Dave Smith and Robbie Bernstein argue President Biden's health issues are a pretext for removal, contrasting his diagnosis with Trump's 2020 infection while criticizing corporate media double standards. They challenge mRNA vaccine efficacy, citing Fauci's own warnings on enhanced infections and rebound cases, alongside high hospitalization rates in vaccinated nations like Israel. The hosts blame Paul Krugman's inflation errors on excessive government spending rather than supply chains, link gun-free zones to mass shootings using an Indiana hero example, and dismiss AOC's handcuffed protest as a symbolic stunt by the "squad." Ultimately, they contend that liberty requires armed citizens and skepticism of elite narratives. [Automatically generated summary]
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Government Overreach and Decline00:14:55
Fill her up.
You're listening to the Gash Digital Network.
We need to roll back the state.
We spy on all of our own citizens.
Our prisons are flooded with nonviolent drug offenders.
If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
You're listening to part of the problem on the gas digital network.
Here's your host, Dave Smith.
What's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
I'm Dave Smith.
He's Robbie Bernstein, the king of the caulks.
COVID, Jesus.
We're very happy to be back with you again.
How are you doing, Rob?
I'm doing well.
You know, I like being on the road, but then I also like cranking out podcasts at home.
So, yeah, I agree.
I agree with you.
It's nice to come back to the home base.
And we're both in good spirits.
We're doing better than Biden is this morning.
Biden has, if I'm keeping track, today we found out about COVID.
A couple of days ago, we found out he has cancer.
And for years now, we've known he has dementia.
So it's a rough, a rough go for President Biden.
Which one of you.
Should be in charge.
Look at what he can stomach.
Yeah.
I mean, like, if you had found out that he had COVID and cancer and dementia this whole time, you'd go, well, considering he's doing pretty good.
So yeah, this is only helping him.
And also it's potentially an excuse for Democrats to get him the hell off the uh I thought they were going to take that opening.
I really did.
When he said the cancer thing, I could tell that it was just a Biden flub, but I was like, that's the perfect thing because then they don't ever have to address the dementia.
They can go that it just happened and he's starting to decline.
Well, I've always thought that it would be under the guise of like some health thing.
Some health thing is going to be the reason.
Yeah.
Yeah.
They're not going to just go like, no, he's so terrible.
So he's got to go.
They're, they're going to have something, oh, he fell ill.
And also, it's just very possible that it won't even be a lie.
I mean, you know, 80-year-olds have health problems.
So let's.
And he does have dementia and shit in front of the Pope.
So, you know, how much can you hope for from this guy?
Well, those are according to rumors, but I'll tell you the rumors, they sounded plausible.
So, so anyway, yeah, I guess this is kind of interesting.
It's, you know, the second president in a row to get COVID.
It's a very different time with COVID, even though it's only a couple years later than when Donald Trump said that, or not said, when Donald Trump had COVID.
I don't, I'm not, I didn't mean to put that out like a conspiracy theorist.
I believe both of them did, in fact, have COVID.
And if you remember, I don't know.
This is just what I've been thinking about this morning since I heard this announced.
Do you remember how different the propaganda around COVID was in, what was it, November of 2020 when Donald Trump got COVID?
Maybe it was a little before November, but it was late in the year when he got it.
And, you know, do you remember this, Rob?
He tweeted a thing about how you can't let fear of COVID run your life and you've got to get on with it.
And they all lost their minds.
This is so irresponsible and disrespectful.
And it was one of those interesting moments because the entire corporate press was basically like, you know, like Trump goes, don't let fear of COVID control your life.
And they were like, we object.
We would like it.
That is the whole project that we've been embarking on for this last year.
So it's a little bit different, the climate now that Biden has it.
And most people are like, yeah, I mean, he'll be fine.
Well, yeah, because they were giving shit to Trump for the recklessness, because the recklessness.
And look, now this is going to be his downfall because he wasn't taking this seriously.
And honestly, I think if the Democrats didn't do such a good job of fear-mongering on this one and pushing him into a corner, I think his instincts on COVID from the outset was like, yeah, we're going to keep running this country and doing what we do.
And he lost that battle.
So I'm not saying that he was right to start the vaccines.
I just think his initial instincts on this were better than the direction that he went in.
And he definitely kind of got shamed into like, nope, we're all going to panic about COVID.
Yeah, there's several different issues where I think Trump actually instinctually was correct, but he just kind of wasn't, he wasn't strong enough in his belief.
I think partially because it was all instinctual and none of it was intellectual, he didn't actually know better.
He wasn't like, no, I have convictions that this is where I'm standing.
So he just kind of allowed himself to get pushed in different directions, pressured in different directions.
But I agree with you.
That was certainly those were his, I think his instincts were like, to be like, yeah, this is all, yeah, come on, can't do this.
This is bad for business.
That's kind of the way Trump thinks.
And he happened to be right about that.
It's something, though, to see if you look back at it, if you remember what they were really outraged about with Trump was that he wasn't wearing his mask outside.
That was the big thing because it's crazy when you look back at it that you're like, oh my God, yeah, they actually got away with saying that, like pretending that this was some huge risk to not have a cloth mask on outdoors.
Awesome.
We need to encourage everyone to not breathe fresh air ever.
Yeah, that's just insane.
And of course, there's never like a look.
Oh, looking back at it, we were completely wrong about that.
You know, there's, you don't get that.
Anyway, I guess there is something about Joe Biden getting COVID that also, you know, look, it's not as if he's a young, healthy man.
He is old and rather frail seeming.
So I suppose that does raise a little bit more of a concern.
I mean, like, this was true with Trump too.
Although at the time, the combination of the variants were stronger.
