Libertarian Tupac and James Smith dismantle CNN's "evil" narrative regarding pediatric COVID deaths, arguing that manipulating statistics ignores natural immunity and government lockdowns. They condemn MSNBC for ignoring myocarditis cases and accuse Sam Harris of using "tortured logic" to defend torture while refusing Brett Weinstein's neutral debate challenge on pandemic errors. Ultimately, the hosts assert that corporate media prioritizes money over truth, urging figures like Don Lemon to admit mistakes or face public scrutiny outside their protected bubbles. [Automatically generated summary]
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Comedy Gigs and Government Critique00:02:42
Fill her up.
You are listening to the Gash Digital Network.
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You're listening to part of the problem on the Gas Digital Network.
Here's your host, James Smith.
What's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
Libertarian Tupac here, Comic Dave Smith.
And I'm joined, as always, by my life partner, Robbie the Fire Bernstein, the king of the caulks.
How you feeling, brother?
I'm doing well.
Perryville was fun and more live shows coming.
Perryville was great.
Great time.
I really love that spot, Fifth Brewing.
What's it called?
Fifth Company Brewing.
Fifth Company Brewing.
Great people there.
Really, really cool spot.
If you live in the Perryville area, go check out Fifth Company Brewing.
Really cool spot.
They make delicious beer.
They got great bar food and stuff.
Just really great staff.
Awesome, awesome venue.
Go check them out.
And yeah, we got a bunch more stuff coming.
I'm going to be heading off to LA in a few days here.
And then the following weekend, me and Robbie will be out at Hyenas Comedy Club in Fort Worth, February 10th, and then over to their spot in Dallas on February 11th, which is Fort Worth and Dallas are very, very close to each other.
But anyway, so yeah, come out to those shows February 10th and 11th.
Then the next up is the House of Comedy in Detroit, February 17th and 18th.
Got a lot of stuff coming out.
Potts Town, Pennsylvania, Providence, Rhode Island, Chicago, Tampa, Florida.
Just added Syracuse, Albany.
We got gigs in Salt Lake City, Utah coming up.
A whole bunch of stuff.
ComicDavesmith.com.
Come see me and Robbie the Fire doing some stand-up comedy near you.
2023, going to be a lot of going on the road.
And I got two gigs.
I got this Friday night.
I'm in Fairfield, Connecticut, opening up for Justin Silver coming out for that.
And then I think the weekend after that, I'll get you guys the date.
Going to be with BK Chris and Ryan Long up in Buffalo.
Awesome.
Awesome.
Very, very good.
Love all of those people who you just mentioned.
All great.
Okay.
All right.
So to start today's show, we're going to hit on a topic that we've discussed before, which is that CNN is evil.
Flu Risks and Vaccine Debate00:14:58
But this is even by CNN standard, like a little bit, a little bit more satanic than just your average evil CNN norm.
So this really, I saw this and it just made me so furious that I just could not open the show with this today.
This was a piece that was written yesterday, or I should say was posted on CNN.com yesterday.
And here we go.
Let's get into it and deal with some evil.
So CNN tweeted from the at CNN Twitter account.
They tweeted, this is the tweet.
COVID-19 has become the eighth most common cause of death amongst children in the United States, according to a new study.
So that's their tweet.
And the headline of the article, and I'm not making this up.
This is their headline.
COVID-19 is a leading cause of death for children in the U.S., despite relatively low mortality rates.
So that's their title.
So you should really be concerned about kids dying from COVID.
So Look, just to start off, this is so, it's such a great example of what Michael Malis always says, which is just such a great line.
And he goes, the corporate press is largely factual, but not truthful.
And this is an example of that.
No, don't get me wrong.
Sometimes they're also not factual.
They will get fat, you know, they will get their facts wrong also.
But this is a perfect example of something being factual, but not truthful.
Now, by the way, I don't know that this study is correct.
There's one study that said it's the eighth largest cause of kids dying.
But when you're talking about truth, if you were getting at truth, you would write an article saying kids really statistically have nothing to worry about in terms of dying.
Even within their own article, they admit some of this.
Throughout all of COVID, throughout all of the COVID deaths, 1% of all the deaths since the start of the pandemic have been amongst those younger than 18.
That's 1% of the deaths.
Then, you know, forget even taking into account how those deaths are measured exactly.
Then if you're going to take into account people with severe health problems, which is the overwhelming majority of that 1%, like almost the entire 1%.
And you're left with a number that is statistically non-existent.
But that's not the point of the title.
The point of the title is to scare you.
Oh, my God, it's the eighth leading cause in kids dying.
I just can't explain how despicable this is to try to put articles out there that play on people's fear of something bad happening to their kid.
And of course, Rob, we know why they're doing it, right?
What's the end goal of this article is to convince you to get your kids jabbed.
More boosters.
More boosters for the kids.
It was so crazy too.
Like even if it is true that it's the eighth, like it's like there's a way that like statistics can be very misleading, right?
