James Smith and Dave Smith dissect Joe Biden's classified document controversy, arguing the Justice Department's selective enforcement reveals a politicized system designed to undermine him post-midterms. They critique the "deep state" while noting Condoleezza Rice and Robert Gates admit Ukraine is likely losing, suggesting Putin waits for Western fatigue rather than seeking total victory. The hosts further condemn Pete Buttigieg's appointment as Transportation Secretary, linking recent aviation grounding to a prioritization of diversity over competence, ultimately asserting that hiring qualified individuals regardless of background serves the nation better than current ideological mandates. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Tickets Moving Fast00:01:34
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Fishy Clinton Foundation Angle00:16:02
Nothing much, man.
We got some fun stuff.
Yeah, there we do.
We sure do.
We sure do.
So I guess the big story that we got to jump into, this was a story that we, you know, we, our last episode, which actually has gotten a really great response, was us trashing Neil deGrasse Tyson.
But I was thinking of like, I was like, oh, you know, this is going to take the whole episode.
So we'll just talk about the Biden classified documents thing on the next episode.
And I'm glad we did because the story developed quite a bit more.
Yeah, if you guys don't know, it's, it's, there's a lot of interesting things to this story.
It's also just hilarious on a lot of levels that Joe Biden has been busted keeping classified documents in several places that he's not supposed to have them.
These were documents from his time as vice president.
So it's not like, oh, the current president of the United States had these documents.
It's actually been found out that he had them out of office.
So essentially, the exact same thing that they rated Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago home for.
Now Joe Biden's been busted with it.
Doesn't look good.
But man, I don't even know exactly where to start.
There's a lot of different angles I want to go through here.
I guess I'll just start with the most obvious and most hilarious thing.
It's like, yes, he did the exact same thing Donald Trump did.
And holy shit, look at the different responses, not just from the media, but like from the Justice Department.
You know what I mean?
Look at how different the responses are.
Pretty entertaining, pretty transparent, how politicized the justice and the corporate press systems are.
So yeah, I guess that's the first thing to mention.
I don't know.
What would you start with?
Well, the entire racket of the classified information, it seems a little bit overblown.
And this is a bit of a hot take, but like even the fact that, you know, I guess we're privy to all of these people's emails doesn't really make sense to me.
Like, I mean, I've worked jobs that are significantly less important than being in government.
And I wouldn't want my employer, I wouldn't operate with the assumption that my employer could read all my emails.
And if I did, I would certainly have a second email address.
So it's almost a little bit, I understand why it's done because we don't want these people being treasonous, selling state secrets.
And we've, but it's like, if we're privy to every conversation, it's almost weird that it happens in a platform that's seemingly private, such as your email.
You know what I mean?
I would think you would almost just have to have open conversations at that point.
It just seems like strange expectations of politicians in general.
And it seems like there's a little bit too many C's getting thrown on documents that you would like, I don't understand.
That's for sure.
That's one of the things that doesn't get, that seems to not get brought up nearly enough with the with the Trump situation and with the Biden situation is like, if you zoom out, forget the specifics, like the specifics of this incident.
The real story here is that way too much shit is classified.
That's really what it comes down to.
It's insane.
It's like, there's just like the enormous amount of information that's just kept secret from the public is inexcusable.
Like, I'm sure you could come up with a justification where like in extreme times, you, there's some information that you need to have that's classified in like very extreme examples.
But if the premise of this whole government here is that it's a democracy of the people or something like that, then it's just so ridiculous that they get to keep secrets about anything.
I remember, I don't know if you remember this episode.
This was back in, I think maybe 2017.
We did an episode about at the time Devin Nunes was in the house and he had gotten like he had declassified some FBI documents.
He had been able to get them declassified about the FISA warrant that they got on Donald Trump.
And one of the things that we were talking about at the time that was so interesting about it is that there was like all there was in the document was stuff that was embarrassing to the FBI.
There was absolutely nothing in the document that was like, oh, here's the, you know, the name of an active source or something like that.
Like there was no, but that shit happens all the time.
There's, it's, when shit gets declassified, you can read through like thousands of pages of declassified documents where there's just nothing in it that you could even possibly justify being classified.
It's just like, eh, let's err on the side of secrecy.
Even sometimes it's not even that embarrassing for them.
It's just, they just make it secret, like constantly, you know, and then even when they declassify it, they redact it.
So we never get the shit that really, you know, would expose.
I mean, we get some level of exposure, but never like, you know, probably what they don't want us to know.
But there's no type of like, there's no type of honest process of like, here, I have to demonstrate why this needs to be classified.
There's just, it's just, they make it secret.
So every president, if you have any type of documents with you, you're almost always going to have something that got marked classified.
So that's in many cases, this is a big nothing burger.
And in fact, I don't know with Trump or Biden if there was anything even nefarious that went on here.
Like for all the corrupt shit that these guys do, it's funny that this is the thing they pick.
That's why they had to make it with Trump, you know, the day after stories of, oh, there were nuclear codes or something to try to give you this like impression that there's something crazy serious going on here.
When in fact, what it could be is like a document on the process for PLA, you know, getting a FISA warrant.
That was just like, oh, yeah, they kind of, they kind of bullshited to get that warrant.
