Dave Smith and Robbie the Fire Bernstein dissect Andrew Cuomo's resignation as a calculated "bitch move" to evade criminal charges, contrasting his rapid fall from grace with the media's prior lionization. They critique Rand Paul's YouTube suspension for mask criticism as censorship, arguing that unequal enforcement silences dissent while corporate outlets spread misinformation. The hosts emphasize that ignoring basic health precautions like staying home when sick fueled the pandemic, suggesting vaccines may create a false sense of security by reducing symptoms without preventing infection. Ultimately, they challenge the permanence of lockdown mandates and question whether the current media apparatus truly serves public safety or political agendas. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Government Overreach and Corruption00:15:05
Fill her up.
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You're listening to part of the problem on the Gas Digital Network.
Tear your votes, Dave Smith.
What's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
I'm Dave Smith.
He's Robbie the Fire Bernstein.
Coming in a little grainy today.
Having some internet problems at the studio.
But how you doing, brother?
I'm doing pretty good.
I had fun in D.C. Getting ready for Nashville.
Big things.
Hell yeah.
Thank you to everybody who came out to our shows in Washington.
That was a lot of fun.
Go into the heart of the Capitol.
And we managed to not get all of our people killed in a coup attempt.
So there you go.
Successful night.
People laughed.
We didn't storm the Capitol.
Good job.
Well, we booked a venue a little bit too far for a storming that if we had gotten that fired up, we would have had to uber it or get tired and route.
So if you'd ever hop your way to the Capitol, you'd be tired by the time you got there.
So next time we'll have to find a venue a little bit closer.
Okay, there you go.
But for peaceful protest, we're not, you know.
Yeah, just saying.
Careful what you spend the internet these days.
Yeah, just saying peaceful doesn't seem to be enough to get you not in trouble with your people going to the Capitol.
That's one thing I learned from our 45th president.
All right.
So we did the live podcast at the DC Comedy Loft after the stand-up show.
And we talked a little bit about Cuomo on that show and the sexual assault report that the Attorney General put out and all that.
But the big thing, of course, that changed was yesterday morning, Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York, announced that he is resigning.
He gave his two-week notice, like he's working at KFC or some shit like that, and said, yeah, in two weeks, he's out of there.
I find this whole thing really, really interesting on a lot of different levels.
So I wanted to spend some time talking about Cuomo, what exactly is going on here, how bizarre this whole thing is.
I guess the first thing to start with was just what a bitch move it was by him.
I mean, like, I just can't, I can't forget that he's evil and an authoritarian governor and that he killed all these people and all this stuff that we'll spend a lot of time and have spent a lot of time talking about.
But just on a human level, on a man level, I can respect somebody saying, look, I didn't do this stuff and so I'm not leaving.
I can respect someone saying, look, I did this stuff and I'm sorry for doing it.
So I'm going to leave.
But to do the middle ground thing that he did, where he goes, look, man, like, I just, you know, because I'm such a great guy and this is causing a distraction, I'm just going to leave because I'm so great.
And, you know, that this way we can move on and the government can get back to the business of governing because I've never done anything wrong, you know, but so I'll just leave.
You're like, okay, fine.
But for him to spin it as going, New York tough was always about being New York love.
And I'm, you know, like, there's nothing tough about not copying to doing something and running anyway.
That is the opposite of toughness.
That's like bitch shit.
Like, I don't know.
I just, that was my initial like gut response to his actual resignation.
Does that make sense, though, what I'm saying?
Like it's like either you did it or you didn't.
So which is I'm going to assume that for practical purposes, I mean, we'll find out if they end up doing some sort of a criminal investigation.
But I think this is almost the equivalent of a prosecutor plea deal, which is, listen, we're coming after you.
You can either resign and then you're not going to face the criminal charges, or he might also just know that the criminal charges are coming and it will be impossible for him to continue to be in the post.
He actually actually focused on the lawsuit.
I would venture to guess that while still having the governor power, he could better defend himself.
So he must, I would just assume that this is a plea deal type thing where it's like, if you go away, this will go away.
No, perhaps.
I mean, I think that he was politically in a situation that was untenable.
So he was when you are, when you have your own party turn against you to this degree.
Now, this is, again, I'm not commenting on whether he did these things or didn't do these things, or I don't know.
We'll get into more of that in a second.
But when you have all the way to the top, the president of the United States saying you have to resign, your own state government, you know, Democrats saying you have to resign, all just very, very hard to hang on to your job and to be able to do anything in that position.
So I think he really had no choice.
And I think that probably he realized after this AG report came out that if he was going to stay and stay in the spotlight, that the publicity was just going to get worse and worse and worse.
And that he could leave without.
That's a fair take.
Well, he could leave now and then kind of get buried.
And, you know, like, yeah, it kind of gets forgotten what happened.
But if he had stayed, there were going to be prime-time interviews.
There were going to be all types of report, you know, articles written and stuff like this about every little detail of every inappropriate hug that he ever gave out and all this stuff.
And so I think for his own, you know, self-preservation reasons, he was like, I got to get the hell out of here.
I'm sure.
Maybe it's the payday bribe where they go, hey, man, this is your last chance to get the following still thing coming your way.
That is also possible.
A lot of these things are possible.
But, all right, first of all, which I think I might have touched on a little bit on the last episode, but now that he's actually gone, it puts it more into perspective.
The thing that I find to be the most fascinating aspect of the whole story is that, look, the rise and fall, you know, that's a term people use sometimes, the rise and fall.
And there's a lot of people who fit into that kind of category.
