Jay Smith and Robbie the Fire Bernstein critique government overreach, exposing how war propaganda mimics 1991 Gulf War tactics to manipulate public fear regarding Ukraine. They argue that NATO's activation poses a greater threat than Putin's $1.5 trillion GDP, while blaming pandemic inflation on money printing rather than corporate greed. Validating their claims about CDC data suppression regarding vaccine efficacy, they condemn media distractions like the Russia-Ukraine conflict for overshadowing critical health transparency. Ultimately, the hosts assert that true policy enforcement must withstand public fatigue, challenging the narrative of state control and information manipulation. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Government Too Big00:12:15
Fill her up.
You are listening to the Gash Digital Network.
We need to roll back the state.
We spy on all of our own citizens.
Our prisons are flooded with nonviolent drug offenders.
If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
You're listening to part of the problem on the Gas Digital Network.
Here's your host, Jay Smith.
What's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
I am thrilled to pieces to have back my co-host and life partner, Robbie the Fire Bernstein, the king of the caulks.
Welcome back from your, what I hear was a very unsuccessful comedy tour in Ukraine.
I hear it was bombing.
They said it was the worst bombing that happened in Ukraine over the last week.
It's Robbie the Fire Bernstein set.
But you know, you went over there and you tried.
And that's, and I'm proud of you.
Yeah.
And then when that didn't work out, we went over to New Hampshire.
We replayed the shell.
Then I joined Lewis up at Mohegan's Sun.
So I have a fun week in the gigs.
It's, they call it the triangle of comedy.
It's Mohegan to Ukraine to New Hampshire.
And then you come back down to New York and make the full triangle.
Yeah.
And you've made it is the point.
How was Florida?
Oh, Florida was great, dude.
Florida was just incredible.
Every one of these state LP conventions so far have just been great.
And yeah, I gave like a keynote speech there, and then I did like an hour of stand-up comedy at night on the last night.
And just a lot of fun.
A lot of fun.
Met a bunch of the guys who are out there, did a panel with Clint Russell from Liberty Lockdown, of course.
Yeah, he was great, as always.
He's really, that guy's really like, he's a beast, man.
He's really become one of the most important voices in the Liberty movement.
And yes, a whole bunch of other guys were there.
It was great.
Great times.
Angela McArdle was there.
She's just been killing it at all these things.
And it's really exciting.
Everything's really coming together with the whole Mises Caucus plan.
And yeah, if you can, you know, get involved and help out.
It's not too late in some states to become a delegate.
Go do that shit.
It's really, you know, it's a really exciting time in the Libertarian Party.
So, and then this weekend, I'll be out in Pennsylvania for that one, a real big convention out there.
Then going out to Colorado.
Then in the next few months, got Texas, Minnesota.
I think Pennsylvania's a good question.
I forget the name of the town.
I don't have it off the top of my head.
It was a small town in Pennsylvania somewhere.
So it wasn't like last year they had it in Pittsburgh, but it's somewhere else this year.
Why?
You want to come?
Maybe, maybe.
I think Adam Nutter said he was doing it.
Maybe I'll just crash and host that.
If I don't have anything doing Friday, maybe we'll see.
Okay.
Yeah.
If you want to do it, let me know.
We'll drive out together.
Hell yeah.
Road trip.
Yeah.
Let me know if you want to do it and we'll ride out together.
It'll be fun.
Honestly, this could probably be handled off the podcast, these type of decisions.
You want to stop for snacks?
Oh, I'm sorry.
That's right.
We're talking to hundreds of thousands of people.
Okay.
Anyway, so it's what an interesting little moment this these last few weeks have been.
And of course, it's very dark and kind of, you know, a sad time.
It's always dark when there's a war and innocent people are dying.
But it's just these moments to me are like incredible.
It's like these, you have these moments where you really feel like you're living through history and something important is happening.
And I tweeted this, I think a little over a week ago, where I was like, buckle up for some serious war propaganda.
And man, has it been all over the place?
Types of videos of what's going on in Ukraine that comes out later, like, whoops, that was a completely fake video.
But one of the things that's cool.
Wait, can I ask about that?
Because I've seen those reports and I haven't been able to, I guess, sift through fact from fiction.
What did you see that was actually put up?
That was supposedly.
I'll recommend to people.
If you go over, they just did a great piece on this over at anti-war.com.
And they're just going through a few of the videos that are like old videos or things like that.
To be honest, I wasn't even really paying attention to it because I've just been traveling around so much the last few days.
But over at anti-war.com, there is a piece up that kind of goes through some of the videos that have been floating around online.
And it links a bunch of articles about misleading Ukraine war videos.
And what is the angle there to make it look like the war is more warrior?
Like, or they just can't get footage because they can't get people over there.
I mean, like, it just seems so strange that they're trying to sell us on.
