Dave Smith and Robbie the Fire Bernstein dismantle a Reason magazine article they claim dishonestly misrepresents Ron Paul's views on Putin and big tech censorship. They expose internal libertarian divisions between the "Ron Paul camp" and establishment figures while criticizing the media's suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story, which intelligence officials falsely labeled as Russian disinformation to justify NATO narratives. Ultimately, the hosts argue that mainstream outlets prioritize political conformity over truth, silencing dissenting voices regarding vaccine mandates, foreign policy blowback, and verified digital evidence. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Roll Back The State00:14:00
Fill her up.
You're listening to the Gash Digital Network.
We need to roll back the state.
We spy on all of our own citizens.
Our prisons are flooded with nonviolent drug offenders.
If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
You're listening to part of the problem on the Gas Digital Network.
Here's your host, Dave Smith.
What's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
I am Dave Smith.
He is Robbie the Fire Bernstein.
Of course, I am the most consistent motherfucker you know.
I'm also the libertarian Tupac, and he is the king of the caulks and the Jesus of the COVID.
What's up, my brother?
I'm doing swell.
Good weekend.
Oh, good.
What'd you do?
I've been reading up obsessively on currency stuff because I want to find out whether or not my currency is collapsing.
But check it out.
I did a run your mouth with Gene Epstein.
I learned all sorts of things about interest rates.
And it's amazing what I don't know and how much Gene can explain to you.
So check it out.
When Rob says he's concerned about his currency collapsing, he is referring to Robbucks, which is a currency that Rob started himself.
It's been plummeting over the last few days.
But don't you worry, the dollar is doing just fine.
Okay.
Well, I actually will be very interested to go to go listen to that episode because Gene Epstein is great and you're great.
And it's a really interesting topic.
Really kind of scary, but it's pretty wacky what's going on with the currency.
What if you, if you, just to entice people to go listen to it, give me just like a couple, let's say, like bullet pointy type things of what you think is the most kind of like interesting stuff that you've been researching?
Oh, I'll pitch the bullet points.
Oh, wait, for the Gene Epstein episode?
Or just in general, whatever.
All right.
One, Gene Epstein, the situation in Russia is not affecting gas prices.
You're not going to hear that one anyone else or anywhere else.
He explains it.
Makes perfect sense.
Wow.
I held his feet to the fire and I said, if you were in charge of the Fed and you couldn't just unwind the Fed, what would you be doing with interest rates?
And I got an answer from him.
And the short on that is that we are diverging from Fed fund rates being above inflation for about the first time in 50 years in Fed policy.
Oh, that's very interesting.
And then he gives a breakdown on what the Fed fund rates is and what that means and why that's not sustainable.
And it was a great episode.
Oh, I'm really interested to go listen to that.
Okay, there you go.
You got to check out Run Your Mouth.
If you don't already, that's Rob's other podcast.
It's his show, and it's really incredible.
So go check that out for sure.
Okay, so for this show, what I wanted to open with is an article that I found over at reason.com.
Reason magazine, for people who don't know, is a libertarian publication.
I believe it's the oldest libertarian publication in America, perhaps in the world.
I'm not sure.
But it's one of kind of the very well-known ones.
And this article interested me because there's kind of been a divide, which I've talked about a lot before on the show amongst libertarians.
There are these different camps.
And this has always been true.
There is kind of, there's kind of like the Ron Paul camp of libertarianism, which is what I've come out of.
And I think Rob represents what Gene Epstein represents, really kind of the Rothbardian.
You know, it's kind of like goes from like, there's like Ludwig von Mises, who's like the greatest libertarian economist who ever lived.
Of course, at that time, called himself a classical liberal.
And then his lineage kind of splits between like Hayek and Rothbard, who are both kind of students of his.
And then the Hayek tree goes and creates like this group of libertarians.
And the Rothbard tree creates all this.
And we're in the Rothbard camp.
And a lot of these guys, I think, are more in the Hayek camp.
Again, this is kind of broad brush strokes, but that's kind of the thing.
A lot of times people in our camp refer to these guys as the more establishment libertarians.
They're called the Beltway libertarians or the regime libertarians.
They probably don't appreciate any of those terms to describe them, but we don't really appreciate some of the terms they use to describe us either.
But whatever you want to call them, the kind of Reason Magazine, Cato, and I think a lot of the old guard of the Libertarian Party, you know, are kind of in that camp more or less.
And by the way, I should say I have friends in that camp and people who I really love and admire and get along with very well.
Like I was Nick Gillespie, you know, I've had him on the show a couple of times and he's had me on.
He's interviewed me for Reason Magazine a couple times.
And like, I always get along with that guy.
Like I just, I like him.
And I also, the last time he had me on, I, they had talked about me on the Reason Roundtable podcast and I thought they were unfair to me.
And I said something about that.
And he immediately, literally, I think like the day I said it, or maybe the next day, said, well, hey, why don't you come on the Reason interview series on our next one so you can give your side of it.
And I always just, I just really respected that.
Like I thought that was a really like decent thing to do.
And I like that.
It's like a sign of kind of like an honest person who's like, well, hey, here, come on and we'll talk about your side of it, you know?
So I like, I like him and I like Matt Welsh and I like like a lot of the guys over there.
I like a lot of guys at Cato and stuff too.
But there's just this kind of difference in the camps.
And of course, you could see in the Libertarian Party as we've talked about before, there's a difference between the Mises caucus guys and the guys who think like Gary Johnson and Bill Weld were the most successful libertarian candidates ever.
And that's kind of who we should have.
We just, we don't see eye to eye on this stuff.
And one of the things, and obviously this is going to be a little bit tainted from my perspective, but one of the things that I notice is that when these kind of big crises are coming up, it always seems to be that camp that seems to kind of be not as hardcore as our camp.
When lockdowns are going on, they seem a little bit like, I don't know, maybe we should have lockdowns, maybe we shouldn't.
And our camp's like, no, like we are, we're against these lockdowns.
When vaccine mandates and vaccine passports are going on, you'll see Reason Magazine articles or Cato articles that are like, you know, what was the one we went through?
The libertarian case for vaccine passports or mandates or whatever it was.
And Reason Magazine will have articles that will say things like, well, we're against vaccine mandates because we believe vaccination rates would actually be higher if you didn't have the mandates.
Some people won't get vaccinated because they don't like the idea of mandates.
So we shouldn't have the mandates so that more people get vaccinated.
And you're like, yeah.
They were pro-vaccine.
Huh?
They were pro-vaccine, Reason Magazine.
Well, again, it's not necessarily everyone there, but some people there certainly were.
Robbie Suave, another guy who I've had on the podcast before, who I like very much, but he, he was kind of making the same argument that he was like, well, vaccinations are much less of an imposition than mask mandates.