Like they have these meteoric rises and then they crash.
And, you know, you think about, I don't know, people like Mike Tyson or something like that, right?
Who's like the heavyweight champion of the world and then he's in prison.
You know what I mean?
And like people who have this happens a lot in life, particularly, I think, in our society.
But Cuomo's, politically speaking, it's really hard to compare it to anything I've ever seen.
Particularly in this COVID regime, he went from being the guy, bar none, the political hero of the COVID regime, at least according to the corporate press and the political establishment.
He was the guy.
He was the governor of America, they were calling him.
I mean, the man collected a freaking Emmy.
He was really that guy who was just beloved by the establishment.
And then to leave like this, to leave in disgrace off the heels of the Attorney General's report that said he was guilty of criminal sexual harassment all in the span of a little over a year is pretty remarkable.
I mean, it's not like we're talking about 20 years he went from being this high to this low.
It really was all so fast, so incredibly fast.
And that in itself is just really something to see that.
Like how they could, you know, make this guy the hero, the governor hero of America down to not only not the hero, but the most humiliating exit for a New York governor in my lifetime, even including his predecessor, Elliot Spitzer, more humiliating than his exit is really something, just something to behold.
I think if you're willing to look at this through a conspiracy lens, it all kind of adds up pretty nicely.
And so you have Governor Cuomo, they're trying to paint Donald Trump that this guy has always been a buffoon.
He shouldn't be in the, like, he should not be in the office.
And the fact that he's in the office is leading to all this chaos.
And hey, look, now we actually have a real disaster.
He's been lying to you and telling you that everything's going to be fine and it's not going to be fine.
And Cuomo became the perfect individual to make a television spectacle of here's what good governance would look like, right?
And so here's the guy that's going to be honest with you is going to tell you that it's going to be a problem.
And this is what we actually need.
At the same time, they have to shut down the country because while Trump is saying, hey, this is not going to be that big of a deal.
New York City has incredible death numbers that suggest that this is going to lead to an incredible pandemic and that hospitals are going to be overrun.
We later discover that that's because of blunders or purposeful killing of old people in old age homes that boosted those numbers.
They got the country shut down.
And so I think for the duration of time that you fit the narrative, you're a superstar because they want you on television, right?
They want to showcase, hey, this is how big of a dummy Donald Trump is.
And here's what good governance would look like.
Now Donald Trump's already in office.
That story is over.
He kind of got outed on the old age home and then they don't want that unraveling.
And so if anything, it would seem like this, like, how did the sexual assault thing like first come up now?
If the guy's been doing it for his entire career, why is it like, if anything, we should be doing an audit of all of government as to how he got away with it for this period of time.
And then it very conveniently surfaces when he should be investigated for killing old people.
Yeah.
Okay.
So, yeah, there's a whole lot there that's that's really interesting.
And it's not, I mean, look, I understand we're, you know, we're speculating a little bit about what could be going on behind here, but it's pretty hard to ignore a lot of red flags.
And one of those being that like, you know, just how quick it was, that like what I was saying before, how quick it went from this guy is the heroes collecting Emmys.
Everyone in the corporate press is just singing his praises.
I mean, go see some of those like montages or whatever, the compilations that they have on YouTube of the corporate press just heaping praise on this guy.
And then it's like, as soon as Donald Trump's out, everything starts turning on him.
He gets thrown right under the bus.
That does seem convenient.
It's a red flag for sure.
Now, who knows exactly what's going on there?
Just to give the counter argument, it could be more of a correlation type thing where like sometimes it happens, like Cosby kind of went down quick from when Hannibal Burr is brought it to the attention and then the media is like, oh, I guess we're allowed to talk about this.
And then all of a sudden they're reporting on it.
But luckily Cosby's back out of jail and he's going to tour soon.
Same thing collect a big check from the government.
The first story was that I think trying to run for mayor or some sort of a position in New York, the hot red-headed chick who was saying, hey, he sexually assaulted me.
And then it kind of became a funny thing of, hey, believe all women.
That's what your party believes in.
And by the way, no one just believed that lady.
But then it escalated to there being 11 reports.
So it could be that two things happened at the same time, theoretically.
Before the election, he fit the narrative perfectly.
And so like the same way Beto O'Rourke fit the narrative for a little bit and CNN played the hell out of him, this guy fit what they were looking.
And so he got a ton of press and a ton of TV times.
Yeah, that is a good point.
And it's funny that you bring up Beto O'Rourke.
The guy that I was thinking of was Michael Avenati, who was the lawyer representing Stormy Daniels, that porn star who Donald Trump was in a legal fight with.
And there are these people.
It's funny, all of them in some ways, Kamala Harris, you could throw in there too, with her presidential campaign, where the corporate press, and this is something that is very revealing.
And it happens so much quicker today.
And I think part of that is the internet age that we live in, right?
And even the point you were making about these rumors kind of taking off and taking on a life of their own or actations, whatever you want to call them.
You know, that wouldn't happen nearly as quickly in the past.
But one of the things that's really kind of cool about it is that you can very quickly see, you know, it's not just that the corporate press kind of, you know, praises these guys who then they unravel and are exposed.
It's like you see the type of people that they are.
And the reaction from the New York Times and CNN and MSNBC is like, wow, what a great person.
What a great human being Michael Avenatti is.
You're like, this dude is like the sleaziest of the sleazy.
And then, of course, that totally gets exposed.
Same thing with Cuomo.
Same thing with Kamala Harris.
