Dave Smith and Rob Bernstein review 2022, highlighting permanent pandemic policies like New Jersey's mask mandates and criticizing Biden's refusal to let Ukraine join NATO as an escalation tactic. They analyze the Mar-a-Lago raid, Steve Bannon's prosecution, and Elon Musk's Twitter acquisition as pivotal moments challenging censorship. The hosts argue that "dictator rules" target Trump specifically while celebrating the Libertarian Party's Mises Caucus takeover, concluding that 2022 marked a decisive shift where societal fractures over government overreach became permanent. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Human Traditions vs Rationality00:04:05
Fill her up.
You are listening to the Gash Digital Network.
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Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
You're listening to part of the problem on the Gas Digital Network.
Cheers your host, James Smith.
What's up, everybody?
What's up?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
I am Dave Smith.
He is Rob Bernstein.
This is our final episode of 2022.
What a year.
This will be our year in review episode, and I'm excited to do it with you.
Rob, how are you feeling this evening?
I'm doing great.
Just did my Zoom run through.
Only got to make a couple tweaks.
I'm looking forward to this filming.
Hell yeah, dude.
I'm looking forward to watching it.
And I'm also looking forward to going out to Los Angeles for the shows with my brother Louis Jay Gomez.
And then Jay's coming out to meet us for New Year's Day.
And we're doing a live podcast.
So a lot of fun stuff.
Yeah, I'm in.
I got a nice glass of bourbon here.
I figured this will be a fun episode to look back at the last year.
What do you got there?
The Mad Elf.
It's like a very, very high alcohol content, sugared up IPA.
It's like a milkshake and a beer in one.
It's delicious.
Sugared up.
Yeah, they put cherries and honey in there.
I can just tell you it's delicious and I'll get you drunk at the same time.
Oh, there you go.
All right.
Very good.
It's kind of what's the old David Tell joke.
Oh, the getting drunk on eggnog.
Yeah, he goes.
He's like, I want to get drunk, but I also want pancakes.
If I look back at this past year, one of my biggest accomplishments is I feel like I really ate a fair amount of donuts and didn't put on that much weight.
So I feel like this was a good year for me.
That's huge.
Yeah.
If I could keep up this level of bake good consumption in the afternoon without getting morbidly obese, I feel like that's all I need in life.
That's pretty great.
Because it's almost just like a mathematical formula, but it's very hard to figure out.
But what is the maximum amount of donuts you could eat while gaining the least amount of weight?
Like there's an optimal number somewhere where you're still eating a lot of donuts, but not getting that fat that you can't get laid anymore.
Yeah.
There's something.
There's something in there.
Well, that's good.
Isn't there something?
Even though this is an interesting thing about the human experience or something, is that sometimes there'll be these things like holidays or, you know, just events that are, you know, traditions that if you're just thinking about it purely rationally, like especially I think about like from the atheist point of view when it comes to like religious holidays or something like that, you could argue like this is silly.
Like what does the year doesn't really end on December 31st?
That's kind of arbitrary, right?
Like the year, you might say the year is 365 days long, or I think it's 365 and a quarter long, right?
Like that's how many days it takes the Earth to orbit the sun.
But, you know, to pick a day that is the end of the year and the beginning of the year is completely arbitrary.
I think I'm right about that.
Maybe some scientist is going to email me like, no, it is that day.
I don't know.
But, you know, and certainly, you know, you could think about a lot of different holidays and celebrations and things like that.
Yet we see throughout all of human history, every single society that's ever existed has special days.
And special feasts.
Even in times where people, there was mass starvation, they had days of feasts.
The Arbitrary End of the Year00:05:13
You know what I mean?
Which is kind of an interesting thing to think about that, like it's, it's somewhat counterintuitive on its face.
But then you'd kind of understand because you're not just a robot.
And I know a lot of people listening are autistic libertarian robots.
I understand.
I don't mean to insult 60% of our audience.
But if you're a human being and not just a robot, you understand why that would be.
Even if you were struggling to get enough food on the table every single day, you'd still want a day a year where you had a big feast because that'll almost keep you going.
You know what I mean?
Like you could, you could get through all of this struggle with this, like looking forward to this event.
That'll be a big thing.
Anyway, I've just been thinking about this.
How there's something about New Year's that I've found particularly recently over the last, say, four or five years, where I've really felt like there's something special about putting like an end to the year and then looking back at the last year, thinking like, what happened in your life?
What did this last year mean to you?
And I'll say before we even get into any of the, you know, the, what's going on in the world, which of course will be the theme of this episode, I've, it's, it's, it's been a great year for me in a lot of ways.
And I'm, I'm really, just, I don't know, just I find myself as the new year comes up being very grateful for everything in terms of my family life, my personal life and professionally, all of it.
It's just been a really, a really great year.
And obviously, it's, um, I had a big health scare with my son last year.
And the coming into the very beginning of 2022, there were still like some kind of questions in the air.
And he's done really great this year.
So that's first and foremost.
And, but just the experience that I had with my son being sick when he was born and having surgery and all this stuff, which I've talked about before, it just really, it really changed me in a lot of ways.
And one of the things that was, I guess, kind of a nice, like a silver lining coming out of a difficult experience, it really made me just kind of appreciate the things you take for granted.
And that's just something I've been thinking about.
I wanted to open up by saying that, but I'm really grateful, just like everyone in my life has their health and they're, you know, that everybody's doing good.
And I'm really just kind of, you know, blown away by the amount of support that me and you have for this show that we do and our stand-up and stuff like that.
And it's, it's just so cool that we're able to do what we love.
And there's, we, we have this big audience of people who listen to us.
I'm really grateful for that.
It's not, I know that me and you both, Rob, we've worked very hard at what we do to put ourselves in this position, but there's also a lot of like luck and, you know, random circumstances that come together.
And so I'm very grateful for that.
So thank you to everybody who listens to this show.
And yeah, I don't know.
I figured I'd start with that would be the ultimate, I don't know, the most important thing to say.
It's me and you, Rob.
We've known each other for a little while.
We've had a lot of trips around the sun at this point.
That's true, buddy.
It's been, I don't even know how many years, but it's a, I don't like to think about how long I've been doing stand-up, but I'm not a rookie anymore.
Well, the more the more successful you get, the less of a problem that is.
Like at least now, at least like, I feel like two, two or three years ago, maybe it would have been probably harder for you.
I remember that.
I remember that turning 30 for me really fucked with me.
But I'm about to turn 40 next year and that's not fucking with me at all.
And I realize now that it wasn't getting old.
It was being a failure.
That was the issue.
It wasn't just being old.
I was just like, fuck, I'm 30 and I'm broke and I have nothing.
But now I'm like, I'm 40.
I'm like, all right, that's fine.
Everything's fine.
I don't care.
I don't really want to be young anymore.
Yeah, I mean, I don't know, dude, but I know that.
So I remember me and you were already good friends when I got new faces.
Because I remember me and you joking around about that.
And we were hanging out at LOL all the time in those days.
And I remember always making the joke like that now.
I was too good for you.
I got new faces.
I was a real comic and you're still a failure.
I was a failure last week, but now I'm successful.
By the way, nothing came of that.
I was still a failure.
But I got that in 2013.
So we were at least friends for a year before then.
So it was, I, you know, it's, we're going on a decade of this shit and you've been doing this show for a long time.
And it's really, you know, we've, every year has been better than the previous year for our fucking, the thing that we do here.
So it's, it's, it's pretty cool.
At a certain point, that won't be true anymore.
And we'll be like, oh, man, last year sucked compared to the year before.
But hopefully we're not, we're not seeing that anytime soon.
All right.
Staying Through the Pandemic00:06:36
So 2022.
So Brian sent us this.
He did a great job, our producer, Brian, for the show.