And I think that's what makes this so fun is that we're talking about a nothing burger that they blew up on Trump.
But Trump seems to have this cartoon thing.
I know you've mentioned it where it's like you shine a light on him and it just seems to reflect right back.
So here you are, you're making such a stink about how can this guy have these classified documents?
This is so incredibly dangerous.
And then what does it turn out?
I mean, I don't care if either of these people have documents, but it's just so hilarious that you guys made as big of a stink as you did.
And then Joe Biden's got the documents.
He seems to be more reckless with it.
He does not have the power to actually turn around and say that they were declassified.
Only the president does.
So and in Trump's case, where do they go instantly?
They go, oh, these are nuclear codes.
This is dangerous.
He might be selling secrets.
We haven't heard any of that with Biden.
And there's a chance with Trump that the information he walked away with was actually how the deep state fucked him over in trying to concoct a Russia collusion story and that that's the leverage he left with.
And it would be so embarrassing to them that they're like, we have to go collect that.
Yeah.
Last point on this, what they, this is so government of them is they go, well, the distinction is that Trump had been notified of this and he didn't immediately succumb to our authority.
And so that's the distinction is that Biden didn't even know.
Well, I mean, the guy's supposed to be the president.
He's supposed to be competent.
And so if you're saying that classified documents is an unbelievably important thing that we can't trust a reckless individual who wouldn't be aware that he just stashed it in his garage or his pen center that's being backed by China and he's bringing all those fucking donors there.
We'll get into that.
Yeah, no, I mean, I guess, yeah, we could just mention that right now.
That's another thing that came out of all of this.
I mean, I don't know, as I didn't know about this, and I'm sure a lot of other people didn't either.
But the first place that they found these classified documents was in his, the Penn Biden Center.
So the University of Pennsylvania opened some like thing for Joe Biden and gave him an office.
Yeah, they paid him a million dollars.
Well, they paid him a million dollars to open this.
It's almost like his version of the Clinton Foundation type thing.
And then what's very interesting is right after they did that, they started, the university started receiving tens of millions of dollars from China.
So something there that's all types of corrupt.
This is part of the reason why I always say, like, there's, there's a lot of lefties who always harp on campaign finance laws.
Like, that's the big problem is we got to get money out of politics.
And I'm somewhat sympathetic to that instinct.
Like, I understand at a certain point, they're going, well, the problem is that these private interests buy off the government and then they do their bidding, which certainly is true.
But I'm always like, the idea that you're going to write some, it's like it's, it's the thing is that they're, they're almost bending over backward to not notice what the real problem is.
So I always say it's like, yeah, okay, write some rule that says what?
You can't contribute to their campaign or something.
It's like, they'll always find a way.
I mean, look, here you go.
China's not giving Joe Biden money.
The University of Pennsylvania is giving them money.
China's just giving the University of Pennsylvania money.
You know, it's like they always have these way.
Look, the Saudis are not allowed to contribute to an American political campaign.
You can't take foreign money for an American political campaign, but they could donate $10 million to the Clinton Foundation.
You know, so like, does it matter that they can't?
And so this, this impulse to kind of say, let's get the money out of politics.
It's like, yeah.
I mean, really, I think we'd prefer to get the politics out of money.
But you go, look, the federal government of the United States spends $6 trillion a year.
There is no other organization on earth that spends $6 trillion a year.
Think of the biggest company you can imagine.
It's not even close, not even close.
Okay.
And if you, if you're spending, I mean, you think about this, this is more than the GDP of Russia by a factor of four.
I think the GDP of Russia is about $1.5 trillion.
At least it was before the war.
I don't know where it is right now.
But okay, so just think about that.
Four times the entire economy of Russia, right?
And more than the economy of lots of the majority of countries.
You know, you're moving mountains.
That's how much power is coming out of Washington, D.C.
And if you have that much concentrated power, the idea that you're going to write a rule that says no one's allowed to try to wield it, you know?
I mean, just think about how ridiculous this is.
No one's allowed to try to influence that power or buy it off.
It's like, no, the only solution here is to like drastically cut down the amount of power.
It's like all these other things are just nonsense window dressing.
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All right, let's get back on the show.
Anyway, so yeah, a totally shady, but I think very typical little scheme that they have going there, which is anyway, that's where the classified stuff was found at first.
Then there was more found.
Now, another angle of this that's very interesting is that there's something really fishy about how this all went down.
There's a few different levels.
But I got to tell you, my guess is that this is an attempt to bring down Joe Biden from inside the house.
I think that's what's going on here.
I think that Joe Biden, first of all, it's clearly the timing is like they found this before the midterms and announced it now.
They clearly didn't want to like fuck up the Democrats' chance to do as good as they could through the midterms.
And now, and then after the midterms, Joe Biden said like he plans on running.
And also, I mean, he had said that before the midterms, but he said it after the midterms.
And I think for the first time after the midterms, most people went, oh, yeah, Joe Biden's running.
He's running for reelection because he didn't, look, everyone was predicting a red wave and you didn't really get a red wave.
So now Joe Biden's more emboldened to be like, hey, look, the American people just basically kind of said they're kind of okay.
Yeah.