Seems like there actually is war over there.
Well, there is.
Footage of that.
Well, because it's just seems, it's like the more, um, the more you can have a video that plays on people's emotions and gets them emotional, the more likely they are to shut up and fall in line with whatever it is that you're pushing.
So if you remember, um, I don't know if you remember this right because I'm only a few years older than you, but this might really make the difference.
Um, in terms, but in the first uh war in Iraq, in the Persian Gulf War under George H.W. Bush, there was, I remember, I don't remember watching the testimony, but I remember hearing the rumors.
And I was a little kid.
So this was in 1991.
I'm born in 83.
So I was eight years old.
But even as an eight-year-old, I remember hearing the story that Saddam Hussein and his army were pulling babies out of incubators.
This was a thing that like Americans believed that this was happening.
Saddam Hussein's army would go into hospitals and pull babies out of incubators.
And, you know, you hear something like that.
And like your first, the human reaction is like, okay, well, whatever you got to do to stop them, stop that from happening.
You know, there you go.
You guys have it.
Take whatever you need.
Do whatever you need to do.
And there's this testimony of this girl.
Must have been like 15 years old or something like that at the time, who's testifying before Congress that she witnessed this, that she saw Saddam Hussein's army doing this.
And it's horrific.
She's crying.
She's this little girl.
She's all upset about it.
It's like, oh my God, this is horrible.
And then you find out that later that she was like the daughter of a Kuwaiti ambassador or something like that.
And that the entire story is made up.
And then when you look back at it, you're like, oh yeah, that does seem a little far-fetched.
I mean, like, forget even like the morality of it, just in terms of the logistics.
Like, if you were invading a country and you're like, we're going to have our army stop off at the children's hospital and pull some babies out of incubators.
You might be like, that's not the best like military strategy for like an effective invasion.
You know what I mean?
It's like, but when you just, when you get people emotional, that type of thinking, you're not thinking logically.
You're just like, oh my God, this is so horrible.
I feel this is creating such a feeling in me.
We have to do something about it.
So there's been a lot of that.
And I think it's, you know, like I said on the last episode, I think during these times, that's when it's like the most important for the people who can still think logically to really tell the truth and say the thing that's the most unpopular thing to say.
And so that's what I think we should be trying to do.
That's what I was trying to do on the last episode.
It's been like I've been saying, I just want to let me preface this by saying, I don't think there's going to be a nuclear war with Russia.
I don't think that's going to happen.
However, I think the chances of that happening are much higher than they've ever been in my lifetime.
And that that's enough that all sane people's number one priority should be to avoid a war between America and Russia.
That should be everyone's priority.
Now, just to make it clear again, I don't think that there's going to be a nuclear war.
However, the fact is that NATO, and this was posted as of three days ago, this is on CNN.com.
It's been widely reported that NATO, NATO's response force has been activated for the first time in history.
No, that's already should be alarming to people that it's like, whew.
So NATO is actually like preparing itself for some type of conflict with Russia.
And again, this should be, if there were any type of sane, like if sane people were in control of the world, we'd all be together that the most important issue in the history of humanity is that the U.S. and Russia not go to a hot war.
This is nothing's a bigger threat to all of mankind than that.
So what would the response be?
It would be like, well, let's have a massive effort at negotiating right now.
And all sides should be willing to make concessions if it can avoid the possibility of that.
And the truth is that this is true in all of these conflicts, that it's got to be the more powerful side who makes the initial concessions.
That's the way these things are going to work.
In the same sense that, like, if there were ever to be a peace between Israel and the Palestinians, Israel has to make some concessions.
Because what can the powerless really concede?
They don't have that much.
And same in this situation.
The fact is that the U.S. and NATO are far more powerful than Vladimir Putin and Russia.
And so they should be the first ones to make concessions.
How about like, you know, I'm not saying this would guarantee to work.
I'm just saying it's insane that we're not trying.
It's insane that we're not trying to just say, how about an official treaty that says Ukraine will never be a part of NATO, but you have to leave Western Ukraine immediately.
How about, you know what I mean?
Like we pull some of our weapons a little bit away from Russia's border, but you have to leave Western Ukraine immediately.
You know, like something like that.
It's not even being attempted.
That's the crazy part.
It's a hilariously small concession.
Yeah.
I'm just saying, like, how much do we really lose by going, okay, NATO, this thing that should no longer exist and doesn't need to be right at Russian's borders?
Yeah, how much of a concession?
I mean, it's these are what Putin's demands were to begin with.
And it's like, no, look, maybe that wouldn't be enough.
But again, it's worth pursuing, you know, right?
It's not as if we're saying, oh, we're going to give up Poland or something like that.
We're just saying we're not going to absorb more countries into NATO.
And then, or the EU for that matter.
