Dave Smith and Robbie Bernstein dissect the Left's shifting stance on COVID-19, critiquing suppressed CDC data on hospitalization rates and the false narrative that vaccines prevent transmission. They analyze Bill Maher's admission regarding ineffective cloth masks and the catastrophic 51% rise in self-harm among young girls due to lockdowns. The hosts condemn the two-tiered system where the wealthy worked remotely while essential workers faced unjust mandates, arguing these policies were driven by control rather than science. Ultimately, they suggest that acknowledging these failures marks a necessary, albeit late, correction toward ending the bureaucratic pandemic regime. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Rolling Back The State00:13:41
Fill her up.
You are 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.
All right.
What's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
I'm Dave Smith.
He's Robbie the Fire Bernstein.
I'm still out here camping out, quarantining.
But yeah, we're back with a brand new episode.
How you feeling, Rob?
I had an amazing weekend in Buffalo.
Had some good shows.
Oh, you opened for Tripoli out there, right?
Yeah, yeah.
It was a ton of fun.
Oh, that's great.
We're going to have to do some Buffalo gigs.
That's a drinking town, dude.
Sure is, especially this time of year.
Yeah, yeah.
And I'm happy to see that you're surviving one of the worst plagues and epidemics that have ever, you know, fallen upon humanity.
Yeah, this was totally worth shutting down all of civilization over.
It's been a, it's been, it's funny, man, because people even like, you know, like I said on the last show that I had, that I got it, and I'm just getting tons of messages from people like, dude, praying for you.
Hope you're doing better and all this.
And you're like, I have a mild cold.
Like, I mean, I'm just, I appreciate the thought and everything, but like, yeah, just for people who know, I'm fine.
I'm absolutely fine.
I'm fucking, I'm like going stir crazy and I'm very homesick and I really miss my wife and kids.
But, you know, in terms of like, I've had a runny nose.
The runny nose is annoying.
It hasn't gone away.
But that's about it.
The latest science is blue chews and marijuana.
So I'm fucking up.
I'm not doing any of that.
Yeah, you're about halfway there.
So you just got to crank them out till the end.
Let's know I did mean to pour myself a whiskey before we started, but so I fucked up on that.
In fact, I might pause in a second to go do that.
Anyway, but yeah, so whatever.
It's been fine.
I guess to some degree lucky that I got the Omnicron and not the Delta.
Like somehow I died because I was at some places where people caught Delta and I avoided that one.
And I do know the Delta.
I know some people who got sick and it was pretty nasty with the Delta.
So I guess I'm lucky I got the variant that was less likely to make you have like a real nasty virus rather than just an annoying one.
But anyway, that's what it is.
So yeah.
I don't know.
I don't have much to say about it.
I've had the experience that millions of people have had, which is that they get it and then kind of feel like, oh, this is it?
This is what we were talking about.
Okay.
Well, the good news is you don't have to think about it for another six Months.
There you go.
And you probably didn't miss out on anything.
Like, it's always great when you actually, like, I got it two and a half weeks before my sister's wedding.
So, like, I was fine to go to that wedding.
That would have been really bad if I missed that because I was the person who wasn't socially distanced or getting the vaccine.
And then I got it the second time after I filmed the end of year thing.
So, like, if you can almost time, maybe that's what I'm going to start doing in the future.
Is you just find your windows and maybe if you could just go to a place and get it, that would be awesome.
Yeah, you could just get it.
Yeah, maybe that's it.
It's funny, too, when they like, uh, when they people try to like, uh, not that I've, I haven't really had this experience, but I've seen this before a lot where people try to be like, um, I think they, they were just losing this argument so much that they kind of stopped doing this.
But they definitely did it with Rogan.
They did it with Trump.
They did it with a lot of like high-profile people where they'll be like, well, Mr. Anti-COVID lockdowns, look what happened now.
You got COVID, you know, and they kind of like try to dunk on you.
Like, oh, you got it.
And they did that with Rogan too.
Like, well, Mr. I'm not vaccinated.
Looks like you got COVID.
And then everyone's like, he beat it in a day.
They're like, oh, so you're dunking on him because he didn't get the vax.
And without the vax, he was fine.
He was able to just flex out of his system.
Yeah, like, explain how this proves your point.
Like, in what universe does this make your case stronger?
Do you remember when Trump got it?
It's going back a while now, I guess, that fall of 2020.
They got it and they really did have this energy, like, well, this changes everything.
And then he was out of the hospital in a weekend.
And you're just like, wow, the fat president who's in his 70s is fine.
And Chris Christie.
Chris Christie surviving this should have been the end of the pandemic.
That should have been, that should have just been where cooler heads prevailed.
And we're like, okay, I mean, come on.
Like, we're going to be fine.
If they took that picture of him when he closed the beach and then sat there like a beached whale, like just propped up in that launcher, if they just like, if that was the front page of the New York Times and it just said coronavirus over.
Well, unfortunately, that's an alternative reality.
However, it is interesting.
One of the things that I've been keeping my eye on, and we've talked a good amount on this show about, has been the changing narrative around COVID.
And it's always something I always try to kind of keep my eye on these things.
Like, for example, just changing narratives, that is in general.
It's always kind of interesting.
And it's why it's good to pay attention to even your enemies or your opponents sometimes.
I've noticed, like, for example, right?
In the Libertarian Party.
Now, I don't know if you follow any of this stuff at all.
I think you don't really care about Libertarian Party drama as much as you do just about like, you know, the economy and shit like that.
But there was this narrative for a long time, like the opponents of the Mises caucus, their narrative was the Mises caucus will never win because they're just so awful that they won't attract people.
And in fact, they didn't realize the power of the caulking.
