Dave Smith and Robbie Bernstien dissect the NIH's admission of funding Wuhan gain-of-function research despite Dr. Fauci's denials, mocking media defenses. They condemn Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen's proposed tax on unrealized capital gains as an economic suicide pact that would crash markets by forcing asset liquidation. The duo then analyzes Barry Weiss's claims of global censorship regarding the lab leak theory and Hunter Biden's laptop, arguing that platforms demonetize dissent while true freedom requires meritocracy over collectivism. Ultimately, they assert that current policies target the working class and threaten financial stability. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Government Overreach and Bioweapons00:14:39
Fill her up.
You are listening to the Gash Digital Network.
We need to roll back the state.
We spy on all of our own citizens.
Our prisons are flooded with nonviolent drug offenders.
If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
You're listening to part of the problem on the Gas Digital Network.
Here's your host, Dave Smith.
What's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
I'm the most consistent motherfucker you know, libertarian Tupac Dave Smith.
And of course, I am joined by COVID Jesus, the king of the caulks, Robbie the Fire Bernstein.
How are you, sir?
I'm doing swell, dude.
I like late night episodes.
I'm in the zone.
I got three Red Bulls.
Let's do it.
Yeah, that's where I like.
I like Robbie late night, but jacked up.
That's when we have our best episodes.
This is one, you know, we take some off, but this one's going to be a fire episode.
I can feel it already.
I'm adjusting to life with two kids, which is, as it turns out, a lot more than having one kid.
But right now, I'm in a moment where my daughter's asleep, my son's asleep, my wife's asleep.
And it's like, all right, let's let it rip.
You know, let's have a dealing with an apartment that's a little too quiet.
So, you know, everyone's got their issues.
Yeah, no, totally.
We all have our responsibilities and our crosses to bear.
There you go.
Let me say, before we start getting into the meat of this podcast, don't forget we're doing it a live pay-per-view part of the problem Skank Fest spectacular event is coming up on November 5th.
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Well, let me tell you something.
I'm going to trim this pretty goddamn quickly.
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There's a whole bunch of other things too, a whole bunch of other pay-per-view events from SkankFest that are going to be awesome.
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Part of the problem pay-per-view at SkankFest live show.
It's going to be fucking, it's going to be really cool.
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So let's get into today's show.
All right.
There's a few things that are just on almost like, you know, as you guys know, I've had a lot of crazy shit going on.
So there's a few things that are just on the docket that I got to knock off.
And so let's get to them and knock them all off because there's a couple of things that I haven't talked about with all you good people yet and that just need to be discussed.
Okay.
So first of all, as I'm sure you saw, Rob, last week, the NIH admitted, I think just a tiny little thing, you'd think would be the biggest story in the history of the world that, oh, yeah, they did fund gain of function research at the Wuhan lab.
Not, that's not a big deal to you, is it, Rob?
No, Fauci wants to go fund, you know, bioweapons research in other countries and then buy bioweapons that he brings over here and shuts down life as we know it.
Doesn't bother me, none.
No, no biggie, you know?
And it's really, it's something when you start to put all of these pieces together, it really is something.
So first of all, just so people remember, right?
I know, man, we're flirting with getting this channel banned.
But just so people remember, the Obama administration, and I have been on record, as have you, Rob, as not being fans of the Obama administration, but the Obama administration did ban gain of function research and funding gain of function research.
Now, they did it in this really weak way where they left a clause where under like, it was kind of like under emergency situations, you could fund gain of function research.
You really need to ruin the economy.
If you find yourself in a bitch, there's no wars going on and you need something else to really shut it down.
If you really, if you have to bail out the banks and get Trump out of office, then sure.
But so there was this emergency clause and that was invoked and it was signed off by Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Now, they could try to fucking kick us off this shit or say whatever about it, but that's a fact.
That happened.
Okay.
Fauci is the one who signed off on this shit.
And then there was a lot of fucking, you know, accusations led by the great senator Rand Paul saying that, you know, this is actually that the NIH was funding this gain of function research.
And Fauci denied it under oath, testifying in front of a Senate hearing.
He denied it.
And then he turned around and said, no, Rand Paul, you're the liar and blah, blah, blah, all this stuff.
Now the NIH is admitting that they did indeed fund gain of function research.
So just saying, putting all this together, Fauci signs off on this thing.
At first, they're saying it came from the wet markets and all of this, but then more and more evidence starts coming out that perhaps it came from the lab.
Then it comes out that we were funding the lab.
Then it comes out that we were funding specifically gain of function research at the lab.
Then it comes out that we were funding gain of function research of coronaviruses at the lab.
And again, I do not want to mislead the audience here.
This is not conclusively proved, but there's quite a story that seems to be developing here where it's like, wow,
could you imagine like this is something out of a fucking like epic novel that the guy who's in charge of locking us all down and imposing all of these restrictions was actually the one who's responsible for this thing to begin with.
And look, even if the exact gain of function that they were funding isn't the one, you know what I mean?
Like it wasn't COVID-19 that they were fucking funding.
Just other random, you know, they were research that we funded and then they had to chip in a little bit more money.
But still, even if fucking Fauci is the one who signs off.
Okay.
Even if Fauci is the one who signs off on, you know, funding the lab, and we all know money is fungible, and he signs off on funding that lab.
And that lab is where the virus comes from.
And then he's the guy leading the charge against it.
That is still something.
I mean, it's like something out of a bond villain origin story that you couldn't even imagine.
So that already is pretty crazy.
But Dr. Fauci was on one of the Sunday shows.
