Dave Smith and Robbie the Fire Bernstein critique President Biden's reckless moral outrage toward Vladimir Putin, arguing it risks misinterpretation as a call for regime change while ignoring US involvement in Iraq and Libya. They condemn corporate media hypocrisy regarding these remarks and pivot to supporting Florida Governor Ron DeSantis's bill restricting sexual identity instruction for K-3 students. Smith attacks Disney's hypocritical campaign to repeal the law, noting their silence on Uyghur oppression in China, ultimately asserting that parents must decide early childhood education content while boycotting corporations acting as selective moral arbiters. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Rolling Back The State00:01:59
Fill her up.
You're listening to the Gas Digital Network.
We need to roll back the state.
We spy on all of our own citizens.
Our prisons are flooded with nonviolent drug offenders.
If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
You're listening to part of the problem on the Gas Digital Network.
Here's your host, Dave Smith.
What's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
I am your host, Dave Smith, and I am joined, as always, by my partner in crime, Robbie the Fire Bernstein, the king of the caulks, COVID Jesus.
What's up, my brother?
I did some shows out in Colorado, had a great time.
Meatcock showed up.
Mecox are traveling.
I like it.
Yeah.
Well, Colorado, I will tell you, is a Meekawk stronghold.
I know there's a bunch of them out there because I was just out there in Colorado for the state LP convention.
And yeah, we run that place.
No, they show up, they party, and they shame other people into laughing at shit they don't want to laugh at.
So I appreciate them showing up for the gigs.
That's the most important.
Just imagine you're just at a comedy show and some meat cawks over your back.
Like, you think that was funny?
That's the king of the caulks.
You laugh, motherfucker.
There you go.
Well, very good.
Well, it's good to talk to you, Rob.
And by the way, again, gotten a great response off of our last episode where we had Colonel Douglas McGregor on the show.
So a lot of people were excited about that.
We were very excited to have him on.
Hope to have him on again in the future.
By the way, how random is this?
I'm wearing my Libertarian Party of Colorado hoodie.
It's got Murray Rothbard on the back, but I can't really turn around given my studio restrictions.
Official Policy vs Fantasy00:12:14
But yeah, so there you go.
Colorado's great.
Retired Colonel Douglas McGregor is great.
And now, you know, right after the Colonel, it's me and you, Rob.
So, oh, there you go.
We'll try.
We'll try to live up to the expectations.
All right.
So what I thought we almost had to talk about for most of today's episode was Will Smith slapping Chris Rock.
How could you not?
It's the most important thing in the world.
And everyone's talking about it.
No, I'm kidding.
I've already talked about this on my other two podcasts.
I talked about this on UMMA rap and on Legion of Skanks the other day.
But what got not quite as much attention didn't go quite as viral.
And I am fully willing to grant was not quite as entertaining.
Oops, sorry, I didn't mean to shake my camera there.
What was not quite as entertaining was slightly more newsworthy, which is that Joe Biden has said now that Joe Biden, are you familiar, Rob?
He's the guy who mumbles on TV.
That is true.
Yes, same guy, but he is also the president of these here, United States.
There's a group of states that have been united.
They call themselves America.
And they are the most powerful military force in the history of the world by a pretty wide margin.
And Joe Biden, this guy is the commander in chief of said military.
And representative of China.
You shouldn't forget about that.
That's true.
It's all in the Hunter Biden emails.
They've been fought.
That is true.
He's a big representative of, you know, China and maybe more importantly, this conversation, Ukraine.
But regardless, he said, And you almost, and this is what's amazing about Joe Biden, you almost feel with him like you have to give him some type of pass for the dumb shit he says.
You know, like if Joe Biden just blurts something out, you kind of have this attitude, even as someone who's, you know, a staunch critic of Joe Biden.
But you kind of feel like you go, you can't take what Joe Biden says seriously.
I mean, you know, I don't know, he blurted something out.
This wasn't prepared.
It was something he just said, you know?
And so he was, he was like doing almost one of those things where he's walking by and reporters were talking to him.
And he said something about how Vladimir Putin's got to go.
He can't be.
Vladimir Putin's got to get out of here.
But you almost go like, wow, look, that's not like the official policy of the United States of America or anything.
That'd be a crazy thing if that was the official policy.
It's just Joe Biden blurting things out.
But at the same time, you're like, I really hope that someone in Moscow is telling Vladimir Putin to know that.
Like, I hope they're telling him, oh, by the way, like, no one takes what Joe Biden is saying seriously.
You know what I mean?
Like, that's crazy.
Was that the, I think a reporter asked him if he would consider Putin a war criminal?
And then in passing, he said yes.
And then someone said something to him and he went back to say no.
Was that the incident?
Because he said yes, he's a war criminal.
Of course, he's a war criminal and he's got to go.
He's got to go.
It was kind of like that.
It's like, yeah, he's got to go.
Like, not that.
So, but then they made him walk back in and correct himself.
Is that the video you're talking about?
I don't, I don't know if he walked back in and corrected himself exactly.
It's hard to say whatever Joe Biden always says, but the point is, I would have let that go and not even made that a topic of a podcast.
He takes all of his mental focus to walk.
He can't also answer questions.
So you can't take what he says in stride.
However, exactly.
But after that, Joe Biden gave a speech.