And the war machine might need to do it because they've been trying to sell us on this evil, big, bad Putin guy.
Can't even take over Ukraine in a couple of days.
Yeah, really.
How much of a military threat is this guy?
Yeah, right.
Well, the truth is that what they try to sell you on is that he's he's there's some type of threat that he's gonna like expand uh um Hold on, sorry.
So they're trying, I apologize for that.
So they're trying to make the threat that he's going to like expand and annex all these countries, that he's going to re, you know, create the Soviet Union or something like that.
You know, like these kind of ridiculous claims, which whether he wants to do it or not, are just like, that's not going to happen.
But they don't make the threat that like, oh, we could go to a hot nuclear war, which is the actual threat.
That's all he really has.
The guy has a GDP of $1.5 trillion.
He's not taking over the world.
We can't even take over the world without going $30 trillion into debt.
He's certainly not going to be able to do it.
But so they don't talk about what the real threat is.
Switching To Vaping00:02:49
And they instead talk about this kind of boogeyman threat, which happens to work out very well for the military industrial complex.
But yeah, so the propaganda out there has been, I mean, in some ways, hilarious.
Now, one of the things that's like kind of a bright spot about today, as opposed to previous times, that, you know, that example that I gave of the Persian Gulf War and that kind of propaganda about Saddam Hussein's army invading Kuwait.
Not that obviously they did invade Kuwait, but I'm just saying what they were doing.
That was just broadcast to the American people.
And then it's like years later on the internet, there's all these people pointing out that it's complete bullshit.
But today, you start getting these things like this anti-war.com article is up like a few days after the videos are out there.
So that's kind of, you know, encouraging and that it's like we live in a different world where it's hard, like they don't have nearly as much of a monopoly on the control of information.
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Did you see, Rob?
I mean, I've seen several articles.
Inflation Hurts The Poor00:03:58
It's really kind of funny all about how Putin invading Ukraine is going to cause inflation.
Like, so that's real.
So that's really, that's why you've been having this inflation.
It's all because Putin invaded Ukraine.
So, you know, and it's so bad that the inflation is going to hit eight months before he invades Ukraine.
Just so you know, that's how bad the inflation from Putin invading Ukraine is, is that you've already been feeling it for almost a year.
It's really, it's a terrible form of reverse inflation.
So, so there's that.
Also, it looks like I've seen this reported in several of the financial outlets that damn, the Fed had this target of raising rates, but now we're not going to be able to walk out of these artificially low interest rates, or not that they were walking out of them, but we won't even be able to tick them back up because he just can't do it now.
Now that Putin's invaded Ukraine, I mean, there's all these sanctions and there's less oil going out there.
So, I mean, you know, we got it.
We really got to deal with that.
The Fed's got a tough problem here where they got to decide: do we want to pop a bubble or do we want to fight inflation?
And sadly, inflation, you know, it benefits.
Well, to be clear, to be clear, the choice is: do you want to pop a bubble or do you want to accept inflation?
Right.
So, the choice is either like, do we want to try to fight inflation by raising rates and popping this bubble, or do we want to just accept that inflation is here to stay and it's going to get worse?
And that is a very tough choice.
Yeah, I mean, I think that they're going to inflation robs the poor more than anyone else.
And they're the government.
So, if they can rob the poor, not made up of poor people.
Yeah, keep the wealthy wealthy.
And then, because they're the ones who are in the investments of homes in the stock market, and the government itself has a ton of debt.
So, unless the poor, you know, get really pissed at them.
If we're getting like poor, could you just imagine like if on the Federal Reserve Board, there was just like one just average American, like there was one guy who's like, well, as somebody who makes 70K a year, I'm really concerned about this inflation.
You know what I mean?
Like, if there's just one person who's just like, as a guy who's like, you know, I don't know, my pension's been cut a few times.
And like, I'm really concerned about losing the value of the money that I've saved.
Like, it's just all a bunch of fucking, you know, people who are like, you know, had a career at Goldman Sachs or whatever.
And then they're like, yeah, no, we can tolerate.
We can tolerate a little bit more inflation.
And they're right.
They can.
Yeah, that's right.
But the, you know, the bursting of the bubble, it's also just, and this is one of the really poisonous things with politics in general, is that all the incentives are so fucked up.
But it's like, look, if you have some more inflation, and this is Rothbard wrote all about this, right?
Is that the inflation tends to come like if you, this is in some ways why inflation is the worst form of tax from the government?
You know, it's the same thing as a tax in effect.
You know, it's the same thing as stealing your money in effect.
Because they print more money, they give it out to their friends.
So they get the money and then your money loses value.
So they extracted that value from you.
But unlike a tax, where it's like your taxes are due tomorrow and you feel it all, and there's no debate about what happened to your money.
