Dave Smith reflects on his Dallas Mises Caucus appearance and clarifies false claims by Joe Jorgensen regarding his past views on voluntary intoxication. He critiques CNN's Brian Stelter for evading a student's direct questions about fake news coverage of Russian collusion and the Smollett hoax. The discussion further analyzes acquittals in the Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping plot and a January 6th case, arguing that FBI entrapment and selective prosecution manufacture domestic terrorism narratives to silence political opponents while allowing illegal government actions to go unpunished. Ultimately, Smith suggests these systemic failures erode public trust and highlights his upcoming comedy tour as a response to such negativity. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Government Too Big00:14:30
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 Gash 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 the king of the caucs, Robbie the Fire Bernstein.
COVID, Jesus.
What's up, my brother?
Nothing much.
How was the weekend out in Texas?
Oh, it was great, dude.
Just great.
Like all these things always are.
We had the, it was a Mises caucus event out in Dallas there.
And it was, yeah, it was sold out.
Scott Horton spoke.
Clint Russell from Liberty Lockdown spoke.
Eric Jai came out.
He gave a speech.
And then I gave a speech at the end of the night.
And it was just fantastic.
Just met a bunch of a ton of really great people.
I also did Glenn Beck's show during the day.
Yeah, which was very cool.
I really enjoyed it.
I thought it went great.
And I thought he was really great.
You know, I didn't know exactly.
Like, I know Glenn Beck from back in the day on Fox.
And like, I'll see his stuff every now and then, but I didn't know exactly where he was at.
But I was really, he said at one point during the interview, like how wrong he was for supporting the war in Iraq and the Patriot Act.
And I was like, I thought that was really cool.
And it wasn't like I twisted his arm to get him to say it.
He just kind of offered it up.
And yeah, I really enjoyed it.
I did another show there too with Stu, the show Stu Does America, which I guess is Glenn Beck's radio show co-host there.
And that went great too.
So I really enjoyed it.
And then, of course, I had a great time at night at the Mises Caucus event.
Tons of great people.
I always just love going to those things.
And I was able to stop by the Texas LP State Convention a bit too, and met up with Spike Cohen for a little bit, who I always enjoy hanging out with.
So it was just a great time overall.
And the only thing is I flew, I had like a 6 a.m. flight out there.
And so I was up since like three in the morning.
And then by the time the event was over, I was like taking some pictures and saying hi to people.
And it just like hit me like a wave of exhaustion.
So I do apologize to people if they were out after the show.
If I seemed like I was out on my feet or if I didn't hang out for that long, I apologize.
I was just the exhaustion really started to hit me at that point.
Even as someone with a baby who cross trains for being sleep deprived, that was a long stretch.
I was ready to crash.
But great time.
And yeah, that was it.
That was the last like state convention event until Reno, the big one, the national convention.
And it's just been really great.
I've really enjoyed going around the country to all these libertarian state party conventions and met a ton of great people and just everyone's super cool.
It is nothing but positive like interactions and experiences.
And it's interesting because like, you know, on libertarian like Twitter or social media, it's all known for like, you know, the crazy mudslinging and fighting.
But at all of these events, every interaction has been nothing but cool.
So that's, it's, it's a good kind of reminder that social media is not exactly real life.
And for Reno, we're doing it big.
We have rented a small little maybe theater.
I don't know what you call it.
Whatever.
We got a place with seats and you guys can show up.
We've got a stand-up show going on followed by a live podcast.
It's going to be a good time.
Yeah, that's right.
the Thursday before Reno, me and Robbie the Fire Barnes team will both be doing long stand-up sets and then we'll be doing a live part of the problem podcast out there.
So if you're coming out to Reno, make sure, you know, for the national convention and, you know, book your tickets and hotels and all that stuff, make sure you're out there for Thursday night so you can come on out and have a good time.
We'll post the ticket links there in the description.
I just want to be fair because I lied and I try to be honest to the fans.
We don't actually have seats yet.
We will have seats.
There will be seats.
I'm in negotiations with people for chairs.
We got a chair guy.
Don't worry.
There'll be seats.
There will be seats, but currently we just have a place.
As of right now, it'll be standing room, but we will.
By the time you get there, there will be seats.
That's my guarantee to you.
We will find seats.
I got a couple seat guys.
They're competing for prices right now for our seats.
Let us know after the show what you thought of the comedy and also let us know what you thought of the seats, whether we should use this seat guy again or not.
I'm not sure.
Okay.
Anyway, so there are a few things that were on my mind that I wanted to talk about on the show and a few things on Rob's mind that he brought that we were going to talk about.
But I did, I thought I would open the show by first addressing something that happened the other day.
I honestly, I was just not going to talk about this.
I just thought it was so ridiculous that I would just kind of let it go.
But a lot of people have been requesting that I do.
And we got claims on how to get laid.
We got to get into this.
Yeah, evidently.
That's evidently what I don't know.
I can share my strategy with you.
Well, look, so eventually enough people were like, hey, you really should say something about this.
And a lot of my friends were like really furious.
I was not.
And I'm still not.
But I kind of understand that.
I get more angry usually when people attack friends of mine or kind of like people who I really look up to than I do when people go after me.
So I can understand why some other people were a little bit upset.
But anyway, so basically what happened was Joe Jorgensen, who's, of course, was the LP nominee for president in 2020.
She was on a show, a very big show.
The name of the channel is Valutainment.
And it's this guy, Patrick Bett David, who's very, very popular.
I mean, they have like, you know, millions of subscribers.
And he's a really interesting guy.
He's interviewed like everybody.
Like he has like really good interviews with, he had an interview with Kobe Bryant that I thought was really interesting.
And he's had an interview with Ron Paul that was great.
He's interviewed.
He just had Francis Nganu on the show.