So I'd rather have the vaccine mandates than the mask mandates.
And, you know, I for, yeah, I disagree with that.
I also think it's a false choice and like a bunch of other things, but there's just like that's not my attitude.
My attitude is not that I want progressive ends through libertarian means.
I want libertarian ends through libertarian means.
You know what I mean?
But anyway, yeah, there you go.
So anyway, so what the, there's been a little bit of a divide, although I got to say, I do think our camp has really dominated the liberty movement.
And we have way more people on our side.
But I think it's important, and this is part of the reason why I'm in the Mises caucus and doing all this stuff with the Libertarian Party.
I think it's important that we kind of win and we own the term libertarian and we set what the narrative is, because I don't think our movement can really have any success if we're out there in the middle of the most draconian COVID mandates saying, no, we just want more people to get vaccinated too, but we have a different way to get them there.
You know, I think we have to be out there saying like, no, people should do whatever they want to do as far as the vaccine goes.
And also, by the way, the vaccines were sold on lies to the American people.
They were completely lied to.
I mean, these vaccines were sold by literally the president of the United States, along with major figures in corporate press and all the rest of it, saying, oh, if you get this, you can't get COVID and you can't spread COVID.
So go get these.
Now, I'm sorry, that's a blatant lie.
And I don't see why after that, I have to sit here and pretend that like, well, I just want more people to get the vaccines.
Like, no, I'm actually not so sure they should.
In fact, there's lots of people that I straight up think shouldn't get the vaccine.
Like, say a young, healthy person who's already had COVID for sure.
That person, for sure.
I would not recommend get the vaccine.
Anyway, that might be going a little bit too far.
Hope we don't get pulled off YouTube, but that's how I feel.
Anyway, okay.
So the latest split has been over the war in Ukraine.
And there's a lot of people, I shouldn't say a lot, but there's a few people in other libertarian circles who are accusing people in our camp of being kind of pro-Putin because we're not just lining up and changing our profile pictures to the Ukrainian flag or whatever.
I don't know.
Have you done that yet, Rob?
I hate it.
I mean, just do you really get to feel good about yourself like you've done something?
Like people in the Ukraine see your flag and they're like, oh, my house isn't being bombed now.
Yeah.
That really solved my problem.
Yeah, of course.
It's so empty.
But I also think, and my perspective, I was literally, I was just before we started this recording.
I was just on with Clint Russell, who you've done his show before too, right?
Liberty Lockdown.
Great guy.
Love Clint.
Love his show.
Go check out Liberty Lockdown if you don't already.
He's one of the best libertarian podcasters out there.
And I was talking about this thing where from my perspective, if you're like, if you believe in freedom, and I think what comes along with that is kind of believing in individualism and believing in kind of like critical thinking and independence and all of this stuff.
Don't you see something about this culture and think, even if you're just on the side, even if you're just like, Russia's completely evil, unprovoked, awful, Ukraine is completely good, democratic, wonderful country, you know, this like that's just your view, whatever the character is.
If you did believe in critical thinking and independence and individualism and liberty, don't you find something about this culture of conformity to be troublesome?
Where all of these people, I mean, what percentage of the people who have Ukrainian flags as their profile picture now know anything about Ukraine, know anything about the conflict, actually care at all about this, could have told you a single thing about the tensions between Ukraine and Russia a day before they were told.
No, they were just told by the powers that be that this is your new issue to care about.
And so they jumped on it.
Their profile picture was 15 days to flatten the curve.
And then it was, you know, Black Lives Matter.
And then it was, I've been vaccinated.
And then it was, you know, and whatever.
And now it's Ukraine.
It's this culture of conforming.
It's not good.
It's not healthy.
I stand with the true Ukrainian, so I got a Nazi flag.
You know what?
Am I doing this wrong?
That's really funny.
Funny sketch idea.
I just put up a Nazi flag on this game, but you go, what?
No, I thought we were doing the thing.
I was just doing Ukraine.
Yeah, I'm with you.
No, I'm with you.
Go Nazis.
By the way, there's a lot of non-Nazis in Ukraine, but there's some Nazis also.
Most of them are in pictures with John McCain.
Anyway, that's not, that's neither here nor there.
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Western Bleeding vs War Crimes00:15:14
So, anyway, I saw this article was put up and I thought maybe we'd go through it.
I did not read this whole thing.
I just read the first two paragraphs, and then I was like, okay, I want to read this on the show and see.
So, I'm not even like coming at this like, oh, this is such a fucked up, horrible piece, although the first two paragraphs didn't start good.
But we'll see where they go and let's, you know, let's let's kind of take it apart.
Okay.
So, this is a piece by Stephen Greenhunt, uh, Greenhut, who I do not know personally, uh, but he's he's a writer over there who writes some pieces for Reason Magazine.
This is from uh, this is two days ago as of the recording of this podcast.
It was published on the 18th of March.
Um, and the title is Opposing War with Russia Doesn't Require Excusing Putin's Aggression.
Okay, so the title, Opposing War with Russia doesn't require excusing Putin's aggression.
Now, I would say that I agree with that title.
I don't think that opposing war with Russia means you have to excuse Putin's aggression, but I also don't think we've done that.
And I've certainly been accused of doing that.
So, that's kind of my issue with it.
It's not that I technically disagree with this.
It's just like, well, what are you defining as excusing Putin's aggression?
Because this was always, of course, the criticism of Ron Paul when he would explain the motivating factors for 9-11.
Oh, so you're excusing 9-11.
It's like, no, that's not what he's doing.
He's explaining 9-11.
Sorry, go ahead, Rob.
Do you understand how much of a psychopath you'd have to be to oppose a war with Russia, but then be pro-Putin's aggression to go, hey, I don't want to go to war with Russia, but I love that he's killing people.
Right.
Who is this cartoonish individual who is going?
There's a difference between saying I oppose war with Russia.
I also see Putin's actions as rational, and I would like to do what we can to de-escalate.
That would be the opinion.
There's no one who's gotten up, or at least that I've seen that said, hey, I don't want to go to war with Russia, but it's awesome that he's bombing people.
Right.
Exactly.
Who's taking that perspective?
Or even if you're using the word excusing, not just saying it's awesome, but saying, and Putin bears no responsibility for what he's done or something like that.
You know, that's not what people are saying.
But what we are saying is that, you know, in the same way, it's just kind of the argument is like the same old argument that Ron Paul used to make.
It's like, just put the shoe on the other foot.
Like, how would we feel if we were in this situation?
Right.
Exactly.
It doesn't excuse it.
It just goes, we can understand that it would happen.
So maybe we shouldn't have policies that's going to lead to that.
No, it's not saying that they're allowed to do it or that it's okay or cool that they're doing it.
