Dave Smith critiques mainstream media's Ukraine propaganda, comparing it to Iraq War lies while highlighting the viral spread of Gideon Rose's insights on US strategy. He condemns the mass incarceration and torture of January 6th rioters for trespassing, contrasting this with legacy outlets like CNN that fail to explain complex conflicts. The discussion culminates in Tulsi Gabbard's exit from the Democratic Party, accusing the party of warmongering and censorship, suggesting her departure exposes deep contradictions regarding nuclear war risks and elite control over national security. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Rolling Back The State00:13:38
Fill her up.
You're listening to the Gash Digital Network.
We need to roll back the state.
We spy on all of our own citizens.
Our prisons are flooded with nonviolent drug offenders.
If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
You're listening to part of the problem on the Gash Digital Network.
Here's your host, Dave Smith.
What's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Heart of the Problem.
I am the most consistent motherfucker you know, the libertarian Tupac, Dave Smith.
He is the king of the caulks, Robbie the Fire, Bernstein, COVID Jesus.
What's up, brother?
How are you?
I'm doing well, buddy.
How are you?
Very good.
I'm excited.
We leave for Skank Fest very soon.
What day are you going out Thursday?
Late Wednesday night.
Oh, you're good.
So you're going tomorrow.
I will have lost all my money by Thursday morning.
Oh my God.
Rob's going to be sleeping at the foot of my bed in my hotel room and be like, they let me gamble my room.
I didn't even think that was a thing.
They'd let you do.
They'd let me put it up.
Yeah, someone else is out there.
Someone else is in my room.
So you traded for some chips for your room outside.
All right.
Yeah.
I hadn't even thought of that as an option, but now that I am aware that this is on the table, then yes.
She's like, hey, Dave, awkward question.
Can I get my next six months of part of the problem pay?
I kind of already lost that too.
I can make it back, Dave.
I promise you.
I like to think that like, because I'm getting out there Thursday afternoon and you're getting out there Wednesday night.
I like to think that like by the time I got out there, you've already been way up and lost it all.
Like you were like a millionaire and now just completely destitute by the time Vegas is a quick town, man.
Things move fast.
Yeah, no, I'm very excited for that.
We're going to be recording two part of the problems while we're out there.
One that we will be putting out for on the RSS feed and up on YouTube and all that shit.
And or at least I believe we are.
I hope we are.
I just realized I said that and I was like, I don't know if anyone's recording this, but we'll figure it out.
And then there's the one that's just for the pay-per-view where you can purchase it for 10 bucks at mintcomedy.com.
We have confirmed Tim Dylan and Sam Tripoli going to be on that.
All of us are going to be doing some stand-up and then the four of us will sit down and fucking talk about all things going on in the world.
So it's going to be fucking great.
You guys want to check this out?
Go purchase it over at mintcomedy.com.
There's also Legion of Skanks live stream and real ass podcast and a whole bunch of other great things there.
So go check them all out.
They're each $10 for the stream or it's $100, I believe, and you get all 12 streams.
So either buy them a la carte or buy the whole thing together, but definitely get the live part of the problem.
It's going to be fucking awesome.
And then, of course, me and Robbie the Fire Bernstein will be up in Poughkeepsie, New York on November 25th and 26th at Laugh It Up.
That's going to be a lot of fun.
And I'll be out for New Year's.
I'll be out in at the comedy store in Los Angeles with Louis J. Gomez, a bunch of other great comics.
So come celebrate New Year's Eve with us out there.
Hell yeah.
And I got dates coming up, people.
November 5th with Scott Hordon in Austin, November 4th in Dallas.
I'm doing Connecticut, which I'm going to link in the episode description the weekend.
I'm back from Skank Fest.
Phoenix, Arizona coming soon.
More dates coming soon.
Hell yeah.
Sounds good.
All right.
So let's jump into the episode.
There's one thing that was pretty cool.
Your boy was featured at the top of Zero Hedge.
They ran an article about my appearance on Rogan, the latest one, and they shared the YouTube clip up there and stuff.
So that was cool.
I appreciate the guys at Zero Hedge.
They've written several pieces about me over the years.
And I've always appreciated them.
They've always given me a lot of people.
That was so cool.
I read Zero Hedge every day.
I mean, I don't know why.
It's not more cool than Rogan, but when it popped up, I was like, fuck yeah, David's on Zero Hedge.
I remember the first time, I believe it was the first time they ever wrote a piece about me was when I had a moment with SE Cup when I had that rant.
It was like the thing I did on that show that went the most viral was some rant I had about the, it was about the insane Syria policy that they were advocating at the time still.
I think there was still talk of like, it was like already like 2017, but they were still talking about, you know, overthrowing Bashar al-Assad.
I guess it was, it was around one of the gas attacks or something like that.
It was when Trump was trying to end the war.
And I had some whole rant about, you know, how insane the policy in Syria and all the wars in the Middle East are.
And they wrote a piece about me then.
And that was like, it was, yeah, it was like one of those things.
Like, oh, I've been reading these guys forever.
Or this guy, I should say, Tyler Durden.
He's a great, a great writer, really prolific.
He writes, writes a lot of different pieces.
And it's pretty random.
He's got the same name as the imaginary character in Fight Club.
Who'd have thought?
Zero Hedge made a big time comeback.
I had stopped reading them a couple of years ago because you read them and you're like, the world's going to end.
I need more silver.
I got to live out of my car.
And it got exhausting.
But then the world started ending and you were like, oh, now it makes sense again.
Yeah.
No, it was over Corona.
They kind of broadened what they cover.
So I had noticed that all the COVID stuff I was researching, they actually had very good coverage on and was spot on.
