Dave Smith critiques government overreach and mass surveillance, arguing that sanctions against Russia backfired by strengthening the ruble while hurting the U.S. economy. He dismisses Gavin Newsom's migration appeal to Florida as ineffective, noting economic factors drive movement more than social issues. The discussion highlights Democratic struggles, citing Hillary Clinton's discredited status and skepticism toward figures like Michelle Obama. Ultimately, Smith suggests that perceived foreign aid waste fuels public anger, while the party's lack of talent hinders re-election prospects despite attempts to position themselves as saviors. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
|
Time
Text
Rolling Back The State00:02:10
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 Heart of the Problem.
I'm the most consistent motherfucker you know, Dave Smith, rep in the Libertarian Institute.
My boy Scott Horton, Keith Knight, all those great people who will all be out at a Freedom Fest with me in just a little over a week now.
And then you could also catch me at Young Americans for Liberty, Revolution 22.
And of course, as always, I am joined by my co-host, the great Robbie the Fire Bernstein, King of the Caws, COVID Jesus.
What's up, my brother?
How you feeling?
I'm doing good.
How about you, Davey Smith?
Doing very good.
What do you got coming up now, Rob?
I know you're fucking all over the place.
Yes, this weekend, Libertarian Festival, Libertarian Festival in New Stanton, Pennsylvania.
Link in the episode description.
A bunch of musicians, comedians, other stuff.
Later this month, I'm opening for my good friend Menu and Hart at Carolines and Broadway, July 19th.
And then next weekend, I'm in Atlanta and Nashville.
Come hang out.
Porch tour rages on.
Fuck yeah, dude.
All right.
So several things that we wanted to talk about on today's episode, but I want to lead off with the one that I find most interesting.
And I was very glad to see that this happened.
So Alex Berenson has been reinstated to Twitter.
Now, I find this to be a big deal for several different reasons.
Number one, people being reinstated to Twitter, high-profile people who get booted off don't often get reinstated.
Twitter Reinstatement Victory00:12:21
That's just, that's the way this, you know, there's, it's like, as everybody listening to this knows, but more or less the dynamic for us kind of political dissidents who are just outside of the system and not just outside of the system, but outside of kind of the allowable opinion.
You know what I mean?
Like you're, you're outside of, you know, if you're a critic through COVID, you know, at the height of it of the COVID regime, if you were anti-vax, as they'd label you, if you were anti-lockdown, that was outside the realm of kind of allowable opinion.
If you're, you know, critical of democracy, let's say, if you're critical of a lot of these things, you're kind of outside the realm of allowable opinion.
And for a long time, these people were basically just completely marginalized because you had to go through corporate outlets in order to get your voice out there.
And so if they could control the major newspapers and the major TV stations and the major, you know, like magazines and stuff, well, okay, what are you going to do?
I mean, like, let's say you were like a dissident right-winger in the 1960s and 70s.
And it was like, okay, well, ABC and NBC and CBS aren't going to have you on.
And National Review isn't going to publish you.
And, you know, the New York Times, obviously, these outlets aren't going to publish you.
Then what would you do?
And the answer is usually they'd form their own little group and they'd put out their own little newsletter or something like that.
But you could only get that out to so many people.
And then the internet came.
And all of a sudden, as the internet really blew up, it changed all of this, changed this whole dynamic.
Now you could get something out there.
And if people liked it, they could share it around.
And all of a sudden, dissidents started having huge audiences that they could reach.
And then right around, you know, it really, it happened a little bit before, but it was really around 2016, 2017, the deplatforming era started.
This was not, you know, this, as we've talked about many times on the show, this was not the it's a private company bro arguments that you might get online are completely missing the point.
It was all about government and politics.
And it was what happened basically was after Donald Trump won, the rationale was, oh my God, Russian interference, or the, or not even the rationale, I should say, the bullshit excuse was, you know, this was all because of Russian interference.
And in the name of that, they said, well, we have to, you know, they hauled the heads of the big tech companies before Congress, threatened them, started putting enormous political pressure on them to start silencing some of these dissident voices.
Now, they said this was in the name of, you know, fighting disinformation or Russian interference or all this bullshit.
But the reality is that they saw it for what it is.
Like, oh shit, all the dissidents now have an opportunity to persuade people.
And if we're on equal footing with them, we might lose because a lot of us have, you know, views that probably would be much more appealing and much more beneficial to the average American than what the establishment wants to give to them.
So this is the new reality that we're in now.
The new kind of new matrix is that you can be a dissident on the internet, but there are all of these guardrails that you have to be very careful about touching and how you touch them.
And if you do, you risk losing what you have.
And it, the bigger you get, the more you have to lose.
You know what I mean?
So like, I know there are there are people like friends of mine and stuff in like the liberty world who have like, you know, they maybe have like five, 10,000 Twitter followers or something like that.
And they don't give a shit.
They're just like, I'll say whatever the fuck I want to say.
And then they kick them off.
And then they create a new account and then they kind of climb back up, you know, but maybe this time they had 10,000, this time they'll get back up to like 6,000.
And then that one gets kicked off and a new one gets back up to 5,000 or whatever.
But they're just like, I don't care.
I'm going to let it.