Because something could be the eighth leading cause of kids dying, but it would still not be that important.
You know what I mean, to think about because kids don't die that much.
It's one of the things about being a kid.
There's not that many things that kill kids.
Kids, anytime a kid dies, it's like because something kind of crazy happened.
It's a wild situation.
Typically, people die when they're older than being a kid, right?
And things that like, if you think about the things that are leading causes in adults dying, well, like certainly a huge part of it is like preventable illnesses.
You know what I mean?
Like things that come along from years of smoking, years of drinking, years of eating like crap, you know, obesity related things, stuff like this.
Now, none of that kills you when you're a kid.
You might be doing some of it when you're a kid and it will kill you down the line, but it's not going to kill you as a kid.
So like, in other words, obesity amongst kids, you know what I'm saying, does not lead to a lot of deaths amongst kids, but it leads to a shit ton of deaths amongst those kids later in life.
So it's just a very kind of like misleading way to even think about these things.
There are things that are much bigger problems that maybe wouldn't necessarily outrank it on this list, if that makes sense.
Okay.
So let's jump into this article a little bit and discuss.
COVID-19 has become the eighth most common cause of death amongst children in the United States, according to a study published Monday.
Children are significantly less likely to die from COVID than any other group, according to the federal data.
COVID-19 has been the third leading cause of death in the broader population.
But it's rare for children to die of any reason, the researcher wrote.
So the burden of COVID-19 is best understood in the context of the other pediatric deaths.
And here's a quote from Dr. Sean O'Leary.
Pediatric deaths are rare by any measure.
It's something that we don't expect to happen and it's a tragedy in a unique way.
It's really a profound event.
Everyone knows that COVID is the most severe, is the most severe in the elderly and immunocompromised, and that it's less severe in children, but that does not mean it's a benign disease in children.
Just because the numbers are so much lower in children doesn't mean that they're not impactful.
So a lot of nonsense so far.
So just because there's it's just because if you have a child who does not have some like severe health issue, like they're not like, you know, they don't have leukemia and they're in the middle of treatment for it, right?
Like if you just have a kid who's like a regularly, you know, a typically healthy kid, it is statistically the probability is zero that your kid will die from COVID.
But then they could say things like, even though that number is very low, it doesn't mean it's not impactful.
Okay, sure.
That's the same thing that news anchor said the last time.
Well, the people that died were affected.
Yeah, but if we're making decisions for large groups of people, yeah, anytime anything tragic happens, it's tragic for that person.
When a person gets struck by lightning, it's tragic that he got struck by lightning.
For the rest of us to orchestrate our lives around the risk of getting struck by lightning would be really stupid.
Or for the rest of us to have an investment strategy I said the last time of winning the lottery is retirement would be really stupid.
That's not the way like these people are literally going, hey, let's make stupid decisions.
Let's not look at large numbers.
And they know this, Rob, as we pointed out, they know this because you never see them applying this logic to the vaccine.
Right.
It's that simple.
I mean, they don't exactly say this ever, but no one actually can argue with the straight face that no one's died from the vaccine.
Right.
Like this, right?
So to those people, you know what, Rob, it was impactful.
It was really impactful.
To those people, like that, like, isn't that just the counter right away to who was it who said it?
Was it Neil deGrasse Tyson?
One of them who said they go to those people who died, it really meant something.
It's like, yeah, same with the vaccine.
So there you go.
Proof against anyone taking the vax.
Thanks for letting me know that pediatric deaths are tragic in its own unique way.
They're different than other deaths, but still tragic.
I mean, can we get more into the minutia about things that were fucking obvious?
Yeah, really, really.
Okay.
In 2019, the last year before the pandemic, the leading cause of death amongst children and young adults aged 0 to 19 included parenthal parenatal conditions, unintentional injuries, congenital malformations and deformations, assault, suicide, malignant neoplasms, disease of the heart and influenza and pneumonia.
The researchers analysis, the researchers analysis of data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that there were 821 COVID-19 deaths in this age group during a 12-month period of August 21st to July of August 2021 through July of 2022.
The death rate about one for every 100,000 children ages 0 to 19 ranks eighth compared with the 2019 data.
It ranks fifth amongst adolescents age 15 to 19.
So that is what you're looking at there.
They say one out of every 100,000 children age 0 to 19.
And even that, I would be skeptical of.
Even that, that's the number they could come up with.
You know what I'm saying?
But that does kind of, you know, put it in a little bit better perspective.
COVID-19 deaths displaced influenza and pneumonia becoming the top cause of death caused by any infectious or respiratory disease.
It caused substantially more deaths than any vaccine preventable disease historically, the researchers wrote.
Not clear if they're saying that that means kids or not.
But of course, this is also very misleading if you're looking through this time period, because if you remember, the flu disappeared.
Whether it really disappeared or didn't really disappear, that's up for you to figure out for yourself.
