Dave Smith and Robbie Fire Bernstein debate supporting Blake Masters over Mark Victor in Arizona, arguing for pragmatic "lesser of two evils" voting despite Masters' hawkish rhetoric. They analyze the UAE's refusal to lower oil prices, linking it to historical grievances, while speculating that weak charges against Hunter Biden signal political pressure on Joe Biden regarding his re-election viability. The hosts critique Stacey Abrams' stance on abortion as prioritizing maternal convenience over fetal life, concluding that these political maneuvers reveal deeper establishment conflicts and strategic messaging within the current administration. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Why We Need Gun Control00:14:20
Fill her up.
You are listening to the Gash Digital Network.
We need to roll back the state.
We spy on all of our own citizens.
Our prisons are flooded with nonviolent drug offenders.
If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
You're listening to part of the problem on the Gash Digital Network.
Here's your host, Dave Smith.
What's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
I'm Dave Smith, the most consistent motherfucker you know.
He is Robbie the Fire Bernstein, the king of the caulks.
COVID Jesus.
What's up, brother?
How are you?
I'm doing well.
How about you, Davey Smith?
Very good.
Very good.
What's new?
Skank Fest this week.
Yeah, Skank Fest is this week.
Very excited for that.
God damn.
Skank Fest always just creeps up on you.
And then a few days before, you're like, oh, shit, you're going to Skank Fest.
I need jokes.
Yeah.
Oh, shit.
I got to remember how to be funny.
It's been nine years since I've been funny.
We are going to do a lot.
We have two part of the problems that we're going to record at Skank Fest.
One of them is going to be a pay-per-view that it will only be available for those who order it at mintcomedy.com.
And you can get the live stream and then you have it for a few days available.
It's 10 bucks to order the stream.
And we just confirmed that our guest for that show will be the great Tim Dylan.
Tim Dylan on a live part of the problem at mintcomedy.com.
So go check that, go over to that site, go order the stream.
This is going to be, he hasn't been on the show since back before he was rich and successful, back when he was a loser.
And we talked to him like the chump that he was at the time.
Like, yeah, you're lucky to be here.
Now we're going to be like, thank you so much for coming on.
Do you need me to shine your glasses?
Do you need me to bend and laugh at your jokes?
Hey, Tim, that's a great point.
Can I borrow a few bucks?
Anyway, this is going to be, honestly, this is going to be an incredible episode.
Trying to confirm one other big guest for that show as well.
Tim is already confirmed.
It's me, Rob, and then one other big guest who isn't officially confirmed yet, but Tim Dylan will be on the show.
We're going to do stand up before the podcast.
You'll get all of that if you go plunk down the 10 bucks at mintcomedy.com and order the stream.
So look for that.
And then we're going to do another podcast, still putting that together.
That one we'll probably put out, but the big pay-per-view with Tim Dylan, you got to go buy if you want it.
Okay.
So, oh, yeah.
Also, me and Robbie the Fire Bernstein will be out in Poughkeepsie, New York on, what is that, November 25th and 26th, I believe.
Ticket links are up at comicdave Smith.com.
Go check that out.
Just confirm BK Chris will be coming with us to host the shows.
So BK Chris, me and Robbie the Fire Bernstein all doing some stand-up up in Poughkeepsie, New York.
New Year's Eve, me and Louis J. Gomez are returning to the comedy store for our tradition of doing the New Year's Eve shows there, which was discontinued after 2019 when the world went crazy.
But we're bringing it back.
A bunch of other great comics on that show as well.
All right.
Anything else you want to plug, Rob, before we start?
November 4th and 5th in Texas, November 4th in Dallas.
I'm going to get a ticket link up for that.
And then November 5th with Scott Horton.
Ooh, Robbie the Fire, Scott Horton.
Sorry, Brian, what is this that you're telling me to do?
Plug.
Oh, yes.
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Okay, so a few things that I want to talk about on today's episode.
Maybe we'll start with this.
I upset and pleased some people the other day with something that I said on Twitter.
And I wanted to expand on it a little bit and kind of explain myself.
So this is somewhat related to the last episode that we did when we were responding to Dennis Prager about his criticisms of the Libertarian Party and I suppose libertarians in general, although not libertarianism, just libertarians in the Libertarian Party.
By the way, just to keep you guys updated, Dennis Prager still has not shown up to my house with a fine bourbon and a Marborough Red.
I'm not saying he's not going to.
I fully assume he will, but I have not yet received any of that.
We'll check in every single episode and let you know when this is finally over.
So I tweeted the other day that I am supporting, for whatever that's worth, throwing my weight behind Blake Masters in Arizona, who is a candidate for Senate out there, rather than supporting the Libertarian candidate, Mark Victor.
So that was something that bothered some people in the Libertarian Party, and it pleased a lot of people who I guess were Blake Masters supporters or even some people in the Libertarian Party who kind of understood where it was coming from.
So I made that official.
So I thought maybe I would open with explaining why I did that.
All right, Rob.
Now, you're getting behind Slave Master.
That's right, Masters.
I get that.
I will say there were a few people who made the comment.
And it's a pretty solid joke that a libertarian supporting masters is not the best look.
Now, I will get that just on the pure wording of that joke.
I will say solid.
And I get it.