Now, Beto O'Rourke, they were like, this guy is charisma and he has the it factor.
Like, what?
Like, how out of touch they are with what normal human beings would think of these type of people.
So there is something to that.
And so, yeah, your point is well taken.
It is possible for these rumors to just, you know, kind of hit a breaking point where all of a sudden, oh, shit, there's all these accusations and they're all out there and they're getting traction.
But there's a little bit more to this particular story.
Now, one thing that is interesting to keep in mind, Tucker Carlson was talking about this on his show last night.
And look, it is a fair point to say, you know, that Andrew Cuomo was the attorney general in New York who was going after the then governor for his, you know, that whole prostitution thing.
Tucker Carlson's Accusations00:15:16
And then he got the job.
And I have already heard a couple people floating out this lady, the attorney general, as being a candidate for governor, which just saying, that seems like a conflict of interest.
If you are investigating the governor, who you're going to, if you bring down, then you get to upgrade to that job.
That seems a little bit of a, you know, hmm, that's, that's an unhealthy way to work a system.
But if you look at her report on Cuomo, and this is what gets a little bit tough to believe.
Basically, so Cuomo's been governor for 11 years.
And I know there's some rewriting of history where almost like people think, you know, before the Me Too movement that sexual harassment couldn't ruin you, but that's really not true.
It really could.
And lots of people have been fired for sexual harassment way before the Me Too, you know, hashtag was big.
Sexual harassment was a major political issue in the 90s when I was a kid.
Like, it's been going on, you know, there's been awareness of this for 30 years, at least.
You got to go back to the 50s to when you could say, hey, Tootson, just slap your secretary on the ass.
No, that's when back in the 50s, it was like it was something on your resume.
He's been accused of sexual harassment in every job.
Like, hmm, well, his grades aren't that great, but he sexually harasses the hell out of it.
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Anyway, but so, but what they're claiming in this report, again, maybe is true, but it is pretty wildly blatant sexual harassment.
Like talking about him making women who work for him sit on his lap at parties, just grabbing chicks' asses, all types of crazy innuendo and like all this stuff.
Now, perhaps all of this is true.
I have no idea.
You know, I'm willing to assume it is.
I don't know.
But it does make you wonder, not only getting through the last 11 years, but you're telling me that since 2017, since the Me Too movement, that this never came up.
And then as he becomes the most famous governor ever, this just isn't something that they want to pursue or go after or talk about.
And it happens to be right after Joe Biden gets in and his kind of usefulness, as you were pointing out, of kind of being there to be a big thorn in Donald Trump's side, as soon as that's gone, then all of a sudden they start moving to bring this guy down.
Like, I don't know that this is a conspiracy, but it's certainly it.
If it doesn't set off your spidey senses a little bit, I think you're not paying attention.
You know, like there's something about that that seems very strange to me.
Very bizarre, the idea that this guy could have been this brazenly from 2017 to 2021, just openly sexually harassing women for all to see.
Not like this was all just private shit, like for everyone to see and no hint of anything.
Again, as he becomes, and I'm not exaggerating when I say this, the most famous governor in the history of our country.
There's never been a governor in this type of situation before who was on TV every single day giving with people, not just like that he was on TV.
I mean, that in itself is probably, I don't think there's ever been a governor who's done that, but that he was on TV every day with people like waiting with bated breath.
You know what I mean?
Like, oh shit, what's he going to say?
What can we do today?
Every day he had this like this built-in must-see television because it was literally going to tell you what you were allowed to do with your day in New York state and New York City, the biggest city in the country.
I mean, like, which was, of course, at the time deemed the epicenter of COVID.
And that guy under that spotlight has been just brazenly sexually assaulting women and no one said anything.
And just now, it just seems like if nothing else, a very important question would be, how did he get away with it for all these years?
And it doesn't.
Just share your tips, dude.
Yeah, well, I'm saying it doesn't seem like there's a lot of people asking that question, which is like the obvious question right there.
How was this not like, I mean, just imagine in today's day and age, you have, you're a governor and you have female subordinates sitting on your lap at parties and stuff like that.
And no one's going like, whoa, what?
Like, no one's saying something about this?
No one's writing a story about this?
It just seems to me like that would be one of the first places to start, like a first question to ask.
The second question is, was he hard, chubbed up, barely could feel it?
You know, that also plays into how offensive this was.
It might have been the fourth or fifth question, but it'd be on the list at some point.
And then, of course, if you did find, it seems to me that if you did find out that the attorney general who released this has any interest in the job herself, that'd be something that, say, I don't know, a journalist, if we have any left, might want to ask, did that play any role?
Are you interested in this job?
You'd think nothing else if you had like an honest press corps that that would at least, they would at least, just through doing their job and asking questions, shame her out of the possibility of running for that job.
You know what I mean?
Because you would just ask over and over and then put her in the position of either saying, oh yeah, no, I was totally thinking about that, or like, no, of course I have no interest.
And then if she said that, wouldn't really be able to run without being a blatant hypocrite.
Well, I think as a lady who takes down sexual assaulters and empowers women to speak up, that's the perfect governor, Dave.
Well, that's kind of the thing now, right?
They can play this.
Or, you know, if you have the press just carrying their water, then yeah, you can swing this in.
She had the gunction to take on corruption.
No, she's heroic.
She brought down an abuser, and now, of course, she should be governor.
But of course, all it would take is one journalist to be like, wait, but as you were bringing him down, were you thinking about getting this job?
And it turns the whole thing upside down.
Anyway, look, I don't know.
I mean, I think Cuomo is just horrible.