And then I got back into reading it daily because some of the financial articles are tough because they can sell a story.
They put up charts and you're like, I'm not sure.
And they're like, you're not going to have any food next week.
You're like, all right, I guess these charts say that.
But then when it comes to all of the stories about what's going on with Russia, like they're on top of this shit that, hey, Russia's not losing the war.
They were on top of COVID.
They were on top of pipelines.
Like all these social issue topics, they seem to have the best coverage on.
Yeah.
No, I agree with you on that.
So one of the things that's really cool too, I saw today, again, going super viral is this.
I guess Jack Pasebiak, sorry, I apologize.
I know I always butcher his name.
I'm not sure on the correct pronunciation.
But he's like a big, he's kind of like a Trump supporter and, you know, someone in that kind of world.
But he's big.
He's got a couple million Twitter followers.
And he tweeted out the video of the Gideon Rose on the old Stephen Colbert show, which is the video that I was telling Joe Rogan about in the clip.
And then, and this was awesome, just the way it happened to work out is that because I wasn't even thinking he was going to fucking like pull it up.
I was just explaining what happened in it.
And then he was like, Jamie, pull up that video.
And then he pulled it and then he played the video and we watched the entire thing on the thing.
And then, and he kept the video in.
You know what I mean?
Like it's not like one of those things, like sometimes on Rogan, the guests will be watching something, but it's not on the feed, but they kept it in the feed.
And then he put that part out as the clip on YouTube.
So the clip now ended up getting seen by just like a ton of fucking people.
I mean, like the YouTube clip has like 5 million views on it.
And the podcast gets like 15 million views.
So it's like 20 million views right there.
Then that the YouTube clip version was put up like, you know, by like tons of other people share it.
And it's also, it's like just millions and millions of people have seen it.
And then the fact that this jack dude posted, and I saw so many people were sharing it again today.
I don't know if that's related to the fact that we just brought it up on Rogan, but very likely that, you know, and then Zero Head sharing it, more people are seeing it.
So one of the things that's pretty cool about this is that you go, I mean, It's like around 20 million for sure people saw this clip.
And then with all this other shit, it's, I mean, it's got to be a few million more.
I don't know exactly how many, you know, but it's that to me is pretty cool.
Like that's like, oh, okay, this is a really, it's, you know, we live in a big country.
There's like 320 million, you know, people in the country.
But, you know, there's like kids and there's, you know, there's people who just don't vote or people who don't participate in politics, who don't care about politics at all.
You know, when you actually get down to the number of like how many people are actually like paying attention at all to any of this shit, the number starts shrinking and shrinking.
And when you get something that's being seen by, you know, 25 million people, you're like, oh, that's actually like, you know, that's a fair chunk of America.
And I just think there's something so powerful.
There's lots of videos that I could tell people to go look at in terms of, you know, making the argument that, hey, no, look, this, this whole conflict in Ukraine is not as simple and one-sided as the official narrative would have you believe.
There's just more to it than that.
And that doesn't mean that there's no truth to the fact that Vladimir Putin is fucked up and didn't need to start this war and a lot of innocent people are dying as a result of it.
It just means that there's a much deeper story to this.
And perhaps he's not the only guilty party involved.
And there's lots of clips I could tell you to go look at to see this.
I mean, you could say, hey, go check out Victoria Newland's fuck the EU leaked phone call where she's talking about who should and shouldn't be allowed in the new government after this coup goes through.
And, you know, you could, you could certainly go listen to John McCain and Lindsey Graham and Amy Klobuchar going over to Ukraine back then and all the shit they were talking about Russia.
But there's really no video.
If there's just one video to see that's better than fucking Gideon Rose, who's the editor at the time of Foreign Affairs magazine, which is like the, you know, establishment, like the journal of the, you know, the Council for Foreign Relations.
Right.
The Council on Foreign Relations.
Exactly.
Thank you.
To see that this guy and in this like perfectly, you know, it's the old Colbert report.
So it's like in this perfectly like, you know, shot and produced segment, all of them just kind of like boasting about what an idiot Putin is because he's so fooled, you know, he's so, you know, busy paying attention to the Olympics that he doesn't even know that we're stealing a country from him.
And yeah, look, we just took off his fucking girlfriend and took him over to our side on the West.
And it's not that Gideon Rose isn't actually taking the worst of the position, which many others have taken, that in other words, that we wanted this war, that we basically wanted to lure Russia into a war to ultimately like bleed them dry and overthrow their regime.
Others have suggested that.
He's saying we don't want this war.
We just want to steal the country away from them.
He's like, oh, you know, we got to be careful because if we don't do this the right way, he says, you know, then Vladimir Putin might just throw the whole board over and take the country back.
And Colbert's like, could he do that?
And he's like, yeah, yeah, he could do that.
But we're going to, but we're going to calibrate this just perfectly so that we get Ukraine and it doesn't piss him off.
And the reason why I just think it's so cool that so many people have seen this video is that it is, I think if you're being honest and you're looking at this, I'm not saying that it comes like, I'm not suggesting that seeing this video will make you go, I'm now on Putin's side of the war or something like that, which none of us are.
You know, it's just like, that's kind of the caricature.
But I think if you're being honest and you see this video, you're going to have to go, holy shit.
This is not at all what this is being presented as.
Like, it's just not.
There's just much more to this than simply saying like, Vladimir Putin led a completely unprovoked invasion.
And why on earth would he even do that?
No one could have seen this coming.
No one would have thought he was about to do that when actually eight years before the invasion.
As they're like leading this, this uh uh regime change the people in the establishment are going now obviously, we all know the risk of this is that Vladimir Putin could be, you know, pushed to invade Ukraine.