So let me just explain to people what happened, all right, and where I'm coming from on all of this so they have a little bit better perspective.
So, first of all, Blake Masters is an interesting candidate to me.
And I've thought this for a while now.
I've been kind of interested in this guy.
And I've reached out to some people who are somewhat within his orbit to try to get some more information about him.
But if you're not familiar, Rob, which I assume you're not, but so Blake Masters is running for Senate.
He is trailing very slightly behind Mark Kelly, who is the worst, just the worst of the worst.
He's, I don't know how to say it.
He's a Hillary Clinton Joe Biden Democrat.
Pull up some pictures.
Yeah, do you?
Sure, you can pull up pictures.
Um, so he is.
Do you remember the congresswoman who got shot years ago?
Uh, the ball guy, the crazy, she was attractive, but some crazy guy shot her.
Well, yeah, I don't really remember what she looked like, but this is her husband.
He's like the astronaut, if you remember.
And their big thing, uh, Gafford, was that her name?
And the big thing after she got shot was that they got big on gun control.
This is why you have to sport gun control.
So they're basically like, uh, I don't know how to describe him.
He's Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden on everything else, except a little bit more aggressive on gun control.
Maybe that's how to describe him.
So not good.
Now, Blake Masters, who's running against him, and is, I believe, the latest polling that I saw, he was like three or four points behind.
So really within striking distance.
And he got a, he just recently got Trump's endorsement.
So that's, you know, keep in mind, I feel like MAGA Republicans tend to underpoll a little bit.
Seems to be a theme that they do a little bit better than they poll.
Either way, even if he's not doing better than he polls, this guy is a real shot to be in the Senate.
Okay.
Now, Blake Masters used to be one of us.
And when I say one of us, I mean a true radical, hardcore libertarian.
I mean, was an avid reader of LewRockwell.com and anti-war.com.
If you guys know, antiwar.com is the site that Scott Horton is the managing editor of, and an avid reader of Lewerockwell.com back in like 2007, like that time when it was just the best site on the internet.
He even had a couple pieces published on Lewerockwell.com that were just incredible.
And he was like a true hardcore radical libertarian at the time.
Now, he's definitely gone in a more MAGA direction since then.
I'm not trying to, you know, pretend that that's not the case.
And he's had some campaign rhetoric that's not good at all.
Stuff about getting tough on China and, you know, a few, a few other things that really were not good.
But he definitely used to be one of us and has gone in a MAGA direction.
Now, I don't know exactly.
I've had some people who are close to him who kind of like assure me that he's really closeted one of us, but that he's, you know, this is just, you know, he's trying to win.
And there is, to be fair, there's a different game that you play when you're running as a libertarian in these big statewide races than what you play when you're running as someone who's trying to win, right?
I mean, if you're running and you're getting 4% of the vote, your job is to just tell the truth.
But if you're running and you're getting 43% of the vote, maybe your job is just to try to win.
I don't know.
That's kind of debatable, but he's certainly become a border hawk.
Like he's really running on, you know, build the wall, all of this stuff.
That I don't really have that much of a problem with.
He's, he's running as a Republican in Arizona.
I think that's kind of what you have to do to win.
And also, you know Rob, as we've talked about many times, I don't think that um, border restrictions are that incompatible with libertarianism.
To be honest, he uh said a couple things about being a hawk on China that I think are not good.
He's um, He said one thing about how, you know, something, I can't remember exactly what he said, but he said like, America, we should never fight war for regime change.
We should only fight war if we're directly attacked or one of our allies are attacked, like Israel.
And I didn't really like that.
I was like, no, that's a little bit too much.
Like, maybe if we're attacked, not if anyone's attacked.
It's just getting a little bit too broad.
But regardless, that's who he is.
He's not perfect, but some people behind the scenes are saying, no, no, no, he really is that great, but he's just doing what he's got to do to win.
I'm not going to assume that that's true, but I will say he's a guy who used to be a hardcore libertarian, who went in a more MAGA direction, who has a real shot of winning against one of the worst Democrats.
Now, if you could imagine, Rob, my position initially was that I don't really think this is the guy libertarians should even run against.
I think, I mean, look, if you read some of his older stuff that he had written, it was like so good.
Like anti-war stuff that was like could have stuff that me or you, if someone just presented you with this piece, you would have signed your name to the bottom of it and been like, okay, I'll say I wrote that.
Perfect.
Literally perfect.
I posted, if you check out my Twitter, I posted one of his recent, not I recently posted one of his articles from back in like 2006 or whatever, 2007, something like that.
And just excellent.
And I just kind of feel like my feeling with the Libertarian Party is that we have to be smart about how we utilize this party.
Making Republicans Better00:03:39
And the goal is, like I said on the last episode, right?
If you are a terrible Republican, then we're here to fuck you up.
And if you're a good Republican, then we're here to make you better.
And if you're a great Democrat, like if you're Tulsi Gabbard, something like that, right?
Then you know what we're here to do?
Like let's say Tulsi Gabbard is running against, I don't know, I can't, I don't know who another Republican in Hawaii would be, but let's just say Tulsi Gabbard was running against Lindsey Graham.
Then you know what the Libertarian Party's here to do?
Fuck up Lindsey Graham to give the race to Tulsi Gabbard.
