Dave Smith and Robbie the Fire Bernstein critique the "no compromise" stance in Ukraine, arguing it prolongs conflict for war profiteering while ignoring failed prohibition policies that blame addiction on substances rather than societal neglect. They condemn the $40 billion aid package tied to Florida relief without an inspector general, contrasting this lack of oversight with the $50 billion spent in Afghanistan, and suggest the true goal is regime change in Moscow. Ultimately, the episode frames endless war as a vehicle for inflation and corporate gain, demanding fiscal accountability before further appropriations. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Why The Simpsons Got It Right00:04:19
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, James Smith.
What's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
I'm Dave Smith.
He is Robbie the Fire Bernstein.
What's up, sir?
What are you laughing about already?
It's very puberty.
What's up?
What?
A puberty?
Like, before?
What's up?
Yeah.
Did I crack a little?
It's fine.
It's all right.
Whatever.
My body's going through changes, Rob.
You get enough really good intros where you hit it.
I think the fans will let you off on one bad one.
Brian, edit this out and edit in one of my other intros and then make it seamlessly go into the podcast afterward.
It doesn't matter if I'm wearing a different shirt or nothing.
Just fucking make it real blatant.
None of them hear my voice crack.
What's up?
Remember that Simpsons character who was like the teenager who worked shit jobs?
Yes.
Yeah, that was a great subtitle character.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, it was a good one, wasn't it?
All right.
Our older fans will get that one.
Okay.
Isn't that weird?
You make a Simpsons reference and you're like, oh, the old people will get The Simpsons.
Yeah.
Well, it was, it was great when it was great.
Oh, so good.
I mean, I think it still might be on the air.
I don't know what the fuck happened with The Simpsons, but man, Simpsons, like the first, like, I don't know what it is, like six or seven seasons or something like that.
Maybe even more than that.
But back in the day, it was just so good.
Actually, I watched a few episodes on a plane the other day.
Like it was like, you know, I don't know what I think my fucking, maybe my phone was dying or something.
But I actually watched the TV on the plane, which I don't usually do anymore.
And I was going through like the guide and it was like Simpsons.
And I was like, oh, let me just click on it.
I know it's going to be like bullshit.
And there was like 1995.
And I was like, oh, yes, good Simpsons.
I watched like two of them.
It's just phenomenal.
Just still hold up.
So good.
Just some of the best comedy that's ever been made.
I know it's been documented how many times they've kind of predicted the future, but I'm amazed in my own life how something will happen.
And like in my own brain, to make sense of something, I'll reference something I saw on The Simpsons as a kid.
And you're like, man, they pegged that.
Yep.
Yep.
No, I know I've seen.
I haven't done like deep dives on this, but I have seen some of those compilation videos.
Like The Simpsons predicted this and stuff.
And it is, I mean, pretty unbelievable.
I saw one recently where they say a thing about all the powers that be unleashing a deadly pandemic, like just so they could sell the vaccine.
There is like a ton of things.
Or maybe it's going the other way where the world leaders are watching and going, hey, that's not a bad idea.
Maybe that's what this is all about.
It's like they're sitting at like some fucking G20 meeting and they're like, I don't know.
I'm out of ideas.
Throw on The Simpsons.
Let's all just fucking watch The Simpsons and see what they oh, that happened.
All right.
And I know this is old news, but you and I never just, I think, got into it.
But when they chat on Apoo and people, I became friends with people that owned stores because of The Simpsons as a kid and seeing those characters and seeing how they had lives and depths and being like, oh, it's cool to like know these people that you might have otherwise have just thought is like service industry people.
Like when I was in high school, I became friends with bodego owners.
Like that was a thing.
I saw it out.
Was I want an Apoo in my life?
And then these dumb Indians watch this as if like that was somehow.
Oh, I don't even think it was Indians.
I mean, don't even put it on them.
It's like white liberals.
It's like they're the ones who are getting offended on behalf of this.
I don't think so.
You know, it's just, yeah, it's just really stupid.
Anyway, by the way, I mean, okay, fine.
I say anyway, but one more thing.
The funny thing to me of that is that it's like the, oh, I mean, what's his name?
Did a whole fucking, it was a big part of his comedy special is about this.
Oh, I'm playing on.
I fucking love the guy.
I'm sorry.
I apologize to him.
Co-host with Andrew Schultz on his podcast.
Oh, I'm an asshole.
Akash, Akash Sin.
Yeah, he's great and he's hilarious.
And his point on this was all spot on.
His special was really funny, too.
White Liberals and Black Markets00:15:48
Go support Akash.
It's great, dude.
But the thing that's so ridiculous is that you're like, it's like to just pick one character on The Simpsons and be like, oh, that was a stereotype.
Like every character was a stereotype.
That was the, that was everyone.
The cop was literally a pig.
Like the mayor was like a Kennedy who was like always like a womanizing Kennedy.
Homer Simpson was a fucking buffoon.
Like there's every, it's not as if like, you know what I mean?