He, he, you know, sent us a thing like with all of these stories broken down for 2022.
And we're going to kind of go through them.
We don't have to go through them in chronological order.
We could just kind of like go through a whole bunch of them.
But let me say this.
Maybe I'd start here, which isn't even a story exactly, just kind of my bigger picture thoughts about the year 2022.
Cause that's what I do.
I'm the big picture guy.
Dave.
Consistent motherfucker people know.
That's Christian conservative.
All of these things.
All of them are just accurate.
And these aren't even like nicknames or these aren't things I brag about.
These are just objective facts.
This is what I am.
Okay.
So I remember in 2020, in late 2020, I was on Rogan's show.
This was the one, if you watch it, when he had the Red Studio, it was when he had first moved to Austin and it was his like temporary red, like neon red studio thing.
But so I was on that time and it was during 2020.
And it was kind of obvious what the big stories of 2020 were, you know, it was like the lockdowns and COVID and the riots and Black Lives Matter and all this shit, you know, the election, all of this.
But I remember saying on that show at one point, we were talking about like, what does this COVID thing mean?
And I said something along the lines of that, like I basically said, and this was in 2020, I was like, look, we're never going to be in 2019 again.
And I know that's only a year ago, but we'll never be there again.
Now, where we go isn't exactly clear.
But in the same way that on September 11th, 2001, we were never going to be in September 10th, 2001 again.
Like it's just a different world.
And I compared it to 9-11 and I said, look, after 9-11, people were terrified of another terrorist attack.
Like everyone was thinking about that all the time.
And no one's really that afraid.
Most people don't live with a fear of a terrorist attack every day.
But the Department of Homeland Security is here to stay and the TSA is here to stay.
And the wars in the Middle East seem to be here to stay.
And, you know, all of these other things.
The Patriot Act is here to stay, all this stuff.
And I said, that's kind of what COVID's going to be like.
That, yeah, people won't be scared of getting COVID anymore in a while.
They won't be like, Oh my god, I'm so scared I might get COVID and die.
Honestly, what people are afraid of with COVID right now, from most people I know, is that they're like, Oh, I have a trip coming up, and if I get COVID, I may not be able to go on my trip.
But a lot of these policies are going to be here to stay, and we'll see what stays.
In many ways, if this makes sense, what I'm trying to get to, I think that this year, 2022, was the year that COVID ended and we figured out what was here to stay.
Not just, you know what I mean?
Like, not just like, okay, so 2020 was the year of the lockdowns, 2021 was the year of the vaccine mandates, 2022 was the year of, okay, obviously, all this shit was bullshit, but how much of it can we can just stick and is never going away?
That's kind of like what we started to get a sense of this year.
And I mean, it's good to not have the worst of it still here, but man, there's still a lot of it that's sticking around.
What are the bad ones that you think are still sticking around?
Because it seems to me masks are gone, vaccine mandates are mostly gone.
Seems like you got some dumbasses who are still kind of holding on to it.
But from what I hear of even people that were into the vaccines, their doctors aren't recommending it anymore.
So Fauci and him trying to say it's still a pandemic don't seem to have much of an impact.
So what do you think are like the big stickers?
Well, there was a there's a okay.
So I'll say this: there's a school district in New Jersey that just brought back uh mask mandates for schools, and they say it's because of the uh have if you've heard this, the triple demic, I think is what they call it.
Trying to claim that the RSV and uh well, the RSV and the flu and COVID all equal COVID or something, you know what I mean?
Like that's kind of the idea because the COVID numbers have plummeted so much that they're still trying to keep that.
Uh, there was an article uh just recently about um how we should permanently have masks.
It was, I can't remember who it was on, but it was on like one of the like big platforms, uh, one of the big publications that we should permanently have masks because during the winter at least to mitigate flu because 2020's flu season was so weak, which is there's a lot of questions about that, but you know, that so that's proof that's because everyone was wearing masks, okay?
Um, there are uh there, so there's yet the vaccine push isn't completely over, um, but more than that, I think that what really came out of uh uh the COVID times is the um the the ferocity in which uh government labels uh misinformation dangerous to public health,
you know, that or to the you know threats to democracy.
I think it all ties in.
I think that was way ramped up during COVID in a way that it never was before, and that that kind of like will continue to be there.
Um, I think that the like tech censorship, maybe not so much on Twitter anymore, but on the rest of the platforms, was crazy ramped up during COVID and will kind of, you know, this was the justification to stay at those levels.
Um, I think that in many ways, it's just how many people were psychologically broken by 2020 and 2021 that you're like, oh, yeah, I don't know if there's any coming back.
You know, I don't know if a lot of those people will be able to come back from that.
I think there's that was one of the things that kind of sunk in in 2022.
Where are we exactly as a society?
How much have we recovered from these two crazy years?
But look, I agree with you.
It's great that we're not locked down right now and that we're not, uh, you know, me and you aren't second-class citizens the way we were for a few months there during the passport, the vaccine passports, as they called them.
Therapy for Busy People00:02:07
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Putin's War on Borders00:14:52
All right.
So, biggest stories of 2022.
Well, you know, most years, it's really obvious to me what the biggest story is.
I think with this year, it's somewhat debatable.
I would say that the war in Ukraine would be my first pick for what is the biggest story.
Of course, this is the part of the reason why it's the biggest story is because it holds the biggest risk with it.
Like the idea of the United States of America and Russia having some type of hot war is, you know, pretty terrifying prospect.
This was a big thing that happened in 2022 that finally Putin had had enough and he invaded Ukraine.
It's been awful and bloody, but my God, I don't know what we can say about it that we haven't already.
Just disastrous handling of this situation by the U.S. federal government, of course, completely leading up to it.
But since the thing started, it's really kind of hard to believe when you look back at it that this is actually where we are right now.
I think that's a fair first contender for biggest story of the year.
Yeah, it's kind of hard to put anything above that.
By the way, recently, Ukrainian officials said that they will, their terms for negotiation are a complete withdrawal from all Ukrainian areas by Russia and Russia submitting themselves to war crimes tribunals.
Yeah.
So, in other words, they're not ready to negotiate.
Yeah, exactly.
I mean, just imagine if someone ever said that about like, it's just so funny that it's like, you know, I mean, I'm not saying that, look, I wouldn't even be against that in theory.
Like, yeah, every war criminal should go like be punished for their war crimes.
But imagine if you were seriously trying to stop like an American hot war.
You know, like we just had this war powers act that Bernie Sanders cucked like a bitch and fucking pulled out of.
But we were all pushing for the Congress to like, you know, exert the war powers resolution to say it's Biden can't continue this war anymore.
We have to end it, right?
Because you want to end the war in Yemen.
It's the most fucking horrible thing, substantially more horrible than the war in Ukraine.
Far more people have died there.
But could you imagine if we were ever like, oh, we want to end the war?
And the position was, well, I won't end this war unless Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden are all brought up on war crimes and put in jail.
I mean, it's like, look, I'd like that to happen, but if you could just end the war, I'm happy.
Like, let's negotiate.
Let's do it.
I thought that was one of the two biggest blunders Biden made was when he declared that Putin was a war criminal.
He really removed the easy out or the ability to de-escalate the situation.
His first blunder was obviously when he was saying, We refuse to say that we're not going to have Ukraine join NATO.
And then behind closed doors, I mean, there's reporting that he was saying, Hey, you guys obviously aren't joining.
So what was he doing if not trying to provoke this fight?
So I'm just saying if there were two big blunders or that Biden's purposely doing this or his administration's purposely doing this because they want escalated problems and they want this prolonged Russia sinkpit of being in Ukraine, all stupid in my opinion, seemingly intentional, though.
I'm just saying the two strategic moves that they played were: one, hey, we're bringing NATO in here, provoking the fight.