They had no idea.
Now, in fact, when I debated one of the most, I don't know, high profile, it was not very high profile, but it was like a Cato staff writer, this guy, Andy Craig, who I debated on Lines of Liberty back last year, I guess it was.
And he said in the debate, he was like one of the guys in the Prague caucus who it was anti-Mises caucus.
And he said, he goes, you guys are just awful people.
And that's why you're going to go on to lose all of the internal elections and you'll keep losing.
Like, basically, you're never going to take control of this party.
And he's since left.
He quit the party because we just started winning everything.
And now I watch even the enemies of the Mises caucus.
The narrative is now once they get control of the party, they're going to destroy it.
And you're like, oh, that's kind of interesting.
That's interesting.
That's a very different narrative than they'll never get control of the party.
You know what I'm saying?
Like, and so people kind of have this natural tendency to, when they see the writing on the wall, start protecting themselves with the narrative that they create.
And I've seen a lot of this with the COVID stuff.
People kind of start, once they realize that they're like, well, this narrative is going to be transparently full of shit, they start changing it.
And in general, I've just been wondering for a long time.
I think a lot of us have.
A lot of the politics of 2020 was knee-jerk reactions.
You know, well, if Trump said something, then the people who hated Trump were going to be opposed to that.
And if Trump said something, a lot of the people who supported Trump were going to be for that.
And that was just like that's that describes, you know, not 100% of politics in America, but like a very large percentage, like 80% or something like that is described by just that phenomenon.
But we've kind of talked about for a long time.
You're like, after so long of this COVID stuff, even amongst, say, liberals, there's got to be some people who start to really not like this, who are like, who want to get back to life.
Now, disturbingly, there are a lot of people who don't, who are quite happy to just live this way.
But there still are some people who you got to think are going to want to find an out, to find a way out of this.
And that's why I found this, these, I didn't watch the whole thing, but these clips from real time with Bill Maher, who had Barry Weiss on as a guest.
I found these really interesting.
She's too jewy to be watching the whole thing.
You got to go with clips.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's it's a lot.
It's a lot.
And that's coming from us.
That's a Bernstein just threw that at you.
All right.
So you know, you really got to get your shit together when you're hearing that from a dude who studied, it was, you know, went to yeshiva in Israel or something, right?
Didn't you?
Something like that.
No?
You did.
Well, that's the thing.
It was, it was overexposure.
So now it's like, I've already hit my max capacity for how much jewiness I can tolerate in a lifetime.
So like, I'm just instantly, you know, irritated.
No, I'm done with COVID.
I'm done.
It's like, I, I went so hard on COVID.
I remember sprayed the Pringles cans that I bought at the grocery store, stripped my clothes off because I thought COVID would be on my clothes.
Like I did it all.
I watched Tiger King.
I've got to the end of Spotify.
Like we all did it, right?
No, no, we didn't all do it.
Well, here's the thing.
A lot of us, a lot of us did do it.
And then we were told you get the vaccine.
You get the vaccine and you get back to normal.
And we haven't gotten back to normal.
And it's ridiculous at this point.
I know that so many of my liberal and progressive friends are with me on this and they do not want to say it out loud because they are scared to be called anti-vax or to be called science denial or to be, you know, smeared as a Trumper.
I'm sorry.
If you believe the science, you will look at the data that we did not have two years ago.
And let's pause it.
Let's pause it right here.
So, Rob, I'm curious to get your take on this because I bet you have a similar feeling to me as we were pretty much on the same page with this whole COVID insanity.
And it's very hard for me to not have two distinct feelings about this as I watch it.
And I want to be the bigger person and just go with the first feeling that I have, which is like, great.
And welcome to the team.
And thank you for saying this on a platform like Bill Maher, which does still, you know, I don't know the exact ratings, but I believe Bill Maher gets about a million views an episode or something like that.
That's nothing.
That's a big audience.
And that's, and it's a progressive audience, at least mostly.
And that's really great that someone could say this.
And it's really great.
It's very encouraging to hear her say this and get a good reception from the crowd.
It just starts to make you wonder like, wow, what percentage of people who consider themselves like liberal Democrats or progressives or whatever are open to this message at this point?
So anyway, first and foremost, I don't want to even say the second part of this because I feel like, man, you have to, if we ever want to get past this, then it's probably never going to come with a, hey, progressives, liberals, you have to admit you were wrong and we were right and put your tail between your legs and walk the walk of shame and all of this.
It's like, no, that's, that's probably just going to get more people to dig their heels in rather than I think what you'd rather do is allow them to have some narrative that they were right the whole time.
However, I'm not quite big enough to do that.
So there is also the part of me that's just like, isn't there something a little bit annoying about going like, well, look, it's like, believe me, I was all in on COVID.
I was spraying down my groceries and I was stripping off my clothes and we all did this.
And then Bill Maher, to his credit, puts his hand up and goes, no, we didn't.
We didn't all do this.
And there's something about, again, I shouldn't even be doing this.
I'm only doing this for our crowd because you know me and you know us.
I'm instructing you.
Don't do this if fucking liberals are getting good on this issue.
But just between us, it's a little annoying that you brag about how all in you were to then be like, and I don't want to be smeared as a Trumper just because I'm coming out and saying this now.
And it's like, another way of phrasing that would be like, you were wrong about all of that stuff.
That was stupid to do at the time.
And it's just a little bit frustrating for people who were right about this stuff to hear someone go, but you know what?
Acknowledging Their Bottom00:02:09
We do follow the science and we have the data now that we didn't have then.
And it's like, when's then?
You're coming around pretty late at this point to where the data leads you.
The data led you to oppose lockdowns at least by April, May the latest of 2020.
We're in 2022.