And he's, you know, I'd much rather see him go down over the stuff he really deserves to go down over.
But look, if he did all these things, they are pretty inappropriate.
A lot of things he was accused of.
And that certainly would be enough for someone to go down for.
But anyway, it's just a policy.
Let's settle this one way or another.
Was he unseated because of some bad AG report that compiled, you know, questionable claims that those people didn't want to show up in court and actually give testimony for?
Or was there a known sexual assaulter who managed to keep his job four or five years too long because the government system somehow protects people in power?
Let's settle it.
Right.
Well, that's the thing.
It's like, no matter what the story is here, it doesn't add up to being above water, if that makes sense.
So if Cuomo's story here is that he didn't do any of this, which that is Cuomo's story.
I've never inappropriately touched or sexually harassed anybody.
That's what he said.
He's like, I'm 62.
I've lived my entire life in the public eye.
I don't do any of this shit.
Well, if that's the truth, right?
Then there was like this coordinated hit job against you.
In which case, wouldn't wouldn't would the logical thing there be to just be like, oh, okay, I'll accept that.
And they get to take me out and they get to take over government now.
Is that New York tough and New York strong?
No, I mean, like the move there would be to try to expose it.
Or then, of course, you have the other scenario, which is that this all is true.
I mean, of course, it could be somewhere in the middle.
Some of it could be true, some of it not, but just, you know, hypothetically assuming different shape, you know, but if two out of 11 turns out to be true or if half turns out to be true, you're probably at a place where it's still pretty bad.
But just, so let's just assume that all of this is true, just for the sake of argument.
So all of this is true.
How then, like, how could you possibly accept this outcome, assuming that the outcome is that Cuomo resigns and gets to go away now?
Now, if the Attorney General is going to say, as she said, that she's concluded that this was criminal, well then, like, what do you do in an honest system if somebody committed crimes?
Well, that person should be charged with the crime, right?
So there's almost no excuse now for them if they don't prosecute him.
You can't just say something's criminal to bring down a political opponent or a potentially, you know, a potential political opponent and then just say, oh, yeah, he was guilty of crimes, but, you know, he's gone now.
So the political issue is settled.
So we don't have to like charge him.
I'm sorry.
That's not how that works in any type of even remotely fair system.
You'd have to go after the guy now.
And then, of course, the major question, I think, is what you just asked, which is like the next thing that would follow is if you said, okay, this guy is guilty of all of this.
Not only is this guy a habitual sexual harasser and sexual assault, but he has been brazenly doing it openly for years and lots of people knew.
I mean, this is like the official story.
I'm not just like adding this.
This is what they're saying, that he was doing it in front of audiences at parties, that he was doing it with his subordinates, with young women who worked for him, and that a whole bunch of women knew about it.
A whole bunch of the people around him knew about it.
A whole bunch of the other politicians knew about it.
Like, okay.
Well, if that's the case, how the hell is this guy allowed to not only keep his job, but just be praised by the entire corporate press?
And what's wrong in the corporate press apparatus that they could lionize such a creep?
Like, that in itself should warrant some investigation.
How the hell did you guys get this so wrong?
It's like If you're an honest person and there's somebody in your life and you're singing their praises and you're like, oh, this is like one of the best people I've ever met.
And you make him, you know, godfather to your kid and you're always bringing them around your house.
And then you find out he's like the worst person.
That would lead to you having some introspection.
Like, holy shit, what is my judge that I was praising this guy?
But yet you see none of that out of the corporate press.
So that in itself should be pretty revealing.
So in other words, no matter what is true here, something's not adding up.
And it is interesting to see, you know, who stands to benefit from this guy being brought down.
Already now, there are rumors about this woman, the attorney general, running for governor.
There's rumors about Bill de Blasio running for governor.
And there's rumors about Al Sharpton, of all people, running for governor.
I have a tough time seeing Sharpton or de Blasio being in, but maybe this woman will be.
Who knows?
De Blasio and Sharpton don't have a choice.
Is Larry Sharp going to make a run?
We'll see.
We'll see.
That would be interesting.
At least get someone good up there.
I'd be real interested to see if he would do that.
I mean, Larry Sharp, of course, ran for governor on the Libertarian Party ticket against Cuomo in 2018, I believe.
And, you know, it was just, it was a drastically different time in New York then.
You know, now after the lockdowns and all this craziness, it's really, you can't overstate how drastically different a position the state and the city is in from then to now.
It's, you know, it's only been three years or whatever, but it's been decades in terms of, you know, how night and day the state is.
I mean, the major problems that exist right now were not even issues back in 2018.
Like, you know, whether it's lockdowns or the COVID passports or the surging crime rate, none of this stuff was going on then.
So, yeah, I'd be real interested.
I would hope that Larry Sharp would give it a go.
I encourage you to do so, Mr. Sharp.
Anyway, so that's so that's the situation.
And the reality of the situation is, you know, if I had to guess, this will all just go away.
None of this will really, this is just kind of like, okay, we got him out now.
That's all this was ever about.
He's going to go and sulk off into the corner while everyone, you know, moves on.
And the vaccine passports go through.
That's what I guess.
Does he throw one last rager at the governor's mansion?
A groper?
One last groper.
Yeah, maybe.
Maybe.
And what happens to Chris?
Does he just keep his cushy gig?
Yeah, I think so.
I think he keeps it.
Every time he goes somewhere, is he referred to as advisor to sexual assaulters?
Misinformation and Medical Law00:15:23
No, maybe he's maybe he's the one who's behind all of this.