And then two, going, oh, you're a war criminal because of what you just did, which then didn't give them any easy out.
Like, if our 100% policy is this guy's a war criminal, well, then how do you de-escalate from here?
You're going to, you're going to, oh, we were wrong when we said that.
Like, you know what I mean?
You haven't given any easy way to de-escalate the situation.
No, I think you're absolutely right.
And by the way, of course, also just like American foreign policy has set an awful precedent for us to be able to de-escalate the situation.
You know, if you read Vladimir Putin's declaration of war, he had two big speeches that he gave, I think on back-to-back days, if I'm remembering this correctly.
But when he announced that he was launching this war in Ukraine earlier this year, he said there was one of the two speeches where he just kept throwing shots at American presidents.
And they were like, Vladimir Putin has this weird, like almost dark comedic style of talking.
But so he was saying a thing where he was like, he was like, well, there's a persecuted minority in Ukraine.
So we have to go in and save them.
Isn't that right, Bill Clinton?
And also, we're concerned that Russia has weapons of mass destruction.
Isn't that right, George W. Bush?
And like he kind of kept going through all of this.
And in fact, the first strike in Ukraine was like a big, like a television antenna thing, which was, I believe, the theory is that it was supposed to be, it was, this was supposed to be symbolic of the first strike in the war in Kosovo, of what the NATO took out.
You know, because whatever, a war based on protecting an ethnic minority within a country.
Like, so anyway, so that's true.
But even in addition to what you said, and I agree completely with what you said, but I also, I just would not underestimate also the blunder of Joe Biden, who obviously is a borderline retard, but him saying that Putin needs to go and that the goal was to overthrow Putin over and over again.
I mean, he said that like at least two or three times to the point that the White House had to correct him and say that that's not our position, really.
Joe Biden was just saying that, which is, you know, leads to all sorts of weird questions of like, well, if the president says something, how is that not the White House's position?
Thought he was in charge of the White House, whatever.
I guess not.
But William Perry, who was Bill Clinton's Secretary of Defense, he's a really interesting guy to read on this stuff or to listen to what he's said.
He is set and he was a huge opponent of NATO expansion in the 90s.
And he even says that he regrets not resigning over it.
Like he really was furious about it, but he, you know, stayed on.
Like that paycheck.
Yeah, I guess so.
But I mean, probably he made a lot more money, I guess, like most of these guys and whatever next job they had, but he, you know, he stayed on through it.
But he said that Vladimir Putin is convinced.
And he's talking about for a while now, like he's talking about back like 15 years ago or something like that, that Vladimir Putin is convinced that it is the U.S. has like a policy operation to kill or overthrow him.
And that he is completely like what Perry was saying was that Putin is under this belief.
He wasn't saying that this is our policy.
He was just saying that Putin is under this belief.
Now, I don't know if that is actually the U.S. policy, but like it, it wouldn't be that surprising if it was.
But that's almost like not even what's important.
What's important is to know that a former Secretary of Defense was telling the American people, not because he's on Putin's side, you know, because he's on the American empire, the American regime side.
He's going, just so you know, that's what this guy believes.
He believes that your policy is to try to murder him.
And so when the president says something like that, when they're in a war on their border, you got to just think about how this guy would take that.
And man, given all of the fundamentals of this situation, wouldn't you think that's the worst thing you'd want this guy to think?
Like the worst thing you'd want this guy to think is, hey, man, you got nothing to lose.
You know, like if you lose this war, you're going down either way.
So just fucking go for it.
Yeah, will the whole world be destroyed?
Sure, but you're going down either way.
So there's just, there's, you're absolutely right in what you said, declaring him a war criminal early on, even though he was a war criminal.
You know, it's like, look, when Nixon went to China, which is pretty universally regarded as like a great thing that he did and opened up relations with China, he went there and said nice things about Mao Zetong.
Now, I understand that's pretty tough.
And Mao Zetong killed more people than Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin combined.
Maybe he didn't need to say all the nice things he said.
But the point is, you don't go there and call him a war criminal, or you don't go there and call him a genocidal maniac or whatever the fuck the term would be for Mao Zedong.
It's just because then you leave yourself no room, just purely for strategic reasons.
Then how the fuck do you, you know, how do you explain?
And from the very beginning, I think, which is your point, the rhetoric from the Americans has been the only acceptable answer here is Ukraine winning.
You're like, okay, but now you just completely like, you know, if the strategy was to try to, you know, find a peaceful solution to this, you screwed yourself.
But of course, that's not the strategy.
The strategy is to bleed Russia dry at the risk of, you know, all of us dying.
All right.
Other big, big stories from the year.
I'm trying to see if I can get this in order of what I think are the most important ones.
All right.
So the next story I want to bring up, I mean, I'm almost debating.
There's a couple here.
It's hard to say what should be the next one that's the biggest story.
I guess what I would go with next would be Trump.
And there's a few stories, I guess, related to Donald Trump.
The crazy one was his Mar-a-Lago home being raided.
I mean, that did seem like something that you're like, you step back and look at this and you go, man, that's really huge.
That's just something that is pretty unprecedented in American history.
The last president who now is the frontrunner to, you know, be the Republican nominee, his home is raided.
The FBI storms in to his house.
Pretty incredible.
Pretty incredible that that would happen.
Really seemed to kind of it seemed to be something that is a theme in modern, you know, or in the last few years in American politics.
Again, we talk about this a lot on the show.
How do I put this exactly?
It seems like the ruling elite are not overwhelmingly concerned with the mask not slipping.
And they're not overwhelmingly concerned with like, you know, like, you know, someone in the room is going, but this will be seen as blah, blah, blah.
And they're like, yeah, that probably will, but fuck those people.
We don't care.
And so it's just pretty incredible.
A real show of force of like, look, this is what we will do.
This is what we will do to you, Donald Trump.
And then, of course, him announcing for president.
So this was in August when his Florida Mar-a-Lago home was raided.
Got to say, that's got to be up there is one of the biggest stories, wouldn't you say, Rob?
Definitely one of the biggest and along the lines of the mask slipping.
I'm also surprised they're not concerned with retribution.
That if the tides turn, that they didn't just set precedent of going after previous administrations, previous officials.
And, you know, as the House changes, are we going to actually see an investigation into Fauci?
Are we going to be seeing an investigation into the FBI?
I don't think any of these things are going to happen.
I think if anything, we'll get two years of storylines and the occasional congressional hearing of people going, oh, I don't remember.
Oh, I got amnesia now.
Oh, my God.
I got Biden's dementia.
That shit's contagious.
But I'm surprised that they were as forceful as they were in their actions because it seems like the pendulum could swing the other way.
And then all of a sudden, now, you know, you're getting investigated.
Yeah.
And in a way, that's what I mean, you know, and I'm struggling to kind of like articulate this correctly, but that's that is part of what I'm saying that's so interesting.
It's because typically you would think that their attitude would be like, well, look, we can't do this because if we do this, then like 50% of the electorate is going to look at it and go, this is completely illegitimate.
And we need them to think it's legitimate so that they think we have a right to rule, you know?
But they're almost going, no, we don't care if they don't, if they think that.
And I believe that the major driving, like motivating factor behind that is that they're that desperate.
They're that desperate because they go like, yeah, well, that's how important it is to make sure that this motherfucker can't fucking run and beat us.
You know what I mean?
And so that's.
If they don't have the evidence of something disqualifying, which I mean, it seems like the Mor-a-Largo files have kind of gone away.
When was the last time?
I mean, there was the storyline about the special master and then the special master getting overturned.
By the way, you want to talk about an interesting story that no one's reported on.
Well, what did the special master say that the FBI shouldn't have, which is now going back into their hands?
And is some sort of a judge going to make a ruling on that at some point as to why the special master thought that something was actually considered privileged information that now the FBI gets to have again?