And Joe Biden's speech, well, let's play the clip.
He said this: notwithstanding the brutality of Vladimir Putin, let there be no doubt that this war has already been a strategic failure for Russia already.
Having lost children myself, I know that's no solace to the people who've lost family.
But he, Putin, thought Ukrainians would roll over and not fight.
Not much of a student of history.
Ukraine will never be a victory for Russia.
For free people refused to live in a world of hopelessness and darkness.
We will have a different future, a brighter future, rooted in democracy and principles, hope and light of decency and dignity, of freedom and possibilities.
For God's sake, this man cannot remain in power.
God bless you all, and may God defend our freedom and may God protect our troops.
So, to be clear here, at this point, this is not something that Joe Biden said as a throwaway line.
This was his closing line in a major address to the country.
This man cannot stay in power.
Let's break this down a little bit because it's kind of a big deal when the president of the United States, the commander-in-chief of the most powerful military in the history of the world, says that somebody cannot stay in power.
And I know that there are Democrats who will say, well, you know, and a whole bunch of them were walking it back after that and saying, well, there's been no change in the official U.S. policy or something like that.
But by the way, you know, on the last episode, retired colonel Douglas McGregor was talking about one of the things that really like rattled him when he was in the military before he retired.
And one of the reasons why he's out there telling the American people the truth today is that he goes, you know, they were saying that the official position was not regime change in Iraq.
And he's talking about after the first Persian Gulf War and into the Clinton, you know, bombing campaigns and sanction campaigns against Saddam.
But he's like, while they're saying that, they've tried to assassinate him several times.
So they could say that's not the official position, but that is the official position.
You know, the real official position is that they were trying to take Saddam Hussein out.
And of course, eventually they did.
And it led to hundreds of thousands of people dying and the country being worse than a separate bin.
Historically, when the president said something, it became the country's official position.
These are new times that we're in.
So, you know, call us a bunch of dummies that we didn't realize that new times where the president doesn't express the official position.
Well, look, I mean, you here's the basic like test that I always, this is the old Ron Paul test, which is such a basic human thing and a basic like, I don't know, for any situation in life, this is just kind of like a fairness meter is like, well, just put the shoe on the other foot.
That's all.
Like, just, well, what if this was the other guy doing it to you?
And that is, in life in general, a great way to just kind of deduce whether someone is really sincerely arguing something from principle or they're just being kind of, I don't know, self-centered and wrong.
And, you know, like if you were like, well, you're doing this thing to someone else and you go, no, yeah, but there's nothing wrong.
There's nothing wrong with what I'm doing to this person.
You go, well, what if they did that to you?
You go, well, that'd be completely different.
That'd be wrong if they did this.
Then, okay, you're full of shit.
And so just to say, what if another country just announced that the president of the United States had to go?
And I think that, so I'll say this.
Okay.
If you, if you really hated Obama as a president, or if you really hated Trump as a president, which I got to imagine, that must cover 100% of the people listening to this, right?
Like, is there anyone listening to this show who didn't hate Obama or hate Trump?
I like to think most of the people listening had problems with both of them, but as we do.
But if you hated one of them, look, even under Obama or under Trump, who I both thought were terrible presidents, if someone, if Vladimir Putin or, you know, whoever it is, some foreign leader said that that president has to go, I've decided he must be out of power.
I think my reaction to that would be, excuse me, who the fuck do you think you are to tell us when he has to go or when he doesn't?
And by the way, I was just saying on my last podcast he has to go.
But now that you're saying he has to go, fuck you.
Like I've, you know what I mean?
Like there's it's like unbelievable to not be able to put yourself on the other side of this and go, oh yeah, no, that would be the worst thing you can say.
And then on top of that, to think that when the United States of America, whose federal government is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world, who has been known to launch a regime change war or two, when they say you have to go, that kind of means something.
That's a little bit more, that's not just me and you at the bar with a buddy of ours, Rob, who's talking shit.
That's a very powerful thing.
And you would think that the president of the United States of America would not say something like that unless this was the official policy of the government.
And for him to say that off the cuff once to a reporter and then repeat it in his speech.
If that's not the policy, this is, especially when you're talking about a country with, you know, whatever it is, many hundreds of nuclear weapons.
It is unbelievable reckless, unbelievably reckless to just kind of like throw out there.
Yeah, it's not our official policy, but our official policy, but I'm telling you, Putin has to go.
In the history of the Cold War, there was lots of harsh rhetoric.
You know, Ronald Reagan called them the evil empire.
And at one point he told Gorbachev, you know, to tear down this wall.
But he never said this guy has to be overthrown.
This guy has to go.
I don't think we ever said that about Stalin.
I don't think, you know, that's a really serious thing to say.
When there's militaries involved and a war underway and you're sending weapons into one side of that war and are very clearly on one side of that war, to just throw out your closing line in a speech is that this guy's got to go is, again, put the shoe on the other foot.
I think anyone would take that as a very provocative statement.
I think to be fair to Biden, he's talking about light.
He's talking about this great future that the Ukrainians are going to have.
He's talking about a fantasy land anyway.
So in the fantasy land of that we can just talk and things are magically better and they're going to have a remarkable future.
Putin's not going to be in that fantasy land.
So, you know, give the guy some crazy just describe.