To act like, well, I was completely right to be doing all of that stuff, but now we have this brand new data.
Specifically, tell me what data it is that just came out.
When exactly did this, did following the science start leading toward this?
Because from what I understand, Barry Weiss was like real on board with the COVID train for a while.
Anyway, that's all petty.
Let all that stuff go.
Congratulations.
Welcome to the side of sanity.
It's so great that you were wiping down your groceries for a while.
And thank you for announcing that you're done with this.
All right, guys, let's take a second and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is IP Vanish.
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All right, let's get back on the show.
It's almost like an addict admitting that they're hitting bottom.
Clear Evidence Emerges00:16:30
It's like they're not saying that the behavior was wrong, but they're kind of acknowledging that it's like they're at their bottom.
They can't continue to do this stupid behavior.
Well, it makes it harder in some ways for there to be for I'll say there should be consequences.
If you were to get rid of every fucker that was out there, you know, pretending like we had this like a month ago, I don't know specifically about her, but if you had said comments like this, it would be like, oh, so you're just looking to have people die?
Like, this is the most serious thing that ever happened.
There's 700,000 people out there.
Are you talking about herd immunity?
What are you advocating?
Like, if you were one of the people who, if you're saying now, it's like, there's like, I'm, you know, like she said, her and other people, other liberals or whatever, we're scared to say this stuff because we're going to get smeared.
And it's like, okay, but were you a part of smearing other people who were saying this stuff?
Because if so, from the perspective of people who were like just a little bit quicker to this truth than you for whatever reason, you know, like, I don't think it's like that I'm smarter than Barry Weiss or whatever.
I mean, I don't really know.
She said some dumb shit that, but, you know, it's not a matter of that.
It's real.
I don't look at it that way, at least.
It's just that I wasn't poisoned by the politics of the whole situation the way that she was and the way lots of other people are.
It's an advantage in a weird way to have the outlook that we have.
I think that's part of why people like this show is because I hate the state and both parties and the whole system and all of these institutions so much that I don't get sucked into the latest red team, blue team thing.
It just doesn't affect me.
Like if Biden ends the war in Afghanistan, I'll be like, that's great that he ended the war in Afghanistan.
And if he's flirting with the war with Russia, I'll be like, that's terrible that he's flirting with the war with Russia.
I don't immediately have to oppose what Biden says.
And I don't immediately have to oppose what Trump said when he was president.
It's just, we're just a little bit more free, no pun intended, because we believe in freedom.
So we're just a little bit more free to just, so there wasn't now, if anything.
I'm also hyper-aware that government will pretend like it's acting in our interest while robbing us of our wealth.
I mean, like, if you understand the Federal Reserve, you understand the way the war machine works, you understand the way the EPA works.
It's any regulation, really.
You start seeing the way it favors big companies and really squeezes on us.
It's not that hard to look at the medical industry and go, wait, can I actually see this data?
And then when you see the way that they continuously hide the actual data, make claims that turn out to be not true.
Oh, there's got to be some financial interest here.
And the government's evil.
Well, right.
Right.
And so this is a big advantage that we have too, is that we are our basic starting point, our basic philosophical outlook is that the government is evil and we're correct in that basic outlook.
So that allows you when the government is lying, your instinct is always to be skeptical of those lies.
And so, but this is basically the reason why, I mean, that and like, you know, I do my research and I think I have at least a decent head on my shoulders to think these things through.
But that's why when I'm like me and you are able to be completely correct about the Trump-Russia collusion whole thing, because as soon as the CIA starts coming out and saying all of this stuff, our instinct is like, hmm, I see some evidence for that.
Like, wait a minute, everyone's just trusting the CIA.
No, sorry.
That's not like, I'm inoculated against that faith in the CIA.
And in the same sense, when the government is taking these extraordinary measures to exercise more control over its citizenry, our instinct is always going to be to be skeptical of that, to be concerned about that side of things.
Even from day one, when I really didn't know anything about the dangers of the virus, I was already saying, I'm more concerned about this than I am about the virus.
Even in mid-March 2020, that was obvious.
Like that, that was a bigger concern.
A bigger concern to me was destroying the economy and the totalitarianism of the lockdowns.
So anyway, whatever.
So that's the advantage like we kind of have going in.
But from the perspective of people who were quicker to, you know, much quicker to understand the correct way to think about these things, it would help a little bit if your goal was to, you know, have some type of like reconciliation here.
Like you said with your example about the addict, it would help a little bit if there was an apology attached to that.
You know, it would help a little bit for us to believe like, you know, that there's something genuine here that you wouldn't turn around and do this again.
Or in real good faith to say like, yeah, I don't think it's right that we smear people is if you were to say, you know what?
I was wrong for trusting all of these people before.
And I'm sorry for that.
And I'm sorry for anyone who I smeared in this way.
Because the more the data comes in, the more it proves they're right.
Now, I will say to caveat that I understand where maybe it's best that she didn't have that approach on Bill Maher's show.
I don't think Bill Maher's audience would be able to swallow.
And it turns out that those Trump supporters were right and you were wrong.
That might be a bridge too far.
So perhaps it's better that she just does it this way.
But you got to at least say the positives outweigh the negatives on this by far.
It's very cool to see this happening on a progressive show that has a sizable audience.
That's cool.
All right, let's finish.
I think you're right, though.
And I hadn't picked up on it, but the fact that she's going, well, the information has changed, that's not really accurate.
It's just that the information, people are now being more accepting because even Fauci, like every time Fauci got busted in a lie, the information didn't really change.
He just accepted the fact that he was wrong.
You know what I mean?
Like there's been plenty.
If you were doing honest investigative research into any of the data here, you would have seen that we've been wrong on most of this stuff.