What's that guy's name?
The groundskeeper?
Oh, yeah.
Groundskeeper Willie.
Yeah.
Like all these things.
Can you be more of a Scotsman?
Yeah.
Like it's all that was the thing.
It was, it was, it was literally a cartoon.
Like your depiction of Apu was kind of cartoonish.
Like, yes, that's, that's true.
He was also like one of the more well-balanced characters on the show.
Anyway, regardless.
Okay, let's get back into some shit.
So I wanted to talk about this moment from Trump's announcement speech the other day.
We ran out of time yesterday, so we didn't get to it.
But let's, this was one other interesting kind of piece of substance that came out of the Trump campaign or excuse me, this Trump campaign announcement speech.
And it's gotten some attention on social media.
So let's play the clip and then let's discuss this a little bit.
It's got some creative new ideas.
Dwar upon the cartels and stop the fentanyl and deadly drugs from killing 200,000 Americans per year.
And I will ask Congress for legislation ensuring that drug dealers and human traffickers, these are terrible, terrible, horrible people who are responsible for death, carnage, and crime all over our country.
Every drug dealer during his or her life on average will kill 500 people with the drugs they sell, not to mention the destruction of families.
But we're going to be asking everyone who sells drugs, gets caught selling drugs, to receive the death penalty for their heinous acts.
So there you go.
That's the big, bold new idea from the Republican presumptive nominee is get this, Rob, a war on drugs.
We haven't tried that one yet.
So let's give that a shot.
If he wants to go after the drug dealers like Pfizer, Moderna, and others, I'll listen to that conversation.
It is interesting.
It is interesting.
He still brags about Operation Warp Speed and developing this drug and working with these pharmaceutical companies, yet the drug dealers are they, you know, they need to get the death penalty.
I mean, just to address the fentanyl thing, a lot of that has to do with Johnson and Johnson and who is the Purdue family or whatever those people were with the OxyCot.
Like, I mean, government was in on that racket.
They might be fining the families now, but we definitely expanded how many people we got hooked onto painkillers.
And then people have switched over to substances like fentanyl.
And then also you lock people in their homes.
I'm not saying that there are people aren't going to abuse drugs and there isn't more of a problem of things being laced with fentanyl, but like it's not just drug dealers.
It's literally our own pharma policies and lack of jobs, you know, shipping jobs overseas because of our own laws on wage rates and then locking people in their homes.
It's not like that's just drug dealers.
So there's, yeah, there's a few things to be said here.
I mean, look, let me start trying to be as charitable as possible because there is something here that, you know, Donald Trump, in a way, is owning this lane because almost no other major political figure even discusses this.
And it is a humongous problem.
I think the last I looked at it, I think he's off a little bit on the numbers there, being 200,000 Americans dying from ODs every year, but it's really high.
It's over 100,000 for sure.
And it's really, I mean, like a humongous problem.
It's terrible.
It's like the, I think the overall life expectancy rate has been affected by how many people are dying from drug overdoses.
And of course, the numbers of people dying from drug overdoses, that's only one percentage of the people who have ruined their lives with drugs, you know, and it's that's really genuinely horrible.
So he is at least addressing this concern, whereas this seems like, you know, to most people in the corporate press, there's, I don't know, what do you think the ratio of how concerned, how many times they've mentioned the 100 plus thousand people dying of drug ODs every year to like January 6th.
You know what I mean?
It's like there's, this is just like doesn't even register as a concern.
So, you know, he's at least bringing it up.
The issue, of course, is that, you know, as I was my dumb joke a few minutes ago, it's just like, look, we've been fighting a war on drugs for 40 years, 40 years, 50 years, right?
50 years, 1970s, the early 1970s to the early 2020s, right?
50 years of a war on drugs.
And we ramped it up in the 80s and we ramped it up more in the 90s.
And if you're still dealing with this problem all of these decades later, it's just, I understand it's a little bit counterintuitive, but it's not even that counterintuitive to just go that the prohibition here is a huge factor in this problem.
And the truth is that most of these of the people dying, they are dying because they're getting fentany on the black market.
And they're getting fentanyl from these drug dealers, as you, as you say.
And a lot of these deaths come because the measurements are all wrong.
They don't know what the dosage is.
They don't know what they're getting.
You just have to take some drug dealer's word for it.
And this is what always happens in black markets.
There's a lot more risk.
Of course, in the same sense, like a lot of people die from alcohol and a lot of people kill themselves on alcohol.
A lot of people kill other people when they're drunk.
I think it's something like 50% of murders.
The person who does the murder is drunk.
But I think most people know that, like, well, prohibiting alcohol is not going to stop this problem because if there's enough of a demand for alcohol, then it's going to open up the black market, just like under prohibition of alcohol is what happens.
That then criminals move in because there's money to be made there.
And you, you know, it's just like the it's the idea that, well, if we made the punishment even worse, the punishment will be death.
I mean, do you know already what the punishment for dealing drugs is?