Putting Yourself In Their Shoes00:02:53
Also, you're...
Freedom and democracy, what Ukraine stands for.
That's what they're people like.
We're going to get back to being run by neo-Nazis and companies that send money to the Bidens.
I agree wholeheartedly with your analysis, but this put it on the other foot expression kind of sucks.
Like a shoe that fits on one foot's not going to fit on another shoe might work for you.
It's not going to work on my feet.
I don't get it.
Yeah, that is a good point.
So you agree with the point, but I need a better expression.
It needs a better expression.
Put yourself in the other person's shoes, I think is what I was going for.
That's the expression.
That's the expression I was thinking for.
The shoe on the other foot probably isn't right at all.
I don't know.
I'm not great with expressions, but well, no, I do appreciate that.
You're right.
Shoe on the other foot, that is not.
Did I just come up?
Yeah, put yourself in his shoes.
Put yourself in the other person's shoes.
Put yourself in the other person's in the other person's shoes.
How would we feel if someone else was doing this to us?
I don't like other people's shoes, though.
So that's still a little weird, but it's better.
We're making improvements.
Put yourself in their shoes, but with your own socks on.
You know what I mean?
So yes.
Yeah.
Imagine you had their feet in their shoes and then walked out.
No, it's still your feet.
It's got to be your feet.
And I'm granting you your socks, but it has to be their shoes.
I'm pretty sure it has to be their shoes.
What if they're like nine sizes too big?
Like, I got smaller feet than yours.
You could have great shoes, but I'm like, this is torture.
Yeah.
All right.
That is a good point.
All right.
Listen, I'm not.
I didn't mean to derail it.
I pulled an OCD artistic moment here.
No, I actually kind of appreciate it.
I go, listen, I'm not sure my shoe lingo is perfect, but the greater point I think was on target.
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Who Should Remain In Power00:15:27
All right, let's get back into the show.
So, okay.
So, then Joe Biden is asked about this at a press conference so he can clear up what's going on.
Because after Joe Biden said that, which is so weird, is that after he says that, then his whole administration starts like walking it back.
And they're like, no, look, there's been no change in the official, you know, United States of America position.
Our position is still the same it was.
Our position is nothing of regime change or Vladimir Putin has to go.
It's like they're all like, that's just something the president says.
Like, right?
We all know he's borderline retarded, right?
That's kind of, yeah, come on.
So, that was kind of their thing for a while.
And then Joe Biden had this press conference and he had this to say.
Donald, NBC.
Thank you, Mr. President.
Did you believe what you said?
Thank you, sir.
Do you believe what you said that Putin can't remain in power?
Or do you now regret saying that because your government has been trying to walk that back?
Did your words complicate matters?
Well, yes, three different questions.
I'll answer them all.
Number one, I'm not walking anything back.
The fact of the matter is, I was expressing the moral outrage I felt toward the way Putin is dealing and the actions of this man were just brutality.
Half the children in Ukraine.
I just come from being with those families.
And so, but I want to make it clear: I wasn't then, nor am I now, articulating a policy change.
I was expressing the moral outrage that I feel, and I make no apologies for it.
Your personal feelings, sir.
Your personal feelings?
My personal feelings.
Secondly, you asked me about it.
Does it complicate the diplomacy of this moment?
No, I don't think it does.
You know, the fact is that we're in a situation where what complicates the situation at the moment is the escalatory efforts of Putin to continue and engage in carnage, the kind of behavior that makes the whole world say, my God, what is this man doing?
That complicates things a great deal.
But I don't think it complicates at all.
Is it, dude?
It is so insane that Joe Biden is the fucking president.
Like it would have been crazy for Joe Biden when he was Joe Biden to be president.
But the fact that this Joe Biden is president is just, it really is like hard.
It's hard to accept.
I mean, the way he struggles to answer basic questions and the way the way he has to close his eyes and focus, you know what I mean, to just try to get it right.
And he goes, look, he has three questions.
I'll answer all three.
And then after he gets through the first, and the reporters are carrying him, you know, they're going, you know, she's finishing his sentences for him.
You know, so it was just a personal feeling.
It was a personal feeling.
And then, um, what was the second part?
And the second part is this.
Okay, okay, okay.
And like, ooh, it is just so brutal to see him struggle through this.
But so, you know, you'd feel bad, even, you know, doing a whole segment on the guy and mocking him and talking about how dangerous what he's saying is and how much he's getting this wrong.
But the problem is, he's the fucking president.
And, you know, it's like, so this actually really matters what you say.
This, this is a crazy, reckless thing.
It's not like he's just up there saying some random, stupid shit.
And he's the senile guy saying random, stupid shit.
He's saying a foreign leader must go.
And when America says that, it usually means, holy shit, America's getting ready for a regime change, you know?
But you're saying that about someone sitting on a stockpile of nuclear weapons with delivering capability.
This is like a really fucking serious thing to say.
And it's really, it's just unbelievable to watch this.
So, no, he won't back off of it, but he's saying, oh, it was just a personal feeling.
You're the commander in chief.
You closed your major address to the nation with a personal feeling.
I'm sorry.
Some people might take that as policy, you know?
And you just think about how reckless it is.
It's like you're in this position where you hope to God that someone is advising Vladimir Putin that you can't take anything this president says seriously.
