Dave Smith and Robbie the Fire Bernstein analyze Trump's Ohio aid tour versus Biden's Ukraine distraction, debunking media narratives about chemical accidents while debating NATO expansion as a primary war catalyst. They explore China's potential gamble on Russian victory to influence Taiwan policy, critique Vivek Ramaswamy's shift from libertarianism to conservatism regarding virtue, and argue that statism inherently causes cultural decay by disincentivizing wealth creation. Ultimately, the episode suggests current geopolitical failures stem from misplaced priorities and an overreliance on government mandates rather than market forces or moral clarity. [Automatically generated summary]
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Why Government Is Too Big00:03:28
Fill her up.
You are listening to the Cash Digital Network.
We need to roll back the state.
We spy on all of our own citizens.
Our prisons are flooded with nonviolent drug offenders.
If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
You're listening to part of the problem on the Gash Digital Network.
Here's your host, Dave Smith.
What's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
I am Dave Smith.
He is Robbie the Fire Bernstein on location.
What's up, brother?
I'm out in Buffalo.
All I need is a clock that doesn't move.
It'll look like we're in the same room.
You son of a bitch.
It does need a battery.
It's more of a decorative clock than anything else.
Buffalo.
I think it brings the whole room together.
Well, thank you.
I appreciate it.
A lot of snow on the ground up there.
Dude, it is literally an ice sheet.
You can go ice skating by walking outdoors.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Buffalo in the window.
I'm going to be pulling slip and falls all weekend, buddy.
Oh, dude, it's just fucking great.
It's great.
I have like a real steep driveway.
You've been in my house, Rob.
I have like a real steep driveway.
And it snowed.
This last month, it snowed and really iced over.
And I was just bringing my garbage out.
And oh, man, you would give anything to have a copy of the video.
You took a good old man's spill?
I took a nice spill.
And then it's, and then there's just like nothing you could do.
Like, I'm just halfway through this very steep driveway.
And you're like, God's hands now.
And it's not even, the falling wasn't even the funny part.
It was the seven almost falls.
Like, if you just watch that, there's nothing funny.
Just a lot of that.
And then, and then I had to like sidestep my way down.
Yeah, it was great.
And this is the cursed thing about like being a professional comedian in these moments is it's like I'm living in how funny I think this is while it's happening.
Like I'm still scared.
And I'm also already thinking like, oh my God, I wish I had a video of this because this is just so hilarious.
And then you're also like, please don't break my, I really don't want my kids to find that.
That's my gay lover.
That's all right.
That just, that happened.
Okay.
I told him to stay out of the shot, but Buffalo, they got good men up here.
Who are you?
Who are you doing gigs with up there?
That was Chris Vega.
Ryan Long's in the other room.
We had a fun night.
Very nice.
Chris will be opening for me in Providence, Rhode Island next month.
By the way, before that one, me and Robbie the Fireburn scene will be in Pottstown, Pennsylvania.
Come on out and see us in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, Souljoles Comedy Club, and then back in Providence, Rhode Island.
Rob is not able to make it for the stand-up shows on that, but he will be in town on Sunday for the live part of the problem podcast.
So Rob will be dropping in that weekend and Chris will be doing covering for Rob on the rest of the shows.
Bunch more stuff coming up.
ComicDaveSmith.com for all the tickets, links.
And of course, Rob's got, you got a weekly show in New York City now.
Yeah, Cafe Bohemia every Wednesday, 8 p.m., promo code FIRE for $5 tickets.
You can get that at robbythefire.com.
And then got my steamboat gig coming up, and that's about it.
All right.
All right.
Sounds good.
Okay.
So a lot of interesting things that I wanted to talk about for today's episode.
One major story that I thought was so interesting.
Trump's Resonant Appearance00:15:24
You know, every now and then, and I feel like Donald Trump has been, he's been largely removed from the kind of high profile position that he occupied for, you know, basically his whole life, but particularly in the realm of politics from say like 2016 to 2020.
You know, he's not on Twitter, although technically I guess he could be, but maybe he's contractually obligated not to use his Twitter.
He's not, you know, his rallies aren't covered on television every day like they used to be.
But he's still there, just doesn't quite have the megaphone that he used to have.
And I personally think Donald Trump is a much weaker political force than he was in 2016, or certainly when he was the president.
I think he doesn't have the same magic.