That's kind of like how I feel like the party should be utilized.
And so in this race, I was like, I don't think we should run someone against them.
Now, by the way, just to be clear with how I feel like the Libertarian Party should be used, I think it's like, I think I said this last episode, but on the local level, we should be trying to win, get as much control as we can and roll back as much government as we can.
On the statewide level, I think we should be doing what I'm saying right now, fuck up the bad guys, pull back on the good guys, and then maybe even extort the good guys a little bit, you know, get some concessions out of them, and then throw our support behind them.
On the national level, it should be about spreading a message and waking more people up.
That's kind of how I see how this party should be used.
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Okay, so I wanted, I tried to use my influence behind the scenes to go.
The Age of Consent Debate00:05:09
I don't, this is a couple months ago, maybe a month ago.
I don't know.
So I tried to use my influence behind the scenes to say, hey, I don't think we should run someone against this guy.
I know he's taken a turn.
He's not exactly one of us anymore, but he used to be one of us and went in a MAGA direction.
That's still way better than a Joe Biden Democrat, right?
It's got to be.
I mean, this is a guy, just so you understand, Rob, who is completely red-pilled on the military-industrial complex and the Federal Reserve.
Like, knows all about this, but he's definitely now running on a Republican MAGA type message.
Like he's mocking the Federal Reserve for being woke.
That's like what he's getting written up for.
He's really anti-wokeness.
Now, nothing wrong with that, but it's just he's not really going at the Federal Reserve for like how artificially low interest rates distort the economy.
He's going at them for like, oh, look at them.
We have this inflation and they're worried about like how many Latinos they're hiring.
Which, okay, I mean, I don't know.
I think sometimes if when you're a libertarian or when you're a Republican, there are kind of different there's a different task that you're supposed to, you know what I mean?
Like if you're getting 4% of the vote, maybe your job is to wake people up to the truth.
But if you're actually trying to win, maybe you're just going with what is the most popular, populist, anti-Federal Reserve message that you can come up with.
So anyway, that was kind of my feeling.
Now, this guy, Mark Victor, who's running against him, I actually, I met him at Freedom Fest a year, a little over a year ago.
And he gave a great speech and he does great work.
He's a part of this group.
I believe it's Attorneys for Freedom or something like that.
But he's a lawyer who does a lot of work against the state, defending people against state, you know.
you know, authoritarian awfulness.
And he's great.
And I like the guy, nothing against him at all.
But he really fucked up in the debate the other night.
And his first major fuck up was that he said a thing.
He just invoked age of consent laws and how people, reasonable people can disagree on this and you should be able to vote on it.
And the point he was trying to make was not awful.
It's not as bad.
He came out pro fucking kids.
No, no, he didn't, Rob.
But it came off that way.
No, he didn't.
He didn't.
But it, if it makes sense, what he said would be necessary to clarify that he's not pro-kids, which is just not great.
You never want to be in a situation where you have to clarify.
Hey, by the way, I was not suggesting that it's okay to fuck kids.
So he was trying to make the point that I guess what he was saying was that, look, there are some things that you, that you shouldn't get a vote on.
And there are some things that we should vote on.
So there are some things, I don't know exactly, you know, whether I can enslave you or not shouldn't be voted on.
But some things like fucking kids.
Like fucking kids.
Like if there's a whole community of Michael Jacksons and they're all wealthy and they're all into kids, then they should have a right to vote on that.
I mean, it's because it's, because then you're going to be fucking someone else's kids.
So if that parent's in agreement, then everyone's in on it.
Just a different society.
This is not exactly what he was trying to say, but this is how it works.
And then he brought a 16-year-old.
He's like, tell me this chick's not hot.
Tell me.
I mean, honestly.
Tell me.
You guys going to tell me that this 16-year-old, all right, let's take it to a vote.
If I'm the bad guy, let's take it to a vote.
The eyes and nays.
But so he was saying that like, look, there's areas like, I think he was, he mentioned abortion and he was like, look, should abortion be banned at conception or at 10 weeks or at 15 weeks or at 20 weeks?
There's no, you know, it's an arbitrary line.
So that should be up to a vote and the vote should be done at the most local level as possible, which by the way, I don't completely disagree with him on.
I think there's some validity to this point.
And he was saying that like, look, if one town wants to do it one way and another town wants to do it another way, that's fine.
That's the most voluntary like way to do it.
And then if you don't like the town's rules, you can move to the other town.
Kind of, you know, a fair localism argument.
And then he just goes, there's other things that people, you know, reasonable people can disagree about, like the age of consent.
That should be up for a vote.
Supporting the Lesser Evil00:14:13
Now, it came off awful.
It was not the point he was trying to make.
But of course, I mean, I don't know.
It was just such a stupid, unforced error that then, of course, that's going to get clipped and go super viral, which it did.
And then everybody's just, you know, it's like the perfect thing as if you were set up to dunk on libertarians.
Like, if you were just trying to discredit libertarians, this would be what you would have the libertarian candidate say.
Everyone's trashing it.
And I did feel after seeing that that I kind of, you know, I have a little bit of a responsibility as one of the bigger, if not the biggest, kind of figure in this movement to like, then when that happens, I have to come out and say, nope, that's not what we support at all.
I'm not supporting this guy.