I mean, talk about a fascinating thing you haven't heard anything about.
Yeah.
Bigger picture.
That's what we do here.
When was the last time we heard anything about this Mor-a-Largo thing?
I mean, they started off saying that he had nuclear bomb information, confidential material.
This is disqualifying.
And now it seems like it's all in the FBI's hands and we haven't heard shit about it since the show of force at his residence.
Yeah.
Well, this is this is why I like episodes like this.
And this is why I like doing this bigger picture stuff when we can.
Prosecuting Trump and Elites00:15:21
I mean, don't get me wrong.
I love talking about the news of the day and I love talking about libertarian theory and all this shit.
But there's something interesting about talking about the news, that like big news with some time and perspective on it, because you go like, okay, so there was this huge thing that happens, right?
This huge thing.
The former president of the United States, I mean, typically speaking, presidents of the United States are treated like royalty, no matter what.
You know, George W. Bush shows up at some event and it's like, hey, that's the president.
That's, we call him president for life.
That title never goes away.
Yes, did he get us into two bullshit wars and leave us with the worst economy in modern American history?
Sure, sure, sure.
But, you know, it's president George W. Bush.
You must show respect.
He can go on Ellen DeGeneres.
He can do all.
But now we've got a former president and the FBI is raiding his house.
It was just so crazy, especially considering like who really thinks that like Donald Trump was going to put up physical resistance against the FBI coming in, you know, and obviously it's known that they were negotiating with the feds about what should go back and what shouldn't.
But of course, when that story happens, and this is to your point, Robin, when the story happens and there's this kind of like, at least pushback from the Trump base, like, hey, this is insane.
You can't just do this.
Well, what does the media do?
They go wild with accusations.
Well, there were nuclear codes.
There were like all this crazy shit he was doing.
He was selling nuclear secrets to foreign governments or any of this.
And then in the following months, you just don't hear anything about that again.
So that's the way it works, you know?
So if there's, if there's like outrage about, hey, this seems very corrupt, they give you something that's plausibly like here.
This would be a reason why it's not so corrupt because he was about to hand off nuclear secrets to a foreign power or something like that.
And so then they kind of, they do their best to calm that down.
And then everyone forgets.
But hey, man, if he was like doing that, shouldn't he have been arrested by now?
Shouldn't this be all we talk about?
Shouldn't we have seen the evidence of it?
I mean, they went in there.
They executed the search warrant, right?
Shouldn't we have this?
Shouldn't something be happening?
But like you said, no one's even talking about it.
That's just some OCD librarian who goes, those records belong in our storage cabinet over here.
Yeah.
The worst Indiana Jones movie of all time.
And then, what, and then, of course, with Trump, he still ends up announcing before this year is over that he's running for president again in 2024.
So, that's got the NFTs to fund it.
Jesus Christ, that's got to be another big story, though, right?
Trump back on the back in the scene, and that's it's we're back on the Trump show.
So, we'll see how this plays out in 2023, I guess.
But yeah, that was a fucking big one.
That was well, if we're talking Trump, I guess we've also wrapped up the whole January 6th show trial scam thing.
And interestingly enough, I guess they have walked back their subpoena, which they never actually got Trump to, I guess they never really got him on it.
But on the same note, they're also handed over to the Justice Department to say that I guess he should be investigated or prosecuted.
And one other thing that's on this topic is, I believe, the old guy who runs Breitbart, that guy might still be going to jail.
I mean, talk about prosecuting.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Bannon might be going to jail.
So, talk about, you know, political prisoners and prosecuting people for political reasons.
I mean, Bannon might actually go to jail.
Yeah, I don't know.
What is he facing?
Do you know?
It was because he didn't show up on a subpoena.
I think also relative to the charge.
Oh, how many years?
Yeah.
Do you know what the like off the top of my head?
It was like a six months to two years type deal.
It wasn't like a 10 to 20 thing, but that's fucking crazy.
Yeah.
No, I mean, if you found out you were going to jail for six months to two years, you'd be like, I'm going to fucking lose my mind.
That's pretty insane.
What gets interesting to me is, do you change the rules of the game to dictator rules, which essentially in dictator town, you got to take out everyone because if you don't, they're going to be revengeful on you.
So there's different rules in a dictatorship.
You come in, it's like North Korea.
Hey, where does my sister live or where does my brother live?
We got to go kill those people.
Anyone who could possibly take this throne, we better get rid of them because there's some nasty consequences if they come back around.
And so if they're in the game of basically going after people for political reasons, I mean, you think there's nobody in the Democratic Party that's a Bannon type character that's pulling financing or other legal shenanigans?
Of course there is.
So it's interesting.
Like, is the deep state so powerful that they're not concerned with retribution because the game is completely rigged and they can't possibly lose political power?
Or if we just change the rules of the game where you're going to see a lot more of whoever the incumbent party is prosecuting and investigating the other party to essentially hold them up.
One more thing on this is that in the last one of the things that was being talked about quite a bit was in that last omnibus bill was $1.
I think $6 billion in legal funds to continue to for basically legal funding and going after January 6 people.
So like the Democrats understand, oh, we need some real fucking funding here to continue to legally prosecute who we see as our enemy.
So I'm just saying, like, if the deep state really has no fear of getting kicked out, this shit makes sense.
If we're going to be playing by some new dictator rules where whoever comes into power starts going after the others, I mean, I guess let the political elites eat the political elites.
It could be interesting, but it definitely does seem like a change.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, you're, you're absolutely right.
It does.
And it seems like that change is kind of in line with what I was talking about before, that it's like there, it's not just, it seems like It's not the old game of like, oh, we don't care which party it gets handed off to because they all work for the same elites.
It seems like, oh, no, we're actually very afraid.
And I think it's not so much of Donald Trump himself.
Although I think there are some things of Trump that they're afraid of, but I think it's more about what he represents.
What he like, I think it's about how pissed off his base is and how tough his base is and how much they really like are like furiously fed up with the establishment and that those people, they're very concerned with them being handed a win.
I think since he's an outsider, he still is easier to bully.
So, for example, a Bush family, I don't know that the political elites would still think that they could get away with bullying them in this way.
You know what I mean?
Or like the Clintons, they wouldn't think they could get away with it.
He still is kind of, in their eyes, this lucky outsider.
So, you know what I mean?
I guess there's still a little bit more legroom.
Yeah, but no, I agree with you on that.
But I also think that, you know, someone like a George W or a Bush, a Jeb Bush or someone like that, or a Mitt Romney or someone like that, someone who's, if they're saying to their followers, like, I don't know, you know, if Jeb Bush is saying, please clap, and this audience is clapping a little bit because they were told to please clap.
And he's saying, hey, we have to have common sense, you know, conservative values.
And we need, you know, we need to make sure we continue.
Okay, the war in Iraq might have been a mistake, but we really do need to fight the terrorists.
And we really, oh, maybe, and even if they say some things like we might like, like the conservatives might say, hey, and we should really, you know, the debt's out of control.
We should really think about balancing the budget or something like that, you know?
But you know, there's no, you know, they don't, they're not going to do it.
But they're still kind of just saying kind of calm, you know, things that it's like, okay, this is what our plan is and this is what we want to do.
And, you know, everyone knows they're just going to play ball with Goldman Sachs and they're just going to play ball with the with Raytheon and like all these companies and stuff.
And they're, you know, but if Donald Trump is standing up in front of like 50,000 people and it's like, it's not like he's standing up in front of like liberal arts gender studies majors or something like that.
Like he's standing up in front of like coal miners and like fucking, you know, barrel-chested, tough dudes.
And he's going, we are going to drain the swamp because these people are corrupt and we are going to put an end to their whole reign and all this.