However, you know, when I have like a quarter million followers or something like that, not that it's the biggest account, there's much bigger ones, but you lose that.
It's like, fuck, lose that.
You really got to start over from zero.
And it's very, very hard to get back up to those numbers.
So the bigger you get, this is the new dynamic.
The more pressure there is on you, the more you have to lose by getting, getting caught up in the deplatforming scheme.
So anyway, most people who get deplatformed are effectively deplatformed.
They, you know, they may still exist out there, but their reach is drastically limited.
And not too many of them get reinstated.
So seeing Alex Berenson get reinstated for just that reason alone is pretty big.
The other reason is because he has really been one of the leading voices.
One of, I think, one of the smartest and one of the most kind of accredited, I guess I would say.
Like just the fact that he was like a New York Times guy and he was completely like in the establishment world.
And also that he's very, very smart.
And he really knew his stuff on COVID.
And he's been one of the leading COVID skeptics or COVID regime skeptics, I should say, throughout the last couple of years.
And he Lost his Twitter account sometime last year for, you know, the bullshit that they say it was like, you know, promoting dangerous misinformation about COVID.
And, you know, as we could have gone through a million times, of course, all of the most dangerous misinformation about COVID was pushed by Fauci and Biden and Cuomo and people like that.
Gavin knew some people like that.
But anyway, so for both of those reasons, it's very interesting that he's back.
And I think there's a lot that we could talk about here.
You, I assume you like me, subscribe to his sub stack and follow his stuff.
Yes, I love me some Alex Berenson.
He became the lazier way of breaking down the COVID story because over enough time, I realized everything I was researching, he was just kind of on top of and putting it in more simpler terms.
There are some issues, though, here with this victory.
So to speak to the positive.
So to speak to the positive, he is reinstated.
He just won a lawsuit.
And well, he didn't come.
Let's just be just to be very clear here, because I just want to get this right.
He didn't win a lawsuit.
He settled.
He settled.
A lawsuit, right?
Which is just to be technically precise here.
So the thing that's interesting about that is that basically he sued Twitter after they kicked him off.
And Twitter made a motion to dismiss the case.
And the judge denied this motion and said that they could go forward with the case under the grounds of like a breach of contract type situation, where basically they said that he basically said that even though they're protected, that they have the right to kind of kick people off because they made this, you know, their terms of service, this five strikes for Twitter misinformation, that kind of becomes the agreement.
And if he has a right to argue that he didn't, you know what I mean, like didn't put out misinformation or whatever.
So as soon as they said they could go forward, then Twitter was like, let's settle.
We don't know the details of the settlement, but this culminated in him getting his account back.
So anyway, the interesting part about that is a judge saying that you could sue under this breach of contract concept opens the door for it to be more people than just Alex Berenson who's able to do this.
But so I just want to make that clear.
So go ahead.
And I'm sure the settlement aspect was for a fair amount of money.
So at a minimum, it probably does force these services to maybe think twice before kicking people off.
So that's on the plus side.
On the downside is probably everything that he tweeted is now or that was at the time controversial is probably like just understood now.
And so to remove somebody from a platform when you're trying to sell bad policy and then the bad policies enacted and then to allow them back once the bad policy was already enacted, it's kind of like if you were trying to sell us on a war and you got people going, hey, this war is really dumb.
And so you get them all off Twitter and then you go to war and now you're already there.
You spent all the money and then you go, okay, you guys can come back now doesn't necessarily help.
And so what Alex Berenson is getting some criticism for is he did crowdfund this on the basis that he would not settle and that he would make sure to push forward with discovery so that perhaps we could find out, which would have been really interesting, if there's actually a violation of your First Amendment rights because they're working in tandem with government basically saying, hey, censor these individuals.
Now, not to get too technical, I think the judge had already overruled that aspect of it that might have never been discovered, but there would have been additional elements about basically how they're censoring individuals that probably would have come out in Discovery.
So Alex Berenson is still claiming that, you know, Discovery, even though it's been settled, is in motion and that there will be some revelations that are made.
But there's definitely some, there has been some pushback on the fact that he settled as he claimed that he wasn't going to do so.
Yeah, it is really something that, and this has been a big theme during COVID, is that, you know, this dynamic that you talked about where there is kind of these, there are these opinions that are labeled as misinformation, conspiracy theorists, conspiracy theories, and dangerous ones, not just like, you know, someone like saying like the earth is flat or something like that is labeled as like misinformation,
maybe, you know, or is like a conspiracy theory, but no one like cares.
It's not considered dangerous.
Like you can go be a flat earther, go talk, tweet about it all day long.
You're not going to get banned for doing it.
None of them care about that.
They don't like, but, you know, being say like, you know, anti-anti-vax, or as they would call it, or being, you know, a critic of the COVID vaccines.
Again, it's not right now nearly as hot as it was, but there was a time last year when this was like unbelievably like, you know, you couldn't be saying these things and not be risking really getting yourself silenced and also attacked.
This happens in a lot of different, you know, instances, different political, you know, fields.
Usually when a big policy is about to be pushed, they're very good at creating this environment.
And a lot of these things down the road turn out to be obvious that it was bullshit.
And the person who was labeled the dangerous conspiracy theorist was absolutely right.
This happens all the time.