I mean, the variants were more deadly back when Trump got it.
And also the propaganda was like a thousand times more intense.
And people were like, oh, Trump's pretty old and he's fat and all this.
Maybe he'll be in trouble.
I highly doubt the odds are overwhelmingly in the favor that Biden's going to be absolutely fine from this.
But I don't know.
It is kind of interesting, just the fact that it kind of, it makes one focus a little bit on the state of the health of the person.
And Biden seems to, at least from the outside looking in, be a little bit more vulnerable.
And there's definitely, yeah, there's definitely not coverage like, will he make it?
There's none of that.
Or, oh my God, we might not have a president.
Is Kamala getting ready?
Like, there's none of that.
It's just that guy got COVID.
An old guy who's in the risk category, but no, he'll be all right.
I also, I don't understand the Pax Levid thing.
I don't understand.
Like, I've not researched Pax Levid the way I have the COVID vaccines because they're not mandating that I have to get it.
So I don't care all that much.
But everything I've read about Pax Levid is that it seems to work if you haven't been vaccinated, which is kind of, there's an irony there that they might actually have a tool for COVID, but not if you went with the earlier recourse.
And it didn't work for Fauci when he took it.
It seems to cause more of a, what they're calling like a COVID rebound that like you can get sick again.
So I'm not understanding why he's taking it.
So, okay, so it's again, to be clear, it's not just that it didn't work for Fauci.
So this is one of the antivirals that's become very popular that people are taking as a treatment during COVID.
And it does seem from what I've read into it, it does seem like there's some pretty solid evidence that it does.
What antivirals tend to do, which is like cut down the days of symptoms that you have, you know, like there's one, there's one that is pretty common.
I'm blanking on the name of it for just for the flu.
And it'll basically be like, usually when people take this, instead of being miserable for five days, you're miserable for four days, which is not a cure, but you'd rather be miserable for four days than five days.
So, okay, you know, it's something.
That seems to be the case with this one.
However, in a percentage of people who take it, they get what's known as a rebound infection.
It's a small percentage.
I think it's like 2% or 3% of people who take it get what's known as a rebound infection, where basically they recover.
In many cases, they're even testing negative.
Their symptoms are gone.
And then they are once again testing positive, and their symptoms from the initial symptoms come back.
And they have basically what is in effect another run of it, oftentimes, even worse symptoms than they had before.
So, this is what happened to Fauci, evidently, that he got, you know, he got COVID, was sick, started to recover, and then had a rebound and went through the whole thing again.
It is, I've read a little bit about what they believe the scientific reasoning for this is.
I don't completely understand it, but it is interesting.
As far as the theory of like how it affects the vaccinated versus the unvaccinated, it is very interesting.
And I wish there was like a lot more done looking into that.
But of course, there's not too much eagerness to really get to the bottom of that.
It is interesting, of course, with Biden, much like with Fauci getting it.
It's so like sometimes these things are so right in front of you that it's not as if you even need to make this argument.
It's just everybody can see it right in front of them.
And it's one of those things that's just out there that only the people who are intentionally putting their head in the sand and just married to the idea that they don't want to believe this.
Those people never underestimate people like that, their ability to, you know, just still believe what they want to believe.
That's how human beings are.
But for the vast majority of people, for anyone who's like willing to even entertain, you know, rational thinking, it's just like with Fauci when he got it.
Same with Biden.
It's how do you not just see this and go, oh yeah.
So these guys who told us point blank said, if you get the vaccine, you can't get this virus.
You can't spread this virus to other people, told us that we were in a pandemic of the unvaccinated and used that as the basis to mandate this vaccine, cost, you know, people their jobs, their livelihoods, their ability to go to restaurants and sports games and all of these different things.
And then these are people who have been double vaccinated and boosted and had another booster.
And oh yeah, they got COVID.
And oh, yet, no one's even pretending that they couldn't have been spreading it around to a whole bunch of other people.
It's just, it's so right in front of you that like whatever other arguments you want to have, if you want to get into like the data on how much the vaccine is actually stopping severe illness, which is a claim that they still hold on to.
They've long abandoned, obviously.
If you've gotten a booster and it's within the last two months, then I guess that's the only window of time at this point of which you would even see that benefit of a reduction in, I guess, hospitalizations.
But then, so I guess you would have to, how many times a year?
So six times a year, you got to get yourself a booster shot.
And I don't even know if they're recommending that, nor do I know if there's any evidence that there's safety to, you know, doing that six times a year.
So And this is why, and remember, we talked about this the other day when Fauci mentioned it, although it's interesting, Fauci just mentioned it, but this really should be a much huger story that people are talking about all the time.
But of the people who have been double vaccinated and are now eligible and encouraged to get their booster, only 50% of them have gotten the booster.
Biden hasn't been boosted within the last two months, in which case any claim of that the vaccine is avoiding or making him not as bad would be, I guess, scientifically not true because it wouldn't be backed up.
The efficacy is only two months.
Yeah.
Yes, it wouldn't be backed up by any of the data.
But the fact that only about half of the people who did the original double vax have gone and gotten their booster when they're told to really say something, really says something like even that there's been a line for a lot of these people that's like, yeah, look, I got the thing initially when the deal was, oh, you get this and you can't get COVID anymore.
And then we go back to normal.
But once you found out all of that was bullshit, like, no, we're not, I'm not doing this.
I'm not going to, because the implication that you're talking about is obvious.
Like, what are we talking about?
So I got to be vaccinated every few months for the rest of my life.
Now we need these people to demand new emergency technology that will remove the mRNAs from their vaginas.
That's what they need.
That's next.