It's like, well, it was taxed.
I sent it into the IRS or it's withheld from my paycheck.
I see it being withheld.
With inflation, the effects come months later, sometimes even years later than when the money printing happened.
And then there can be all types of debate about what happened and what led to the inflation.
You see, like, I mean, I know it's idiotic, but there are people like senators, like Elizabeth Warren, who's out there arguing that the cause of inflation is corporate greed.
That's why.
That's why you get, yeah, yeah, Rob, it's these greedy oil companies.
That's why the price of gas is going up.
Corporate Greed Steals Value00:08:06
Right.
Because they just want to raise prices.
Yeah, but it just, it's as simple as if people refused to pay the prices and they couldn't do it.
Well, there's some sort of a reason why people are able to pay those prices.
Well, also, it's like, it's just funny that it's like, so I guess they just weren't as greedy two years ago.
Like two years ago, there just wasn't this much greed going on in these big corporations.
And all of a sudden, they were like, ah, feeling greedy in 2022.
Yeah.
What did you change in the climate that these corporations feel comfortable being more greedy?
It must be the political structure is somehow incentivizing corporations to become more greedy.
No, Rob, you're not getting it.
Look, 2019, corporations were greedy, but they weren't that greedy.
Then in 2020, we had massive lockdowns and printed trillions of dollars and handed out checks in the form of direct payments.
And then completely unrelated to that, the corporations got greedier.
I don't know what's hard to follow about that.
These are all unrelated events that just happen to fall in that chronological order.
We almost need a sad video of the CEO who is talking about how he's making all this money, but look how much more expensive my luxury goods are.
Yeah, right, exactly.
All right.
So just a final kind of thought on this, but you know, it's like I was saying, the biggest threat in the world right now is that there would be some type of hot war between America and Russia.
The fact that NATO is preparing in this unprecedented way for a direct conflict is troubling.
The fact that Putin invaded Ukraine and has gone, it seems to be at least who knows whether his goal here really is to take over the country and absorb it, but it seems not out of the realm of possibilities.
He certainly has, you know, it's not just peacekeepers.
He's got like tanks rolling into fucking, you know, Ukraine.
And there's been attacks all throughout Ukraine.
Seeing as how that is the case, you know, as I was saying in the whole last episode and earlier on this one, my major thing is that like what we should be saying when we come into this is the important thing to be said that others aren't saying.
And when you see people who are just like mindlessly repeating, they're like, we must condemn Vladimir Putin for this invasion and he's wrong and he's the bad guy.
And it's like, yeah, okay, sure.
But what does that really add to the conversation to just repeat everything you'd hear on CNN, you know, like to our audiences?
The thing is that what's happened, it's not just like the provocations over the last, you know, 30 years that have like put us in this situation or the expansion of NATO or all of that, but just over the last few years, I mean, the amount of like war propaganda that's been spewed out through the corporate press to the American people about Russia is insane.
I mean, look, before the COVID thing, what was the biggest story that me and you spent most of our time covering was this accusation that Donald Trump had been installed by Vladimir Putin, that they had essentially like done something that no one else has ever done to America, even in all of our wars.
Now, if that were true, of course it's not, but if it were true that Donald Trump was installed by Vladimir Putin and that they overthrew basically the Hillary Clinton administration, right?
The accusation was that in effect, there's been a coup in America and that Vladimir Putin interfered with our election to get the person who rightfully would have won out and get his puppet in there who's in a conspiracy with him.
Never mind that there's absolutely no evidence that any of this is true, but that's the accusation.
If that were true, well, then that's an act of war by Russia.
And what is the logical conclusion?
And so they never talk about the dangers of a nuclear war with Russia in the corporate press, but they do feed you all of this propaganda that like basically read between the lines here.
We're at war with Russia.
It was, if you remember back when we used to be talking about this all the time in 2018, 2019, one of the things that was repeated over and over again by the corporate press and the whole Trump-Russia collusion, Trump-Russia collusion was that this attack was worse than Pearl Harbor.
That was one of the lines that they used to say over and over again.
A whole bunch of different people in the corporate press repeated that line.
And if this was worse than Pearl Harbor, well, in Pearl Harbor, what did we do to the Japanese?
Oh, yeah, we dropped two nukes on them after a lot of firebombs and an invasion and all of this, right?
So what, like it, they're not saying we should nuke Russia or we should invade Russia or something like that, but they're kind of hinting around at it.
And so I saw this the other day.
They put up a poll over at CNN.
And now I'll preface this with take anything CNN says with a grain of salt.
They are liars.
Maybe none of this is true.
I don't know if their polls are even accurate, but they claimed it was an internet poll.
And they say there were just about 37,000 votes in it.
And it says the question was: should NATO go to war for Ukraine?
77% said yes.
And 23% said no.