During the COVID regime over the last two and a half years or so, it's been amazing how quickly it's changed.
Like things like we're talking about, like things like last year that were like, we, I mean, look, if you listen to the show, you know, we were saying a lot of these things, but there would be certain things that we would tiptoe around, make clear what our point is, but try to be very careful with wording because it was like, fuck, I don't want to lose this show, you know, like I don't, you know, and that now are just completely accepted, just completely accepted.
I mean, again, I remember when I was on Rogan, the episode where Fauci called him out.
And I think Biden even said something about it because he said that for young, healthy people, his advice wouldn't be to get the vaccine.
It would be to exercise and work out and stuff like that and just be really, be really healthy.
I mean, this was in 2021.
It's 2022.
You know what I mean?
BetterHelp Mental Health Sponsor00:03:02
It's not like this.
I'm not saying like 10 years ago, he had this take that was at the time considered very dangerous.
And then it turned out to be correct.
It was saying like last year, they would say, and the, and the reason Fauci called him out and Fauci goes, what Joe Rogan doesn't understand is that you don't get vaccinated for yourself.
You get vaccinated for everybody else.
If you get vaccinated, you can't give the virus to anyone else.
So this was what was deemed dangerous misinformation that made it all the way up to where Fauci had to say something about this and Biden administration had to say something about this, right?
And they were criticizing him for spreading misinformation.
Joe Rogan's misinformation was telling young people to be very healthy.
And Fauci's counter was that if you get the vaccine, you can't transmit it to anybody else.
This was a year ago, a little more than a year ago, but this was in 2021.
You know, it's like, that's very, it's a very short time period to see this, this all go down the way it's gone down.
All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is BetterHelp.
BetterHelp offers professional counseling done securely online.
So, if you feel like there's something interfering with your happiness or preventing you from achieving your goals, definitely check out BetterHelp.
Let's be honest, over the last few years, a lot of people's mental health has taken a real beating.
This is nothing to be ashamed or embarrassed about.
This is just the reality of what living over the last two and a half years has been.
If you're dealing with something, whatever it is, BetterHelp has a wide range of counselors available for you.
Plus, BetterHelp is more affordable than traditional offline counseling.
Financial aid is available and it's easy to get started.
Once you sign up, BetterHelp will match you with your own licensed professional therapist who you'll be able to communicate with in under 48 hours.
This is not a crisis line, it's not self-help.
This is professional counseling, it's done securely online.
BetterHelp is committed to facilitating great therapeutic matches, so it's easy and free to switch counselors if needed.
You can send a message to your counselor at any time, you'll get a timely and thoughtful response.
Plus, you can schedule weekly video or phone sessions, so it's the perfect way to do therapy in these work-at-home, you know, remote days.
And you won't have to go back to sitting in an uncomfortable waiting room in the future.
Betterhelp.com/slash problem.
That's where you should go to join the over 1 million people who have taken charge of their mental health with the help of an experienced professional.
New testimonials from users are posted daily.
In fact, so many people have been using BetterHelp that they are recruiting additional counselors in all 50 states.
Go to betterhelp.com/slash problem.
That's B-E-T-T-E-R-H-E-L-P dot com/slash problem.
That'll get you 10% off your first month.
One more time, betterhelp.com/slash problem for 10% off your first month.
All right, let's get back into the show.
Crypto And Gold IRAs00:15:15
So, anyway, it's just been very interesting to see that, but you're right.
It's one of the interesting dynamics with him being back on Twitter is that now all this shit that he was saying that was so, you know, considered so crazy is now just about all, not all, but just about all of it.
The major ones that, you know, he was getting in trouble for basically become the undeniable reality that even, you know, no one's pretending you can't get COVID if you have the vaccine anymore.
No one, yeah, I haven't heard any of them say it's a pandemic of the unvaccinated in quite a while.
When was the last time you heard one of them say that?
They won't say it anymore because freaking Fauci just got it.
You know what I mean?
Like, how could they with a straight face even say that?
Um, so this is, you know, again, like you said, I don't know.
I didn't see like exactly what he said with the crowdfunding thing.
That is a little bit like, yeah, if you raise money and promise to do something a certain way, you kind of got to do that.
But in the bigger picture, I'm glad that he's back on Twitter.
And I'm glad that maybe they think twice before some of these, you know, deplatformings in the future.
It's just not good.
It's really not good to have dissident voices be stifled.
That's never healthy, especially when the establishment is as insane as our current establishment is.
And the truth is that we know for a fact that government is very involved in this censorship process.
The question is to what extent, you know what I mean?
The question is like, was Alex Berenson specifically requested to be silenced by the government?
Or did they insist that he be silenced?
That we don't exactly know, but we do know, or at least we know that the former press secretary for Joe Biden said that they give lists to social media companies of people who they believe are spreading misinformation or whatever and should be silenced.
That is no libertarian should have the response that, like, it's a private company, bro.
That is a clear violation of the First Amendment and just basic liberty.
How did that not raise a red flag and get not both an investigation and more widespread reporting?
I mean, isn't that just blatantly them saying we violate people's First Amendment right in the name of safety?
In the name of not spreading misinformation.
Yeah, it will always be in the name of safety.
You know what I mean?
They're never going to go, hey, this guy's costing us money.