This could be a big provocation of him.
So it's just, it's kind of like one of those things that I think, for people who are at least in the space of being willing to examine the official narrative, this is a real red pill fucking video to see.
So anyway, I thought that was very cool.
So thank you to everybody who's sharing uh, that clip and sharing all of it.
I think there's there's real value in uh, cracking open this narrative there's.
You know, the war in Iraq had to be sold with a year-long propaganda campaign um, and obviously led to, you know, complete disaster.
Uh this the, the risk here is about a trillion times higher than it was in Iraq um, and the thing that's that we have going for us now that we didn't then is that there are these platforms that just didn't exist in in 2002 um where, you know where uh, you can get this message out.
We can kind of crack through this propaganda.
So there's a reason why they needed the propaganda campaign for the war in Iraq.
There's a reason why they need this propaganda campaign for for this war and hopefully fucking, you know, people can really crack through it.
Cracking Through Propaganda00:02:23
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All right, let's get back into the show.
All right.
So throw the message out there, dude.
It's cool.
That's that's the goal.
Okay, so the other thing that I wanted to talk about, what was it?
There was something that I thought it led into.
Oh, yeah.
So speaking of my boy Joe Rogan, he had a very interesting exchange the other day with the founder of Rolling Stone magazine.
Was it?
I know you saw this clip, Rob, that this was going super viral.
Speaking of clips going super viral, this was certainly one of them.
Let's play this and discuss for a second.
To regulate the internet?
Absolutely.
You trust the people that got us into the Iraq war under false pretenses to regulate the internet?
Do you think that makes any sense?
Well, wait a minute.
I would not, the people who got us into the Iraq war.
War On Good Information00:15:03
It's the government.
Was the politicians.
It's the government.
In the end, yes, it's the government.
But who else is going to regulate?
But if they're going to be in power and they're regulating the internet, they're going to regulate the internet in a way that suits their best interests.
The same way they do with the banking industry, the same way they do with the environment, the same way they do with energy, the same way they do with everything.
What represents their interests?
You're talking about so much money involved in disseminating information in a very rich company right now, or the internet companies are rich beyond belief.
Yeah, but it's a disruptive thing that has never existed before.
I think it exists.
And I think where we're at is where we're at.
I think we need to move forward collectively as a country with an ethic that respects truth and that appreciates opinions and reality and an understanding of things that's not necessarily possible with corporate interests involved in dissemination of information.
But there's no way to do that except through the government.
There's no way you can do that except through the government.
Why is that?
Human nature is not going to change.
But the government's not going to change either.
But the government is capable of change.
Okay, look, the government regulates, for example, the food supply or it can regulate.
Let's take the food supply.
Yeah, that Department of Agriculture.
Why have they let glyphosate infestate all of our foods?
Let's stay.
What's one thing?
Yeah, but that's the problem.
That's right.
Well, then we better get better politicians to them to employ better people.
I mean, it's not, I guess, again, don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Right.
Okay.
So let's take the SEC or take the Food and Drug Administration, which regulates big pharma.
On the one hand, we've got a very safe supply of drugs in this country.
Safe.
Drugs are tested.
You don't get too many bad drugs, prescribed drugs.
25% of all drugs approved by the FDA get recalled.
I mean, I don't know.
I mean, what do you like, dude?
God damn, man.
Sometimes I'll see people like particularly like in our world, because, you know, we're fucking, I have an army of autistic libertarian followers who are purists.
And I love that about them.
You know, I am one of them as well.
But they'll sometimes give Rogan shit for not being like 100% one of us or something like that.
Or, you know, like I remember a bunch of people giving him shit when he said he might vote for Bernie Sanders or something like that.
But come on, man.
Just the biggest dude in media, just fucking saying everything exactly what you would want him to say right here.
Just like perfect.
And just watching this guy squirm as he tries to come up with examples of where government regulation has been so successful.
And he's naming like the worst.
He's like, oh no, but I mean, they could control it, you know, like they do with the food.
You're like, we have a country of just poisoned whales of human beings, just an obesity epidemic.
Just go, you go to the supermarket and there's just aisles of poison everywhere.
And like, this is supposed to represent what?
Like, oh, isn't the government doing such a great job?
He's like, well, no, but I mean, look, they regulate big pharma.
So isn't that great too?
So anyway, it was just, it's just great as every example he brings up is almost just digging his ditch further and further in.
But isn't it creepy?
It reminds me of, I don't know if you remember, Rob, when I got in that thing with David Cross years back, and he's arguing with me a similar type thing that the internet should be regulated so that people can't lie.
And you're sitting here like, you know, as some, it's a very similar feeling as I have watching this, like, but listening to David Cross, like you're making this argument to me that you just really, you don't see any concerns with that route.
And the guy who created Rolling Stone magazine, like you, a publisher, you don't see the issue in giving final control over publishing decisions to the government.
And I don't know.
I don't know what to say.
It's just, you're just hearing someone sit there and argue.
It's like, yeah, you know, I just, I just think this whole free speech thing was flawed.
I don't, I just don't think that's this whole freedom of speech.
You have the right to say what you want to.
I don't think we need to go in that direction.
And it is even as crazy as our society has gotten.
It's just interesting to see people, you know, with a straight face actually go, yeah, that's that's what I'm on.
I'm on that side.
There's an incredible irony to sitting on Rogan's show and saying, I would like it if the government censored media on the internet because then this show would not exist.
Yeah.
Oh, no question, right?
All the most powerful people in government were trying to get this guy canceled.
