Dave Smith and James Smith dissect the January 6th anniversary, arguing it served as a pretext for government crackdowns that silenced anti-statist dissent. They ridicule CNN's Brian Stelter for fabricating journalist PTSD narratives, contrasting this performative trauma with genuine experiences from 9/11 and car accidents. The hosts challenge election legitimacy by noting no candidate ever secures 51% of the vote, suggesting current outrage masks deeper concerns like inflation. Ultimately, they contend that labeling election questioning as "the big lie" allows media to suppress political debate while ignoring systemic overreach. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Questioning Election Legitimacy00:10:45
Fill her up.
You're listening to the Gas 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, James Smith.
What's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part Problem.
I am the most consistent motherfucker you know, Dave Smith.
He is Robbie the Fire Bernstein, the king of the caulks, COVID Jesus.
What's up, dude?
Let's get another show going.
We got a lot to talk about today.
How you feeling?
I'm feeling great.
And I want to remind everyone, January 13th and 14th, we're going to be up in Boston, January 13th, 8 o'clock comedy show.
And then there's a separate live podcast after that.
I believe it starts at 10.
And then Friday at 7:30, this is the last night to celebrate your freedom in Boston.
So come hang out.
Me, you, BK, Chris.
It's going to be a fucking party.
And then I just put Buffalo on the books.
I think I'm hosting for Sam Tripoli following 20 and 21st.
That's going to be fun as well.
Spreading truth all over the country, baby.
Hell yeah, dude.
That's awesome.
And these Boston shows, they're selling very fast.
We have some seats left, but if you want to come, come get them now.
There's still tickets, a bunch of tickets available for the live podcast, which is a separate ticket that you got to buy.
But the stand-up shows, there's only a few seats left.
So go get them now if you want to come out.
These are going to be great fucking shows.
I'm really excited to go back to Boston.
It just worked out that we're there.
Like literally, they announced they were adding the vaccine passport.
And I called Rob and I was like, dude, what the fuck?
They just did a vaccine passport.
Are we still going to be able to do these gigs?
And it was like, oh, it goes into effect the 15th.
And we're there the 13th.
They've made an exception for us.
They knew.
It's kind of like they knew.
So come out and spread as much COVID as you can while you still have the freedom to do it.
But I'm really looking forward to it.
I love Boston and we haven't been there in a while.
It was literally one of our last stops right before the whole world went nutty.
So we're excited to go back there.
And a whole bunch of stuff, a whole bunch of gigs coming up.
I'm going to be at a bunch of the LP conventions right after the Boston date.
I'll be in Arizona.
I'm going to be at the Colorado convention, the Connecticut convention, at the Pennsylvania convention, at the California convention.
I might be missing a few of these here, but a bunch of them.
And me and Rob are going to be doing a ton of stand-up all over the country over this next year.
It's going to be a lot of fun.
And maybe a big, maybe even in the month of January.
I might have a big surprise for you guys that'll be that'll be fun.
So keep your eyes peeled and come follow us.
We're going to be coming somewhere near you, hopefully very soon.
Okay.
So I figured we would open today's show since it is, this is kind of our January 6th show.
I mean, it'll be out for a lot of people will end up watching this show on January 6th or maybe even on the 7th, but whatever.
You get the fucking point.
And so it is the one year anniversary from the worst thing that's ever happened to people.
I'm still on edge.
Yeah.
I don't feel like I live in a democracy since it happened.
And to think that not all of them were arrested, especially the ones working at the FBI, those guys are still out there.
That's right.
The worst.
By the way, I will say, going into all of this, Tucker Carlson, obviously, you know, did a whole thing on this that drew a lot of heat.
I would highly recommend people go listen to Scott Horton's recent episode on January 6th.
There is, I just started listening to his audio book.
It's so good, dude.
The book is so good.
The book is so both of his books are incredible: Fool's Errand and Enough Already, both incredible.
Have you ever gotten into Audible at all?
I'm not a big Audible guy.
No, it's cool.
I've never used it.
You can listen to things on Double Speed, and it's just like downloading information into your brain.
It's like that Matrix scene where Neo just plugs in.
Oh, it's so good.
Yeah, listening to Scott Horton on double speed is like fighting a robot with one hand in the Matrix.
Yes, I could imagine that.
But no, I'm not, I still need to actually physically read, but I'm a boomer.
What can I say?
Um, but I would recommend go listen to that episode.
I will say this: January 6th, at the very least, there's more than meets the eye there.
Okay, but transformers.
Yes, I but I will say that me and you, we did a live stream a year ago while January 6th or on January 6th, I guess maybe not while it was going on.
It may have wrapped up by then.
We did a stream that night, and then we talked about it, obviously, many more times on the show.
And I still, I think, I stand by what we said there, um, which was to me very obvious from the beginning that this was it was like, regardless of all the uh, say, outside interference that may have been involved in that day, that it was there were all of these people, kind of like uh, Trump supporters, right-wingers in general, uh, who were like kind of celebrating it and laughing about it on Twitter and all of this.
And they were like, aha, that's so funny.
And look at them just kind of mocking the whole system.
And I was right away like, this is dark.
This is not funny.
And this was a big mistake.
No one should be going in there.
Like, you guys, I really think it's like a lot of people just don't realize what they were playing with and didn't realize how much they were falling right into the enemy's hands.
And they're like, no, this isn't going to work out for you.
This isn't like, aha, I farted on Nancy Pelosi's desk.
This is like, aha, I farted on Nancy's on Nancy Pelosi's desk.
And now I'm looking at 30 years.
And by the way, I'm going to be held in solitary confinement until I face a trial in two years.