I think his enormous failures during the COVID regime are very, very challenging to make up for, especially as we've said before on the show, especially when your whole thing is like, bottom line, I win, you know, and then your final year in office is the biggest L in modern American history.
It's just, it's hard to rectify that or reconcile that.
It's very hard to be the guy bragging about creating the vaccines when pretty much your entire base has, you know, turned on this, the whole vaccine regime.
But every now and then you do see a moment where you realize like kind of the political brilliance that Donald Trump has.
And quite often, it's hard to even call it political brilliance.
It's almost just, as I've said before, it's almost like there are these, this winning hand that no one in the establishment wants to play.
And Donald Trump's just like, these cards are just laying on the floor.
But these are pocket aces.
I'll play pocket aces.
Those are really good hands.
It's like securing the border.
It's just such a like common sense thing that like the vast majority of Americans want.
It's like an unbelievable political winner.
And you have, you know, the left flirting with basically like de facto open borders.
And then you have, you know, like even the Republicans like Jeb Bush would be like, well, they come here for compassion because they're such great people and blah, blah, blah.
And then Trump's like, build a wall.
Everyone's like, I like that guy.
It's just like no one else is willing to play this hand.
And he's willing to play this thing that's very politically popular.
So in a move of political brilliance, Joe Biden makes this trip out to Eastern Europe, pops by the war zone in Ukraine, and then over to Poland and all this stuff, rallying support, promising another half a billion dollars or whatever for Ukraine.
And he's out there talking about how we're going to take care of your social security or whatever they call it out there in Ukraine, their pensions and shit like that.
And Donald Trump just goes, you know what I'm going to do?
I'm going to go to Ohio.
I'm going to go there and start handing out things.
And it is just so obvious.
And okay, Ron DeSantis, I mean, he's not officially running for president yet, but there's a lot of speculation of that.
He's kind of not in a position where he can do things like that.
When you're the governor of Florida, you can't just go to Ohio and start doing things for their people.
You're in a way kind of committing the same crime that Biden is.
You know what I mean?
By going to Ohio.
But Trump's like, I'm free to do this.
I got money in the bank.
I'm just going to fly there and buy a bunch of shit and hand it out to people.
It's a really smart move that I think is much like playing the immigration card.
It's just such a winning hand to play.
Like, okay, yeah, yeah, while Joe Biden was off worried about doing things for the Ukrainians, I'm worried about doing things for Americans.
It fits right into his whole America first brand.
I don't know what else to say about it other than it was just a fucking brilliant move by Donald Trump.
Couldn't agree more.
And it's amazing how many losses he's taken prior to this.
You got COVID, you got January 6th, you've got claiming he won an election, not getting his signature agenda of a wall.
But this one was literally just right there and he actually capitalized well.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Now, of course, what was pretty funny about this was the media reaction to it.
Man, it's fun watching these people melt down.
So first I want to play as Tom Elliott, who's a great Twitter follow, he posted a bunch of these clips.
I was like, oh man, I really want to like capture some of this stuff I've seen.
And then of course he has it right there.
So let's play first.
This was a great little supercut that he put out.
That's what he calls them when he mashes these media clips together.
This was a taste of the corporate press reaction to Joe Biden going over to Ukraine.
Joe Biden has put solidarity ahead of his own personal safety.
Air raid sirens and no real guarantee of security has air raid sirens blared.
This was incredibly dramatic, Andrea.
It was historic as well.
Historic, timely, and brave.
The first American president to go to a war zone with no U.S. military presence for security on the ground.
American presidents have made dramatic trips before.
Nixon to China, Kennedy, Reagan to the Berlin Wall, and presidents have visited U.S. troops in war zones, but never like this.
To find a day of this kind of presidential bravery in a war zone, you've got to go all the way back to 1864.
With Biden's trip to Europe, you know, he is he is welcomed as not only the, frankly, the savior of Ukraine, but also the savior of Europe as a whole.
It's historic.
It's the first time that a U.S. president has gone into an active war zone that the U.S. military does not have control over.
And against all odds, it was successful.
The continuing threat, quite literally, sounding all around the two leaders.
The skies here are not safe.
And in fact, an air raid siren went off while President Biden was here.
Seeing the American president there walking the streets of Kyiv while air raid sirens literally sounded in that moment about possible incoming fire from Russia.
The wail of an air raid siren.
Air raid sirens wailing in the background, seemingly undeterred by an air raid siren.
Undeterred by the sound of air sirens.
President Biden's ability with his aviators on to walk through in broad daylight in Kyiv.
