that's essential.
You know, it's not religion.
How essential is that?
That seems like an interesting decision for a politician to be able to make.
But yeah, what a, I don't know.
Your thoughts.
What I thought this is like jaw-dropping segment.
I can't believe that they, I feel like even that, that probably made people at CNN uncomfortable.
Like, well, saying the quiet part out loud.
I think you nailed it.
They really changed the concept of freedom where it's something that you can enjoy under certain circumstances.
The norm is not that you're supposed to have them.
It's that sometimes we'll give it to you.
Yeah, really unbelievable.
Which is that is that, I mean, now, like, is that freedom that if I do something, I can enjoy it afterwards?
Is that the way freedom, like, if I kill a guy, so then I get to like, is that, you know, I'm allowed to be free if you give me that off?
Like, is that freedom now?
That's not freedom.
I didn't have a choice.
Well, right, exactly.
It's, it's just, it's a complete perversion of the whole concept of freedom and rights and all of this, this stuff that we care about and take pretty seriously.
So, you know, like, right.
And just to be sitting there and saying, like, he just goes, listen, these states are opening up and they're opening up 100%.
It's like people are going to start doing stuff.
This is our moment.
But we have to stop them from doing stuff.
So, in the same way that she was really telling Grandma Killer's brother the same thing, the inverse of what I've been telling you guys for the last week.
She recognizes the same thing I do.
It's just she's on Team Bad Guy.
But she goes, No, this is our chance.
This is our chance because if we don't do it now, they're going to have freedom.
That's so funny because you're pointing out that she doesn't actually say if they don't get vaccinated, there's going to be a risk of death or the virus proliferating.
The risk to her is just that we might enjoy our life and that they won't have forced everyone to be vaccinated with something they don't, you know, I could argue don't need.
Because she's, you know what I'm saying?
She doesn't actually complete the argument to say that there's a risk of death or the virus continuing.
She says that the actual risk is that we go do things without being vaccinated.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Did you see Bob Murphy tweeted?
I really loved this.
Let me see if I can find it so I do it justice.
But so Robert Murphy, where is it?
Here he tweeted this and I got a whole bunch of people upset and enthusiastic about it.
But he said, if a vaccine were 100% safe and 100% effective, then somebody's decision to not take it would have no effect whatsoever on anybody else.
So if people refusing a vaccine bother you, it's only because you admit it's not completely safe and/or effective.
And so a bunch of people are getting mad at this.
And they'll say things like, someone said, those who don't get vaccinated can carry the virus amongst various hosts in which it can mutate to the point where it's more dangerous and is no longer phased by the current vaccine.
And he goes, right.
So you're saying it's not 100% effective.
So the really interesting thing about this tweet is he leads everyone back to arguing that the virus, I mean, the vaccine isn't 100% effective.
And so that comes back to a thing where you go like, oh, well, okay.
But in that case, just acknowledge it.
At least acknowledge the reality that the vaccine isn't 100% effective and it's not 100% preventative.
So again, it's just, there's so many things here.
But even when she would go like.
To your point that you just made before, when she goes, well, listen, the states that are opening back up are opening 100%.
And the reality is that there are states that have already done that, right?
Two big ones, Florida and Texas, not little small states, not states that are like, well, they don't really have any big cities there or something like that.
Like big, major states, two of the biggest states in the union.
They're both open, 100% open, right?
So if you're going to go, oh my God, all these other states are going to start opening.
This is going to be a problem.
Wouldn't the onus be on you to demonstrate how it's going so bad in those states?
But that's not even part of the conversation.
That's not even like what?
No, I'm just saying people are going to get their freedoms back.
This, this chick, this psychopath actually sees, and this is, I'll tell you, this is, it's a really profound difference between the way people who believe in humanity, who believe in human liberty, look at the world and those who don't.
She goes, well, listen, all these freedoms were taken away from the American people.
So now, I mean, we've got this great incentive structure to make them do what we want them to do before we give it back to them.
And other people like us look at that and go, hey, you have no right to control other people's lives.
Like they're not hurting you.
They're not infringing on your rights.
You have absolutely no right to tell them what they can or can't do.
I'm sorry.
It's just like, it doesn't make sense.
There is no slam dunk argument for why everybody should be vaccinated, why there should be any of these restrictions, why any states shouldn't be completely open.
There's no strong argument for any of it.
I think to me, because I was starting to kind of formulate my anti-vax arguments today, I did a whole Twitter thread.
I'm not there.
I'm starting to do my homework.