You know what I mean?
Like, this is people's lives are going to be ruined over this.
I think a lot of times people see kind of like the face of the state and they think like, you know, what a lot of libertarians even think.
They go, what a bunch of incompetent boobs, you know?
But if you see the back end, you're like, oh, what a bunch of blood-soaked monsters.
And it's people don't realize what they're playing with.
And so I would just, I would always advise against anything that could even be perceived as like a direct physical confrontation with the government.
That's not going to work out well for you.
And I think we kind of knew right away that this was going to be the pretense for a big crackdown.
And really, what it did was I think it did a lot of damage to this really wonderful possibility that we had for a little while, no matter what you think happened with the election in 2020.
But I think there was something really from the anti-statist position, at least, I think there was something really beautiful about the fact that a whole bunch of people did not believe the election was legitimate.
And that's, you know, and when I say a whole bunch of people, I mean like a huge portion of the country, like tens of millions of people did not believe this was legitimate.
And I think if it wasn't for January 6th, this would have been a much bigger force in our lives.
I think that they were able to really kind of bully Trump into silence.
They were able to use it as an excuse to ban him off of social media.
Not that they couldn't have found another excuse, but they used this as an excuse and used it as an excuse to impeach him again and all of this stuff.
Am I right?
I think he was banned after that on social media.
Was it before?
Maybe I'm wrong, but regardless, I think it was almost like because it got such crazy attention, it kind of eclipsed all of that other stuff.
And it was like, well, look, I mean, look what happens when you question democracy.
And this is the big problem with Donald Trump telling, as the media likes to call it, the big lie.
Have you heard that, Rob?
That's their, they still use that all the time on CNN.
The big lie, referring to Donald Trump saying he doesn't believe the results of the election.
That's the big lie.
Not that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
You know, that wasn't a big lie.
That was a little lie.
Something like a million people died as a result of that lie.
I thought Trump was a Russian spy for two years.
That was also a little lie.
Just immediately.
It was a lie.
Yeah, a medium.
Let me hear weapons of mass destruction.
Trump's a Russian asset.
January 6th, the election was stolen.
That's the biggest lie imaginable.
But in a way, as I always say with these things, in a way, they're right.
Like if you just flip things around and look at it from their perspective, if you look at it from the evil lizard people's perspective, they're kind of right about that, right?
Like the biggest lie is questioning whether this whole system is legitimate or not.
And it's a dangerous game.
And it was fun.
There were fun kind of thought experiments about January 6th and about questioning the election.
You know, there were things about it that I found really interesting.
I mean, you know, first of all, from the libertarian perspective, I think that once you start questioning whether an election is legitimate, it's like opening a Pandora's box into a lot of other questions that are hard to avoid.
Like once you start, for example, right?
Once you start questioning, was this last election legitimate?
Well, what's what are these next questions that just obviously flow into your mind?
Like, well, if that one wasn't legitimate, was the one before it?
Was the one before that?
Hey, well, usually, how do we know that any of these elections are legitimate?
Usually there aren't that many corpses that have another corpse to vote for.
So they're not that excited to show up and vote.
This was the first time where dead people could vote for another dead guy.
Well, okay, fair enough for another dead guy.
But you know, this is a thing that happens every election: that dead people vote.
The Problem with Dead Voters00:02:42
This is always like those non-in masses.
Usually they stay home.
This year, they really showed up.
They were excited for a candidate.
No, this year they mailed in their ballots.
This year, they stayed home more than ever.
But you do start to go, once you start to question the results of an election, you're like, well, if you think the government would steal this one, what other ones would they have stolen?
I mean, it's just, it just kind of follows from that first question.
And then you might even get yourself to asking, like, why are elections legitimate at all?
You know, if this election is illegitimate, and then you go like, well, okay, well, we overhauled the way we do elections and everyone gets to vote for from home now.
And that's illegitimate because you used to have to show up to the polls.
But that's kind of arbitrary.
Why is that the standard?
We should all surround the Capitol every four years and everyone storms it.
And whoever gets in places in the middle first with a flag.
Well, right.
They win.
But I'm kind of saying like that's you start to realize once you question this system and don't take it as a given that this is just, of course, how it has to be.
You start to realize how very arbitrary the whole thing is.
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Blue Chew Sponsor Segment00:16:02
Like, you know, when Nancy Pelosi floated out the idea of like, we think we should let 16-year-olds vote instead of 18 and up, it should be 16 and up.
And a lot of Republicans, and I think understandably and rightfully, were like, oh, no, fuck that.
You're just trying to get young, dumb people because you know they'll vote for you, you know?
And that's a fair counter, in my opinion.
But it's also reasonable to say that's, you know, it's pretty arbitrary.
Why is voting at 16 ridiculous, but 18 okay?
Maybe it should be 20.
Maybe it should be 25.
You know, you realize that it's like, okay, the founders.
Once you've had your first abortion, then you're going to hear what you have to say.
Yeah.
Well, the founders had the whole, you know, you have to own property and be a white man.
So, you know, my point is they were reasonable across the board.
And they, no?
Okay.
Just kidding.
But I just like that, I guess slave was a property.
So if you had one slave, you could vote.
I got some property right here.
I'm white.
Here's my property.
Where's my voter registration?
But there is something to be said, right?
Now, you don't have to completely agree with this, but there is something to be said for the idea of someone who's a property owner having a vote versus someone who's not a property owner not having a vote.
Now, of course, slavery stuff and the white guy stuff aside.
You could at least, once you start to get into the idea of 17-year-olds shouldn't be allowed to vote, but 18-year-olds should, can't you at least just play this mental exercise with me where you go, like, okay, well, why were the founders saying that only property owners could vote?