And the people aren't just like, it's not like, please clap, like, oh, yeah, I'll clap.
It's like, like, there's something about that that I think really freaks out the regime.
That, like, no, you can't be whipping up the toughest people in America to hate our guts.
I think that's the thing.
I think that's the essence of why they really have a problem with Trump.
It's because he's not just like, he didn't just find another political lane to run in.
His lane was whipping up ferocious anger against this system for ruining people's lives.
Isn't it almost weird that if the machine is this against him, they can't get him on anything real?
I mean, like, Look at the AG, the bullshit in New York that they're prosecuting him for, like the tax stuff of claiming lower values for paying taxes and higher taxes for getting loans.
Like, or it, like, I mean, the political institution was able to take out Cuomo, and that's a weird one because you had all these sexual assault allegations.
You have they're prosecuting him, and then he leaves office and the case just disappears.
So, I don't understand.
Were all these women lying?
Should we be prosecuting a bunch of women for lying and getting a person out of office?
Like, do we have an issue in this country of women who are making false allegations and making men lose their jobs?
Because that should be criminal too.
Or what happened here?
I like they talk about another news story that just fucking disappears, and no one seems to be interested or wanting to report on it.
But is there no interest in truth?
A guy left his job under like a political elite under the allegations that made it seem like he was definitely engaged in criminal sexual behavior.
And then, once he left, the suit just got dropped completely.
So, what's up here?
You know, but going bringing it back to Trump, it's weird that like you would think, I mean, the stories that it's almost weird doesn't get more reported on is all the fucking people he just didn't pay.
All the stories of like, you know, of him just being a real shitbag, literally just building buildings and going, nope, not paying the bill type thing.
Like, he's never been a nice guy.
It's odd that they can't bust him on anything that will stick.
It would be a better sell to, think about all the construction workers that probably support him.
That you can't make that the storyline of like, look, he's actually going to jail because he never paid this bill type thing.
Like, how is there nothing real that you can get the guy?
Well, I'll tell you that back in 2017, what I said, and I suppose this could count as a prediction that I got wrong.
And I'm okay admitting that because I've had a pretty good record.
But I said when they first assigned the special prosecutor to Trump, when the Mueller investigation first started, what my prediction was was that they will not get anything about a Russian conspiracy on him because that's just not true.
That's obviously completely made up.
I go, but what's going to happen is it's going to be like Bill Clinton, where they sicked the special prosecutor on him over the Whitewater thing, and they didn't find anything with that, or they didn't find enough with that, but they found out that he was having this affair and that then he lied about it under oath.
And that then, you know what I mean?
So, like, once like a special prosecutor is like a pit bull, they're going to go through everything and they're going to find something.
That was my prediction.
That I go, look, this motherfucker was a real estate developer in New York City.
No one, you know, no, I think, I think this wasn't my line.
Someone else said this, but they go, no one rents an apartment in New York City without committing a crime in order to get it.
You know what I mean?
Like real estate developer, there's something they're going to find and they'll go through.
And it is pretty incredible that that has not happened.
Like that is not.
Now, people could take this and say, well, that's proof that he's controlled opposition or something like that.
That if they really wanted to find, you know, but I don't, I don't really buy that personally.
I think like, look, the way they're going after this guy, they really want to ruin him.
And if they could, they would.
And I think it probably is a testament to how careful Donald Trump has been or well connected or whatever, that he has just had like very good people around him making sure that his trail is clean, you know?
And so that's, that would be my guess.
But yeah, it's pretty amazing that they, that even at this point, you'd think, you guys, you can't even put a case together.
But that might be one of the things that happens in 2023.
I think that's a very distinct possibility that they actually proceed with criminal charges against Donald Trump in this next year.
I think they're going to have to do it in a way that they're going to have to at least try to do it in a way that they can sell it.
And then what's the move?
So if they have criminal charges against Trump, are you not allowed to run for office if you're in the middle of criminal charges?
Or are you still allowed to run?
But they try and make it such a circus freak show of a temper tantrum that like they hope that the American people go, all right, maybe you shouldn't be running while this is until this gets figured out.
Okay, so now I'm not a lawyer, but this is my understanding of it, is that no, there is no actual law that says you can't run when you're in the middle of a criminal charge.
Cutting Out Healthcare Middlemen00:03:24
But your second part is absolutely true.
You could, I mean, if he's under criminal investigation during the primary, if there's anyone running against him, that'll be a real good hammer.
Donald Trump, who's currently under criminal investigation.
Yes.
And then they could at least use that.
But the other thing, and again, I'm not a lawyer.
So double check with someone, but I believe once you get down to like, if you're found guilty or if it looks like you're going to be found guilty, once you get down to like a deal, like cutting a plea bargain, like once it gets to that point, I think there could be anything in that deal.
So it could be like, hey, look, Will, here's your deal.
You know, you plead to these like a few misdemeanors and agree to not run for public office ever again.
And then we'll recommend no jail time or something like that.
Right.
So I think that's, that's the range of possibilities.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
One of the things I just think we should get rid of, like we should vote on this tomorrow and get rid of it is gag laws when you're in Court cases against the government.
The fact that, like, I mean, if I completely agree, if they believe in their nobility and they believe in their legal system, I mean, I don't understand why that's not a second amendment, like, right.
I mean, a first amendment right that you have freedom of speech.
And if you wait, so the government can basically threaten you to give up your freedom of speech on a particular topic because they don't want the record of the way that they interacted with you.
Honest Stories in Our Group00:14:44
I mean, how does that make sense?
It's like they should stand by the way they interacted with you if they think that they apply justice in a fair way.
I mean, if anything, the entire reason that there's criminal justice is to prevent more crime.
So, if they think that they dealt with you in a fair way, they should want you screaming about how harsh the government was in treating with you because that would prevent other criminals.
Yep.
Seems reasonable to me.
And then for you to assign for you to be forcibly have to give up your right to speak about something, I would think that the government would be not legally allowed to do that because you have a First Amendment right.
And so, the obvious reason is that they know that they're doing things that they don't want the general public to know about because it shows their hand as being incredibly evil.
Yeah.
Completely agree with that.
All right.
Let's let's let's talk about one more, another story here.
Yeah, a few more I want to talk about.
So another thing I think you'd have to put up there is one of the biggest stories of the year.
Um, so I'd say, and this probably falls under the category of fallout from 2020 and 2021.
But of course, inflation.
And this was really the year that at least by the measure of consumer price index, as the government keeps it, inflation hit kind of record highs in our lifetimes.
But honestly, even by other metrics, even just by more real metrics, there has been like, you know, me and you might argue that inflation is not exactly the same thing as the CPI.
And that, you know, if you have, you know, if you have these presidents like Donald Trump was when he was president bragging about a record high stock market, you might go, okay, but how is that not inflation?
You know, and how is how are lots of these things not inflation?
And really the inflation is just the creation of new money and credit.
But there's no question that over this year in 2022, I've never seen anything like it before in my life.
I've never seen anything like it before in my life where there's just things like, I'll go, I'll be like on the road or I'll be out.
I'll go get like a, you know, like go to a burger joint or something like that.
And you get like a, you know, be like, let me get a burger and a soda and fries.
And they're like, okay, no problem.
That'll be $36.
You're like, wait, what?
Like, what?
That's, it's just insane.
And so that's been a huge factor over this year that Americans have really like been confronted with what inflation means.
I'm somewhat optimistic that like maybe this will wake some people up to at least think about this as an issue going forward.
If there's government spending or money printing, that they'd go, ah, well, there could be a downside to this.
Like, I think at least if someone is proposing something like that dumbass Andrew Yang, you know, like a UBI, you might go, yeah, well, do you really think that's there might not be a downside to this?
So, but man, it's been, I think it's really crushed people.