Like he just interviews a bunch of really interesting, cool people.
But anyway, so Joe Jorgensen was asked about me and she had some things to say.
And look, I just, I guess there were enough people who were like, you really like got to address this on the next podcast.
And it is like, okay, at first I was like, ah, this isn't even worth talking about.
But you think of it, you're like, okay, this is the last presidential nominee in the Libertarian Party.
And she is talking about me on a platform with millions of subscribers.
So I guess that does warrant a response.
And what's a little bit strange about it is that I've been going to these LP conventions around the country.
And I've been at a bunch of them with Joe Jorgensen.
In fact, several different events.
We were the two keynote speakers.
And then I was on a panel with her like a few days before this show happened.
And so, you know, she never raised any of these concerns with me, but she did feel the need to, what, you know, I don't know, just lie, make up things that I've said that I've never said.
So anyway, go ahead.
Just to give a little context to this, though, it was three hours into saying all sorts of nonsensical things.
So it came from a whole series of nonsense and, you know, showcasing a mount of being uninformed and, you know, the joke that this party was before we stepped into it to make sure that we get better representation.
Well, Lizard, I mean, she does have a bad habit of saying ridiculous things.
So anyway, let's, I guess, play the clip and then we could respond.
And I will tell you what I actually said that she is talking about.
And then we can see if this is a fair representation of that.
So, okay, let's let's let's play.
About to get a caller in.
Two things before we wrap up.
Do you have an opinion on Dave Smith?
Well, do I have?
Yes.
Is it a good one?
Is it a bad one?
What's your perspective on him?
Because he's getting a lot of younger people to pay attention to him.
Yeah.
It's, I mean, like everything else, some good, some bad.
How different are you and him?
What differences do you guys have?
Philosophically, not much.
Okay.
I mean, well, actually, I don't want to say that.
I mean, no, let me take that back.
When it comes to like healthcare, no, no difference, I'm sure.
Although I haven't heard him speak directly to healthcare.
Education, probably not much choice.
Okay, so let's just pause it right here.
This is almost why I didn't, this is why, look, I understand why other people who are like friends of mine or, you know, who are followers or supporters of mine, I understand why they're angry over what she's about to say here.
But the reason why I just kind of wasn't is honestly watching this, I kind of felt bad.
I just felt bad for the position she's in.
And you can already see that she's like, kind of doesn't know what to say.
And at first, she's like, I have an opinion.
I'd rather not give my answer.
And then he's like, well, what's your opinion?
And then she's like, some good, some bad.
And he's like, okay, well, what is good and what's bad?
Like, I mean, he's being reasonable, asking reasonable questions.
And then she's like, well, I mean, we're, we're the same philosophically.
And then she realizes she said that.
And she's like, oh, no, I don't want to say we're the same.
Because basically, she has, I think, people around her.
As you could imagine from, look, all of the things that Joe Jorgensen's tweeted or said that, you know, got her in a whole bunch of trouble with libertarians.
She wasn't saying that.
It was people around her.
So those people around her, imagine how they feel about me.
Probably not the biggest fans, right?
So after she says, oh, we're pretty much the same philosophically, she's like, oh, shit, no, that's not the right answer.
So then she's supposed to be talking about the difference.
And she goes, well, we're probably the same on healthcare, although I've never heard him talk about healthcare.
It's like, so then how do you know we're the same?
I mean, it would be completely reasonable for Joe to just be like, I don't know that much about Dave.
I've heard some not great things.
You know, like that, that'd be fine.
I couldn't complain about that.
What could I say?
All right, fine.
But so she's kind of just like, she is, she's just kind of talking out of her ass.
And whatever.
It's, it's fine.
But the next part is where she really messes up.
And she's been eating a lot of shit for this on social media, which is fair.
She should.
But anyway, so here's what she goes on to say.
Not much difference, but there are some, there are many things that he has said that I'm 100% against.
So such as?
Oh, such as if If you're a man and you want sex and you can't get it by persuasion, then you can give a woman 12 drinks and it's okay.
I don't think that's okay.
That's what he said.
That's what he said that you can give a woman 12 drinks.
He said, he said, if he gives it a strategy.
Yeah, hold on.
Just bring it back one second there, like literally just one little second here, because this is the part that she says that really bugs me.
But okay, go ahead.
Strategy specifically.
Right, right.
That's interesting.
Was that an authority?
Yeah.
Was that an authority?
So what she said there, if you catch it, was she goes, yeah, that's his strategy.
Now, okay.
Okay.
So anyway, what I kind of appreciate that Patrick there, even you could see from his reaction, he was like, he said that.
Like, that's how he said it.
You know what I mean?
Like, even it seems like, because the way she's retelling it just doesn't sound like the way anyone actually said it.
All right, guys, let's take a second and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is IP Vanish.
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All right, let's get back on the show.
So anyway, let's just play the end of this and then I'll get into what I actually said.
How did he present what you heard and you just repeated?
So it was reported to me that he said it on his podcast.
And then when people protested, he posted it and put it in writing.
And also, I disagree, you know, yeah, let's just say that's one of several.
Okay.
Okay.
So let me just ask another question before we go.
Okay, so that's it.
They start asking her other questions and stuff.
So look, I mean, again, I understand why other people are pissed off.
Responsibility on Huge Platforms00:15:29
This was wrong.
She shouldn't have said it.
And then at the end, she admits this is how it was reported to me.
It's like, Joe, if you didn't see this and you're this misinformed about what I said, like, don't, you're on a huge platform with millions of viewers.
I mean, you can't just say shit like this.
You can just, you know, there were other people who were like, this is like actually legitimate slander.
And I was like, well, look, I don't, I don't really believe in slander laws and I'm not going to get the state involved in a dispute with Joe Jorgensen over a podcast.