What was it, ABC?
And he was Face the Nation, I believe.
Stephanopalopoulos, the Clinton aide, the Clinton advisor, who now gets to be like, you know, the face of a fucking network news show.
What a fucking joke.
But anyway, he was on there and he had this to say.
So let's roll the video.
The controversy over whether the U.S. was funding risky COVID research in Wuhan again this week when the NIH released a letter about the research, which showed that the subcontractor had not disclosed some results in a timely way.
Can't just pause it already.
Just pull it back a little bit, Brian, to see Fauci's face.
You can just see Fauci's face already when he's fucking asked this question, just doesn't look pleased.
He does not look happy.
Well, yes, I suppose.
Well, if you disagree with me, you disagree with truth.
Yeah, things have been going worse and worse for this guy.
All right, let's let's play.
Sorry.
The controversy over whether the U.S. was funding risky COVID research in Wuhan was kicked up again this week when the NIH released a letter about that research, which showed that the subcontractor had not disclosed some results in a timely manner.
Now, now some critics and analysts have seized on that to say you and others have discussed.
Let's pause it for a second.
When he says, this is as good as Stephanopoulos can do to cover for him, the subcontractor had admitted that they had not released some information in a timely manner or whatever he said.
But the key there is what they did release.
Not that it wasn't in a timely manner.
I mean, that's part of it too, but that they just finally admitted that, yes, they funded gain of function research at the Wuhan lab in China.
That's the important part.
Not that they hadn't released some information in a timely manner.
It's what the information was.
It's like if you were like accused of murder, you know, like you were accused of murdering some chick and then, you know, you were like, you, you paid to have this chick murdered.
And you're like, no, I would never do anything like that.
And then someone who you paid, I was like, but you paid someone who murdered this chick.
And you were like, no, I don't know.
And then imagine someone was grilling you.
And then the person who you paid admitted, oh, yeah, we were killing people.
And you were like, now, Rob, let me hold your feet to the fire here.
Some of your subsidiaries have released some information in not a timely manner.
Isn't that already just such a ridiculous way to put that?
Like, that's not the story, Stephanopoulos.
It's not the story that they didn't release it in a timely manner.
I mean, okay, that's part of it.
The story is what they released.
That's the story.
Okay, let's go back to the video.
Sign that to say you and others have misled the public about U.S. funding of this so-called gain of function research.
The NIH says that's false.
Our medical unit backs that up.
But Senator Rand Paul stepped up that criticism in a new interview with Axios on HBO.
Let's play it.
Dr. Fox, you should be fine.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
The thing is, is just for lack of judgment of nothing else.
You know, he's probably never going to admit that he lied.
He's going to continue to dissemble and try to work around the truth and massage the truth.
I want to give you the opportunity to respond to Senator Paul, but also explain what was the United States funding, what wasn't it funding, and why that's important.
Well, I obviously totally disagree with Senator Paul.
He's absolutely incorrect.
Neither I nor Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the NIH, lied or misled about what we've done.
The framework under which we have guidance about the conduct of research that we fund, the funding at the Wuhan Institute was to be able to determine what is out there in the environment in bat viruses in China.
And the research was very strictly under what we call a framework of oversight of the type of research.
And under those conditions, which we've explained very, very clearly, does not constitute research of gain of function of concern.
There are people who interpret it that way.
Isn't that great?
Go ahead.
I'll give you the honors.
I mean, it's a remarkable sentence.
So he goes, you know, after all this time of going, no, we never funded gain of function.
What are you talking about?
And what's amazing is that Rand Paul leads off with he's going to try to weasel out of this.
He'll never admit that he's wrong.
He'll hide behind some words.
And then he goes, after all these months of saying, we've never funded gain of function in the Wuhan lab.
He goes, no, we all know we've never funded gain of function of concern.
But you're just like, oh, so now it's like, well, so basically what he's saying is, yes, we funded gain of function.
I've been lying through my teeth to you guys, but there was regulation.
It wasn't of concern.
It wasn't anything that was dangerous.
Look, even if, again, let me give him the benefit of the doubt here, even though I shouldn't.
But let's say this has nothing to do with the global pandemic.
That is still so profoundly misleading that up until this point, when this gets revealed, he goes, no, we don't fund gain of function.
And then as soon as one of the subsidiaries comes out, he's not saying, oh, I had no idea about this and I'm shocked and appalled.
He's going, yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, look, they should have revealed it a little bit earlier, but we never funded gain of function of concern.
CrowdHealth Insurance Alternatives00:04:50
And what they mean by that is basically gain of function that was something that like, oh, this could spread and be a big problem.
So now, but the idea that he won't even admit that he was wrong or that he was saying something inaccurate before.
And it's really something to see when Rand Paul leads in by saying, oh, he's going to hide behind these words.
He's going to do all this.
I kind of can't believe they played that.
But yeah, I don't know.
Anything else you want to add?
Well, his original lie was trying to say what we did has been claimed by experts up and down of who I spend money with of not being gain of function.
That was his original lie, which was this isn't gain of function.
And then some guy from Rutgers is like, this is the definition of gain of function.
And now he's busted because the NIH itself has the paperwork and the trail where like, you know, it's clearly gain of function.
Whoa.
All right, I got animated.
You know, I get excited about this stuff.
We got Fauci on the on the ropes here.
So, but now he seems to have pivoted to a new lie where when Rand Paul was asking him questions, you know, what he was really referring to was gain of function of concern.
That's what Rand Paul was referring to.
