Dave Smith and Robbie the Fire Bernstein critique Andrew Yang's Forward Party as a flawed UBI vehicle that expands government spending without repealing welfare. They contrast this with Libertarian principles, analyze Liz Cheney's establishment motives regarding Trump, and debunk deep state conspiracy theories about Mar-a-Lago documents. The hosts argue that pressuring Twitter to silence Alex Berenson violates the First Amendment, asserting government vaccine misinformation is less accurate than his reporting. Ultimately, they advocate for legal challenges against censorship to restore societal trust in free speech and expose political manipulation. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Why UBI Fails Libertarians00:14:05
Fill her up.
You're listening to the Gash Digital Network.
We need to roll back the state.
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If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
You're listening to part of the problem on the Gash Digital Network.
Here's your host, Dave Smith.
What's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
I'm Dave Smith.
He is Robbie the Fire Bernstein, the king of the caulks, COVID Jesus.
My brother, how are you feeling?
I'm doing good.
How are you, Davey Smith?
Very good.
Very good.
Can't complain.
Can't complain.
Always a pleasure to have a conversation with you and all the wonderful.
There's still a little bit.
The FBI hasn't come for us yet.
Not yet.
Not yet.
This time next year, hopefully, but not yet.
So I wanted to talk today a little bit about Andrew Yang and his new party, the Forward Party.
Andrew Yang has started a third party for those people who don't know.
He's got that D State money, so he can do it.
Perhaps.
Perhaps he does.
Now, full disclosure, by the way, I should say, before we talk about this, obviously I am a member of the Libertarian Party.
And I, as some of you may know, recently took that bitch over and installed all of my people into every single position.
But seriously, I mean, the Mises Caucus literally took over the entire Libertarian Party.
And so I have a little bit of a dog in this fight.
Andrew Yang has said a couple times that the Forward Party will be the third biggest party in the United States of America, which is kind of, you know, him directly saying that they're going to overtake us in the Libertarian Party.
So I've always, this has always bugged me.
I've never liked Andrew Yang, not like personally or anything.
I thought it was pretty cool when he went to bat for my boy Shane Gillis.
So that was that was cool of him.
But just as a political person, I just don't like him.
And I, you know, me and you talking about.
He's the even more free stuff guy.
It's like someone's always going to push it a little bit further on how much socialism we can have.
So he's now the most socialist.
Well, he was in two.
Look, I suppose you could, you know, perhaps he would argue, well, actually, I'm, this is just going to be a more efficient, you know, form of government welfare or whatever.
Like we're going to abolish all the other welfare programs and just have the UBI.
But that, right, practically speaking, you're never going to do that.
We could, we could get into a little bit tearing apart the idea of the UBI in general.
I think probably people who are living through price inflation today are a little bit more open to the idea that like, oh, yeah, just forever having direct payments from the government might actually lead to some increase in prices.
This may not be the best policy.
I heard it works, but only if the money comes from a helicopter.
Then it's real well.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, you know, so I mean, the whole idea of the UBI is really just awful.
It's the, there's the practical like implications of it.
There's the problems with it in theory.
Like, you know, first of all, the idea of giving everybody a check is stupid.
It's stupid to say we're going to, you know, if you were like going to donate money to a charity and you said, well, so what are you going to donate the money to poor people?
And you said, no, everyone.
I'm going to donate it to rich and poor people.
Like, well, that's pretty stupid.
It just doesn't make any sense.
On top of that, the idea, like the logistics of it legislatively, to actually say that we are going to abolish every other program and then enact this major program is just not plausible.
Also, logistically, it's just not really feasibly possible.
You're going to go in here and what we're going to piece by piece, you'd have to not only enact the UBI, but you'd also have to, at least if this is the plan, repeal the entire welfare state.
So you'd have to repeal what everything else or maybe not repeal everything else.
So what will keep all entitlement programs?
Are we going to keep food stamps?
Are we going to keep all these other things?
Well, so you're going to somehow work up the political will to repeal all of these things on the promise that don't worry, everyone's going to get like a guaranteed, you know, paycheck, a universal basic income.
And then once you have this, even if you were able to do all of that, isn't this all just in the same way that the welfare state continues to grow?
Isn't this just, you know, going to, I don't know.
So whatever you give someone, let's say you give them $200 a week, you know, what about people who are run out of their $200 a week?
They spent it all and now they still need food.
Yeah.
Are we going to be able to stomach if someone spends all their money on chips and then now they need granny needs her drug money?
Hey, yeah, send them enough money.