But one of the, if you look at the news companies as being places that are creating content that's of interest to people, how are you not talking to these drug companies about why it is that they put were only willing to put out this product if they were identified from lawsuits?
If they are so sure that these things are good for all of us and it's so necessary and they can charge whatever the hell they want to for it to, I guess, you know, cover the risk or maybe even get people who want to take it personally sign off on that they understand that if something bad happens, they won't sue.
That's even different that you're going to sign off on that you're, you know, letting them off the hook on a lawsuit.
But if this thing is so good, why were they only willing to bring it to market market if they could not be sued for it?
And fine, maybe there's a good reason there, but how are these news channels not having a single conversation about that?
That is like a very little kind of unspoken factor from when they first went into production on this.
No, I have urgency authorization.
It's a great point.
I haven't thought about that this whole time.
It's a really fair point.
I'm just saying, like that, that to me would be the most interesting conversation.
If you want to have a conversation about why people should be taking this and you're advocating for it, I think it's at least worth addressing.
Like you want to just talk about a fun, think about a year ago when everyone's anti-pharmaceutical companies.
That was a big thing is big pharma and the profits of big pharma and you look at insurance and now you got an opportunity to bring the CEOs in and go, I don't understand.
Why is it that you, you know, why is it that you're bringing this product to market, but you needed identification from lawsuits?
How is that not an interesting conversation if you're a news company?
So that's one factor.
The other factor that I'd like to just see the numbers on is what's my risk of death or serious illness as a healthy 30-year-old from COVID-19 versus the risk of illness of taking one of these vaccines.
And firstly, I think the risk of illness from one of these vaccines is probably thus far underreported.
But AstraZeneca, which Fauci is still saying is better than nothing.
I mean, now it's just...
It's factual.
They falsified their initial test results in terms of bringing it to market.
You've got all these blood clotting incidents, which they're downplaying.
Certain countries are saying we're not running with it anymore.
The other ones are still saying, well, it's important to take it.
Now, I get that AstraZeneca is still not the main thing that we're taking in this country because we are rich and we've got the better options of the Moderna Pfizer and Johnson ⁇ Johnson.
But at the end of the day, our own system approved it and is still saying that it's better than taking nothing without much of an addressing of, well, what's going on with falsified resorts results.
Yeah, by the way, you had the same thing with the hydroxychlorine where they had the falsified study.
It's all listen to scientists, but like how are the scientists on the biggest stage?
We're talking about the biggest stage right now for science and the biggest agencies for monitoring, I guess, the information they're putting forward.
How do you have errors there?
How does that even happen?
If you're so sure that everything is rock solid and it's on this big of a stage, how are you having noticeable errors that, and these aren't things that we're finding out seven months later.
These are things weeks later.
Well, listen, you have this situation, right?
And this is true across a spectrum of fields of supposed experts, okay?
And you start to realize that this is a root structural problem.
And to the in a way that I think leftists should be able to appreciate too, because it is a lot of the structural problem has to do with incentives and profits and where they're coming from, right?
But you have people who, you know, people in the CIA and people in the Pentagon and people in, you know, like all these people in the corporate press who are there because they are foreign policy experts.
That's their title.
See, you and I, Rob, you may have an opinion on foreign policy, but you're not a foreign policy expert like Max Boot or someone like that.
And those people will tell you Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction.
Assad is committing genocide against his own people.
Qaddafi is about to commit genocide.
Skepticism Over Expert Claims00:06:25
And they're wrong about all of them.
Now, even if you want to give them the benefit of the doubt and say they were just honestly wrong, they weren't lying.
They just thought all of these things were true.
Well, even then, you might go, well, how is it that these experts get this completely wrong?
And you could have, you know, all of these experts, like you could have Ben Bernanke, you know, in, was it Greenspan or Bernanke?
I think it was Bernanke in 2007 telling you that the housing market was completely stable and that everything was fine.
There was no bubble, you know?
And yeah, that turned out to be pretty wrong, but he was the expert, the guy in charge of managing the monetary policy of the country and of the world, really.
You know, he's wrong.
Now, again, they might be lying or they might be wrong, but they're one of the two.
There's no other option.
They were either lying or they were just wrong.
And so, and whatever, I could, you know, you could do this in almost every, you know, conceivable industry you could think of.
And the science, the, the pharmaceutical industry is no exception to this.
You know, a lot of these people get it wrong.
Maybe they're lying.
Maybe they get it wrong.
But the idea that this is just, well, we have to completely believe that in this field, the top people in the government and in these government propped up industries, they couldn't possibly get things wrong.