And it is at least something that people are realizing now that, well, yeah, look, man, if there's like inflation, which I know they say, they'll say like at the height, it was like 9%, but everyone knows better than that.
Everyone knows what their supermarket bill is, what their gas bill is, what their housing bill is, what their heating bill is, all this stuff.
If you, but if you understand, if prices are rising by like 20%, you got a pay cut of 20% that year.
It's the same thing.
It doesn't, you know, like that, that if you, if you got a pay, you know, raise that year of 5%, well, you didn't really get a pay raise.
And if your pay was the same, you really got, you know, a reduction in your pay.
And so that's a big story.
Also, I would tie in with that the things, some crazy things.
I mean, the baby formula shortage of earlier this year, which was just like fucking, I don't know.
Right now, by the way, there's a huge baby ibuprofen shortage.
This is something that if you don't have young kids, maybe you're not aware of, but there's a major nationwide problem with getting children's Motrin, Advil, Ibuprofen in general.
This is something that feels like it should not be happening in America.
It should not be happening in a first world country.
What I'm hearing is I should hoard more shit.
You never know.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Don't throw out nothing.
Just hold on to it all.
Stuff your pantries.
Well, that, I mean, look, I'll be honest with you guys.
That has been my response to all of this.
Um, has been to like, yeah, well, I'm going to hoard all the fucking baby shit I can.
And I'm partially because I, uh, you know, I'm doing okay financially and because I have like some connections or whatever, I'm able to do this.
But yeah, I'm just like, it does put me in a position where I'm like, I'm going to do whatever I can to make sure my kids have everything they need.
So I've been particularly crazy with baby stuff, you know, because that's like seems to be the stuff that's there's shortages of.
But I would just say that all of this, the inflation and the supply side, the supply chain issues and all these shortages, I think it's pretty clear to say, look, we never had these problems previously in modern American history.
These are all, this is the fallout of the whole COVID regime and the government response to this pandemic.
So I don't know.
It's at least something should be mentioned.
I think that was one of the biggest stories of 2022.
All right.
All right.
So maybe let's move to some stories to try to close this out that were more, I think.
I feel like you've missed the biggest one.
What's the biggest one?
I feel like the biggest one to me is tech censorship.
I feel like we live in a new media landscape, unlike anything I've ever seen.
And it started with Trump because I've been following the news like pretty rigorously going all the way back to Rob's newsroom.
So I got to be in this racket of kind of like following daily news to comment on it for nearly seven, eight years.
Like, I'm just saying, I've been at this for a little bit.
And it changed after Trump that all of your big media players realized, all right, no more honest information because if we have honest information, then people might support and vote for Trump.
So we're not doing the honest information thing.
And then that shifted over like the four years of him into Biden, especially with the Corona stuff, where then they got a grip on all of social media.
And I find myself in a place now, particularly when it comes to like just your typical news story that comes out.
It's like you're basically just getting like a signal.
There's like a little signal that like, hey, here's something that's going on, but you got to do your all your own homework to just even decipher what the range of possibility is.
You know what I mean?
Like, take like the Nancy Pelosi story.
It's like the range of possibility is that her home was broken into at random and for some reason she doesn't have good security, all the way to that Paul Pelosi has a gay hooker.
Like, just the rate, you know what I mean?
It's like every story basically comes with, like, I don't know, like they talk about poker these days.
I don't play poker, but I have heard like professional pokers talk about that they like put people on a range of hands.
So it's like there's a news story where it's not like, oh, there's the opinion of the uh, this is the way the conservatives are selling it, and this is the way that CNN is selling it.
Now it's like you get a news story with a range of possibilities and just the knowledge that like you're not nearly getting all the information.
Yeah, yeah, I think that that's right.
It's a weird thing where there will be a story, and this seems to be kind of a theme in America now that there will be a story where I mean, it's not like it was, there were always stories where like different sides of the political aisle, let's say, viewed it in different ways.
We're on this side and we're on this side.
But at least it seemed like in the past, people would agree on what the story was.
Whereas now it seems like there's just a complete, like, there's such a chasm between what one side is saying the story is and what the other is.
So I agree.
Now, by the way, I will say, I did not miss this story.
I was about to lead into this story.
I was saying, I jumped.
No, it's okay.
Okay.
No, no, no, it's not the closer.
We got a couple more that I want to get to.
But these are the theme of the next few stories are optimistic ones.
Okay.
So even on this topic, because we're talking about the year 2022, what I want to, and the truth is that there was a huge spike in tech censorship after Donald Trump got elected.
And there was a huge spike during the COVID regime.
And of course, our former, you know, rest in peace, part of the problem inner circle on Facebook was destroyed by these monsters.
And it was all over the COVID stuff.
That was what, you know, there was just constantly every day.
And I knew it was going to be a problem.
If you remember back in 2020, we were talking about it.
And it was all of our guys in the, you know, in that group were posting about how the lockdowns were bullshit.
There were all types of posts of doctors who were claiming that lockdowns wouldn't work.
And every day, I, all of a sudden, I, you know, I, I, we had had the group for years.
And in 2020, when the COVID stuff hit, I was getting, you know, notifications every day.
This has been flagged for, you know, someone needs to do a documentary of the inner circle.
Where are they now?
Oh, God.
Like that Boris guy, that jiu-jitsu guy who we had to ban, the one guy who got banned.
Yeah, yeah, there was one.
Yeah, fuck.
And there were some other characters.
It was a good group.
By the way, I still love all of you.
No matter where you are today, I still love everyone who is in that group.
But everyone was able to say, but the thing that was kind of crazy was that the people in that group, look, it was a wild group.
And I, we had like a, for anyone who doesn't know what I'm talking about, we had a private Facebook group for supporting listeners of the show, for people who subscribe at Gas Digital and, you know, pay a few bucks a month to support the show.
I thought that was a cool thing to kind of like give to listeners.
Like, okay, you can be in this group and we'll all be in this group together.
And there were a few, not that many, but there were like a handful of people in the group who had kind of gone down the libertarian, maybe to alt-right pipeline, as it would be called, or whatever.
And there were people who were talking about every taboo and, you know, unallowed topic that you wanted to.
And some people, maybe the more, I don't know how to describe the more sensitive people in the group, who I also love, but they would complain about some of the other guys who are like, hey, this guy's saying really fucked up shit.
You know what I mean?
Like, we don't want that.
That's not what our group's about.
And I always maintained, because this is just my attitude about these things, that I go, no, this is a free speech group.
Anyone can say whatever they want to.
And if someone says something that offends you, then either don't engage with it or go argue with them and prove them wrong, you know?
And that was kind of always my thing.
And I was, by the way, I was so ignorant about this shit at the time.
I did not at all understand how social media worked.
I remembered saying, I remember saying, God, I'm so stupid.
I was, I'm really like, despite what any of you listening who admire me might think, I'm not a bright person.
I remember saying, I went, well, look, this is a private group.
So no one knows what we're saying in here.
I really thought at the time, this is back in like 2016.
This is like 2015, like when I didn't even understand that it was all like algorithms.
So I was like, well, look, dude, I mean, don't, you know, it's not like they're posting this on their page.
It's in this private group.
So no one can, anyway, that was my attitude.
So the point I'm trying to make is that we had fucked up shit being said all the time in our group.
Now, most people in the group for the record did not agree with this fucked up shit.
And in fact, the few people, like even the ones you're talking about, the Boris and Kyle and some of those guys, they were kind of the outcasts.
It was like a sitcom where people go, oh, Boris.
Yes.
Oh, Boris again.
Yes.
Those guys who were kind of more like, let's just say alt-right.
I don't even know if that's the right way to describe them, but let's just say that for the sake of argument.
Those guys were the outcasts of the group.