And clear, and just to be clear, the term blowback, what it actually means when it was coined by the CIA is that because people use it kind of in a shorthand way, and I've probably been guilty of this too before, but people use it as just saying like a response to our foreign policy, like blowback.
But the technical definition that was put forward by the CIA was of blowback was unintended consequences to covert policies.
So in other words, there are these unintended consequences to policies that were secret.
So when the response comes, the American people have no idea what to blame it on because they didn't even know about the policy to begin with.
And a perfect example of that would be Russia invading Ukraine and the Western fomented coup in Ukraine in 2014.
The fact that most Americans don't even know that George Soros NGOs and the State Department and the CIA and whoever else was involved in this fomented coup to overthrow a democratically elected government that was more pro-Russian and put in a more pro-Western government.
And then less than a decade later, you have Vladimir Putin invading him when he invades.
They go, whoa, where did this come from?
This is completely unprovoked.
It's like, well, yeah, because you don't know about the first part of it.
So anyway, again, it's like, if you were to say that, you know, if you, the example I used to always give is like, if you were raising a kid and you locked him in the basement and, you know, just like beat the shit out of him every day and just gave him the worst childhood ever and he grew up and he became a serial killer.
And you were like, well, this is all your fault.
You know, you did this to this kid.
The reason he's a serial killer is because of how you raised him.
And they'd be like, so you're excusing his serial killing?
Are you for his serial killing?
Are you saying it's okay?
I mean, this is all just so silly, right?
Like you understand that it's like, no, we're explaining it.
We're explaining what led to this, you know?
It's not a perfect analogy, but you get the point.
Okay, so anyway, the title of the article is Opposing War with Russia doesn't require excusing Putin's aggression.
It's far too easy to find glowing descriptions of Putin on the nationalist right.
Even some libertarians are making excuses for Russia's invasions.
They should stop.
That's the subtitle there.
Okay.
Let's get into the article.
As a longtime critic of American military, as a longtime critic of American military interventionism, I've been dismayed by the lack of moral clarity expressed by some libertarians and conservatives regarding Russia's inexcusable attack on Ukraine.
There's a difference between opposing, say, direct American military interference with a nuclear-armed Russia and excusing its autocratic leader, Vladimir Putin.
Sadly, many of these folks haven't just gotten closer to the latter, they've gone over the line.
It's one thing to argue that perhaps the United States shouldn't have pushed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to Russia's borders, and another to sound like those same old Soviet commentators spewing unsophisticated, how do you pronounce it?
Agit prop.
What's that word?
I know I've seen it and read it a lot, but okay, anyway.
So it's okay to argue that you shouldn't have pushed NATO to Russia's borders, but it's another thing to sound like the old Soviet commentators.
Oh, all right.
So here, this is the, I read this next paragraph, and then I was like, okay, we're going to read this.
Isn't the statement of, hey, we pushed NATO too far, wouldn't that be excusing?
Wouldn't that fall directly into his headline of excuses?
Well, I don't think it's excusing.
I think it's just what we were saying, explaining, but I don't know.
It does seem to be like a fair question.
But here, let's get into it a little bit.
Okay.
For instance, former Reagan administration official Paul Craig Roberts made this argument in the libertarian, quote, anti-war, LewRockwell.com.
So a little bit of a shot at Lew Rockwell for, you know, kind of poisoning the well a little bit there.
I guess he's not libertarian, quote, anti-war.
All right, but, you know, then what's your whole title about how libertarians are doing this too if he's not libertarian?
Anyway, whatever.
Lou Rockwell is one of the greatest libertarian heroes of all time and debatably the greatest living libertarian hero.
Okay.
Quote, this is from Paul Craig Roberts' article that was shared on LewRockwell.com.
So now we're trashing Lou Rockwell for an article that was shared on his site.
But Paul Craig Roberts, again, who was a former Reagan administration official, this is his quote: quote: The chance of a wider war would be far less if the Kremlin had committed all of the invasion forces and used whatever conventional weapons necessary, regardless of civilian casualties, to quickly end the war while refusing to be delayed and distracted by the negotiations and Western bleeding.
Now, okay, let me read the next paragraph and then we'll get back to this.
So one more time, this is the quote from Paul Craig Roberts.
The chance of a wider war would be far less if the Kremlin had committed all of the invasion forces and used whatever conventional weapons necessary, regardless of civilian casualties, to quickly end the war while refusing to be delayed and distracted by negotiations and Western bleeding.
Using, quote, whatever conventional weapons necessary doesn't sound like an anti-war idea, nor does the invasion fit fit Roberts' description of a Russian quote demilitarization of Ukraine.
Now, I don't know if here's the problem right away that is really bothering me.
He says using whatever conventional weapons necessary doesn't sound like an anti-war idea.
Well, that's true.
It doesn't sound like an anti-war idea.
But Paul Craig Roberts, at least in the quote given here, wasn't saying this is an anti-war idea.
He wasn't advocating he do this.
He was saying the chances of a wider war would be far less if this was done.
So what you have here is he's giving you an analysis.
He's saying that I believe the chances of a wider war would be less if Putin just went in and did what he wanted to do and didn't get into this whole thing.
Now, I don't know, maybe he's wrong about that, but that's a very different thing than advocating for it.
Does that make sense?
Yes.
So anyway, so that's that.
That's kind of the first problem I have with this.
It's like, you're not allowed to have analysis anymore, or we're going to take that as meaning that you're excusing what Putin's doing.
Also, I can't imagine this guy was advocating that he would have preferred if Putin went in and killed more civilians and was more aggressive so that we didn't.
It doesn't sound like he's advocating for that, but I know I think he's saying that there's a little bit of confusion here by me because I don't know the quote's kind of out of context and being quoted in a backwards way.
So I'm not really following it.
Well, I feel the same way.
But it seems to me that he's just saying that he's almost like making the point that paradoxically, if he had just like if he had just gone in and gone all out blitz right there, it probably would be more likely that he would pull back and we wouldn't be worried about this nuclear conflict and all of these other things.
But again, I'm not, if it just, if Putin actually went in and just started demolishing hospitals and bombing the shit out of all of Ukraine, it's probably more likely that, you know, the other nations would go, ah, he stepped over and we got to go to war.
Yeah.
So like, that's not a definite that if he just went in there and demolished them, then everything.
I agree.
I agree.
I'd have to hear.
Paul Craig Roberts, by the way, is a very smart guy.
I'd have to hear his entire analysis to really judge it.
But whether you agree with the analysis or not is kind of separate from the point of saying that there's a libertarian, which I don't think Paul Craig Roberts is, but the idea that there's a libertarian advocating or excusing this type of policy.
That's all I'm saying so far.
He says that description is so absurd.
It reminds me of the cheesiest efforts of Saddam Hussein's propagandists, Baghdad Bob, who always claimed that Iraqi, that Iraq, that Iraqi was rousing American armed forces.