If the idea is that government can do things better than the private market, which I guess even assumes your ability to make money, then why don't we just make the decisions about what you're spending the money on?
Like, why would we hand you the money to then go to so that you can decide how to spend it?
Yeah, I mean, look, there's a million different problems here.
And then, of course, the incentive is always just going to be for it to grow and grow and grow.
Oh, we need to give them more money.
You know, just like with the welfare state now.
And in fact, I think it would actually be a lot worse than the current welfare state.
I mean, number one, it's going to be going out to rich people and upper middle class people and middle class people all the same.
Like everyone's going to be on welfare now, essentially.
It gets everyone into the system.
It also removes whatever degree of shame, obstacles, hoops that you have to jump through in order to go on welfare.
It just makes it like directly automatic.
I mean, why would we want to encourage this?
And, you know, the truth is that there already is like the free market already kind of has an invisible UBI built into it, if you want to think about it like that.
As societies get richer, people basically are provided with a lot of stuff just by living in that society.
Just by living in this society, you have access to so much more than you have if you were in a very poor society.
So the best thing you want to do is let societies be as productive and prosperous as possible.
Anyway, the UBI is a terrible idea.
So my thing with Andrew Yang was always like in 2019, when he was running, it was like he was a one-issue candidate whose issue was terrible.
It was just one issue and the issue sucked.
And then on every other question he ever got, he never, I just never heard him say anything that I thought was the slightest bit impressive on anything.
Like I never heard one thing he ever said where I was like, oh, that's kind of thoughtful and a good point.
And it was just like would say, you know, things about math.
And, you know, I don't know.
So anyway, I just was thoroughly unimpressed with him.
And the thing that's interesting about this guy, so now he doesn't talk about UBI so much anymore.
You know, made a run for being the mayor of New York.
He failed at that.
Then he went.
That's right.
Then he went and he started this forward party.
And I'm always kind of like very skeptical of these people who just want to be politicians so badly, but don't really stand for anything.
I mean, it's one thing if you really stand on some principles and you're like, I want to be, I want to hold political office because X, I want to do this.
This is the direction I want to take the country in or help lead in this direction.
But when you're just like all this kind of emptiness and everything out of the forward party that I've seen so far has all just been empty fluff.
Now, some of it I think is somewhat appealing, you know, to people.
Hey, you know, just the basic things that I think a lot of, let's say, some libertarians, some prominent libertarians in the Libertarian Party have tried to kind of run on, which I think is a very bad idea, even though it is somewhat attractive to some people.
Hey, we need a third option.
America deserves more than two options.
Hey, don't you think both the Democrats and Republicans are corrupt?
Let's try someone else.
Now, there is something about that that can get some people going, you know, there's a point to that, right?
Because that's true.
It's kind of crazy that we only have two options.
And also, both people know that both of those parties are corrupt.
So why not someone else?
The problem is if you actually do stand for something and you actually do want to like change the direction of the country, then you haven't really gotten any buy-in from anybody.
You know, so this is why someone like Gary Johnson and Bill Weld, when they ran for the Libertarian Party, they got more votes than the Libertarian Party has ever gotten before, largely on that message.
It's kind of, we're fiscally conservative and socially liberal.
We're a little bit, we're not like either of these parties.
Let's have a third option.
So they got a ton of votes.
They got millions of votes.
And it did nothing for the party.
Nothing for membership, nothing for inspiring people.
Because like you didn't get anyone to buy in.
You didn't win over like hearts and minds.
You just kind of got people going, okay, that's a different option.
So anyway, this has been basically what the Forward Party has been.
This is their motto is like not left, not right, just forward or something like that.
You know, I don't know.
But anyway, Andrew Yang was on CNN the other day and Brian, our producer here, sent me the clip of it.
I was really kind of blown away by it.
So here, let's play it and discuss.
And I have to come up with policies.
You need a better system.
Yeah, but Andrew, you're going to have to have policy positions at some point.
How does the Forward Party feel about Roe versus Wade?
Should it have been overturned?
Well, I personally think that women's reproductive rights are fundamental human rights.
But the Forward Party has not left or right, but forward stance on even the most divisive and contentious issues.
What does that mean?
You have to take a position on something.
Don't you want to take a position on something?
You can't just say, well, this is a hot button issue, so I'm not going to take a position on you.
If you want to run the country, you're going to have to make some hard decisions, Andrew.
Again, the Forward Party is about that common sense consensus majority view, which is very clear on abortion.
It's clear.
What about guns?
What about climate change?
It's actually clear on just about every issue under the sun.
Should 18-year-olds be able to buy AR-15s?