So 77% of these CNN viewers were willing to go to, let me rephrase that.
They're not willing to go at all, but they support NATO going to war with Russia over Ukraine.
Now, I'm sorry, it is completely reasonable to say you don't think that Vladimir Putin should take over Ukraine or you root for the Ukrainians or something like that.
But the idea that NATO, which includes the United States of America, should go to war over Ukraine.
So it's worth going to a potentially nuclear war over Ukraine, not being part of Russia or whatever.
I mean, to me, this is to describe it as insanity is an understatement.
That it's worth risking all of humanity to make sure that a country that's historically been a part of Russia isn't again a part of Russia.
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I guess one final point that I'll make, which kind of is an obvious point, but just that, you know, if you just look at, I don't know, and I don't, I guess no one knows exactly what the numbers of dead are right now in Ukraine.
There's certainly been innocent people killed, no question about that.
I've seen reports of dozens of people dead in this city, hundreds wounded, things like this.
And it's horrible.
But it's like just compare and contrast the amount of horror and coverage that this has gotten versus all of the wars of the last 20 years.
And what's different about this one?
It's just like, oh, it's not the American Empire doing it.
These numbers of dead are nothing like the numbers in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and Syria and Libya and Yemen and Somalia.
It's nothing like those.
You're talking about wars where hundreds of thousands of people died in each one of those.
And so again, it's just like, you know, just like, I think if I have a role in all this, it's like, it's not just to repeat, like, yes, Vladimir Putin is bad.
He shouldn't have invaded Ukraine.
Although that's true.
But my role is to like be like, no, but look, see what's going on here.
See what they're not showing you.
So yeah, anyway.
Any other thoughts, Rob?
No, I think the propaganda is wild because even I, when I look at these pictures, I'm like, well, we got to do something.
But you kind of remember it's a hostage situation where the world leaders, like, we're not going to be helping anybody.
I'm sorry, and it sucks to hear, but if we went to war with you for Ukraine, first worst case scenario is we start a nuclear war, which obviously no one wins.
And then best case scenario is, I guess, we push back Putin, but we just kind of set up whatever the next catastrophe is where they, you know, hold civilian lives in front of us like we can help.
Yeah, no, that's right.
And again, it's like, first off, there's like, right, there's almost like two parts to it.
It's like, if the American government and the American military-industrial complex were benevolent, like if there was nothing but, you know,
like there's no questioning the motives or the morality of our side, you could still argue that, look, just practically speaking, it is not possible for us to stop another nuclear-armed country from invading their direct neighbor, you know, that's halfway around the world from us.
There's just no way to do that.
And then on top of that, you could also point out that perhaps the butchers of Iraq and Afghanistan and Syria and Yemen and Somalia and the political class that's had you locked in your homes and is supporting the Canadian government squashing working class protests and seizing bank accounts of people who they deem political enemies that silence political dissidents,
the people that will have your life ruined if you don't get the jab that they want you to get from their preferred pharmaceutical companies.
Perhaps those people don't have nothing but pure intentions.
Maybe, maybe you're not in a moral position to do anything to say that you're going around the world to save the people of Ukraine.
How about you save the people of America?
The whole thing is just nuts.
I think this whole thing is, I can't, I don't quite have the whole picture.
I think it's just Biden family profits and Putin being like, yeah, you're not going to be like, we're done.
I think it's just about Nordstream.
And this is what kind of really annoys me: is that if the U.S. wants to go, hey, listen, we're not doing this NATO thing and protecting you guys if you're going to go buy all your oil from Russia, then like, just So, just don't do NATO anymore or then just make it transparent: hey, we're pretending like Russia's the enemy.
So, you guys can't buy cheap oil over there while we're paying for your defense bill because this is the fake enemy.
Like, I don't know.
They're just they're lying about a whole bunch of stuff, but I think it's mostly that the Bidens and other people are in there making a lot of money.
Well, there's no question, there's no question about that.
Ukraine is one of the more corrupt governments, and there has been we know, right, like that American oligarchs and particularly the Biden family has really enriched themselves in this corrupt country.
So, that I certainly wouldn't, you know, think that that's completely unrelated.
Um, okay, so let's switch gears a little bit because uh, I already this would be three episodes in a row on this topic, and I'm sure as things develop, we're going to be talking about this more, um, unless we all die in a nuclear war in the next week, in which case we won't be talking about anything.
This uh podcast will be hosted by two cockroaches.
Um, before we transition, and uh, sorry, Brian, you're gonna have to make an edit here.
The video has been completely frozen for a while, but I can hear everything.
Is it coming across okay in terms of the recording?
He's moving to me, looks good to me.
And I'm not frozen either.
I haven't noticed you look good to me.
All right, fine.
I mean, I can power through it.