I'm more concerned about war crimes than Western bleeding.
But what do I know?
What does he mean by that?
So I think the idea is, well, let me just say, like, before even that, because I do, I think that the idea of saying if someone goes, look, if someone's making the argument that they say,
I think that if somebody actually, let's say, I think if the war was more aggressive for a week, it would actually, you know, it would actually lead to less death overall.
Right?
Like for whatever the argument is, you know, I think if you bomb this city right now, instead of just going in with men with guns, maybe that would end the war quicker and that would be less death overall.
That's not the same as someone saying, I don't care about those people dying.
They're just saying like, this is what I think strategically is going on in a war that's already happened.
So I don't know.
I'm sorry.
What did you ask, Rob?
Uh, what Western bleeding wasn't that kind of what you just said, isn't that almost kind of like the Hiroshima argument?
Yes, I suppose.
Well, I guess in a sense, but I think a slightly different version.
Bleeding, I think, just means like complaining, like whining.
So, he's saying, like, um, if he's saying that if Putin just didn't even listen to what the West was complaining about, there'd probably be less of a threat of a wider war.
Now, maybe he's wrong about that.
Okay, but it's not exactly excusing Putin or saying for him to then respond with his comments, I'm more concerned about war crimes than Western bleeding.
But what do I know?
It's like, I don't think Paul Craig Roberts here is saying that he's he's more concerned about Western bleeding than war crimes.
I think he's just trying to analyze this from like a military strategic point of view and saying what makes it less likely for a wider war.
Now, again, I'm not saying I agree with him, I don't even completely understand what his argument is here.
I'm just saying, I don't, I hate this kind of virtue signaling of like, I don't know, I just think war crimes are worse than people in the West complaining.
It's like, yeah, but no one's no one's arguing with that.
Okay, so let's hear to the next paragraph.
Former GOP presidential candidate Pat Buchanan even called Putin a Russian nationalist, patriot, traditionalist, and a cold and ruthless realist realist looking out to preserve Russia as a great and respected power.
High Praise For Russia00:03:49
Sorry, looking out to preserve Russia as the great and respected power it once was, and he believes it can be again.
That's high praise from the nationalist traditionalist Buchanan.
His columns have blamed the Russian invasion on the United States and excused Putin's seizing of Crimea.
Teddy Roosevelt stole Panama with similar remorse.
Now, I got to say, when he says that's high praise, I just don't think that's actually high praise.
Again, I think this is analysis.
So, this is Pat Buchanan saying he's called Vladimir Putin in the quote he uses a Russian nationalist, patriot, traditionalist, and a cold and ruthless realist, looking out to preserve Russia as the great and respected power it once was, and he believes it can be again.
I don't know.
Am I crazy?
I don't see that as being high praise.
High praise to me would be like if he said, He's a great leader, he's a wonderful man, he's doing the right thing.
This is just kind of like describing what he sees, and you could understand where if you want to like understand where Putin's coming from or what his motivations are, then yeah, you would say, Look, Russia, just factually speaking, was a country that was basically in charge of half of Europe, and they now they're a country that's right on their borders are people in a military alliance with the United States of America.
And so, he thinks they used to be this wonderful, great country, and they could be a great country again.
I shouldn't say wonderful, that's not what Pat Buchanan said, but they a great strong country, let's say.
Aren't those areas a collapsing dump under Russia, though?
I only know that so, like, what they want to restore these areas to being a dump.
Listen, man, like collapsed and people cheered.
I mean, I only know that of Germany, I don't know about the other areas.
Maybe they're all like, let's go back to being the USSR, but that's definitely not my life.
No, the USSR was horrible, it was one of the most evil regimes of all time.
But the point is, never under underestimate people's feeling of we were great, you know, and we were like, we want to be great again.
And the truth is that even though that is true, everything you're saying is true, their propaganda for a very long time was like that they were going to overtake the West.
I don't know if you know the we will bury you, you know, line that what was said, what's his name?
Set Khrushchev said to Richard Nixon.
I believe it was Khrushchev, said to Richard Nixon.
So that it's like they, so they had this national kind of vision of themselves.
And that's his point, I think, is that Putin is like patriot.
He cares about Russia being great.
I think that's Pat Buchanan's point.
I don't think it's high praise.
And as far as the, you know, him talking about how he says that he's blamed the Russian invasion on the United States and excused Putin's seizing of Crimea.
Well, look, I mean, I think the United States has a lot of blame to go around here.
I don't see how, you know, being instrumental in a coup in Ukraine and then sending in a ton of weapons to Ukraine, this border country that was clearly a red line for Russia, and then Russia ends up invading Ukraine, leaves you with no blame.
I think you have some blame.
That's not the same as saying Putin has none or even doesn't have the majority of it, but you certainly have some.
Questioning Government Claims00:17:40
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The Crimea thing is like, look, I'm not saying it's justified that Putin took Crimea, but Crimea had a referendum and voted to be with Russia.
And what happened in Crimea, I mean, to consider it like an invasion, as it's called here in the article, I mean, okay, technically, I guess, but how many, I mean, how many people died in the invasion in Crimea?
It's Again, I think I said this before on the show, but double-check me.
Go research the amount of people that died in the invasion in Crimea.
But I think you're going to get a number around six, you know, like something like that.
And I don't think they were all killed by the Russians who were invading.
You know what I mean?
Like some of them might have been killed by random people in the streets and stuff like that because there was like some chaos going on with invasion, not from invasion.
Yeah, right, exactly.
Yeah, right.
A skateboard accident while the invasion was going on or something.
But it was like, look, I'm not like downplaying.
Look, people died.
It's horrible.
But you know, to consider something like, you know, in American invasions recently, where like hundreds of thousands of people have died in these wars or as a result of these wars, to like talk about an invasion and how horrible it was.
It was basically a huge group of people who wanted Russia to come in.
Russia walked in, took the thing, and that was that.
And I don't know.
It's not, you know, even from like the libertarian, even from like the left libertarian perspective, you know, you're kind of like, I mean, do we all think these lines on the map are drawn exactly where they should be?
I don't know.
There was a group of people who kind of wanted the lines to be drawn in a different area, and Russia walked in and took it.
I'm not saying, I'm not excusing it.
I'm not saying it was the right thing to do.
I'm just saying on the grand scheme of like what governments do and their evil kind of like encroachments and their violation of sovereignty or something like that.
It wasn't, it didn't even come close to the level of, say, Obama's drone campaign in Pakistan.
Forget like the, you know, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and Libya and Syria and Yemen and Somalia or like any of that shit.
Just Obama's drone campaign in Pakistan was far more horrific than Putin, you know, seizing Crimea.
That's, I think that's a fact, but whatever.
It's far too easy back to the article.