You know, in his mind, he's like, that's the thing about Joe Biden too.
You know, like when he's stuttering and stumbling up there, you know, when he walks off, he's like, nailed it.
Like, you just know inside his head, he's like, fucking crushed another one.
But so I think that the truth is that I think there's a lot of powerful people who would like him to step aside and get somebody else in there.
And it makes sense.
I mean, the guy is, look, let's, let's take a look at how Joe Biden responded to this scandal.
Adam My Classified Material next to your Corvette.
What were you thinking?
Let me, we're not going to get a chance to speak on all this, God willing soon.
Because as I said earlier this week, people, and by the way, my Corvette's in a locked garage.
So it's not like you're sitting out in the street.
At any rate.
Yes, as well as my Corvette.
But as I said earlier this week, people know I take classified documents and classified material seriously.
I also said we're cooperating fully and completely with the Justice Department's review.
As part of that process, my lawyers reviewed other places where documents from my time as vice president were stored and they finished the review last night.
They discovered a small number of documents of classified markings and storage areas in file cabinets in my home and my personal library.
This was done in the case of the Biden Penn.
This was done in the case of the Biden Penn Center.
The Department of Justice was immediately, as was done, the Department of Justice was immediately notified.
And the lawyers arranged for the Department of Justice to take possession of the document.
So you're going to see, we're going to see all this unfold.
I'm confident.
I don't know.
I mean, I guess we're getting used to it at this point, but it is just so unbelievable how frail and weak he looks.
Like it's the man, he cannot even answer you.
He can't even talk to you like a person.
He's constantly got to look down and read his response, which he struggles to do.
He struggles to just read the words that are on paper in front of him.
It's fucking insane.
This guy's the president of the United States.
Like it's so, it's so bizarre.
And you see that and you go, yeah, I could see where some people wouldn't want him to be, you know, running.
They would want to try, this guy could lose.
I don't know.
Look, they got through 2020 by basically keeping him at home and really doing very, very few events.
And he got through the events that he got through.
Rocket Money Sponsor Plug00:06:51
Also, Trump really fucked up by with his debate performance.
And then I forget what they were able to get out of the second debate.
Was it because Trump had COVID at that time or something like that?
But they were able to cancel the second debate.
So Trump really fucked up, if you remember, because he just dominated and talked the whole time and kept interrupting him, which is the worst way to debate Joe Biden is you debate Joe Biden, you sit back, you let him talk.
That's what you're supposed to do.
Let him talk, make him talk as much as possible.
And then afterward, after he says something, you just go, could anyone follow that?
Because I certainly, I don't know what he just said.
Can you elaborate, sir?
And let him talk more.
That's how you debate Joe Biden.
I can't believe, by the way, I mean, I'm sure some people told Donald Trump that, but Trump's just Trump.
And he's like, I'm going to do it my way.
I'm going to show he's a bitch, you know, whatever.
Anyway, but okay, so they got through the election like that.
It was still 2020.
You could, you could spin this into like, he's being safe.
That's why he's at home the whole time.
You know, this is just so responsible of him to not be out there campaigning.
Can't do that in 2024.
Can't do that this year and next year.
That's not going to work.
And he's also, you know, going to be four years older than he was when he ran last time.
He, everybody knows that Joe Biden against anyone, Joe Biden has a good chance of losing because Joe Biden might have a major moment where he just completely fumbles and can't remember what his name is.
Like, you know, there's just, there's a chance of that.
Now, they could, it seems like they can goose him up for a big thing.
You know what I mean?
Like if he has to get through a debate, they can give him whatever cocktail of shit they give him to get up there to go, you know what I mean, get through the debate.
But if he's out campaigning like every day, or at least a few times a week, can he get through all of these events?
I mean, think about it.
Can you imagine like Joe Biden giving four or five speeches a month, say?
Having to give like long speeches.
I mean, the moments are just, there's going to be an opportunity every single time for him to blow the whole campaign.
So, anyway, the reason I'm kind of speculating and I'm guessing that this is the situation is the way this is coming out is very bizarre.
You know, this has all been leaked to the press by like Biden AIDS.
Biden AIDS found classified information.
It's like his own people are throwing him under the bus.
And all this classified information, you know, they're saying it goes, it's from his time as a vice president.
So it's been sitting around for six years.
Seems a little bit strange that it's after this midterm election.
We found it.
We found all of it.
You know what I mean?
Incredibly odd.
I mean, why now?
Other than to dethrone him, I guess.
I mean, it literally makes no sense.
Were they doing a cleanup?
Like, what are they even coming forward as the reason why they just discovered this?
Yeah.
Well, Merrick Garland did address the situation.
Brent, see if you can find that video.
Merrick Garland addressed Biden's classified documents and is, you know, not properly stored or whatever.
But that was another thing like when I watched that, where I was going like, oh, okay, something's going on here.
This seems like an effort to get Biden out of the way.
And it would be an interesting play for getting Biden out of the way, because then I guess it would be consistent for getting Trump out of the way to go, hey, we treat this really seriously that we even took Biden out because you're not allowed to have a classified materials.
Like this might be a very good trap for the system always getting rid of people it doesn't want because like someone will always have classified materials.
Right.