So you're going to sit there across from him on his platform and go, yeah, the government should really decide what's allowed to be said and what's not.
Right.
How do you think that would have worked out?
It's just, and then there's something, I mean, it is just the bizarre, you know, attitude that people have.
He actually said at one point in that clip that, you know, like basically Rogan said, which I think, I think Rogan's right about, I think he's right about everything he said here.
But so he's, he's like, well, look, this is the this technology exists.
This is the state of what humans are capable of and how we're capable of communicating.
And we're going to have to somehow move to a point where we value truth more.
And it would be good if there was less misinformation, right?
And like, so he's kind of like, and then the Rolling Stone guy says, yeah, but human nature is human nature.
And he goes, yeah, but so is the government.
And he goes, well, no, government can change.
Like what, like, like there's, there's human beings here, but then up here, there's the government.
And Rogan, again, just perfect.
It's like, but those are politicians.
And it's really interesting.
There's a really interesting dynamic.
And, you know, I'm sure libertarians have noticed this forever, right?
But it's one of the things that's really fascinating about this kind of like mental block people have when they talk about government action is that there's something about saying the government that or or regulation or something like that, where people go, oh yeah, yeah, I believe in that.
And then if you go politicians, they go, well, no, I mean, it's not politicians.
It's the government.
And it's a certain point, he actually corrects Joe and goes, like, no, not politicians, the government.
And Rogan's like, politicians are the government.
Like, what are we talking?
Because when you say politicians, when you, it just, there's something about it.
It like changes the way people perceive the reality of the situation.
So like the government is kind of like this thing, this idea, this we the people, we're blah, blah, blah, blah.
Say politicians, you're like oh, the people, the actual people who are involved.
And now, all of a sudden, you're not thinking about it as some, like abstraction, you're thinking about it as a group of people.
And then, by the way, who are those group of people?
Politicians, the worst people in the world.
Like everyone knows that no one.
If you ask anyone like, are politicians honest, are politicians noble, are politicians moral?
Are politicians good people?
You know, everyone knows because no, we know what a politician is.
You say that just the word politician brings to mind like the worst snake oil salesman you know.
And so it's interesting, just even changing that dynamic, how much it goes like, oh, that's what you really, that's what you're telling me, that that's who should be in charge.
It's not the government or this idea.
You're saying Democrats and Republicans, a bunch of lawyers in Washington Dc.
That's what you're talking about here it's.
It's so interesting how Donald Trump made people not cool.
So Rolling Stones is not something I ever had a subscription to, it's not something I read over the course of my lifetime, but in high school I mean, everyone finds Hunter Thompson at some point and just goes, this guy's awesome and I want to do more drugs.
But Hunter Thompson was definitely an anarchy spirit and it was definitely like, firstly, Hunter Thompson really followed politics.
I remember reading one of his books, like not one of the famous ones, one of the other books as a kid and like he was in the know on, like what senators were running in which race.
I remember at the time being like how could someone know this?
Now I understand it's like you actually read the newspaper every day, but at that I remember at that time just being blown away by it.
But people like him and David Cross, coming to a point in their life where they become pro-government censorship because they're so blinded by Trump, was evil and so we can't possibly have a free and open internet.
And I mean i'd respond in two ways.
One is, how have they done with the censorship over this past two years?
Every time that they come at us with this misinformation if you can take a step back I mean just the pure track record of them being wrong about Corona and other topics, now the Ukraine War I mean I don't know how anyone doesn't look at this picture and realize that there's an Orwellian worldview of government where they're trying to control our minds.
They're trying to ensure that certain narratives can exist like, no, it's actually a war on good information.
They would have had that dumb advisory later with the Misinformation Board and, like I said, if they had enough power, you and I would be in jail.
But these people really, just I I I, I.
It's such an ignorant worldview to think that we're going to give more power to government over the internet and that's going to lead to better information.
Yeah no, I know exactly what you mean, though it's the the the point that you made.
I mean, I completely agree with all of that.
The point you made about turning what we're supposed to be cool people into lames is just, really it's, it's sad.
Yeah, it kind of like robs, like your spirit a little bit.
Like I just feel I feel bad for young people today.
You're like really, this is what like, this is what's put forth is cool, like you guys.
That right, I never read Rolling UH, Rolling Stone Magazine.
That was never.
I mean, i'm sure i've read an issue or two of it, but I I was never like a regular reader of it.
Um, but yeah, it just felt like yeah, you're supposed to be cool, you're called Rolling Stone Magazine.
Like you're not supposed to be the one who's like Like, teacher, teacher, you know, somebody's saying mean things.
I would like the teacher to be in charge of all of the conversations in the classroom, right?
Like, it's just not, this is not what you're supposed to be.
And like, David Cross, you're supposed to be the one who's like, no, fuck these guys.
Like, I'll say whatever the hell I want to say.
Part of it is those guys are now in a way legacy media.
Yeah.
So they probably don't like the competition of the internet.
And so I guess when you, I mean, that's what you almost hear CNN complaining about when they were complaining about is we're supposed to be the ones that everyone looks to for information.
Yeah, but you're giving out bad information.
But they still have that feeling like, oh, if I have the job at CNN, then I'm supposed to be the noteworthy guy.
I don't want to compete with people who sit in their living room.
Like, that's not the way this is supposed to work.
They're not supposed to be able to get their perspective across.
I bet people even like David Cross is supposed to be, I'm supposed to be the political commentator because I've been endorsed by Comedy Central and all these other institutions that are irrelevant now.
Same with Rolling Stones.
It's like now Rolling Stones got to compete with everyone who's got a sub stack.
Matt TB, I don't even think rights for like Rolling Stones anymore.