It wasn't as simple as like, because fuck everybody else.
There was some skin in the game.
Well, that's right.
They had some nice white skin in the game.
But you get, but look, if you're the idea was that if you're not a property owner, well, what are you going to vote?
You're just going to vote for the people who do own stuff to give more stuff to you.
Well, that's not a real vote.
That's, you don't have skin in the game.
You don't have white skin in the game.
Okay.
The race thing they were wrong about, but the other part, you know, like, I'm just saying there is an argument to that.
And there is, there's lots of different arguments to like, You know, should somebody who is a net taxpayer and somebody who is a net tax money receiver both have equal vote?
Like, if you work all day and I just sit on my ass and collect a check from what you work for, should I get a vote over whether you have to give me more money?
It's just for anyone who's a thinking person, I think a lot of these questions start to get, you know, come out.
And then, of course, the ultimate one, which really to me is like the dagger, is like, let's say 51% of people do vote for something.
Why do they get to rule over the other 49%?
Why is that all of a sudden legitimate?
I mean, even if you do get 51% of the vote, so fuck the other 49%.
They just have to live under a government that they don't agree with.
Like if that other 51% didn't exist and the 49% just had this government that they hated that they all voted against, we'd be like, well, that's horrible.
By modern political theory, you'd go, that's horrible.
That's a brutal authoritarian regime.
You know, because they don't have a vote.
It's taxation without representation or whatever, any of that shit.
But if there is this other 51% who voted for it, then that other 49% still lives under taxation without representation.
They still live under the same, you know, authoritarian regime who they didn't support and they don't want governing them.
But we say, but because there's, or not even 51%, 50% plus one, you know, because there's that, it's totally okay what happens to the other side.
Now, if you want to like even take this further, if 50% plus one votes for something, then it has to happen.
But if 50% minus one votes for something, then it doesn't have to happen.
You know, why does that, why does those two people, why does that make some huge difference in terms of the moral legitimacy of what happened there?
So anyway, my point was.
Also, wouldn't it be fun if you really believed in voting, then why don't we put the system to a vote of does 51% of the population think that 51% should be able to just vote in one guy and him be in power?
If you put that up to a vote, maybe people would just vote away the whole system.
But you wouldn't because you don't actually believe in democracy.
You wouldn't want them voting on that.
You wouldn't want us voting on the power of the federal government.
That's one of my big themes that no one actually believes in democracy.
They all pretend to, but no one actually believes.
And realistically, what's a winning?
Well, it's probably more like 30%, 80%.
Oh, you know, in terms of the population, yeah, no one ever gets 50% plus one in American democracy.
Yeah, that's probably a landslide.
You know, that's like a landslide victory if you have that percentage of the population.
But anyway, so that's what that to me was what was fun about the thought experiments that I feel like just come out of Trump questioning the election or not questioning, denying, you know, is probably more a fairer way to put it.
And then I thought there were some thought experiments that also came out of January 6th that I thought were really interesting too.
I was tweeting about this and I remember being like right on the verge of like, ah, shit, I might get banned for this.
But I tried to word them in a way where I'm like, let me keep my channel, my account.
But I remember that there are these questions that fuck with a lot of people where they'd be like, you know, they'd be like, it is, I can't believe these people stormed the Capitol.
And so I would just be like, hey, when do you think it would be appropriate to storm the Capitol?
Like, let's say Trump cheese inside.
Yeah, right.
Well, there's Rob's answer.
But let's say Trump was telling the truth.
Let's say the election was actually stolen.
Then would it be okay to storm the Capitol?
Like, is anyone going to argue with that?
Now, isn't this kind of weird?
Don't you find yourself in a little bit of a weird kind of logical box.
If the president's in charge of the democracy and he's telling you that it was stolen, you would think that you'd get some immunity because you're listening to the guy that the democracy chose to be, isn't this also goofy?
You go, that is the democratically elected president.
He just told you this election was stolen.
We all believe in the democracy thing.
So the guy in charge told us it.
I should be free and clear.
I mean, he could tell us someone has weapons and then we got to go to war with them, but he can't tell you the election was, you know, they should hire us to be their lawyers, Dave.
Well, it's just, I just, I don't know why, whatever.
It's the way my brain works, but I find all of that stuff to be fascinating.
Because once you, you know, it's like, once you concede that, like, if you concede that there are some circumstances where it would be okay to storm the Capitol, it's like, okay, so now kind of take the outrage out of your voice.
And now we have to argue about whether these circumstances did, you know, lead to that.
And when I was, I remember arguing with some libertarians, the types of libertarians who will no longer be in power in the Libertarian Party in the next few months, because we've been kicking ass.
Shout out to the Mises caucus, who is fucking killing it right now.
But so a lot of those types, they, you know, they'd be like, oh my God, okay, this is so outrageous.
And I'd be like, well, when would it be appropriate?
And they'd be like, you know, their response would be, well, maybe if they were trying to overthrow authoritarianism instead of instill their dictator as king for life in all of this.
And I'm like, okay, well, what if they were going there to pro like, what if they were doing it because of the 20 years of war, the year of lockdowns, the, you know, monetary policy, the all of this shit, all of the horrible things that libertarians hate.
Like, what if that's explicitly why they were going to storm the Capitol?
Then are you okay with it?
And then they'd have like a weird moment of silence.
And then I'd be like, well, you know, all of that is part of it.
Even if they won't tell you that's part of it, all of that is part of it.
Even if they don't know that that's part of it, all of it is.