Don't worry.
The fact that that was what he closed his speech on, don't think that really means anything.
You know what I mean?
It's just, I don't know, that's just how he felt at the time.
And that's his defense.
And the press kind of at, you know, they just kind of carry him through that answer and then they accept that.
Okay.
Those were just your feelings.
You weren't saying, you know, like, imagine like, you know, what whoever it is, George W. Bush is like, Saddam Hussein must go.
And they go, oh, so are we going to war to overthrow Saddam?
He's like, no, I'm just telling you like how I feel.
I just feel like he must go.
This isn't policy or anything.
I'm just a guy.
I'm just George.
They're like, no, you're the president.
Imagine Trump or Obama or any of them.
You just can't imagine it that this would be the excuse.
This was just my personal feelings.
I don't know.
And then she asks, if this escalates things, well, you're not really giving Putin much of an out.
I mean, how do you sit down with him and negotiate or figure something out and out from this if now you've labeled him as a war criminal and someone who's done such horrible atrocities that he has to go?
Yeah, really, really.
I mean, I would have to think that escalates and complicates things.
Yeah.
So the RNC research Twitter page, whatever that is, the Republicans research page, they tweeted a thing that says Biden again says Putin, quote, shouldn't remain in power.
And then Bill Crystal, Bill Crystal, he's Scott Horton's child.
He, without permission from daddy, Scott Horton, tweeted.
He said, I guess the Republican position is that Putin should remain in power.
So you just have people like this, like Bill Crystal.
Now, again, he's just saying, oh, I guess your position is he should remain in power, just the champion of regime change war after regime change war for the last 20 years, every single one of them being a disaster.
This one having the potential to be much more of a disaster, I think, than any of those.
He just says, oh, well, if you're not for this, then you must believe that Putin should remain in power.
But of course, that's a little bit of a binary.
And there is kind of a third option there, which would be that I believe that we don't get to decide.
You know, like I believe that it's not our fucking choice who the head of the Russian government is.
How obvious is this?
That, of course, it's not a question of saying Putin should remain in power or shouldn't remain in power.
I'm saying that just like if you were to go through every country in the world, I don't really feel like I should have a say in who remains in power and who doesn't.
And, you know, all this stuff, like, you know, with Joe Biden saying, you know, all about freedom and democracy in Ukraine, obviously, I mean, anyone who knows anything about what's going on there, it's so ridiculous to say that.
But also for him to just say, well, I'm just speaking from a position of moral outrage.
It's like, oh, well, that's pretty convenient to focus your moral outrage on what's going on in Ukraine.
You know, again, there's, I know I say this every week, but there's plenty of American wars where you could focus your moral outrage.
There'd be more than enough, by that justification, there'd be more than enough justification to remove Biden or have removed Trump or have removed Obama or to have removed George W. Bush or Bill Clinton or George H.W. Bush or any president in my lifetime.
If you just want to have moral outrage about innocent people killed in an aggressive war, then sure.
Okay.
And sure, maybe there's an argument that you should remove all of them.
But if Putin started talking about how, you know, Joe Biden must be removed from power, I think our attitude would be like, oh, what the fuck are you going to do about it?
Pretty aggressive words to say.
And I don't think that, as Joe Biden described it, just expressing his personal feelings.
I don't think that in a presidential address to the nation, someone should just be, you know, throwing their personal feelings out there.
They should probably be talking about what the policy of the government is.
So anyway, what do you think the media response to this would be?
You know, if we had like an honest media, it might be kind of like, well, this is pretty reckless of the president to just throw his personal feelings out there that could easily be misinterpreted as a change in policy toward regime change in Russia.
A pretty big deal.
Something we never had through the entire Cold War.
All of a sudden, we now have with Vladimir Putin.
That's a pretty big deal.
Maybe they would say that.
Yeah.
And then you would wonder how you could possibly implement that.
I mean, what can you do that wouldn't get us into a war with Russia and switch up their leader?
How are you going to approach that?
And then how are you going to continue to, I guess, trade with other countries without them wondering, oh, are they going to just decide that I can't be in charge of my country?
Yeah.
Seems like you'd have some pretty big issues to address.
You're right.
I think if someone in the corporate media probably should address all of this.
So let's see how they handled it.
I think it was probably something like what you just said, Rob.
So here, we have our best and brightest.
Oh, no, I'm sorry.
We have Don Lamon.
Can I guess what maybe they said?
Feelings are important.
And so for a male to be able to express his feelings, wealthy, wealthy white men's feelings are very important to Don Lemon, all of the sudden right now.
Now, well, here is CNN's some of their coverage of Joe Biden announcing, again, in his closing line of his speech that Vladimir Putin must go.
Here's the response.
I'm going to say what we, my interpretation of this, as I said over the weekend, right after the president said it, being here in the region in Ukraine, the president is saying exactly what most of the world feels about Vladimir Putin.
Now, he did not in that speech say that Vladimir Putin should be removed or we're going to take him out of power.
He said this man should not remain in power.
What person in their right mind thinks that someone who okay, so pause it and bring it back a little bit for when we go back into it.
So he goes, he didn't say he should be removed from power.
He said this man shouldn't remain in power.
You know, an important, thoughtful distinction from Don Lemon there.
It's very important that you understand that he didn't say this.