Because of the nature of our system.
Should 18-year-olds be able to buy AR-15s?
Again, the common sense consensus majority is that there should be some rules around background checks and access to firearms, but we're not getting any of these things, Jim, because the two-party system does not need to deliver.
It doesn't sound like you're taking any hard positions.
It sounds like you're sort of a fill-in-the-blank party.
You know, if somebody wants a party with no clear policy positions, you're it.
But unfortunately, in the real world, in the real world, you have to take a position on something.
Well, we're for the common sense consensus.
You actually just said it again.
That was like, it sounded like a robot that was just set on like.
Ask it a question and it will say, the common sense, you know consensus, majority position, but like it really was, like I mean, I don't dude, imagine going on CNN and just getting wrecked like that on CNN.
You can't handle, like this guy.
But so yeah, this is more or less what this party seems to be offering the American people.
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All right, let's get back into the show, and I hate this.
I I personally have always hated.
I hate, um.
Hating the Centrist Attitude00:09:00
It's a real pet peeve of mine in general in politics when somebody says nothing uh, but just takes this like centrist attitude.
You know what i'm talking about.
Where it kind of like it, it.
It always bugged me.
It'll be.
It's a response.
Libertarians get uh a lot.
I think they'll be like, well, I mean, like you know, complete liberty, like that's a little bit extreme.
The answer is somewhere in the middle and you're like, I mean, I guess like the thing that's annoying about it is that you're putting yourself forward as like you're kind of above this, i'm a little bit more level-headed.
Yes, I understand that perspective, but I also understand that perspective and the truth is somewhere in the middle, like because i'm a little bit, you know, like it's this, this kind of like air of I, I kind of transcend your little worldview and your truncated ideas and I kind of see the big picture and you get to have that air while saying nothing, while adding nothing, without making any argument.
Well, why should the center, why should the center of what, the established orthodoxy, the right in the middle of that, why should that be correct?
Why does that?
You know what I mean like it's it I, I don't know.
The easy examples always are like if you were like an abolitionist during slavery or something, and you were like we should abolish slavery and some you know southern Dexiecrates, like we should keep it just like it is, and you were like, all right, you're both being a little extreme, we should have some slavery, like what?
No, call himself the uh, the extreme non-sequitur party.
Well, we're not going to do either those things.
We're going to do the forward thing.
Well, what's the forward thing?
The forward thing yeah yeah, but what's the actual policy?
You know, the forward looking thing, the sunlight the, the thing everyone wanted.
Well, what is the thing that everyone wanted?
Well, the forward.
Well, it's because you know what I blame CNN, because you could watch that channel and think that they would just go, all right, sounds great.
You know, it's very rare that they ask follow-up questions and harp on you.
If they did this to everyone, you'd see everyone crumble.
Well that's, that's a very interesting point, that you uh, that you're getting at there Rob right, because that is that is very true right, they don't ask these follow-up questions of everyone.
So why would they be clearly trying to make Andrew Yang look really bad?
Well, because Andrew Yang is a former Democrat who's now talking about running a third party.
Now, who could that hurt?
Potentially the Democrats.
So as soon as you're a threat to them, that's when they're going to try to ruin.
You is another thing, Gary Johnson know what?
Who's actually funding this Yang operation?
I bet it's the same real team.
I, I don't think he's uh, really a true independent.
Uh you, you might be right about that, but I i'll tell you, I don't think the Democrat establishment is going to be a fan of him starting a third party or any of this stuff.
Well, I don't see this party having too much success anyway, to be honest.
Um, but to the point I was making the when, like with the example of slavery right, when you live under an evil system, the middle of the road is like a guarantee to preserving the worst of it.
That's what you're trying to do.
You're trying to come off as the common sense, consensus person, while maintaining the established order because that's what centrism essentially is, you know with minus any real guiding principles.
So anyway, Andrew Yang uh, he tweeted um just the other day and this really, I think, kind of proves my point, whether she wins her Wyoming primary tomorrow or not, Liz Cheney has demonstrated leadership and character at a higher level than just about anyone in American politics.
So there you go.
So this is what you get, this is what um, this kind of centrist, not left, not right, just forward empty rhetoric, bullshit gets you.
It lands you in praising.
Well, since we're not trying to be all the way extreme like Donald Trump and we're not trying to be all the way extreme like Aoc, let's just meet in the middle with the absolute Absolute, worst, most vile person in Washington, D.C., Liz Cheney.
That's who we should be supporting here.