It's pretty damn high.
I mean, fentanyl, I believe, is a Schedule II drug, not a Schedule I drug.
You know, it's not as bad as pot.
So this is how good the federal government is at conducting its war on drugs.
But you're, I mean, you're looking at decades-long sentences if you get caught right now.
You move that up to the death penalty.
I mean, forget, you know, all the problems associated with that, but just doesn't seem to be any reason to believe that that's going to solve the problem.
If you understand that the problem is so related to black markets to begin with, um, but then I also think that you really touched on something else there with the lockdowns and stuff like that.
Did you know, Rob, have you ever heard about this?
There was this major study.
I wasn't even planning on talking about this, I don't have the info at the top of my head, but you can look this up.
This is all true.
So, there was this major study, I believe it was in the 70s.
Um, uh, it was like a study on rats, and they put uh, they'd put like a rat in um in a cage with two water bottles, and the one water bottle was just water, and one water bottle had cocaine, like water, cocaine-laced water.
And the rats would go drink the um the water with the cocaine, they'd get a little high and spurg out a little bit, and then they would just keep drinking it until they died.
And this was taken at the time, and it was justified by many of the proponents of the war on drugs, where they were like, Well, look, this was kind of like the belief of drug use at the time.
It was like, Look, you try it once, you're hooked, and you're just going to do it until you die.
There's like no other way, you know what I mean?
Like, it just takes over you.
And so, the only answer here is we have to ban them.
That's the issue.
And then it was years later that this scientist came along and he was like, Well, you know, in the in this test, the rats were isolated in a cage with nothing but two water bottles.
And this is kind of a miserable life for a rat.
Like, life is awful here.
And so, he said, Let's run this experiment again, but I'm going to make the rats really happy.
And so, he'd give this rat like a bunch of rat bitches, let him get laid a whole bunch.
He laid out like toys, like, so he would have this whole like little world to play in and like all this shit.
And they just made the rats' existence less miserable.
And then they ran the same experiment, and none of the rats killed themselves with the cocaine.
They'd take a little bit of it and then go back to the water.
Yeah, they're like, dude, I'm not going anywhere.
I got more rat pussies showing up at five o'clock.
What do you, but seriously, this and it, so it really almost like demonstrated.
Now, I don't know exactly, you know, it's not like you can perfectly extrapolate out of these experiments, but the point is that, and I think this is kind of what you were getting at with like the lockdown regime, and there's a million other things like that, that the substance itself is really not the core of the issue.
The core of the issue are the conditions that people are living in.
And of course, even way before the lockdowns, right?
Even before the COVID regime, the destruction of the working class, of the family unit, of kind of the religious culture, of spirituality, of meaning in life.
This is all, I think, played a huge factor in leading to problems with drug addiction.
And then, of course, when you had the lockdowns destroying so many people's lives and throwing them into this kind of like unstable, fearful state, yeah, you saw the number of drug addictions and overdoses go way up.
So, again, it's just it's it gets to, I think, the point that you were getting at that, like, there's other factors involved here.
And, you know, when you create these black markets, you have a lot of other unintended consequences that come along with it.
Um, in the same way that when uh, prohibition, the original prohibition was um was ended, the murder rate uh decreased dramatically in the years that followed.
Because, you know, if people can just like right now, when alcohol is legal, you can certainly point to a lot of problems that exist.
There are drunk driving accidents.
There are people who get drunk and assault people and kill people.
There are people who ruin their lives with alcohol.
There's no question.
There's a lot of problems with alcohol.
There's also a lot of other people who use alcohol responsibly.
But what you don't have happening is violence associated with the alcohol trade.
Like, I don't know.
You can go to a liquor store.
It's not like a dangerous environment.
I'm not concerned about what's in my bottle of whiskey when I get it.
They're not like me and you aren't like, yeah, we might OD on this whiskey because there might be some fentanyl in here.
You know what I mean?
Which is the case if you go and get cocaine or something like that.
Or so I've heard.
But you know what I'm saying?
So it's like you eliminate, and there's no gang element in the alcohol trade.
That is so much of the crime problem in this country.
It's like the gang element in the drug trade.
And so many of the things that the Trump that Trump will blast and that his people are concerned with is they're talking about all this human trafficking and drug trafficking coming over the border from Mexico.
It's like, yeah, well, this is what you get when you have black markets.
Again, none of these things, it's kind of like the old Thomas Soul insight, like everything is trade-offs.
It's not none of these things are perfect in the same way that like, yeah, it's not perfect that we have alcohol.
There's problems associated with it, but it's a whole lot better than having it prohibited.
And so unfortunately, here you have the kind of MAGA movement recognizing a problem that so many other people don't want to even touch, but coming up with the absolute worst prescription for the problem.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
His 500 number has to be wrong.
And I just did some quick math.
Firstly, let's just grant that it's wrong, but just some quick math.
I would just guess that if you did a study, the average drug dealer's career is about 10 years.