It's one of those like bribery corruption charges in China.
Like everyone has it.
Right.
And also just that for them to go, look, the entire system just went all in on this is an unforgivable crime.
Right.
And now to be like, well, he committed it too.
And then leave them kind of like, oh shit, what are we doing now?
I like the garage door defense.
I'd like to see the Johnny Cochran lawyer for that where it's like, you know, Trump was in a facility.
This one had a locked garage door.
So yeah, well, I mean, they're already trying some of this.
It's, it's going to be an interesting thing to see.
I think that the, you know, they don't, they don't want to Andrew Cuomo him.
You know, like if you were, Andrew Cuomo was, it's funny to even remember back, but how much of a rock star he was for the Democrats, like how much they were pushing him.
And then all of a sudden it's like, oh, no, actually he's a creep and he's out and he's never to be thought of again.
It's really, really bizarre.
Like it's, I know it's 2023, but like 2020 was not that long ago.
And holy shit, this guy was just, you know, they gave him an Emmy.
I mean, they were like, he was the hero of the world.
And now it's like just not even brought up, not even a person, completely removed from the conversation.
And they don't want to do that with Biden because in a presidential election, it's still going to reflect on them.
If like, you know, they, they want to get him to voluntarily step aside and let someone else run and still kind of try to save face a little bit.
They don't want to hurt the next Democratic, you know, nominee, especially if they're running against Donald Trump.
But so it'll be interesting to see.
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All right, let's get back on the show.
But anyway, so here, yeah, Brian, you found the clip.
Here was Merrick Garland.
Mueller Investigation Timeline00:11:51
I'm joined today by John Lausch, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, who conducted the initial investigation into the matter that I will describe today.
On the evening of November 4th, 2022, the National Archives Office of Inspector General contacted a prosecutor at the Department of Justice.
It informed him that the White House had notified the archives that documents bearing classification markings were identified at the office of the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement located in Washington, D.C.
That office was not authorized for storage of classified documents.
The prosecutor was also advised that those documents had been secured in an archives facility.
On November 9th, the FBI commenced an assessment consistent with standard protocols to understand whether classified information had been mishandled in violation of federal law.
On November 14th, pursuant to section 600.2b of the special counsel regulations, I assigned U.S. Attorney Lausch to conduct an initial investigation to inform my decision whether to appoint a special counsel.
Mr. Lausch has served as a U.S. Attorney in Chicago since 2017.
Before that, he spent more than a decade as an assistant U.S. Attorney in that same office.
I selected him to conduct the initial investigation because I was confident his experience would ensure that it would be done professionally and expeditiously.
On December 20th, President Biden's personal counsel informed Mr. Lausch that additional documents bearing classification markings were identified in the garage of the president's private residence in Wilmington, Delaware.
President Biden's counsel informed Mr. Lausch that those documents were among other records from the period of the president's service as vice president.
The FBI went to the location and secured those documents.
On January 5th, 2023, Mr. Lausch briefed me on the results of his initial investigation and advised me that further investigation by a special counsel was warranted.
Based on Mr. Lausch's initial investigation, I concluded that under the special counsel regulations, it was in the public interest to appoint a special counsel.
In the days since, while Mr. Lausch continued the investigation, the department identified Mr. Hur for appointment as special counsel.
All right.
So that's basically boring, dude.
We found some papers.
We're going to look into it.
But essentially, well, look, there's a few things that are interesting about this.
The biggest one is, that's right, there's a special prosecutor on Biden's ass now, just like they had on Trump.
That's a bit, that's something you really don't want if you're a president.
Now, I look, I was, I guess I got this wrong.
This was a prediction that I made about Donald Trump.
And you know how rare it is that I get things wrong.
But I did say when they put Mueller on Trump, basically what I predicted from the very beginning was I said, this will bring him down.
And I said, they'll find something.
And that they're not going to find anything about Russia in collusion, obviously, because Trump is not in bed with Russia.
That's just a stupid made-up lie.
But I go, the guy's been a real estate developer in New York City for all these years.
He's Donald Trump.
I mean, there's got to be something.
And these getting a special prosecutor on you, it's like a pitbull.
They're going to go through everything.
Now, this is famously what happened with Bill Clinton, that they put the Ken Starr, the special prosecutor on him.
They were investigating financial crimes at Whitewater that had nothing to do with Monica Lewinsky, but they were tearing through everything.
And then they found that, oh, shit, he under oath said he never had sexual relations with this woman.
Whatever, blah, blah.
There we got him on perjury.
And that's it.
So if any crime is uncovered and that was someone like Biden, who's a career criminal, you know what I mean?
You're going to have a special prosecutor on you.
That's not good.
If you're Joe Biden, that's a bad, bad situation for you.
So forget anything, even with this classified material.
Just having a special prosecutor put on you is very bad news if you're Joe Biden.
But there's other things here that are kind of interesting.
So number one, he says this was found, the head of the Justice Department there confirms, Merrick Garland confirms, this was found before the midterm elections.
Man, it sure is lucky there were no leaks.
You know how there's always all these leaks from the Justice Department?
Like when it would be something that could damage Donald Trump's reputation?
Man, they really stayed tight-lipped this time.