You would not have, you know, Republican voters getting to this point where they didn't believe in the whole system if it wasn't for all of the things that libertarians hate that the government's been doing for the last 20 years.
I would really storm the Capitol if the FBI tricked me.
If they, you know, like a Looney Tunes moment, they open up the door.
They're like, hey, it's a free entry today.
And then you walk in like, I got you.
Yeah, maybe some big guy with a buzz cut and a barrel chest is like, we're storming the Capitol today.
All right.
You hear me, son?
If he is, don't trust that guy.
And then maybe some guy from a tower is shouting, go, go forward, go forward.
Anyway, the point is, go listen to the Scott Horton episode.
Very good.
And by the way, the Scott Horton show, go listen to it.
He does the best fucking interviews.
So, but anyway, but the media pounced on this as their big opportunity.
And it was their big opportunity to try to take all of these questions and put them aside.
Take all of the lingering, you know, kind of feelings of like, wait, but how did that guy who's senile and never left his basement and you guys never asked him a tough question?
He's our president, like all these things push them aside and go, January 6th, the worst thing ever.
And they freaked out about it forever.
And, you know, and they still freak out about it.
And a year later, the way the corporate press is talking about this shit is goddamn hilarious.
And I got to say, I kind of love it.
It's really interesting.
Bill Crystal.
Let me actually see if I can pull up to them.
It's almost as scary as getting COVID.
It's up there.
I think it actually might be scarier.
Okay, it was actually two days ago he said this, but okay.
So here's Bill Crystal's tweet.
Polls show a large majority of Americans are anti-January 6th.
Trump is pro-January 6th.
The Republican Party is pro-Trump.
This is sound logic here.
Rob, you hear?
You got it so far?
Let me run this through.
Don't try to swallow this down because this is the soundest logic you'll ever hear in your life.
Okay.
Polls show a large majority of Americans are anti-January 6th.
Trump is pro-January 6th.
The Republican Party is pro-Trump.
Not to be too political or anything, but shouldn't Democrats be forcing Republicans to choose visibly and explicitly between Trump and the American people?
So you got that there?
Now that's a little bit that I will say this is that was I don't even get what the end choice is.
So, I mean, I don't even get the logic flow, but what's the, I don't even get his final statement.
This is better than anything he offered against Scott Horton.
I'll say this, okay?
There's an attempt at an argument here.
Let's go through it.
Okay, so polls show.
All right.
Americans are anti-January 6th.
Trump pro-January 6th.
What do they mean by pro-January?
I think it shouldn't happen.
They were against it.
I don't know.
It was bad.
Trump says it was good.
Is it like a 13th floor type thing?
We're not going to have a January 6th.
So we'll go fifth to seventh.
We'll skip the day.
I don't know.
I think it refers to the event of last year on the day, but that would be funny if he was just talking about the date.
It is not to be too political or anything.
Shouldn't, well, let me just get through this.
Not to be too political or anything, but shouldn't Democrats be forcing Republicans to choose visibly and explicitly between Trump and the American people?
See, Trump's over here being pro-January 6th.
American people are over here being anti-January 6th.
When he says they're anti-January 6th, I think what he means is that most Americans didn't like that people stormed the Capitol.
I think Trump also doesn't like that people storm the Capitol.
So they'd be on the same side here.
Well, look, but here's the thing.
Even if you're going to say Trump is pro-January 6th and the American people are anti-January 6th, so shouldn't the Democrats force the Republicans who like Trump to pick whether they like him or that?
There's a whole bunch of obvious nuance that you're jumping over.
Well, also, if we don't want to go with polls, then why do we have elections?
I mean, the poll showed landslides that Hillary was going to win.
So we should just enforce what the polls are showing, not even go to the election.
But even, regardless of that, even if the polls in this are all completely right, the fact that a lot of people say they didn't like what happened on January 6th and Trump, let's say Trump did.
Let's say he's right about all of that.
Let's even say that the assertions are correct, that the people were against January 6th and Trump was for January 6th.
I have to go to war with someone.
That's what Bill's probably.
The Republicans are for Trump, who's for January 6th, and the people are against January 6th.
Why don't the Democrats make this all about Trump being for January 6th and the people being against it?
And here's a knife that tears right through this whole line of thinking, which, god damn it, do the establishment neocon fucking now Democrat types just hate.
But you go, hey, guess what?
People could be against that and also not have it be that big of a priority.
You know, like people could be against that in the same way that they're like, I don't know, they could be against fucking people not standing for the national anthem.
But that doesn't mean that's their number one concern, right?
So, why don't we just be hysterical about January 6th all the time?
Because the people are against it and Trump is sport.
It's like, because most people don't actually think it was the insurrection that you guys are claiming it was.
Most people don't, even the people have no idea about the inside job shit.
Most people just don't.
They care a lot more about inflation.
They care a lot more about COVID restrictions.
They care a lot more about what their kids are being taught in public school.
They care a lot more about a million different issues than they do about fucking a few hundred people going into a building they're not supposed to be in.
And like, what?
Maybe scaring some politicians and journalists.
So it's just, it's unbelievable that a year later, in a year that I think objectively has been a very tough year for the American people and a year in which objectively, the American people are not happy with their government.
You know, like say what you will about the polls, Rob, but I believe that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are not polling well.
Like I believe that.
If those polls were being exaggerated, they'd probably be exaggerated in the other direction.
And even if they're not perfectly accurate, that is somewhat reflective of reality, that people are unhappy with the state of the leadership in the federal government.
And so to still be a year later just talking about that thing, I really believe, I mean, it's almost like if you get outside of your bubble and just talk to regular people and ask them what their concerns are about the state of America, who the fuck is talking about January 6th?