But the flu, basically, they were counting no deaths.
So yes, in that period, it might be true that they counted more COVID deaths, but there's no debate that the flu is deadlier for children.
Like if you get the flu, you have a higher chance of dying.
Still incredibly unlikely that a kid is going to die from the flu, but that flu is definitely more risky to kids.
So this is a very like intentionally manipulative way to put that.
That, well, in this time period when there was no flu, you are more likely to, you know, die from this.
But right now, in the time period we're in, there is the flu again, conveniently.
And that's much worse.
You should be more concerned about that.
There's no argument at all that if your kid, if your kid had to have COVID, the flu or RSV, you'd absolutely want COVID every single time.
No question.
It's really deadly if we also group in all these other diseases and count those numbers.
Yeah, that's right.
Which, by the way, is unironically what they're doing right now to scare people about their kids, right?
They call it the tri-demic or something like that.
But they go, well, if you look at COVID, the flu and RSV all together.
It's all to be afraid of.
Now we can piece together something to be afraid of.
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By the way, one of the things that's so disturbing about that that they never point out is that the reason why kids are getting so sick right now is because of the measures that our insane governments put into place during COVID.
There's a huge factor.
I've talked to several doctors about this.
My kids' pediatrician, a couple other people who I know.
And you can see it.
I also just like, I see it all around me.
This is kids today.
If you have a kid anywhere between like, say, three and five around that age, they're, they're getting sick left and right right now.
And the reason is because in 2020, everything was shut down.
In 2021, everything was pretty much still shut down.
And that last cold and flu season was of 2021 going into 2022.
Things were still pretty shut down.
There was still a ton of like masking and all this other insane stuff.
And now it's kind of like the first winter, the winter of 2022 going into 2023.
And these kids didn't get the colds that they were supposed to get in the last couple of years.
They didn't build up their immune system.
And so now they're paying for it.
And they'll ultimately still probably be fine.
It's just now they have to get sick over and over.
But so then they'll use that and go, oh, this is a really bad RSV season, a really bad flu season, a really bad cold season.
And there's still COVID there.
So that's enough to like talk about, wait, maybe we should bring masks back or something like that.
It's very, very dishonest.
What was the, what was the last line?
Do you mind rereading that about that it's a higher threat or higher death rate than any other vaccine something?
It said it caused, quote, substantially, end quote, more deaths than any vaccine preventable disease historically, the researchers wrote.
What is that like?
So when before we had a vaccine for measles, you're saying it wouldn't count.
It wouldn't count because it wasn't a vaccine preventable disease yet.
So they're only going to measure probably after you had the vaccine.
So in other words, all the other vaccines work.
And so they put an end to the problem.
Zero Chance of Kid Death Claims00:08:04
That would be another way to look at it.
This is the only one that the vaccine doesn't work.
So it's the high, got the highest vaccine preventable because it's not vaccine preventable.
Well, they're trying to argue it's because you haven't gotten the vaccine.
The problem is that they're not actually establishing that the vaccine is going to stop this from happening, which is the other, you know, point to this.
Okay, because here, by the way, this is, this should clear things up of what they're arguing in the next the next paragraph.
According to CDC data, children are less vaccinated against COVID-19 than any other age group in the U.S. Less than 10% of eligible children have gotten their updated booster shots, and more than 90% of children under five are completely unvaccinated.
Could you believe that, Rob?
90% of children under five are completely unvaccinated.
What a tragedy.
Now, but if you see, this is like just how it's not just dishonest.
It's like so fucking evil.
As you see what they do and they do these things like this is not, again, this is not in the CNN opinion piece section.
This is in CNN health.
And they present this as like, look, we're just sitting here telling you about a new study and giving you some data.
It's like reading about kids without food in Africa where you're just reading it like, oh my God, why can't we do something for them?
It's like, that's the way it's presented.
These kids are just left unvaccinated.
And even worse than that, first they give you this very like, it's not that the data is manipulated.
It might be.
I don't actually know.
I wouldn't be surprised if it was.
But they present it in a very dishonest way to make it sound much worse than it is.
And then the very next paragraph is, according to the CDC, you know, most of these kids aren't vaccinated.
Now, they haven't actually at any point made like an objective point about like, we know that this vaccine will prevent these kids from dying or we know that this will, but they put it in the order to let you clearly draw the conclusion that you're like, oh, well, that's why that's the problem.
All right, continuing to the article, quote, if we looked at all those other leading causes of death, whether you're talking about motor vehicle accidents or childhood cancer, and we said, gosh, if we had some simple, safe thing we could do to get rid of those, wouldn't we just jump at it?
And we have that with the COVID vaccine, says O'Leary.
What is also a, who is also a professor of pediatric infectious disease at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and Children's Hospital, Colorado.
So this is where they're going.
And here's just a quote from some, again, this isn't an opinion piece.
We're just delivering the news.
Here's a quote from one doctor.