It's like, how much credibility does their institution even have?
So it's like, yeah, they love the idea of government coming in and regulating these stuffs because then they get to kind of stay as the cultural elite and they don't have to compete.
Yeah, there's definitely something to that that they kind of got their status.
And now there's this kind of revolution in how status is acquired.
And so why would they be for that?
Why would they be before that?
Oh, we have these mechanisms of like stopping other people from rising up and competing with you.
Now, there's definitely something to that for sure.
It is.
And by the way, and they can't speak to the threat.
So what specifically is this threat of misinformation?
So misinformation got Trump elected.
I don't know.
A lot of people still kind of liked him.
And the current president is getting us into a nuclear war.
So like, what is the horrible trend of Trump misinformation regard to COVID?
What did the CDC say that turned out to be true?
I mean, if we look over at this from a 50-year timeline, you think the people who listen to misinformation and maybe didn't follow the CDC's advice is going to be living a better lifestyle.
At a minimum, even if you were vaccinated, you probably went out, saw your family, and continued living your life or found better careers.
I remember arguing about this with Brian Stelter on SE Cup's old show.
And he was talking about at the time we did a segment together and he was talking about, you know, his topic, the only thing he ever wanted to talk about was misinformation.
And this is back in like 2017, 2018, maybe something like that.
And so it wasn't like the misinformation was a term that had was still fairly new, you know, like the, in the way that it's pushed, like with that weight behind it.
And he was talking about, I believe it was the Parkland shooting, the Parkland school shooting.
I think that was it.
It was a school shooting or something.
I believe it was the Parkland one in Florida.
And there was a video that I guess was like the top viewed video on YouTube of the week, which was like a stupid video conspiracy thing, like saying it was an inside job.
It was all crisis actors.
You know, no one was really shot.
And so he was talking about that.
And, you know, I started talking about, of course, like government misinformation, you know, whatever.
Saddam has weapons of mass destruction or Assad or I don't remember exactly what I used as the example.
But so we started talking about that.
And I said at one point, you know, I was, I was like, well, look, there's such distrust in government and the media.
And they lie so much to the American people that now you've created a situation where, yeah, people are willing to believe the worst about you guys, that you guys would be lying about all of this stuff.
And then I said, it, you know, it manifests in silly ways sometimes, like a video saying that this school shooting didn't happen.
And Brian Stelter really, I remember, took objection to this.
And he was like, no, it's not silly.
It's not silly.
It's dangerous.
It's dangerous.
And then, you know, of course, my response was something like, well, what's really dangerous is saying Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
And I think, I think the other example I used was talking about how I was talking about how there are real conspiracies and the media doesn't report on them and that are very dangerous.
And I said that, you know, Barack Obama signed into law the right to indefinitely detain American citizens and hold them without a trial.
And no one in the media really blew this up.
It was like a big story.
Like that's not, and then he said, oh, well, this is dangerous.
I go, no, what's really dangerous is the president of the United States signing into law the right to detain American citizens without a trial and the media not reporting on it.
I think it was something like that that I said.
But I remember asking him after the show, and it was just funny because he couldn't give me an answer on this.
I was, you know, you have a couple minutes on camera and then the cameras go off and we're on commercial break.
And I said to him, I go, what's so dangerous about this?
Like, listen, I'm with you.
On this one, I'm with you.
Freedom From Health Insurance00:03:58
It's misinformation.
There was really a school shooting.
People really died.
Here's a YouTube video claiming there was no shooting.
People didn't die and it was crisis actors.
Okay, I'm with you.
It's misinformation.
And the danger of that is what?
And he just kind of couldn't give me an answer.
You know, he started giving me these vague things.
Well, if after a while, if a society doesn't believe in institutions to give them the truth, then we don't know the truth as society.
It's like, I don't know.
It seems to me like there's some people out there who believe a shooting didn't happen when it really did.
I just see the number.
Yeah.
Like, yeah, it's more people just watch it and probably go, yeah, that's bullshit than actually believe it.
So like, but what exactly is the grave danger of that?
Because like, I could tell you what the grave danger of believing Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction is.
You know what I mean?
It's like a million dead Iraqis and, you know, tens of thousands of our young soldiers coming home and blowing their brains out because they can't live with themselves over what they've done over there.
That's a danger, right?
Like that's a very direct.
Here's the real danger of believing this misinformation to what the outcomes are.
But you can't even point to one.
So again, like with all this stuff, like you were pointing out with the COVID stuff, you're like, so what would be the danger then that we wouldn't all listen to Fauci and follow the rules?
We wouldn't all be socially distancing and we wouldn't all stay home.
We wouldn't all wear our masks.
We wouldn't all do all of the things that we now know made absolutely no difference in mitigating the virus.
What even is the danger?
And then compare that to the danger of following the misinformation out of Fauci.
Oh yeah, the danger is you fucking destroy society.
So yeah, it's just, it's insane.
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Quitting Is Tough But Fume Helps00:09:46
All right, let's get back into the show.
I haven't heard that much of this as of late, but there used to be two giant leaps in logic of that, I guess, styles of comedy could lead to violence.
And so there were one, has there ever been an incident where a joke actually led to a violent act?
That was great, Patrice, great Patrice Onioli.
You said, how many rape jokes lead to rape?
Right.
Do you have evidence of it ever happening once?
But they go with two leaps that one, like one, that words can lead to someone else's violence, and that two, that you would have responsibility to it.
And then jokes would be treated the same way as like a general speech.
There's like just a lot of leaps there that don't make a lot of sense.
The same thing's going on here, where it's like there's this giant threat of misinformation.
Like, well, what specifically has gone horribly wrong?