We should be supporting, as Michael Malice always likes to run down her hit list, as he did on the last episode, the woman who criticized John McCain for not being pro-torture.
The woman who would sell out her own sister, you know, like the supports, nothing but a defender of her father, who literally launched the torture regime in America.
That's there you go.
There's your centrism.
That's not left or right.
It's just forward, Rob.
You understand?
By the way, I can't even believe the world will allow for a Liz Cheney.
Like, if Hitler had a kid, you think we'd embrace him in politics?
I mean, like, how is Dick Cheney's kid in politics?
And people are like, oh my God, this lady's noble.
And then you look at the stance she's taken, like, which is, I'm going to be the one Republican who goes hard after Donald Trump.
Well, then it sounds to me like you're just representing the war machine.
It sounds like you're the old Washington guard of the war machine that is like, I don't care if this guy's on my, like, you know, this guy's not starting new wars.
We got to get him out of here.
Well, that's exactly right.
You know, and so, and just to be clear about this a little bit more, right?
Because I could see where someone could initially give some pushback to what you just said and be like, well, just because you're opposed to Donald Trump doesn't mean you're supporting the warfare state.
And sure, there could be people who are opposed to Donald Trump because they're opposed to the warfare state, right?
You could, but that ain't why Liz Cheney is opposing him.
That's not her beef with Donald Trump, right?
Like, let's get this clear.
So, again, where this comes from, this idea that, oh, well, she's shown real leadership and bravery and courage and all this shit that Yang's talking about is the most shallow surface level assessment of politics, right?
So they'll go, well, look, okay, on the very, the very, very top surface of it, you have the former president who's very popular amongst the Republican base, and she has gone against him.
So she's willing to stand up against him, even though this is probably almost certainly later on today, as we're recording, I think her primary, the polls are closing tonight.
She's down like 25 points in the polls right now.
She's going to get destroyed.
So, okay.
So, on the very shallow surface of it, you could see where someone would look at that.
If you like, if you have no guiding principles or no deep understanding of what's actually going on right now, sure, you could look at that and say, well, hey, she's even willing to stand up against her own party.
You know what I mean?
She's even, even though it's going to cost her politically.
However, if you actually know anything about who Liz Cheney is, what type of policies she supports and what's really going on here.
And so you probably wouldn't look at this and go, oh, yeah, the fact that while the country is falling apart and the Justice Department has been weaponized against the American people in the name of this domestic war on terrorism and the currencies being destroyed and all of this, the fact that her most important issue is January 6th really shows that she's got this courage and leadership.
It's like, and then even one level beyond that is that much like with everyone who obsesses about January 6th, they don't actually care about January 6th.
They don't care about that at all.
This is all a means to an end.
And the end is getting Trump.
So like no, none of these people actually care that even if they believed it was an attempt to overthrow the government or some dumb shit like that.
Was there any chance of it succeeding?
Was it to any degree a fucking threat at all?
Like, let's say, you know, it's like, uh, was that the governor Whitmore?
Who, I mean, we've, you know, the whole thing was an FBI sting operation anyway.
But let's say it wasn't hypothetically.
And there were these, you know, four homeless people who were like, we're going to kidnap the governor or something.
Okay.
Are we really still making that like the biggest national issue or the biggest issue in the state, even at this point?
It was never going to succeed, right?
So, like, whatever, who cares?
Is it just about destroying government property?
Is that really the problem?
Is it about intimidating elected officials?
How about Donald Trump was rushed to an underground bunker when Black Lives Matter people were like protesting at the White House?
Remember?
Remember how little anyone cares about that today?
Does anyone ever even bring that up?
Is it even no?
Because no one actually cares about that.
That's not what it's about.
Quit Smoking Naturally with Fume00:02:38
Liz Cheney does not hate Donald Trump because he denied the results of the election.
This is all bullshit.
She fucking hates him because he repudiated her father's entire legacy.
That's what it is.
So to your point, yes, that's right.
That's why Liz Cheney hates Donald Trump.
That's why Hillary Clinton and the Bushes and all these people hate Donald Trump, because he was a repudiation of all of them.
He destroyed the Bush and Clinton crime families.
It's the best thing Donald Trump did.
He didn't just beat them, he ritualistically humiliated them.
That's the best thing that Donald Trump did.
Unfortunately, he didn't do too much more than that.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
The idea of just like, oh, isn't that the common sense meet-in-the-middle position?
The Danger of Declassified Docs00:15:17
We'll just meet in the middle with Liz Cheney.
She's the absolute worst.
She's worse than AOC.
She's worse than Bannon.
She's worse than any other.