Do you think they're going to have a quote from another doctor who argues that that's absolutely ridiculous?
That there's really no scientific justification for vaccinating your three-year-old, which is also, by the way, to the credit of the American people, why 90% of them have not.
A CDC survey of blood samples suggests that more than 90% of children have already had COVID-19 at least once.
That's why they better be vaccinated.
I mean, you better imprint them with a very specific immunity that no longer works for the current variants as opposed to the natural immunity that might leave other functions still in place.
Make sure the antibodies are left.
Let's not be concerned with natural immunity, T cells, or your other systems.
Let's imprint.
Let me just read this next paragraph.
I'm going to reread that short paragraph and read the next one real quick.
A CDC survey of blood samples suggests that more than 90% of children have already had COVID-19 at least once.
There is uncertainty about exactly how much risk the virus will continue to pose, O'Leary said, but the potential benefits of vaccination clearly outweigh any potential risks.
How can that be if you don't know the risks?
I'm just sorry, if you're literally saying I don't know the risks, but the potential benefits outweigh the risk.
You haven't quantified the risks.
How can you possibly know that you're literally telling me you don't have the second half of the equation?
Oh, they don't have the first half of the equation.
No, I'm saying if you want to make a comparison between the benefits and the risk, but you're saying we don't know the risks, so how can you possibly do a comparison?
No, but you're openly telling me you don't have the information.
He's even saying there's, but I'm saying it's even more than that.
He's openly saying that they don't have the information for the benefits either, because they're saying there's uncertainty about exactly how much risk the virus will continue to pose.
So if you don't even know, and let's be clear about this, like again, let me say this.
Of children who are not catastrophically ill, okay?
And I'm not downplaying how horrific that is, that some kids are catastrophically ill.
It's the worst thing in the world.
But of children who are not catastrophically ill, who have already had COVID, how many in the entire country have gotten COVID for a second time and had a serious negative outcome?
I mean, hospitalized or died from it.
What's the number?
And I'm telling you, it's zero.
Produce one case.
That is my challenge to all of you.
And I will issue a public apology.
Produce one case of a healthy kid who had COVID and has natural immunity and got it the second time and something and died.
You cannot find one.
I promise you, not one.
It's rare enough that there's a healthy kid that's ever died of COVID.
There's only a handful of those cases.
You're never finding one the second time around.
So in other words, those 90% of kids who have already had COVID once, there is so no need to even think about this.
It's ridiculous.
Just the safest group of people from COVID you could possibly be.
Okay.
And then just to say the, well, the potential benefits of the vaccination clearly outweigh any potential risks.
Like show your work on that one.
Like show your work.
Since there's zero benefit, if there's any risk at all, the risk outweighs the benefit.
So that's essentially the argument I'm making is that there is zero chance, zero, zero, zero chance that your kid dies from COVID.
And it's not zero of the vaccine.
Okay.
So that's that already, I think, disproves the argument that the benefits clearly outweigh the costs.
And now a quote, vaccination clearly is our best option right now, and the benefits clearly outweigh the risks, he said.
Better safe than sorry.
So he threw in two clearlies and then a slogan, better safe than sorry.
I actually agree with the better safe than sorry part.
That's why my kids will not be getting vaccinated because I agree.
I'd rather be safe than sorry.
Back to the article.
The findings of the new study published in JAMA network open may underestimate the mortality burden of COVID-19 because the analysis focuses on deaths where COVID-19 was an underlying cause of death, but not those where it may have been a contributing factor, the researcher wrote.
Also, other analysis of excess deaths suggests that COVID-19 deaths have been underreported.
Also, other analysis suggest it's overreported.
But as COVID-19 continues to spread in the U.S., the researchers say that intervention methods such as vaccinations and ventilation will continue to play an important role on limiting transmission of the virus and mitigating severe disease.
CNN Ratings and Political Distrust00:04:48
So that's the article.
What a steaming pile of crap.
And just in the most despicable way, like trying to convince people that they should be afraid for the lives of their kids about something that clearly poses no risk.
It's just not true.
I'm sorry.
There's just no one who's calling like balls and strikes on this down the middle who is telling you that this is anything to be worried about, that your kid's going to die from COVID.
It's just ridiculous.
I guess we're lucky no one's listening to or watching CNN anymore.
Yeah.
Yeah, that is, that is true.
Oh, yeah.
You saw you sent me that thing the other day that we're beating CNN in the in the demo.
Yeah, well, they say that 25 to 4, 25 to 50 is like the most lucrative demo.
And we have more, we have more in that category than they do during prime time.
And I'm sure their prime time numbers are distorted by the fact that it's still left on in gyms and airports and how many people are even like, you know, that tuned into it as opposed to just having it on the background.
Right.
It's wild to think about how negligible their influence is if during prime time they're smaller than we are amongst 25 to 40 year olds.
Yeah, you throw in the nursing home numbers and they're a little bit larger, but in terms of like actively engaged human individuals, we're killing them.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's, but there's something really kind of, you know, interesting about that.