And so he didn't lie when he said that there wasn't gain of function because Rand Paul was talking about this new category of gain of function of concern.
Now, under oath, he might take a different line of reasoning, but this does seem to be his new pivot of this new category of gain of function of concern, which I, and by the way, I guess it turned out to be concerning.
So even according to this new lie of gain of function of concern, I guess it's concerning.
I mean, that would probably be the most polite term.
And then also it's all, well, under the framework of the blah, blah, blah and the restrictions and the this, it couldn't possibly, I don't know, you turned out to have some sort of a problem here.
Something or if you got perfect frameworks, I guess this shouldn't have taken all this time to be reported to you.
You're telling me you got perfect frameworks.
This guy's so full of shit, dude.
Yeah, it's really unbelievable.
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Not constitute research of gain of function of concern.
There were people who interpret it that way.
But when you look at the framework under which the guidance is, that is not the case.
So I have to respectfully disagree with Senator Paul.
He is not correct that we lied or misled the Congress.
It's just not correct.
That's sorry.
Right.
And it showed that the research was very far from the COVID, the SARS-CoV virus, but it did show that the subconscious did not release some results in a timely manner.
What did we learn from the letter?
Does it show that some of the research we were funding was riskier than we know?
No, it isn't.
We knew what the risk was and what the oversight is.
Certainly, they should have put their progress report in in a timely manner.
No denial of that.
And there will be administrative consequences of that.
Okay, so pause it.
Pause it right there.
So here's what he's going to say.
Fauci is actually going to look into the camera and say, well, yeah, look, they should have put their progress report in in a timely manner.
All right.
You could kind of maybe under normal corporate, you know, circumstances say, yeah, that's just it was a progress report.
Should have been in a little bit more timely.
It comes in now.
I don't know.
It comes in now in October of 2021 when we're talking about things that predate, you know, I don't know, February of 2020.
Yeah, you know, it's a little over a year and a half later, but whatever.
They should have put their progress report in earlier.
But you're like, come on, look, can we live in the real world for one second here?
The biggest thing that's ever happened ever.
And you're just admitting this now.
This has kind of been a global phenomenon, you know, this COVID thing.
Are you guys familiar?
Has this not been like this isn't, you're telling me this isn't priority number one to get your report on this in?
And oh, yeah, they should have admitted it.
And yeah, now we're going from the line of, oh, we never funded gain of function research to we never funded gain of function research of concern.
All right.
I mean, come on, man.
What are we fucking eight?
Like, we're supposed to buy this?
This is this is something that I wouldn't, I'd feel uncomfortable telling my three-year-old a lie like this.
Like, oh, no, this wasn't misleading at all.
Really?
This isn't not even kind of, not even kind of misleading.
Okay.
Yeah.
No, you're, yes, they, they absolutely should have disclosed this immediately, not 18, 19 months later.
And for him to just keep like a straight face while he goes, no, Rand Paul's the one misleading you.
I never misled anybody.
You go, well, okay, this sounds a whole lot different than what you were saying a few months ago.
Of course, he won't get in trouble for it.
You know, lying to Congress is a crime, but like lying to Rand Paul isn't exactly a crime.
You know what I mean?
Like lying to Congress, like if you're Trump's lawyer and you say a deal ended in July when it really ended in January after four hours of testifying, I mean, that's a crime.
You lied to Congress.
If you're, you know, a clapper and you say the NSA isn't involved in collecting metadata on American citizens, that's not like a crime.
You know, it's basically like if you're with the establishment, then no, it's not a crime to lie to Congress.
It's only if you're the guy we're trying to get.
But a Paul?
Yeah, you could lie to a Paul.
That's not a big deal.
That's how the law works.
It's really something to say.
All right.
I do think, I don't know if you saw the story, but the research came out about him funding dog torture and monkey torture.
Oh, yeah.
So it could be that enough negative news will come out that even your mainstream mom and pop start going like, wait, what the fuck's the deal with this guy?
And then they got to get rid of him.
So that's not that I don't think the NIH is going to change.
I don't think you're going to see Fauci going to jail.
There's a life cycle to these stories till when the truth comes out.
And it's going to be long from when we moved on from Corona and we're deep into the global warming stuff that we find out the truth.
Yeah, maybe you're right.
Yeah, it could be that Fauci's at least at the end of his run, which doesn't really matter to us because the next guy will be the same.
Yeah, you might be right about that.
Although I will say the life cycle seems to be getting shorter and shorter because it's easier to get the truth out now than ever.
But yes, you are right that the answer to this would be Fauci being fired, not a complete audit and reform of the NIH or the, you know, right.
So you're right about that.
All right, let's play the end of this.
Burke of oversight of the type of research.
And under those conditions, which we've explained very, very clearly, does not constitute research of gain of function of concern.
There are people who interpret it that way.
But when you look at the framework under which the guidance is, that is not the case.
So I have to respectfully disagree.
Just pause again, Paul.
He is not.
So now we're supposed to believe that the framework of the guidance was in order.
Like it started with, hey, there was never a lab leak.
Hey, we never funded the gain of function.
Hey, just trust our framework of, what was it, framework of guidance?
Can you define what this new thing is?
Like, what is you have a framework by which you give guidance, and we're supposed to have faith that that would prevent gain of function of concern?
Like you're a little bit too deep into the story for us to just go with, oh, well, they got, they got a framework of guidance.
They got guidance counselors.
You come into their office.
They give you some tips.
They got this figured out.
There's just some guidance counselors like, hey, how are you feeling today?
You doing okay?