And also, to be completely honest, I don't think there's too much money for me to get out of that out of that lawsuit.
But so, okay.
I did not at all.
First of all, it's not my strategy.
I am a happily married man.
My strategy for having sex is to try to get my kids to sleep.
That's my strategy.
Okay.
My strategy is not this.
I also did not say that if a man wants sex, he can he can't persuade her.
He can give a woman 12 drinks and that's okay.
Like, that's not what I said at all.
I actually specifically didn't said it wasn't okay.
So, anyway, just to be clear here, what she's talking about when she says, and clearly, she's getting this all secondhand, and she's getting it from unreliable people who are probably giving her bad information.
But, Joe, for just some advice for you in the future, you should probably think about who you keep around you and who gives you bad information.
That might be helpful.
So, the parts that she kind of got right, so I know what she's talking about, is that so one of these, like one of these, like just awful, dishonest, like little libertarian pages that spend all their time, you know, hating me and the Mises caucus and other guys like that.
They found a clip of the podcast from, I believe, from 2016, maybe 2017.
And they found some random clip because this is what they do.
They go through everything I've ever said for years and years and years.
And they put up a little clip that was maybe like, I don't know, like 20 or 30 seconds long.
And it was me back in 2016 talking about.
So I was answering a fan's question.
And the question was, is drunk sex rape?
Which was like at the time, like something that crazy radical third wave feminists would claim.
And I responded to it.
And so I saw this clip that they took.
And I called Brian, our producer here, and I said, Hey, Brian, I hate to ask you to do extra work, but I need you to find this episode and where this clip was and send me like the entire context of it and not just this little 20, 30 second clip or whatever.
And he sent it to me.
And of course, the context of it made it much better.
And I was like, you know what?
I'm not like running from this.
So I posted it.
I posted, I go, here's the full context of what I said.
And basically, what I said was that, no, that drunk sex is not rape, even very drunk sex.
And I'll tell you, this was years ago.
Since then, I've gotten engaged.
I've gotten married.
I have kids.
I'm now a husband and a father of a daughter and of a little boy.
And with my perspective that I have now, looking back on it, I was completely right about what I said.
I still feel exactly the same way.
And basically, the point that I was making is that if you are an adult and you voluntarily consume alcohol and then you voluntarily consent to having sex, that that is not rape.
Now, what I said was that what I said is, even if you get a girl very, very drunk and you think she wouldn't have had sex with you before you were drunk, like you think sober, probably she wouldn't be down.
I think that's too sexy.
Right.
The two of you go out and get hammered.
And then she's like, okay, I want to have sex with you now.
I say, that's still not rape.
Now, I did say in the clip, I didn't say what Joe said.
I didn't say it was okay.
I didn't say any of that.
I said that actually I said it's, it can be a really scummy, shitty thing to do.
I'd be really disappointed with someone if I knew them.
And they did that.
I'd be like, dude, don't do that.
Don't get a chick like a little drunk if you think she wouldn't have had sex with you.
But I'm saying it's not rape.
I'm saying it's not something that the police should be involved in, throw you in chains and throw you into a cage.
That is the correct position on the issue.
Now, for Joe to take that and not only it's one twist to say that I said it was okay, which is just absolutely not true, but to say that that's my strategy.
Like, wait a minute.
So just to be clear here, like you said you disagree with me, what, that it is rape.
And so that's my strategy.
Like, are you, are you calling me a rapist?
I'm a rapist for what I was answering a question about hypothetically what I would consider a crime and not a crime.
It's not speaking about anything that I do.
But I will tell you, I think honestly, and I've seen, this has been like the kind of like deranged critics of mine, this small group of people in the Libertarian Party who evidently Joe Jorgensen has in her camp, they have really jumped onto this and they talk about it all the time as if this is some huge gotcha.
And I've argued with a few of them about it.
And I just think all of them have like no argument to make here.
Now, if you're the reality of the situation, the situation is right, that drunk hookup culture exists.
And this isn't just like something like at college campuses or something like that.
This is just like at every, in every town, in every city, in every state across the country, and in every country across the world, pretty much, there are people at bars getting drunk and then hooking up.
This happens.
Now, and even people get very, very drunk at bars and hook up with people they normally wouldn't in a situation that they normally wouldn't, but because they've had several drinks in them, they go ahead and do that.
Now, if you're going to say that that is inherently rape, you have a lot of problems on your hands.
Number one, vast, majority of those people don't consider it.
Like they don't consider a crime to have happened.
I'm talking about like the women who go out and get drunk.
Like the vast majority of them are like, oh, shit, I got so hammered last night and slept with a guy.
I wish I hadn't done that.
They still don't consider that rape because they didn't get raped.
They consented.
Now, if you're going to say that they were all rape victims, now you have a huge problem.
Now, you've just created a huge class of violent criminals, even though they don't believe a crime has happened because you decided a crime has happened.
Okay.
But okay, libertarians, what's the position there?
The police should get involved.
Seems like you're going to have a little bit of an incarceration problem here.
And hey, I wonder who will actually end up being targeted by the state police who should are supposed to be regulating this.
Another major problem that you have is that in these scenarios, all parties are involved.
All parties involved are drunk.
So is everyone raping each other?
Or is it always just that the man is the rapist?
I mean, that seems like kind of a sexist attitude to have.
Anyway, there's another problem that you have is that if you're going to say that once you get very drunk, and the example I used was, you know, to say very dry, I was like, I don't even care if you're 12 shots in.
If you're like, if you're passed out, of course, you can't consent.
If you can't speak, of course, you can't consent.
But if you're drunk, even if you're like slurring your words a little bit, I think you're still responsible for, and people slur their words after three, four drinks sometimes.
And other people don't slur their words after 10 drinks.
I don't know.
It's hard to say exactly.
Like, to me, that's not a line.