Just convenient, I guess, just a great lucky coincidence.
They were really able to tighten that up.
So nothing leaks.
No press conferences had then.
But now, after the midterm elections, when Biden clearly wants to run for reelection, now we've got to assign a special prosecutor.
We didn't need to assign a special prosecutor when we found out that Biden's family was trading in political favors for money.
That wasn't necessary.
Never needed a special prosecutor for any of that.
But now all of a sudden, we found some documents next to his Corvette.
And now we got to join.
It just, something about this smells fishy.
Something else other, something bigger is going on here.
And my guess is that this is the beginning of a play to bring down Joe Biden.
I think they want to make it a controlled crash.
I don't think they want to just humiliate the president because that could have a, you know, that could have some unintended consequences of getting a Republican elected, which I don't think is the game plan.
But I think this is an attempt to get Biden out of the way.
And for obvious reasons, you know, understandably.
I mean, again, you know, if you were, if you try to put yourself in like, you know, I don't know, some Democratic oligarchs position, you know, you're George Soros.
You're some billionaire, you know, donor to the Democratic Party.
What are you, what is your number one thing that you're saying like in every meeting, in every secret smoke-filled room meeting?
What are you saying?
If what you care about is just the Democrats maintaining power and getting all of your, you know, keeping this crony system going.
I'd say every day you're in there, you go, who can we replace this guy with?
Who is our guy?
Because it's not him.
You're telling me the guy who literally can't look you in the eye and answer the most the easiest question that looks like a brittle old man has to look down and read and then stutters through reading this.
And then when people shout at him, he looks like he's scared.
It's like, come on, that can't be the guy.
And so it just seems to me that this is, there's a high, a high probability that that's what's going on here.
Got some questions these assholes got to answer for us.
Firstly, what's the nature of the classified documents?
Just give us the broad strokes.
We're talking nuclear secrets.
We're talking about trade agreements.
Just give me the category, but factually give me the category, not just like skepticism of, oh, well, it could have been anything as horrible as our nuclear summaries.
Just give me the, give me a general idea.
What do we think was in there?
And then, yeah, why was this first discovered now?
I mean, where the fuck are the journalists?
Just tell us like, why, where were they cleaning his garage?
Did they shut down the pen thing?
And then I wasn't even aware of the AG aspect, but I guess that's interesting of if they're not a political, like if they're not playing politics.
So if they knew about this three weeks ago or a month ago, why were they not bringing this to light?
Especially it would be highly relevant if it's at the exact same time that they're going after Donald Trump.
If anything, they could say, hey, we're realizing we've got an issue across our government of classified materials ending up in not safe facilities.
And we've noticed it at both of these places.
Well, do you remember back?
I always thought this was one of the more revealing moments from the Mueller investigation was when there was this BuzzFeed article that came out and announced that there were two there were two co-authors of the article.
And they came out and wrote this piece announcing that they had been shown evidence by Mueller's team that Cohen, Michael Cohen, Donald Trump's personal lawyer, had been instructed by Donald Trump to lie to Congress, which already is like quite a claim.
You know, like they're claiming they saw evidence.
Like, what would you see?
Is Donald Trump stupid enough to put in writing to his lawyer, I want you to lie to Congress?
I mean, like, even if you think Donald Trump's stupid, that's like really, really stupid, you know?
But this is, this is like a bombshell announcement.
It was a few weeks before Mueller was set to wrap up the investigation.
We were like, holy shit.
So they got him and they got him on something really big, directly instructing your lawyer to lie to Congress.
Like there's jail time coming for Donald Trump, if that's the case.
And Mueller came out and made a statement and said, this is not, no, this reporting is not accurate.
We do not have evidence to show this.
These journalists just claimed they had seen it in TV interviews and stuff.
I mean, it was pretty wild.
I'd love to get like a follow-up interview with one of those guys who claimed they were shown this evidence.
But anyway, but I remember me and you talking about quite a bit that one of the most revealing things throughout this whole Mueller investigation was that.
And it was almost, it was like the like a lie by omission type deal, where as soon as he came out and made that statement, then after the whole investigation's concluded, you're like, oh, wait a minute.
So like you're okay coming out and making a public statement if there's some reporting on something about your investigation that isn't accurate.
Well, where the fuck were you for years when every single day, all anyone on cable news was saying was Trump-Russia collusion.
The walls are closing in.
Mueller's about to nail him for this grand conspiracy in which he conspired to steal the presidency.
Like they were all saying the biggest scandal in the history of the United States of America is going on.
This guy's investigating it.
He's about to expose the whole thing.
And Mueller never bothered to make a statement to just say, actually, no.
He did with the Michael Cohen thing when he wanted to temper expectations because he was getting ready to release it, but he never bothered once to come out and go, guys, just so you know, like we have not found anything indicating that, at least as of now, you know, like, so he can come out and make a statement.
He is fine commenting on the investigation just when convenient.
And you kind of realize like, oh, that's part of the game too, to let this speculation happen.
So in this case, it's almost like the inverse of that, where you're like, oh, part of the game here is to decide when we're going to come out and announce that we found all of this stuff.
And it always, you know, again, it's the inverse here where Mueller and his investigation team, they let everybody think this was the case through Trump's midterm elections in 2018.