The swagger of this trip, not just the execution of the secrecy, but the swagger of it on display.
All right, there you go.
I don't even know.
Do you need to add anything to it?
This is as we flirt with a nuclear confrontation.
This is what the corporate press is giving you.
Just lapdogs.
And it's so preposterous.
All of it, just so ridiculous.
You see, the swagger, Rob.
When you see Joe Biden walk, the only thought a normal person has in their head is he is not very good at walking.
It's more of a shuffle.
It's more of an old man shuffle.
But I don't care what type of fucking sunglasses you throw on him or what sirens you have going off in the back.
We're all looking at the same picture, but they're all just, oh my God, this is amazing.
So here's the posture.
This is what's so great about what Trump did here.
Here's the posture of the corporate press.
This is amazing.
This is the greatest trip ever.
This is like Churchill and fucking, you know, this is just, I don't know.
You might have to go back to 1802 to find something as terrific and brave as this.
Just amazing.
Put unity over his own safety, just courage and swagger and the greatest thing ever.
And then Trump just goes to Ohio, turns it all around on them, turns it all around on them.
It shows how out of touch they are.
By the way, because Biden goes over to a war that is losing popular support here in America.
And their response to the Trump thing was great.
There's a bunch of clips.
We don't have enough time to play all of them, but this was one that I thought was particularly interesting on CNN, where this is, by the way, just a CNN analyst breaking down.
So let's check out this clip.
Russian aggression.
And to try to undercut that under the auspices of America First and photo ops at McDonald's passing out Branded Water isn't a sufficient response.
They want to draw the contrast, but it's a false contrast.
It's a false choice.
As you said, it's personal for you.
Your family is from there.
And you bring great perspective, John.
Thank you.
Let's see if there's some action.
The criticizing Biden.
Just fear.
What a false choice.
This idea of criticizing Biden because he, oh, this America first, you go there.
It's a total false choice.
He also mentions in there that the priority, obviously, is Ukraine.
That's what really matters.
It's not Ohio.
You're like, look, it's not a false choice.
Like, resources are finite, right?
Every bit of resources that we pour into Ukraine are resources not being poured into our country now.
That's just factually the case.
It's not a false choice at all.
Like that money is going somewhere or that.
That's like, I don't know, like try this in your personal life.
You know, if your wife's like, whatever, she's like, did you just gamble away $100,000 when we have bills that are past due?
And you go, that's a false choice.
It's not a choice between me gambling $100,000 or this.
We can do both.
It's like, no, it's actually, that's a choice.
It's so just ridiculous, but you can just see how angry it makes.
And that, of course, of course, this is a winning hand that Trump is playing.
Like there's a mushroom cloud of toxic chemicals hanging over an American city and you're going to a foreign country to worry about their problems before you've come here.
And of course, a couple days later, Pete Buttigieg did go down to the site.
But man, even that, whether it's true or not, just the optics of it are so bad for him that he comes right after Trump comes.
You know what I mean?
Like, oh, no, no, no, we're here too.
We're here too.
Anyway.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
There was another clip that I thought was really fascinating.
It's gone super viral from the Clucking Hens over at The View, which was just wonderful, right?
Kind of on the same topic.
So let's cut into that.
They would have a vote for him because of somebody who, by the way, he placed someone with deep ties to the chemical industry in charge of the EPA's chemical safety office.
That's who you voted for in that district.
Donald Trump, who reduces all safety.
He did.
Voters saw something on the ground that probably resonates.
That's the thing.
But they need to look past the photo options and say, who's doing the job here?
Forget about the photo option.
Showing up as a big showing up.
I think this is Donald Trump's fault.
So there you go.
I mean, yeah, even they have to admit.
I mean, it does seem like it'll probably resonate with people that he showed up there.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, but it's his fault.
It's Donald Trump's fault.
And their argument there, of course, is, if you can call it an argument, their argument there is that he deregulated these things.
And Joy Behard actually says in the clip at one point that he deregulated these things because there's profit in that.
And that's what these big businesses want.
They just want deregulation.
And then, see, that's the whole issue here.
First of all, just to take this apart a little bit.
First of all, Joy Behard's comment about how, you know, Donald Trump put, what did she say, someone who's in the chemical industry as the head of the EPA or whatever or something like this?
It's like, look, I'm sure she's right about that.
I don't know the person that she's referring to.
I'm sure she's right.
That's how it is across the board with all of these things.