The reason I'm throwing that figure out there is between people doing it in high school and stopping and then people getting arrested.
I would just go with that.
So let's go with this higher overestimate of 200,000 deaths a year, right?
So if the average career span is 10 years for one of these people, you'd be talking about 4,000 drug dealers in the entire country.
If you had to scribe 200,000 deaths a year over the course of 10 years, so then that would play out to being 4,000 people.
There can't only be 4,000 drug dealers in the country.
I think there's 4,000 in my listeners.
Amongst our listeners, there might be 4,000 drug dealers.
At least part-time.
Yeah, I mean, it just, a lot of these numbers don't seem to be quite right.
But again, look, nothing, what puts drug dealers out of business is finally having the courage to walk away from the war on drugs.
Just call it quits and surrender it.
I mean, there's far less.
Like, look, there used to be a major problem with weed coming from Mexico.
It was also crap weed.
But that has very much dried up now because it's much, it's legal here.
Now, again, I'm not even playing it.
Like, I think there are other negative externalities that come along with legalization.
It's just far better than the ones that come along with prohibition.
And again, there's the people are not.
Prescribed Pills for Depression00:10:10
And the other point that you made early on is that this is also very connected to the pharmaceutical industry who are getting a lot of people hooked on these pain pills.
That's why they kratom.
There you go.
Well, they've pulled back a lot on how much they like over-prescribed pain pills, but for a while there, they were going crazy with it.
And this created a lot of people who were addicted to the pain pills, then couldn't get those anymore, and then were like, you know, on the street looking for heroin and fentanyl and shit like that.
And there's back in the good old days when you could call up your friend who broke his arm and be like, hey, man, I heard you broke your arm.
Hey, that doesn't hurt that much, does it?
Yeah, you're not taking all those, are you?
Yeah, those were the good old days.
But I do think that, like, look, it's, it's really tragic when there are people whose lives are so fucked up and they're so addicted that it's like overtaken their life and they're on the street trying to find drugs.
But can't we all say that it would be better if those people could go somewhere?
And I mean, obviously there are the places that they can go, but the places they can go are like detox facilities.
There aren't places where they can go.
And just at least if they're not going to go into detox, there's somewhere they could go where at least they know they're getting like clean stuff that's at the right dosage.
Again, it just seems like a much better solution.
And this federal war on drugs has just been a goddamn nightmare.
It's just destroyed communities.
You know, it's done nothing but create more violent crime.
And even as we're seeing now, it's even more addiction and a much more dangerous addiction.
There's like an Adderall shortage in the country right now.
I mean, forget just all of these illegal drugs, which I would bet if they were illegal and you can get safe dosage.
Like I'm willing to bet over a lifetime.
I mean, I don't know about cocaine, but I bet if you were just drinking like cocoa leaf tea, it's probably better than doing Adderall on a daily basis.
I would just bet.
Yeah, maybe.
I can't say that scientifically, but I would just.
Well, and then there's like these other things that never seem to come up when there are, you know, when big pharma is behind it, but things like Adderall, where you're just like, holy shit, dude, like, what is this like?
These companies who are in bed with government are just like, have quietly just gotten like huge percentages of young people, particularly young men, addicted to amphetamines.
And like, that's not even like really critically discussed.
They're prescribing this shit to fucking like seven and eight year olds.
It's really wild, really, really wild.
The idea of like, you know, if you've done Adderall as an adult, you go like, it's a, it's a strong drug.
The idea of like just putting your seven-year-old on Adderall every day, and this is done so quickly, like so quickly.
It's like, oh, he doesn't focus in class enough.
Okay, throw him on drugs.
I find that to be like profoundly disturbing.
And yet this stuff rarely comes up even as a conversation.
I can't imagine having had that happen to me because as an adult, I mean, I took Adderall in college when I had finals and then later every once in a while for fun.
But at one point, I was actually prescribed it.
And within 15 days, I was like, I can't be taking this every day.
I mean, I was just fucking angry.
Come the end of the day, every like literally just fucking angry.
And there's something that becomes not fun when you're actually prescribed it.
Like it just becomes not fun anymore.
But I can't imagine being like seven or eight years old.
I'm saying I saw a doctor, was prescribed, it was taken it as prescribed, and that was not a fit for me in any capacity.
But I can only imagine being seven or eight years old and like being kind of forced, you know, your parents are giving it to you to take, and they're not really taking your input when you're going, Hey, this is this is not clicking for me.
Yeah, I mean, it's it's uh it profoundly changes you, it's a very weird thing to do, uh, particularly to a child.
Um, but I also think there's like you know, back to the example of the rat, you know, thing.
There's just very rarely it's kind of like there, there's not there's no thoughtful question about the circumstances in which people are in.
Um, and I think at least part of that is because it's really not to the benefit of like these pharmaceutical companies to even have those conversations.
They're like, I don't know, we got a pill to sell here, right?
That's what we're trying to do.
And this is true with the SSRIs as well.