Most people did not agree with them, but they were there and they were saying their stuff that would be considered wildly, you know, outrageous by, say, you know, whatever within the establishment Overton window or something like that.
But nothing ever got banned.
Nothing was ever like flagged.
But as soon as COVID hit and there was just posts of like, hey, here's a group of doctors saying that lockdowns are going to cause more damage than they, then it was like everything, every day, every day, flagged for misinformation, all this.
And then they switched, they did a thing where they Facebook made me approve or every comment and I knew or every post.
And I knew when that happened, I was like, oh, it's just a matter of time.
This is a honeypot.
I guess not a honeypot.
Cancel Culture and Tech Censorship00:15:58
What is it?
A trap, whatever.
This is a trap.
If ever I've seen one, I know this.
And so I was just like, well, I'm not going to do that.
So literally every comment that came up or every post that came up, I just went approve, That's what I was going to do.
I was like, I'm not going to not approve anyone.
And yeah.
Anyway, that didn't work.
It was long.
It wasn't long after that that they just banned the whole group.
But so the point I'm trying to make of this is that it was the COVID shit really ramped up tech censorship.
So that was that was a big thing that happened in when Trump was first elected.
And then in 2020.
But I will say it's got to be one of the biggest stories of this year is that a thing that happened is that the richest man in the world bought fucking Twitter and is claiming at least that he's trying to reverse that.
Now, I don't know if he's actually going to effectively reverse that or not, but it is a huge, huge, huge story, one of the biggest stories of the year that, goddamn, the most important political platform has at least been ripped away from the establishment in a way that they are not happy about.
And that is something.
That is something.
This is, I think, Elon Musk buying Twitter is on the level of Brexit or Donald Trump being elected president.
There's something about it that is, it might even be bigger than those two things because it recreates the opportunity for some type of like 2016 anti-establishment magic that maybe this time won't be wasted on Donald Trump and could actually be turned into some type of really positive, constructive, you know, pro-liberty, you know, avenue.
I'm just saying that that's there's something about that.
As bad as the tech censorship thing has been, this is the biggest win I think we've had since it started getting really bad.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
It's so interesting on Twitter when you can see the disparity in the news coverage, you know, where it's like you can have something like, oh, everyone's got to support Ukraine.
And then you see a video on Twitter of like Ukrainian soldiers doing Nazi salutes.
Yeah.
And you're just like, well, that's something.
Because people, look, by the way, we're all still in a little bit of a mindset.
Like we're all still kind of suckered by this.
We're like, well, if that's a news story, if that's really going on, someone would have to cover it.
Right.
And it's like, I hate to break it to you.
The only place you might see that is on Twitter.
And now you get to have some fun trying to track down on DuckDuckGo whether or not that's a valid video or just some one-off fucking a costume.
Dude, Google, I mean, it's interesting because now Twitter's okay, but Google's gone so far as, oh, we haven't yet been able to get the official propaganda.
So we're going to tell you that the search, like it literally tells you the search results are now limited.
This is a rapidly changing story.
You're telling me that the internet's gotten worse, that we used to get instant search results.
And now you're telling me that we're going to, you need a couple days.
Yeah, that's pretty wild.
So at least, at least there's Twitter going in a better direction.
So that's, and of course, with all of that goes the Twitter files.
I mean, I don't, we've, we've done enough on just the last few episodes talking about this.
Of course, this is a story from over the last month.
So I don't want to spend too much time going over that, but a lot of things have been revealed.
And at least I am a big believer in the fact that Getting the truth out there to as many people as possible is valuable.
And in fact, I think it might be the most valuable tool that we have.
I think that there's a reason why the regime relies on propaganda so much.
There's a reason why people like Bernays are such important figures in how the modern superstate has taken power.
The propaganda matters, influencing people matters.
And therefore, I can deduce from that that the more people that have accurate information and can actually be influenced to understand what's really going on, that that also matters.
So I think that's a big deal.
And I think is one of the biggest stories of the year for sure.
One more white pill story that I would say from this year, which was way earlier in the year, which almost seems to be a thing that's forgotten now, but I do think is one of the biggest stories of 2022 is that there was, and it's right on the topic of this cancel culture shit or tech censorship.
There was the biggest campaign to cancel somebody in the history of modern social media tech cancel culture shit ever.
And that was to cancel my boy, Joe Rogan.
There was a huge, huge push, unlike anything else that you could compare it to, where he was like front page news on every corporate media source.
It was, and we all knew what it was.
It was all because he had like Dr. McCullough and Dr. Malone and all these guys who were making really compelling arguments against the COVID regime, against the vaccine regime, against the lockdown regime, against all that shit.
And he had them all on and they made this big push to cancel him for spreading misinformation.
That failed.
And then they went to this like N-word compilation and then that failed.
And there's something really beautiful about that, that they went all in to try to ruin the biggest guy who's bigger than any of them was having people on who were telling the truth.
They tried to ruin that guy and it failed.
And that's huge.
I think that's so goddamn huge.
And I think it's probably none of us can really appreciate what a big deal that is.
That there was at least somebody who was outside of their like range of ability to reel in because they went all out like they thought it would work.
And it was a beautiful thing to watch Brian Stelter talking every night about how Joe Rogan should be canceled.
And what's happened by the end of the year?
That was at the beginning of the year.
And what's happening at the end of the year?
Okay, well, Joe Rogan's bigger than ever, and Brian Stelter doesn't have a job anymore because no one cared.
So that's, man, I mean, that's like that might be the best thing that came of this year was that fucking attempt, that attempt to lynch Joe Rogan got completely smacked down because just too many people love that guy.
Well, I think there's something interesting about corporate mainstream media that they posture to have more influence than they actually do.
I actually think one of the best examples of that was with the vaccination where they were pretending like we were all crazy if they weren't, if we weren't getting it.
And then you found out, I mean, pre-mandates, like 60% of the population didn't get it.
Like they were making it seem like you were a fucking believing in aliens, putting a thing on your tinfoil on your head so that radio waves didn't overtake your brain and have you walk outside in the middle of the night so aliens abducted you and raped your asshole if you weren't getting a vaccine.
And then it turned out that, well, a lot of people had the same opinion of as you.
I think corporate media has done a great job over the last couple of years of posturing like they have a lot more influence than they really do.
And I think the Rogan story kind of highlights the fact of, hey, you guys are not reaching nearly as many people as you claim to be.
I'm so glad.
I'm so glad you mentioned that because I would also add one other story that I didn't even have in mind, but is a big story from 2022.
And such a good point you made, Rob, is that in 2021, which was the year of the vaccine, right?
Like that's the year that they rolled them out.
There was something like, you know, fuck, I didn't even have this on mine, so I don't have the numbers in front of me right now, but there was something like we got up to well over 70% of the adult population was double vaccinated.
And now, a lot of this in America was because of mandates, you know, because of private and public and government and private mandates.
2022 was the year of the booster.
And the compliance rate fell dramatically.
About, I think it was less than half.
Go double check me, look up the numbers, but it was less than half of the people who got the first two vaccinations got a third booster.
And then even less of them got a fourth booster.
And then it was something that once they started like recommending that children five years and under get it, it was like a tiny percentage of Americans were actually getting their little children boosted.
And there's something really positive about that.
That it does seem like even the ones who complied at first were eventually like, fuck that.
And the other story attached to that, which is something I was going to plan on, is that it does seem like 2022 was the year of seeing some of the results of the vaccine, which we're a little bit more allowed to talk about now than we used to be, but still not completely allowed.
But let's just say, okay, the vaccines are completely safe and no problems, but a lot of people completely unrelated seem to be dropping dead.
I don't know.
How can we say this?
Look, I'm not, honestly, I'm not even trying to make any claims because I don't exactly understand this, but it sure does seem like the evidence that these experimental mRNA vaccines came with no consequences seems to be, that seems to be a thing of the past.