They let him lose the Senate in the House.
That's fine.
You know what I mean?
Like that, or did they lose the House?
I lost the Senate.
Anyway, but they let that happen.
That's no problem and didn't come out and say anything, but they will come out and correct, you know, BuzzFeed.
So that.
That's just part of like how this whole game, whole game works.
All right.
Anything else on the Biden classified stuff that you're thinking of?
Well, curious to see how it all plays out.
It's a very recent story.
It's funny because who really cares?
Stamps.com Postal Services00:02:34
It's a coupled piece of paper.
It sounds like an error.
It's just all of the shenanigans around it that make it interesting.
Yeah.
And it's pretty damn entertaining to watch people in the corporate press explain why this is nothing like Donald Trump's.
As Lawrence O'Donnell on MSNBC the other night said that this was the exact opposite of what Donald Trump did.
And you're like, yes, yes, it's the polar opposite of having classified material at your house is having classified material in your garage.
I can't think of thing.
I can't think of two more different things than those two that, you know, he's like, this is the polar opposite because what Donald Trump did was the worst way to handle it.
And what Biden did was the best way to handle it.
It's just, it is pretty funny to watch them jump through hoops.
Sometimes you wonder.
I mean, I know there's not a lot of people who watch Lawrence O'Donnell's show, but you wonder like, how could anyone actually be fooled by like even your most like hardcore, I'm in the MSNBC liberal world.
Wouldn't one of them go?
I mean, come on, dude.
He did the same thing.
And how come the archive people weren't even aware of these documents?
Shouldn't we be doing a review of these archive people that they weren't even aware that for, what, 12 years, there were documents just sitting in Joe Biden's garage?
Yeah.
Yeah.
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Ukraine War Narrative Shift00:10:58
All right, let's get back into the show.
It really is something, though, dude, that like there's so many secret documents that the people keeping track of the secret documents don't even know where the secret documents are.
It's just unbelievable, like how, how anyone puts up with this?
Like in a country, and then the country is allowed to call itself a democracy, not only call itself a democracy, but insist on fighting other countries who aren't democratic enough to overthrow them and put in a democracy.
You know what I mean?
Like, but we also just like, oh, yeah, we lie to our people.
We don't, we can't like tell them the truth.
So yeah, I mean, they get to vote, but we don't tell them what we're doing.
It's just unbelievable that this is actually able to persist.
Yeah.
All right.
Let's move on.
A couple other things we'll touch on real quick.
I don't have a ton to say about them, but it was, I thought it was worth mentioning that there was this op-ed that was written by Condoleezza Rice and Robert Gates.
The Condoleezza Rice was the Secretary of State under George W. Bush.
Bob Gates was the Secretary of Defense under George W. Bush.
Two people who in a sane world would never be allowed to talk about foreign policy at all, but they're allowed to write op-eds for the Washington Post.
Bob Gates also, I mean, they both had a bunch of government jobs before that.
Bob Gates was at the CIA for a while, and then he became an ambassador.
He was at the CIA.
I think he ran the CIA for a few years.
And then he continued as the defense secretary under Barack Obama as well.
They wrote an op-ed talking about how, look, you won't believe this because it goes against everything that everyone's been telling us.
But turns out Ukraine's losing.
They're not dominating.
I mean, they're winning, but they're losing.
I mean, they're doing awesome and they've totally humiliated Russia, but, you know, things look real bad, real bad for them.
So there's a time is not on Ukraine's side is what they say.
So they go, despite how well they've been doing, they're poised to lose.
So that's more or less the take of the article.
I thought it was kind of interesting that, you know, after all of this propaganda about how, you know, there is all this propaganda about how I apologize, it was the, what did I say?
It was the Washington Post.
Did I say New York Times?
Anyway, after all this propaganda about how Putin's being humiliated and a lot of people who, you know, I talk to and sources who I trust a lot more are like, yeah, no, that's not really right.
There's, you know, Russia has taken some losses, but overall, Ukraine's in a very bad situation and there's really no way they can win this war, even with all the aid that they're getting.
So now it seems like some more people from the foreign policy establishment, hawks, not doves, are coming out and going, yeah, that is, that is actually the case.
It's looking really bad for Ukraine.
Biden responded this week by promising more money.
It's very strange that the old school deep state is opposing this war.
We even had Kissinger being like, hey, this one's not a good idea.
Now you got the pushers and architects of the Iraq war going, hey, guys, not sure that this one's a good idea.
So it's kind of interesting if you look at it from like that there is a deep state.
Like who are the who are the characters that are pushing this one?
And why is it that these people actually come forward and oppose it?
Well, you know, the interesting thing about that's true with a lot of these things, right?
Is that essentially there are a lot of people within the foreign policy establishment who have been completely against our policy toward Russia for 30 years.
A lot of them and very powerful people too.
And this is true with a lot of these things.
I mean, there were people who were against the war in Iraq who did not want to do this.
But the neocons won out.
And same with their Russia policy as well.
They kind of won out.
It's like the neocons and the insane like democratic neocons or neoliberals, whatever you want to call them, the kind of crazy war hawks have always won out.