That's not covering for the president.
That's just giving you objective news right there.
He didn't say we should remove this man from power.
This man shouldn't be in power.
He said, the guy can't remain in power.
It's a totally different thing.
Now, what, you know, and now he's about to go into who would think otherwise?
Let's keep playing.
What person in their right mind thinks that someone who bombs innocent people, children, a country that is an unprovoked war, should remain in power?
Now, Brooke, if you said on the other side of that, so I think that.
Hold on.
Here is where we go with this.
Again, as Scott Horton has said before, you go, we don't need a double standard here.
One standard will do just fine.
Okay.
So if that's what you're saying, who in their right mind would think that people who bomb innocent people, women and children in an unprovoked war should remain in power?
Who in their right mind would feel that way?
Okay, fine.
I'll agree with you on that.
No one who does that should remain in power.
But understand that that's going to eliminate a lot of people from power, including every American president in my life.
So again, if you want to lay down these standards, then fine.
I'm okay with these standards, but they have to be applied universally in the same way that if someone, you know, like, again, nations of people are a big group of people, you know?
But the same standards that should be applied to them should be applied to a slightly smaller group or a slightly smaller group or down to the individual.
Like this, if we're talking about how, because he's obviously making a moral claim here, you know, the claim is who in their right mind would feel this way.
So if you were at a bar, you know, with somebody and they were like, hey, this guy just started a fight.
He literally just went up to someone who didn't say anything to him and just punched him in the face.
Who in their right mind thinks this guy shouldn't be kicked out of the bar?
That's reasonable.
But if the guy saying that has punched 17 people in the face who didn't say anything to them, you might go, well, you know, okay, fine.
But then you should really be kicked out of this bar many times over.
So I'm actually fine with that standard.
I completely agree with that standard.
Who, if anybody bombs innocent people, who in their right mind would think they should remain in power?
But that also means our government, right?
And I think that if a foreign leader said that there's no way we have to make sure, or there's no way that, you know, the American president should stay in power, I think we would take that as like, whoa, that's not an appropriate thing for a foreign government, someone in charge of a military to say.
Vaping And Creative Fiction00:03:29
And I also think that as I mentioned before, as much as I hate presidents, that would kind of push me toward being like, hey, you have no say in this.
You have no say.
Person who lives in Moscow, you have no say over who is in charge of the United States of America.
And I wonder if maybe they'd feel the same way.
I'm enjoying that CNN is literally my jokes, that he started off by talking about his feelings.
He's addressing his feelings and he's saying what should be, that he's just describing the fantasy world that we would all agree with.
Yes, if you want to describe some fantasy world where everyone's tall, looks good, and is wealthy, then sure, I guess we'll all agree with you on what the world should be, but that's not what you do.
Like, this is nonsense.
I guess, yes, if the president goes out and he's a creative fiction writer where he's supposed to write about the utopia that the world should be, and now you're getting the back of a guy who is describing his feelings and his fictional works about what it should be.
Well, how about a convert?
I thought the guy is creating solutions for how we fix things.
And then you're letting us know if what he's doing makes sense.
Like, no, you see what I'm saying?
Like, you're both living in fantasy land here of he's going, he's defending what the president did by going, the man is allowed to talk about his feelings in the fantasy world that we should live in.
Yeah, that's it.
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Precise Language Matters00:15:01
All right, let's keep playing.
Unprovoked war should remain in power.
Now, if he had said on the other side of that, so I think that we should do something to take him out of office, that would be a different thing.
General Hertling on our air that evening said the same thing.
Quite honestly, I think this is a media-manufactured story.
And the media, it's in the media's interpretation.
Being here on Sunday and or Saturday and being in a place that was bombed by people who are under attack and under constant assault, I might have a different experience.
Every single person I've spoken to in this region feels the way that Joe Biden feels, that the president of the United States feels.
The mayor of Lviv, when I interviewed him last week, said Vladimir Putin equals Hitler.
The Russian people who agree with this are the Russian soldiers equal Nazis.
Only Nazis would do this.
Those aren't my words.
That's a leader here in Ukraine.
So we have to understand the moment that we're in now.
And I think we should ease off a little bit because that's not what the president said.
He did not say regime change.
I think that was the interpretation.
Again, the generals we had on our air, people who are familiar with foreign policy, perhaps the president should be a little more precise with his language.
I will give him that.
But I think to blow this out of proportion, to say that, you know, the president was doing some sort of thing about making a regime change, I just think it's out of proportion to what is going on.
We're in the middle of a war and by a man who is killing innocent people.
And to one, who would think that he should be in power at this moment?
So I think that we have to take a step back.
All right, so we'll oppose that.
I mean, look, we're in the middle of a war.
Innocent people are dying.
Who would expect the president to be precise in his language?
Who could honestly expect that?
Thank you, Don Lemon, for that very important piece of journal.
I mean, if it's not just so obvious to you that the corporate press is here to carry this geriatric skeleton over the finish line, that's it.
I mean, innocent people are dying in a war for the first time, by the way.
This has never happened before.
And so, of course, it's completely reasonable for Joe Biden to close his speech with the line that this guy cannot remain in power.
Now, a lot of people are blowing.
It's a media construct, Rob, to say that this was a big deal.