Well, that's a ridiculous attitude to have.
A much more reasonable attitude is to be skeptical.
On that note of what you're saying with them getting it wrong, but it's also when you stand up and go, I'm the foremost expert and that's why government has to pay me this huge salary.
And that's why my job is crucial.
My department is crucial and you should take everything I say as fact.
That's when you're not allowed to just go, oh, we got it wrong.
And I mean, I made that joke about the Federal Reserve and interest rates that they pretend like they can hit the benchmark.
They can't.
At the moment, they're not tracking their 2%.
Like, look at how much the Federal Reserve, I'm not talking about the cost that we don't see.
I'm just saying the cost of these people's salaries, the expertise that they're supposed to have.
And they can claim that they can hit their 2% inflation target, which they can't.
Now they're not able to hit it.
And they're also changing their standard.
I don't have to go on a Federal Reserve rant.
But the point just being, you don't get to claim that you are the expert.
Your job is crucial and then make mistakes and then just keep your job and keep on going.
It's like, and I, by the way, I don't think they're making mistakes.
It's more nefarious than that.
But I'm saying even if you want to play into the better framework that they're just messing up, well, at some point, you don't get to mess up.
Like, I've had shitty jobs where I mess up and I get in trouble and it's over nothing.
I'm not claiming to be the world's expert.
No, that's right.
And this is what you said, just being as generous as you could be and say, this isn't nefarious.
It's just you messing up.
Like, okay, but then there should be some type of ramification for that, just like there is for all of the rest of us.
So, you know, I don't know.
I really, I really don't know enough to speak about the COVID vaccines with authority.
I'm not an anti-vaxxer in general.
I think vaccines have done a lot of good for humanity.
There are certain aspects of what I've looked into.
Like, for example, the trials that have been done on pregnant women really have not been many.
Like, it's really, when you look into it, it's like, oh, that's pretty shocking.
It's pretty shocking.
There really haven't been that many.
And in the first round, there were like almost none.
There are a few people who got pregnant during the trials, but there were none who were pregnant going in.
That's pretty cool.
You get to like volunteer yourself for humanity, you know?
It's like being a first, like going to the moon, dude.
Oh, yeah, it's just like that.
Totally.
Same, pretty much same thing.
But so I just, I think there's nothing wrong with people being skeptical.
And I look at, you know, I, so again, just disclaiming, I don't know enough about the vaccines and have not done the, you know, a lot of research on that.
But I have, as many of us have, but I really have over the last year, done a lot of research on COVID and the risks associated with that.
And the truth is that I just do not see any argument.
Like for somebody who is, if you are, you know, under the age of 60 and in good health, there seems to me to be no argument for getting the vaccine unless, I mean, you have conclusive argument that there's no risks associated with it and it really works.
And people can say, well, you have to get it so you don't spread it to the more vulnerable people.
But it's like, well, then just let the vulnerable people take it.
If that's the situation, because it's just, it seems kind of ridiculous to me that you're even, you know, thinking about getting a vaccine for something that you will be fine if you get.
And like we know to As high a degree of certainty as you could know with just about anything.
And again, I understand that someone could be like, well, there's this one story of this one guy who did that, but that's anecdotes like that aren't how you do science.
You know, it's like, no, this is not, you don't have to worry about getting this if you're a young, healthy person.
If you get it, you might get a little bit sick.
You also might not, might not be sick at all.
And, you know, I don't know.
I just, I, I, I, um, you know, I, I, I really don't understand the compelling argument for someone who's young and healthy to get it.
And I really am just appalled by the argument that some young, healthy person can't have their fucking freedom if they don't get it.
Um, that's not even to get into all the dangers of the uh the whole passport thing.
I mean, you want to talk about diseases.
I'm living with AIDS, and I'm offended that people would even pretend like COVID is of a serious thing.
It offends me and my community.
That's right.
And we're not even trying to figure out a vaccine for you.
We have no interest.
I take some prep advantages.
Yeah, you're on the hydrocaloxic core quinn.
Jesus, we can't speak.
Anyway.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
All right.
So let's transition into the video that you sent me, which was interesting.
And I felt almost obligated to play this because I was saying on the last episode that it seemed to me that this guy Colvin, the cop who's on trial for murder in the George Floyd killing, I was just saying I think he's going to get off and I think there's going to be riots.
But this maybe at least gave me some reason to pause.
Perhaps I rushed to judgment there a little bit.
Underdogs putting up a good third round.
Yeah, exactly.