So there's never yes, there's never been an authoritarian, tyrannical government in the history of the world who ever said, we are doing this because we are the bad guys who just love tyranny.
That's never been the case and never will be the case.
Yes, they all say they're doing it for good reasons.
We're looking to solidify our power and this guy's calling us out for being a bunch of dicks.
So we currently have tremendous power.
We'd like even more.
So we're going to be squashing our opponents like bugs.
They never, yes, that's not how it goes.
Like even, you know, like Stalin or Hitler never got up and said, well, I'm a really, really bad guy.
And so I want to do really, really bad things.
And I'm looking around.
I don't think anyone can stop me from doing these really, really bad things.
You know, no, they all justified what they were doing for the greater good and protecting people's safety, you know, whatever.
They always had their justifications.
So, you know, Alex Berenson, he's an interesting guy.
I recommend him to people.
I met Alex Berenson at a Soho forum debate.
I believe it was in 2019.
And he was, his big thing before COVID used to be pot.
Yep.
And he was really anti-pot.
And he was arguing against the decriminalization of marijuana.
And I always thought he was wrong on the legality of it.
I always thought that was like I just sharply disagreed with him.
In fact, I remember meeting him and I was in the green room there at the old Soho Forum at the subculture before that venue.
I think they didn't make it through the COVID shit and they shut down.
But so I was in the green room with him and I was just vaping.
And I remember being like, hey, Alex Berenson, should I go to jail for this?
Like, do you think I was just fucking with him?
But anyway, we talked for a while.
He was a very nice guy.
And I will say, I completely disagreed with him on the legality of pot thing, but he made some very good arguments about pot not being as harmless as a lot of people make it out to be.
And I did think that was like worth listening to.
There were strong arguments.
In fact, he had some arguments with like data to back it up about people who have certain mental illnesses, like who are already struggling with that, smoking pot being very bad for their mental state.
And in general, it just not being so harmless of a drug.
And I do think that there was a very strong argument to that.
I think that sometimes many libertarians get a little bit goofy with some of this stuff, where I mean, I guess just it's a tendency in general in human behavior to fall into binary thinking.
But that just because we might advocate that someone ought to be free to do something does not mean we have to then say that this thing is really great to do and there's absolutely no problems with doing it.
You know, if that makes sense, you can you can think something should be legal and also still think it's it's not necessarily you know advisable to do it.
Um, I'd say personally, somebody who used to smoke a lot of weed and I do not anymore, uh, and I haven't for years.
Uh, yeah, that's right, Brian.
There's a lot of data suggesting that it can be a trigger for schizophrenia.
But this is for people who are already have are genetically prone to be schizophrenic, but still, it's it's interesting to know this stuff.
But like, I'll just say on a more on a less extreme level, as somebody, I was a big pot smoker for many years.
I don't smoke anymore.
I can tell you, I'm very glad I made that decision.
I'm, I, I, I've noticed many improvements in my life since not, since quitting.
And I just think that's worth pointing out.
So, even though I disagreed with him always on his thesis about the criminality of marijuana, I do think that, and I, I got to say, I think a lot of people, uh, particularly talking to young people who smoke way too much weed, know that it's not all benefit.
A lot of them know that they're like, Yeah, I kind of wish I could kick this habit.
And, you know, arguments about whether or not it's physically addictive.
I think a lot of a lot of those people, probably a good amount of them listening to me right now.
Um, and yes, I do think it is physically addictive, but regardless of whether people, there's a debate about that.
Um, but a lot of those people who are probably listening right now who are know that they're smoking way too much weed know that it's very hard to stop.
Whether or not that's physically addictive or not, you whether or not wherever you fall on that argument, you know, it's very hard.
It's very hard for a lot of people to stop.
And it's not great.
It's just not great for you.
That's my personal take.
Now, I don't, I also, at the same time, know people who use it very responsibly and are very hardworking and do a lot of things and have great families and careers and stuff.
So, I don't know.
I'm not like judging that person.
Um, but you know, kind of in a similar way to alcohol, there are people who drink very responsibly and live very, you know, like productive, meaningful lives.
And there are people who like fucking ruin their lives with alcohol.
So, that's kind of how I like to smoke some weed some of the time, which is very similar to my stance on abortion, which is you know, a couple times a year when you have to.
But you are actually, I would say, I think you're pretty responsible.
Like, you will occasionally smoke, but you're not a guy who like gets the, or at least since I've known you.
Because I lived that life and I had to quit it.
So, I don't, I don't want to ever have to go back to quitting smoking weed, but I still love my weed.
So, every once in a while, yeah, meodelton.com, get one of those vape pens nice and even.
Yeah, well, it's uh, it's interesting, though, because I, so I guess maybe, I don't know, maybe I can't even remember.
I was smoking too much pot at the time, but I don't remember like when we first met.
But I know, like, now you're not like a guy who smokes pot all the time, but like occasionally, maybe will.
Like, that's I, you know, I don't, I don't judge that at all.
I think that for a lot of people who smoke it way too much, it's like it's not good for you to be living in a constant state of being in a haze and not, you know, this-you're not doing your best work.
That's the easiest way to say it.
I'm not saying like it's not, yeah, and you're kind of going through your whole life that way is just not, I don't know, I don't think it's uh, I don't think it's ideal.