I think there are so many people who are like, like, um, are depressed and very like my okay.
And I'm, I'm no fucking you know, doctor, but my general attitude on this, and this does not apply to everyone, but my general attitude on this is that I think that, so, like, if you think about this, there are certainly different people have different chemical balances, and there are some people who are more prone to depression and anxiety.
And there are some people who it really is just a chemical imbalance.
And in those people, I think sometimes like prescription drugs can be a lifesaver.
I'm not like saying there's no one who they're right for, but generally speaking, anxiety and depression are things that every human being has the potential to feel.
In other words, there is if there is a state in which you would be depressed.
If you were, let's say, if you were morning.
Well, yes, right.
But I'm saying if you had, if you didn't, if you don't have friends, if you don't have a job or a job that's just miserable, if you don't have any like, I don't know, if you, if you don't exercise or get sunlight or socialize or all of these things, if you live your life in that state, it's like a 100% guarantee that you will be depressed.
It's not just like some people happen to suffer from depression.
It's like, oh, like, you mean they're in a state where any human being would be depressed.
Like, and you know what I mean?
And then it's like, okay, well, the solution here is the pill.
From my perspective, I think in many cases, not all, but in many cases, depression is like the body's response to certain situations.
And that's the indicator.
Like, that's the reason why you have to change these circumstances.
And so the pills then are going to come in and just kind of mask that feeling.
I think in many cases, it can lead to you losing the motivation to need to change those things about your life.
And, you know, even in these tests, like cardiovascular exercise performs better than SSRIs against depression.
Now, the argument goes that, like, well, those people are so depressed, they're not able to exercise.
So we have to just give them these pills.
And then once we get them on the pills, maybe they can start exercising later.
I'm pretty skeptical of that.
Again, not in all cases, but in many cases, I'm very skeptical of that.
I think that I don't know if you remember there was a like a viral clip once where Rogan really called out Michaela Peterson for making this argument.
And I really err on Rogan's side on this.
Like where she was like, she was like, you don't understand those people can't exercise.
And he's like, bullshit, bullshit.
He's like, can they walk?
Can they walk?
Then walk faster.
Like, he's like, I'm not saying you got to run a triathlon, but like, no, you can get your heart rate elevated.
You can do that.
Start slow and build from there.
Like, it can be done.
And there's anyway, my point is just that it is not in big pharma's interest to even start like to even be hesitant or to think about these things before you just throw pills at people.
These aren't an absolute.
And I agree with you that probably a substantial amount of depression is a reaction to something that you're your brain's kind of telling you, hey, you got to change this.
It's a little bit like putting your hand on an oven with heat.
And I also think that the pills probably could help short term if the focus is developing better habits.
I think, and I'm writing some jokes on some of the trans stuff, but I think some of what almost makes me sad about it is I feel like people are turning themselves into like a used car where like you're now going to need a lot of repair work.
And the pharmaceutical industry feels like a similar thing where it's like, if you're dedicating, your brain's lazy.
If you're outsourcing brain function to chemicals, well, there might need to be another adjustment.
And then there might need to be another adjustment, but now you're kind of in someone else's hands to try and fix a problem.
And that just, I don't know, maybe it's my own anxiety that I like just to be more in control, but it feels like that's a, it's like, you know what they say with cars that stay stock, stay happy, because you start like fucking around with the engine and you don't go with the factory parts.
It's like endless repairs.
That's what it feels to me a little bit with like your brain wiring.
Yeah, I think there's something to be said for that.
I also think that if you actually, when you look into the science of a lot of these prescription pills, you'd be shocked at how much of it is guesswork.
Yeah.
It's not as if like, oh, we have this clear understanding of like what, you know what I mean?
Like this is what causes depression and then this is what fixes it.
And we know exactly which levels to tweak.
They kind of throw stuff at the wall, things that mess with, you know, the chemicals in your brain.
And then they kind of ask people how they feel after they take them and go, oh, okay.
Well, this seems to work.
I mean, you know, the famous the story of Viagra, which is like, I think still, I don't know if it still is, but it was for a while the number one selling pharmaceutical drug ever.
We might, we might have some competition over the last few years, but the story was that it was for blood pressure or something like that.
And it just didn't work.
They just did all these tests and it just wasn't working.
But boners.
A whole lot of people started reporting back and they were like, you know, my heart's not doing any better.
Compromises in the Ukraine Narrative00:15:09
But I did notice something.
We've got a boner of the Greek gods.
And then they were like, well, then we'll just give it to people for that.
And as like, it's just one example, but it's just like, it's kind of crazy the way all this shit works.
Like it's, it's just anyway, it's something to think about.
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Okay, so I did want to like just mention that stuff from it can't be more unpopular.
I mean, talk about the other people that are talking about the fentanyl stuff.
I mean, it's coming up in the lack of border security, which I understand.
And then there's also conversations about making more resources for testing and for treatment.
But the idea that most people are looking at their friends who are drug addicts and thinking the solution here is I want to see more dealers getting the death penalty.