I think you're still, I think you as an adult, if you voluntarily consume alcohol, you're responsible for your actions.
Now, you know, I imagine if I, you know, could don't twist my words on this.
This is a hypothetical, but like imagine I get like, I got like blackout drunk and cheated on my wife, which I would never do.
But, you know, like I got blackout drunk and cheated or something like that.
I'm sure I could come home and say, baby, don't worry.
You can't be mad at me because, you know, I was raped.
And she'd be like, wait, someone forced you to do this?
No, I totally agreed to it at the time, but I was hammered.
So I just have no agency.
You know what I mean?
You can't hold me responsible.
I don't think that would play too well in my household.
I don't know about you guys in your relationships listening.
I venture to guess it's probably a similar situation.
But if you're really going to go down this path, I think you have a lot of other problems.
See, if you're going to say that when someone is very drunk, they can't consent because they lose agency.
Well, then there's no reason why that should only apply to consenting to sex.
I mean, if you're going to be logically consistent about this, then you should, I mean, you should lose your agency for all other things.
I mean, if you take 12 shots and get behind the wheel of a car and go kill someone, should you now not be responsible for that?
Because you never, you don't have agency to consent.
You didn't really choose to get in the car and drive it, right?
Something in the ballpark of about 50% of murders are what happened when people are drunk.
I mean, should those people not be prosecuted as murderers?
Or perhaps maybe they should be prosecuted like as children because they're in this childlike state where they can't consent.
No, I think that's bullshit.
I think if you're an adult, you're responsible for your actions.
And if you're responsible for your actions in one situation and you have agency and you, of course, you can't be held responsible for your actions unless you have agency.
So if you're responsible and you have agency, then you're also responsible and have agency in other situations.
To me, that is the only libertarian, logically consistent position.
Again, I've used other examples with this, but like if someone like orders an Uber to go home when they're hammered, well, if you're arguing they can't consent, is that Uber driver guilty of kidnapping and robbing them?
I mean, if they can't consent to the Uber ride, right?
Then someone who does something, anything that happens, any consensual agreement is now out the window.
And you see how this all, the logic of it all begins to fall apart.
So for any of these people who talk shit about this, and of course, Joe Jorgensen, like, I'm not even mad at Joe Jorgensen.
She never heard what I had to say.
It's just the thing that she did that was stupid that she shouldn't have done is don't, if you haven't heard the thing and you're on a platform with millions of people, don't just start rambling and guessing and giving the worst like interpretation of what I said.
Like even Joe Jorgensen knows.
Joe Jorgensen has now heard me give several keynote speeches at these libertarian party events.
She knows that's not what I said.
Like if she was really on a live detector test, you go, do you think that's really what Dave said?
She would fetch it.
Like she doesn't believe that.
But so it's just, it's shitty to say it on there.
But for all these people who like criticize me for saying it, not a single one of them wants to actually come debate me on this because they know I'll wreck them on this topic.
There's no other logically consistent position other than saying if you are an adult and you voluntarily consume alcohol, you're responsible for that.
And you're responsible for what your actions are after that.
And we do this with people all the time.
This is why if you get hammered and then go stab someone, guess what?
You're in trouble because that's the way life works.
And that's the way it should work across the board.
The law, of course, is, as all libertarians know, is not always what it should be.
But that's the way it should work across the board.
That doesn't mean there aren't things that are very scummy to do that are really shitty things to do.
That doesn't mean it's okay.
And no libertarian should ever equate someone saying something shouldn't be a crime to saying that something is, quote, okay, or that they do it because they don't think it should be a crime.
So I don't know.
That's basically that.
I would say that, you know, look, I've been, I've been critical of other libertarians before, but I don't do this.
I don't do what she just did.
I never do that.
And I've been critical of Joe Jorgensen.
And I never do this to her.
I never just flat out lie about what she said, just make it up when I have no idea what I'm talking about and just claim that she said like some horrific shit that she never even kind of said.
I don't.
And I also feel like, you know, when I'm on like huge platforms, you kind of feel a little bit of a responsibility to make sure, you know, especially if you're attacking someone like this, that you kind of get it right with what you say.
I remember the first time I was on Rogan's podcast, he straight up asked me, like, almost the same way she got asked here.
He asked me what I thought about Gary Johnson.
And my response to that was, I said, I like Gary Johnson.
I wish he was more like Ron Paul.
And here's why I think Ron Paul's message is like kind of better and kind of contrasted them.
But I didn't like sit there and like start just unloading on Gary Jack because it just seems like a like, I don't know.
That's not really, I'm not on a big platform to try to convince people that these other libertarians really suck.
I'm kind of on there to convince them that like libertarianism is the way to go.
And anyway, it just seems like a shitty thing.
It seems like a shitty thing to do to me, a shitty thing to do to the party.
Like, why would you even want to?
Anyway, whatever.
It was silly.
I'm not like too mad about it, but I did.
The more that people reached out to me, I was convinced that it was worth responding to to set the record straight.
So I guess that's, that'll have to be my response.
I don't know.
Anything you want to add, Rob?
I'm going to leave rape quote to you, buddy.
Anything, anything, anything you want to add that's not an inappropriate joke that will get me not really.
Not looking to incriminate myself here.
So I stand by everything you just said.
Okay.
Well, I mean, look, I mean, I think it's reasonable.
I'll just say, in addition to that, as the point I've made before, that I don't think, look, I don't think drunk hookup culture in general is great.
And I really don't think it's something young people should be doing.
You know, I think if like people like, say, at least 30 and over, you know, if you're at that point in your life, you're a full frontal cortex developed adult human being who's going to bars and hooking up with people.
Like, look, if it's all voluntary, if everybody's consenting, it's all voluntary.
Hey, like, I'm not judging.
That's, you know, that's your life.