I remember that, you know, one of the major things that I think it was around the time my wife was uh pregnant with my first.
It was like, uh, you know, I just kind of like, it's like, well, wait a minute, I'm gonna have kids.
I can't like, I'm not gonna raise my kids in the state of constantly being stoned.
That's like, that just seemed like crazy to me.
And so it was, you know, that I think helped Lead to my decision to, you know, to quit.
Anyway, sorry, got off on a tangent there.
I didn't expect to.
So then, after being this guy, Alex Berenson, really turned out to be like a COVID skeptic.
And I got to say, I liked him when we met and I thought he made some interesting points on the pot conversation.
But man, I really gained a whole new level of respect for him.
For he was one of those guys, like when we talk about when it was really difficult to be against this stuff, really spoke up and really did his homework and had all of the data and was very became a thorn in the side of the COVID regime because he was, you know, he was a guy who had these like kind of like corporate press credentials, wrote for the New York Times and had best-selling books and stuff like that.
And then he was going on Tucker Carlson and Joe Rogan.
And so he was going on huge platforms and telling everybody, like, no, no, no, look, here's actually the real science to all of this.
And it doesn't back up what they're saying about the lockdowns and it doesn't back up what they're saying about the vaccine.
It doesn't and all the stuff.
So anyway, it was, it was, uh, you know, it was, it was fucked up that they fucking banned him for being that guy.
And at least let's take the small victory that now he's back and hopefully, uh, hopefully keeps telling the truth.
Yep.
And hopefully it allows more people to not get banned from platforms because I don't know what the settlement was, but if it was expensive enough, maybe he'll turn into that kid yelling at the Indian or Kyle Rittenhouse where, you know, the major news corporations think twice about defaming or deplatforming.
And look, you got to say, like, this shit is really important that like the stuff he's doing is really important.
I think that it's very important that people are out there telling the truth, even if, let's say, obviously telling the truth alone and waking up some people alone is not enough, you know, to roll back all of these awful policies.
I mean, I suppose waking up enough people might be enough.
But something like, you know, so I saw him.
He was just on, he was back on Tucker Carlson last night talking about being reinstated.
And one of the things right away they were talking about, and now, and he is, I'll say to his credit, he's not one of these guys who like, because he's on this team and he's got this narrative, he's going to go all in with that narrative every time.
So he'll say sometimes, look, we don't really know, but this is something we should keep our eye on.
But one of the things they brought up was there is there's a new study out of Israel.
Have you seen this stuff about the like, so there's been questions in a few different countries about their reproductive rates?
I'll be selling my sperm soon enough.
There you go.
Unvaxwimmers.com.
Absolutely.
Imagine that.
Imagine you just become like a millionaire off of this.
It turns out that was not getting vaccinated was the best move ever.
So there's been a few different countries where they've been looking at this.
Like since they did mass vaccinations, the reproductive rate has gone down.
Now, and Alex Berenson makes the point.
He goes, this is not conclusive what's causing this yet.
There's a few things that could, but he goes, it's really important to keep our eye on this and see what's going on.
And the big one was this study in Israel from a sperm bank, I believe, where they said that there was a 20% decrease in the sperm of the vaccinated.
Now, that's a big deal.
And if this, let's say, and I don't know exactly, you know, like I'm just going based off this one study that's been done.
And so I kind of agree with Alex Berenson saying, like, hey, let's keep our eye on this, see what this is.
Who knows what's really going on here?
But for the sake of argument, let's say that's the truth.
That it's also throw in that period blood is 20% thicker.
Now you're in a situation where everything's 40% grosser.
You know, you're fucking less and the sperm are a little bit less.
So it's like you start adding all these things up.
All of a sudden, those sperm are like swimming.
They're swimming through real thick.
All right.
Anyway, I don't think any of that's how it works.
So in fact, I'm pretty sure if you're having your period, sperm have no shot.
Anyway, anyway.
But just say, like, hypothetically, if it did like decrease your ability to have kids.
Now, maybe that doesn't, maybe even Alex Berenson shouting from the rooftops isn't going to stop them from pushing this vaccine.
But at the very least, he could give that information to people.
Like people could know that.
You know what I mean?
Going in and then kind of weigh like how much they're willing to resist this vaccine.
I got to say, like that, that's something that I have a very different perspective on after having kids.
And I understand people who don't have kids might look at this or don't want to have kids might look at this and go like, yeah, whatever.
It doesn't mean that.
But like, if you want to have kids and something like destroys your ability to, that is like a profound thing to be robbed from you.
The most profound thing in life to be robbed from you if you want to have kids and aren't able to.
And particularly a lot of people, like young people, they may not even know yet whether they want to have you.
Strong Federalism Ideas00:02:18
You might be 20 and feel like you don't want to have kids, but by the time you're 35, it's like all you want in the world.
So it's anyway, the point I was just making is that a lot of this stuff he talks about is really important.
It's really important that he's able to talk about it and able to reach as many people as possible.
What's that?
I just want to convince, I just want to convince more women I can make their mouth pregnant.
So that's what I'm going for.
Oh, that's why I like having you around.
All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is iTrust Capital.
iTrust Capital is a great company.