She's worse than any of what are considered the extremes within the confines of the establishment.
You know what I mean?
Like she's worse than any of them.
So there, there you go.
There's your, there's your forward party.
Support for Liz Cheney.
And I will tell you, I do think it's, it's, it's great that she's going to get fucking destroyed.
It's great that she's going to get destroyed tonight.
But in terms of the idea of like, oh, she has all this courage or something like this, or she's shown such leadership.
Ah, whatever.
Why?
Because she's risking losing a political election.
So where do you think she's going to go?
Yeah.
Where do you think she's going to go?
What do you think Liz Cheney's next stop is going to be?
What do you think it is?
I don't know.
CNN contributor.
Maybe she'll go fucking be a spokeswoman for some weapons company or work at a think tank that's funded by those weapons companies.
Or maybe she'll go give speeches to fucking bankers about courage and make fucking 200K a speech.
What do you think?
Like, is she really risking anything?
Does she know?
She, by completely sucking up to the establishment, has guaranteed herself.
You know what I mean?
Like a position in something.
Watch.
Watch where she ends up next.
She's not just, I'm sure that deal even gets worked out beforehand.
I'm sure these people are smart enough to sit down and go, hey, look at the state you live in.
You can't win if you oppose Donald Trump.
And I'm sure they sit around.
They have a meeting.
She probably doesn't even want to do the job anymore.
And she goes, listen, I'll be the one Republican that jumps ship and I'll run this committee.
And they line up whatever it takes beforehand.
I'm sure that's a detail.
These are not dumb people.
They work out these logistics beforehand.
Hey, I've got this DNN gig.
Hey, I've got this Netflix show.
Hey, I've got this podcast deal over it, whatever for you.
All right, I'll go do that.
She's a lawyer.
That was a lawyer on a job site, you know, trying to make her case.
Didn't even work that well.
No one really cared because it wasn't, even though they hired a television producer, didn't even do that good of a job.
You know, the TV producer was, by the way, I mean, this was some article I came across.
It was the guy at, I think it was NBC or ABC that canned the Epstein story.
Really?
Yeah, I'd have to like re-look up those details, but I'm pretty sure that came across my radar.
It was like finding out that the judge who signed the warrant for Trump was the, was the, he, as a lawyer, defended the Epstein side of the, it's all just like, it's almost like too ridiculous to be real.
Um, but that's the idea.
You can cover your tracks better, government.
You know what I mean?
It's like the internet's there.
It's not good enough that just Fox and CNN won't report this shit.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, right, exactly.
And it's just like, you know, again, the look, there, it is true, right?
That a lot of people, a lot of the Republican voters are simply Trump loyalists and they're going to be on Trump's side no matter what the conflict is, even when he's wrong.
So it's not that I'm denying that, but to not be able to see what's going on with Donald Trump and the whole, like the incredible opposition to him throughout his entire presidency and now in his post-presidency, it's really unbelievable that like how many people just miss what's actually going on here.
And it's like, they just so want to believe, they want to hate Donald Trump.
They want to be opposed to him that they'll find any like post hoc justification to be, it's amazing just seeing even the people on Twitter like defending it.
And they're like, well, I mean, he had classified material when he wasn't supposed to have classified material.
As if like, do you, do you not see?
It's so obvious.
What's going on here?
Like, it's so obvious.
What are you talking about?
And what do you even mean by classified material?
Do you know what shit is classified?
That just never should be classified at all.
It's not even clear whether what you have is classified or not classified.
It doesn't mean that you have anything of any value if it's classified.
It could be as simple as something as like, oh, this would have been embarrassing for someone at the FBI or the CIA, and therefore they classify it.
We've seen this a bunch when they declassify things.
You remember the Devin Nunes memo that he got declassified?
We read on the show years ago here, but it was classified, got declassified.
It showed nothing except basically that the way they got the FISA warrants on Carter Page was kind of bullshit.
That's all it showed.
There was absolutely nothing that anyone could have possibly argued this was a national security risk if it was known.
It was just covering up the FBI's tracks.
Yeah.
Well, now they're saying that it's not a function of whether or not the materials were classified because Trump's saying that he had a standing order to declassify anything that he had taken because he has the power to do so.
Right.
So now they're saying that it would be a violation of whatever the Espionage Act is.
And essentially, anything that the government deems would be dangerous.
The problem with that is that means, I mean, he could potentially take a recipe for baking a cake and then behind closed doors, you decide that that's dangerous.
And now he wasn't allowed to be in possession of it.
Like, isn't the whole point of the classification system that that's what is deemed to be dangerous?