I just wanted to double-check sucks, but yeah, I'm not getting it on my end.
Okay.
Um, so, of course, the COVID regime is still uh going on while we're worried about freeing the people of Ukraine.
There is a sweeping totalitarian movement, you know, across our country and most of the Western world.
Um, but there, there do seem to be some signs of them rolling it back and stuff like that.
And, um, maybe I was thinking like maybe quietly, because this whole thing has failed so much while people are distracted with what's going on in Ukraine.
They're going to very quietly be like, oh, yeah, we don't need this anymore.
Oh, the science has changed and blah, blah, blah.
So, we are two stand-up comedians.
And so, I thought this would be sometimes me and you will kind of analyze what goes on and like, you know, out there in the world of comedy.
And this kind of caught my eye.
And I know it did yours too, because I was thinking we would talk about this.
And then you sent it over to me.
But it was pretty interesting to see.
There was this Saturday Night Live skit about kind of how about kind of how like progressive America is grappling with the state of COVID and restrictions.
They're almost channeling of, hey, we're looking for our orders here.
That's that's really kind of what they're saying is we've been like, we've decided we're on team, whatever the hell you tell us.
And now we need some clear instructions on like, give us the lie.
Tell us what we're supposed to go out there and lie or put our faith into.
You have our full faith.
Just you kind of haven't given us a clear, like you're not even giving us good bullshit anymore.
We don't even know what the bullshit is.
Well, listen.
And I don't like, I don't like being in the business of just like critiquing other people's comedy.
But this is more than just comedy.
This is kind of like, you know, like propaganda to some level.
And so it's just, it's, it's kind of interesting to me.
I'll say I didn't find the sketch particularly funny.
I don't really watch Saturday Night Live that much.
I love Michael Che, who is a hilarious comedian and a great dude and a friend of mine.
And I have seen some sketches from Saturday Night Live that I still thought were really funny like over the years.
I just don't, you know, like I don't watch the show like that.
And also, I'll say, I love it when they nail it.
I also rarely watch SNO, but when I was during the Trump, when Trump was claiming that, you know, he had won the election and I was looking at the news and somewhat leaning like it seemed that there was some real buffoonery.
They did this really funny sketch spoofing that of the Jets pretending like they had won the Super Bowl and like they kept bringing up the evidence.
And it was a hilarious sketch.
Like, I love it when the other side nails it, but in this, you know what I mean?
Like, in this- So good comedy is good comedy, man.
It really doesn't matter.
Um, but anyway, so here, let's just play like a little bit of the sketch so you kind of get like what we're talking about.
And this is this is kind of what it was.
Oh, I'm so glad we're doing this.
My favorite restaurant is my favorite people.
Honey, I agree 100%.
You know what?
This is so fun.
Dinner is on us.
Oh, wow.
But, Keith, you know, you can take your mask off the table.
Oh, I'm sorry.
I don't know.
I'm wearing it half the time.
Well, I heard the CDC is going to lift all mask mandates soon.
Oh, yeah, I know.
It's so weird.
It's like COVID's not over, but it's just going to stop.
I don't know how I feel about that.
Oh, you know, that reminds me of this article I read.
Honey, no one wants to hear about that.
Well, it was in Bloomberg, and I thought it was interesting.
What article?
Well, honey.
It was just saying how mask mandates had, I don't know, little to no effect on COVID.
Okay.
So, listen, by the way, I also will say on Saturday Live, this is, and this is true in general.
It's like, it's always been true.
I love, I was a huge fan of Saturn Live growing up.
Like, when I was growing up, when I was a kid, it was like, to me, the glory years, like maybe like the greatest, like assembled group of talent ever.
You know, it was like the Tharley, Adam Sandler, David Spade, Phil Hartman, Mike Myers.
Like, it was just incredible that the talent that they had on Saturday Live.
And even back then, every sketch isn't good.
You know what I mean?
Because you have a week to do an hour and a half show and it's live and there's all that.
And that's kind of part of the thing about it is when they pull something off, you really appreciate it because you're like, this is such a hard thing to do.
So I do want to just make that clear.
I thought there was, this was a funny idea.
It just wasn't exactly executed perfectly.
But what's really interesting about all of this is that it's like they're kind of, and I give them credit because at least they are kind of mocking themselves.
You know what I mean?
Like they're mocking the side that they have chosen in this whole like culture split.
But it is interesting that they're like, so who is this for?
This is for like people who have completely bought into the COVID regime who are coming to grips with the fact that they're wrong about everything without ever giving like credit to the people who were who were right.
Like, I don't know.
I just found this to be such an interesting little glimpse into like their mind.
Like it's like, so even if you look at this and look, there's never even say like people who supported Donald Trump.
I mean, maybe that's the only thing I could compare it to.