Hold on to the Supreme Court and just start rubbing that blood on the walls, you know?
Let them know.
There you go.
That's Robbie sent you.
Tell them Robbie sent you.
Spell out run your mouth with the blood.
But it's, you know, but whatever, there's a lot of like really interesting like debates to be had and about what exactly the health risks from being vaccinated and being vaccinated over and over and over again are.
There's a very, very interesting.
I don't like my sperm anyways.
So you know.
You weren't doing nothing with it.
That was the one upside.
You want to avoid having to get any abortions.
You just get enough mRNAs, killing off them swimmers.
There you go.
But there's, I'll tell you, there's really a really interesting argument and really interesting like kind of research to be done about whether or not the vaccine ultimately has a reverse effect and whether it actually makes you more susceptible to the virus and more susceptible to getting very sick after a certain amount of time.
This is something there's been a lot of research on this.
It doesn't get discussed in like, you know, polite society, but the truth is that if you look at a lot of these countries that had the highest vaccine compliance rate, like the highest vaccination rates, and then are later seeing their worst hospitalization and their worst death numbers, there's a lot of people who believe that the reason this is happening is because after the protection wears off, if you get the virus after that,
your body is actually worse at fighting it off than it otherwise would be.
Vaccine Efficacy Hypothesis00:12:31
The speculation about this is that it's because your body is essentially trying to fight the last strand rather than this new strand that it got, because that's what it's like prepared to fight off.
Again, this is, I wouldn't be comfortable saying this is certainly the case, but there has been like, this is a theory, a hypothesis.
And then there has been data that would kind of fit into that hypothesis.
For example, you know, these countries like Israel, like Australia, like these countries with very high vaccination rates that then see later even higher hospitalization and death numbers than they ever had pre-vaccination with deadlier strands of the virus.
It's just something there is not adding up.
And it's certainly not as simple as what, you know, this was sold to the American people as.
But regardless of that, it's just, it's almost like there's just no getting around the first most important one, which is that they sold this on you can't get COVID if you get the vaccine.
That's how it was sold, point blank.
Not like they alluded to that or implied it.
They just said that.
And that, and there's never really been in any way a recognition of that from these official people.
They never, they just stopped say, they just stopped saying it.
They, they acknowledge that that is not the reality of the vaccine, but they never go, hey, we were really wrong about that, but you should still get it.
It's just like, no, pretend it never happened.
And they also called it safe and effective.
And now, according to MSNBC, 42% of women are reporting a change in their menstruation.
So, and they basically said, well, they hadn't thought to consider that when they were studying potential side effects, they didn't even realize.
But when people were saying, hey, well, this is experimental, might there be things that we're not sure about?
And they said, nope, 100% safe.
Well, that turned out to be certifiably false at this point, too.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it's interesting.
Oh, here.
You know what?
I'll send this video over to Tanner now so we can play this.
But it was kind of interesting.
I came across this one.
And I apologize.
The quality is not great.
But I came across this video that someone had posted on Twitter here.
And it's from in 2020 during the Trump presidency when this was still a theoretical conversation about finding a vaccine.
You know, that what, because if you remember back in 2020, they were talking about like, well, what could theoretically bring an end to this pandemic?
And it could be finding a vaccine.
Sure.
I think it was a good idea.
I just said it to you, Tanner, by the way.
Trump was trying to pitch the American people, hey, I'm working on this thing and I'm going to get us all out of it.
And so the Democrats were shitting on him and said, it's certifiably false that a vaccine could be made within this time period.
We are not getting out of this.
Donald Trump's a disaster.
This situation is a disaster.
We have to get him out of office.
But he was there.
That was his pitch at the time was Operation Warp Speed.
And so when he was in office, the storyline was that won't be safe.
You can't release that.
That's not certifiably false.
So, right.
And to be clear about this here, for anyone who now, and again, you almost have to remember, it's weird that these things go like, because this is how what they call like mass psychosis, but what I just like to call like massive propaganda campaigns.
This is how it kind of works, where there are these different times and there's like these different moods of the country during the time.
So if you can try to remember kind of like in the way things were when this was first happening, we're talking about a hypothetical vaccine, you know?
Then there's the time where the vaccine is being rolled out and it's like, oh, now there's big pharma profits involved in this.
And then back then, I mean, the propaganda was like, you can't question the vaccine or you are risking being deplatformed, vilified, mocked, ridiculed, like, you know, like, and, and now we're almost in a different phase where people are a little bit more open to like you're like, me and you are not as worried that we're going to get, ah, shit, this video might get taken down for saying this.
It's not quite as concerning now because it's just the evidence has been so overwhelming.
You know what I mean?
That at this point.
So you kind of, but for anyone who even thinks what we're talking about here and what I was just talking about of the vaccine actually hurting people's ability to fight off the virus later on, if you think this sounds goofy, just to be clear, before this was clear that it was going to be locked in pharmaceutical profits, this is what Fauci said.
Again, I apologize for the quality not being so great, but this is what Fauci said during 2020.
And I also want you to keep in mind that he was really kind of telling the truth here.
Now, he might have been doing it to get Donald Trump, but this is what he said in 2020.
Let's play this video because it's pretty damn interesting.
Normal volunteer for a phase one trial to see if it's safe.
That's the fastest that's ever been done.
That's the good news.
The challenging news is that even at that rocket speed, it's going to take a few months to show that the initial safety is okay.
Then you go into a phase two trial, which instead of involving 45 people, which we have in the phase one trial, it involves hundreds, if not thousands of people.
That will take another six to eight months to even know if it works.
So at the fastest we can go, it's going to take a year to a year and a half to know if we have a vaccine that we can use.