And then you gave the president the power to go, I'm declassifying this.
You've given him the power to make the decision that it's declassified.
I'm allowed to have it in my possession.
So, what is this now new criteria of that it's dangerous that gets to be decided behind closed doors?
None of the official narratives that have been given out make any sense on the face of it.
Like, you can dismiss them.
Look, even this stuff where they're like, they kept saying for a while that he had nuclear documents.
Remember, this was like the thing they were saying for they let him hold on to it for two years.
They figured it was nice for him to read on the toilet.
So he enjoyed having them, you know, let him keep them a little bit longer.
By the, and then, right.
So, these are nuclear documents.
So, what are you telling me?
This is like so dangerous that he has these documents that then, um, right, we just for a year and a half sat on it and then decided, like, you know, 90 days before the midterm elections, this is, oh, this hat, this can't wait anymore.
We better go to a judge and get a warning.
This makes no sense whatsoever.
Also, by the way, what do you mean by nuclear documents?
Can you be a little bit clearer on that?
Oh, no.
I mean, Trump's an engineer.
I'm sure he sits down and he reads over like, you know, engineering documents on our submarines.
And I bet he likes numbers.
So he just likes looking at the passcodes for thrills.
I'm sure it's like the really high-end stuff.
So, right.
So, but again, it's just like, just so here's the question: like, what documents?
What are you referring to?
Oh, you can't tell us.
Oh, okay.
And what evidence do you have that he has these?
Oh, yeah, you can't tell us.
Oh, and who exactly is making the accusation that he has these?
Oh, yeah, they also can't tell us.
Yet, people in the corporate press will repeat this as if it's fact without so much as one shred of evidence, one person openly making the claim or even telling you what these documents are.
Just the vaguest term, nuclear documents that are so important, we have to bust his door down, but we could also wait a year and a half before we end up doing that.
It's just like, come on, like on the surface, just makes no sense right away, like on the surface of it.
And then it's like, even if you're talking about this, like the way they're using the Espionage Act now, like whether the stuff is technically classified or not, if the government deems it, you know what I mean?
Like important, he can be it's like, well, so Donald Trump was the president of the United States, in theory, at least, has absolute top security clearance, the highest level of security clearance you can have.
In theory, again, not saying this is necessarily true, but in theory, the way it's supposed to work, there's nothing beyond his.
So he can see everything and he can legally declassify anything he wants to.
So what are you saying?
All of a sudden, right now, there's a huge risk that what?
What is the risk?
Are you saying that he'd be selling it to foreigners to make profit?
Why does that risk exist now, but didn't when he was president?
What, you know what I'm saying?
Like, what exactly is different about this?
He could have declassified anything and then taken it and then sold it or whatever.
You know what I'm saying?
This would certainly be illegal if he was doing that, but it would have been illegal for him to do it as president or not as president.
But why?
You know what I'm saying?
Like the guy just had all this stuff for four years and didn't do it.
So now you're saying this is, oh, okay.
And then, by the way, do you have any evidence that he was going to sell this to anyone else?
Or are you just claiming that it was like, you know, like with the Hillary Clinton private server, the big claim was it's not that they were claiming she was sharing intelligence with people who didn't have the security clearance.
They were saying that she, this, this is a really like this is a completely unsecure way to store it.
Like you're just someone could hack into your shit.
And in fact, possibly did.
You know what I'm saying?
And like all this, right?
So is that the claim with Trump?
Well, you can't just have this in your Mar-a-Lago home.
Someone could break in and get it to your home that's guarded by secret service.
You know what I'm saying?
It's like, is this really any less secure than having it at the White House?
It's just like none of every one of these like these, it just all falls apart on its face.
It all falls apart.
So like, so what's really going on here?
And this is crazy.
To me, the craziest thing is that anyone in the libertarian world would be like suckered by this or say these things.
I don't know.
Presidents aren't above the law.
Yes, they are.
Yes, they fucking are.
And like, okay, yeah, no, they shouldn't be, but they all are.
All the insane crimes against humanity that every single president in the last hundred years has committed.
None of them have ever been prosecuted for it.
And now the one guy who's getting prosecuted happens to be the same guy, or at least looks like he's going to be getting prosecuted for it.
The one guy, he happens to be the same guy that the entire system was weaponized against and was framed for being a Russian spy for four years.
That seems convenient.
What's he going to be charged with?
What?
Mishandling classified information?
Oh, no, we're going to invoke the Wilsonian Espionage Act.
That's how they're going to end up getting him?
Can you imagine?