All right.
So let's play this video that you sent me.
It's a quick one, but it was interesting.
Sir, based on your review of the body-worn camera footage, do you have an opinion as to when the restraint of Mr. Floyd should have ended in this encounter?
Yes.
What is it?
When Mr. Floyd was no longer offering up any resistance to the officers, they could have pinned to the restraint.
And that was after he was handcuffed and on the ground and no longer resisted.
Correct.
Thank you.
I have no further questions, Your Honor.
Oof, so ready.
Pre-damning.
What are your thoughts?
My thoughts are: usually, Team Blue doesn't turn on Team Blue, but when you got the supervisor willing to review the own footage and say, nope, that guy messed up, and that's not, I mean, I wasn't that clear on what they were trained on, but this would seem to suggest like, nope, that is not what we would train him on.
That's the department turning on him.
That's the supervisor saying, I'm not getting his back on this one.
He shouldn't have done it.
I think with that testimony, it's hard not to get a conviction.
I think that this is really, really damning to the defense.
That is, what he did was consistent with his training.
I mean, that's pretty damning when the guy who is in position to tell you if that was consistent is saying, no, it wasn't.
Yeah, now you need the police chief or whoever actually does the training to come in and go, no, the supervisor was wrong in his analysis.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So maybe they will.
Maybe they will end up getting a conviction out of this guy.
It's possible I'm wrong.
I've been wrong three times before, and this could be the fourth time.
So perhaps I was wrong on it.
You know, maybe this makes me a real hypocrite in some ways.
And maybe it's just how judgmental of cops in general I am.
But there was, because I'll be the first to complain that they just always go in there and defend the blue and side with the blue.
And then watching this guy just turn on him, you're like, oh, you bitch.
So now, now, finally, when the pressure's on you, oh, no, it has nothing to do with us.
Nothing to do with our training and our system.
So, okay, granted, I'm being a little unfair because no matter what he did, I'd be, you know, feeling the same way.
But it is something to see that it's like, oh, okay, I kind of see what's going on here.
They're like, listen, this guy needs to go down because they never do this.
They never do this.
They defend their own.
But they're like, dude, more cops are going to die.
There's going to be riots.
This is going to be insane.
Oh, yeah, yeah, it's totally not consistent with training.
Oh, I can't believe you did that.
We've never heard of anything like that.
Roughing up a black guy, never in our police department.
And so now they'll try to throw him under the bus.
But you know what?
I mean, maybe, maybe this is the best thing that could happen is that they come out there and just go, this was not consistent with training at all, just to hold off the next round of riots.
But yeah, that made me think this guy might go down.
You want to talk about Hollywood movies?
Whoever sat down, had the conversation with him, and they convinced him to give that testimony.
I mean, talk about things that would be fun to watch.
Yeah, yeah, that would be.
That would be real interesting to see exactly how it really did go down, you know, and all this shit.
So, yeah.
Anyway, we'll see what happens.
That made me think that it really is quite possible that this could go bad.
This could go bad for this former officer.
Anyway, yeah, evidently a police officer was killed after a car rammed through the barricade at the U.S. Capitol.
Did you hear about that?
Yeah, that happened earlier today.
I was just curious if you had heard about it.
I don't really know any of the details, but yeah, someone rammed through one of the barriers in the Jews talking about talking out against the LP Mises caucus, and he was upset about it.
You think that's what did it?
Yeah, probably.
It's a slippery slope.
Not their tweet, but the Jews that were upset about the tweet.
They might have convinced him to go.
Yeah, that's what happens.
It's a slippery slope between condemning Holocaust analogies to people doing crazy shit.
What are you going to do?
The good rabbi should have thought about this.
There's blood on his hands.
Blood on your hands, sir.
Oh, I did want to mention that I'm having, I just talked today to Ben Burgess, and he's going to be coming back on the show.
I'm really interested to talk to him about his new book, which is like, I haven't read it yet.
He just sent it over to me, but it's called Canceling Comedians While the World Burns.
I thought it was how to not answer questions.
You sure?
No, that is not it.
He has the title right?
Be kind, my friend.
No, I'm actually, I think this is a really interesting topic that he dove into on the book.
It's the idea, it's a critique of today's left from a left-wing perspective, which I got to say, that topic really fascinates me.
I'm really interested to talk to him about it.
I've been thinking about some of this, because I've been talking a lot over the last, really over the last year about the whole idea of wokeism as a corporate plot.
And, you know, while I think it's something, speaking of things I got wrong, this was one of the three.