I know a lot of people are concerned about inflation.
A lot of us have been talking about it for a long time, but we're really starting to see the price inflation explode all over the place.
A lot of people have become very interested in precious metals, gold and silver, and cryptocurrencies like Bitcoins.
And the smartest investors are investing with their IRAs and 401k retirement accounts.
The easiest way to do that is with iTrust Capital.
All iTrust accounts are IRAs, which means you can invest and trade your crypto or gold tax-free on their 24-7 platform.
If you have an existing IRA account or another retirement account, like a 401k, you can roll those over with no penalties or taxes.
iTrust Capital makes investing in crypto safe and easy.
You can log into your account 24-7, invest at the push of a button.
Now crypto can be traded as easily as stocks, no keys or complex processes.
iTrust Capital also makes investing in physical gold and silver easy.
They use a blockchain ledger that gives you digital ownership of your physical gold, which is held at the Royal Canadian Mint.
So this isn't a security or a derivative or some other financial contract.
This is fully backed by physical gold that is deliverable upon request.
And the best part of all, iTrust Capital has low transparent pricing.
They are 90% cheaper than their comparable options.
So if you're looking for an IRA to trade cryptocurrency or precious metals tax-free, go to itrustcapital.com.
Use the promo code POTP when you sign up.
You'll get your first month for free, and they're going to send you a free crypto IRA and gold IRA investors guide.
So one more time, go to iTrustCapital.com.
Use that promo code P-O-T-P for your first month free, and you'll receive their crypto IRA and gold IRA investors guide at no cost.
Hillary Clinton Politics00:13:48
If you're interested in learning more about the company, I recorded a short conversation with the CEO.
That is posted over at the Gas Digital sponsor page.
So definitely go check that out.
iTrustcapital.com, promo code P-O-T-P.
All right, let's get back into the show.
All right.
So there's, I want to make sure we get to this on today's show because I've wanted to talk about this for a couple episodes now and we ran out of time.
But there was changing gears.
There was a political ad that I thought was one of the most interesting political ads I've ever seen in my life.
That really I don't, it got, it elicited like a feeling out of me where I'm like, I hate this, but I kind of love this and I'm very intrigued by this and I want to discuss it.
I want to talk about it and kind of break it down a little bit.
So Gavin Newsom, the governor of Florida, ran an, I'm sorry, the governor of California ran an ad in Florida, which is strange.
And anyway, here, let's let's play the ad and then let's discuss this a little bit.
Here's the ad: It's Independence Day.
So let's talk about what's going on in America.
Freedom is under attack in your state.
Republican leaders, they're banning books, making it harder to vote, restricting speech in classrooms, even criminalizing women and doctors.
I urge all of you living in Florida to join the fight or join us in California, but we still believe in freedom, freedom of speech, freedom to choose, freedom from hate, and the freedom to love.
Don't let them take your freedom.
Paid for by Newsom for California Governor 2022.
It's independent.
So, okay.
I don't even know where to start with this because there's something so interesting just about one governor running an ad in another governor's state attacking him, asking people to move to his state.
Like the kind of almost like decentralized vibe of that is very interesting.
The unbelievable stones of him to run this ad and to go, hey, Florida, there's a lot of violations of freedom in your state.
In California, you have the freedom not to own your restaurant.
You have your freedom to go everywhere in a mask.
You have the freedom to know that anyone who doesn't care about the COVID policy might face legal repercussions.
These are all freedoms.
You go, hey, Florida, can you even take a shit on the sidewalk there?
I didn't think so.
You got the money over to spend the most money on energy.
You got the freedom to see more homeless people than anywhere else.
I will say, look, I am somebody like you, Rob.
I believe very much in freedom.
And that, like, I believe in individual liberty.
Some might even say I take that to extremist levels of believing in individual liberty.
But I will say there is something about this that I kind of like.
Ideally for me, we would be in, you know, the way we organized our society would be in a libertarian, you know, manner, and individuals would be free to live their life the way they want to, as long as they don't initiate violence or violate the property of other people.
But there is something about being like, hey, look, we do things this way in our state, and they do things this way in their state.
And if you like our way better, hey, come move over here to our state.
And I think that that is at least a closer, you know, approximation than what we have now.
So I like that.
This is why I really like the idea of strong federalism, you know, like, or even secession or national divorce or any of that stuff.
But the idea of decentralizing power, that like, okay, as we've talked about recently on the show, different states doing things their own way.
And hey, people who like this can vote with their feet and go here.
And people who like the other one, at least then you have more people who like the way their government is working, theoretically.
Can you imagine meeting the asshole?
Sorry, go ahead.
No, I was going to just the asshole.
You're like, so how'd you end up in California?
Like, oh, I saw that Newsom ad.
I was living in Florida.
And then when Newsom came on my TV and pitched me on coming here, I realized I was in the wrong state.
Well, the funny thing about it.
So basically what's going on is that Newsom is sitting on money for his election.
And my suspicion here is that this isn't really an ad targeting Floridians to move to California.
It's really an ad to show his liberal base in California that he's sticking it to their enemy over there, DeSantis, or something like that, because otherwise it's just stupid.
But he does, he's sitting on money.
He survived the recall election.
He's now he's kind of just like, well, I got the money.