Do you remember when there was an uproar over Trump revoking Brennan's security clearance?
Can you imagine if a month later he then sent people into his house to see if he still had documents he wasn't supposed to have and then prosecuted him for not returning stuff that was now above his clearance level?
Would anyone have accepted that as any?
And in that case, I would actually say that what Brennan was doing was treasonous because he's basically representing the deep state, whether he's pretending to work at CNN and not at the CIA or at the CAA and not CNN.
Either way, it's a person in government who's working against the interest of the elected official and making false claims.
But so in that case, you might actually have a reasonable case of treason.
And I don't know what else that guy might be doing that might, you know, you might be able to paint that picture, but no one would have accepted it.
They would have gone, my God, this is the highest level of overreach and Donald Trump's going after people just because they oppose him on the news.
And this is the Google eyes of Russia.
So much of this stuff, it's almost so obvious that it's like boring to even state.
You know what I mean?
But like, and this is the thing that I think just everyone knows, like the hypocrisy is so obvious.
Like, do you really think if Donald Trump had two straight quarters of negative GDP growth and then Donald Trump said that's not what a recession is?
What would the response across every single cable news show and every single mainstream newspaper?
What would they have said?
They've been laughing at him for what a clown he is.
And yet when it was Biden, they all took the exact opposite approach.
Everyone sees this for what this is.
It's state media.
That's all it is.
It's like, okay, it may not technically be called state media.
It may not technically be receiving its money right from the federal government.
Instead, they just got Boeing commercials playing all the time.
Okay, fine.
But like, it's the same thing in effect.
That's what they're there for.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
It takes a little bit more than the most surface-level understanding of all this shit, but it's not to recognize what's going on with Trump here, to recognize how the deep state's been turned against him from the very beginning.
To recognize all of that doesn't mean you have to be some blind Trump loyalist or even a Trump voter or even someone who supports Donald Trump.
As I've said many times, I think there's lots of things Donald Trump should be prosecuted for, namely war crimes.
I think that I don't think he should run again.
I don't think he was a good president.
I don't think he's a good person.
You can think all of that and also still recognize that he was framed for treason for three years, four years, depending on when you want to cut it off by the deep state and the corporate press, starting with the Clinton campaign.
And that he is absolutely right now having the Justice Department weaponized against him for political reasons because they are scared of him and his movement.
That's what's happening.
You know, one of the other things that's interesting now is that it looks like it looks like it's very possible that Rudy Giuliani is going to be indicted.
From what I can understand about this, it's basically from denying the election results for saying the election was stolen.
You're dumb enough you shouldn't be a lawyer, but just take the guy's license so that other people don't make the mistake of having him represent them.
I mean, I can't imagine he's got other clients at this point just because he comes off like such a buffoon.
But if he does, just take away his license, but I don't think you got to prosecute him.
Listen, I'm no fan of Rudy Giuliani either, but I think you also have to see this as a piece within the greater coming after Trump.
If there's like a temporary insanity, there should also be it's our fault because you're so stupid.
We shouldn't have given you a license.
And now you might go, hey, government shouldn't be giving licenses, but in a free, in a real free market, you would know that some guy was so dumb you shouldn't trust him.
We have like a rotten tomato system or otherwise.
But in a government system, we have no choice but to rely on their license.
And so at some point, they're at fault for licensing individuals that are this stupid.
You might, you know what?
I got to be honest.
You have a strong argument.
You have a strong argument there.
I'm not going to, I'm not going to contest you on that one.
Okay.
Alex Berenson Vaccine Arguments00:09:21
What else do we want to talk about?
Oh, yeah.
This was a big story that has not gotten a lot of coverage, but I think this was really interesting.
And I wanted to just mention it.
So Alex Berenson, who's somebody who I read regularly, I believe you do as well, right?
He's been really great on throughout the COVID hysteria.
And Alex Berenson was a former reporter for the New York Times.
He's an author.
And he was really demonized and silenced over the last couple of years for the crime of making fact-based arguments against the vaccine regime.
I mean, I now, again, there are you can think he's making his arguments are wrong or not.
I think he's, he's been a lot more right than he has been wrong, personally.
There have been, I think, a few things that he got wrong, but I think overall he's been very good.
But however you feel about his arguments, they're always like academic arguments.
He's always pointing at studies, drawing conclusions from them, making arguments about what, you know what I mean?
And it was always in very stark opposition to the vaccine.
When I say the vaccine regime, I don't even just mean the mandates.
I mean, just the entire thing, just the entire pushing of the vaccine on the global population.