There's another element to safety, and that is if you vaccinate someone and they make an antibody response and then they get exposed and infected, does the response that you induce actually enhance the infection and make it worse?
And the only way you'll know that is if you do an extended study, not in a normal volunteer who has no risk of infection, but in people who are out there in a risk situation.
This would not be the first time, if it happened, that a vaccine that looked good in initial safety actually made people worse.
There was the history of the respiratory syncitial virus vaccine in children, which paradoxically made the children worse.
One of the HIV vaccines that we tested several years ago actually made individuals more likely to get infected.
So you can't just go out there and give it.
So there you go.
Now, I mean, look, man.
It's wild.
Isn't that pretty wild to hear him say so?
He flat out says that, look, even if the initial testing looks good, there's no way we could know for years.
But then as soon as the initial testing looked good, not only did he say you have to get this, but said anyone who's against this is anti-science.
This is why I'm telling you, it's not that Fauci's wrong.
It's that he's evil.
Like he's lying through his teeth.
He knows exactly what he's doing.
And then here, I'm just saying, and I'm telling you, I don't know if this is true or not.
I'm not like claiming some expertise that I don't have.
I'm just saying that he himself, this is not just some crazy Alex Berenson conspiracy theorist, conspiracy theory that like, oh, maybe this could actually make people worse.
This was Fauci himself was saying that, oh, yeah, no, this has happened before, and it's certainly scientifically, theoretically possible.
And then you look at some of these countries, Israel being a great example, who rushed out, got the highest vaccine compliance.
I mean, Israel at this point, I think they're almost 90% of their adult population has been double vaccinated.
Something like 80% has been boosted as well.
And then you see just a few months ago, they had their worst single day for hospitalizations and deaths.
Well, what's that about?
You're telling me that you had your worst day for hospitalizations and your worst day for deaths.
Worse than when there was no vaccine, worse than when there were deadlier strands of COVID out there and nobody was vaccinated.
I don't know.
It sure seems to line up with this idea that Fauci's throwing out there that perhaps this actually makes the body fight it off not as well.
I agree that we got the vaccines out too early.
I just think Jews aren't the best case study because they're weak and frail and they're under the stress of trying to keep the Palestinians on their side of the wall.
So Rob, no, but see, you're got bad neighbors.
I'm not arguing with your point, but see, I'm making an apples to apples comparison.
I'm comparing them to those same frail Jews before they were vaccinated.
So I'm just saying if you have worse, I'm making the comparison of Israel between, you know, February and whenever it was February, you know, maybe from that year, February to February, something like that, of like when COVID was around and being spread and before the vaccines were being put into people's arms.
Like in that period, if you're telling me you have a worse, you're having your worst single day hospitalization and death rates after that, it would just seem to indicate that like something's going on here.
Something's going on.
And so, but anyway, regardless of all of that, just the fact that you have Fauci on record saying this is, I mean, just unbelievable.
It's unbelievable that he himself is saying that the same Fauci later who's going to tell you the initial studies look good.
The initial trials look good.
Therefore, everyone has to take this.
He goes, there's no possible way we could know after a couple months.
There's no possible way.
And no, anyway.
If only we could have Fauci one debate Fauci two.
That would be great.
They could debate everything, dude.
They could debate masks.
They could debate vaccines.
You know what I mean?
Like all the fucking, remember Fauci talking about how stupid masks are back in the fucking day?
Not even back in the day.
It was like in, I think it was in March 2020, maybe February 2020, where it was like, ah, fucking mask.
What are you going to do?
You're an idiot.
You don't know how to wear a mask and be touching your face and all this shit.
They're not going to do anything.
And like, you know, some of these things were like, I certainly like, I mean, I was like good on lockdowns and mandates and all of this stuff from, you know, because I'm a libertarian.
So I was kind of inoculated against all of that stuff from the very beginning.
But I kind of was, when they were saying masks are a good idea, I was kind of like, well, I mean, maybe they're right about that.
I mean, putting a piece of cloth, it might, you know, cut down on some ability to transmit the virus, even if it's not perfect.
I kind of like, that seemed plausible to me.
But it wasn't until after just looking at the data that you're like, oh, no, they didn't fucking, they didn't work at all.
Even if you look in places that had the highest mask compliance versus places that had the lowest mask compliance, there's no like discernible, oh, this led to a better outcome than that area did.
It's just, it's just a very contagious upper respiratory virus that's going to do what it's going to do.
Don't get me wrong, even back then when I thought the masks might work, I still wasn't wearing them.
So let that be a comment on me.
But anyway, pretty insane to see Fauci saying all of this.
Okay.
Anything else you want to add on this topic or we could move on?
Yeah, hopefully they try him.
You know, I'm still holding out.
Man, that really would.
He really should be like, he should be put on a public trial with cameras in there for the whole country to see.
It's just unbelievable what this guy is doing.
That's what they're doing with the January 6th.
Let's do that for Fauci.
And I think, by the way, this video kind of demonstrates what I'm talking about.
Like, it's not just like, oh, here's a guy who got it wrong.
Or even here's a guy with a conflict of interest who got it wrong.
You know what I'm saying?
Like if somebody's like, oh, you're getting it wrong, which is also in a convenient way, what you profit from.
Even that, it's not quite that.
It's like, this is what I'm saying with this video.
He's lying through his teeth to you.
He knows exactly what he's saying is wrong.
And he's still going to fucking say it because that's what gets him like him more wealth and power and all of that.
He'll pull good weasel tricks.
Like on this one, he'll say, well, that's for traditional vaccines.
This is mRNA.
It's not really a vaccine.
I know I was saying it was a vaccine.