And especially that just, you know, I mean, when you see, you know, when you see pieces like this, you kind of understand why.
You understand why.
Who's it?
Glenn Greenwald had a great, a great tweet about this recently.
I'm trying to just pull that up right here.
But that really, you know, it just says it's kind of like a similar point that we've made before.
But he was talking about, I think specifically CNN or MSNBC.
I can't remember which one.
Let me see if I can find it.
He was just talking about the way that they covered the Hunter Biden laptop thing and how it's like there's like this just blatant, you know, like this one.
I guess with the with the Trump-Russia collusion story, there'll probably still be some people as ridiculous as it is who hold on to this idea that like, no, well, there was something there, right?
Didn't we just played, who was it?
Was it Scarborough who was holding on to that recently?
Well, no, the fact that the FBI agent went down proves that we can't trust the verdict of that or something like that.
You know, which is obviously completely absurd.
But when it comes to the idea that Hunter Biden's laptop was Russian propaganda, that it was a fake, and that wasn't actually Hunter Biden's laptop.
That is one that everyone's given up on.
Like there is nobody in the corporate press even who will look you in the eyes and still tell you that that's the case.
Now, they could perhaps say, well, at the time it seemed this way.
They might get you, you know, they might be willing to hold on to that.
I can't find the tweet here, but whatever.
It's fine.
So they may hold on to that.
Let's say they could wiggle out and go, well, at the time, it did seem like it was Russian disinformation.
That's not good enough because they'll even have to admit it turned out it wasn't.
And they know that they broadcast this message to their viewers, like that they told them right before the election not to think about this story because it was Russian disinformation.
And none of them come and apologize about that.
Even when they correct the record, none of them in a sincere way or even in any way go like, we really gave you bad information right before you were about to vote for the president of the United States.
Not a single one of them.
So when you see these numbers of CNN, like their ratings dwindling and stuff like that, it's just like, it's so well deserved.
It's so obvious why.
And this is one of the most, you know, this is one of, but we talk about a lot of things that are very easy to get kind of like depressed about of the state of affairs in this country.
But this is one of the things that's really exciting about the time we live in now is that people really have, it's not just like us, that a huge portion of the population has really realized, oh yeah, these guys are just not to be trusted.
And just to be clear on this, Rob, if you want like the actual numbers on it, here's a quote from therap.com that was measuring these numbers.
Sheath Underwear Sponsor Segment00:02:11
CNN has notched its lowest ratings in nine years across all its day parts, averaging just 444,000 viewers in prime time, 93,000 in the all-important 25 to 54 news demo.
And in the day, they averaged 80,000 in that demo.
Nothing.
Yeah.
It's pretty incredible.
It's pretty incredible to think like that an operation like ours can beat this operation that includes, I mean, I used to work at CNN.
You know what I mean?
This operation, you go to the Turner building and it's like a fucking skyscraper with like a whole, you know, you know, penthouse, you know, offices and windows and multiple different professional studios and all of this stuff.
And like, yeah, just pretty, pretty interesting to think about.
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Metadata Accusations Against CNN00:07:17
Glenn Greenwald tweeted, he said, this is so well deserved and good for the country.
CNN turned itself into a fanatical political pact during the Trump era and had a few quick sugar highs, hired an army of U.S. security state operatives and ratified one lie after the next with no retractions or accountability.
Just look at this alone.
Oh, here, this is a good one here, Brian.
I'm going to send this to you.
This is what I wanted to play before.
One second.
Let me just send this over to Brian.
Okay.
So whenever you get a chance, Brian, I just sent you over this video.
So this is one that he goes, Glenn Greenwald says, just look at this alone.
Everyone who works at CNN knows it spread an outright lie before the 2020 election.
No one ever told their audience it was false or that they spread it, let alone apologized for it.
And here is the CNN tweet.
It's a tweet from, of course, the former director of national intelligence, James Clapper, or it's a clip with the former director of intelligence, James Clapper, of course, who famously lied to Congress without any consequences about how the NSA wasn't involved in any collection of metadata.
Here's the clip.
Obama.
So, Director, a bunch of questions from this.
Let me just start with this.
How much does the source matter, right?
So you hear the story of this laptop.
We don't know a lot.
We do know that the way that this information is getting out is through Steve Bannon and Rudy Giuliani.
How much does the source matter here?
Well, source matters a lot.
And the timing matters a lot, I think.
And to me, this is this classic textbook, Soviet Russian tradecraft at work.
The Russians have analyzed the target.
They understand that the president and his enablers crave dirt on Vice President Biden, whether it's real or contrived.
That doesn't matter to them.
And so all of a sudden, two and a half weeks before the election, this laptop appears somehow without emails on it without any metadata.
It just, it's all very curious.
But so here you have a willing target and the Russians are very sophisticated about how to exploit a willing target.
And to me, that's what's at work here.