He's like, who's Fredo now, motherfucker?
Oh.
Yeah, he goes like, you can call me Michael Corleone.
Thank you very much.
I don't know.
He was able to get through this whole thing without reporting on it, which is really, really something.
I mean, I know, I think I said this on the last podcast.
I probably said this a bunch, but it's just the most obvious comment to make.
But the fact that CNN would let him report on it when we were praising him, but then as soon as it's, oh, no, we're throwing him under the bus, he gets to go, well, I can't.
I can't comment on my own brother.
No, you had a nightly segment with him when he was doing nothing but just suspending, you know, the constitutionally protected rights of the entire state.
That was okay.
But we're not allowed to talk about sexual harassment charges.
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And of course, as you know, got to, as I mentioned before, there is something about it.
Like, it's hard to look.
If he is guilty of all the things he's accused of doing here, there's some real wildly inappropriate shit that's that's going on.
And I, I don't like, I really do not mean to downplay that at all.
Um, like, I'm fine, more than fine with people getting in trouble for like sexually harassing people, particularly in a job like that, where you're the governor.
Like, yeah, you can't fucking grab chicks' asses or make inappropriate comments.
That's like that's outrageous.
But that is not nearly as outrageous as killing 11,000 senior citizens and then covering it up.
I mean, that is so obviously criminal.
I mean, you could make the argument, which I'm not, I don't think I buy, but you could make the argument that they did not know and they really thought it was the right thing to do to send COVID-positive patients into these elder care facilities.
Okay.
But to cover it up when everywhere else you're just trying to play up the dangers of COVID and there's this one area where you're downplaying it, and it happens to be the area where you are responsible for murdering thousands of old people, killing thousands of old people to give the benefit of the doubt.
Yeah, that's fucking criminal right there.
So that, and then the fucking lockdowns, you know, and then to allow the COVID passports to be rolled out in New York City.
I mean, I would much rather see him forced to resign or even potentially, you know, charge.
I mean, I would love to see him charged and convicted for all of that stuff, which is all criminal than sexual harassment allegations.
I can tell you.
I take that stuff a lot more seriously.
Not to say that, you know, it's okay to sexually harass people.
But anyway, won't be holding my breath on any of that stuff.
So you just have to point out that some of the old people that died were women.
So we're still, you know, trying to protect women here.
It's not like all the old people were men.
Attack the left from the left.
We're really concerned.
Isn't murder the ultimate sexual assault?
That's the really come at them from their own angle there.
Anyway, so that's it.
It looks like, I mean, who knows?
Maybe there'll be charges.
I don't think so.
I don't think there'll be any more getting to the bottom of this.
I think he'll just go on his way and go live a nice life.
But if that's the case, then there you go.
This next 10 days or whatever will close the chapter on Andrew Cuomo, the politician.
And that is, it's really bizarre.
It's hard to really put it into words, like just how surreal it all feels.
I mean, just think about the fact that a year ago, the guy was collecting a fucking Emmy.
He was the guy that everyone was saying.
I mean, it was too late in the primary season, but pretty much everyone was saying, like, oof, the Democrats wish they had this guy running against Donald Trump, you know?
And there were still whispers.
I mean, we were talking about it pretty loudly on the show, that if Biden were to drop out somehow, this would be the guy the Democrats would want to put in.
And imagine, go to this guy a year ago.
He is the most famous governor ever.
He's collecting an Emmy.
He is being praised by the corporate press.
He is the guy.
And to tell him that a year from now, you're through.
Not only are you not president a year from now, you're disgraced having to resign.
Like, that really is just pretty wild.
People have rises and falls like this, but it does seem like, man, that's a lot quicker.
That's a lot faster for it to all happen than anything I can think of.
Well, hopefully he'll open up that deli that he's always wanted and he can film some TV commercial and be like, these sandwiches are so good, you won't even need to grow up women.
That's how good these are.
In Anatomy of the State, Murray Rothbard talks about the relationship between intellectuals and the state and how, of course, like the state benefits from having a whole intellectual class that rationalizes the existence of the state and rationalizes state actions.
And then the intellectual class, they benefit from the fact that the state exists and therefore there's a lot more jobs and roles for intellectuals to rationalize the state.
So it's kind of this weird little mini economy that they both get involved in where they both, you know, they mutually benefit from the relationship.
And this is true not just for intellectuals, but it's true for like a whole big class of people.
Yeah, I just did a podcast with Jose Galason, No Way Jose.
Great show.
I like Jose very much.
And we did an episode all about Anatomy of the State.
And I was talking about this, but I was saying, like, think about some of these guys.
Like, you think about like Max Boot, or I think was the example I used.
Like, where is he?
What value does he add in a market economy compared to what value does he add when he's neocon, you know, propagandist writing for all these big fucking publications?
And there's a lot of people like that.
So when you think about the Cuomos, you know, these guys who've, you know, his father, of course, Mario Cuomo, was a governor of New York, and then he becomes attorney general, then becomes governor after he brings down the governor from the attorney general position.
But when you say deli owner, to me, like in a true free market, that's about where Andrew Cuomo belongs.
He should be a deli owner.
I think Chris David might have a funny joke about that.
Sorry if I spill your joke, Chris.
No.
It's okay, Chris.
That's what happens when you fucking come on the road and open for us.
And then if the jokes work, you test them on the market.
So, you know?
Yeah, there you go.
Anyway, the Cuomos should own a deli.
That is their rightful place in the world.
And I'll tell you, pretty good deli.