Anything holding you back from your goals?
And on the other side is just a bat.
He was just kind of like, you gave me, you gave me a virus.
All right, let's keep playing.
Bleeding out the eyes.
Correct that we lied or misled the Congress.
It's just not correct, George.
Sorry.
Right.
And it showed that what was being researched was very far from the COVID, the SARS-CoV virus, but it did show that the subconscious did not release some results in a timely manner.
What did we learn from the letter?
Does it show that some of the research we were funding was riskier than we know?
No, it isn't.
We knew what the risk was and what the oversight is.
Certainly, they should have put their progress report in in a timely manner.
No denial of that.
And there will be administrative consequences of that.
Oh, well, those are the things that we need to get.
We're messed up in this, George, and it really needs to be made clear to the American public.
There's all of this concern about what's gained of function or what's not with the implication that that research led to SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19, which, George, unequivocally,
anybody that knows anything about viral biology and phylogeny of viruses know that it is molecularly impossible for those viruses that were worked on to turn into SARS-CoV-2 because they were distant enough molecularly that no matter what you did to them, they could never ever become SARS-CoV-2.
Yet when people talk about gain of function, they make that implication, which I think is unconscionable to do.
That's unconscionable.
Research led to SARS-CoV-2.
You can ask any person of good faith who's a virologist, and they will tell you absolutely clearly that that would be molecularly impossible.
So things are getting conflated, George, that should not be conflated.
Okay.
So that's the end of that video.
But let's let me just try to say this, okay?
The idea that he would say this is unconscionable and it's molecularly impossible that the research you're talking about here is what led to SARS-CoV-2, to COVID-19, to all of this.
Oh, okay.
I'll take your word for that.
I don't fucking know.
I'm not a scientist, but sure.
But the fact is that, you know, it's like one of these things where, you know, like it's like when you go to the, you know, we go in a war in Iraq and you're like, Saddam has weapons of mass destruction.
And then like a year and a half later, they're like, hey, it doesn't, but we got to win this war, you know?
But you're like, hey, if you had told us this at the beginning, we'd have had a whole different attitude about everything.
Like if you had told us at the beginning of COVID, you know, when they were like 15 days to flatten the curve and all of this and it came from bats in the wet markets and Wuhan, if you had been like, ah, you know, it actually came from a fucking lab that we're funding and we were funding gain of function research, which gain of function research might have led to this virus, but we were funding gain of function research in like a different virus that isn't the virus that led to this one.
Wouldn't we have a slightly different feeling about that?
And by the way, what's come out is that we were funding gain of function research in a different virus.
Let's let's take him at his word.
It's molecularly impossible that the one that's been exposed is what led to COVID.
But how about other ones that haven't been exposed?
I mean, you know, like you said, there was this one subsidiary of the NIH that was, what did he say?
They were late on their reporting or whatever.
Okay.
Can you guarantee that's the only one that's late?
Maybe there's some other subsidiaries.
I mean, you guys do have a lot, right?
Yeah.
Also, he was adamant about the lab leak.
He's going to be adamant about the molecular impossibility.
Right.
Right.
Well, that's the thing.
It's like, you've already been, yeah, you've already been caught so many times being adamant about you were adamant that there was no funding of gain of function research.
Evidently, that's out the window.
You, you literally, like under crime of jail time, testified before Congress that there was that you absolutely did not fund gain of function research.
That's what you said to Rand Paul and then called him a liar.
Like, okay, so, so still, and by the way, even if that wasn't the one, even if everything he's saying is true, you were still funding gain of function research at the lab, which possibly likely is where this whole fucking thing started from.
This virus that wreaked havoc on the world.
And really what, you know, the government response to it is what really fucked up the whole world.
So Jesus Christ, to admit this, and then to have the guy, right?
And this is another thing that's crazy, is that Stephanopoulos is there clearly just like, like the goal here is like, look, we're going to address this story, but I will carry you over the finish line.
Like, yeah.
And all of our experts agree with you on this, that this couldn't possibly have anything to do with COVID.
So isn't Rand Paul kind of being misleading here?
Left-Wing Radical Narratives00:06:10
And like, it's like, really?
You're not going to grill this guy over this of if there was ever a time for the press to grill someone over something.
But you know, I'll say, I'll tell you, my like almost my bigger takeaway from all of this is in line with what I've been saying for a while now.
And this has been a major theme of mine, a major theme of this show.
And it's something I've talked about a lot.
I talked about this on when I was on Rogan and it's like, I think on Tim Pool too, and like on a lot of shows, I talk about how, you know, if you look at the state of the country today and how crazy the left wing is, and how crazy the right wing can be too, and you could, and you can see how things are spinning out of control.
You have the, you know, the radical socialist left or the radical nationalist right.
And I'm not trying to equate the two.
Believe me, there's a big difference, especially in dominance of the culture.
But if you look at how much people are, you know, spinning out, like completely rejecting the system, how much chaos you have because the system, the centralized power, can't maintain order.
And it's easy for people to blame the radicals and go, you know, well, you know, it's like the like if you, if you watch CNN, it'll be like, oh, I don't know.
Well, look, there's like, oh, these crazy, you know, like nationalist right-wingers who want to like protest.
And some of them even stormed the Capitol on January, you know.
I don't want to say the word.
I don't want to fuck with the algorithm.
You remember the date.
And then there's these crazy, you know, and they'll the most crazy, but then they'll even be like, oh, and, you know, there's kind of these crazy Rashida Tlaib, you know, kind of, ah, there is kind of a thing over here with Antifa and Black Lives Matter or whatever.