You know what I mean?
It's not like the information's really changed.
It's just what is now mainstream or acceptable changes every six months when, you know, whatever today's conspiracy is is what Fauci is going to be saying on the news in six months from now.
Like when like at first, when people said, hey, this is a lab leak, the science didn't change that all of a sudden, like we're allowed to discuss it.
It was that they weren't able to keep that story under wraps for long enough.
Like for you to stand, I don't know specifically like or on the mask thing.
When Rand Paul said six months ago hey, these masks aren't really working, you could have looked at the science and the science hasn't changed.
It's just what people are willing to report.
It has changed.
So no, that's right.
And so many of these progressive outlets just slammed Rand Paul for saying that and Fauci himself as he was testifying in that Senate UH committee uh, he slammed Rand Paul.
Masks absolutely work.
You know, you don't know what you're talking about.
Now that's okay.
Now we're allowed to say all of that stuff.
And look, even if you're going to argue that like, more information has come out, that doesn't change the fact that he was right at the time.
He was looking at the information he had and making the right call and you made the wrong one.
And how are you not curious how everyone else had it right then, like if there was this entire team, which is the Trump team, and you're convinced that they were really dumb and that they should have been more trusting.
And then, all of a sudden, it's a two years later, you've lost two years of lives or a lot of consequences for getting this one wrong and you go.
Oh well, like well, how do you not want to have a little bit of a review of yourself and where you're getting information from and who?
We were listening to that you managed to get it so wrong?
I would think that would be the starting point.
Is man, we really got to something interesting?
Yeah, there'd be something there, you know.
Um, so anyway, all right, let's play.
Let's play the rest of this clip.
You will look at the data that we did not have two years ago and you will find out that cloth masks do not do anything.
You will realize that you can show your vaccine passport at a restaurant and still be asymptomatic.
You gotta pause, because this actually really irritates me.
So why do we take those actions without evidence that they did work?
Yes, why would you allow government to impose and take away freedoms on the suggestion that something could work and then, now that we have the evidence that it never did like, where's that conversation of?
Why are we just going to allow government to have emergency powers or, in like, throw just really nonsensical things into our lives without very clear evidence of the utility?
It's like if a surgeon you know.
It's like if you um, if you came into the hospital claiming about like abdominal pain, and the surgeon like opened you up and performed some like stomach surgery on you, and then they go like, well, now the evidence is seeing as how you still have the same pain.
The evidence is in that that wasn't the correct surgery to perform.
It's like, well, isn't the onus on you before you perform the surgery to to have some type of reason to believe that, like with a high degree of certainty, that that is necessary, like how is it just like well, we did.
And I also.
I really hate this thing where she goes, look, we have data now that we didn't have two years ago and it's like, oh, that's a very convenient cop out.
Yeah, what?
Yes, that is true, two years ago there was not a pandemic.
So yes, that's true we, two years ago, in january of 2020, there was what Covid was officially, I think it.
Maybe it had just gotten.
Like the first documented case might have been in America.
But so yes, you're right.
We didn't have evidence we had.
We didn't have data that we had then, right?
But you're kind of, this is all fuzzy now over these last two years.
It's like all of a sudden today it started that we have more of this data to look at.
It's like, well, was it there in the, you know, was it there by April of 2020?
How about the summer of 2020?
How about the fall?
How about the winter?
How about the beginning?
How about the four quarters of 2021?
Which one of them?
Because we actually did like, if you want to say, instead of two years ago, let's say one year ago, we did have a lot of data in.
And me and you were talking about it quite a bit on this show.
And so don't act like this all the sudden now that it's like kind of okay to talk about a lot of these things.
Well, I've just been looking at all of this evidence and look at that.
Things have changed completely.
It's like, no, this evidence has been coming in and it's been very clear.
One of the things I remember that this might be back in, oh, maybe in April of 2020, one of the things that became very clear right away was who this virus was actually killing.
That became very clear.
Okay.
Yes.
Right away it became, it was very clearly it was it was sick people.
And that's, you know, disproportionately are old.
But that was very quickly revealed, like who this was actually killing.
And that never really seemed to be like very clearly articulated to the American people.
Coronavirus was almost like a mercy rule in a sports game where you had people with only one year left to live.
And it was like, let's call it a little early.
Right, right.
So it was just like, oh, like, no, there's actually quite a bit more to this than just, and, and things like, you know, certainly like outdoor masking, certainly like the, the, um, all of these enforced precautions at schools, lockdowns, all, like, so many of these things were obvious right away.
The hospitalization numbers, the death numbers, all of these things, like it was, it was obvious for a very long time.
And to the point you were getting at before, it's like the people who really, it's like, forget even us, because whatever, we've been able to survive this, this whole thing, at least thus, thus far.
And, but there were people whose like careers and reputations were seriously damaged and or destroyed over, you know, things like, you know, doctors early on opposing the lockdowns, you know, being whistleblowers about what the overuse of ventilators that was actually killing people.
There were people who were talking about the lab leak theory.
There were people who were talking about vaccine effectiveness.
There were people who were talking about like a ton of these different things.
And Unix.
Yeah.
And like it was, and I'll tell you, like it was pretty obvious pretty early on.
I mean, at the very least, at the absolute, very least, by the summer of 2020, at the latest, the absolute latest, it was very clear that there, like, you don't have to be a genius to understand that you had these examples like Sweden and Florida and South Dakota and places like this that you were like, look,
they're not doing what they should be doing way worse than their counterparts.
And they're not.
And this is, this was a huge issue.
That was why they were so demonized in the corporate press because they had to be to explain this away.
And they were always predicting doom and gloom around the corner.