BetterHelp Remote Counseling00:02:39
It's not really.
So we could have been more sure.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, he'll always find a way to weasel out of it, but that's not gain of function.
It was a different based on the definition.
Yes, that's right.
He goes, it's not gain of function.
We were simply splicing viruses to make them more potent, but it did not rise to the level of gain of function.
And then they'll be like, oh, no, everyone else says this is gain of function.
He goes, it is not.
What was the one?
He's like, no, we just changed our website.
No, but what was the thing he said?
Gain of function of concern.
Yes, that's what it was.
Then he goes, as I've always said, it's not gain of function of concern.
You're like, wait, well, that seems like an admission.
I'm concerned about it.
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Inflation as Monetary Phenomenon00:13:35
Okay, speaking of experts, just getting everything wrong, our boy Paul Krugman was on the news the other day.
I have not actually seen an interview with Pauli Krugs in quite a while.
But if you're not familiar with Paul Krugman, he is a Nobel Prize winning economist.
He's a New York Times writer, and he's been, I think, in many ways, the leading Keynesian economist in America for 20 years now.
And so he was recently interviewed about inflation, and he was asked about how he got it so wrong, which I thought was interesting.
What do you want to say, Rob?
He's also a leading liberal douche in that I've never read Paul Krugman in my entire life, but you'll run into these fake liberal intellectuals who read the New York Times every day, who basically believe in modern monetary theory because they're reading Krugman and just going, well, the debt's not an issue.
And they think that they're so wonderfully right because they've taken the time daily to read the New York Times.
So they're in the know.
But, you know, he's just leading liberal douche.
That's it.
It's modern monetary theory.
Then since he's got his fancy award in the New York Times credential, he's considered automatically right, no matter how retarded his ideas are.
Yeah, basically.
I think that's about it.
All right.
So here, let's play from Paul Krugman's latest.
And what did you think?
What did you think you got wrong?
Well, partly it's that there's stuff that I didn't, you know, that nobody saw coming.
Nobody saw Putin invading Ukraine.
I think nobody really thought about logistics supply chains or any of that stuff until suddenly they became a big problem.
But part of it is that we did, in fact, end up with what is clearly an overheated economy.
And the effect of that overheating on inflation was bigger than his past experience would have led us to believe.
So it's always dangerous to extrapolate from the past.
And in this case, it really, we, you know, I thought it was possible that we'd overheat.
I didn't think, given the historical relationship, that it would lead to this much inflation.
But the really important thing, I had another article this week.
I was pausing right there because I love that transition to the really important thing.
So why were you so wrong about like kind of the most important thing that an economist would be predicting, at least leading up to right now?
So why were you wrong?
And it's like, well, I didn't see, I mean, no one saw coming, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Who would have known it's all Putin?
And who would have known Putin was going to invade Ukraine and all this stuff?
You know, it's like, but the most important thing, now let's move on to the most important things.
Like, no, actually, it's first off, not only would lots of people have seen this coming and did see it coming, we are like two dumbass comedians and we saw this coming.
So who would not see inflation coming when you literally shut down the economy and printed $3.8 trillion in a year, sending out direct payments to individuals and corporations?
Who would have not like, who could have looked at that and gone like, wow, I don't know.
I don't see any potential risk here.
Yeah.
And you got a job at the Times.
Can't you just call someone up and go, hey, when you're shutting down the economy, are you shutting down the supply lines too?
Like, I just want to check.
Like, I mean, you got all the resources in the world.
Just make a couple phone calls.
Like, hey, you guys are at the port.
I know Biden's shutting down other places.
He's shutting you guys down also.
And then you could just report, generally speaking, I don't believe that inflation is a monetary phenomenon and we could be spending this money, but there's an issue that we're shutting down supply lines.
So I do expect inflation.
Then you could be right.
So really, you didn't make one phone call that you needed to make to make a more accurate prediction.
So why?
Why were you selling us on that there wouldn't be inflation?
Did you have a call with Janet Yellen beforehand?
Because you're in with the fucking deep state cabal of greenspans and other ones who just want expansionary monetary policy at all times?
Of course.
Right.
So it's really something just to see this.
And then this idea that like, well, I knew, you know, I knew there was a risk of overheating the economy, but I didn't think we would overheat to this level.
Like, first of all, the economy didn't overheat.
It's not an oven.
You're giving these dumb fucking examples like you were baking bread and you just left it in too long.
Also, just one more thing.
The idea that like Putin stepped in and he ruined our market, even if that was true, you know what the idea of saving is?
Is so that if there's a problem, we're prepared for it.
You guys are taking the philosophy of we don't need to prepare for incidents of chaos within the world because we can just afford to take on debt.
Well, then how does this fall?
Like you're going to have chaos.
Like be prepared.
There will be instances where countries go to war, where there's freak weather occurrences.
Like you're going to have these things happen and you're taking the philosophy of that we don't need to save for them.
So then when the chaotic events happen, you don't get to go, well, a chaotic, they will always happen.
That's why you would advocate for saving, not spending.
You're the one who's saying, well, we can spend all the time.
And there's something that's so fucked up about it and like so evil about the whole thing is that it's not just that they're like saying we don't need savings, they're actively punishing savers and rewarding speculators.
And this is essentially what easy money does.
Like if you're printing a ton of money and you have very low interest rates, it's like during, say, like, you know, the run-up to all of this, it's like, well, what do you do when you have very low interest rates?
Well, you encourage borrowing.
You encourage going into debt because the interest is very low on the debt.
So it's, it's a good, you know, it's very beneficial for people who want to take on a lot of debt.