But then, you know, even if you turn on Fox News or something like that or whatever, it'll be like, oh my God, the crazy Black Lives Matter and Antifa and these left-wing radicals.
And it's like, yeah, but why are these radical left and radical right-wing groups so livid?
Like, what's going on here?
And you realize that really it's the center, it's the establishment that's that's more extremist than any of the extremes.
And, you know, I talked about this when Scott was on the show and we were doing the recap of his debate with Bill Crystal.
And Bill Crystal, like neoconservative general master, number one guy, was asked one point.
I was talking about this.
He was asked at one point by one of the audience members, well, look, you know, you've promoted all of these wars.
And is there one intervention you can point to in the last few decades that has been a success?
Where like the cost in money, in lives, the results, the success of it, all of this, you would say, yeah, that was worth it.
And Bill Crystal goes, well, I think the intervention in the Balkans, which first of all, he's wrong about, but forget the fact that he's wrong.
You go, that's the one you're telling me.
We've been in the longest wars in American history and you can't, and you've advocated for every last one of them.
And you can't tell me one.
Like, you can't point to one post-9-11 war that you think worked out, even though you were like the chief architect of all these things.
You can't point not Iraq, not Afghanistan, not Libya, not Syria, not Somalia, not Niger, not Pakistan, not Yemen, not like Mali.
I probably missed a few, like none of them.
So when the person who's selling all this shit can't point to one successor, like, why should anyone not just want revolution?
You know what I mean?
And so with this, you go, so when Fauci, when Fauci, you have a situation where this guy, Fauci, is now somewhat credibly being accused.
We know he's the guy who led the charge for lockdowns and restrictions and mandates.
We know he's the guy on the corporate press constantly who's like, well, you can't have Thanksgiving this year.
You definitely can't have Christmas this year.
And we're talking last Thanksgiving and last Christmas, which was already eight months after the thing started.
It's a whole nother year after that.
Maybe I'm a little off six months.
And now it's a whole nother year after that.
And he's still going, well, I don't know about Thanksgiving.
And you got to watch Africa.
The guy who's advocating all of the restrictions, you got to wear a mask everywhere.
You got to do all this shit.
That this guy is the guy who signed off on continuing gain of function research.
That gain of function research was funded by our government at the lab where gain of function research was quite possibly responsible for this whole thing.
Now, all of that, I'm going to say is possible.
I'm not trying to claim certainty on anything I don't know for certain, but isn't that enough to go that if you wanted to have any faith in the system and that those were the circumstances that they would go, well, we are absolutely going to get to the bottom of this.
I mean, we're talking about the thing that upended every societal norm you could think of, kicked tens of millions of people out of work, cost hundreds of billions of dollars, forever changed the trajectory of where we are going as a species.
And if the head guy in charge of solving it had anything to do with what caused it, I promise you, we will get to the bottom of that.
Novo Banking for Small Business00:03:38
But that's not what we get.
What we get is some fucking, some mediocre stooge covering for him as he answers this question.
And one guy, Senator Rand Paul, of course, the great Ron Paul's kid, actually the only guy who's like, let me fucking push you and ask you these questions.
That's what we get.
But seeing as how that's the situation and your own government won't even pretend to tell you, look, we're going to get to the bottom of this.
How do you argue that anyone shouldn't be a radical under those circumstances?
You know what I mean?
It's time, baby.
Ross picks up a rocket launcher.
Let's do it.
But you know what I mean, right?
Like you'd think they'd almost have to pretend.
Let's stand outside buildings and stay outside the buildings.
That's what I say.
Well, we've already been doing that for quite a while.
All right.
Well, there's the Fauci news.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
All right, so the other thing I wanted to talk to you about, there's a couple other things, but this one I thought you would be particularly interested in.
But there's been, look, the financial stuff that's been going on, and this is where you shine, Rob.
Just long-term transitory inflation.
It's nothing to be concerned about.
But the financial stuff going on is really, it's becoming more and more like in your face.
And this starts to get into the area of like, I don't know, economics and, you know, government financial.
Taking over the supply chains and centralized government, they can, with the right price controls, they can even this back.
Yes, that's right.
They can do if there's anything that the last 120 years has taught us, that'll work out great.
Unrealized Capital Gains Tax00:10:27
But this is, you know, I think to some people, a topic that's just like not as sexy as others, but it's really some important shit that you really got to understand and wrap your head around.
And this was there was this clip that we're about to play that Janet Yellen said the other day, there's been a bunch written about this in some of the publications that really kind of matter in this department.
And this is something now that they're pushing out.
It's so stupid and destructive that you would think we were making it up if it wasn't real.
But let's just go, let's go right to Janet Yellen and hear what she has to say.
Well, I think what's under consideration is a proposal that Senator Wyden and the Senate Finance Committee have been looking at that would impose a tax on unrealized capital gains on liquid assets held by extremely wealthy individuals, billionaires.
I wouldn't call that a wealth tax, but it would help get at capital gains, which are an extraordinarily large part of the incomes of the wealthiest individuals.
And right now, escape taxation until they're realized and often they're unrealized and it does benefit from just off the bat.
What?
The sex appeal?
The pure sex appeal?
Yeah, I'll take her home.
Let's do it, baby.
I wouldn't buy into this idea if it wasn't for the pure charisma and sex appeal of Janet Yellen.
Yes.
I would venture to guess.
I mean, firstly, well, let's explain because I don't think people realize what she's describing.
It's my first time watching this.