Like, if you had an incident where, you know, people were saying that there was a bridge where there wasn't, and there was some massive amount of people just driving into the ocean, you would go, oh, wow, we've got a real problem with misinformation on the internet.
Or if you had overwhelming, you know, like this shit happens on TikTok where kids like start like swallowing pods for like tide, which is really fucking stupid.
But like if there was some massive incident where someone told you that like, I don't know, you could hallucinate from doing that and then kids were dying in droves, then I would understand if they were having a conversation about misinformation.
I might not agree with the way they might apply the restrictions, but I would understand if CNN said, we need someone to police TikTok because kids, we had an incident where a million kids died because of misinformation.
I would go, wow, there's a threat of misinformation.
I might take the other side and go, I don't think you should regulate it, but I would understand that there's a threat.
At the moment, what example are you pointing to to go, hey, there's some giant alarming threat?
Yeah.
No, even like even with the big one right now, which is really kind of like at the source of all this misinformation, misinformation allegations.
And I think there's something really interesting about this.
But the big one is what?
That like Donald Trump keeps repeating the big lie, which is that he really won the election.
I guess it's not going anywhere.
So I guess if you've proved anything, it's that the worst that misinformation can do is sucker people from the other side so you can torture them in jail.
Those are the victims of misinformation is the people that believed in Donald Trump, showed up, rallied for him on that day, got suckered into going into the building.
There's a couple of them on the front line, and I don't know, probably some FBI agents mixed in.
But I'm just saying, fine, if there's a victim of misinformation, it's all the people who are in jail right now because of the January 6th and pretending like there's domestic terrorism.
So I agree with you.
Let's go get those people out of jail because they've been tortured because of government misinformation.
Right, right.
Well, the thing that I found, so there's two things that I want to add on to that because it's a really good point.
Is number one, what's fascinating about that is that like what the real threat is from their perspective is really something that comes down to like a very fundamental libertarian insight.
Like this is anatomy of the state stuff, is that the threat to them is simply that there's a lot of people who don't believe in their legitimacy to rule.
That that's basically like without this, this without this belief in elections and the election results being real, then by the modern justification for the state's existence, they don't have a justification, right?
The justification under modern statism is that, well, we're government of the people because we had a popularity contest and we got more votes.
Therefore, we have a right to rule over you and the minority, which is, you know, just logically and ethically bullshit, but whatever.
Like that's, but that's the so undermining that, that really is the danger.
That by Trump saying Biden didn't really win the election, what he's in effect saying is that the government itself is illegitimate.
Now, from our perspective, I think he would probably take the position that whether Biden won or didn't win the election, the government is illegitimate.
Like it doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter if you had 48% or 52% of the vote.
You're still illegitimate to rule over other people, like morally speaking.
And so that is something kind of interesting, even if like where people are like, yeah, I'm not really convinced on any of these like conspiracies about how the election was stolen or anything like that.
I'm more interested in the conspiracy in plain sight, you know, like the big tech companies censoring the Hunter Biden story, the whole media working against Trump, things like that.
But that, it's just interesting that that really is the problem.
And then the other thing, you know, say, and I know I've mentioned this before on the show, but it really should be mentioned again, that it is just, it's horrible what's happening to so many of those people who entered the Capitol building on January 6th and even forget, like, you know, whatever.
They have the picture of the one guy with zip ties.
And I've heard other people say, well, no, he had those because he found them at the protest outside or something.
I don't know all the details of this story.
But go ahead.
No, I don't mean to cut you off.
I'll mention it at the end.
No, but I'm saying, even if that's, let's just say that's not true.
It's like, okay, maybe there are a few, there were some people there who were looking to do really bad things.
And if they had gotten their hands on Mike Pence or something like that, really would have like done something violent or something.
Okay.
But you can't deny that a huge percentage of those people just walked in the building.
Like they just went into the building.
And that was their crime, trespassing on government property when police were lifting barricades out of the way for them.
This is a fact.
Like we've seen the video of all of this shit.
And there really is something to obviously you could, this could be a criticism of a lot of people on the left.
But for from my perspective, I really look at it like a lot of the Beltway libertarian types who go on and on about mass incarceration and people being locked up for victimless, nonviolent crimes.
And none of them will say a word about this.
And it's like, come on, look, I know it's a little bit dirty and it's unpopular.
And you might, you might get looked at in a weird way at your next cocktail party or something.
But like, Jesus fucking Christ, you either have principles, you either stand for liberty or you don't.
And like, it's wrong what's happening to those people.
Not just like kind of wrong, like horrifically wrong, but people being tortured for like 150 days in solitary confinement over the crime of trespassing in a government building.
Jesus Christ.
I mean, this one, it's sad, but funny.
Inmates of the Washington, I think the Washington, D.C. prison from January 6th requested a transfer to Gitmo because they were saying how harsh the conditions were for them in DC compared to what they've heard of Gitmo.
In regards to the people in tactical gear, I'm not saying we all watch videos.
There were some people on the front lines who were pushing indoors, who were taking out cops, who were knocking over guardrails.
Some people probably have some responsibility.
There was another video of one of those tactical guys, and I think it's the one that people are talking about who had like all the zip ties.
And when the shaman was in like the main room, he was saying, hey, guys, we have to be respectful.
We got to be respectful of government.
I saw that video.
Yeah.
A lot of these people are fucking losers who enjoy tactical gear.
You know, I have friends who own guns and they then buy a lot of guns and they buy guns on top of guns.
Some people show up to riot-type environments, dressed for riot-type environments because they're like the guy who has a lot of camping gear and he's got a million things you're not going to need because that's what he's into.