I'm supporting Masters in this race, right?
So it kind of was kind of how I was feeling.
But then I saw another clip of his from the debate that made the decision much easier for me, where he actually trashed Blake Masters for he linked him with Trump because Trump has endorsed him.
And they're, you know, he's running on this kind of like Trumpist message.
And he said, it was something like they were talking about wokeism in the military.
And he was like, look, there's lots of people in the military who are great generals who aren't woke at all, who are complete straight shooters.
And one of those guys was Mattis.
And look, Trump ran Mattis out of the military.
Mattis resigned because Trump was so terrible.
And you're representing the same thing Trump is.
So it's actually your type of people who are driving guys like Mattis out.
And that to me was the deal breaker where I was like, wait, hold on, hold on.
Do you not know why Mattis like resigned?
And he publicly stated this.
There's no like, there's nothing about this that is even in debate.
He stepped down because Donald Trump ordered him to end the war in Syria.
And he said he would not do it.
Now, by the way, Donald Trump should be criticized for ever appointing Mattis, and he should be criticized for backing down and not ending the war in Syria, even after Mattis resigned.
But the libertarian does not side with Mattis.
You know, like that's not the criticism.
The criticism is, why did you ever hire Mattis?
Support fucking kids.
We can look past that, but they're going to support war.
I was willing to move past that, is what I'm trying to say.
But anyway, so that was to me, I go, look, there's, there's different roles here.
And I know there were some libertarians who gave me some shit about this, who were like, well, you're, they'd go, well, look, Mattis or Mattis, well, look, Masters isn't a libertarian.
Look at this thing he said or this thing he said.
It's like, yeah, I'm not claiming he is a libertarian.
I'm saying he used to be a libertarian.
He's not anymore, but he's still way better than this Joe Biden Democrat.
Okay.
And he could potentially win.
And then people will say, you know, things like, well, look how much better the libertarian is on this policy or that policy than Masters.
And again, I agree.
I'm not saying that's not true.
I mean, Victor is way better on several policies than Masters is.
But there's a different standard that I hold, number one, for the Republican Party than for the Libertarian Party.
And number two, more importantly, for someone who's actually can win than someone who can't win and someone who's just kind of running to make a point.
There's a difference between someone who's running to win and someone who's running to make a point.
And if you're running to win, so in other words, let's say There's something that a lot of people in the Libertarian Party say a lot that I really hate.
And they say, we don't believe in supporting the lesser of two evils.
And I don't like that because I don't agree with that.
I don't agree that it's wrong to support the lesser of two evils.
I would support the lesser of two evils if it was substantially lesser.
You know, like, you know, I think that the income tax is evil.
But if there was one guy running on a 90% income tax and the other guy was running on a 10% income tax, and theoretically, for this example, let's just say that we knew they were both going to enact that when they got in.
Would you say, I won't support the lesser of two evils because it's still evil?
I will only support someone who runs on a 0% income tax.
I don't agree with that.
I would support a 10% over a 90% because it's less evil, you know?
And so I don't agree that you wouldn't support someone who's a lesser of two evils.
Now, there's, I don't think that the LP candidates should run on a lesser of two evil platform.
Because if you're in a race where you're not going to win anyway, then you might as well tell the truth.
Then that's your job to just say what's right and try to pull people more in your direction.
But if you're, you know, like, even like, we'll give people shit sometimes, you know, like even Gary Johnson, we've been critical of, who was the LP candidate in 2016 for president.
And we'll say, like, oh my God, you're moderating all your positions and you're like not really like standing up for like true libertarianism.
But if Gary Johnson was polling at like 45% and was about to be the president of the United States, you'd be like, ah, shit, whatever.
Moderate, I guess, if that's what you have to do.
You're still going to be way better than anyone else who's getting in there.
Oh my God, he's going to get in there and try to be, you know, abolishing all of these awful policies.
That's better than what we have.
But when you're at 3%, it's like, dude, what the fuck?
Just tell the goddamn truth.
You know what I mean?
It's just, you're playing different games.
There's a different standard for someone who's actually like potentially going to win than for someone who has no chance of winning and is just kind of trying to, you know, play this role where it's like, you know, they just have a different role.
And so what I thought Mark Victor's role was, obviously, if anything, look, I wasn't going to support him.
I, or behind the scenes, I didn't want anyone to challenge Blake Masters, but I couldn't control it.
Basically, what happened was, you know, I tried to exert my influence behind the scenes, but there's fucking goofy laws in this fucking country.
And the way it works is crazy.
But so this is their in Arizona, this is their ballot access candidate.
So they need to run this candidate in order to have ballot access for all of their candidates.
And also he went and got the signatures required by law to be on the ballot.
So there's nothing the party can do.
The party can't take him off.
It's very bizarre the way the laws work.
But so there's literally, there was just no amount of influence I could exert to change anything.
So that's just, it's just the way it is.
But it's like, look, if you're a libertarian and he is, by the way, polling, at least the last one I saw, he's beating the spread, right?
So Blake Masters is losing by a little bit.
He's polling it more than what Blake Masters is losing by.
And okay, so him getting out and endorsing Blake Masters might make this guy the next senator, and he might be one of the best senators in the Senate.
Like someone who's truly red-pilled on war and the Federal Reserve in the Senate, way better than a Joe Biden Democrat.