I'll go spend half a million bucks on some TV ads in Florida.
But the irony of all of this is that, you know, people have been voting with their feet, with their feet for the last two years.
And the votes are overwhelming.
And there's something powerful about voting with your feet, both in there's there's something powerful about how much that can change your own life and put you in a better situation.
And there's something powerful about what it demonstrates to everybody.
I mean, people see that.
People know that their friends are, I can't tell you how many people I talk to in New York who are like, all my friends have left.
It's just people have seen this.
Like everybody's leaving, you know?
And in Florida, go ask anyone living in Florida.
They've noticed that people are coming.
Go ask anyone in Texas.
They've noticed people are coming in.
So there's, look, the Soviet Union had to build a wall.
The reason they built the Berlin Wall was because people were flooding out of the Soviet Union and into Western Europe.
And this made it almost impossible to keep the narrative up.
Now, they gave justifications for why they had to build the wall, but the real reason was that it was like, look, if you're sitting here saying, hey, we're building this workers' paradise, but people see that the workers are flooding out in masses because they want to get the hell out of here.
It just destroys that narrative.
And so it's interesting to see him try to make this pitch.
It's like, okay, let's see.
Let's see how many people actually are leaving Florida right now to go to California.
My guess is it's not going to be a lot of people.
And look, I'll say, and those who do, I mean, you know, hey, if that's what you choose, then okay, fine.
Go choose to live there.
I also, what I loved, which I think is kind of an insight into the next election cycle, is that you notice he's not talking about the strong California economy.
He's not talking about the opportunities that you might have in California.
He's talking about the dangers of a government that won't allow teachers to teach kids about trans issues.
We already watched the ad a couple minutes ago.
So I don't remember what else was in there, but it's all like kind of social.
It's a 15-week abortion ban or something like that.
You know, yeah, yeah, it's all right.
So they're talking about the social justice issues.
And if the economy is bad enough, people will not care.
They just won't care.
Like, believe me, if abortion is too expensive, like, I'm sorry, if people aren't going to care about, hey, I can't get abortion if government's still willing to pay for it in another state while you can't literally afford food or showing up to work.
It just, it's no longer an important issue.
That's right.
Yeah.
I mean, look, the issues that really move most people are kitchen table issues.
This is most people are not obsessed with ideas and politics in the way that me and you are.
They're just not as focused on those things.
Most people are much more focused on like their mortgage payments and their healthcare payments and their car payments and gas prices and the state of the economy, whether they have a good job, how their kids are doing, how they're, you know what I mean?
Like the cost of college, this type of thing.
This is like the things that have, yes, the idea that you're going to go like, hey, come move over here to our, you know, fucking struggling economic state because we're, we're, you know, we're woke on trams is just, you know, the idea that this is going to get people to actually move.
The reason why people flooded into Florida over the last two years is because Florida was an open economy while many others were not.
It's that, you know, you could go there.
If you were working remotely already, you could go down to Florida and fucking work remotely and then live in a place that's like a fucking normal society.
You know, it's like these are the things that were drawing people in.
And then also, you know, not pay any state income taxes.
These things drew people in.
It was not because, you know, nobody's moving.
Even people who like believe in the whole woke agenda, I just don't see people moving somewhere because they go, oh, they're being strict on teaching third graders about transgenders.
I just, I, I, at least that's my suspicion.
My guess is that, you know, you're correct in saying that's not going to move the needle.
And to your broader point, that if the economy gets worse, that will, that balance will only be more lopsided.
That people, this is really what people care about.
And as far as like, even things like, you know, you know, there was the report just recently, me, you and Brian were talking about before we started recording here, this, this, uh, report out that the like millions of barrels of our reserve oil has been sent to foreign countries, including China, which are not having particular problems with gas prices right now because they are buying from Russia.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Um, so it's unbelievable, by the way.
We should probably, we could do probably a whole show on how profoundly these sanctions have flopped.
Like I've never actually seen it work this way before.
I've seen sanctions really like American sanctions on other countries really hurt those countries.
They almost never achieve their stated intended goal.
But in fact, they usually backfire in the sense that quite often you'll have sanctions on a country like, you'll have sanctions on a country like Iraq under Saddam Hussein, or they'll have sanctions on Castro, you know, Cuba.
And yes, it damages or devastates even their economy.
However, then it also becomes a tool for that leader to say, well, look, all your problems are because of these evil Americans and their sanctions, and I'm the one who's fighting against them.
So, you know, rally behind me.
So if the goal is usually state, at least the stated goal is to put pressure on the people so that they overthrow their regime.
That doesn't usually work.
So sanctions do tend to backfire.
But this is a very unique case where not only have the sanctions backfired, but they've backfired at the most basic level.
It seems to have actually hurt our economy and not hurt the Russians at all.
Like, you know, our dollar is getting weaker and their ruble is getting stronger.
It's really something, it's really fascinating.
All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is rockauto.com, auto mechanics and do-it-yourself guys who work on their own cars.
I got to tell you about rockauto.com.
It's the online store with every auto part at the best prices.
This is your one-stop shop for everything auto parts.
Rockauto.com has been in business for 20 years.
They make it easy to find the parts you need at the best possible prices.
So, no more talking to counter guys who need to order your parts and they don't really know what you're looking for.