Get your own sugar.
Get a bomb sandwich at the Cuomo's deli.
And they're both in there.
They're busting balls.
They're fun to hang out with.
That's a good setting for them.
I'll tell you, don't bring your chick in there.
Do not bring your chick.
She's going to hear some pretty inappropriate things.
But if you just want to go in with your boys for a sandwich and a six-pack, that's the spot to go.
Cuomo's deli.
No doubt.
No doubt about it.
Okay.
Let's switch gears a little bit here.
The other thing that I wanted to talk about, which I'm sure you noticed and caught your eye, was Rand Paul caught a seven-day suspension from YouTube, which is funny to see.
It's, you know, it's hard to explain how bizarre it is to get used to this censorship environment.
that we're in.
So I saw this video that Rand Paul put out and I retweeted it.
If you want to find it, you can go check on my Twitter.
I'd seen a really incredible, he seems to be doing a better job at social media and both cutting his clips and getting them up and then also doing like little segments to put up online.
I believe what got him censored was some sort of a statement he made about masks, even though I'd watched a really good kind of compilation of his Fauci engagements.
But I don't know that I actually saw the video that got him removed, which I believe was him talking about masks.
Yeah, well, it was the masks thing is what they're latching on to as the reason to remove it.
But he basically gave a little, well, let me see here because I have it.
I did retweet it.
Let me just check.
Last I saw it, it was still up on Twitter.
Because there was, you know, like the, he put it up on Twitter as like a Twitter video and then also put it up on YouTube.
I do think it's worth it.
It's got 1.2 million views on Twitter.
So that's pretty awesome.
I do think it's worth unpacking just how brazen it is to be taking down Rand Paul over medical misinformation.
I mean, you just have to put out some of the elements here.
He is a doctor.
He's claiming that he's quoting medical studies.
Now, first, off the bat, so you're telling a medical doctor that they're not allowed to express their opinion, even if it's supported, supposedly, by academic literature.
And then it's also a medical doctor who's sitting in the Senate, who you would think would have enough power that at least that guy you would leave alone and go, oh shit, we don't like what he's saying and it doesn't fit the narrative, but that's the one person who we're going to have to let them do it because they both have the degree of being a doctor and being in the Senate.
Right.
So, and it's not, it's not to say, again, because I don't want people to misconstrue what we're saying here.
It's not that I think that somebody who's, because they're a senator or because they're a doctor or something like this, that they deserve their right to speak and other people can be censored.
The point is just that the fact that they can even go after them, you know, like even somebody who has, you know, like all of the, you know, the cathedral approved credentials and positions.
I mean, you're talking about, yeah, look, okay, he's not an epidemiologist, but he graduated from Duke Medical School.
I mean, like that, you'd think that's someone, like, this is not a dumb person, right?
This is a person who knows a bit more about medicine than the average person and is a sitting United States senator.
And even he can be silenced by one of these tech companies just for going against the narrative, which is all that he's guilty of doing here.
Now, I'll tell you, this video was Rand Paul at his absolute best.
I mean, this was like Rand Paul, you know, like this was Ron Paul's kid saying this.
I mean, he tweeted out, he tweeted to go with the video.
He said, we are at a moment of truth and a crossroads.
Will we allow these people to use fear and propaganda to do further harm to our society, economy, and children?
Or will we stand together and say, absolutely not.
Not this time.
I choose freedom.
And he put out the video.
The video is, let me see here.
It wasn't very long.
It was a few minutes.
The video, at least the Twitter version one, was a little under four minutes long, but it was just a scathing attack against the entire COVID regime, against the lockdowns, the mask mandates, the masking of children in school, the COVID passports, all of it.
You know, like all of the mandated vaccines, all of this stuff.
It was an excellent video.
And, you know, to see that get taken down.
Now, here's what they jumped on and how they, this is how they justified that it was misinformation, is that at one point he said just the sentence, cloth masks don't work.
Now, I mean, look, again, here's the thing, and this is the way it works with all of these things.
Once you get to say, I'm going to take down misinformation, like all these big tech companies are saying now, you can, if you're willing to go over everything with a fine-tooth comb, if someone's not perfect and says any little thing that you could twist into being misinformation, then you now have license to silence them.
Of course, the issue with this is the issue with authority in general, which is like how the rules are applied.
And as anyone would know, right, like if you take laws, you could have a law that many people could even think is a reasonable law, but if it's not equally applied or it's misapplied, then that can be, in effect, like an outrageous violation.
You know what I mean?
Because it's like if you, let's just say you have a law that says like there's a 65 mile per hour speed limit, but you only pull over black people when they speed.
Well, then, okay, the law itself may not be like, you know, inherently wrong, but the application of the law is pretty damn evil.
Like, that's that's pretty messed up, right?
So here you have a situation where they can claim, eh, look, it's a little bit overstated for Rand Paul to say cloth masks don't work.
I think an accurate statement would be to say that there's really not much science to back up that cloth masks do work.
But in other words, right, saying cloth masks do work is just as much misinformation as saying they don't work.
Because there's actually been, you know, shockingly, for how like, you know, dominant mask wearing culture has been, there aren't that many studies that have been done on it.
The Mask Narrative Problem00:02:10
And the ones that are certainly not conclusive, certainly not conclusive that they actually do anything.
And mask mandates certainly cannot be demonstrated to do anything.
So, okay, you could say, eh, maybe he was a little bit sloppy in this one sentence there.
But of course, that standard is only being applied to people who deviate from the, you know, the allowable opinion.