I can't imagine that that's popular.
I just, I can't, I can't be that far removed from reality that there's a lot of conservatives out there that really want the death penalty for drug dealers.
I'd be surprised.
Yeah, I don't know.
You know, a lot of this stuff too, it's kind of Donald Trump has this weird thing where it's kind of like, what was it, Peter Thiel, I think?
Was it him?
Was he the one who came up with the saying?
But it was really a great way to describe Donald Trump back in 2016 or might have even been 2015.
But he said, he said the media took Donald Trump literally, but they never took him seriously.
Right.
And his supporters took him seriously, but they never took him literally.
So in other words, like the corporate press would be like, oh, Donald Trump's such a fucking clown.
He could never win president.
Look at this horrible thing he said.
But take this literally, you know?
Whereas his supporters were like, he could definitely be president.
He's got my support.
And if they pointed some horrible thing he'd said, they're like, oh, you can't take him literally on that.
You know what I mean?
He's just in other words, he's just saying, hey, I'm going to be serious about the fentanyl stuff.
He's not actually saying he wants to kill drug dealers.
Yes.
So he, I mean, Donald Trump ran in 2016 on deport them all.
Right.
That every single illegal alien would be deported.
Now, forget the nightmare that that would turn our society into, but just the logistics of it.
You're like, what?
You got 30 million illegal immigrants?
How do you lock up Hillary Clinton?
Yeah, really, right, right.
But again, that's another example, right?
Of like these things that he said that no one, you know, it's hard to say, like, does he really mean this?
Does he, does he mean it in the moment and then have no real interest in following through on it in any meaningful way?
But it became, but there were people, opponents of Donald Trump, critics of Donald Trump, you know, not opponents, I mean, just people who hated Donald Trump, who were very seriously like, yeah, some type of Gestapo is about to come and start showing up to fucking check who's an illegal immigrant because we're rounding them all up.
And I guess it's kind of not completely unreasonable.
That is what he said, you know.
So I don't know.
In other words, I don't know if Donald Trump really means this.
And his supporters, I've learned, have quite an ability to defend no matter what he says, defend him no matter what he says.
All right.
I want to go to this other video of Jane Harmon, who is a former congresswoman.
She was on Morning Joe either.
This was either yesterday or this morning.
And I thought this was kind of interesting.
It's one more piece.
Obviously, we talk a lot about the war in Ukraine.
I think it's kind of the most important thing, the most dangerous thing that's going on in the world right now.
This was an interesting segment that I thought was worth bringing up.
One more example of a very powerful person kind of toting what has been the U.S. line on this war since the very beginning.
So here she is, former Congressman Jane Harmon.
Were anybody that would be a key player in at least the start of negotiations from the United States side?
It would be Director Burns, would it not?
It sure would.
And he met with Putin personally, I think, before this ridiculous, unnecessary illegal war started, but obviously to no effect.
I just wanted to add to what David said, which is there's no room for compromise right now.
And that's the U.S. position.
And Lloyd Austin met with his counterparts, I think, this week, and almost a billion dollars more aid is coming from Sweden and Germany and us and Canada.
And that's what we have to do.
There's no evidence that Putin keeps his word, and it ain't over until it's over.
And it's going to be a brutal winner.
But the strongest weapon in this fight is the Ukrainian heart.
It's much stronger than dumb.
I just can't resist.
She needs a compromise between her right and left side of her face.
You got to figure out where you want it to be.
She also looks like she's the Halloween costume of the news anchor who's on that show, that lady.
You know, like when you buy Halloween masks.
Halloween Mika.
Yeah.
That's not bad.
All right.
Yeah, let's play the last one.
Then dumb missiles or drones or tanks or whatever else has been used.
And the Ukrainians are very well trained at this point, in part thanks to us, but in part also thanks to their enormous tech skills to withstand this.
And boy, if Russia isn't pushed back here, we are going to have an Article 5 NATO confrontation.
And that's not going to be good for anybody.
And for all the reasons that Jane just laid out, General Milley said yesterday, there's about zero chance that at this point that Russia just completely jumped over.
We got to applause again.
I apologize.
I just can't resist to be talking about their tech skills while you see people fighting over food and the most low-tech thing, which is that people currently need food.
Don't tell me about their tech skills.
I mean, the irony of that.
Oh, they're going to be fine because they're so technologically advanced.
Really?
Because they're gathering in town centers for basic necessities.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Hold on.
I just pull it back a few seconds because I just want people to hear what Willie Geist says at the end here of the segment.
The reasons that Jane just laid out, General Milley said yesterday, there's about zero chance that at this point that Russia just completely overruns Ukraine.
With that said, even though.
Okay.
So that's just to back up that General Milley also said there's a 0% chance that Russia takes all of Ukraine.
And he also reasserted yesterday that we will be supporting Ukraine for as long as it takes, seemingly no matter what.
But as long as it takes were the words he used over and over again in his press conference.