Well, I'm construct, I think you could pretty easily flip it to say it's important that we're on the brink of nuclear war.
We have a president who can be precise with his language.
Well, I mean, that's very utopian of you, Rob, to think that we might be able to find a leader who can be precise with his language.
That's mostly the guy's job is just talking.
That's most of your job.
So, you would think that you could just be precise with what you're going to do.
That's all you're supposed to do.
It's not like you're actually in the rooms doing it.
You're just gonna in theory, I agree with you, but I mean, in practice, Rob, come on.
I mean, the idea we're going to be precise with our language in the middle of a war when people are dying.
Unlike any of the any of any of the U.S.-led wars in this war, people are dying.
You know, it really is something, really is something to watch.
That is, but that is their response to it.
But the thing is that this isn't a game, it's not a joke.
It's like, yeah, this is your again, as I've been saying for weeks now.
The goal here, if anyone had any type of leadership ability or cared about anything that matters, like any basic, like if you actually cared about people dying, the important thing here would be to find some type of resolution to this war.
And that doesn't mean America gets to pick who the leader in Russia is.
That means that you go, well, look, Vladimir Putin is the fucking leader of the Russian government, and therefore we got to find a way to work with him and talk to him and try to find a way to minimize the bloodshed.
That's the adult response to this situation.
And to just sit there and say that, you know, well, I mean, he's just expressing what normal person wouldn't want Vladimir Putin gone.
It's like, yeah, okay, sure.
I'd want Vladimir Putin gone.
And I'd want a way better, more peaceful person to come in after him.
Is there any guarantee that would happen?
No, not at all.
Especially if the fucking president of the United States was insisting he's gone and then that results in him being gone.
And by the way, I'd also like the president of the United States to be gone and a way more peaceful person to come in for him.
But that ain't the world we live in right now.
So right now, what you should be trying to do is have a major effort toward diplomacy.
And instead, you're announcing that the other guy must go because, quote, he's a war criminal.
The nerve, the nerve, Joe Biden.
The nerve as you are sitting here presiding over the biggest military in the history of the world.
The nerve as you were the vice president who was there and maybe was on the right side of some of these conflicts after being one of the biggest champions of the war in Iraq.
So if we're really going to hold people accountable, Joe Biden not only voted for the war in Iraq, not only championed the war in Iraq, but shamed members of the Senate who wouldn't support it into supporting it.
And then was the vice president in an administration that started wars in Libya, in Somalia, in Pakistan, in Yemen, which has led to the worst humanitarian crisis in the world, which is still going on, which he promised to end, which he has not ended.
Don't give me the shit about innocent people dying and therefore I'm so emotional that you must be removed.
Sorry, Joe Biden.
You've lost that card.
And I'm not going to complain like some Fox News host about how you botched, you know, you botched the Afghanistan withdrawal.
Fuck that.
Good for you for getting out of Afghanistan.
But how about all these other wars that you're complicit in?
Where, you know, believe it or not, in every single one of them, innocent people have died.
So that's, you know, to see Don Lemon just sticking up from, I mean, so clearly, just carrying water.
Well, I think we have to really be easy on the president.
We can't treat him as an adult who's speaking on behalf of government policy here.
We have to just look at him as a person who's emotionally reacting to the situation.
Okay.
No, I actually think we can have slightly higher standards.
All right.
So in the time we have left in the episode, I guess we could talk a little bit about there was a clip that was going viral today back here in domestic news.
Ron DeSantis, he is the governor in Florida.
Rob, you're familiar with the state of Florida.
It's one of these awful, terrible states.
Obviously, we have to fight wars on behalf of places like Ukraine because we care so much in freedom.
We care so much about freedom and democracy.
But here in America, we have this one state that's had a little bit of freedom and that's a problem.
So we got to deal with them.
Sure, they did not, you know, deem half of their population non-essential and mandate that they change their entire way of life for very long.
For a little bit, they did.
But there has been, if you're paying attention to the corporate press, the most tyrannical thing that's happened in America in the last two years.
No, it's not the lockdowns.
No, it's not mandates that insist that people lose their livelihood if they don't consume a pharmaceutical product.
No, it's not turning people into second-class citizens who can't go to a sporting event or eat at a restaurant unless they consumed said pharmaceutical product.
It is that people can't say the word gay.
This is if you watch the Oscars, if you watch the Oscars, most of us just saw Will Smith slap Chris Rock, but if you watch the whole thing, they really stood up for freedom.
They yelled gay a bunch of times.
Those three, there were three overweight ladies who were the hosts, evidently.
And they said, hey, for the people in Florida, gay, gay, gay, gay.
And they really, that made a big difference.
So the most tyrannical policy in America is that in Florida, you're no longer allowed to say the word gay.
They passed the don't say gay bill.
Except really what the bill was about was not teaching children like seven and under about transgenderism and gay lifestyles.
That seems from what I've been able to read about it, that seems to be what the bill was about.
Now, this, what's funny about this is this, to me, seems to be like there's kind of this dynamic in America where there will be conservative conceits.
Like the conservatives will basically retreat on the cultural issues that they care about.
And as they retreat, the progressives call them Nazis.
Like as they go like, okay, okay, well, we can't have what we used to want, but how about this?
And they go, that's insane that you want that.