And the idea that all of the negative health repercussions from these vaccines could just be swept under the rug, I think that is getting at least a lot harder to convince people of.
Hey, man, if you like a bloodier vagina and a three-year-old with a heart attack, this has been a breeze.
Yeah, that's that, but that's just normal shit that happens.
Yeah.
Three-year-old heart attacks have been a major problem in this country for a while.
All right, let's hit a couple more before we get out of here, or maybe not.
I don't know.
Well, let's see what we could do.
Okay.
2022.
This is how crazy a year it's been.
Shit happens, and it's so easy to forget it.
This is another white pill one.
They attempted to create a ministry of truth.
Oh, yeah.
They attempted to have a fucking Department of Homeland Security council on what was real information and misinformation, and it failed.
And it failed because there was such a huge pushback against it.
And that was every now and then, there's these beautiful moments, man.
Beautiful moments when people realize how much power they really do have.
This is the same thing I'm trying to say about there's a reason why the fucking government is so hell-bent on pushing its propaganda because they need it.
And when it doesn't work, their shit fails.
They can only do it when the propaganda is successful.
This is the this is the thing that convinces me to keep doing this show and keep doing everything we're doing because it's like no, no, no, it is important.
It is important to wake people up to unplug them from this propaganda.
They tried to have a fucking ministry of truth and it failed.
And the reason it failed is because it was dubbed the ministry of truth immediately online and everyone was just outraged by it.
And then we all got to see that what Nina Jenkowitch or whatever her name was, we all got to see her, like every video of her looking like a fucking retard ever.
And it just, that was what?
The free expression of ideas, at least to the extent that we have it, and the pushback, that's why it failed.
And isn't that beautiful?
They would have a ministry of truth if they could have gotten their way and they didn't because they couldn't.
A spoonful of vaccine helps your three-year-old go down.
Remember, remember that shit?
All right.
Um, uh, let's see what other uh stories we got here.
Uh, uh, Mark Zuckerberg on Joe Rogan admitting that the FBI was responsible.
That was pretty cool to get that information out.
Um, let's see what others think.
All right, um, I think these are these are mostly the big stories of the year.
I guess the ones that I wanted to cover, let me say, I could not do this episode without mentioning one of my uh favorite stories of the year, which was that the uh Mises caucus of the Libertarian Party took over the entire party in May.
We had a uh the national convention.
This is something that uh I uh I announced I think in uh late 2020, maybe whatever.
I don't know.
I mean, 2018, I got really in I joined the party and got more involved in 2019 and 2020.
But it was, I think we we announced we were going to take over this party in 2020, and this year we did it.
Um, I think this is just so great, and I'm really grateful for all of the people who put in so much hard work to make that happen.
Um, that I think in the same spirit of what I've been talking about, of how important it is to wake people up from the Matrix, how important it is to red pill people and pull them out of this way of thinking.
Libertarians Unite Under One Party00:05:11
And this is why the establishment works so hard to keep you in this way of thinking.
Um, I think it's just incredible that the hardcore libertarians took over the Libertarian Party.
And I, I just want to give a huge shout out to Michael Heist, Angela McCartle, Josh Smith, um, Karen Ann Harlos, uh, and so many more.
I know I won't be able to name everybody, um, so I apologize to you, guys.
Real superhero is cell phone cameras, because if not for that, then people could have been violently attacked by shoulders that they ran into.
Well, I think that the cell phone footage proves the violent attack, Rob.
It was, but you know, let me tell you what's really cool about this.
And to have this, this party have a real strategy now.
And by the way, go check out.
I retweeted the other day.
In fact, I'll throw in the episode description for this episode, the decentralized revolution plan that Michael Heights just laid out.
There's an article, it's written out, but he reads it on a YouTube video.
But I'll throw both in the episode description for this.
But, you know, let me think of how to say this.
So obviously, it's been since May now that the Mises Caucus has been kind of not even the Mises Caucus.
Forget that.
They're my people, but the Libertarian Party is run by great libertarians.
And it's not that everything is perfect.
It's not, there has been since then, I've had several phone calls and meetings and things like that where I've been like, hey, I think this is wrong.
I don't think you should be doing it this way.
I think you should be doing it this way and stuff like that.
And it is, I will say, harder to run an organization than it is to rail against an organization that's being run poorly.
But here's the thing.
Here's what I love about what the Mises Caucus did in transforming the Libertarian Party.
It's that for whatever you might say about the way like the Mises Caucus guys are, our camp of libertarians, sometimes they can get a little rambunctious.
And sometimes perhaps they're not as professional as they should be.
And sometimes there are tweets where I go, that wasn't perfect.
It should be said like this.
But you know what I love about these guys?
And when I say the real libertarians took over the Libertarian Party, I don't mean to be insulting to a lot of other libertarians because there were always real libertarians in the Libertarian Party, even outside of the Mises Caucus.
There were always really good libertarians, really principled people.
Yeah.
People's shoulders.
But here's the thing.
Here's the thing.
Exactly, Rob.
The leadership ended up having these kind of qualities, which I think are somewhat, it's somewhat natural unless you're there explicitly to not be like that.
Where people, once they get into leadership, they go, okay, well, I've got a position here.
Let's be careful with it.
Let me make sure I don't lose this.
Let me, my biggest priority here is to not blow it, you know?
And so there were these people in leadership who, when it mattered, would go, okay, okay, let's not go against the grain too much.
Let's, let's not say something wrong and get us in a lot of trouble.
And the one thing that the Mises caucus guys, since they've taken over, have, which is just so great, is that even if you think they might say something a little bit offensive, or even if you think they might like, oh, they should present something in a better way, what you can count on them is that when the time comes, what we always say on the show, right?
When you're in the storm, when it really matters, they will not fall for the government propaganda bullshit.
And they'll be completely against it.
It doesn't matter.
They won't be the libertarians who are making excuses for lockdowns in March of 2020.
They won't be the libertarians who are making excuses for supporting Ukraine in March of 2022.
They're the libertarians who will constantly be against the government on the most important issues.
And if it, and if we're going to wake people up, that is the only way to do it.
It's the only way to do it is to be like, like, to strongly oppose what the government is doing while they're doing it in the moment.
And so that's such a cool thing that came out of 2022 is that it used to, there used to be this big disconnect between the Liberty movement and the Libertarian Party.
The Future of the Liberty Movement00:01:58
And now we're all one.
We're all one thing.
And that's fucking awesome.
It's really awesome that all of the biggest voices in the libertarian movement, in the liberty movement, like all of the biggest, you know, the people with the biggest followings and the biggest, you know, platforms and all this, they're all right in line with the actual libertarian party.
I think that's so fucking awesome.
And again, you know, credit to Michael Heist, who just worked relentlessly to make this happen.
And Angela McCartle and Josh Smith and Karen Ann Harlos and all the people who are a part of it.
Also, all just really great people.
So, and it's been, it's been awesome just to like, you know, get to know those guys better and be friends with all of them and stuff.
So it's been, that was one of the coolest things of this year for me.
All right.
I think we're going to wrap up on that.
I think we covered 2022.
That's the year in review.
And man, we'll see what 2023 has in store for us.
I have a feeling, Rob, they're going to give us a lot of content.
I have a feeling 2023 will give us a lot of shit to talk about.
Rob, I'm also very grateful for you.
Thank you for being an excellent co-host to me all year.
Brian, thank you for being an excellent producer all year.
Rob, anything else you want to plug?
Let people know where they can find you.
Run your mouth, be on the lookout for the end of year.
Even more disinformation.
And that's about it.
I'm excited to do more stand-up next year.
We got a lot of shit coming up.
All of our dates for 2023, or at least a lot of them, they're up on my website now.