And then it was like, yeah, no, none of that actually ever came.
And so again, not that there wasn't like a problem with COVID there, but that it just like, if you're going to justify all of these policies, it would have to be much, much worse in those areas.
And so, again, it's just, it's hard.
In some ways, I'm venting and this is not the best way to handle this, this shit, but there is something that's kind of hard to listen to about that.
No, no, I think you're right.
I think without like, imagine stock pickers.
If you had one stock picker over the course of a year who's getting every single trade right and he's making a ton of money and the other guy's losing everything and all of his clients are going broke.
So you're going to switch.
You're going to go with the guy who keeps getting things right and you're going to take your money away from the guy who keeps getting things wrong.
On every one of these issues, there are scientists that did call it right.
Like take a simple one that they just flipped on, which is keeping schools open.
And there have been significant consequences of kids with the remote learning.
There's no question about that.
There's some kids that are going to be, they have some fucked up psychology from having been home or from having not learned from here.
There's no question that there were consequences from kids that were doing the remote learning.
I remember there was a Newsweek article six months ago.
And by the time this hit Newsweek, that meant that like, think about how many people were in trouble for having these opinions.
Like Newsweek was already kind of, but it was that death rate's lower than the flu and there's no evidence that there's high transmission amongst kids.
And it was in one paragraph.
That's six months ago.
So who was the doctor who noticed that then?
And why aren't we giving him the job to start figuring this shit out and firing the people that six months ago made the wrong call?
How do you, how are these people, even if you want to give them the benefit of doubt and don't, they're murderers.
I'm telling you, like they're therapeutics that could have helped people.
Like they've done the worst things ever to humanity for their own profit.
But like, let's just imagine that they didn't do that.
They were just making mistakes.
Well, then how are we not doing a review here of the people that got this right on every one of these?
Like someone should just be putting Rand Paul in charge of the CDC and going, oh, yeah, if we look back at all these videos that we're making fun of you for, you were right on all these.
And look at this, you actually got a medical degree and you understand the way government works.
You know what?
Fuck, fuck the NIH, CDC, Rand Paul's in charge.
Well, listen, I'll tell you, the reason why I keep kind of like apologizing for it, even though I can't help but go down this path and just to go down the path before I even get into that, it's like, and just like the people, some type of like, hey, we should like apologize and reward the people whose lives were ruined.
Meepod Vape Promo00:03:39
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But aside from that, the truth is that what we got to do is try to rise above these things and go, look, I understand wanting justice, you know, and justice is like, we want all of the people who did the wrong thing to somehow pay a consequence and we want all the people who did the right thing to somehow be rewarded, you know?
But before we can get to wanting justice, we want an end to the injustice.
So the most important thing is that we want to end this insanity and we want to get back to a normal society.
So the most important thing is we want to end the COVID regime.
And what I think that libertarians and right-wingers and stuff, what they have to realize is that like there's going to have to be a left-wing component to that in order to end this shit.
Now, I suppose you could argue that, well, there could be places like Florida.
There could be little like areas where you cut out that that maintain a high level of freedom as compared to the rest of the COVID, you know, totalitarian states.
And that's true.
But that's still a pretty unstable environment as long as you're in a union together.
Or even if you're not and you're just neighboring these areas, you'd still, it's still better off for all of us if the COVID regime falls.
And in order for that to happen, you're going to have to have some people who vote Democrat wake up to how crazy this shit is.
So I'm very happy to see this.
It's just hard to not make all of these points.
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COVID Breakthrough Cases00:10:38
All right, let's get back into the show.
All right, let's play the rest of this clip because then I got another clip from Bill Maher's show that I want to watch as well.
And you will find out that cloth masks do not do anything.
You will realize that you can show your vaccine passport at a restaurant and still be asymptomatic and caring Omicron.
And you will realize, most importantly, that this is going to be remembered by the younger generation as a catastrophic moral crime.
The city of Plint, Michigan, which is 80%, I think, minority students, has just announced indefinite virtual schooling.
In the past two years, we've seen among young girls a 51% increase in self-harm.
People are killing themselves.
They are anxious.
They are depressed.
They are lonely.
That is why we need to end it more than any inconvenience that it's been to the rest of us.
I think it's a pandemic.
It's like at this point, it's a pandemic of bureaucracy.
It's a pandemic of bureaucracy.
All right.
So, I mean, look, great point.
She's making great points all around.
And I tip my hat to her for that.
You know, Barry Weiss is really bad on some issues, but she's good on some issues.
And she's, she's, what she's saying right here is fucking great.
And I got to say, it's really nice to see that get like a very enthusiastic round of applause by Bill Maher's progressive leaning audience.
That's an encouraging sign that maybe, dear God, maybe at least in some ways we still live in the United States of America.
And there's still some, you know, like there's some group of people who are waking up over all this shit.
It is just interesting to see.
And I'm sure for people who like listen to this show, it's just kind of like, it's hard to not have a little bit of a feeling like, well, welcome to the conversation.
Welcome to the conversation that the rest of us have been having for quite a long time.
It's really interesting.
I got to say, it's fascinating in a way because like I said, like I grew up, you know, watching politically incorrect Bill Maher's old show before real time.
And, you know, like there's no matter how much the show grows or like our careers grow or anything like that, being on the doing these, these, you know, internet shows and I guess there's still always, as much as I know that they're all like lying, blood-soaked monsters, you know, there's something about it that's just so crazy to see when the establishment people start saying the things that we've been saying forever.
I mean, it's like, this is, you know, if you listen to this show, it's like this idea that it's like, oh, but you know, when you're vaccinated, you can still have and spread the virus.
You're like, wow, that is brand new information.
Like, thank you so much for, huh, this is crazy.