It's far too easy to find glowing descriptions of Putin on the nationalist right.
And it's not just Donald Trump.
Remember that Zelensky is a thug, Representative Madison Cawthorne, Republican from North Carolina, said recently.
Remember that the Ukrainian government is incredibly corrupt and is incredibly evil and has been pushing woke ideologies.
So again, it's far too easy to find glowing descriptions of Putin.
And then what he uses as an example is a condemnation of Zelensky.
But I'm sorry, that's not the same thing.
That's just not the same thing.
That's not.
And like, I hate these pieces where it's like, so what's wrong about that?
What's wrong about this definition of Zelensky?
You tell me, and fine, then we can talk about what's accurate about the quote, but don't tell me that that's a glowing literally.
This was far too easy to find glowing descriptions of Putin on the nationalist right, not just from Donald Trump.
Quote, remember, Zelensky is a thug.
Remember that the Ukrainian government is incredibly corrupt and is incredibly evil and has been pushing woke ideologies.
That's not a glowing, I'm sorry, that's not a glowing description of Putin.
Doesn't even mention Putin.
They're just saying that, like, no, remember that this side isn't perfect either.
No, I guess I agree with you.
I guess maybe the argument is that it's somewhat, I mean, glowing is just a bad categorization, but maybe it's what he means to say is that someone excuses Putin's behavior, but no one's going to excuse Putin's behavior on behalf of the fact that these people are woke.
Like it would be one thing if that quote was something about, hey, Zelensky is actually a Jew who's working with the neo-Nazis and responsible for civilian deaths.
And then you might go, oh, is that then it's still a leap of logic to go in.
So this person is trying to state that Putin's a savior for going in there because that's not the nuance.
But look, you still would not use the words glowing description of Putin because it's not even a description of Putin.
You could say demonizing description of Zelensky.
Okay, fine, but that's not, I'm sorry.
These just words mean something, and that's not what those words mean.
Like people from classes and nuance.
Yeah, really.
The nation could use it.
All right, let's back to the article.
It's actually not that hard to understand this fascination with Putin and similarly minded autocratic leaders, such as Hungary's Viktor Orban.
See, this is the thing, wrote American conservative pundit Ron Dreyer last year.
Putin, Orban, and all the illiberal leaders are all completely clear and completely correct on the society-destroying nature of wokeness and post-liberal leftism.
Well, the Italians were right about trains, but you know how that went.
Okay, so he did find one guy who said last year, before this war ever started, that Putin and Orban and the illiberal leaders are all completely correct about the society-destroying nature, society-destroying nature of wokeness and the kind of modern leftist shit.
But I mean, again, that has nothing to do with the war.
That's just kind of a comment on how wokeness is society-destroying.
And, you know, agree with it or disagree with it.
It doesn't really, to me, it doesn't really back up the thesis of this article because this was all before the war started.
Dreyer has criticized the Russian invasion, but like other populist conservatives, he doesn't spend much time examining allegations that Putin's government murders journalists, poisons political foes, and imprisons people who participate in peaceful protests.
Thus far, thus, I'm sorry, these far-right conservatives like that, he, oh, Jesus Christ, sorry, guys, I can't read tonight.
These far-right conservatives like that he's a nationalist, so-called patriot, tough guy who doesn't put up with open immigration, fake media criticism, or anything well gay related.
Now, again, there's no quotes here.
It's just kind of conjecture, I guess.
He doesn't, he just hasn't talked enough about how Putin does all these other bad things.
Allegations that Putin's government murders journalists, poisons political foes, and imprisons people who participate in peaceful protests.
All right.
I mean, I don't think anyone's arguing that Russia is a free country and Putin doesn't, you know, isn't authoritarian at all, but maybe I'm wrong.
I also, I do see people arguing that Ukraine is a democracy and a free society.
And that is a little bit goofy if you actually know anything about Ukraine, but that's a different story.
Many conservatives seem willing to toss aside our nation's constitutional protections and market economy in favor of post-liberal autocrats because they're frustrated by our nation's cultural tilt.
Prominent conservative writer Sobram Amari famously tweeted that he's at peak, quote, at peace with Chinese-led 21st century because I ate liberal because I ate liberal America, or sorry, late liberal America.
It's very weird the way they wrote this.
Late liberal America is too dumb and decadent to last as a superpower.
Okay, so that was one conservative said that liberal democracy is perhaps too messy for them.
But what explains the views of many libertarians?
That's a good question.
Quote, lobbyists for the military-industrial complex are already explaining to a very respect, a very receptive Capitol Hill audience why the Ukraine crisis justifies increasing the military budget to quote counter the threats from Russia, China, and whoever else can serve as a convenient boogeyman, wrote congressman and libertarian icon Ron Paul in a column remarkable for its level of free association.
So one more time, here's the quote from the great Ron Paul, as now we've gotten back from just conservatives into libertarians.
Let me read this one more time.
Lobbyists for the military-industrial complex are already quote explaining to a very receptive Capitol Hill audience why the Ukraine crisis justifies increasing the military budget to quote counter the threats from Russia, China, and whoever else can serve as a convenient boogeyman.
Well, that sounds like a pretty goddamn accurate thing to say and a pretty goddamn perfectly libertarian thing to say.
Just factually true that lobbyists for the military industrial complex are jumping on this opportunity to try to increase the military budget by saying, look, all these threats around the world.
Oh my God, look at all these threats.
And it's not just Russia, it's China and whoever else they can think of.
I'm sorry, are libertarians not supposed to say that in a moment like this?
Is there something problematic?
All right.
Paul labeled Putin the quote new coronavirus.
I'm sorry, that's just great.
And seemed more worried that big tech companies were censoring people who quote question the U.S. government's claims regarding the Ukraine crisis than he was about the Russians' military attack on hospitals and apartments.
By the way, okay, so can I just tell you, this is by the way, this fucking infuriates me.
This is a real style.
And let me just like explain this to people because this is a style of the most dishonest type of writing.
So just like, like, try to follow with me on this, okay?
Here's how it's written because I'm reading it and almost like if you could see this in your mind.
So here's the, I'm writing, and I'll tell you where the quotes are and just kind of focus on this.
Okay.
So here's the paragraph.
Paul labeled Putin the quote new coronavirus.
Now, what does he mean by that?
He's basically saying, oh, this is the new thing that is supposed to be the big fear where you give up all your liberties for that fear.
That's obviously what Ron Paul means.
And it's obviously said kind of tongue in cheek, right?
Like he's not saying that the coronavirus never existed or that Putin's invasion never existed.
He's saying this is the new thing, more or less, right?
But so he starts with that.
This is completely unconnected to the next quote, but he goes, Paul labeled Putin the new coronavirus, the quote, new coronavirus, end quote, and seems more worried that big tech companies were censoring people who quote question the U.S. government's claims regarding the Ukrainian crisis, end quote, than he was about Russia's military attack on hospitals and apartments.