I don't think it's a good idea for to have like crazy, you know, like college drunken hookup culture.
Vaping and Consent Issues00:02:58
I think it just leads to very bad situations.
And there is no question that there is a lot of people who like regret the drunk hookups that they've had.
But again, the standard cannot be how you feel about an event the next day to determine whether it's a crime.
And that's essentially, if you disagree with me here, that's essentially what you'd have to be arguing.
That the standard is, well, what do you feel about this the next day?
Not what actually happened in the incident.
Because you understand, right?
Like if someone's hammered and they're like, oh, I'm going to go have sex with that person.
And then they go over to them and they're like, hey, let's go back to my place.
They go back to their place, they have sex.
And then if the next day, they're like, oh, that was awesome.
Well, then obviously you're not suggesting a crime happened then, I don't think, or maybe you are.
I don't know.
But if not, then you're basically saying it depends.
But if the next day they're like, oh my God, I can't believe I did that.
Then it's a crime.
That's just, that's absurd.
That's absurd that someone has to rely on how you feel about this the next day and not whether you consented in the moment.
That's it.
And again, you know, it's like, it's kind of this slippery slope argument that like, look, I can draw like some reasonable lines.
Like I said, if obviously if you're unconscious, you can't consent.
If you, if you can't speak, you can't consent.
But any other line besides that is awfully arbitrary to judge something like rape, a heinous violent crime.
Seems like there should be pretty objective standards for that, if you ask me.
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Fake News Logic Explained00:14:09
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All right, let's get back into the show.
Okay, let's get into some other news that's not just about me.
Although I guess this was also kind of about philosophy and stuff like that.
Okay, so Brian Stelter, our favorite little piggy.
Ooh, we've got a good, a good one.
We got a good one for you guys.
Let's just get right to the clip, and I hope you like roast pork.
Thank you for coming.
My name is Christopher Phillips.
I'm a first year at the college.
My question is for Mr. Seltzer.
You've all spoken extensively about Fox News being a purveyor of disinformation, but CNN is right up there with them.
They pushed the Russian collusion hoax.
They pushed the Jussie Smollett hoax.
They smeared Justice Kavanaugh as a rapist.
And they also smeared Nick Salmon as a white supremacist.
And yes, they dismissed the Hunter Biden laptop affair as pure Russian disinformation.
With mainstream corporate journalists becoming a little more than first year student at the university, fucking nailed it.
Gotta say that was that was an excellent opening to the question with what was it, four or five really good, concrete examples of them pushing what is demonstrably fake news.
And I mean, look, it was a great point to just be like, look, you're up here.
You guys are all slamming Fox's fake news, but look at CNN.
Then there's these really good examples, very crisp, because the truth is that no one's even really arguing anything other than that.
Like at this point, right, they've all conceded the Hunter Biden laptop was real.
At this point, they've all conceded that Nick Sandman, you know, like wasn't actually a white supremacist or wasn't actually being a dick in that thing.
In fact, they settled out of court with him.
Probably, we don't know exactly, probably gave him a very handsome amount of money.
Um, the Trump-Russia collusion stuff, the like, you know, I forget what the other one that he mentioned was, but these were very good examples of like, hmm, though, yeah, the Judge Kavanaugh one, no one's really still saying that the guy sitting on the Supreme Court is a rapist.
All these charges they all fucking vanished.
Um, I mean, maybe some people still hang on to that one, um, the what was her name, Christine Ford, or something like that.
But the other ones that were out there, they've all been completely discredited.
So, yeah, this is, I gotta say, so far in this question, pretty damn good.
I'm proud of this kid.
It kind of scares me how much better the next generation of people doing this are going to be.
Because every time I see these kids or truckers in the railing, I'm like, damn, they're better at this than I am.
Yeah, we gotta, we gotta stack money now, Rob.
Yeah, we better stack up these bills.
Uh, kids in the University of Chicago, and I think he works for a Rice for the paper, so it's a little, it's a little clickbaity to go at like, because when you think college freshmen, you think of like the people, um, what's his name?
Always always debating, like these idiots from the, yeah, like you think of like these idiot freshmen in the middle of the country.
Like, University of Chicago is a really good school.
And if you're writing on the newspaper there, you're no dummy.
Agreed.
Agreed.
Okay, let's let's let's go back.
Laptop affair as pure Russian disinformation.
Uh, with mainstream corporate journalists becoming little more than uh apologists and cheerleaders for the regime, is it time to finally declare that the uh the canon of journalistic ethics is dead or no longer operative?
Uh, all the mistakes of the mainstream media and CNN in particular seem to magically all go in one direction.
Are we expected to believe that this is all just some sort of random coincidence or is there something else behind it?
Okay, let's do that.
All right, that um, that by the way, great question and a great way to end the question.
I just got to give this kid props.
Look, I don't know what uh this kid's like entire worldview is.
He's he might be like some right-winger, I might disagree with him on some issues, but that was an excellent question and a really good way to end it.
Um, because ending it at the end, making the point that, look, I mean, it all of these mistakes go in one direction.
It's not like we can point to one story in CNN in the last five years where it was like they got it completely wrong and it really favored Trump.
You know what I mean?
It's not like there's these are just mistakes being made.
This is this is uh an agenda at work here where they're willing to you know lie and push fake news.
It's just undeniably true.
And what's cool about this is that he actually it's rare that someone who says some of the stuff that we'd like to have said actually gets a chance to directly ask Brian Stelter on camera in front of a lot of people.
And this clip, of course, is going super viral.
Um, so there you go.
Very, very well done, very pinpointed, used specific examples, asked a really important question.
And here you get to see, and this is what's powerful about this moment: how can Brian Stelter deal with that?
Surely, right, you must think this guy.
I mean, look, we do what we do here on this show, but this guy gets paid fucking millions of dollars to do what he does.