Has there ever been more of a mass kind of push to demonize a group of people like the COVID regime?
What we're being like the people who oppose lockdowns, the people who opposed vaccine mandates or even opposed the vaccine itself.
Has there ever been a bigger push to like demonize a group of people in your life?
I don't think I could think of one.
And so it's like while you're out there demonizing these people for so long, and then you kind of like turn around and you're almost admitting in a way that like we can't even acknowledge that there's no science to back.
It's making everyone so uncomfortable if someone brings up the fact that we were wrong about all of this and that we were wrong about all.
And they do get into even like the vaccines and all that shit.
So I don't know.
I just found it so fascinating.
You're like, what am I watching here?
Am I watching you guys grapple with how wrong you were?
At least, at least they're acknowledging it and trying to fucking make something funny out of it.
I give them credit for that.
But like, God damn, it's also, it's a little bit frustrating when you're with it.
It's like, yeah, man, like this is not, this is not new.
Anyone who's been paying attention to this should have, should have recognized these contradictions for a very long time.
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CDC Hides Data00:09:50
Yeah, and it's incredible the ability of people to just walk it back and change teams.
I saw that Lena Wen or whatever that lady is on CNN addressing one of the new studies about all the harm that's been done because of the corona response, specifically with kids in school.
And she's just talking about it the way she's talked about everything.
So clearly the science now, we have to change course.
It's like, yeah, but you've been preaching the other side of this.
And this news is not new.
This is not new information.
It's literally the exact same thing that happened with the Russia collusion, that it doesn't matter how wrong you were, nobody loses their job.
You just get to move forward.
And it's really tragic for humanity.
Yeah, I mean, like, and I'd say, like, even if it's nothing more than an acknowledgement.
Right.
Like that in itself would be something.
That would be better than nothing.
Because we're not talking in this case necessarily about the people.
You know, like if you're talking about the people who pushed for the war in Iraq or who pushed the Trump-Russia collusion or something like that, it's like, yeah, these people should, you know, face serious punishments and certainly they should lose their jobs and never be, you should never be able to like be commenting on these situations for millions of dollars a year again when you got it so wrong.
But you're here, if we're just talking about like just people, you know what I mean, who just bought into this and demonized people who didn't.
And then they realize there's all of these contradictions and none of what they're saying makes sense and none of these, you know, like policies help at all.
You would think like if you're a decent person, that would come at the very minimum attached to like, I'm sorry, I got that one wrong.
And you, guy, I was demonizing, you were right about that.
But that's just, I just don't see that happening.
It's too hard.
It's too hard for people to like give up on their identity, you know?
And so, but anyway, I guess there's like overall, I see something kind of encouraging about this.
Like it's, it's kind of encouraging the more and more, you know, that, you know, there's been a lot of things like this, right?
Like we talked about this, me and you talked about this with the Jon Stewart bit that he did on Colbert's show and how, you know, that one was so funny.
Like that was really genuinely hilarious when Stuart was up there and he's like, They're like, It was the bit he was doing where he's like, He's like, the lab is called the coronavirus lab of Wuhan, and we have a coronavirus loose in Wuhan.
And he's like, maybe a bat mouth kissed a mangoose, you know, like it was so funny.
But even as we said, there's like it's like the same thing when Barry Weiss went on her whole rant on Bill Maher's show, where you almost feel like these two simultaneous feelings.
Like, on the one hand, you're like, Thank you.
Yes, it's nice to see that we're allowed to say this now.
But then on the other hand, you're like, you were just ruining people for saying this five minutes ago.
And now, all of a sudden, what you've just decided, oh, it's okay now.
Now it's just funny.
It's really cute that we all kind of admit this now.
And it's, it's very hard.
It makes it very hard to like stomach.
The coordination of it also, I mean, it's going to be harsh, but it also starts making it feel a little bit like propaganda where it's like the CDC just admitted to the fact that they haven't been giving us all the information.
Something I've been saying forever, because it was clear that they were tracking this stuff.
So, so I'm sorry, just for people who don't know, because we never talked about that on the show.
Just explain that, what you're saying, because I don't want you to say it quickly and people don't realize because this was just reported in the New York Times just a couple of weeks ago.
Okay.
So, just to give you guys the short, you can go look it up.
It's a very small New York Times article.
The CDC has not been putting out all the data it has in terms of everything, case information, ages, breakthroughs.
And the reason why they weren't doing it, according to the New York Times, is that they thought that if people had access to that data, they would misconstrue whether or not the booster program was working.
Now, where the New York Times put its own propaganda spin on it was it's not just whether or not boosters are working, it's whether or not the shots at all were working.
So, they drastically distorted the issue with them not putting out the information to just being an issue of whether or not we can establish who should or should not be getting boosters.