So that's really where you get the problem with all this shit.
That it's like, oh, okay, yeah, if you're going against the narrative, then any little thing they can twist to be misinformation, they'll claim as misinformation.
By this, if you were to put, let's say, CNN under this fine-tooth comb, you could take every CNN video offline.
Everyone.
You cannot find me.
You cannot find me one five-minute long CNN video where I can't find something at least as misinformed as that sentence.
And I think what Rand Paul was really doing, and he said a lot of really other great shit, which is, let's get real, the reason why this video is pulled down, That's what he was doing there was just kind of like exposing the whole thing and letting people know.
It's like, well, listen, if somebody's gonna get up here and say, hey, you know, these masks don't work, but everyone's masking up, you'd think there'd be a really great argument on the other side, right?
Not just an assertion that they do work.
Show me the studies.
Show me the actual scientific evidence.
And of course, in places all throughout the world where there's been very high compliance with masks, COVID is still, you know, like torn through there.
And in other places where they don't mask as much, it hasn't.
Like there's no direct correlation between any of these things, which truthfully I think is ultimately the lesson of COVID after these 16, 17 months or whatever, or I guess 20 months or whatever since it's been spreading around the world, that, yeah, it actually seems like there hasn't really been any mitigation strategy that has done much of a job.
Investing in Crypto and Gold00:02:09
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COVID Testing Flaws00:10:31
You know what's funny is that it seems to me like that the ultimate thing that you really should, if there was one thing that you'd go, this is the thing to really harp on to people, to like really push, it's that if you have symptoms, don't go out.
Like don't go mingle with people if you feel sick at all.
Like, hey, you think it's just allergies?
Are on the safe side.
How about this?
If you have allergies, like before you like take some clariton for a few days and they go away and you make sure that it's just allergies, just don't go to work.
Don't go out.
Don't go hang out with friends.
And yet that is almost never pushed for the whole last 16, 17 months.
If that's ever said, it's said as a very secondary thought that like is not, it's never like right at the forefront of things.
But that's really, like to me, at least what I've seen, that seems to be the most like tangible, effective thing that you could actually try to convince people of.
Don't go.
If you're going somewhere, but then you feel a little bit sick, just air on the safe side, just in case.
You know what I mean?
Anyway, I think that's a reasonable thing to ask of people, but that hasn't been something.
And the other thing, of course, the major other thing is to like be as healthy as you can be.
And that is another thing that people are just like allergic to saying.
On both of those, I've always been a longtime germaphobe.
And the fact that we didn't take this as an opportunity to better shame people as like, don't like, I keep having that where people go, oh, yeah, it's just a cold.
I got tested.
It's just, well, I still don't want to get a cold.
It's annoying.
Like, just, I think, like, culturally, it used to be if you had a cold, you kind of couldn't tell your office you weren't coming in unless you were really sick.
And I always thought that was disgusting because it's like, well, we're all going to get colds.
And now everyone's going to be like, it's not good for productivity.
I think that we've probably advanced.
It's gross when someone's at the office and they're fucking got snotty tissues all over the place.
Squeezing and coughing the whole thing.
Like, I think we now live in a world where before you might have been nervous to tell a comedy club or an employer or whatever, hey, I can't come in because I have a cold.
I feel like social convention now is, all right, yeah, getting sick sucks.
So we're not going to push it on that.
So I'm shocked that people are still like, oh, yeah, I just have strep or I just got a cold or I just got, it's like, then fucking stay home.
Why are you getting cold?
And I've known a few people who it's like, they're telling me the thing and I'm like, oh, you have COVID.
Like you clearly have COVID.
And they'll be like, well, no, I just took a test and said negative.
I'm like, I don't care what the test is.
By the way, those tests are, I mean, when I had COVID, the first day I felt a little bit off.
I took a home test and it was fine.
And then the next day I didn't go, oh, I took the test yesterday.
I'm fine.
I was like, this is odd that I'm still sick.
I took a secondary test.
It was positive.
I go, okay, that makes more sense.
I guess it wasn't.
And then I went to get a PCR test to confirm what my home antigen test did because it wasn't as reliable.
These people that are just getting tested one day or first day of symptoms, I don't think is a very good way of flagging it.
And by the way, now back to more conspiracy talk.
I actually think that they will find out over time that people that have been vaccinated are probably spreading it more than the unvaxed because they're more in the category of people just assuming that they have colds and not getting tested.
And by the way, asymptomatic shed rate from people that have been vaccinated is also going to be an interesting thing for them to find out and explore because part of the way the vaccines work is it doesn't actually keep you necessarily from getting the virus as much as not showing symptoms.
So now you have a question of are people who are asymptomatic spreading more of it because they are asymptomatic.
Now, the asymptomatic shed rate conversation has never been that clear to me.
But I'll just tell you, it's an interesting topic for exploration.
Yeah.
Well, that is.
Okay.
So it's, it's an interesting idea that it's look, no matter what you have in terms of like what's being said on CNN, the reality of the situation is that very few people watch CNN.
Like the ratings are just terrible.
You know, like it's like there are like, you know, there are shows on MSNBC on the weekend and on CNN that like literally almost nobody is watching.
So they, whatever is being said officially, right?
So like it might be true that like some people are saying, oh, look, you can still get COVID if you have it.
But it is worth pondering.
I mean, I don't know if there's any way to really know this or not, but how many people got the vaccine and themselves believe I can't get COVID now?
My guess would be it's not an insignificant number.
I don't know, but they might.