Now, this is so dirty to go, he seems more worried about, quote, end quote, than he is about this and that.
So he never said the seems more worried about and the than this and this part.
He just said the quote part in the middle, right?
You added the seems and then more worried about than this.
That's all completely you.
Ron Paul never said that.
Ron Paul said, quote, he was worried about, quote, people being, sorry, he was worried about censoring people who, quote, question the U.S. government's claims regarding the Ukraine crisis.
That's what Ron Paul was concerned about.
Censoring people who question the government and whether their claims are accurate or not.
That seems like a pretty fucking libertarian thing to think.
But what you added was seems more worried about that than Russia's military attacks on hospitals and apartments.
He never said that.
Never said anything like that.
Never said that that was worse than what Russia was doing or that he's more worried about that.
He just said a thing about how like it's fucked up that they're going to, my words, not his, but that it's, it's wrong that big tech companies will censor people who question the government's official narrative.
Never said anything about that being worse than Russian's military.
You just added the word seemed more worried.
And now that's a so if I, I guess, if I'm talking on my podcast all about, I don't know, if I'm talking about like regulation in some industry on my podcast, then I guess you could just say it seems like I care more about regulation than I do about babies dying somewhere.
Even though I never said that, you just said seems like he cares about, quote, regulation hampering business expansion than he does about babies dying.
You get my point here?
It's just so dishonest and shitty and awful.
Like, why are you going after Ron Paul, who's just, if you actually read his quotes here, just saying a perfectly libertarian thing and a very real concern.
All right.
Such thinking is harder to unpack, but I believe it stems from the habit of perpetual outrage at our government's abuses.
There are plenty of zany right-leaning hot takes that are that an event more unusual that even more unusual views, such as the idea from, quote, forbidden knowledge TV column, Vladimir Put, quote, Vladimir Putin is good friends with Henry Kissinger, the ultimate new world order deep state today here.
In the United States, the Rockefeller poodle who made his living serving as a shill for the new world order.
Okay, so then he just found some zany right-winger who said something about the new world order.
Yes, that explains everything.
They see how like how dishonest this is to go right from like the few right-wingers to Ron Paul's quote where you just added in what he actually meant by that, which he never said at all.
And now you just found some zany right, as you call it, a zany right lean, right-leaning hot take from forbidden knowledge TV.
I don't know what that is.
Defending Ukraine Or Not00:07:01
The Ukrainian situation is not a moral conundrum.
It's wrong for Russia to invade a neighboring country.
The United States should avoid direct conflict, but help Ukraine defend itself.
Hmm.
Maybe be a little more specific on that, how we should help Ukraine defend itself.
The U.S. government does many awful things, but it isn't actually to blame for everything.
I remember when conservatives and libertarians used to understand those points.
And that's the end of the article.
So it's really funny to like go through all of that.
It's just, I don't know, Rob.
I don't know what your thoughts on this are, but I just think this is such a like, I think it's, it's an incredibly stupid and dishonest piece because you don't actually grapple with any one person's points.
You take little quotes from them here and there.
In the case of Ron Paul, it was just so dirty how they did him.
They just took one point he was making about being concerned about social media and just claimed that it seems like he's more concerned about that than he is about the innocent people dying, which what a shitty thing to say about Ron Paul, who is, I mean, objectively, the greatest anti-war hero in modern American history.
The guy who has really like just opposed every time, and not just war, but the war abroad and the war at home, the war on drugs, the war on guns, the war, all of these things that just destroy people's lives.
If there's nothing else, if anyone is being even like remotely honest, Ron Paul is a bleeding heart peace lover who hates when people die.
So for you to just decide that you think, you know, it seems like he doesn't care about these people because he's talking about the concern that social media companies could censor any Americans who like maybe don't trust the government's views.
Oh, maybe I don't think what they're saying about the biolabs are real.
Maybe I think there's more to this situation.
And we know the government has censored a whole lot of people before.
Maybe we'll, well, or excuse me, social media companies have censored a whole lot of people before at the government's ordering.
So whatever, we'll talk more about that in a second.
But to then just jump around from that.
So you basically put like, I mean, I don't even think there were too many actual libertarians besides Ron Paul's quotes in this article.
You just kind of jump around to these random quotes.
And I got to tell you, I didn't hear one quote in this whole thing that actually really met the claim of the title that people were excusing Putin's aggression.
Like, why?
Why is it that it's always like with these publications that right at the height of the crisis, not only do they not have the courage to call out the official government narrative about it, but no, they must attack the libertarians who do have the courage to call it out and who do have the courage to say that like, you know, there's, there's more than one thing going on here.
Maybe there's a little bit more to this.
I don't know.
That fucking, that pissed me off more than I expected it to after I read the Ron Paul part.
I probably should have known better.
They brought Lou Rockwell into it just because he ran an article.
I mean, Jesus.
Pat Buchanan just had a reasonable description of Vladimir Putin and Ron Paul just made an objectively great point.
That's what you got.
Okay.
I guess.
Reason magazine, shots fired.
I don't know.
Any other thoughts on that, Rob?
Did you, what did you think of the whole fucking thing?
I don't think I was in the article, Brea, any great insights or clarity?
Yeah, just seems like it's not even like he seems to have a strong position of here's the danger of people taking this perspective, nor clear evidence of people even taking the perspective he's claiming.
And his title's fucking screwy.
So I don't know.
It's just, it's not the kind of thing I read and go, oh, wow, I walked out with a lot of insights on the situation.
And then at the end, he goes, in the last paragraphs, he said, the United States should avoid direct conflict, but help Ukraine defend itself.
Well, okay.
But like, what exactly does that mean?
You know, for all these, like going through all these other people's quotes.
Yeah.
There's always a way to be in the middle and make everybody happy.
Yeah, I guess the problem with that is that helping Ukraine defend itself means what?
Sending in weapons?
Like what I mean, you tell me what does that mean?
I don't want to be guilty of what this guy is guilty of.
And I don't want to just say, well, it sure seems like he's saying this, but you know, what does it mean to help them defend themselves?
It sure seems like he means sending in weapons.
And here's the thing.
That is pretty close to an act of war.
And there's a pretty strong argument that that actually might bring us closer to a war with Russia.
So maybe it's more of a priority for people to be skeptical of our government, who is, by the way, the greatest purveyor of violence in the world by far.
Maybe it's more important to be skeptical of their narrative than it is to insist that we flirt with getting into a war with a nuclear armed power like Russia.
Anyway, I don't know.
Yeah, that article pissed me off more than I thought it would.
I'll just fucking stop besmirching the name of Ron Paul.
Like Reason Magazine, all the people you could go after right now, really?