The fact that someone was there with zip ties, that means shit.
That's literally evidence of nothing.
He might just like having a lot of gear and he has it there just in case some leftist Antifa people attack them so that they can zip tie them up or someone in the crowd gets too drunk.
They can zip tie them to the cops show up.
Like that's not evidence of trying to show up into the Capitol.
Yeah, no intentions.
It's not clear one way or the other.
You know what I mean?
So I think that's fair.
But I'm just saying, I'm just making the easier case about the people who weren't that, who are just walking in like, oh man, look at this.
We're in the Capitol.
And you've seen video at points now where police were moving barricades out of the way.
It's not like it would have been almost kind of reasonable for them to be like, oh, I guess they're letting us do this, you know?
And it's so anyway, it's just a free mall walk.
What you were talking about with the government panicking because people are seeing through their credibility.
It's funny because you hear in all these press hearings, they're always talking about that this undermines people's faith in government.
And I laugh at that because that to me is like if you're running a Ponzi scheme and a guy puts out like a sloppy investor report and then you yell at him like you're not yelling at him like, hey, we have to fix the Ponzi scheme.
You're yelling at him like, hey, if you're putting out these shitty reporting materials, people are going to realize that we're running a big scam here.
Yeah.
No, that's exactly right.
Like people, oh, yeah, people are going to realize what the fuck this is.
And the convert and the conversation is not about fixing it, but it's almost funny to have a public conversation about you're not trying to fix the issues.
It's just like, oh, this is getting out and it's undermining our credibility.
You're ruining the scam for all of us.
Well, right.
And it seems like with a lot of these people, I mean, I guess a lot of them are just straight up like, you know, they know what they're doing and they're just lying through their teeth.
But it's funny when you see these people in the corporate press who are like complaining so much that like, oh, it's like, no, they're undermining their trust in all of us and all this.
And you're like, wouldn't you like, if you were doing your job, wouldn't you just not be that concerned about this?
Wouldn't you not be concerned that like some like people like us would be more trusted than you?
I mean, you're like the fancy adult in a suit and tie on CNN.
You're Mr. Journalist.
We're just a couple idiot comedians.
Why do you think it is that like so many people are turning into tuning into us and shows like us and not trusting you guys?
Maybe it has something to do with the fact that you guys have done a horrible job.
Democrat Party Control00:03:18
Yeah.
How many clips does CNN have that went viral explaining what's going on in Russia and Ukraine?
And think about the resources they have and the amount of hours that they spend covering it.
How is it that they don't have a single five-minute clip breaking down the situation?
I mean, you literally have all the budget in the world and your job is to explain what's going on and they can't compete with your five-minute clip explaining it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's it's a weird state of affairs in the world today.
Anyway, it's worked out pretty well for us career-wise.
Okay.
So before we wrap up for this show today, I do want to play this video that was put out this morning, I believe, by former Hawaii Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard.
Tulsi Gabbard is somebody who we've always been kind of interested in in this show.
Of course, she was a presidential candidate in 2020, made some noise in that campaign, really brought down Kamala Harris.
And one of the things that was interesting, of course, what we took interest in is that she really put the issue of war and peace at the forefront of her campaign as the number one issue.
And she was very critical of, you know, regime change wars.
Not perfect on foreign policy, but was certainly much better than any other Democrat in the field.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
So yeah, she put this video out this morning.
Let's watch it.
Anti-War Liberal Roots00:09:29
I can no longer remain in today's Democratic Party that's under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers who are driven by cowardly wokeness, who divide us by racializing every issue and stoking anti-white racism, who actively work to undermine our God-given freedoms that are enshrined in our Constitution, who are hostile to people of faith and spirituality,
who demonize the police but protect criminals at the expense of law-abiding Americans, who believe in open borders, who weaponize the national security state to go after their political opponents, and above all, who are dragging us ever closer to nuclear war.
Now, I believe in a government that's of the people, by the people, and for the people.
Unfortunately, today's Democratic Party does not.
Instead, it stands for a government that is of, by, and for the powerful elite.
Now, I'm calling on my fellow common sense, independent-minded Democrats to join me in leaving the Democratic Party.
If you can no longer stomach the direction that the so-called woke Democratic Party ideologues are taking our country, then I invite you to join me.
So, pretty interesting that Tulsi left the Democratic Party.
I have some mixed feelings about it.
You know, like there is part of me that goes like, oh, no, but maybe you should just like stay and be the best Democrat, you know?
Maybe you could exert your influence to make them less worse on something.
But it's interesting that she left.
The reasons are certainly justified.
And I guess the real interesting thing is what type of impact will this have?
You know, I mean, Tulsi Gabbard didn't like do extremely well in her presidential campaign, but she has some influence.
And you wonder, even like something like if it can, you know, going into the midterm elections, does this cost the Democrats a point or two?
And how much of a difference could that make?
So that's kind of interesting too.
Look, I don't know what to say.
Rob, you got any comment on this?
She made some pretty good points about where the Democrats are at.
Maybe she wakes some people up.
I like it.
You know, maybe you start dividing the Democratic Party, or it's kind of like what we're trying to do with the Libertarian Party to the Republicans and otherwise.
So maybe she actually forces them to be a little bit more liberal, which by the way, are all things that we would hate because you're talking about social wealth distribution, but at least like that's a Democratic party that's rooted in something that I can understand and you can pretend is good versus everything that she's describing, which is the censorship, the woke stuff, the dividing everyone based off of race and privilege and all the conversation about nonsense of the current environment that we live in.
Yeah, well, and as she mentioned, the pulling us into nuclear war, which I think is her big issue.