For that, he was booted off Twitter.
Then he had this lawsuit with Twitter.
He actually got his Twitter account reactivated.
We did an episode on this.
It was a very interesting thing.
Doesn't usually happen.
He released some evidence last week that evidently they're email correspondence between people at Twitter who pretty blatantly say that the White House was grilling them about why Alex Berenson hadn't been kicked off their, hadn't been kicked off Twitter yet.
And he shortly after that, he was kicked off Twitter.
This is a very interesting development.
It seems to be some real proof that what we've been saying this whole time is going on is in fact what's going on.
That it's not as simple as, well, Twitter is a private company and they can do whatever they want to.
But in fact, what you have here is the government intervening in these private companies and putting enormous amounts of pressure on them to silence voices.
And why are they silencing these voices?
Oh, yeah, because they're critics of the government, specifically for being critics of the government.
And in this case, spreading a whole lot of information that turned out to be far more accurate than the information the government was giving you.
This is something that I think, like I've said this before, I already think this argument should have been long done and won.
And largely, I think it has been.
But within the libertarian world, this should really be the nail in the coffin.
No more defending tech censorship.
That's not what we do anymore.
We actually oppose it.
It's terrible.
It's completely unhealthy for a free society.
And particularly, anyone who is like anyone who is a political dissident, anybody who does not approve of the current government should see the government stepping in and silencing people for being critical of the government as, I don't know, a bad thing.
Well, we saw it earlier.
There was at one of the press conferences, Saki was saying, yeah, we're working in conjunction with these companies to try and remove misinformation, but they always seem to, and I don't really remember the specific laws, but they hide behind the fact that they're, I guess, an independent company and they don't have the publishing laws.
But if they're working in conjunction with government, like on government's behalf, then I guess then you should be allowed to have your First Amendment.
You know, government shouldn't be allowed to censor you.
Well, it's clear.
Sorry, go ahead.
No, no, I think that was.
Well, it would, so it would be a clear violation of the First Amendment for them to tell a private company you have to fire this guy.
What they can hide behind is the technicalities that they could say, like, well, we didn't tell you to ban him.
We simply asked you why he hasn't been banned already or like something like that.
You know what I mean?
But come on.
Like this is it's so obvious here that what you have is the government pressuring companies to silence people for criticizing that government.
I mean, if that's not in effect, a blatant violation of freedom of speech and just like an incredibly dangerous dynamic in society.
It won't happen, but it'd be the greatest thing on earth if Hindsight's 2020 get whoever it was who thought that it was so important that Alex Berenson be off of Twitter and have them defend specifically why they thought he needed to be removed.
And then we could see who is actually more correct about the vaccine and COVID response now.
And then we could have a good case study for why government shouldn't be censoring individuals.
This is a really good opportunity for our society to heal and grow and to really take a look at the divisive nature of why so many people distrust government, distrust government.
So let's do that.
I propose it.
If you're out there listening, government, why don't we treat this in a fair way?
Let's do a review.
Let's see who is more right.
Should government have censorship power because there's such evil spirits putting out misinformation?
Like, let's actually put this one up or should government not have the ability to restrict free information because sometimes they get it wrong.
Yeah.
It's a good case study.
Well, I would love, I would love to really thoroughly do that case study.
And I think we all know how it would end up.
Yeah, no, look, I mean, the fact is that Alex Berenson has gotten this stuff way more right than Fauci and Biden.
There's just really no argument about that.
You could just run through the list of the things that he's said versus the things they have said.
And he's absolutely more accurate.
By the way, all of our thoughts, of course, are with the quadruple vaccinated Jill Biden, who just tested COVID positive earlier today.
So hopefully she gets better soon.
The other thing that's fascinating with the Alex Berenson story is that there was a little bit of an outrage, at least in small circles, mostly on his sub stack that he settled.
And it seemed like he wasn't really going to be able to stick it to Twitter.
This is a little bit of a game changer because it's interesting that I guess this came out, I guess, in Discovery or whatever that process is, and that he's actually, even with the settlement, allowed to shine a light on it.
Usually the reason why people settle is to have everything go away.
So it's interesting that he's able to act on this and that there might be a lawsuit against the government.
And then potentially, I don't know how big his other settlement was, but he might not need additional funds.
So he might actually be able to push this case and not want to settle it.
Yeah.
No, that would be, that would be very interesting.
Yeah.
Certainly rooting for that.
I'm rooting for your case study.
I'm rooting for more lawsuits where more stuff is revealed.
All right.
That's going to be our episode for today.
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It's fantastic.
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Yeah.
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