But if you can't, if you're not going to drop out and endorse the guy and you're going to run, then Rob, I mean, what should you be doing there?
Not fucking kids.
Not definitely not fucking kids.
But your role there, right, would be to be, so you should even be challenging Blake Masters to be like, hey, dude, you were so great just a few years ago.
So what are you talking about with this China Hawk stuff?
You know that that's not the correct position.
You know that you shouldn't be, you know what I'm saying?
Like you should be sitting there almost challenging him and making him move back in the liberty direction.
Like that's what you should be doing.
But you shouldn't be challenging him for why Mattis left the race or any of that stuff.
Like that's just insane to me.
So as I've always said, since I've been a member of the Libertarian Party from the very beginning, in fact, some of you may remember back on this very program when I debated the now former disgraced chair of the party.
We had a Soho Forum debate and then we sat down on this podcast in the studios at Gas Digital and we debated.
And the big thing that I argued with him was, is that I don't believe in like just blind party loyalty.
I don't believe in that.
I don't believe in like, I'll support anyone.
Like that, that's stupid to me.
If you're, if you're going to tell me that, oh, I'm a member of the Libertarian Party, and I am a member of the Libertarian Party because I believe in the Libertarian Party.
I think it's important to have a third party that believes in the principles that we believe in, right?
But if you're asking me if, let's say, I don't know, let's say the Democrat was Hillary Clinton and the Republican was Ron Paul, and the Libertarian was, you know, I don't know, whoever, anyone.
It's not as good as Ron Paul.
Let's say, and the Libertarian candidate was Joe Biden, just for the sake of, are you telling me I would support Joe Biden because he has an L next to his name?
No, I'd vote for Ron Paul, who's a Republican.
And switch any of those around, I'm voting for Ron Paul, whether he was the Democrat, the Libertarian, or the Republican.
I'm just going to vote for the person who I think is best.
Now, in this case, I'm not voting at all.
I don't live in Arizona, but I'll support whoever the guy I think is the best one to support.
And that's kind of how I've always felt.
That's how I always will feel that the role here is to say, no, the whole point of being in the Libertarian Party is that we don't believe in blind party loyalty.
If we did, we would just stick with the Republicans or the Democrats or something.
We're here because we believe like, you know, in principles.
And so I think the principle in this case is like, if there's someone drastically better, let's try to get that drastically better person in.
Let's do what we can.
Now, the reason for libertarians to exist is always going to be to either win, to try to influence the results in a better direction, or to try to spread our message.
If we're not doing any of those things, then I'm just going to support who I think is better of the options.
So that's that more or less is just, you know, because I said this on Twitter.
So I just want to start with that to give a little bit more, you know, longer than you can explain things on Twitter, I suppose.
All right.
So you think the LP guy might get the message and endorse endorse the master?
I don't know.
I hope so.
I've been trying to kind of reach out, you know, through back channels.
So we'll see what happens.
So yeah, I'll keep you guys posted on all of that stuff.
But anyway, I'm just going to continue.
This is what I look, man.
Like, this is kind of my responsibility and my bond with the people who listen to this show is that I can't, like, I'm not allowed to not tell the truth as I see it.
I'm not allowed to do that.
Because if I do that, then I'm not like, I don't have anything.
That's all I have.
So I'm going to tell you guys what I think is right and what I think is the best.
And if that pisses some people off or if that goes against, you know, the party that I'm in at the moment, that's not my shit.
I got to be principal over party because otherwise, what the fuck am I doing here?
So that's, that's the reality of it.
And I did, I did, I did email back and forth with Mark Victor, who's the libertarian candidate.
And I explained to him where I was coming from.
So hopefully there's no hard feelings there.
I don't dislike the guy.
I don't, I don't think.
I know he wasn't saying it's, I want to make it legal to fuck kids.
You know what I mean?
But it was necessary for him to say, I wasn't saying I want to make it legal to fuck kids.
And that's just like, it's so damaging to libertarians to even be in that realm.
Principal Over Party00:02:11
So anyway, I felt like I had to do what I had to do.
And I think it was the right thing.
I still believe that.
Okay.
There is my opening rant about supporting Blake Masters.
And I hope Blake Masters wins.
I certainly think he'll be interesting to have in there.
And I really hope that deep down he is a closet still one of us have some, as some people who are close to him have assured me.
He is.
I'm not convinced, but I hope he is.
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Russia and Natural Gas Deals00:09:55
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Okay, so where do we want to start here for today's episode?
We got a few things that we could talk about.
I guess, Rob, we have not talked about the UAE really throwing Biden under the bus.
So any thoughts on this or you want to set up the story?
Yeah, I mean, to me, it's really not a small story.
So you had Biden went over there and he begged them saying, hey, guys, I really need you to help me out here.
So to give the backdrop, prices are going up for the first time in my lifetime.
You actually have a conversation in American politics about inflation.
The entire game that's being played is, hey, we can give away these free goods and services and we can do that.
And now you actually are within a framework where everyone's like, hey, this isn't working.
Prices are going up.
Particularly, what's in the spotlight is gas prices, because that's something that everyone has to deal with on a daily basis.
And it's making Biden look bad.