But this is just to make this clear, this was in this, listen, it was there was, I've been traveling so much and then this whole Ukraine thing happened that we ended up just not covering this on the show.
But I thought this was incredible because even the New York Times put it out with this kind of like this air of like they weren't admitting something huge, but they clearly were.
And they were basically, they just basically said they're like, Look, yeah, the CDC has not put out all of its information on COVID and on the vaccines because we're worried that like if we put that out there, that it might undermine confidence in the vaccines.
And you're like, wait a minute.
So, you're telling me if you told us the truth, we wouldn't, we would then see that truth and not think the vaccines were working.
What?
And for six to eight months, I've been saying from following the story that it's clear to me that the CDC has the data and they're not giving us the data.
So, once again, it's one of these conspiracy theories that just gets validated by mainstream media six months later.
Yeah, no, that's right.
And it's, and it is frustrating, especially if you're one of the people like you are who's been talking about this for quite a while and has dealt with things like your YouTube channel getting censored and like just the general like kind of atmosphere of people like calling you a kook, people who don't know what the fuck they're talking about calling you a kook, some of whom I might do a podcast with later on tonight.
But um, and then they, and then it's like, yeah, and then months later, it's just like, oh, yeah, yeah, you were right about that, but moving on.
You don't get a you were right bonus check.
You should.
Yeah.
I mean, with all the tax dollars, we should put together some amount of it just for people that were right.
If we're going to give out tax money, if we're going to have this system, that's, yeah, who I, they would be preferable to Justin.
No, but it's, it's creepy the extent by which it seems that because uh the COVID regime became so unpopular and people were as the CDC saying, like, according to with everything the CDC said, fatigue should not be a factor.
If the science is the same and they think everyone's going to die, then they should be telling everyone, we don't care if you're fatigued, we're sticking to our strategy.
That's not medical.
It's not medical science that people are fatigued with what we're telling them that they need to be doing.
So now they don't need to do it anymore.
In other words, you don't need to do it.
No, I know they used to, they used to say this about the wars too.
It was the same fucking thing.
They'd go, now we all know America suffers from war fatigue.
As if it was like, look, America's just got to like get a good night's sleep and we'll be ready to fight another war again in the morning or something.
And it's like, what do you mean?
Like, in other words, you mean they've woken up and realized that they were lied to into war and that their kid died for nothing.
That's fatigue of what, like, okay, is an interesting way to put it?
It's wonderful bullshit.
It's either you have a worthwhile idea and you're going to stand by it because it's important and it needs to be done.
Like either you believe that people are going to die if we don't listen to you, or you don't believe that people are going to die.
Like you don't get to have it both ways.
It's one or the other.
And that's been such a theme.
That right there has been such a theme throughout all of this.
Like you're like, even before we had like all of the data and stuff like that, you could just look at this and think, you're like, look, either it's that important that we all have our mouth and noses covered when we're on an airplane together, or when they come around for snacks, you can take it off and have a snack.
You know what I mean?
Like it's one or the other.
Like if I'm on a four-hour flight, you know, and it's like, you have to have this mask on because it's that important for health, but we'll do two rounds of drinks and a round of food.
You're like, well, then no, just tell everyone they can't have a drink or food for four hours.
If it's, you know what I'm saying?
Like if it's one or the other.
It can't be both of these.
This is just, it's so ridiculous.
It's like there's this admission within the policies that you're like, well, I mean, no one's going to fucking sit there for four hours without having a soda, you know, and you're like, well, okay.
Well, if you're admitting that that's just not reasonable, then maybe none of this is reasonable.
You know, like once you open that door to be like, oh, okay, they don't need to do this.
Like, and that was some of the jokes that they were getting at in that in that sketch was like, it's like, oh, yeah, but none of this makes any sense.
Like, you know, anyway, it's just, yeah, it's, it's kind of interesting to see how all of this stuff shakes out.
And then, of course, I think this is part of why, you know, it's part of why that the media falls so in love with this, you know, with this Russia-Ukraine thing is that it's like, oh, okay, this sucks up.
Yeah, this sucks up all the energy.
It's amazing, right?
Like, it's amazing how quickly it happens.
Like, like right now, if I, if you talk about like Joe Rogan's N-word controversy, it's like, huh?
What?
That no one cares.
That was only the, that was the biggest thing in the world like three weeks ago.
That's not even a thing anymore.
I already gone back to using it.
Yeah, more than ever.
He did a three-hour podcast.
It's all he said.
There's not one other word in the podcast.
By the way, great episode.
Unbelievable.
He had a physicist on.
Anyway, but it's like, you know, it's just so bizarre how this happens and it sucks up all of the oxygen in the room.
And, you know, I guess it's kind of on us to not let them, not let them do that.
All right.
I do got to wrap because I got to run over to YoMMA rap and the Indegeness Ganks tonight.