The world's on fire.
We've seen the most like, you know, insane rise of totalitarianism across the West.
There's the threat of nuclear war, but what do you guys have to do?
You still got to go after Ron Paul and in the most dishonest way to just take a quote, he says, and then say, sure does seem like he cares about this more than he cares about these war crimes.
Yeah, that's Ron Paul.
That's really the weakness on Ron Paul.
Doesn't care enough about war crimes.
Fucking pathetic.
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Pretext Against Russia00:15:14
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All right, let's get back into the show.
All right.
Let's, we got a few more minutes before we wrap up.
Let's talk a little bit about this, the Hunter Biden thing.
So the Hunter Biden laptop story took a little bit of a turn.
Nothing that crazy, but it does seem like it's the establishment corporate press is a little bit closer to admitting that, yeah, that was his laptop.
Did you see that New York Times story, Rob?
Well, here's what's great about listening to this show for Run Your Mouth is that you get to live six to 12 months in the future.
And so you get all the news about a year before everyone else does.
So when it comes to whether or not the vaccines are going to work or whether or not Trump's a Russian agent or whether or not Hunter Biden's laptop was given over by the Russians and wasn't actually have any information.
Dude, they, the most flagrant Twitter took New York Post.
New York Post is, I think, the third largest newspaper in America or something.
Yeah, they took them down over tweeting out this and saying that it was disinformation.
It wasn't.
And then they never, no one ever said that the information on it wasn't true.
They just said that it was, it was Russian, whatever.
No one ever said that it wasn't actually valid information.
And it absolutely would have changed the election.
There's no question about it.
Well, it certainly had the potential to.
You know, it's so what's funny is I've gotten a lot of shit from people who are not fans of mine.
And I guess I've made a few, probably because I read articles like this and trash them.
And there's this whole other camp that doesn't like me that much.
But I've gotten a whole lot of shit because I did say right at the beginning when the Pentagon was like, Russia's about to invade Ukraine.
I said, I don't think they're about to invade Ukraine.
And I was wrong.
And I admitted I was wrong afterward.
I go, I was wrong.
I didn't think they would.
But I get these people who go, Dave promised that Russia would never invade Ukraine.
And I was like, well, I didn't exactly promise that they would never invade Ukraine.
In fact, I've had Scott Horton on the show many times because he's one of the people.
We've talked about it many times in the past, sounding the alarm that like Ukraine was the red line for Russia and that this could lead to an invasion of Ukraine.
But I didn't think it was going to happen right now.
But okay, I got that wrong, you know?
Like I got, but it's just funny that they say that.
And I'm like, guys, I've gotten a lot of stuff right.
Like, I mean, over the course of this show, over the last four years, I have such a better batting average than 99% of other political shows.
But, you know, I get pounced on for that one quite a bit.
But it is funny.
Yes, this is one more example of the New York Times.
We called this the week it happened.
We were like, it's so clear.
It's so clear that this is legitimate.
You could tell right away just from the email verifications because they were reaching out to the other people on the other ends of the emails who were like, yeah, that is the right email.
And yes, we did email back and forth.
And there were like several other ways that they verified.
It was obvious that this was real.
And of course, the element that you're talking about was that that's one of the biggest parts of this story, the social media censorship, kind of like what the great Ron Paul was just talking about in that article that they trashed him.
Oh, this must mean you don't care about war crimes if you talk about social media censorship.
No, I think it's pretty creepy that there's a story that is a real story, no matter how much importance you think it has, it's a real story.
It's news.
There's no real debating that.
And the third or fourth biggest newspaper in the country gets their Twitter account suspended over this or froze or whatever you want to call it.
And then on top of that, what was really crazy is it was a level beyond that that it was the first time I ever heard of this.
I didn't even know they could do this, but that they banned the link and that you actually couldn't tweet out the link or even direct message the link to people.
It shows down.
Yeah.
And this was done on Twitter and on other social media too.
Now, I know when I say that that's a little bit concerning, it obviously seems like I think that's worse than war crimes.
But just to be clear, I'm not saying that that's worse than war crimes.
We should just always make things like this clear so it doesn't seem that way to related degrees.
I don't like babies being killed.
I'm not pro-cancer.
I don't like dictators.
Yeah, gender sides are bad.
Yeah, here's something I'm concerned about, but just so it doesn't seem any other way, I want to make it clear.
It's not quite as bad as babies being murdered.
We're all on the same page.
Okay, I'm just going to have to read.
I'm going to read off a 15-minute list of things that it's not as bad as.
But anyway, so all of that is pretty creepy.
But for what's going on in the current situation, I actually think the most important thing to kind of bring up here to put this all in perspective, which is what's really interesting about the Hunter Biden story, it's not just the social media censorship, or although that matters, that is a really concerning trend.
And it's not just that there are these emails that seem to be implicating Joe Biden in these dealings.
That's not even what I'm talking about.
And it's not even as it relates to the Ukrainian company Burisma that Hunter Biden was working for, which of course was a company that was in bed with the pre-2014 government.
And after that government was overthrown, they wanted to get in tight with the new regime.
And rather than just paying off the new regime, they went right to the source and paid off the Americans because they knew who the new regime really was.
All of that's important, but that's not even the most important thing.
I kind of want to get right at the heart of this argument that the U.S. bears no responsibility in what's going on with this war in Ukraine.
And it's not just that the social media companies were censoring this.
I want to remind people, in case they don't remember this, that this was claimed to be what?
Russian disinformation.
And this wasn't claimed just by Twitter or Facebook or, you know, Brian Stelter.
Who claimed this?
Well, Joe Biden bragged, he boasted in the presidential debate in one of the two that he had 50 former, as he called them, quote,
intelligence people, including four former heads of the CIA, who all said that this had all of the fingerprints of a Russian disinformation campaign.
Just remember that.
Keep that in mind.
This is what's broadcasted at the presidential debates, probably the moment that other world leaders and other countries pay attention to the most.
Here's what this isn't just random people or even people in the corporate press or even politicians.
Here's what the CIA was saying.
The last four or four directors of the CIA had signed off on the idea that this was Russia.
And we now know that's a lie.
I mean, we knew then that was a lie, but we know a little bit more now that that's a lie.
And do you not think that that might be a little bit of a provocation?
Like for the CIA, this paramilitary organization that leads regime change wars around the world to just be out there basically making the claim that Russia is what kind of committed an act of war against us.
Kind of.
I mean, they claimed for quite a while that Donald Trump was basically installed by Vladimir Putin.
And again, that wasn't just the media.
That wasn't just the Clinton campaign.
That was the intelligence agencies, right?
That's really where it came from.
And to just say that, think about like the fact that this war comes after four years of the intelligence community leading this huge propaganda campaign against the Russians, where they're really claiming, if you, you know, look into it, like if you read between the lines, they're really claiming that Russia is committing war, acts of war against us.