Surely he has something he could say to all of this, right?
What's the other side of the argument here?
It's not just like what we say on the show all the time.
What's the, there's got to be another side of the argument here, right?
So what does Brian Stelter have to take this on?
It's too bad.
It's time for lunch.
You have 30 seconds.
I mean, there's a clock that says 30 seconds, but I think my honest answer to you, and I'll come over and talk in more detail after this, is that I think you're describing a different channel than the one that I watch.
But I understand that that is a popular right-wing narrative about CNN.
I think it's important when we talk about shared reality and democracy.
All these networks outlets have to defend.
Just look at look at the just, I mean, how transparent the tactics are.
It's like, oh, well, I think it's time for lunch.
No, but seriously, we do have 30 seconds.
There is a clock that is telling me that I have 30 seconds.
So there's a clock that's telling me I only have 30 seconds to answer this.
So I'm going to start by telling you that we only have 30 seconds and there's a clock that's telling me I only have 30 seconds.
It's literally just a transparent trick to eat up a little bit of that time, just eat up a little bit of that time.
And then to respond to this kid who asked a very, what seems to be a very thoughtful question, sincere question, with specific examples of major mistakes made by the media that his company that only seemed to go in one direction.
After all, he is the media watchdog guy.
This is his topic that he specializes in to just say, oh, well, we're just living in different realities.
And I understand that that's a popular narrative on the right wing.
To have no response at all to any of the concrete examples, but just dismiss the kid as you're living in a different world.
That's all just this right wing bullshit.
I also love the let's talk more off air because he doesn't want to be on camera having this conversation.
I'm sure he didn't try and talk the kid off air, but just to pretend like, oh, I'm the good guy.
And yeah, I understand.
So let's just talk about this off air.
Let's not do it while the cameras are here.
Yeah.
I don't have a lot of, you would think like if you had a good response to this, you'd be like, all right, like, I better, I better set the record straight.
That's quite the question you just asked.
It's funny because you could tell like in Stelter's mind that he just kind of knows it's like, oh, shit, this is the fucking thing.
I got to avoid fucking embarrassment in this moment because you don't want this on air, you know?
So anyway, this is here he goes.
He's still got the rest of his story.
Right-wing talking point.
Right-wing talking point.
Yes, of course.
Anything that proves how full of shit CNN is is a right-wing talking point.
All right, let's keep playing and see how he addresses the question, if you can.
And democracy.
And when they screw up, admit it.
But when Benjamin Hall, the Fox correspondent, was wounded in Ukraine, the news crews at CNN and the New York Times stopped what they were doing and they tried to help.
They tried to help him get out of the country.
They tried to find the dead crew members.
That's what news outlets do.
That's how they actually do work together to your question about sharing those kinds of connections and trust.
We don't talk about it enough, though.
We don't share that reality about how that happens.
And with regards to the regime, I think you mean the President Biden?
The last time I spoke with a Biden aide, we yelled at each other.
So that's the reality of the news business that people don't see, that people don't hear.
They imagine that it's a situation that simply is not.
But I think your question, it speaks to the failure of journalism to show our work and show the reality of how our profession operates.
We have a lot of work to do, I think.
Looks like he's been going to Trump's Tanner.
You know, it's like trying to get himself bright and orangey, getting himself cast in like the remake of the seven dwarves or whatever.
But I love, I mean, just everything about his fucking weasel.
Hey, we've only got 30 seconds here.
And really, hey, behind the scenes, you're not painting the picture of what goes on because really we all get along and that's not the reality.
Like, what do you think?
He's lying to us.
What does that have to do with anything that the kid asked?
He goes, well, you know, like there's one time a reporter got injured in war and then our reporters tried to help him.
What?
What the hell does that have to do with anything that this kid just asked?
It's nothing.
Nothing is going to.
And then for him to say, oh, by the regime, I'm sure you mean Joe Biden.
He goes, well, that's not exactly what people mean by the regime, but okay.
But he goes, well, the last time I talked to a Biden aid, we yelled at each other.
What?
What the hell does that mean?
It has nothing to do with any.
The kid gave you specific examples.
He's saying the thing was that you're out here saying Fox pushes fake news, but look at all the fake news that you've pushed and it all goes in one direction.
That's the fucking point the kid was making.
And your response to that is to be like, yeah, but I argued with someone in the Biden administration.
Like, okay.
Like, that I mean, I don't even know what to say about it.
It just has nothing to do.
It's neither here nor there.
It has nothing to do with anything.
I mean, what did you guys even argue about?
Probably nothing meaningful.
Probably which version of your little confined narrative that you want that each one of you believed, but that has nothing to do with what the kid asked.
So to be like, oh, we only have 30 seconds here.
Really, what Brian Stelter was like was like, well, thank God we only have 30 seconds here because I'm just going to completely dodge everything you asked me.
And 30 seconds isn't that hard to run out the clock on.
So I'll just say some shit that's completely unrelated to your question.
But this is, you know, and to end it with this vague, like, well, it's just that we're not really showing the work that goes on and we have work to do here to really, you know, it's almost like the thing is like, well, people believe this horrible shit about the media, and we really have a job on our hands here to convince them that it's not true.
But if you believe that, then take on some of the kids' criticism.
Do the work right now.
Address, like, wouldn't it be?
Look, there's really nothing Brian Stelter could say here, right?
Because the reality of the situation is just that CNN is that corrupt and is one of the biggest purveyors of misinformation while they're accusing everyone else of doing so.
Okay.
But it would at least be more powerful if Brian Stelter was like, look, the examples that you used are stories that we got wrong.
That is true.
We do get some things wrong, but we get so much other important shit right and blah, blah, blah.
And here's what we're doing.