Unrealized capital.
You didn't see this.
No, no.
Unrealized capital gains is that if you sell stocks that you own, you got to pay, right, for basically the earnings, but you don't have to pay for earnings until you actually liquidate it.
Right.
This would force people to liquidate their stocks and take out some of the incentives of being in the stock market.
I'm pretty sure you're going to end up with the stock market crash if the people who are incentivized to be in the stock market, you take away their incentive to be there.
And you've had problems before.
Like I've read about things like when they've changed incentives, like tax incentives to basically in the housing market where they change like the way loans are issued.
And then all of a sudden you end up with like fucking chaos.
And or also just another piece of fucking bullshit from her.
She was talking about that $600 rule because we needed to start catching people who were laundering $2 million a year and that math doesn't add up.
There's 255 bank days a year.
The math literally doesn't add up.
You want to do that math.
It's $10,000 a day, which is your current fucking limit.
So every time that they're trying to say that we're just going after millionaires and billionaires, they're full of shit.
They want to fuck over.
Well, that's right.
Okay.
That's that's such an excellent point that when they say they're going after, first off, when they say they're going after billionaires, like everyone knows billionaires game the system.
Billionaires hire lawyers and fucking tax accountants and like all this shit.
And they tax lawyers, accountants.
They don't get options.
They're fine.
Yeah.
They will figure out how to game this fucking system.
That's not who this is for.
And so, and then at one point you said millionaires and billionaires.
And it's like the wealthy.
And you're like, okay, so you already see where this is going.
But to your point, this is so like, like I was saying, stupid and destructive that if it wasn't sold with this charisma and sex appeal, I would really question how this is possible.
But right.
So unrealized capital gains do not exist.
Like that's just a ridiculous thing to even pretend.
And she's like, this isn't a wealth tax.
You're like, yeah, well, it's every bit as bad and every bit as dumb as that stupid idea that Elizabeth Warren had.
Like here, here's an idea, right?
Here's what an unrealized gain would be, right?
You're in your house and you're living with your family.
You buy your house for $300,000.
And over the last year, the value goes up to $400,000.
You just made $100,000.
And you're like, but I haven't sold my house.
I haven't made it.
Like that would be a realized gain, right?
When you sold your house and made the $100,000.
But if you haven't, you're just living there.
You're living the exact same life, but you're like, well, they say it's worth an appraiser says it's worth $400,000.
Now you're like, well, okay, but tomorrow that might be right back down to $300,000.
Or even if an appraiser says that, I might try to put it on the market and I only get $325 for it.
So the appraisal was wrong.
And it's a, so this is just nonsense.
Like unrealized capital gains is just what it's like kind of estimated at being.
You don't know what the value of something is.
Like this is the great Misesian insight, right?
Is that value is subjective?
And all value really means is what someone's willing to pay for it, right?
So like I could be out on the side of the road selling watermelons and say these watermelons are worth $12, but I can't sell them for $12.
And all day the best I ever get is someone who buy them for $3.
Well, guess what they're worth?
$3.
That's what they're really worth in reality, because that's all I could get for them.
So unrealized capital gains is, that's not real.
That doesn't mean anything.
That just means what someone thinks your, you know, whatever the asset is is worth.
So, the idea that you're going to tax someone on what their projected gains in their capital, their capital assets are.
Well, the only way for them to pay that off, unless they just have a bunch of money sitting around, is to sell it.
And this is what you were getting at.
So, what would the effect of this be?
That everyone has to sell their investments.
This is not only is this insane, it reeks of desperation.
Go ahead.
Capital gains to what is it, 20%?
I think it's 15%.
Has it gone up?
I think it was 15%.
I don't know.
I'm asking.
I don't like this.
I believe it's 15%.
But here's the all of finance is about its time value money, right?
So if I buy a stock and it pays me a dividend and I'm reinvesting the dividend, so I'm able to continuously earn interest on my money and actually accrue wealth.
If all of a sudden I got to pay 15% on my, like you're changing the entire formula.
Firstly, the amount of paperwork and the burden on you every single tax season to figure out what you got what your tax liability is going to be is there you go.
It's between 12 and 37%, depending on, I guess, like the profits.
But like take my, take my Bitcoin.
I own, I own some Bitcoin, done well with my Bitcoin.
So every single year, I got to hand the government 15%.
Like, so I'm going to have to sell some of it to then get.
Well, that's what people are saying.
It's an attack on crypto.
Yeah.
Well, it's an attack on everything.
It's an attack on your ability to even build wealth because one, the burden on you to figure out what your liability is going to be is just a pain in the ass.
Like taxes are already a pain in the ass.
But then two, it changes the entire equation of what your rate of return needs to be on an investment or how you can possibly build wealth over time.
If every single, like you can't even hold on to your money, right, to earn interest on it because as you accumulate the wealth, you got to give it up to them.
So what amount of money can you possibly accumulate to interest on?
That's the crazy thing about it too, right?
Is that they can inflate the value up and then tax you on that, even though you haven't cashed out on it.
Right.
So, so in other words, they could, you could hold some asset and they could just inflate the value up 10% and then tax you on that 10%, even though you haven't done anything.
You're just holding the thing as they are printing money.
And believe me, Janet Yellen, that pure ball of charisma, she knows this.
It's a former Fed chairman.
She knows exactly what they're doing.
So that's a man.
God damn, man.
I mean, you know, if you think we're in like some crazy financial period of time, that is really something to see that.
And you see it.
I mean, I just, the $600 thing was insane and it didn't pass because everyone was like, this is, that's insane.