I think that during 2016, 2017, 2018, around those years, I think that I got the whole dynamic of what was going on on the left wrong.
And that probably made the show not as good as it could have been.
Or as, I mean, not that I, you know, I didn't get the entirety of it wrong, but I think that I missed a really fundamental aspect of it.
And I think that that probably led me to some conclusions that were not, even if not inaccurate, not as fully accurate as they could have been.
So, you know, there were a lot of people during the rise of the kind of woke movement, during the rise of the social justice warriors, cancel culture, all this shit that we all know that's all around us.
I think what a lot of people were saying, a lot of prominent commentators who were talking about this stuff, you know, like Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro and people like that really blew up in those years, you know?
They became famous, huge names.
Not exactly within the establishment, but kind of in the establishment outside the establishment, if that makes sense.
You know what I mean?
Like they're huge household names.
They may not work for the corporate press, but they, you know, they go on corporate press shows and they're and they're, you know, anyway, whatever, they have big followings.
And it seemed to me that like the, and both of those guys, by the way, it's not that that's all they do is talk about social justice warriors, but that's what they blew up off of was confronting the social justice warriors.
Like Jordan Peterson has, you know, has written a couple books now and he has, you know, like a million lectures of his that are on YouTube.
But the reason he is famous is because he took on the fucking, you know, Bill C-16 in Canada and the transgender, you know, legislation and all this shit.
And it was basically like what those guys would say, I think kind of like the Dave Rubens of the world would make similar points, is that they would say that basically what's happened on the left is that the left took over the liberals.
And I think I kind of agreed with that at the time, because it seems like on the surface, that seems true, you know?
Because it's easy to look at the liberals and go, well, they're not really liberal anymore.
They're not liberal.
Like, what happened to the liberal part of it?
They don't believe in free speech.
They don't believe in colorblindness.
They don't believe in due process.
These were all liberal values.
So where the hell has this gone?
Like, this isn't liberals.
This is some far left-wing shit.
This is critical race theory.
This is, you know, postmodernism or, you know, Frankfurt cultural Marxism or something like that, you know?
And you could call those, and accurately, you could call those left-wing thoughts, left-wing philosophies and ideas.
And so it's kind of easy almost on the surface to go, oh, okay, this is the left taking over the liberals, right?
But when you think about it, right?
The liberals were always like, fuck, who said this?
God damn it.
It was one of the, I think it was one of the Libertarian Institute people.
I can't remember who.
Was it Gareth Porter who said it?
I don't know.
But he said that the best thing about a liberal is that he's not a leftist.
And the best thing about a leftist is that he's not a liberal.
Like those are just both of their best.
So the best thing about a leftist is that they're not some corporate bought and paid for liberal who just wants like, you know, to prop up the, you know, the military industrial complex or the pharmaceutical industrial complex or any of this shit.
They don't, they don't like for, they're good on banker bailouts and wars and all this shit because they see through it.
They're like, no, fuck that.
That's all corporate interest bullshit, you know?
But the problem with the leftists is that if they ever took over your Department of Agriculture, we'd all starve to death, you know?
It's like the problem is that they really, they won't even let you have prices and shit like that.
Now, the liberal, on the other hand, is bad on all those things that the leftist is good on.
But at the end of the day, they're for business.
So if they run your department of agriculture, there'll be some subsidies and some corruption, but like there'll be food.
You know what I mean?
You won't starve to death.
So kind of what happened, right, is that this woke ideology, this one little kind of fringe part of the left, got pounced on.
But it got pounced on by all of these corporate interests that used to control all of the liberals.
And that's why all of the liberals bought into it right away.
So you have all of these discussions now about cancel culture and what comedians went too far and microaggressions and thought crimes of straight white men and all of these different things.
But guess what issue is completely off the table?
Corporate power.
Like there's just no more.
So it's like the thing that the left was so good on, even if not as good as libertarians, but they were still kind of good on, was seeing through the corporate power.
And now that has been completely removed from the equation.
So when you look at it, you realize, wait a minute, no, this was really the corporate interests behind the liberals.
This was a liberal takeover of the left.
And that's why the left is in such shambles right now.
And that's why.
I think it's that all of our microaggressions, when you add them up, they equal Goldman Sachs profits.
That's what it is, right?
There you go.
It's just collective.
It's like a collective energy.
All right, there's one more angle to look at it from.
But you get what I'm saying?
Where it's almost like, oh, okay, so actually, I mean, look at it just like the way it plays out.
Did you see this thing with Glenn Greenwald where the intercept guy?