And the backdrop of this is that we've also ramped, you know, we've got less American production of natural gas.
We didn't do the Keystone pipeline.
We're not drilling domestically.
And we just closed off our purchasing of oil from Russia or natural gas from Russia.
So he goes over there and I'm sure he plead his case of, guys, you got to help me out here.
I got a midterm election coming up.
I need you to help me out.
And they basically just said, you can go fuck yourself because what they're actually doing is they're looking and they're forecasting and they're saying, okay, there's a recessionary environment going on.
There's going to be less demand for our product.
So in order to compensate for the less demand of our product, we're going to produce less of it so that we can support the current price.
Another aspect of that, which is important, is that when you tell people, hey, we're making investments so that we don't need to use your product in the future and we don't like your product.
You're also letting them know, hey, we better exert the leverage that we have to profit off this while we can, which is one of the big problems with current oil prices is that no one is making the investments to make sure that there's more of it in the future if they think that there's going to be legislation that's limiting the usage of it.
So, all right, just, and then the last big element here is that if the UAE is moving away from the UAE, by the way, I should, I, I, I misstated this.
I shouldn't have just said the United Arab Emirates.
It's, it's the APAC countries in general, right?
So all of them.
Yes.
Thank you for that clarification.
Yeah, because I was, I was actually feeling as the UAE.
I was like, that's not the right term.
It's OPEC.
Yeah.
OPEC.
Jesus Christ, OPEC.
Yes.
But then where it also gets me concerned, and this is, I guess, a little bit more in Looneyland, but like, how's this going to affect the dollar long term?
It really seems like all other countries are not liking what's going on with this whole Russia thing.
And they're moving away from us.
And I actually think we're starting to exert influence by blowing up bridges and pipelines to try and make sure that everyone's kind of stuck within this current framework.
Yeah, you go like, oh, well, are you feeling a different way?
Like, okay, well, we have submarines in all the seven seas.
And so we'll let you know what's going on.
But if you just like look at the way that assets are priced in dollars, the fact that They've clearly stated, Hey, we're not helping you out right now.
I would seem to suggest that we're moving closer towards a Russia, Turkey, China, you know, Saudi Arabia all working together and us not necessarily being a dominant player in that picture.
Well, it's, I think Joe Biden should get like a t-shirt that says, um, you know, I helped the Saudis fight a war of genocide in Yemen, and all I got was this stupid t-shirt.
Like, yes, something like that, like, right?
It's like, come on, guys, I let you kill the Yemens.
What is a genocide buy anymore?
I did my part.
It is pretty interesting, right?
For this relationship that the United States of America and Saudi Arabia has had for all of these years, 50 years or something like that, since the 70s, that this demand was just like, no, they're not going to do that.
He asked them to lower the price of oil and they were like, we are not going to do that.
And really, what he's asking them to do is fuck over Russia and help our economy at their expense, right?
Now, not necessarily at the expense of the people of those nations, but certainly at the expense of those governments.
But you're asking the governments to do this.
And it's kind of understandable why they would go, nah, why should we?
You know, like, and we've given up our natural gas leverage.
It used to be that pricing was coming down because I think we were producing so much natural gas.
It actually, I think it blew off their cart.
I think it somewhat eroded their cartel pricing.
I can't tell you the specifics, the full picture on that, but that is my understanding that in our fracking boom of natural gas production, it kind of forced the hand of them to be more competitive and lower prices.
That makes sense that there would be less, less demand, right?
So that makes sense.
But basically, we were asking them to conspire with us against the Russians.
And they were just like, I don't know, this doesn't like this doesn't help us as much.
You know, interestingly, this was one of Osama bin Laden's major grievances against the United States of America.
In his 1996, I think it was, declaration of war against America.
He listed off several grievances.
Everyone knows the big ones, right?
That we were bombing Muslim countries and killing innocent Muslim civilians, that our sanctions against Iraq, our bombing campaigns against Iraq, were killing so many people, that we had bases in the Holy Land and in the Arabian Peninsula, that we propped up brutal dictators in the Muslim world, that we propped up Israel who were like oppressing the Palestinian people.
But another one of Osama bin Laden's grievances was that we constantly demanded that they lower the price of oil and that this benefited our economy at the expense of theirs.
And there's, you know, not that Osama bin Laden was not justified in killing innocent people, just like we are not justified in killing innocent people, but that grievance is somewhat reasonable.
It's somewhat reasonable to say, like, just imagine going over to, you know, these countries going over to Saudi Arabia and saying, hey, you know, this product that you're selling, we want you to make less money on that so that it can help our economy so I can get reelected.
Why should they agree with that?
Like, why are they supposed to agree with that?
It's just very bizarre that you'd even expect them to.
And so then they have Russia in their ear who's like, well, let's make way more profit off what we're selling.
And they're like, that sounds better.
That sounds better than what these guys are selling me.
So that's part of it.
And then, as you said, like the other part is that America isn't just, and when I say America, the United States government, I mean, Democrats and Republicans.
I'm not saying the people of America.
I'm saying the fucking lawyers in DC who are raping the entire country.
Their leverage is always like, yeah, but we blow shit up.
We have like the biggest military in the fucking world and all this.
But it seems like there's at least enough of a feeling over there that you guys aren't quite as strong as you used to be, not as scary as you used to be.