You'll hear more about the price of lumber than you will about January 6th.
All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show.
Watching History Unfold00:14:59
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All right, let's get back into the show.
So anyway, it's been fun to watch the media freak out about this for a year.
I take this as a very positive sign.
The more that the media freaks out about things that regular people don't actually care about, the better things are for the rest of us.
Let's go.
We have a couple clicks here.
There we go.
The Omicron.
Rob got it.
We got a couple clips here.
This is from our favorite little piggy, his most recent show.
Rob, you'll never guess what his last show is about.
January 6th.
You got it.
And this was remarkable to me.
I saw this.
I will give another shout out to Tom Elliott, whose Twitter page is great to follow.
He just has great clips.
He does these like mashup clips of all the people in the corporate press getting everything wrong.
And I don't know how he's still up there.
Great stuff.
All the best videos on like COVID insanity and all that stuff.
So he's a worthwhile guy to go follow.
Yeah, Tom Elliott.
I think I got his name right.
I don't know what exactly the handle is.
Maybe we'll see it up there at some point.
Okay, let's play the first part of this.
Brian Stelter, of course, has a couple of reporters on to talk.
Oh, well, Brian's wearing a wig.
It's nice way on him.
Lost some weight too.
Brian is learning more about the attack.
I just got to say, we just got to read before we even get into it.
Just how great it is that the headline is.
Reporters say they are still processing the January 6th attack.
This is their angle.
They need a high school guidance counselor.
They need some time.
I would love to run the meeting for them to help them process what happened.
I hate that it's been a full year and the people that are supposed to be able to handle these things and report on them can't even process it.
By the way, this is Brian Stelter does a show once a week to be the media watchdog.
And like his angle on this, once again, it is just so entertaining to me.
His angle on this is like, but have you thought about the corporate journalists?
Has anybody really thought about the true victims?
Trauma, the true victims in our society.
The people who get six-figure salaries and cushy jobs to ask canned questions to political hacks.
What about them?
What about their suffering?
If they're still processing it, it sounds like they can't report on it because they haven't made a determination.
So then there's no reason to watch.
That is true.
I mean, these are very traumatized people.
So you can't really take whatever they say.
And they're not supposed to report on it as much as establish their own opinion and then shove it down our throats.
So if they haven't even processed it to come up with their narrative yet, I guess they can shut down for a little bit.
If there's one thing you know about good journalism, what you want to do is make yourself the story.
Okay.
And then you want to be hypersensitive and emotional about what your experiences were covering the story.
That's just good journalism 101.
All right, let's go to Brian Stelter.
Processing what it meant to the country and to our lives.
So, Hunter, is there a disconnect between the people who were there that day in DC and the people who were not?
You know, someone like me only watched it on TV.
Will I ever really get it?
You know, I think this was a really unique incident in part because of when it happened during the pandemic.
This was a pre-vaccination moment, and a lot of the DC Press Corps was, you know, working from home, working remotely.
And unless they were the Capitol Hill Press Corps, like I believe Grace was, or someone like myself who went out to cover the protests, they didn't see this firsthand.
And while, you know, we were there on scene, due to the crowds, due to the law enforcement response, cell signals were jammed.
So there was a bit of a delay also in that footage getting out.
That's a great point.
And I think that distance, coupled with the fact that we see active attempts to deny the reality of what occurred, have sort of prevented people from realizing what happened that day.
And what I've found, you know, I know this for myself, but in talking, you know, there's a bit of an informal network of reporters who've been through it that day and are still coping with that, who are leaning on each other and talking to each other.
I also talk to members of Congress, their staff, and members of the Capitol.
So, dude, by the way, Jesse Kelly tweeted this video out and he just goes, he goes, guys, save some pussy for the rest of us.
And I just thought, it's just the greatest thing I've ever seen.
Well, I like that.
God, I love that guy.
I'm trying to get him back on the show soon.
God, I love that guy.
But isn't it just so funny?
Like this whole thing, no, we're still in a network where we talk to each other.
Like, oh, okay, fine.
Look, you could have this attitude, but then spare me any of your like, what a noble like profession journalism is.
Like, oh my God, like you have no idea what it was like.
We didn't know what was going to happen.
The images didn't get out to people fast enough.
You don't know there was a big crowd and we thought things might happen.
I mean, they didn't.
And one, oh, oh, and what happened?
One of the cops shot one of the people entering the building, a chick, right?
That's the story here.
Now, go ahead, Rob.
No, I was going to say Brian Stelter was saying he can't really understand it because he wasn't there.
It sounds to me like he shouldn't be reporting on anything because I don't think he ever does on-the-ground reporting.
So, how does he ever have an understanding on anything?
So, you can't understand it.
They're still processing it.
Maybe everyone shut the hell up.
All right, let's keep playing.
Capitol Police.
And we're all still dealing with that and feeling like we need to convey to others how serious it was.
I mean, just one example.
There are still members of the U.S. Capitol Police out with injuries that they suffered that day from a year ago.
Wow.
And sometimes.
So, by the way, just pause it for a second.
So, like, does anyone not see like CNN wondering why their ratings are in the tank so much?
Like, is this just like, so you have a media watchdog show and you're just spending this as journalist therapist hour?
Like, they're just opening up to you about how they feel inside about what covering a historic event.
By the way, journalists go and cover wars.
They like real journalists, they go, they go in, like they embed themselves with military units.
They cover like the most horrific events ever.
There are also, aren't they?
Like, how many stories have you guys done about like just some tragedy?
Like, I've never heard anyone on one of these shows talk about some tragedy that happens to the American people.