So it's not even like the conservatives are saying what they used to say when I was a kid, which is just that sex ed shouldn't be a thing, that shouldn't be taught in schools, and that parents should teach children about these other, you know, sexual things in life and that at school they should just learn about like reading, writing, and arithmetic and stuff like that.
You just put your wiener in places and you figure out, you know, what's an electrical socket and what's a dude's asshole that will give you AIDS and what's a vagina and feels right.
And it's different for everyone, but just go out there.
That's always been your position, Rob.
Yeah, you gotta, you gotta figure it out for yourself.
But conservatives are no longer saying that.
That used to be their position.
Now they're like, look, you can indoctrinate my kid.
Just don't do it till they're eight, you know?
And I, anyway, this has been a big controversy to me.
Just looking at the bill, it seemed pretty reasonable to me that, like, yeah, I don't think third grade or below should be taught any of this shit.
So, fine, I have no problem with this.
I also, from the libertarian position, you know, some people will put this out there like it's a free speech issue or something like that.
I go, I don't think anything that public schools are teaching kids is a free speech issue.
I don't think public schools should exist, but as long as they do, I have no problem having a preference with what they teach kids.
I think that if they teach kids that liberty is great and tyranny is horrible, that is preferable to teaching kids that tyranny is great and liberty is horrible.
So, I have no problem having a preference, you know, with what kids are taught in public schools.
And I think it's completely reasonable to say that little kids, let's just not teach them any of it.
I'm not saying let's teach them like that gay is, you know, gays are horrible.
Just let's not teach them anything.
Let's not let's just let them be little kids.
That to me seems reasonable, but of course, to the corporate press, this is a great violation of a kindergartner's right to learn about their true gender identity.
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All right, let's get back on the show.
Okay, so here, Ron DeSantis had a press conference, and this clip has gone viral.
So, let's play this and we could discuss and then wrap up the show.
In relation to some of the one of the things I saw yesterday, you know, we signed the parents' rights in education bill.
It's interesting when like a Disney-owned ABC would put that out on tweet.
They'd say, Governor DeSantis signs a bill to prohibit instruction in sexual identity and gender identity in some grades.
Why would they say some grades instead of K through three?
Well, suppose I saw that tweet, and I'll tell you, they did say that they said prohibits it in some grades.
That was exactly what ABC tweeted.
They prohibit talking about this stuff in some grades, and the grades are K through three.
Very interesting that it seems so dishonest to say that as if some grades, like, you know, I don't know, it was seventh, ninth, and 12th grades, some grades.
No, no, no, it was K through three.
And if you understand, kindergarten is five-year-olds, first grade is six-year-olds, second grade is seven-year-olds.
These are little kids that you're talking about, like, yeah, maybe it's not appropriate to start teaching them about anything to do with sexuality.
Did They Cross The Line00:09:28
Does anyone is anyone seriously going to tell me that that's not completely reasonable?
Okay.
Anyway, let's keep playing.
It's just amazing if you're trying to inform the, so you saw a lot of this, but then for Disney to come out and put a statement and say that the bill should have never passed and that they are going to actively work to repeal it.
I think one was fundamentally dishonest, but two, I think that crossed the line.
This state is governed by the interests of the people of the state of Florida.
It is not based on the demands of California corporate executives.
They do not run this state.
They do not control this state.
I also thought it was interesting.
I talked to the speaker of the house yesterday afternoon, and he said Disney never called them while they were putting this through the house.
They didn't seem to have a problem with it when it was going through.
If this was such an affront, why weren't they speaking up at the outset?
And yet they won't.
And then for them to say they're going to actively work to repeal substantive protections for parents as a company that is supposedly marketing its services to parents with young children.
I think they crossed the line.
And, you know, people asked me, you know, kind of about their posture on the bill.
I said, you know what?
If we would have put in the bill that you were not allowed to have curriculum that discussed the oppression of the Uyghurs in China, Disney would have endorsed that in a second.
And that's the hypocrisy of this.
And, you know, we're going to make sure we're fighting back when people are threatening our parents and threatening our kids.
Okay, so let's pause it right there.
And we could, we could wrap.
That's fine.
So yeah, he goes off on some dumb right-winger shit about how if they had put in the oppression of the Uyghurs or whatever, because we have to focus on how awful China is to the Uyghurs.
And by the way, I don't really think that needs to be taught to fucking kindergartners either, because that's, you know, I think they can wait for the- They can wait for the right-wing war propaganda until they're a little bit older.
But it is something that's pretty interesting.
And the reason why I thought this was interesting is not because I agree with everything Ron DeSantos says.
I don't.
And in fact, of course, he has to go in this right-wing fucking anti-China direction, which I think is silly.
We can get into that in another episode.
But I do think that's silly and not anything that needs to be taught either.
But it's funny that, you know, hearing Joe Biden, you know, talk about freedom and democracy, right?
Like this is why we need to care so much about the conflict in Ukraine.
And yet, in a state like Florida, where objectively over the last two years, they've enjoyed more freedom than almost any other state in the country, basic freedoms, you know, freedom by anyone, any normal person's definition.
Floridians have enjoyed more of it.
This is why so many people, even like progressive people, are moving to fucking Florida.
Even progressive comedians like Bill Maher is doing his special in Florida because you can still do a special there and not have to worry about like whether the government will force you to have a mask mandate or limit capacity or something like that.