And yeah, I think there's parts of the international community, as they call it, who are going, no, we're going to like, we don't think Russia's going down.
And we think maybe it's smarter to side with them.
And despite what you hear in the corporate press in America about how Russia is getting embarrassed in Ukraine and all of this, it's like, well, what's actually happening in the situation?
Well, Russia has taken some losses in this war, no question about it.
But what's actually happening is that all of the sanctions on Russia seem to have backfired.
They're actually enriching them compared to where they would be without them.
You know, like, so Europe and America will no longer purchase Russian natural gas, but okay, so they'll just sell it to other people.
Like there are other people in Asia and they'll sell it there.
They still get it.
And who's it really punishing?
It's punishing Europe, you know?
And so there's this, there's very interesting realignment going on where I think a lot of people, particularly say like China and these Arab countries, are saying, hmm, we're being drawn more into the influence of Russia.
So a lot of this stuff, as crazy as this policy in Ukraine is, that is flirting with nuclear war, it also seems to really have an effect of waning American influence around the world.
The Convenience Argument00:13:00
So I think it's a very interesting story.
Yeah, I mean, they said, nope.
Yep.
That's what they did.
They just sold Biden out.
I mean, who knows how it's actually going to turn in the midterm elections, but he went over there, he pleaded his case, and they just said no.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That really is interesting.
And maybe part of it is just like a turning on Joe Biden.
I mean, did you see there was also another story that was pretty interesting that came out with some a couple of feds leaking the story that Hunter Biden might be charged?
Did you see that?
Yeah, but it's such a weak charge.
I mean, I mean, it's going to be weird if it just disappears.
But the charges on, I mean, it's tax fraud and the illegal gun, which I'm not saying it's not interesting to see if the president's son actually gets charged on things because we all understand that these things usually just disappear.
But it would be a lot more interesting if it actually opened up the doors to family corruption, Biden being the big guy, whether or not they've been bribed or it's treason from foreign countries.
So it's like, I'd much rather see the bigger things looked into than whether or not Hunter Biden has engaged in tax fraud.
So here's my theory on this.
And this is just a theory.
I don't know that this is correct at all.
So my theory, and I heard someone else the other day when I was on Kennedy, another guy who was there, who's a very smart guy, who's a lawyer, he had a different theory on this.
And his theory was like, That there are some, you know, stand-up gentlemen at the FBI who are upset that this case has been very slow, buried, and so they're leaking this.
So I was like, okay, maybe my theory is that this is the establishment sending a message to Joe Biden that this is a political move where they're like letting him know because he keeps coming out, even though all these other people in the like very, you know, high up Democrats are like, we don't know if Joe Biden's going to seek reelection.
He's like, no, I am seeking reelection.
In fact, it's official, I'm seeking re-election.
And they're letting him know, hey, we don't have to protect your son, just so you know.
We could ruin your son's life.
Now, they're not going to come out with all this other stuff about, you know, foreign governments' influence because that's a little bit too dangerous.
But they're like, hey, we could get him on the gun charge.
We could get him on the tax charge.
We could ruin your son's life.
So maybe you do what we want you to do.
I think, I think there is globally and nationally, a turn on Joe Biden that's happening.
And so that's to me, that's all very interesting.
I think the problem is he might be too retarded to get the message.
He genuinely might be, but maybe his wife will explain it to him slowly.
That's why he's just that's all we can.
That's why he's just walking up to mayors going, no one fucks with a Biden.
And the guy's like, all right, sure.
Is someone trying to fuck with you?
What's going on, dude?
It seems like you got something you got to get off your chest.
And nothing to do with the speech that we were about to go give, but sure.
Yeah, that is true.
So anyway, I really want to see what all of this, how all of this goes.
I think your Biden theory is more correct.
When I saw the headline, it seemed to look to me like they were leaking it to almost go, oh, we don't have enough evidence to move forward.
But then the perception is that they did their homework to look into it, as opposed to if you never heard that, like, if it just completely disappears, you know what I mean?
If they say, oh, we looked into it and we realized we don't have enough to move forward, maybe people buy that more than, but the gun charge has been very obvious.
So we lied about the problem, it's such a technical, dumb, stupid one.
Like the fact that some guy lies about his drug usage to own a firearm, like whatever penalty exists on the book is probably too is probably too much of a penalty.
Like those things almost just exist so that you know you can scare people into compliance and screw someone over probably very randomly.
So like you're basically flaunting, hey, we can screw him over on this technicality.
But like I said, that is a cover up of let's look into the interesting shit.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, right.
I agree with that.
But so I think that it's that that's why I think there's a there's a strong possibility that what's actually going on is kind of like a message being sent.
Okay.
So let's let's move to this.
This I found very interesting.
Stacey Abrams was recently asked switching over to abortion, a whole different topic.
She doesn't believe in technology.
She does when convenient, but doesn't when not convenient.
So this is something that I thought was really interesting.
She was asked recently here, Brian, let's play the clip about abortion.
I just found something.
So Michael Malice tweeted something about this where he said, when Democrats are now being put on the spot about what, when they believe the like line is in abortion, that there's a real change in the narrative that that's important.
I'm going to try to find this Malice tweet, but go ahead.
Let's go.