Like, you know, I was covering the opioid epidemic.
And I can't tell you how traumatized I am by this whole thing.
Like, 70,000, 80,000 Americans are dying every year over this epidemic of like drug abuse.
So it just shook me to my core.
This is horrible.
No, no, no, that doesn't get it.
No, Not tens of thousands of Americans dying.
That doesn't fuck with them.
It's not like, it's not like a story like, dude, you know, I went into fucking East Detroit the other day.
I'm like, God damn, like these kids are growing up with all of these problems.
I was just like destroyed over this.
It's like, oh my God, Chicago is just fucking like, what is a couple hundred people got shot in a week last month?
Oh man, I just like, I can't process this.
Like, no, nothing like that.
None of those stories.
Just when it happens to be really politically convenient.
I just can't believe these Trump people were inspired to like mosh into a building.
That's what I love this dude.
I fucking love this dude because I just love when the fucking mask slips.
And this is this is, it's like they don't get it.
Like, man, why do people hate us so much?
It must be because Trump's whipping them up into a fury against us.
And it's like, no, I mean, that helps, but you're doing it to yourself.
You're doing it to yourself every fucking episode.
Anything on that, Rob?
It's just, it's so publicly, you don't go, hey, I'm so rattled.
I don't even know if I can do my job.
Really?
People usually don't like that.
They want to watch people going, hey, listen to me.
I can really do my job well.
Well, no one look, dude.
I mean, if you, if you had something happen to you.
Imagine going to a lawyer and the guy's like, I don't know, I'm a little traumatized.
And he started talking about his feelings because of listening to you about the details of your case.
You go, dude, I'm facing murder.
Are you ready to do this or not?
No, look, if you like were in the middle of one of our episodes, we're like, dude, I'm just so rattled.
I don't even know if I can host this show with you anymore.
Like, I'd be like, hey, man, let's jump on the phone and talk about this.
Like, or why don't you come over tonight, spend the night, let's have a couple beers.
Let's talk about what's going on with you.
Like, but don't start talking about this on the podcast because we're doing a show for people.
Adults, but also like be somewhat, even in this, even in what we're doing right now, I have some expectation of professionalism.
It's like, I don't know, dude, like we're supposed to be putting out a product here.
A lot of people watch this.
You know, I mean, fucking, sure, it's not that.
It's no Joe Rogan show, but it's a lot more than a daytime CNN show.
So, like, a lot of people are watching this.
And you're like, okay, well, you should at least like that, we got to figure this out.
And if you're in a state where you really can't do this, then maybe you need some time off.
Maybe you can't do it, but you just get on the show and start venting.
You're like, it's unbelievable.
Unbelievable to be talking about this like this a year later.
All right, let's keep playing.
Be in trauma.
We're going to get into that.
But on the topic of that day and the cell service and the lack of full awareness, I think it's really important to remember it didn't look as bad on TV as it actually was.
And that's not the fault of any television producer or anything.
That is never true.
I mean, you guys found really great clips of cops being squeezed.
Like, it looked so much worse than it was.
Yeah.
So much worse.
You guys are the propaganda network.
You know how to take select clips and make like, remember what you did with that kid when he was being yelled at by an Indian and you were able to take the one clip and make it look way worse than it was.
And then you guys lost a million dollar, $100 million lawsuit because you're able to represent a clip in a false way.
You guys know how to represent clips in false ways.
Don't pretend like select clips can't make paint a whole story.
Let's be honest.
Okay.
The I've seen every clip that there is of January 6th.
And the ones in general, the more you watch, the more hilarious it looks.
Like the more it's just kind of like, oh, this was hilarious.
This is a guy.
Like, again, as the point I made earlier, not hilarious when you understand what's going to happen to these people and the implications, but hilarious, like people just like store, you know, the fucking guy with the goofy like outfit and the fucking, you know, farting on Nancy Pelosi's desk and just the old people there just kind of like, look at this and like all that shit.
It was funny.
The one thing, the one clip that came out that was the most like insane was the chick being shot where you were like, oh shit, that cop fucking just shot her.
And like she ended up dying.
And that's fucking horrible.
And I guess there were a couple other things of like cops being kind of like trampled and stuff like that.
But you know, anyway, so yeah, there were a few, but the idea that it's like, oh, the problem is that the media just didn't sensationalize this enough to tell you how horrible it was.
So now we have to bring in two reporters who will tell you how traumatized they are.
Whatever.
Let's keep playing.
It's just most of the live shots were from far away.
We didn't see inside the Capitol this horrible violence, the attacks against police.
There were only a few of those videos that came out during the day.
It took several days to reckon with just how violent this was, and then several weeks to learn about the security failures and all the rest.
So in other words, it was worse than it looked on live.
He paused.
I feel like I'm still not aware of the security failures and as to why Nancy Pelosi pulled that we have yet to do an investigation into the security failures.
I'm with you, Brian.
Let's figure out what went wrong that the Capitol building wasn't properly secured even after they got warnings that something could happen.
What's funny to me, I guess, to just think about this as being, you know, it was very early 2021.
But this is only about six, seven months removed from massive riots around the country.
And for them to just show this big protest and be like, yeah, yeah, you know, it looks not so bad when you pull it away.
But man, there were some videos in there that were really violent and awful.
It's just kind of funny where you're like, oh, yeah.
But you remember CNN for fucking months straight covering the Black Lives Matter protests.
Mostly peaceful.
Mostly peaceful.
And then what would happen, Rob?
You'd go online and see videos of people being soccer kicked, women being hit with two by fours, businesses being destroyed, all of this shit.