You know, one thing I've been critical of Tulsi Gabbard on a few things.
I sent her a message earlier today.
She's messaged me before.
And like you got that digits.
Yeah.
Well, no, just on Twitter.
She's like messaged me on there.
So I'm sent her a message and I was, you know, just being like, oh, hey, I heard about that.
Well, you know, I understand why you left.
Good for you for standing up to all these maniacs.
But one thing, you know, I've been critical of Tulsi Gabbard a few times and she's gotten some things wrong.
I think she deserves the criticism.
But I will say that one thing she really got right that I think I was wrong about is that she used to say, but people used to ask her in the debates in 2020, what is the number one issue?
And I, you know, I don't know.
This is the debates were in like 2019 for the 2020 election.
So this is pre-COVID stuff.
So, you know, if people had asked me what the number one issue is, I probably would have said, you know, war and peace or the destruction of the dollar or something like that.
That once COVID came up, I probably would have said, you know, the government locking you in your house.
But she always very specifically said the threat of nuclear war with Russia.
And she saw even then that, you know, this is, which I did certainly, you know, we had several episodes with Scott Horton where we were talking about the, you know, the reckless provocations of Vladimir Putin and stuff.
But she saw even then that the real danger and all of the kind of like, I think of all of the Russiagate, you know, stuff and like that it's like, whoa, you guys are like really intentionally provoking a nuclear power and that that's the biggest thing.
And if that is your biggest issue, as she's said since her presidential campaign, yeah, you can understand where you really can't be a Democrat anymore when they're the party of intentional, like this kind of like nuclear brinksmanship.
So yeah.
It can actually just come out as anti-dementia.
You know, that kind of covers all of the current issues.
If you want to make a shorter video, Tulsi, you could have just, you could have just said that.
I also think there's something that is part of the reason why Tulsi is appealing to a lot of people, you know, a lot of Republicans and people on the right wing, even though she's, you know, with the exception of the war and peace issue, there's really been nothing else that she didn't fall right into the, you know, within the realm of where Democrats are or within the, you know, kind of the spectrum of Democrat, you know,
policy views Is something she touched on in the video where she was just like, you know, I'm sick of this hostility toward religious people and white people.
Just like, it's a very plain way to just say it.
What everyone kind of knows is the reality of the situation.
It's like, look, you don't, you don't have to be a white person or be a religious person to just be like, yeah, I don't, why are we like ginning up all of these like, you know, divisive and kind of demonizing, you know, a group of people.
People have the right to their faith.
Race really just shouldn't be an important factor.
Why are you obsessed with it all the time?
And so anyway, found it interesting.
We'll see where she goes.
I know there's already some people being like, oh, maybe Tulsi will come over to the Libertarian Party.
I don't even know.
You know, I'm not like.
You're better off splitting the left.
Yeah, I just, I don't know.
I think sometimes people, I know people have said this to me before.
They've been like, don't you want Tulsi to come join the Libertarian Party?
And it's not that I wouldn't like welcome her into the party if she wanted to come join the Libertarian Party.
But I just don't know.
She's not a libertarian.
Well, right.
So I don't know for sure that that would be the best move for her.
Like, yeah, I mean, hey, if she wants to sit down with some Rothbard books and start really like reading them, going like, oh, okay, I see you guys have this whole unified theory of free market economics and peace and civilization and prosperity and stuff.
Oh, yeah, we're with all that.
Like, okay, that'd be cool.
But maybe she should just go be like the best liberal in America, like who's not, who's too liberal for the Democratic Party.
I feel like good leftists would be an improvement.
So like, for example, if you, even if you make Jimmy Doer president, and you might be more familiar with Jimmy Doer and his policies, I probably would bash him on a lot of stuff because I'm sure that there would be a lot of social wealth distribution, but he wouldn't be advocating war.
He wouldn't be advocating staying in your homes because of COVID.
He wouldn't be advocating tech censorship.
And it would at least be policies that I could somewhat understand.
Now, I would also be fearful that I know the way that government tends to expand.
And then at some point, Jimmy Dore, there's a reason why he's not in office.
He can't get there because government's more evil than that.
Right.
And if he was, then someone who's more evil than him would replace him and expand it.
The point I'm trying to make is that better leftists would at least put us into a better position.
Yes.
No, I completely agree.
Listen, if Jimmy Doerr was like running for Congress or something like this, I'd probably send him money.
It would be like, yes, I'd probably, I'd back him almost over almost every Republican.
And I would probably even tell libertarians, like, leave this guy alone.
Let's fucking, let's not fuck with him.
Because, you know, like there's at least being anti-war, being anti-corruption, being anti-totalitarianism, it's a fairly important start.
So, yeah, I mean, again, I think where Tulsi Gabbard goes from here will be interesting.
She's an interesting force.
And, you know, there's a lot of people who love her, a lot of people who don't like her.
But she's, you got to at least admit she's made a name for herself off inserting some issues that are very important issues into the conversation.
And here's another important element is that maybe it forces other liberals to actually be liberals.
Because if you got someone like Tulsi Gabbard saying, I can't, I can't even exist within this party because you're pretending to be me.
And me being here is an endorsement of the fact that you guys are actually pushing wars and engaging in all this censorship and other things that are very not liberal.
Maybe it forces them to kind of, it makes what they're trying to sell a lot harder because they're selling that they're traditional liberals while they're pushing war.
So if enough people were to leave the party and go, I can't stand by this party while they're pushing war, you know what I mean?
Like that would be a drastic improvement.
Yeah.
No, 100% agree.
All right.
That's it.
That's the show for today.
Catch you guys out there in Las Vegas for Skank Fest.