And if you could point to something where we're correcting the record or something like that, that's the way if you want to do the work to actually convince people to have some type of trust in you, then that's what it would look like, you know?
But you don't seem interested in that.
So you just do this.
How could anyone trust you when your response to this very poignant question is to just dodge for 30 seconds?
How the fuck could anyone take you seriously?
Yeah, it's like a church going, we're just here saving people's souls.
And the reason the kids don't want to come in here is because we haven't done a good enough job explaining to them.
You're like, yeah, but we just asked you about the pedophiles here.
Does that help?
We're asking you about the people that are touched.
No, it's just not a good enough job explaining what we do here.
Yeah.
She goes, well, it'd be like, yeah, it's like, you know, there was this huge scandal where these priests were molesting kids and then you were covering up for them.
And he was like, well, I mean, look, I mean, this is like a right-wing talking point.
But the last time I talked to one of the priests here, we actually got in an argument.
You know, he'd be like, wait, what?
Was it about being a pedophile?
Because if not, then that really has nothing to do with what I'm talking about.
It's like, no, we got in an argument about what time lunch should be after the service.
So it's like, okay, who the hell cares about that?
And we're just not doing a good enough job of convincing people that, you know, we're really great.
Yeah.
Probably because you can't answer about the whole pedophile thing.
I mean, that's like the logic of what you're seeing here.
It's really pretty pretty astounding to watch.
It's so rare that they get directly confronted in a way.
Like if you, you know, if that kid sent that question to one of us, he was like, I get to ask Brian Stelter a question.
Courts Creating Illegal Precedent00:13:46
What do you think of this?
I doubt there would be much that we'd add to it.
We'd go, yep, that's pretty damn good.
I like that.
You know, so it's very rare that you get the question that you'd like to see asked to one of these guys, to their faces.
And it's unbelievable to see that that's what they've got.
That's all they have.
I would also be really impressed because if I was trying to ask that question, I'd be going, and then you had that kid and he was wearing the hat and the Indian screamed at him.
And then you said that the kid was the racist.
And there was also the whole Russia thing.
You guys were talking about that for two years.
Yeah.
Well, no, I mean, he did, he did a very good job with that.
But so, I mean, I guess if you knew you were going to get a question, you'd probably go in there a little bit more.
Maybe give yourself.
I'd be like, I got this.
You're like, I got this.
Nick Sandyman, Sandy Pants.
Yeah.
That guy.
Yeah.
Anyway, so there you go.
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All right.
Well, listen, speaking of the narratives that have been perpetrated in the media, there were a couple of interesting acquittals related to some fairly big scandals that have been going on.
So I guess two people in the plot to kidnap Whitmer have been let off because it was determined basically that the FBI entrapped them into that plot, which basically we've all known about for quite some time.
But it was interesting to see that there was so much evidence of it that even our corrupt criminal justice system, which always seems to fall in the favor of law enforcement, particularly federal law enforcement, that even they even got off there.
And then there was the other case where the guy who was involved in January 6th, who I guess entered the Capitol building, he got off because he had video evidence of a cop, Capitol Hill police, letting him in to the building.
And I don't know, I just thought both of those were very interesting stories and kind of speak to, you know, this thing where there's this huge, like kind of created story, this huge narrative emerges.
And then you find out actually that even in our insanely unfair criminal justice system, the evidence was just so overwhelming that the courts are sitting here saying, yeah, what the media was telling you, that's not at all what happened here, as it turns out.
What were your thoughts on either or both of those cases?
Well, you're 100% right that they're trying to build this domestic terrorism thing.
And they were saying that everyone who was involved, including Garland, saying we're going to get everyone no matter what their involvement was.
So that's a potentially really big win for anyone who did just walk in.
There were people in the front who were violent, and those people, they probably, you know, there should be some penalties for them.
Everyone else that was just walking around because they just follow the crowd in, probably not.
The only thing that I wouldn't celebrate as a victory yet is that this guy does have a history of being a some sort of a government contractor.
So it's a possibility that this is just the first FBI guy getting off the hook that actually went to a case.
I'm not saying that as an absolute, but it would seem to create precedent of that the individuals who were not violent and ended up in the building can now make the claim that they thought that they were allowed to be there because there are videos of like, you know, doors just being open, people just walking in, not everyone just flooded.
So that's a huge win.
And then the other case, apparently what screwed over the FBI is that they had recordings.
And so they were playing the recordings in court.
And it was so obvious that these were just dummies standing around going, yeah, what we ought to do this.
They were like borderline homeless drug addicts who the FBI convinced to like go.
Like they talked a lot of shit, you know, like a bunch of them like, yeah, we should kidnap the fucking, you know, blah, blah, blah, the governor.
We should do this.
But the FBI guys are the ones who came in and really like sold them on the plot.
By the way, this happens all the time in what the FBI calls sting operations that are really, when you look at them, entrapment operations, where they go around and they take someone.
They convince that.
They even, in many cases, even participate in the radicalizing of these people, then give them everything they need, then give them the plan, then give them means to enact the plan.
And then when they start to do it, go, you're under arrest.
We're all FBI.
And then they brag about how they thwarted some attack.
But what's interesting about the Whitmer one particularly is that this was a big story that was intentionally created.
And what was the goal of it?
Well, the goal was to paint these lockdown resistors as terrorists.
That's why they had this whole entrapment scheme.
The goal was to say, oh, the people who are against this governor who's freaking, you know, declared an emergency and is suspending all of your basic rights.
Well, we want a big fat example of that being, well, these are really, you should think of them as like dangerous terrorists who are going to kidnap and kill a governor, which, you know, for all the insanity of the last two years, didn't happen anywhere.
And besides this one example, which is all, you know, and now determined in court to be basically entrapment by the FBI, you don't have one example of an actual violent act happening to one of these governors.
And I'm not saying we should have.