But that it was like, oh, yeah, there was none of this.
None of this.
Like, how about that?
How about like the small business owners who are traumatized by the riots?
They're just not that interested to talk to them about their trauma.
But reporters, let's get some more.
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Trauma and PTSD in Media00:09:40
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All right, let's get back into the show.
All right, let's keep playing.
People like you have been having to tell people what really happened.
I mean, one hallmark of post-traumatic stress disorder is sort of having flashbacks and almost eerily clear memories.
And for me, the single one that really haunts me is this moment when I was on the phone with my editor.
And I was a White House correspondent.
So I started that morning covering Trump.
I was there at the ellipse.
And, you know, in the final 120 words of his speech, that's when an hour he told the.
All right, this is how full of shit Brian Stelter is.
He just said that there are no close-up images.
And now I'm watching what looks like a GoPro camera on a guy's chest.
And most of the footage I've seen is very close up.
Like it was security footage of people right in the door.
It was the cops fighting at the barricades.
I mean, you could not have more blatantly just busted a guy for lying through his teeth where he says, well, you didn't get a full picture of the violence because everything's far away, followed by him showing a clip of hand-to-hand combat.
Better angles than the UFC gets.
All right.
Let's keep playing.
Crowd to march to the Capitol.
And I just kind of went with them.
And when I got to the building, the barricades had already been breached.
I saw everyone crawling over the inaugural stand, but it took a moment for me to pause again.
People were inside.
And I this asshole wasn't even there for it.
He's going, I was traumatized by it and showed up after all the violence occurred.
Well, listen, here.
How full of shit can these people fucking?
Here's what traumatized them.
Let's listen.
I got a call to my editor.
And the moment I hung up from that call, and it's such a simple, stupid thought, but the thing that rang in my head as I looked in one of those windows was, this is bad.
Because it was immediately apparent to me that shooting could break out from either side at any moment.
That's because people had he he instantly he was traumatized by the reality that something bad could have happened.
He didn't see anything bad or traumatizing happen.
Shooting could have happened.
That's it, Rob.
This is the story that we've been building to for this entire segment is this guy's emotional pain over having a moment where after calling his producer, it dawned on him this could go bad.
Yes, that's true.
I mean, that's true in a lot of situations in life.
Things could go bad.
You're right.
I mean, look, I don't know.
He's not completely wrong.
Like, yeah, something it could have gone way worse, you know.
But the idea that any grown man is going to get on television and tell you that that's what, like, you have to really think about how traumatizing this is for me.
That, like, you would think this guy was talking about, like, I saw a man beaten to death in front of me.
And even then, I'd be like, this is inappropriate for a professional news network to be talking about.
Like, you need to go talk to a therapist about that.
But hey, you know, fucked up shit happens and you're here to cover the news.
Like, that's that.
They realized, hey, don't lie about being on a helicopter that was under attack, but you can pretend to be traumatized by anything.
But anything.
Yeah, you can pull fake glory out of whatever you need.
Brian, let's go to the next video when they in this segment.
Last year, you said, sometimes I'm fine.
Sometimes I want to sob for hours.
Sometimes I just want to sleep.
So that sounds to me like trauma.
That sounds like PTSD.
Do you feel like you still experience that?
I do think so.
I'm sorry, Brian.
You got to pause it right there.
Man, I thought that dude was being a chick, but now they throw it to the chick to just really get a j.
Oh my God.
Sometimes I want to cry.
Sometimes I can't cry.
And then Brian Selder's just going to look at her and go, in his expert little piggy opinion, well, that sounds to me a lot like PTSD.
Well, thanks for that diagnosis, professional hack journalist.
Thank you for fucking your psychological opinion on that.
Oh, it's sure.
Well, you said you're real sad.
Well, that sounds to me like PTSD.
Sounds offensive to our soldiers.
Sounds like you're downplaying what they actually went through.
I think the soldiers are being offensive to her.
They have, oh, what did they go?
Oh, did you fight a little battle in Afghanistan?
Oh, you think you have PTSD?
Oh, you held your buddy's head in his lap while he bled out.
Boohoo.
I was at January 6th.
You have no.
And that was on our soil.
So it was more of a threat to everything we've tried to build.
That's right.
I didn't realize that.
All right.
Let's play a little bit more of this before I just give up and go headbutt my desk.
There are definitely still reactions that I feel.
And I go to the Capitol on an almost daily basis.
And every time that I go to the Capitol, I think about that experience that I had on January 6th.
And not only that I had, but that my colleagues had, my fellow reporters, lawmakers, Capitol police, just staffers.
And it can be difficult.
She's so frightened.
She has a permanent lisp now.
Think of, but like really her whole thing is think of the government employees.
I mean, with everything the country has been through from March of 2020 to January of 2022, won't anybody think of the people whose salaries have been guaranteed this entire time, who work at taxpayer expense with pension plans and the best benefits available.
Why is no one thinking about these people?
And then you go back to like the ratings room and you're like, why aren't we connecting with more people?
Why isn't our show more popular?
You're telling me they hate us.
They're furious and want to rip us limb from limb.
Let's do another segment.
Think of the government workers.
That's what we really need to do in this time.
Let's play.
And it can be difficult sometimes to come to terms with that.
And as time goes on, it gets a bit easier to move forward from it.
But I do feel as if it is something that's always going to stay with me no matter how long it is.
Hunter, is that true for you as well?
Well, you know, I've had an experience in my life with a really bad car accident where I was diagnosed with PTSD.
This was as a 21-year-old in 2005.
And I've been really grateful for this as I've been dealing with January 6th.
To know the signs of PTSD.
Exactly.