And so we love freedom, but not Florida.
And we love democracy.
But at the same time, if there's a bill here that's been passed by the elected representatives, and by the way, I do love freedom.
Mixed feelings on democracy.
But then you could have some giant corporation come in and say, oh, we don't like this bill that was just passed.
And there won't be an outcry of this from the left.
That's what's kind of interesting here.
It's just because they're imposing their cultural values on this part of the country that they view as less than them, and therefore it's okay.
But really, when you think about it, it's not even look, they're not even saying like that you can't talk to kids about whatever being you know, uh, being gay or being transgender or anything like that.
What the bill is saying is not in some grades, they're saying just not before third grade, just not when they're six, not when they're seven.
That's too like you don't need to start indoctrinating uh kids into your beliefs about sexuality at such a young age.
I'm sorry, but I won't back off of this.
I that to me is not only is that reasonable, I think it's insane to be against that.
Anything else, Rob?
Well, I agree on all of it, except I thought the Uyghur thing, he's just kind of pointing out the uh you know, you guys don't care about morality.
Look at you guys like because they've made accommodations for China directly in regards to like the Uyghur concentration camps.
I think it was uh who they casted in movies, or I think they even there was like a story where they even like rented that area in order to film something.
So, I specifically on that, I think he's just pointing out like, quit pretending like you guys are some you know, beacon of morality, you guys are supportive of what's going on over there, and then well, yeah, and that could just be said for the way China treats all its people.
Forget even like to go with the whole like if there's like this great like Uyghur oppression or not, just the fact that it's like you guys like you guys will support regimes, you guys act like you're a big corporation who will do business with China and Saudi Arabia.
Stop acting like you care so much about whether people are oppressed or not, you know.
And again, this is, I've said this for a while now.
Fuck, goddamn, Big Jay had the funniest fucking joke about this on the Legion of Skanks, but I can't remember it.
But it was really funny the way he did it.
I got a plug on a laptop and I'm listening.
Okay, but you know, well, we're about to wrap up in a sec, but you know, but he just making the point that it's like, I'm not going to give these big corporations credit for you know flying a rainbow flag or you know, having these like strong woke positions over here, you know.
Okay, you want to have these positions?
You want to say, like, oh my God, it's so horrible.
It's so awful to not treat fucking, you know, it's so horrible to not let five and six-year-olds learn about gender identity.
That's your position.
We must teach gender identity to five and six-year-olds.
We must teach five and six-year-olds about like uh, you know, homosexuality.
That's your position, big corporation.
Okay, fine.
I'm not giving you any credit for that.
Go take that position in Saudi Arabia because all these corporations are there: Coca-Cola and Disney and McDonald's and all of them.
They're all in those countries.
Go take that position in these fucking countries.
Oh, but you won't do that.
That's interesting.
No one's going to Qatar, to Abu Dhabi, and saying, Hey, you know, United Arab Emirates, we really just decided that children need to be taught about homosexuality.
We've just decided that gay rights is a big issue.
Oh, oh, no, that's not an issue over there.
So, basically, you're just playing the market in every market that you're in.
Fine, I'm not against that, but let's be real about what's going on here.
You're not the moral arbiters of what's happening here.
This is just like complete.
So that's where I go.
Like, good for Ron DeSantis for saying, like, no, fuck you guys and calling them out.
You know, and so that's that's more or less my feeling on it.
I think we all got to start boycotting woke companies.
Just force them to go back, punish them, force them to go back to make a good product and sell your product.
That's it.
There's no reason for you to be involved in anything else.
And if you are, I mean, I already didn't want to go to Disney, but like, I, you know, this kind of shit makes me think twice about stuff.
You're like, fuck you.
The hell are you guys doing?
You're supposed to be a corporation.
Why are you using the leverage of your business to try and enforce like that?
And with zero clarity.
Yeah.
And with zero clarity.
It's like, what specifically taught in these schools that like, if I was sitting down with this Disney CEO right now, what specifically was being taught in these schools that you think kids are going to be worse off?
Like, what lesson are they missing?
Is it just, I'm not even exaggerating the ABC like tweet was something that they go, they go, Governor DeSantis passes the controversial, quote, don't say gay bill, you know, banning certain topics, certain topics taught in some grades.
That's literally how they present it.
So if you don't know what's going on, then you'd go, wait a minute, you can't say gay in some grades, but that's not the bill at all.
It's just a parents' rights bill.
It's just saying that, like, look, parents don't want their kids taught this shit when they're very little kids.
Parents Rights Bill Explained00:00:52
And that's, I think, completely reasonable.
So anyway, all right.
That's the show for today.
Thank you guys for listening.
And we'll catch you next time on a brand new episode.
And Rob, where can people find you?
All sorts of places.
Run your mouth.
Follow me on social robby the fire.
And then I got some upcoming gigs.
April 11th, opening for the Soho Forum.
And then I've got gigs coming up in Connecticut and Boston for the Mises folks.
There you go.
I got this weekend.
I'll be out in Minneapolis at the Libertarian Party of Minnesota's state convention.
And then the weekend after that, I'm doing a Mises Caucus gig out in Dallas, Texas.
So check me out there.
I'll be at Reno at the national convention where we're going to be having a real celebration.