And so, you know, when you try to figure out the specifics of, you know, whether that meeting email, for example, is real in the midst of this.
Do you think stuff like that could just have been planted in there and be completely fake?
I do.
I think the emails could be contrived, particularly since, as I understand it from what I've read, they appear without any metadata.
That is, you know, from to any technical data, at least immediately evident.
Now, if this computer is in the hands of the FBI, they have obviously excellent, sophisticated technical and forensic analytic capabilities.
And I think they'll be able to sort it out whether this is genuine or not.
But, you know, it's all pretty curious, given, again, two and a half weeks out from the election.
Just to be like clear about this, everyone at CNN knows this is bullshit.
They know like now.
I mean, a lot of them probably knew at the time.
I don't know.
We certainly knew at the time.
Maybe this is why we're beating them in that demo.
You know what I mean?
Because like at the time, we were telling you this is clearly real.
But everyone at CNN knows now and they know that they propagated that right before the election.
By the way, all the stuff he was talking about with metadata, that's just not true.
It's just a flat out lie.
And the other thing that we also know now is that the FBI did have the laptop.
They already had a copy of the hard drive well before this.
So all of those techniques that the FBI could use, yep, they used it and knew it was legit.
So it's not certainly at least the intelligence apparatus knew already that this was that this was legit and just allowed their people, their spokesmen to go out and propagate this bullshit.
But no apology, no even like admission that they did this.
And they'll just keep using this guy as an expert.
You know, like that's just, that's just the way it works.
So yeah, no wonder.
No wonder they're, and then they blame all the, you know, oh, but there's all this misinformation online.
That's the real problem.
Isn't it wild considering their track record of just being blatantly wrong to accuse anyone of misinformation?
It is really.
It's just unbelievable.
It's unbelievable.
I mean, even when you see like something like when they're talking about the war with Russia, that it's like it, it almost never comes up.
You know, I was, I, I, I had a debate with a couple of guys over this stuff.
And like we were talking about whether Russia was provoked or not.
And I really was making the point that I go, it's like, do you, I go, we literally accused them of stealing the democratic, the democracy away from the American people in 2016.
And then we are, not just like random people did this, like the CIA, like the people who start wars accused them of robbing our democracy, overthrowing our government, basically.
Certainly, if that were true, it would be a justification for us to respond, right?
We accused them of that in 2016 and then came out in 2020 and said they did it again.
Like, you're honestly going to tell me that's not a provocation.
That's not like provoking a country to feel like, oh, wow, they're setting up a war with us.
Really?
There's nothing that, but even this, it's like stories like, you remember the bounties on soldiers' heads story in Afghanistan?
They said that Vladimir Putin was putting bounties on U.S. soldiers' heads.
It's just completely made up.
And they just ran with that.
Like, that's, if, if you're like coming at this from, you know, Putin's perspective, wouldn't you see things like that and go, they are setting up the pretext for the pretense for a war here?
Like, it would clearly, the most war-hungry country in the world is claiming that we like committed an act of war against them when we didn't.
Maybe not that wise to do that to the country with the biggest stockpile of nuclear arms.
Maybe not smart.
Anyway, we're really entering a time.
And this is what CNN's ratings are kind of reflecting.
We're just entering a time where it seems like people are just laughing at these people in the corporate press.
Like it's just like they're just, there's such a like punching bag almost.
And I want to play this next clip and I don't mean to say that, I don't mean to say that people are laughing at this woman who clearly has a very like unfortunate and tragic story here, but this is another one that's really just demonstrating what's going on, like particularly in cable news.
Sam Harris Health Scare Update00:15:17
But we go from CNN over to their sister company, MSNBC.
Let's play this clip.
Well, I have been dealing with a little bit of a health scare.
On December 20th, I began to feel chest pains and they waxed and waned over a period of 10 days.
I wasn't quite sure what to make of it, but as they continued to get worse, I started to think something was actually wrong.
It was December 30th when I finally went to an urgent care and was told I had reflux.
I didn't really buy it, but I was relieved it wasn't my heart.
My body, though, was pretty certain not to believe the reflux.
The next day on December 30th, I woke up with severe pains both in my chest and in my left shoulder, and it was like a tightening in my chest when I took deep breaths that got worse when I was laying flat.
I knew enough at that moment to understand that it could mean, could is the keyword here that I was having a heart attack, especially because it was happening in the left part of my shoulder.
I want to remind you, I run seven miles three to four times a week, or I did.
I do yoga.
I don't eat meat.
I don't smoke.
I drink occasionally.
Not right now, though, because my doctor tells me I can't.
Aside from probably not getting enough sleep and working too much, I'm a pretty healthy person.
But on that day, I was anything but.
My husband drove me to the emergency room and from there, the nightmare that has been my January began.
I was diagnosed with pericarditis, inflammation of the lining of my heart, brought on by a virus, a literal common cold.