Because I've been through treatment, you know, I know what it is.
And frankly, one of the things I learned is that one of the most important things is being aware of your PTSD.
And when you have these moods, do you think Brian called up this producer before the show and said, hey, can you find me two reporters who can be really full of shit?
But I need them to be like really full of shit.
Like they're going to have to pretend like they're really emotionally.
Dude, listen, our normal level of full of shit, which is pretty high, mind you, is not working anymore.
We need to dial this bitch up to 11.
And really, I mean, I listen, even if, let's say both of the, again, and we can just end this here.
We don't need to go back to this.
Even if both of these reporters are actually suffering with PTSD, like if a doctor would diagnose them with that.
Make me their doctor.
I'll just be like, get over it, dude.
You're being a bitch.
But even if they were, right?
Like, even if they're, they really are suffering through PTSD, because look, who the fuck knows?
Situations scare people.
And some people are more easily scared.
And maybe this was really a thing for them that like they're having nightmares about.
They can't get over.
Like they're having all of these fucking, you know, like psychological, you know, ramifications from.
This is not what a news channel covers.
I'm sorry.
This is fucking pathetic.
You're not even covering journalists who were like embedded with military units going to war having PTSD.
You're talking about fucking people who were at the fucking January 6th Capitol riot.
And this is like what?
And the idea that you would put this out there in the middle of like your network collapsing with terrible ratings.
Literally the only guy who had decent ratings on your network just got caught trying to defend his creepy brother and was fired.
Okay.
And you're going to say, well, let's do a show about how hard, you know, a year later, after everything the country's been through over the last year, over the last two years, you're going to do a show about how hard it is for these two journalists who what were there and what's their experience?
That they thought bad stuff might happen.
Remembering 9/11 Moments00:02:26
Like that's really, that's really where you're going to go with all of this.
This is so like um, it's so incredibly um, self-absorbed and childish and just like not serious.
And that's how.
So people like me and you rob Two incredibly self-absorbed, not serious, childish people can still be so much better than them.
It really just boggles the mind.
All right, you know what?
This is I can't peg the specifics.
I know I've seen this in like TV shows.
I don't, I've never lived this experience, but it's like something happens at your school, like a teacher gets fired and they decide that they have to have like a trauma day, and the principal sits down to, and like you're stuck there, and you're like, I have no trauma.
This is ridiculous.
And there's two kids that are really into it and have to share their feelings.
That's who these fucking CNN people are.
Well, I remember, dude, I remember after 9-11 and 9-11 was like a crazy fucking moment.
Like I was a senior in high school and I was, I was only, I don't know, maybe a couple miles from 9-11.
And I do remember moments of 9-11 that were really crazy.
Like watching people walk up.
I got out of school and then I like me and a group of my friends went back to my house and I lived like a couple blocks off Flatbush Avenue.
And Flatbush Avenue runs like all the way down.
It runs straight to the Manhattan Bridge, but also it to the Brooklyn Bridge, like is only a couple blocks off.
And it's the big avenue that people walk up.
And this was like by the time we got out of school, it was a couple hours after the towers went down.
And there were people, you could see all the subways were out downtown.
So there were people who had just walked over the Brooklyn Bridge and just walked home at this point because, you know, it's only a couple miles away.
And so you'd look down and you'd see people like, you know, it's like it was like a busy avenue in New York City, if you could picture, and a lot of people walking.
And then you'd see like a guy in a suit and tie covered head to toe in soot.
Like you'd be like, oh shit, that guy just got out of there.
And you literally look up and the towers were still like, it was really kind of insane.
There was still like almost smoke there where the towers were.
Like it was fading a little bit, but you know, and then for like asbestos.
Drinking on the Brooklyn Bridge00:02:07
Yeah.
And then for like a couple weeks in school, they would be doing these things like assemblies where it's like, if anyone needs to talk to anyone, blah, blah, blah.
And even back then, you'd be like, shut up.
Shut up.
It's one sack kid that just has so much they got to get off their mind anyways.
I don't know.
I'll go talk to a fucking friend about this if I need to.
We don't need to make a whole production out of this.
What this is so like, what happened to like a fucking adult country?
I was 18 at the time.
And even then, we were like, this is getting, guys, this is getting pretty gay.
Let's not like get, let's not get ridiculous with this.
This a year later, after, oh my God, were you there?
Were you there when a mob broke out?
Oh, boohoo.
Okay.
Like, dude, I was fucking, I've been, you know, I was, I've been robbed.
I've had guns put to my head before.
I've had like fucking like, you know, experiences in life that fucking were scary and fucked with me.
If you just, if you were like, if I was age diagnostic, yeah.
You know what that's like?
And then you have to stand in an office with a doctor and he's got to open it up and have you got to have that moment.
And then you pop positive like Rob did.
Do you know what that's like?
But I'm just saying, like, I don't know that fucking traumatic moment.
You don't sit there and fucking like spend an hour on CNN talking about that.
It's just, it's, it's ridiculous.
It's ridiculous.
Your job is to cover the fucking news.
That's your job.
I've literally heard reporters who were kidnapped and held by ISIS be more of a man about it than these guys were being or more of a woman about whatever.
I don't even care.
It was men, but whatever.
All right.
That's our episode for today.
That's our January 6th, a year later episode.
So don't forget, come check me and Robbie the Fire out in Boston.
And I'm going to be all over the place.
And then Rob is also going to be, where's your other gig in?
Buffalo.
Buffalo.
Go check Rob out in Buffalo as well.
Drink so much in Buffalo.
Hell yeah, brother.
Go live it up.
That's all you can do in Buffalo in the winter: drink.