This, of course, all coming a day after we found out that Zelensky lied.
Okay.
In the best case scenario, you could say maybe he didn't lie, but was criminally negligent in doing any due diligence before coming out, figuring out that it was his own missiles that went into Poland, told the rest of the world that this was an attack on attack on defense agreements or something like that, that there has to be a NATO response to Russia,
made this big pitch for escalating a potential nuclear conflict with Russia, all based on complete bullshit.
But the position here still is.
And as the former congresswoman said, and I kind of would, in a way, appreciate her laying it out, that this is not just her talking.
This is the U.S. position.
There can be no compromise.
There can be no compromise.
That's where we are.
That is the U.S. position in this conflict.
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This is insanity to levels that are hard to overstate, that there can be no compromise.
The truth is that even as much as they try to tell you every single day on the news, that it's like they do this weird thing.
This is one of the things that's very strange with the narrative around Ukraine.
It's constantly like Putin is a madman, hell-bent on conquering Eastern Europe.
But he also would never use nukes.
We can count on this madman to never actually go nuclear.
And also he's getting his ass handed to him in Ukraine.
Aha, they're getting destroyed.
So it just seems like all of these things like don't jive with each other.
Like, is he a threat to conquer half of Europe, but he's getting his ass kicked in Ukraine?
Like, what, how does that work together?
And then, of course, it's like always like he's getting his ass kicked in Ukraine.
And also, it's so horrible how he's slaughtering Ukrainians.
Like, it's so horrible that they just had this huge offensive the other day and a bunch of people died, which is horrible.
But it's like, okay, if the idea, you might be saying it's a 0% chance that Russia takes all of Ukraine.
He doesn't want it.
Yeah, that's not the goal.
I don't, right?
He's never stated that he wants that.
I don't know if that's his goal.
I wouldn't put it at zero, but I don't think there's a good chance of that either.
But that's there's there's a big difference between that and your position being zero compromise.
So what does zero compromise mean exactly?
That Russia must be completely expelled from the country?
That Russia must give the Donbass region back to Ukraine?
How about Crimea?
Does he have to give Crimea back to?
I mean, like, what exactly does no compromise mean?
Because I would tell you, I think the chances are far less likely of all of that happening than of Russia taking all of Ukraine.
So not that I think either scenario is going to happen.
The truth is that in this conflict, whether people like it or not, the only sane, the only sane strategy or outcome here is exactly what they just said the U.S. position is to not have in any circumstances.
That's some type of compromise.
Some type of compromise is how this has to end.
And it's the only way to make it end in a quick way.
You know, people can say like, oh, but it's so fucked up that he invaded.
It's so wrong.
We can't just let him have some of this.
And it's like, yeah, it's not fair.
It's just the best outcome right now.
And there's lots of things that aren't fair in the world, particularly when it comes to how governments work.
But that's just the, you know what I mean?
That's just the situation that we're in.
That we should, not only should our policy not be no compromise, our policy should be, seeing as how we are the, you know, the empire and seeing as how we have gotten ourselves extremely involved in this conflict,
the policy from the United States government at this point should just be trying to facilitate negotiations and trying to trying to very aggressively, you know, trying to find a way to negotiate a ceasefire and some type of peace settlement.
How anyone isn't for that is really beyond me.
But that's the there you have that official Ukrainian debts.
No, it certainly does seem like that they're what they want is to hurt Russia.
And they don't seem to have any problem with prolonging the war in order to do that.
So yeah, there you go.
All right.
So here, let's, there's a couple other things that we wanted to get to.
So Here, hold on.
What do I have next up on the docket here?
What was the other one?
Oh, yeah, let's go to our boy Thomas Massey on the subject of Ukraine as well.
Our boy Thomas Massey was on Tucker Carlson last night, had a very interesting segment.
I thought that was worth watching, so let's pull that up.
It seems pretty clear that this story was planted by the U.S. Intel agencies on the AP wire to convince you in the Congress to send another tranche of $37 billion to the government of Ukraine.
That feels like manipulation by our intel agencies to me.
Yeah, and if I may respond to one other thing in your monologue there, there's a myth about the NATO treaty that Article 5 is somehow short-circuiting Congress's responsibility to decide when and if we go to war.
Article 11, which almost nobody has read, says that all of the member states have to carry out the other articles in compliance with their own constitutions.
Our Constitution requires not just the Senate to confirm a treaty, but for the House and the Senate both to agree to commit an act of war or to commit our soldiers to war.
So that, you know, if any of my, if any of my colleagues here in the House or the Senate are listening, please go read the rest of the NATO treaty.
As far as the money, Tucker, they're doing something very despicable here with these last tranches of money.
We had a clear-cut vote on about $40 billion, and we had 57 Republicans.
Those are your true conservatives, who voted against that $40 billion.
But recently, the last tranche, they tied it to hurricane relief in Florida.
So think about this.
If you wanted to help hurricane victims in Florida with your vote in Washington, D.C., you had to increase the chance that we would have victims of nuclear war.