And then when the inflation comes, like when it becomes apparent in the price inflation, who ends up getting punished?
It's the people who were saving.
Like if you're saving money, your money is now way less valuable.
But if you're holding debt, you now have essentially in effect less debt, right?
So it's like, it's this such a fucked up system where they punish everybody who did the right thing and reward everybody who did the wrong thing.
And then, yeah, exactly to your point that like, I guess the benefit for people who might want to like incentivize saving money rather than having a debt-based economy is that, oh, if there is something that's unforeseen that hurts the economy, it's like, oh, well, you were saving for a rainy day.
So hey, now you're in a little bit better of a position.
Of course, none of this really matters because all of this has nothing to do with Putin.
I mean, even if you want to argue, some of it has to do with the response to Putin, which again, this is a very tricky thing.
It's kind of what they do with COVID too, where they would be like, if you remember during the lockdowns, they'd be like, COVID totally destroyed the economy.
And you'd be like, well, no, lockdowns destroyed the economy.
You're just like assuming it's a given that we had to respond to COVID in this way.
Therefore, it's COVID's fault that this is happening.
But like, no, like, if anything, you would say it's the sanctions against Russian oil that are causing this problem.
Like, right?
Like, it's not just Vladimir Putin going into Ukraine.
Now, you could argue that it's a given.
There's no other, there's no other appropriate response except sanctioning Vladimir Putin for invading Ukraine.
But still, it's not the invasion that's causing these problems.
It's the sanctions.
And that argument that there's no other response is stupid because as we know, it's done nothing to hurt Vladimir Putin.
If you're an exporter of oil, it doesn't fucking hurt you that one country is going, we won't buy your oil anymore.
Because other countries just stepped up and were like, oh, okay.
So China and Saudi Arabia and all these other people are going to do business with you.
Okay.
So there's still, this is why, you know, Joe Biden was bragging about how he was going to crush the rupee and he hasn't.
It's doing the best it's done versus the dollar in, I think, two decades.
It's like, just none of this is true.
This is not, it didn't work.
And even that's bullshit because that's not even why any of this is happening.
It has nothing to do with the price inflation.
It has nothing to do with Vladimir Putin.
It has everything to do with printing trillions of dollars after completely wrecking your own economy for no reason.
Okay, let's play the rest of the Paul Krugman quote or clip.
Where do we go from here?
The big question is not, did we overshoot, did we overheat, but how bad is that?
Is it going to be a really difficult problem getting inflation back down again?
And that really comes down to the question of whether high inflation has gotten entrenched in people's expectations.
Do people, you know, is it like The end of the 1970s, when everybody expected 10% inflation, as far as the eye could see, when corporations were giving 10% wage increases, figuring, well, I won't have any problem passing that on consumers because everybody else will be doing the same thing.
And we have a series of new numbers coming out, all of which say, hey, that's not happening.
This really does not look like the 1970s.
The public does not believe that inflation is going to be a problem that goes on for years and years.
So it's a peculiar thing.
I mean, there's obvious stuff.
The price of gasoline is down, but that's really relatively unimportant.
What is really important is that long-term expectations of inflation are, if anything, falling, not rising.
So, you know, we're in actually better shape.
The fear that we had gotten too far behind the curve and that this was going to be really, really hard to get rid of inflation.
All right.
So that's the end of the clip.
Okay.
So Paul Krugman seamlessly goes from excusing away why he was completely wrong about his predictions on inflation to telling you, but don't worry, I've got a prediction on inflation, and that's that it won't be so bad.
And his justification for this is all about, you know, how these Keynesians always look at these things.
It's all about confidence or what people believe, how people feel.
And look, that is not, it's not as if that is meaningless.
It does matter what, you know, what people's expectations are.
That can dictate how they behave.
And, you know, certainly, like, you know, you could, you could just think of it in simple terms, like if you were on a, you know, like the desert island economy that you, I like to like use as an example because it's easier to think about these things.
But if we're all, if there's like five of us on a desert island and we all split up jobs and like one of us is uh is like fishing and the other one's like picking berries and the other one's like starting a fire and the other one's building shelter or something.
You could look at this little economy and like those are our little different areas.
Those are the little different sectors.
There's the fishing sector, the berries sector, the fire sector and the shelter sector and these are the different.
And if we all expect that this winter there's going to be like a brutal storm, this might really change our behavior of what we do.
You know, so I'm not like, I'm not saying expectations in this won't have any effect on the actual economy.
But then there's like, but if you're only thinking about expectations and not looking at like, no, the actual fundamentals, you might miss something.
Like the fundamentals are that say like, no berries are going to be growing this winter.
Okay.
So if that's the reality, it doesn't really matter what your expectations are.
That's a reality that's going to happen.
That matters way more than the confidence in whether berries will be here during the winter.
And sure, it's better that your confidence lines up with reality.
It's better if you know that this is coming this winter than if you don't and you're surprised by it.
But it doesn't really, it's not as if your confidence in berries being there in the future could compensate for the fact that they're not going to be there.
Once they're not there, that's the reality of the situation.
And so if far too much money and credit has been, you know, injected into the market and there's just more money and debt chasing the same amount or less goods, you're going to have inflation.
It doesn't matter what people's confidence is.
And so this is, it's like not understanding that very simple reality is the same reason why he got his inflation prediction wrong before.
And it's the same reason why he's getting it wrong again.
That it doesn't matter.
What matters here is it's a monetary phenomenon.
What matters is what the monetary policy is.
So for the inflation in the 70s, it took a Fed fund rate of 20% to rein it in.
Anyone here think we're going to have a 20% Fed fund rate anytime soon?
Okay.
It's not going to be rained in.