They're laying down the pretext for a justification for something against Russia.
You know what I mean?
And we're supposed to ignore that and just look at this whole thing in a vacuum.
I reject that.
I think there's something there that's pretty important to pay attention to.
That's what's really interesting about all of this.
Now, the Post had a headline about this, right?
They said the 50 spies who lied because the Post is now kind of, they're spiking the football a little bit, but fair enough, they kind of deserve it.
And here's something that'll never happen.
You won't get an apology out of one of those guys.
You won't get Joe Biden going, hey, you know, I know I said this, but that really was my kid's laptop.
It wasn't fucking Russia.
It was my kid's laptop.
That's just what it was.
You won't get that.
Hopefully, we'll get some good Senate hearings, though, about the why these tech companies are representing the Democratic Party and doing censorship that favors them.
I'm willing to bet that we'll get at least one of these hearings.
Yeah.
Well, you see, you don't see anything like you don't see, say, the Steel dossier getting banned off social media, right?
Right.
That actually turned out to be bullshit.
You don't see anyone banning the link to the Steel dossier or fucking sign, you know, suspending BuzzFeed's account because they fucking published it.
If you think about it, I mean, I don't know, your American history would be better than mine, but I bet in the history of American politics, this might be the biggest bombshell story to ever come out the month before election.
I mean, this one probably even tops Hillary Clinton being reinvestigated by the FBI.
This was, you've got son of the president, possibly the president being bought, bribed by a foreign entity, the possibility that the son of the president is involved in pedophilia.
There's certainly sex and, you know, this the P, what's called the security covering up crimes.
It's massive.
It's big.
I would probably lead, I would lean toward Hillary Clinton, but the, and, and, and look, the, the pedophilia thing, I don't know how real any of that is, but the, I would leave, I would lean toward Hillary Clinton, but this was a story and it was a big story.
And there's no way that it's not to come up with something, save your bombshell for the month before.
That's part of the way the political game is, is that you keep something huge.
And instead, what happened was Trump had to bring it up at the rather than, and this is a big deal, too.
Talking about the game of politics, the fact that Trump had to bring it up, and then Biden gets to go, What are you talking about?
The entire intelligence community says this is bullshit.
And then the moderators get to go, That is true.
I mean, no one here was talking about it.
It is.
They all say this is Russian propaganda.
You know what I mean?
Like the fact that really takes away from the bombshell.
So there's no question, just in the political game, that had a huge effect.
But I almost think what's more interesting about that under the current situations is that the fact that they were so quick to blame that on Russia, you know, um, that's that to me is what's really interesting that they would they would say this is Russian propaganda without even like a thought of like what's Moscow's perspective on that if you know they're just lying through their teeth, which they clearly were.
What's Moscow's perspective?
They're like, whoa, they're they're claiming that we just fucking like went to war with them, basically.
What might they do?
Again, keep in mind, America, the greatest purveyor of violence in the world, the United States of America's federal government, objectively, the greatest purveyor of violence in the world.
The people, the butcherers of Iraq and Afghanistan, and Syria and Libya and Yemen and Somalia and Pakistan, as I mentioned before, right?
They're now saying we did that.
Oh shit.
And they got fucking NATO right on our doorstep.
What the fuck might they do about this?
Now, I'm not saying NATO was going to invade Russia or we were going to drop a nuke on Russia or something like that.
But you have to think from their perspective how this would be seen as a serious threat.
Oh shit, they might be trying some shit against us.
They might be trying to tank our economy.
They might be trying to like undermine us, send spies, something like that.
They're laying the groundwork for the justification to do that.
Maybe that was a bad idea.
Maybe it wasn't a good idea to use that lie just for pure political purposes.
And then also, if Putin has always wanted to invade and expand, so I guess why would he have run this disinformation to keep Trump in office?
If I guess he would have preferred Biden, like for some reason, he decided to do this thing that he always wanted to do under Biden, right?
October Surprise Lies00:02:35
It's got nothing to do with NATO.
He always wanted to expand.
And for some reason, he didn't want to do it under Trump, but he feels comfortable doing it in this situation.
So why would he have done disinformation?
That's a good point.
You know, it almost seems like maybe what's actually going on here is that Putin felt more threatened by the Biden administration because they had been a part of this coup in 2014 and because they were more of like the fucking, you know, whatever.
But it's a it's a good point that it's like, why would it be if his goal was to expand and his goal was to elect Trump, why is it that when Trump gets in, actually NATO expands and actually Ukraine gets the weapons that Obama wouldn't even send in, even though he fucking, you know, greenlighted the coup.
Even Obama wouldn't send these weapons in.
And then the answer here is that this was all complete bullshit.
It was complete propaganda.
And then Donald Trump, of course, because he's not a great leader or even a good leader, he, to overcompensate for this, goes, I'll prove how much I'm not a Russian, you know, asset.
And I'll fucking send all these weapons into Ukraine.
And he ends up caving and doing all of it, even though he ran on detente with Russia and working out a deal with them and all of that.
And then Biden comes back in.
And now, yeah, Putin does just go for it.
Now, again, that's not just to be clear.
That's not absolving Putin of responsibility.
That's not excusing Putin.
That's not defending Putin, but it is explaining the current situation.
And why the fuck should we, not just as libertarians, but just as like free men who are clear thinking adults, why should we not be allowed to talk about this?
We're really not supposed to talk about the fact that there was this huge, you know, as you talk about October surprise, this huge, one of the biggest ones of all time, right?
There was this huge October surprise and it was completely censored off social media.
And then in just complete bullshit lying propaganda blamed on the Russians that can't enter the conversation.
Fucking, I don't know.
It just seems pretty ridiculous to me.
What were the other big October surprises in history that are bigger than this?
Abe Lincoln keeps dicks in his hats.
Oh, the dicks in the hats was huge for Abe Lincoln.
They got him re-elected.
It was huge in his thing.
Censored October Surprises00:00:55
Like at that time, Rob, you have to understand the culture of the mid-1800s.
Dicks in your hat was like, that was a rich man.
Oh, you can afford dicks in your hat.
Dicks in your hat, Abe.
All right.
That's our, that's our show for today.
Thank you to all you guys for checking it out.
Go check out Run Your Mouth.
I will be at the Minneapolis, at the Minnesota Libertarian Party Convention in Minneapolis.
And then I'm going to be at the Mises Caucus event in Dallas, Texas.
Rob, you got anything coming up?
Yes, I got a steamboat this weekend.
Then I got the Connecticut thing.
I got to get these dates together.
Some point on Jersey.
And that's about it.
There you go.
All right.
We're going to put together a lot more stuff.
Me and Rob will be on the road in the second half of the year, big.