I also had fluid around my heart that had to be drained or else it could hinder the beating of my heart.
I was hospitalized for four nights and transferred from a local hospital to NYU Langone here in New York City.
On January 4th, I was finally discharged after doctors drained the fluid around my heart and I bounced out of the hospital.
I couldn't get out of there fast enough with the hopes I was on the mend.
But that was not the end.
Three days later, I was readmitted when I felt a flutter in my heart, like a butterfly.
It was inside my chest.
They determined I had developed myocarditis, inflammation of the actual heart now, the heart muscle.
I remember being shepherded through the emergency room and wondering, is this it?
It wasn't, thank God.
Instead, I spent five more days in the hospital where they ran a battery of tests, adjusted my meds, and made sure nothing else was fueling what was happening.
And in fact, in the end, it was still just the cold that was doing all of this that had caused all of this inflammation in and around my heart.
Like, that's a horrible, horrible thing to happen.
And I will say, I don't know.
I'm no doctor.
I don't know, Rob.
But you know, Rob, as well as I do, that privately, this woman is thinking to herself, maybe it wasn't a cold that gave me myocarditis.
Maybe not.
How many, how many has, how many has this MSNBC host had at this point?
And we know it increases your risk for myocarditis.
How, how on earth?
I mean, all right, Vaughan, you want to come out here and tell me what we definitely know what it was.
And it turns out it was, she's not even claiming COVID.
Same, it was a cold.
A cold gave me myocarditis.
Like all right, that's pretty new.
That's pretty new.
Colds have been around for a long time.
Young, healthy people who run seven miles a day uh, who you know, developing myocarditis.
That's been, that has been happening a lot and yet, all of a sudden, you know, something between 2021 and now has really led to an uptick in it.
I'm sure it's the cold.
I'm sure that's what it is.
At least she was smarter than some of her coworkers and was fully up to date with the boosters.
Because think about how much worse the myocarditis could have been if she had only had three boosters.
Oh, God, that's evil and goddamn hilarious.
I mean, I'm just saying that it's like this is, what was the term that Dr. Malone was using about it, the mass psychosis, something like that.
It's like this thing where it's like, we all know that everyone involved, including her, is at the very least wondering.
You know what I mean?
And yet you're going to come on and tell everyone else it's definitely not this thing.
Isn't there something so profoundly wrong about that?
You know, like, it's like, hey, if you had to go through this, like, don't tell everybody else that it can't possibly be this thing that we all know it could possibly be.
Why?
Why do that?
Hey, because some people, you know what they like more than their health?
It's money.
Money.
Go down with all the riches.
Yeah.
Money doesn't mean much if you're, if you're going to die.
I mean, it's like, it's almost like your health or your narrative.
Which one do you want more?
It's really, it's just so disturbing.
All this COVID stuff, man, it's just so goddamn crazy.
We still can't stop talking about it because it's just like the craziest thing that's ever happened to our society.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
Here, I wanted to, here, I want to play a little bit also of the Brett Weinstein clip.
I really, really enjoyed this.
Speaking of this topic, Brett Weinstein is just, for people who know, is like a really brilliant guy.
He's been very, very solid on all of this, this COVID stuff.
And I give him a lot of credit for that.
He's also just a very, very smart guy.
And so I really appreciate that he's out there kind of telling the truth.
I want to play this video.
He made a response to Sam Harris here.
If you remember a few episodes back, we covered Sam Harris's insanity.
And yeah.
Anyway, let's play a little bit of this video.
Noticed that Sam Harris showed up in lots of places.
He was trending on Twitter for some stuff that he said.
And weirdly enough, from my perspective, what he said was about me.
And wow, I didn't like it all that.
So the question is what to do about it.
I didn't mention it last week in part because I did need a little process and it was going to take longer than pulling over to the side of the road to get past that process in order to do anything reasonable with this.
But I don't know how we ended up here.
From my perspective, and I understand that there are in some sense two planets.
There's planet, what I think is planet reality.
Right.
And on planet reality, I believe Sam Harris has been wrong about just about everything related to COVID.
And you and I have not been right from the beginning, but we rapidly got writer and writer.
Every place we got something wrong, we fixed it.
And we now have a set of positions that as strange and remarkable as they are, do appear to be borne out by the evidence and are very robust.
Okay.
Things happen.
COVID was complex.
Guy got some stuff wrong.
What I don't understand is why he's on the offensive, right?
Why is he taking a victory lap?
Why is he torturing logic in order to rescue his ripeness from the evidence?
None of that makes any sense.
And at some level, I guess he's entitled to do that.
But what he's not entitled to do, and you know, look, Sam, among other things, is a moral philosopher.
And my claim is going to be that Sam is not entitled to be taking a victory lap where he has been wrong and making the arguments that he's making if he is not also willing to make those arguments to me so that we can pressure test them.
Now, I will say.
Okay, let's pause it there.
So Brett goes on to essentially offer, and these guys have both, they're both very big.