It's just not going to happen.
I don't know.
Anything else you want to add on that topic, Rob?
I like berries.
All right.
Well, that's your job.
There you go.
Liberty Movement Support00:02:01
That's the job you get on the Desert Islands.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
So anyway, it's just, it's really something to see to see like the mindset here at work and talking about like, well, what?
You were wrong on like the biggest thing.
By the way, Paul Krugman's been wrong on like everything.
It's really unbelievable his track record.
He was he famously once or infamously once said in the, I think it was like in the year 1998 or something like that.
He said that the internet will have no effect on the modern economy.
He was just like, yeah, this internet thing is just, it's a bunch of hype.
It's like a big magazine.
Gun Control Debate00:11:08
Who cares?
It just gets everything wrong.
Anyway, okay.
Moving on.
We got the wrong business model here because we're right on everything and we don't make New York Times money.
So maybe we got to start being wrong on everything and we can get onto CNN.
Yeah, we really should.
We could still know what we're right about.
We could George Costanza this and just do the opposite of whatever.
Yeah, every time we have a thought, let's just say the opposite and then we can start being wrong on everything and make that New York Times CNN money.
Guys, everything's fine.
Joe Biden is a brilliant, strong, viral man.
Viral?
That's not the word I was looking for.
He is no, viral.
That might be literal.
Viral.
Okay.
Yeah, viral.
That's the word I was looking for.
Okay.
Yeah.
There you go.
Freudian slip there.
Okay.
So let's move on.
Let's talk about one other topic before we get out of here.
What do you want to talk about, Rob?
You want to talk about this kid in Indiana who heroically stopped a mass shooting?
I was more into AOC getting fake arrested.
All right, we could do both.
We'll do them.
We'll do them quick.
All right.
So let's do the kid in Indiana first.
This is a kind of interesting story that's blowing up on social media.
Of course, not getting that much attention in the corporate press.
Of course, you're not going to see huge demonstrations or politicians trying to, you know what I mean, capitalize on it because like, what can you do?
It just doesn't serve the purpose.
But evidently in Indiana, there was an attempted mass shooting.
Another one of these crazy people jumped out.
However, Indiana is a constitutional carry area.
And so there was a kid there.
It was a young kid.
I think it's 20, 21, or something like that.
Just graduated from the school of Kyle Rittenhouse being awesome with honors.
And he, yeah, and he fucking pulled out his gun within, I think, within a minute or something like that, lit this dude up and saved a whole bunch of people's lives.
And it's just a pretty no brakes for hand sanitizer.
No, I'm not sure.
Yeah.
And that's the other thing, right?
So people were comparing it to those fucking cops in Texas who are all sitting there for like two hours doing nothing.
Well, this guy.
So it's like, I don't know.
I just thought it was like, it's almost like this thing that's so unbelievably obvious at this point, that if you actually want to deal, you want to deal with this problem, which is a problem you should want to deal with.
It's like a real, it's a fucked up thing, like that we have this like mass shooter thing now.
And in many ways, the cat's out of the bag.
Like it's kind of, it's, it's very hard once this is a thing that happens to just not to make it go away, you know?
What exactly is causing it is hard to say.
There's certainly a lot of factors, none of which are easily solved.
There's, you know, it's easy to say these things like, oh, we need red flag laws or gun control or whatever, which is all just stupid.
And this kind of proves why.
You know, we have 400 million guns in this country.
Somebody who's this determined to go out and kill people is going to be able to get their hands on it.
And in fact, all these laws probably would have done.
I mean, like, let's just say they didn't have constitutional carry.
And you had crazy high penalties for getting caught with a concealed weapon.
Like, let's say it was like, you know, in New York City or something like that.
Like, if you, if you have a concealed weapon, you're going to be looking at decades in prison.
Okay.
Would that have stopped this mass shooter?
Well, no.
I mean, murdering people is already going to get you life in prison, right?
So clearly that's not a deterrent to him.
But would it have stopped this law-abiding kid from having his gun there?
Probably.
So all you're going to do with these laws is stop the person who would have ended the shooting, right?
It's just not, it's not practical to work.
Now, the truth is that I think it's something like the overwhelm.
I think in the high 90s percent, something like 95% of mass shootings take place in gun-free zones.
This one was in a gun-free zone too.
So this kid broke the business's rules or whatever.
He wasn't supposed to have a gun there, but it wasn't illegal.
But so the vast majority of them take place in gun-free zones.
The vast majority of the men, the young men who do this grew up without fathers.
The vast majority of them are on psychotropic drugs.
I'm sure all of those things clearly play a role in this.
Almost all of them are products of the public school system.
I'm sure that plays a role in this as well.
100% of them are products of the modern American culture, which is a very kind of like godless, moral-less culture.
I'm sure like that plays some role in it too.
But regardless, all of these things are here and there's no easy fix for any of them.
There's no easy fix to make sure that all gun-free zones are abolished.
There's no easy fix to make sure that fathers actually are present and take care of their kids or that we get these kids off of these insane drugs.
I mean, I'm all for trying to do all of that, but what can you realistically do at this point?
And I think this is the example.
This is the answer.
What you can realistically do is try to have well-armed, well-armed citizenry.
I think that's basically your best bet at trying to immediately take care of this situation.
Or you can just rely on the cops who are going to sit there with a couple hundred of them for two hours while everyone gets shot up.
Stated a little bit differently.
I think we've proven that bad guys with guns will not be stopped by cops that are reluctant to use theirs.
So you should at least have a right to your own personal safety that you're responsible for yourself.
In other words, society has not provided us with a police force that we can rely upon.
So you as a private individual should have the right to arm yourself and prepare yourself for these situations.