But people like George Kennan, who was like the cold warrior, he was the, I think he was the guy who created the containment strategy to take out the Soviet Union.
He was completely against NATO expansion in the 90s.
Like he was like, this is nuts.
Like we're going to get right back into another cold war.
We just won the cold war.
Why would we want to just start it over again?
And there's a Robert Gates is one of those guys too.
Robert Gates, interestingly enough, Robert Gates was at, I guess maybe he was the head of the CIA at the time.
He was in like the meetings with Gorbachev as the Soviet Union was like right before the Soviet Union collapsed.
And these were the meetings where they were promising that like we won't move NATO to the to the east and that not one inch to the east line came out of these meetings.
And a lot of the other people in the meetings denied that this ever happened.
Now the documents have been declassified and you can read it for yourself.
But Gates never lied about it.
Gates, after like all those years, was always like, yeah, we are breaking our promise here.
Yeah, we really should.
We did say we wouldn't move NATO all the way to the east.
Now we're, man, we've moved it all the way from the middle of Germany up to Russia's borders.
And so there's interesting, a lot of people like that.
So it's not just Henry Kissinger, George Friedman, who was the head of Stratford, another guy who's like these same thing, thinks this policy is completely insane.
I think it was thinks it was insane to aid the coup in Ukraine in 2014.
There's a lot of people, William Perry, who is Bill Clinton's secretary of defense.
He's been against this shit all the way back since the 90s.
And what's his name?
Robert McNamara, who's the dean of the realist school of foreign policy.
He's not like a libertarian isolationist or anything.
He's basically been saying that this, you know, one of the chief critics of this.
So there's a lot of people who are critical of this policy.
Now, I don't, that's not exactly what Condoleezza Rice and Robert Gates are saying here, but they are at least admitting that this narrative that Putin's just getting his ass handed to him in Ukraine is not exactly right.
And the New York Times also mentioned somewhat recently that they were baffled by why Putin hadn't been more aggressive in this war.
And that's another thing that just really, you know, you'd think for such an important story, you know, we're giving $100 billion to this country with the pledge of continuing it going on.
You've got a, you know, a hot war that we are funding on the border of a nuclear superpower.
Like that's a pretty big story.
You think that breakup there is like a pretty big story?
You'd think that would just get discussed more.
Like it's just something that like the New York Times wrote, there's like a throwaway sentence in an article of theirs where they're like, it is kind of surprising.
Like basically they're saying he hasn't taken out all this critical infrastructure that he clearly could take out.
And why isn't he doing that?
Well, you know, I don't know exactly what the answer is, but whatever the answer is, it doesn't jive with the narrative that's coming out of Washington, D.C. Like, you know what I'm saying?
Like, no, the answer to that isn't like because he's such an evil war criminal and he's hell-bent on taking over all of Europe.
You know, it seems more like what his strategy is, is to not go completely gloves off and fight the most brutal war he can.
I think perhaps his strategy is that he thinks we're going to blink first.
And he thinks that coming, you know, coming up through this winter, that Ukraine is going to have a very tough time, that Germany is going to have a very tough winter, that America is just going to have been spending more and more money and seems like it's wasting it.
And perhaps there just wouldn't be the political will to continue to support Ukraine, in which case, maybe my guess is that Vladimir Putin kind of wants a way out of this war.
I think he has to save face.
I think he can't lose a war for his own political reasons.
He can't like lose a war on his border.
I think there's no getting around the fact that Russia is going to control East and Southern Ukraine.
Like that's just going to happen.
I mean, I should say perhaps they grant them independence or independence, you know, something like that, but that it's not going to be given back to Ukraine.
I think there's just no way around that.
But at least perhaps this article is a step in the direction of more kind of establishment warhawk types going like, yeah, this may not be, it may not be possible for us to just be like, we're going to keep sending them money until they win.
you know, and whatever winning means.
I guess taking back every region.
I've seen it defined by Zelensky himself said they want Crimea back too.
And it's like, yeah, that ain't happening, dude.
So anyway, we'll see.
I mean, Crimea is this.
The reason why when Vladimir Putin took Crimea, like he didn't kill anyone.
Well, I mean, I don't know.
Actually, there might have been like four or five people who died, but I don't think it's clear that any of them were killed by Russian military.
But it was basically a bloodless, you know, coup de main type deal.
And basically what happened was they had this, they had a naval base.
The Russians had a lease of a naval base in Crimea.
And there's a little piece of land, you know what I mean?
And they had a huge naval base there, one of their biggest.
And then when the government, the democratically elected government of Ukraine was overthrown in 2014 and they installed this new government, they said, well, we're tearing up your lease.
You can no longer lease this space to have your naval base there.
And so it's not even like people always say Putin invaded Crimea, and he did send in some extra forces, but it's not even like he invaded.
They simply left their base.
They came outside and were like, nope, this is ours.
And everyone was like, oh, yeah, okay.
Well, this is yours.
No one was even going to fight.
They have this giant naval base right there.
It was like, what the fuck are we going to do?
Okay, fine.
And Putin like joked around about it where he was like, he said something like, he goes, you know, we were thinking of visiting our NATO friends in Crimea, but then we thought it'd be nicer if they came and visited us in Crimea.