It's, it's like a full year at least behind where the rest of us have been.
But welcome.
Welcome to the conversation.
It's good to have you here.
I guess, I guess, you know, if this thing does fall, I just, I would have a little bit of suspicion, you know, with how I would treat these people who came on to it very late and are now leading the charge.
I'd be a little bit more trustworthy of people who were saying it when it was somewhat dangerous to say.
The one thing that does make me hopeful about all this is if you look at Cosby, Epstein, yeah, exactly.
Who is the Hollywood producer also who went down?
No, it's you guy.
Weinstein, sometimes like you get these institutions of power, but when the wheel turns and it becomes acceptable to start reporting on it, it unwinds fast.
Like I'm kind of hopeful that the wheel is starting to turn on the COVID stuff that as they start people like this are reporting, hey, this doesn't make any sense.
Well, how much longer does it take before more people are going like, well, why are we doing all this stuff that makes no sense?
And then looking at Fauci when he's giving his answers going, well, wait a second.
Well, I've been, yeah, well, I've been saying for a while that I think I'm, I'm, I, I'm optimistic about this and I'm really optimistic about what the Omicron variant might do, that it, that it might do what all of our arguments, even though Barry Weiss is now just saying the same shit that we've all been saying, it's like, there's something about this that like when it's right in front of people's faces and now you have this new variant where it's like, okay,
it's uh it's just people see people.
They see their vaccinated and unvaccinated friends alike getting it the exact same way, both experiencing the same mild symptoms.
You know what I mean?
And just seeing this and like, um, it, that's a hard thing, even though it's just anecdotal, that's a hard thing to not wake people up to to kind of like, okay, there's, this just makes no sense.
So it's, I think there's something about this that is really encouraging.
So yeah, I agree with that.
All right.
There's another clip that I want to play.
Of course, Barry Weiss.
But Bill Maher, by the way, has been for a progressive has been reasonably good on COVID the entire time.
And I'll give him credit for that, but he gets in on the action as well.
It's not just Barry Weiss.
So here's another clip from the same episode.
So different from where we were two months ago, the last time I sat here, is that we now know the vaccine does not stop you from getting it.
I found that out when I got it.
Right.
I got it.
Everyone's like, oh, my God.
How'd you get it?
You had the vaccine.
I guess I was one of the first.
And now everybody has it.
It doesn't stop you from getting it.
And it doesn't stop you from transmitting it.
All right.
Pause it again.
Let's pause it for a second.
All right.
We now know that.
We didn't know that two months ago, Rob.
Well, they did an incredible job at saying that breakthrough cases were exceptionally rare.
And I don't even know what the official data is right now in terms of breakthrough cases because the CDC kind of kept changing what it was actually tracking so that it would seem that like the storyline would always kind of line up with what they were looking for, which by the way, if you just take a step back and you go, why would the people who are just in the game to give out the health information be changing the way they're tracking stuff and being like why like that, that's when you just start to realize like, wait a second,
they're clearly working for somebody here and they're pushing a narrative and why would they be pushing a narrative?
But anyways, that was kind of a big thing that was suppressed for a long time was the amount of breakthrough cases.
And even this was very interesting at the start of Omnicron, Omicron, they overstated how much Omicron was going on in America because they didn't want to admit to Delta to breakthrough cases.
So like they were saying like it was 95% and then they changed it to 55%.
I don't even think then they then they finally just accepted like they don't kind of give you numbers on breakthrough cases, just accepted that you'll get it.
But magically, the less deadly variant, the vaccine is going to what is going to be what saved you from getting more sick without any, without any like, I mean, I haven't seen recent breakthrough numbers for like the hot, because they're still saying that most of the hospitalization and deaths are unvaccinated, which maybe it's hard to validate.
How exactly are you measuring those unvaccinated?
You know, but this is what's great.
Like, you know, before they would have even said, well, Bill, you're the single breakthrough.
Like, so, you know, it's still working.
You were just the unlucky, the unlucky single vaccinated person.
But I think just enough people have seen their vaccinated parents, friends.
I mean, 85% of the country, I believe, is vaccinated at this point.
So like, where are all these cases coming from?
Yeah.
No, that's right.
That's, that's it.
And anyway, so look, I, just like, it's hard to even hear the like, we now know what we didn't know two months ago when you're like, but then how come we were talking about it eight months ago?
You know, like, but okay, but fine, regardless, it's cool to hear this on Bill Maher's show.
So let's keep on.
Also, wait, wait, just thinking that something can never happen until it happens to you, that's called being stupid, right?
Like, I have to think of it.
Like, if you thought that you can never get a flat tire until you get a flat tire and go, oh, I guess flat tires exist.
I should be prepared for this.
Who knew?
That's called an idiot.
Right.
And then it's like, and then you're like, there's this half of the country that's been saying, hey, you know, you could get a flat tire and you've been demonizing them for years.
Right.
So in this case, if you're just going, oh, yeah, you can't have a breakthrough case until you get a breakthrough and you're working in like the news media game.
That's called being an idiot.
Like that's not the way that you should be getting your information is because something happened to you.
That's a very dumb strategy.
Agreed.
All right, let's keep playing.
The vaccine does not stop you from getting it.
I found that out when I got it.
Right.
I got it.
Everybody's like, oh, my God.
How'd you get it?
You had the vaccine.
I guess I was one of the first.
And now everybody has it.
It doesn't stop you from getting it.
And it doesn't stop you from transmitting it.
It stops you from dying when you do get it.
Okay.
That's a pretty good reason to take that.
I'm not saying it's not a good reason.
I'm just saying that's a huge difference.
And it counteracts the argument that we need the vaccine to protect other people.