I'm making no comment on that subject, but it's just not the reality.
That's just not true.
So they just try to create this completely false dynamic.
And then, of course, everybody in the media, all the Brian stelter types, eat it up, talk about it 24-7, really create this narrative.
And then, of course, the other thing I think that's really infuriating, and this kind of reminds me of the point you make a lot, Rob, which is, I think, a really great insight.
One of your points is like, one of the most fucked up things about the way the government works is that they can do something illegal and then the courts determine that it was illegal and now they have to stop.
That's their punishment.
And you're like, but if they were doing it for the last two months, it's not like, like, if you or I were doing something illegal for two months, we should were prosecuted for that, you know?
But like, it's like, if we just did something illegal, like if you were, uh, you know, if you were just like robbing from your, you know, your neighbor or something like that.
And then two months after you've been stealing everything from your neighbor, they go, Hey, we just caught you.
And now your punishment is you have to stop stealing from your neighbor.
That's your punishment.
And you're like, well, I don't go to jail.
No, no, you're not going to jail.
Do I have to return the stuff?
No, no, no, you keep what you got.
You know what I mean?
It's like, there's just, you just have to stop.
You'd probably be incentivized to like commit a lot of crimes because like there's no punishment here.
And that's literally the way it works with government.
They can do something and then the courts come in and determine it's illegal.
And they go, okay, you got to stop doing that.
But there's no repercussions beyond that.
And in a similar kind of, you know, in a sense, there's something similar about this dynamic where you would think that when these things come out, right?
Like this is, this is a story now.
And it is, it's being reported.
Like if you Google it, you can find what happened in the Whitmer case.
But it's not nearly as big of a story as the original story was.
You know what I mean?
And you'd think in some way that like first, number one, this should have to be as big a story as the initial story or much bigger.
And second, there should be like consequences in some ways for the people who all pushed the original story that turned out to be bullshit.
But of course, there's none of that.
And that's a big problem with how this whole system works is that there's no kind of like repercussions for any of this.
In this case, the FBI prosecutor just gets to go, well, we didn't get the verdict we want, but we respect the jury system.
Whitmer gets to go up there and go, this is a tragedy because this was proof of the fact that words equal violence and this is the kind of rhetoric that spews violence.
And now these people are just going free.
The reality is federal courts should probably be, there should be footage of it the same as like the Kyle Rittenhouse thing.
So we can see how dirty these prosecutors are.
And like, yeah, these people's lives are still ruined for the last two years.
I think they've been sitting in jails.
Or if not, they've definitely had legal expenses.
Like, how come there isn't an insight into, whoa, whoa, what was going on at the FBI here that you guys decided to run a sting operation on four individuals?
Or are you guys trying to make news stories that you can get a domestic terrorism title?
Why is it that you want a domestic terrorism title?
What other liberties are you guys going to take advantage of if you get this title so that individuals don't even have to go to courts like this that can't be filmed?
And how often is this happening?
How many other people are in jails because they weren't white and they were Muslim?
And so a jury wasn't as favorable towards them when they were radicalized and maybe were a little bit further along in their plot.
I mean, right.
And you seem to have, and another thing that's just another crazy example.
And this is, I think, more when Brian Stelter says, when you talk about the regime, you're talking about Joe Biden, but it's actually much more than that.
Like when we talk about the regime, we're talking about stuff like this as well.
We're talking about the entire like apparatus.
And the truth is that this story happened during a presidential election season.
And that it was very related to that too, right?
So here you have like the story being that the kind of like Trumpist anti-lockdown type people are really all a bunch of terrorists.
And so then it also leads to this question of like, you know, what's going on here?
Is the FBI working to create a narrative that would hurt the president of the United States?
So, you know, it just makes you wonder.
I remember there was this one time when Rand Paul, when he first came into Congress or shortly after he first came into the Senate, and he was talking about how they had caught the CIA spying on the Senate Intelligence Committee.
And the Senate Intelligence Committee is tasked with overseeing the CIA.
And he's like, well, if the CIA is spying on the organization that's supposed to be overseeing them, it's like, what's going on here?
Who's really running things?
And that's kind of like another question that this whole thing brings to light.
Like, wait a minute, what's going on here?
The FBI is working against the president and not working against the president, like, oh, we found evidence that the president has committed a crime and therefore we're investigating the president or something like that.
You're talking about we're trying to just create a crime to create a narrative that will hurt the sitting commander in chief.
That's a pretty big deal, too.
And so you just see how much all of this stuff, and this is what's beautiful about like that kid asking Stelter the question and him just fumbling through his answer and avoiding it.
It's like, I really do think that more and more people are waking up to how this whole thing, and this is the essence of like being red-pilled to go like that.
This whole thing, that everything you're told is really a carefully created narrative that is not based on objective reality, that is there for a reason because it benefits some people.
And the people that it benefits are not, uh, do not have your interests in mind.
That's kind of the whole thing right there.
Um, all right, I think we're gonna wrap up on uh on that.
Upcoming Shows in Reno00:00:57
Um, but thank thank you everybody for listening.
Don't forget, come out to our show in Reno.
Uh, we got other shows coming up too.
Me and Robbie are going to be uh back on back out on the road doing a lot of stand-up now that I'm uh I'm done with uh convention season.
Um, but so yeah, we got Reno coming up uh at the end of the month in May.
Uh, uh, then we're gonna be in Chicago uh shortly after that.
Come, we'll post those links uh uh soon.
Links, yeah, links will be in the episode description.
Uh, I also got so form this Monday, so when you're hearing this, still a chance to come out, uh, get some tickets.
Uh, Childerberg, uh, Florida with um the Tower Power Gang people, uh, and other porch tour gigs coming soon.
I think there's gonna be one in California with uh Brian from uh um what's called the Lions of Liberty.