So at least you can feel like you got a little bit of control over your own safety.
Even if it's not a perfect solution, like I'm saying, even if you end up with these situations aren't going away, or maybe you with a gun, you find out you're in this situation, you're not a hero.
I'm just saying for you to have the right to go train yourself and arm yourself, like you should be allowed to do so as society has failed you and have not provided the cops that you would need to otherwise feel safe.
Yeah.
And look, the truth is that even if the cops weren't so unbelievably awful at their jobs and they weren't just sitting there for two hours and stuff, you know, when a thing like this goes down, if the response time is seven to 10 minutes, that's a nightmare.
You know, what you need is someone right there in the moment.
And that's what they, you know, fortunately happened in this case.
And so that's kind of, you just want as many of them as possible.
This seems to me to be the only like living in real life, real world solutions that are immediate.
This seems to be the most immediate.
And then I think you got to start digging back into like, you know, all those other underlying issues that I was talking about, like really looking at like what these fucking crazy drugs are doing to kids, really dealing with all the other cultural issues and all that stuff.
But anyway, that was an interesting story.
And that kid should be, you know, for as much as we put like all these mass shooter kids, you know, on television and read their manifestos and everything like that.
We should really, if we were like a somewhat healthy culture, make a fucking hero out of this kid, right?
Like this kid who fucking like, this is the most heroic shit you could do.
It's something like out of a movie.
Saved a whole bunch of fucking people's lives.
Okay.
All right, fine.
We can move on to the AOC thing.
I don't know.
We got another episode tomorrow.
No, it's fine.
Let's fucking do it right now.
It'll only take us a few minutes.
What did you think about AOC's heroism getting arrested for the cause that she believes in?
Well, I think firstly, she didn't get arrested.
Well, hold on, hold on.
I saw it on video.
Here, let's play the videotape.
I'm pretty sure she did.
Oh, yeah, there she is, Rob.
She's being escorted in handcuffs by this police officer.
All right, can't believe you lock her hands up like, oh, my God, she's a magician.
Oh, my God, she Houdini's right out of him.
Oh, she's back.
Okay.
I don't know.
It looks like a police escorted parade.
That's what it looks like.
It really does.
I don't understand.
I just don't, I don't get it.
I don't even understand.
Was she trying to pretend to be in handcuffs, but then was just so into the moment of giving the fist that she had to break the thing?
I don't, I don't understand.
She couldn't commit to character.
You know, she's a little bit too far out of her acting classes because she mastered the role of a dumbass politician.
You know, so they trained her for one thing.
And so she's not, she hasn't done like action films or dance in a while.
She wasn't prepared for this sequence.
They didn't rehearse it well enough.
She said that she said in response to this, that she was just like, no, this is the way you're supposed to walk off.
So, you don't get like a resisting arrest charge or something like that.
I don't know.
I mean, way to prove that you can't do anything where so you're elected to represent groups of people, and now you've decided that the political system doesn't work to the point that the only way that you can enact change is by symbolically getting arrested.
And now, symbolically getting arrested doesn't do anything.
So, I guess you're telling us that there's nothing you can do as a politician.
Like, so maybe we should just shut down the cop.
Like, what's the point of this thing?
I mean, you're the person who's elected to represent groups of people, and now you're saying, Should we all just go out and get arrested?
Should we follow your lead?
Just uh, all liberals should just go to jail.
I mean, just they can go stay there for all I care.
It's but is that the thing that's so like that sucks so much about like AOC and the squad and these types is that they're like it's just like what they don't even they don't really stand up against anyone for anything that matters.
You know, this was some like anti or pro-abortion uh protest or something, and you know, she'll do that.
It's all like, oh, you're you're basically just like you're an Instagram chick.
I don't know what else this is.
You're doing something to get clicks and go viral.
And it's like, have you ever oh, miss like real, hard, lefty, you know, young uh congresswoman?
Like, has she ever stood up against like the CIA or the Pentagon or even like giant corporations or even anything like that?
It's like you listen to like the messaging the giant corporations put out.
It's the exact same messaging AOC puts out on everything policy on abortion on this issue right here.
It's the same thing, like you're right in lockstep with all those giant corporations.
You're like, um, you know, culturally, but on in Pride Month, you could read a Bank of America tweet or an AOC tweet.
Corporate Messaging Critique00:01:17
I guarantee you, they're indistinguishable from each other.
It's like what like you would think, even if being misguided, like the benefit of lefties is they at least speak out against the powerful, or that at least traditionally was what they would kind of claim to do.
This squad, it's just the worst version, it's the worst version of all of this shit.
This stuff's just chicks with dicks are the best at droning kids because they've got delicate touch, they're used to holding a joystick, so that's why the CA recruits them.
Well, there you go.
I can't, you know what?
So, maybe AOC does make some good points.
All right, all right, we'll wrap up on that one.
Thanks, everybody, for listening.
Uh, Rob, plug away, what do you got?
Uh, run your mouth, check out Run Your Mouth cranking out episodes.
Gonna have Steven the uh resident non-scientist Wonderboy this Saturday for the COVID update.
And other than that, run your mouth.
Uh, I'm sorry, some report store coming up in August, every weekend in August, DC, uh, Maryland, some farm out in the middle of nowhere in Michigan, uh, Denver, Colorado, Vegas, and uh, more coming your way.
All right, hell yeah, and of course, go over to uh comicdave Smith.com, uh, Orlando, Young Americans for Liberty.
I'll be out at the Revolution 2022, just a couple weeks away now.
So, uh, look forward to seeing some of you guys out there, and we'll catch you soon with a brand new episode.