It just protects you.
It doesn't protect you from me.
It doesn't protect me from getting it.
It protects you.
So it's just really about you.
And about the science, you know, the people, this is, I think, where Democrats look bad.
Like, we're the people of science.
And then a lot of what they do has nothing to do with science.
Like suggesting you wear masks outside.
There's no science to that.
Or preschoolers having to be fitted for special KN95 masks.
Or that the virus can get me when I'm walking in a restaurant, but not when I'm sitting down.
Exactly.
You know, there's so much mindless bureaucracy.
Kyrie Irving can play on the road, but not home games.
It's just stupid.
The Supreme Court just ruled on this.
And when we found out what some of the justices said.
They were listening to NPR all the time.
Mindless Bureaucracy Critique00:04:05
Exactly.
It showed that they were just like every other liberal or conservative.
They all listened to their own media zones.
And so did Maier said, we have over 100,000 children in serious condition and many on ventilators.
At the time, they were fewer than 5,000.
She also said it was a blood-borne virus.
Blood-borne virus?
It was, I mean, that's really ignorant for a Supreme Court justice.
So don't be the, we're the people who believe in science, but you don't have the facts.
I read this before, like 41% of Democrats last year thought that over 50% of people who got COVID were hospitalized.
It was less than 1%.
But I'm sorry, if you're watching cable news all day, that's what you're going to think.
Okay, so let's pause it right there.
I just, I got to say, it's pretty interesting to see.
I mean, this literally like it, it reads like one of the writers on Bill Maher's show listens to our podcast and was just giving him talking points directly from it.
Now, of course, I don't need to like be narcissistic myself about this.
Obviously, there's a lot of people who have been really good on COVID this whole time.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
It is really something to see this show that and to see that like all the stuff we talk about all of a sudden is being acknowledged as reality.
It's a, it's nice.
It's nice to see.
It's like, okay, thank you.
Thank you for like admitting that there really is something to this and that we're not like, we are not the crazy ones.
And it's almost like they're they're even starting from a point of still being Democrats and still working under the presumption that, of course, the Democrats are correct, but there is this one real problem we have, right?
Comedian Realizes Truth00:07:36
Is that we say that we're the ones following science, but like, oh, we're not following the science at all here.
And it's like, you're only a few baby steps away from like recognizing that.
It's like, yeah, maybe you're the anti-science people.
Right.
I mean, you've been ignoring all this stuff for way too long.
And so it's, but it is interesting to see them like these very basic, you know, realizations that you're like, well, if the vaccine doesn't stop you from spreading the virus or having the virus and the vaccine does, you know, in some sense, guarantee that you're not going to get very sick or die from the virus.
Well, if that's true, then there is no justification for any of the vaccine passports or mandates or any of it.
These are people taking their own risk.
If all of that is true, then the risk is solely on those people who aren't getting vaccinated.
And they've had every opportunity to get it, right?
It's widely available.
It's covered at taxpayer expense.
You can just go in and get it whenever you want to.
So those people are taking their own risk.
But if you're going to say that the vaccine guarantees that you won't get very sick or die from it, and you can catch it from a vaccinated person also, well, then there's no, there's absolutely no logical justification for why the vaccinated need to be protected from the unvaccinated.
And then if that's the case, why isn't there an uproar over discriminatory policies being mandated by the state?
And why isn't there more like Biden's federal federal mandate just got overruled, even though already I think 95% of federal workers since their jobs have been threatened got vaccinated, but it literally just got thrown out.
The judge is like, yeah, the authority on this was never given to you.
You just can't do this.
It was like, it was like just a blanket like, yeah, you can't do that.
No one ever gave you the authority.
So like the amount of outrage that we should have over discretion, like people's jobs were threatened.
People are like, I'm sure there's some federal workers that left their jobs.
They're probably trying to figure out the paperwork to get that job back.
And even though that ruling was considered illegal, it's not going to be that easy for them to get their job back.
You know, I can't just show up in New York City and hang out at a comedy club.
Like, I mean, it's crazy.
So Bill, like if we're just accepting that that was never true, I mean, like, it should be, there should be outrage and it should be getting reversed immediately.
Yeah, that's right.
Like forget, like, not just like some minimal effort to right the wrongs of this, but to just like at least end it all.
Anyway, it's a, it's really just something to watch the liberals kind of catch up.
But I got to say, overall, I'm really encouraged by this.
And it's like, this is a really good sign.
It's a really good sign to see them like realizing that this just doesn't add up.
And it's just, it's, it's destroying too many people's lives and that this needs to end.
So I am encouraged by all of this.
Here, let's keep playing a little bit more of this before we wrap up.
But I'm sorry, if you're watching cable news all day, that's what you're going to think.
There is misinformation and not just on podcasts and the internet.
It's also on cable news.
The Democrats are supposed to be the party of the little guy, right?
At their best, that's all about.
You know what the Democrats are now comfortable with or seemingly comfortable with?
A two-tiered system in which the haves get to go into a restaurant, laugh with their friends for hours, and the people serving them are masked and wearing gloves.
Or they get to walk as AOC did at the Met Gala while in the background, the staff look like they were in the handmaid's tail.
I mean, this is a look that is unbelievably detrimental.
And jobs.
The people with the consulting jobs or whatever bullshit they do, they get to stay at home and order the food out and do shit by Zoom.
And whereas it's the working class people who are using their shitty stale air old.
This is a huge point.
And it's such a like liberals should really have to swallow this pill is that while they pretend like they care about the poor, the people that were concerned about this virus are your middle class, upper middle class, liberal fucks who were able to work jobs where they stayed at home.
And they were able to impose on the poor and working class of this country that they wouldn't be able to work their jobs for their personal safety while they stayed.