So it is possible that it has this perverse kind of incentive, or maybe that's not the right way to put it, but that it creates this false sense of security for people who go like, oh, well, I can't get it.
And if you're saying that it makes symptoms milder, then it is quite possible that people who get it just don't think that's what they have, you know?
I mean, that is possible and it's worth thinking about, you know, I don't know.
But yeah, so regardless, I mean, look, I know Bobby Hutch, who just got over it, he got COVID and then got, what's it called?
Pneumonia in the wake of it.
But he's getting better now.
But he, at first, he was like, look, I'm real sick.
And he was like describing it.
And I was like, yeah, dude, I think you have COVID.
And he was like, well, I just took a test and it says I don't have it.
I came back negative.
And he was like, you know, I just, I did lose my sense of taste and smell, but the test says negative.
And it's like, dude, you like, come on, you think you just have a fucking cold in the middle of the summer where you lost your sense of taste and smell?
I mean, like, I've had a lot of colds in my life.
I've never lost my sense of taste and smell ever, let alone get one in the middle of the summer while there's a variant that's going around.
Like, you know, and he was like, yeah, like, I probably do have it.
And then the next day he took a test and it was positive.
So look, anyway, whatever.
Yeah, I think that that was one reasonable thing.
Like the most reasonable thing is like, if you're sick at all, just don't, you know, try to isolate yourself and if you're and be in as good shape as you can.
Get which no one is talking about.
And it's crazy because even amongst it sounds like the vaccinated debts, it's in the risk categories.
So what a great opportunity we had here, especially as our healthcare costs are insane to readdress.
Like, I mean, at the outset of this thing, it should have been, hey, if you're healthy, like we got a thing to get through here and we're a fucking America, so we're going to work.
Anyone who's unhealthy, you really should be taking this time to get healthy because you're going to have to stay home.
Or maybe not by force, but maybe the government would just recommend your employer shouldn't fire you, but you shouldn't be coming to work because if you're, and I feel like that embarrassment slash, like, that's actually confronting life.
So much what government does is it pretends like it's protecting us from risk and consequences, but that stuff doesn't actually go away.
And so people don't take the personal responsibility and make those changes.
Here, the vaccine, you know, maybe giving people a false sense of security.
And so they remained with their bad lifestyle choices.
And I'm not the world's healthiest person.
People listen.
And to be fair, not even just shoehorning it back into the vaccine thing.
People who are unvaccinated too.
Like the truth is that for like if you wanted something tangibly that you could do, leave how you feel about the vaccine aside.
The truth is that to get your immune system, this is just a fact, to get your immune system in the best shape possible is one of the best things you can do for fighting off a virus.
This is why like the vast majority of people who get COVID are going to beat it.
And the ones who don't overwhelmingly disproportionately have weak immune systems.
So that's just, you know, that's the reality of the situation.
You know, I don't know what else to say.
Let me just say this to wrap and we could end the podcast after this.
I'd almost, this would be like my message to people who really who are on the side of everyone should get vaccinated and even maybe possibly supporting the COVID passports and supporting the lockdowns and all of this stuff, which I understand we live in such a politicized world that I doubt they're even listening.
I doubt people, because I'm a skeptic of that narrative, I doubt too many of them are even willing to listen.
But I think the thing that those guys got to start, because I know there are good people out there who believe that.
And to any of those people, the thing that you got to start thinking about, like it's a really important question that you got to ask yourself is like, how far in this direction are you prepared to go?
You know, okay, maybe you think Rand Paul got everything wrong there, you know?
Okay.
And maybe you even think in this instance, he should have been suspended from YouTube for putting that out there.
But could you not at least grant that it's a little bit of a dangerous precedent to set, which is, this is not setting the precedent, it's already been set.
But the idea that like if somebody, even like a well-known person with a, you know, a position of influence, you know, like a sitting U.S. Senator or something like that, were to take a position that is not what the, you know, the kind of mainstream corporate press agrees with, that they can be silenced for taking that position.
Could that ever be used in a bad way in the future?
And I think that one of the things that people who are supporters of all this stuff, supporters of the lockdowns and the mandates and the passports and all of this, one of the most important questions that you got to ask yourself is, are you prepared to do this forever?
What if COVID is never going away?
Which I have read several epidemiologists who are convinced of this, that it's never going to go away, that we're going to keep getting new and new variants, that hopefully they become less and less deadly and they become things that we can live with.
But what if you're never going to be able to get 100% vaccine compliance?
And what if even if you did get 100% vaccine compliance, that it's possible that viruses can evolve to, you know, that they can evolve and mutate to deal with people who are resistant to them?
What if this is just with us for now on?
Living With Eternal Variants00:01:02
Forever?
Just hypothetically.
Are you willing to do this forever?
Do you want children to be masked up forever?
Vaccine passports as just a way of life?
That's it?
We're now in a show-me-your-papers society, and not even to enter a government building, just to like enter a building.
I just think that's worth asking yourself.
How far are you really prepared to go for this?
How far are you really prepared to go with this?
Are you down to do this forever?
I gotta hope some of you don't want to.
That's my hope.
All right, let's wrap the show on that.
Thank you, everybody who Rochester at the end of the month.
We just did incredible stand-up shows.
So absolutely, if you're in the upstate New York region, come out for that.
Run your mouth podcast, Robbie the Fire on Twitter.
And I'm also going to be in Nashville this weekend.
So if you haven't picked up your tickets yet, Bon Aqua, Tennessee, to be completely honest about the location.
But right outside of Nashville, going to be an absolute party.