So it's, it just just took.
So anyway, the idea that Ukraine's going to be so dominantly victorious that they go in and kick out the Russians from there, it's just, this is not happening.
Maybe this is a step in the direction of living within the constraints of reality where that ain't happening.
Pete Buttigieg Transportation Job00:04:16
Okay.
Lastly, before we wrap up, I did want to mention, yeah, I guess not the best week for Pete Buttigeg there, Rob, huh?
He's been worried too much about the decorations, making things look pretty, bringing in designers, making sure our airports look nice and not paying enough attention to the software.
Yeah, yeah, seems to be the case.
So I guess I'm glad we weren't on the road this last week.
Seems like a lot of planes were grounded.
I think he just, he wastes too much time on his bicycle going to work.
He's not getting the job done.
Well, the thing about it is, is that, Rob, there's it's a big job.
Okay.
And he's got a tremendous amount of experience.
He was the mayor of the fifth biggest city in, you know, in what state was he from again?
I can't remember.
Yeah.
Okay, great.
Jesus, why am I blanking on this?
Anyway, so he was a small mayor and then he ran for president.
So he's got a tremendous amount of real world experience.
He's given a big job and there's lots of different things that you got to deal with when you're in charge of transportation, Rob.
Obviously, the biggest, racism.
Then there's climate change.
And then once you're done tackling those issues, maybe you'll get around to like, can planes, you know, fly?
Like that's, but transportation is about fighting racism.
We all understand this.
Then climate change.
They're interchangeable, racism and climate change.
And then I get it.
It's because if the airlines work, then rich white people get to go places.
But if we shut them down, then they can't go places and then everyone's equal.
Exactly.
Check your privilege.
We're all equally.
We're all equal when we're locked on a plane on the ground.
Doesn't get a lot more equal than that.
I mean, sure, there's first class, but even those people, they're still on a plane that's not moving.
They're not very happy.
But I do, I think Pete Buttigieg has things under control.
And in case you're concerned about that, he's got a message for you.
Here is our boy, Pete Buttigieg.
Now that the system is up and running, our primary focus is to determine that root cause.
And I've directed FAA to figure out exactly how this happened, the timeline piece by piece about what was known overnight going into last night and then coming out of it.
So glitches or complications happen all the time, but we can't allow them to ever lead to this level of disruption.
And we won't ever allow them to lead to a safety problem.
Great.
Wonderful.
That makes me feel better every time I'm on a flight.
Seriously, it can go down at any time and you have no idea.
It worked for 25 years, but now it's a new era where we're just.
Yeah, basically, we don't know.
We don't know what happened.
I've written a request to be told exactly what went wrong so we can fix it.
You're like, wow.
Well, that's nice.
That's really great to hear.
Everything's cool now.
Anyway, there you go.
Yeah, this is this is the way the whole system operates.
Of course, Pete Buttigieg is the head of transportation in the United States of America, right?
Pretty big job.
And why is he there?
For one reason, because he dropped out before Super Tuesday and endorsed Joe Biden.
That's it.
That's why he's there.
One political favor, you get to run the transportation for the United States of America.
So it's so shocking that it's not working good.
Here's a thought I should probably keep to myself, but I love how Biden has made it a point to try and put people from disenfranchised communities into good positions.
Like you had that puppy boy guy on the nuclear or whatever.
And he was just like, you know what?
We need someone without their sexuality.
We'll give him a nothing job, pay him a great salary.
Just don't go steal suitcases and be in the news giving lectures to kids about puppy play.
And he couldn't do it.
He just couldn't do it.
Or in this case, you got a guy and you go, oh, we need someone on, we need a gay guy in our roster.
We just need someone.
What's the easiest position where, you know, you can just go be there?
The transportation secretary.
Competence vs Identity Debate00:01:26
Great.
Sounds like you're doing something.
Never heard of a transportation secretary beforehand, but hey, we're being inclusive.
Oh my God, the system that worked forever is failing and the gay guy's in charge of it.
Oh, you know what we need here?
I need a press secretary, but find me a black lesbian.
Oh my God, you found someone who's less coherent than I am?
It's like it's like they're making the disenfranchised communities look worse.
Yeah.
No, I think that's absolutely right.
And the thing about it is that if you just go, I'm going to hire the most competent people when you get people who are black or gay or a lesbian or whatever, then they're really competent.
And then you make those groups look great.
But when you go, oh, I'm going to hire someone from this group, even if there's someone more competent out there, then you end up finding someone who's not so competent and you make that group look like shit.
So yeah, there's a lot of truth to that.
All right.
That's going to be it for today.
Come catch us on the road.
Comicdavesmith.com has all of the ticket links for me and Robbie.
We're going all over the place this year.
More dates being added quite often.
So we'll be coming.
We'll be coming to a town near you.
Look out for us.
Comicdavesmith.com for that.
Go check out Rob's podcast, Run Your Mouth.
Anything else, Rob?
Oh, yeah, the end of your stuff.
Funny stuff.
Oh, yeah.
Go check it out.
Robin Squire, all on earth.
So fucking funny.
Highly recommend it.
In fact, everybody, if you're listening to the show, you got to go watch Rob's End of the Year comedy special.