So like for all their fucking talk about caring about the poor and caring about the working class, they imposed on those people that they wouldn't be allowed to go to their jobs while they were able to keep their jobs because they're like that was for their own security.
And it's not just like when you go to the right, when you go to a restaurant and you're able to just sit there and have fun and look at the people that are being tortured by these policies, there is a cruelty to that.
I guess we're kind of okay with it because I mean, that's the structure of a restaurant is sometimes you're eating in a place the staff couldn't afford to eat it.
So like that's kind of.
Yeah, but there's, it's a little bit different.
I mean, I know, you know, when me and you have been on the road and I've addressed this almost everywhere we've been where the staff has been wearing masks.
Right.
And I'm not in a position to tell them what they can or can't do.
I'm just like the comedian on stage, but it's, it'll be like a show where I'm the headlining comedian.
So like I'm something, you know, and I'll just tell them to take it off.
And I'll just tell all the staff.
I'll just go, yeah, if you want to take that off, take that off.
This is fucking ridiculous.
Like you're in a room full of people where no one has masks on.
Why do you have to have a mask on?
But I will say there's something about that that makes me really uncomfortable.
And I love when we would do shows where the staff is unmasked.
And sometimes you'll see a situation where the staff is all on mask, but then there's like one like server who has a mask on.
And that's fine.
Like, okay, if you want to wear your, like if you're choosing to do it, fine.
But there is something that makes me very uncomfortable about that.
Like you already, you know, you're kind of already in this environment.
Like if we go out and we do stand-up shows, you know, we're we're working technically, but we really love our work.
Like, and we have a really fun job.
You know, our job is to go tell jokes and entertain a room full of people.
That's a fun gig.
It's a privileged type of job to have.
We're fortunate to be, you know, we're fortunate to be able to do this job.
We're fortunate to have been born in a first world country, to be like all the things that go into doing that for a living rather than digging ditches.
You know what I mean?
Like, we're, we're lucky to be in a position where we do that.
Everybody who's there for the show is out for a night of entertainment.
They're having drinks and having some food and they're having some laughs.
They're having a good time.
The only ones there who are like not having fun are like, you know, and they may have a little bit of fun here and there, but like the staff is there to work.
There's a bus boy there who's who's bussing tables.
That ain't fun.
That's work, you know?
And to just see that one guy in that situation also has to have his face covered the whole time is like, it just makes me uncomfortable.
And as much as I can, I always try to tell them like, yeah, dude, take that shit off.
None of us care.
None of my people care.
So just take it up.
But yeah, that's some real class.
I never really thought of it that way.
But yeah, that is some real second-class citizen shit.
And I'm already okay with the fact that he's bussing tables while the rest of us have fun.
Democrats Ignore Little Guy00:03:44
I mean, it's still a little bit awkward, you know, but it's like, okay, well, that's his, that's where he's at right now.
And hopefully he kicks ass here and moves up the ranks.
And, you know, and a bus boy in America and, you know, he's, he still goes out for a night of fun sometimes too.
So okay.
But, but at least let him uncover his face.
Why add another?
And it's, it's a very weird thing where it's like a marker, you know, in a way.
Like he's marked as the one who has to do this.
But I guess the thing here, and I appreciate the Barry Weiss saying this, I appreciate everything she said on the show and Bill Maher too.
I think it's great.
But I think there still is this assumption here that it's like, where they say, well, Democrats are the party who cares about the little guy.
And then I think she says, well, at least at their best, that's what they are.
When is that?
I guess that would be my question.
Just give me the example of when Democrats actually care about the little guy.
As the little guy has been trampled over the last two years in this country, I have seen absolutely zero concern for them.
This is, we're highlighting this and doing an entire episode about this because it's like one time where you see some liberal progressives actually caring about the little guy.
And that is newsworthy.
This was trending on Twitter.
This was all over the place because it's like, oh my God, they're actually doing it.
When have they cared about the little guy?
They certainly use the perception that they're fighting for the little guy.
But when do they really?
You give me one example.
Give me one example where they've really stood up for the little guy.
And she's right.
And you're absolutely right in the point that you made, Rob, that this is, it's been absolutely disastrous.
You know, it always from the very beginning of COVID, even if you bought the official narrative of this, like, well, we need, you know, 15 days to flatten the curve or whatever.
There were a whole bunch of people, a whole bunch of middle class people who were more than happy to say, yeah, okay, I'll take a couple of weeks off and we'll do this.
But that's, that's not nearly as easy for the working class and poor to do.
You know, if you're, if you're living paycheck to paycheck, missing a couple weeks is like, oh, this could be devastating.
No one was thinking about those people.
None of these Democrats cared about that.
And then as the lockdown went from 15 days to, you know, slowly into some more version of two years, there was no thought about how much this was destroying people.
And no, you just, and anyone, it's like, oh, you just want to get a haircut.
That's, remember that was the line?
Or you just want to get a haircut if you wanted to end the lockdowns.
It was almost like, if you want to live a shitty life and work some warehouse job, we're not going to judge you.
But if that puts my health at risk, then yes, I suddenly do care that you don't have your entire life together.
Like in other words, like if you want to go be poor somewhere and it doesn't affect me, like good freedom, go be poor.
This is the liberal attitude.
But if your poorness is going to put my health at risk, then no, you can't just live your poor lifestyle.
Yeah.
No, that's that's it, more or less.
Yeah.
All right.
Look, we're going to wrap on that one.
All right.
Thanks, everybody, for listening.
Come check us out.
I'm doing a bunch of the LP convention spots coming up soon.
We got Connecticut, California, Florida, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Texas, a whole bunch, a whole bunch more of them coming up.