I don't see this one flying solely because if every single tax quarter, people have to, let's just say, sell off between 15 and 20% of what they own in order.
So like, what the fuck's going to happen to the stock market?
How's that going to work?
Yeah.
Yeah.
How would it be a quarter that people got to give up 20%?
I don't know.
It just, it does not sound feasible.
Yeah.
No, I, I, I agree with you on that.
It does, it does sound like this, this proposal would be impossible to like actually enact.
Um, the $600, you know, spying on everyone's bank account thing that that seemed a little bit impossible too.
But I'll tell you, that was actually, if you look at the votes, that was actually closer than a little too close for comfort.
I think it was Joe Manchin and a couple of the other like kind of like conservative Democrats who put a stop to that.
But it's, it's pretty wild that they're even floating ideas like this out.
And they also, it would seem, didn't think this one through because in the application, I'd have a lot of follow-up questions.
Like even if you thought that this was the best way, hey, we got to tax rich people and we need to get more wealth out of the system and into the hands of government.
Well, what's the least destructive way?
I mean, if you were going to compile those, not that I'm saying it's a good idea to tax, but I'm just trying to say if practically speaking, you were trying to come up with the easiest ways to do it.
This has to be, functionally speaking, one of the dumbest and worst ideas.
I mean, this, yes, one of the worst.
Absolutely.
Like, as you said, this would be almost guaranteed to bring down the entire economy.
Brian Stelter Disinformation00:13:57
But, you know, it's just kind of one more way to really squeeze that.
It does seem like it's a war on kind of middle class, working class people.
Because like you said, even they can say this is only for millionaires and billionaires, but come on.
We all kind of know.
We all know what's going on.
Might become a big enough issue to be like, dude, between inflation, I'm just saying theoretically, if they push this through and a DeSantis got up and said, listen, I'm going to combat inflation and I'm going to get rid of this dumb fucking corporate tax thing that all of you are now having just issues with compliance.
These are going to become, it's interesting, the financial issues could become signature, like signature talking points in the next election.
The most ignored shit, typically speaking.
Yeah, no, you are right about that.
You are right.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
All right.
So, okay, so the last thing I wanted to get into before we got out of here was there was this real fun video of Barry Weiss on with our favorite little piggy, Brian Stelter over at CNN.
And this was something that this went real viral like a few days ago.
And I thought maybe we'd have some fun talking about it.
But zooming out from the, you know, the financial stuff and into just more like the culture and the world we live in.
So Barry Weiss was on reliable sources with Brian Stelter.
And I kind of, I got to give her credit for this.
And I will say that Barry Weiss, you know, full disclaimer, she's terrible on a whole bunch of issues, including like foreign policy and all that stuff.
And we've smashed her before on the show, but she is pretty good on the woke shit and the state of the culture, I guess.
She's decent.
And this was kind of a fun exchange.
So she was on with Brian Stelter.
Let's play a little bit of that clip.
You're right.
There are tens of millions of Americans who aren't on the hard left or the hard right who feel the world has gone mad.
So in what ways has the world gone bad?
Well, you know, when you have the chief reporter on the beat of COVID for the New York Times talking about how questioning or pursuing the question of the lab leak is racist, the world has gone mad.
When you're not able to say out loud and in public that there are differences between men and women, the world has gone mad.
When we're not allowed to acknowledge that rioting is rioting and it is bad, and that silence is not violence, but violence is violence, the world has gone mad.
When we're not able to say that Hunter Biden's laptop is a story worth pursuing, the world has gone mad.
When in the name of progress, young school children, as young as kindergarten, are being separated in public schools because of their race.
And that is called progress rather than segregation.
The world has gone mad.
There are dozens of examples that I could share with you and with someone knows this.
And you say we're not allowed.
Who's the people stopping the conversation?
Who are they?
People that work at networks, frankly, like the one I'm speaking on right now, who try and claim that, you know, it was racist to investigate the lab leak theory.
It was an example.
But I'm just saying when you say allowed, I just think it's a provocative thing you say.
You say, we're not allowed to talk about these things, but they're all over the internet.
I can Google them.
I can find them everywhere.
All right, let's pause it right there.
So I'm just suggesting.
So let's pause it.
So could you imagine?
Look, I'm not the biggest Barry Weiss fan.
I don't agree with a lot of shit she says, but the stuff she just rattled off right there, pretty reasonable points.
And imagine being Brian Stelter, the guy who's supposed to be reliable sources, like we always say.
And what's his response to this?
Not like, eh, all right.
Yeah, you are right.
Those are all really reasonable things to like dig into and talk about.
But no, he tries to play this kind of semantics game where he goes, well, what do you mean you're not allowed to say that?
You're allowed to say that.
And then she goes, well, I mean, he goes, who's stopping you from saying this?
He goes, well, networks like the one I'm speaking on.
Like when the New York Times says digging into the Wuhan lab leak theory is racist.
And he goes, well, no one on CNN said that.
You asked who said you're not allowed to and the major record along with Facebook and the tech company.
So those are the people.
Pretty, pretty big.
The New York Times, it's not like she said my uncle Steve.
Like, yeah, the New York Times.
That's a pretty big one.
But you just see him grasping at straws and then he'll go, well, who says you're not allowed?
Because, you know, I see this stuff all over the internet and I can Google it and find it.
And it's like, well, okay.
I guess that is true.
I guess literally speaking, it's not exactly that you're not allowed.
I mean, yes, you can find it on the internet.