They've both done a lot of things together in the past.
Like he moderated the debates between Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson.
They had like a long series of debates between the two of them.
And he's specifically calling him out in these videos.
So I think Brett's absolutely right to say like, hey, dude, if you're going to like take a victory lap on, you know, in the most ridiculous, absurd way that Sam Harris did, he really ought to, you know, like step up.
And Brett offers him like basically any type of like format or scenario that he wants to.
He's like, you could just come on my podcast.
We could go on a neutral podcast.
We could submit like all of our information beforehand so that I'm not hitting you with any studies like you haven't seen before and you don't know how to respond to them or something like that.
I reached out to Brett Weinstein.
I messaged him and said that he I thought that was great that he did that.
And that I said that I thought Sam Harris will not take you up on your offer, but regardless that that in itself will demonstrate something powerful.
And he responded back and said he enjoyed our take on Sam Harris.
But I also said this to him that, you know, I don't think he responded to this, at least not yet, but I just messaged him back this.
But I said that, you know, from my perspective, and I don't know Sam Harris, But I also said, I don't think this is a new phenomenon since COVID.
I think COVID clearly, you know, I think Trump and COVID kind of broke the guy a little bit.
But I remember when Sam Harris used to have his like defense of torture.
I said, no, no pun intended, but what Brett Weinstein described as tortured logic.
He would do the same thing.
It was this same hypothetical nonsense, like starting from a hypothetical, if things weren't at all the way they are.
Well, then I'd be right.
And so then I'm right.
Like he would literally go, he would say these things like, he'd be like, he'd write these pieces like in defense of torture when after Bush Cheney had like started torturing people and be like, well, I mean, if Manhattan was about to be nuked and the only way to get the information was to torture it out of somebody, I think we'd all say torture is justified.
Therefore, get most cool.
You know, and you're like, what?
But we're torturing people when that's nothing like that is even the situation.
And you're also just presuming that torture actually yields good results and that we would be able to get the right information out of him that way.
You know what I mean?
It's like, what, like, none of this makes any sense, but it was all, he always argued in this style.
And he does it in his very like, you know, highfalutin kind of like with my, I'm an intellectual voice on, but it's all still just terrible.
And anyway, I would, on the off chance that Sam Harris actually takes Brett Weinstein up on this, I would really love to see that, that debate.
I would love to see, I wish there would be more, particularly for people who, you know, it's one thing when you have these people in the corporate press bubble that we were just talking about before, where they're like in this apparatus that somehow is still, it feels like it's a zombie apparatus.
Like we were talking about CNN has lower ratings than us in the key demo, but yet their budget has got to be, I don't know, a hundred times higher than us.
That seems like a zombie situation.
Like this can only last for so much longer.
But in the meantime, Don Lemon's making $10 million a year.
You know what I mean?
So like in the meantime, he's not coming on the podcast to like debate me.
He doesn't like feel like he has to.
But I do think for people who are outside of that protection of like the big budget world, like for people who are like making their their living or who are keeping their name from their podcast or their social media or something like that, I think there should be like enormous pressure put on those people that they got to like actually sit down with some of the competent people who have opposed the COVID regime and argue these points.
Like this thing was just too big and too important that you're like, no, This is it.
Like either you lose all credibility right now and no one downloads your podcast anymore, or you got to like actually either admit you got it wrong or step up to somebody and argue your point.
I'll volunteer right now.
I'll argue it out with anyone, with any high profile person who was who was supportive of the COVID regime or the vax regime or any of that.
I'll argue it out with them.
There's got to be some type of process like that.
We're not going to be able to convince any MSNBC host to do it, but we might be able to put enough pressure on a Sam Harris type that like, this is it.
Like your credibility is done unless you accept this offer.
And so I'm kind of, I'm intrigued by this.
I think it could be like a kind of healthy cleansing process.
I think that the best case scenario is they agree to do it, some of them, and just get smoked, which they will because there's really no way to defend these positions.
And even if they just refuse to do it, I think that could be a real win in itself.
Well, hopefully we get to see that.
Yeah, it would be, it would be really, really very interesting.
Very, very interesting to see that.
All right.
We're going to wrap up there.
Thank you, everybody, for listening.
Do not forget, we will be out coming up.
The next one is Dallas and Fort Worth out there.
Me and Robbie the fireburn scene coming out there.
Or I guess the next one, I'll be out in L.A.
I think I'm doing some shows at the comedy store and then recording some podcasts and stuff like that.
So that should be fun.
And then the following weekend, me and Robbie out in Dallas and Fort Worth and then Detroit after that.
And then a whole bunch more after that.
ComicdaveSmith.com for all the ticket links.
And remind them, where are your shows that are coming up, Rob?
I got Fairfield this weekend with Justin Silver.
And then in two weekends, opening up for Ryan Long.
Beaka Chris also hanging on that.
That's going to be a drinking fucking Buffalo weekend.