It's despicable and it's wrong.
And they're going to try and do that with the next tranche of money.
They're going to tie it to more disaster relief and other government funding.
This is so obviously a scam.
I mean, it's an ideological jihad.
It's a holy war being waged by some on the left against Russia for their own creepy ideological reasons.
War Profiteers and Crypto Spending00:03:32
But it's also a money-making opportunity for war profiteers, including one prominent Democrat who's trying to do an arms deal in Ukraine right now.
We'll tell you about that tomorrow.
But I don't understand how Congress can appropriate a single more dollar without an audit that tells us what happened to the other tens of billions you've already sent.
That's right.
We should absolutely refuse to send another single penny there until we get an audit and an inspector general.
Senator Rand Paul tried to make this stand in the Senate, only got 11 of his colleagues there to agree that we need an inspector general.
Look, in Afghanistan, we were spending about $50 billion a year.
We're spending, of course, to spend about twice of that in Ukraine.
And we had an inspector general in Afghanistan.
We absolutely need one here.
We found all sorts of waste, fraud, and abuse from Inspector General John Sopko.
So we need one here in the Ukraine immediately.
And we shouldn't be sending any more money.
And there's one other thing we should demand.
You know, the guy that you quoted there said, we'll do it for as long as it takes.
The thing we never had in Afghanistan and we don't have in Ukraine is what is your definition of victory?
Are you going to retake Crimea?
What's your definition of victory?
The American voters deserve to know.
Oh, regime change in Moscow, of course, is the goal of this.
So Republicans now officially, as of an hour ago, can...
All right, so there is the legend, Thomas Massey.
Just raising several more very important points about this ongoing conflict.
It's pretty amazing when you think that we're on pace to spend twice as much as we were spending in a year in Afghanistan.
And doesn't that work out?
Inflation.
Well, yeah, there you go.
So maybe it's not exactly twice as much.
You just can't buy as much war as you used to.
Yeah, that's right.
That's right.
But isn't it something that as soon as we finally end this conflict in Afghanistan, well, here we are right back into a conflict in Ukraine and spending even more money there?
It's honest, man.
If you're a war profiteer, things really don't worry about it.
Well, that's why Biden rushed out of Afghanistan.
He needed, he needed to free those resources up quick.
Well, can you imagine if there's someone, some type of war profiteer, somewhere who is like talking to one of his uh older, wiser war profiteer friends, and he was like, Oh my god, they're ending the war in Afghanistan, we're gonna lose all this money.
And his wiser friend was like, Don't you worry, there's always another war, we're all we'll always find another one.
And for you know, whatever.
Um, but then the point about an inspector general uh to this is really pretty that man, I really like I meant this when I said before about how anyone could oppose negotiations right now is mind-boggling to me.
How anyone could oppose this to think that Rand Paul simply just proposed because, well, if we're going to send over tens of billions of dollars, shouldn't we like check in on how it's being spent?
Kind of know what exactly we're funding.
And that got 11 senators to support it.
That's all he got out of the hundred people sitting in the Senate.
The other you know, 89 were like, What?
No, like, who cares?
Imagine spending that type of money and not caring to check where it's going.
And I'll tell you, with the whole FTX uh scandal brewing, it does add a whole nother element of like, oh, maybe there's a reason why they don't want it to be detailed where this money is going.
I can get my cash off the exchanges.
Fucking Winklevoss twins trying to steal all my money.
This whole thing's gonna go belly up, dude.
Everyone, everyone's taking your money and leveraging it up, and suddenly, you know, liquidity starts coming out of the markets, and boom, everyone's well.
Shoving Crypto Up Your Ass00:01:17
There's yeah, you might be.
I'm gonna get myself a USB thing with my crypto and shove it up my ass prison style.
No one's taking it from me.
Gonna have to shake my bellies.
Yeah, that's when you get into prison.
You're like, hey, guys, I got my crypto with me right here.
She goes, Hey, can I get some cigarettes?
I'll trade you some crypto.
It's on my hard drive.
Do you have a do you have a laptop with you by any chance?
Or you accidentally make diarrhea in an airport, and you're like, Oh, no, oh my god, my life savings.
That's four million dollars worth of crypto.
It's not, you might want to think this plan through, Rob.
It may not be, it may not be as foolproof as you think it was.
All right.
Well, let's just say that continuing this pace in Ukraine is crazier than shoving all your crypto up your ass.
Okay, it's an even crazier strategy.
All right, let's wrap on that note.
Rob, this weekend, you're going to be in uh New Orleans, correct?
New Orleans, Friday night.
Come hang out, gonna be a party.
Hell yeah, don't forget me and Robbie the Fire Bernstein will be up in Poughkeepsie, New York on November 25th.
I'll be with Louis J. Gomez for the New Year's show, December 31st, at the comedy store in Los Angeles.
And then we got a whole bunch more stuff coming up in 2023 coming to a town near you with my boy, Robbie the Fire Bernstein.