They never have exactly what you need.
And after all the hassle, they're still going to charge you storefront markups.
Just go to rockauto.com.
You can easily find everything you need, whether you're a mechanic, an auto shop, or just working on your own car.
Everyone has access to the same incredible prices at rockauto.com.
If you're a car guy, right now, go check out the site, rockauto.com.
Check out all the parts.
You're going to have a lot of fun just looking at all the car parts.
Rockauto.com, no promo code needed.
Their pricing is already that great.
But when you order, let them know that you heard about rock auto on part of the problem.
That would be nice.
Rockauto.com.
All right, let's get back into it.
So stories like that, like the oil reserves being sent to China, or stories like, you know, $80 billion in foreign aid going to Ukraine.
It's not so much even that the average American really feels that amount of money, even as much as $80 billion is, it's like, it's not really that much compared to what the Congress spends every year.
And the hundreds of millions of barrels of oil in the grand scheme of things is not that much.
It's just like the fact that, kind of to get to what you said, if they're feeling economic pain at all and they're like, oh, and you're sending my money like abroad to other people, like that's the type of thing that motivates people.
Like, no, screw that.
We like that money should be here.
You know what I mean?
Like, these are the things that really motivate people and issues that people really care about.
I think that a lot of this woke stuff is pushed to get people worked up about these things that don't really affect powerful people.
Hillary to Save the Democrats?00:05:12
But I just really highly doubt that people are moving to California because they say we're so much more socially woke than Florida is.
I just don't see it.
And the argument that they're freer is really just, that's, I do, I appreciate the fucking balls on Newsome to say, you know, to say, oh, come here, one of the least free states in the union.
We enjoy all these freedoms that you guys don't.
Okay.
For Florida, which has been one of the freest states in the union over the last two and a half years.
It's cool that the Democrats are already starting to break rank and, you know, try and run against Biden.
It is interesting.
It is very interesting.
I'm, we're going to have to keep paying attention to that to see what happens.
But there's, there's been, I've seen more and more talk floated out of Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama.
You know, there's like they're realizing right now that this is not, this Biden re-election campaign is a disaster, at least as right now.
The Hillary stuff is so funny because they keep trying to go, will she come back and save the party as if she's some noble savior that she just, you know, it's like the hero's call to action where she doesn't want it, but she could really help us out.
If she could just overcome her own bullshit and do it once more for the good of everybody else, she might be able to save the Democrats.
It's the disconnect from reality is really something.
I mean, Hillary Clinton is the look, she ran for she was gifted a Senate seat in New York.
Giuliani was running against her.
He, I believe, got sick and had to drop out.
I think he had cancer melting or something.
Something like that.
So he got sick and dropped out.
She ended up walking into it in what would have been a very tough race for her to win.
So she gets the Senate seat.
She's there for a couple of years.
She is anointed by every power that be in the Democratic establishment that she's going to be the presidential candidate in 2008.
In 2008, she runs against a field with no competition.
The only competitor is a junior senator named Barack Hussein Obama.
But he's so handsome, so black.
I will grant that he ended up being a much more formidable political opponent than anyone thought at the time.
But she loses in this huge upset to Barack Obama.
Then in 2016, her primary challenger is like a 75-year-old socialist Jewish guy who's been a political, you know, irrelevant factor for his entire career.
And he gives her such a run for her money that she has to cheat in order to beat him and then goes on to lose to Donald Trump.
She goes on to lose to Donald Trump for the presidency.
The idea that they go, will she come in and save us?
She's the most like discredited, embarrassed political figure in modern American history.
She'll go.
She's the more unlikable person in human.
Yes.
Well, that's that's a big part of it.
That would be the better election for who's more unlikable.
Let's just run that race.
And it's also, it's really something that if you would go, well, look, Joe Biden's too old.
He's borderline senile, all this stuff.
It's just not going to work.
So who can we go to?
And the next person you can go to is also way too old.
Like, it's just like, but if you look at the Democrats' young bench, I mean, they just have no, what are they going to run?
Pete Budig?
Are they going to run Beto O'Rourke?
I mean, who do they have?
They have no one.
They have no talent there.
Forget even like whether they're good leaders or bad leaders, just no talent.
Like it's, it's unbelievable.
I mean, Hillary Clinton, think about this.
The idea of her running for president in 2024.
Her husband was elected president in 1992.
This will be 32 years after her husband was elected president.
It's just, it's insane.
But anyway, what's interesting about that is that they're starting to realize that, I mean, it's not, you know, it's the state of Joe Biden himself, the state of Joe Biden's approval.
You know, it's just, this is, this is very, very bad.
And without Jeffrey Epstein, they can't get the same access to orphan parts.
So they're not going to be aging any slower.
That is a big, that is a big problem.
I mean, I'm sure they could find, I'm sure they find a guy.
But yes, it's not as easy.
Yeah.
That's granted.
I agree with you on that.
Please, that was a joke.
Don't censor us for misinformation.
Isn't it creepy that they still kind of look okay under their layers?
Like you look at Biden's legs or Nancy Pelosi's tits and you're like, some reason, it's not aging at the same pace as the rest of you.
Yeah.
Well, these are, these are lizard people from a planet far, far away from here.