Although a lot of people have been kicked off their platforms on the internet for saying things like this.
But yeah, okay, I guess you are right.
There are people saying, so what do you mean by you're not allowed?
But I mean, come the fuck on.
Come the fuck on.
Like, what if, like, I don't know.
If Brian Stelter just said on his show or anyone else on CNN, on his show, just said, I think, you know, whatever it is, you can think of a million examples, right?
If they just said, well, I think, I think, you know, biological men are men.
I think if like, I think trans women are men.
Let's say they said that.
Or let's say they said that, you know, The, you know, COVID is, I don't know, it's basically the flu and that masks and lockdowns are ridiculous.
Or let's say they said, you know, like any number of things, right?
Let's say they said that, you know, whatever during last summer, they said that Black Lives Matter was, you know, like whatever.
It was all a bunch of riots and whatever.
You know, you can think of like a million examples.
How long do you think that person would last?
On your network?
I don't think too long.
So you know what the fuck she means.
It's not literally allowed to say, like, yeah, we can all say whatever we want to, but then we'll get kicked off of all of our platforms and we'll get fucking demonetized and we'll get all of this shit.
There's a reason why this YouTube channel that we're on right now is still not fucking monetized.
Because I know if we do, we'll fucking, I can make a lot of money off this shit, but I know we'll get kicked off right away.
So what, like, come on, that's your response?
Well, what do you mean not allowed?
I think we're allowed.
I hear people saying it all the time.
So this is their like fucking, you know, like, I don't know.
This is their response to all of that.
Even though she says all of these very obvious things, like that you couldn't even argue with, that you'll never hear anyone else on this network say.
Still, that's his response.
All right, let's keep playing.
Google them.
I can find them everywhere.
I've heard about every story you mentioned.
So I'm just suggesting, of course, people are allowed to cover whatever they want to cover.
But you and I both know, and it would be delusional to claim otherwise, that touching your finger to an increasing number of subjects that have been deemed third rail by the mainstream institutions and increasingly by some of the tech companies will lead to reputational damage, perhaps you losing your job, your children sometimes being demonized as well.
And so what happens is a kind of internal self-censorship.
This is something that I saw over and over again when I was at the New York Times.
People saying to themselves, you know what?
Why should I die on that hill?
Why should I take the three or four weeks that it takes to smuggle through an op-ed that doesn't suit the conventional narrative?
I might as well commission the 5,000th op-ed saying that Donald Trump is a moral monster.
What's going on is the transformation of these sense-making institutions of American life.
It's the news media, it's the publishing house, it's the Hollywood studios, it's our universities, and they are narrowing in a radical way what's acceptable to say and what isn't.
And you and I both know there doesn't need to be an edict from the C-suite in order for people to feel that.
All they need is to watch an example.
Let me give you one example.
Dorian Abbott is a geophysicist at the University of Chicago.
He is absolutely brilliant.
And he was slated to give the Carlson lecture at MIT.
It's incredibly prestigious public lecture.
But he was canceled from that lecture because of a Twitter mob.
And what was his sin?
Well, he argued that people should be hired on the basis of their merit and their individual, you know, and their individuality, not based on their identity as a group.
That was his thought crime.
And for that, MIT, one of the most important research universities in the world, caved in a matter of eight days.
Now you can say to me, oh, that's cherry picking.
Oh, that's a one-off.
What are the downstream effects of an example like that?
Every other scientist, every other academic who's watching that is saying, wait, hold on.
If he's being canceled for that, what does that mean for me?
I might as well shut up.
I might as well practice doublethink in the freest society in the history of the world.
That is one of the great stories of our time.
And that is the story that's been uncovered largely, not because of disinformation or not because they're lying about it, simply because they're ignoring it.
It's disinformation by omission.
No, not in the touch.
And then, and all Brian Stelter can give you after that is, hmm, hmm, hmm.
I like how she said, she's like, you know, these New York Times editors from her experience working there are scared, not editors or writers, are scared to publish an op-ed on something that they think might be a touchy subject.
So instead, they'll write the 5,000th piece about how Trump is a moral monster.
And Brian Stelter just has to sit there like, hmm, hmm.
Like, oh, yeah.
That's what you've been doing this whole time, right?
Maybe it would have been interesting for you to be like, hey, you know, I think my audience knows that I think Trump's bad.
Maybe I should touch one of these subjects.
Maybe I should talk about one of the journalists who's being ruined for touching one of these subjects.
So anyway, I just thought I give props to Barry Weiss for that.
It was kind of cool to see her go on there and like, I don't know, bring that up.
Literally, she's talking about a scientist who was destroyed or like ruined or I don't know, canceled from a thing, whatever you want to call it, for saying that people should be hired on their merit.
This is also a thing that I think is like so crazy.
Like I don't understand how any libertarian isn't against woke culture.
Like, isn't the whole thing about believing in the market that it's like a meritocracy and that we, you know, you know, all the stuff like, oh, racism is just collectivism and all of this.
And so one person says, I think people should be hired on their merit.
I think we should be individualistic and not collectivist.
And that guy gets canceled.
Shouldn't we be against that?
Whatever.
We're not free and there's no equality until we promote gays, blacks, and women's ahead of ourselves.
And once then high concentrations, they are making all the money.
Then after like in a lower tier, then it'll all be.
Yeah.
Then we'll all have freedom.
The freedom exists in the B group once we've already put the A group in a, you know, a higher, a higher cast.
There you go.
All right.
There's the, there's the moral of the story for today.
All right.
That's our, that's our show for today.
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