Uh-huh.
Who left?
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, he was the guy.
He broke the Snowden story.
He's incredible.
He's one of the best journalists in the world, you know?
And he just writes on Substack now.
And it pisses them the fuck off because he's huge and he's got a huge following.
And he's like, hey, guess what?
I don't need any publication behind me.
He started the intercept and left it because he's like, yeah, the culture went crazy.
I'm being more of a grandpa now than you are.
And you're substantially older than I am.
I don't know.
Substantially is a big word, but very, very old.
There he is.
How does Substack work?
What is it?
You can write, you know, it's like just a platform.
You can write pieces and then you can have like a subscription thing.
So it's like Patreon, but for writings.
Basically.
Yeah.
Right.
So, and you can put them up for free and then you can put some behind the paywall or whatever.
Right.
So that's, you know, so he does that and he's killing it on there.
And he's writing really great stuff.
And so he's now, you know, and he's like a, he should be a champion for the leftists by any measure, except, right, he basically, he was good on Trump.
And when I say that, I mean good on Trump like the way we were.
Not that he was a Trump supporter.
He was not.
He was an adamant Trump critic, but he also didn't pretend that he was a fucking agent of Vladimir Putin.
And he had a whole Rogan on that with the journalistic integrity, and that's why he left the intercept.
Yes.
Well, leaving the intercept was about the Biden stuff, where he was like, oh, that they wouldn't publish the Russia.
I mean, they wouldn't publish China.
Yes, they wouldn't publish anything critical of Biden, even when it was legitimate, you know, newsworthy stuff.
But so he was pissing him off the whole time because he was basically good on Russia Gate, good on impeachment.
And gay.
And gay.
And he's gay.
So that pissed him off even more because they can't even say that he's homophobe because he's married to a dude.
So it's hard to call that guy a homophobe.
But so basically, and all of this came from him being a good leftist all along.
So he was always good on the CIA and good on the NSA and good on the Pentagon.
And so when the CIA and the NSA and the Pentagon started telling everyone Trump's in bed with Russia, he was like, oh, no, because I know who they are and they haven't shown any evidence.
Woke Ideology and Rules00:02:16
And he just saw through the whole thing.
So this started pissing the left off a lot.
And so just the other day, and I just thought this was a great little manifestation of the liberal corporate takeover of the left.
So he goes, and you realize when the woke shit gets played and when it doesn't.
Very similarly to, like I was saying just now, right?
The outrage about this Nazi comparison that the Libertarian Party of Kentucky is going through.
Well, that's outrageous.
Oh my God, all these blue check marks are coming down on you.
Convenient that none of them came down on all the people comparing Trump to Hitler, right?
Because the woke shit can be deployed.
All you got to do is send some energy behind it.
And then other things just go under the radar and that's not that big of a deal.
So Glenn Greenwald, the other day, so there's this reporter, this woman just got a job, I guess, at USA Today, I believe it was.
And her first piece was about how we should crack down on the like proud boys and January 6th rioters who have been charged and are trying to raise money online for bail and for legal defenses and how they're able to go online and raise money for legal defenses and how we should crack down on this.
And Glenn Greenwald tweets back at her and he goes, well, congratulations, you know, with your with your fancy new title, you've now gone after, you know, one of the few avenues for how people who are wrongfully convicted or wrongfully charged of crimes can defend themselves.
Who do you think is usually wrongfully convicted or usually wrongfully charged with crimes?
Well, it ends up being disproportionately black and brown and poor and blah, blah, blah, all this.
And they all went nuts on him for, what is it?
Woke crime.
You are harassing a female journalist.
This is his big crime, right?
So all of a sudden, of course, once you're, she's not a fucking professional reporter for USA Today.
No, she's a little girl.
She's just a little girl who's on Twitter.
And you were mean to the little girl.
Powerful People Exploit Rules00:01:05
You know, it's like, so they go right.
So you just realize it over and over again that it's like, oh, these woke rules are now in the same way that they'd start going, you know, I think Bernie Sanders is sexist and all these other things.
It's like, oh yeah, they're actually, all these rules are very convenient for powerful people because they can, you know, if you create these rules where everyone just by existing is breaking some of them, then you just get to choose when and where people are going to get hit.
And how about anytime they're a threat to your power?
And how about who has more money to throw into writing a lot of articles about it and getting a lot of, you know, people outraged about it?
It's not the left taking over the liberals.
It's the liberals taking over the left.
And they're doing it with the veneer of some left-wing ideology.