It's not a healthy question to ask women who need to be in control.
Hold on, hold on here.
Hold on.
I got the clip here.
So I'm sorry, I got the tweet here.
So, Mike, Mike, are we listening to Stacey Abrams or Jack-O'Lantern?
I think you might have had the wrong clip.
It's hard to tell.
So, Malice said, We're about to enter uncharted territory where pro-choice candidates are going to have to explain why they think, excuse me, when they think life begins and how they would frame the law.
They're not ready.
And then he tweeted this clip.
And I thought that was a very interesting observation, as Malice is known to make.
All right, let's play this clip.
Were you to become governor?
Where would you draw the line?
15 weeks, viability, 36 weeks.
What's the limit?
What I've always said is that abortion is a medical decision that should be made by a doctor and the woman, and that the point of viability as determined by a doctor should always take into consideration the life and health of a woman.
That should be the standard.
But the arbitrary standards of timelines ignore the medical reality that it is a fallacy.
We know exactly when a pregnancy starts, that we know exactly where we are in the system.
I mean, in the term.
And what doctors will tell you is that they need to make decisions based on the woman they are treating.
And what women will tell you is that they need the right to make medical decisions that can save their lives and save their ability to control their bodies and their futures.
All right.
So, what I found interesting about this little clip is that it seems to me, as I think Malice is alluding to here, is that this issue that the Democrats thought was their issue is very easily flipped on them if it's just put in this very simple way.
When do you think the line should be drawn?
And while a lot of people, myself included, were even like, you know, this might be a political winner for the Democrats.
You go, oh, yeah, they're really incapable of answering this very simple question.
Okay, so when's the limit?
I mean, whatever you want to say about the Republican pro-life position, they can be pretty clear about that.
They can say, I think it's at conception, or I think it's at 10 weeks or 15 weeks or whatever.
And they can get some tough questions following up on that.
They can get questions.
Well, okay, so you said it's at eight weeks.
Well, what about a 14-year-old who's raped, who's six weeks pregnant, and then doesn't find out till eight weeks, whatever, you know?
But this was pretty interesting that Stacey Abrams asked straight up, what do you think the limit should be?
And she goes, What did she say?
15 weeks?
36 weeks?
36 weeks, by the way, is a baby, a human baby.
Like, if you have a baby, if you deliver it 36 weeks, no one's even worried.
They're just like, okay, yeah, you're having a baby.
Fantastic.
So, and she has to go, well, it's the issue is about the life of the mother.
And you're like, the life of the mother.
I mean, there's no case where 36 weeks in, you're like, oh my God, the life of the mother.
This is just made up.
It does.
If you're 36 weeks pregnant, the baby has to come out of you one way or the other.
No matter what you do, it's not like you could just go, oh, delivering this baby might be dangerous.
Therefore, you shouldn't deliver the baby.
It's like, the baby's inside of you.
It's coming out.
How do you want to do this?
There's that's just not a thing.
So it's just kind of interesting to me that, oh, this is a real change in the narrative here, where this simple question can be posed to Democrats.
It's like they've gone so all in on their talking points that as soon as you ask them about this, they can kind of expose themselves to a lot of people that, oh, yeah, this is, I don't know, there's something very, first off, from my perspective, just evil and fucked up, but also in the just commenting on it politically,
I don't think is very popular or very easy to sell.
Does that make sense, Rob?
Well, yes.
And she gave her answer because it was controlled.
Her requirements are that a lady should be able to control her body and her future, which sounds like anything up until the child is born.
Because then after that, it's no longer controlling your own body.
Right.
So that's essentially their argument: a lady should be able to make a convenience decision about it.
It's more about the mother's convenience than the life of the child.
Which, like, I understand an argument of we don't view a life as being a life at age at the 15 weeks or some other point in time.
I can understand putting forward such an argument.
I don't understand the claim of, yes, we agree with you that that's a life and that in a week from now that will be a living baby, but it would be inconvenient.
And so a woman has an the option of making a choice about what's convenient because we never view morality as well, it'd be convenient for me.
Hey, I stole that guy's money, but it's more convenient for me to have that guy's money.
That's just not an outlook we normally take or ever take.
Yes, yes, no, exactly.
And so it's very interesting to see this be what they're reduced to.
Hey, that guy argument.
That guy was fucking my wife.
It's more convenient for him to be dead than fucking my wife.
You know what?
That one I kind of get.
That one I think that I might be behind.
Okay.
All right.
That's what we're going to wrap up on that note.
But I think there's a really interesting and Malice is usually very good at kind of picking up on these little interesting trends in politics and where people are getting things wrong and where arguments aren't landing anymore.
I think he's got something there.
And then check out today.
I did a long run your mouth with the doctor all about kids transitioning and slamming Jon Stewart, who was pushing for expanded access for children to be able to transition from young ages.
Ooh, interesting topic.
Yeah, I saw a little clip of that video.
And yes, it's goddamn, the topic is fucking bizarre as shit.
So I'm going to be interested to check out that episode of Run Your Mouth.
Of course, everyone, go check out Run Your Mouth.
That podcast is phenomenal, Robbie Fire Bernstein's solo podcast.
And of course, guys, do not miss the part of the problem pay-per-view extravaganza with Tim Dylan, special guest, mintcomedy.com.