It's one of the major problems with government regulation in general is it's like, well, who are you going to put in that role?
Someone with no industry experience?
I mean, how would that work?
Have someone with no industry experience regulate an industry?
Probably you're going to need someone with a lot of industry experience.
But then what's the problem with that?
They have, you know, they have a whole bunch of friends and private connections and things like that.
So now you have a regulator that has a conflict of interest, to say the least.
But this isn't something unique to Donald Trump.
I mean, go look at the heads of the treasury secretaries under the last 10 presidents.
See what connections they have to the finance, you know, industry, right?
They do this for every single industry.
Go through every single regulation.
But it is just really funny to watch them try to blame this on Donald Trump and then more specifically try to blame it on deregulation.
And Joy Behard said at one point that she said they want deregulation for the profits.
Like that, in other words, that's what big business wants, which is just, it's like, think this through logically for a second.
I love this, like this kind of myth that still persists that, yeah, that's what big business wants is deregulation.
They just want a free market.
That's what big business wants.
And you just wonder, then why don't they get it?
You know, like there's this weird thing in like this, in the progressive mind that can simultaneously believe that our government is hijacked by big business and that big business wants to drastically reduce the size of government.
It's like it just kind of leads to the question, then why do we live under such a big government?
Why do we have the biggest government in the world, in the history of the world, if it's run by these big businesses who really just want to reduce regulations and cut the size of government?
Why is it that like you don't see all of these huge business interests getting behind Rand Paul?
Like when Rand Paul ran for president, when Ron Paul ran for president, why weren't they just getting hundreds of millions of dollars from big business?
Because wouldn't that be the best thing they had going?
This is the guy who's really going to deregulate this economy.
So why don't they want that?
Regulated Industries vs Rand Paul00:05:26
Isn't that what's good for profits?
If that's the case, why don't we see more of it?
Why is it that like there'll be progressive shows that get like huge like infusions of money backing them up?
But like, you don't see our show getting that.
You know, like, why is it not, why is the Libertarian Party not just falling onto piles of cash if it's if the fact is that all the billionaire class really wants to live in a more libertarian economy?
It just seems like there's no good answer to that question from the progressive point of view.
The answer from the real world point of view is obvious.
It's that actually there's a lot of profits to be made in captured markets.
And that's what all of this shit is.
That's what you're dealing with with all of this.
It's like, yeah, you have regulatory capture.
Think about how regulated the financial industry is.
You think there's not profits there?
There's a lot of profits in a monopolized, cardilized industry.
And that's what we have because of government regulation.
So it's really just funny.
But anyway, that's kind of a libertarian aside.
The idea of trying to blame Donald Trump for this and just the optics of it where you're like, dude, it's not like it's two months after he was president.
It's two years after he was president.
And the idea of just being like, even they have to be like, no, look, it's going to, it'll probably play well with the voters that he went there while Biden's in Ukraine.
But, you know, don't fall for the photo op.
It's like, okay.
Well, your team isn't even given photo ops.
They're given nothing except an EPA telling you not to worry about anything.
I don't know.
Any thoughts on these view ladies, Rob?
I mean, stay it a little bit differently.
If you think that Donald Trump dangerously deregulated industries, so then day one of coming into power, shouldn't you be doing a review of everything he deregulated and taking action for the safety of Americans?
If that's actually your perspective, and if you didn't even have the wherewithal to understand that he deregulated critical industries that could endanger the American people, are you saying that the current administration is negligent?
And then let's go a little bit further.
If you were actually interested in, so tell me specifically, what did he deregulate on the trains that caused this specific accident?
And then in this specific accident being caused, was the damage and the accident or the fact that they decided to explode these chemicals?
And who made that decision?
You know what I mean?
There's just too many specifics that you guys are not exploring in any capacity to just go, oh, it was Trump's fault.
Well, one of the things that they point out that they said it was, you know, there's always six of them talking at once, even though there's only five people there.
So it's impossible to understand.
But one of the things they said is that they were like, the regulation only required one like supervisor on the train or something like that.
And there might be some truth to that.
Like, I don't know.
I don't know enough about that.
I'm sure none of these broads know either, but I have no idea.
Maybe you needed more people than that.
But it's also one of these areas where a lot of times, and this is somewhat counterintuitive, but a lot of times like market regulations, if you want to call it that, or market regulatory forces are actually much stricter than government regulation.
And so people have this knee-jerk reaction to call for more government regulation.
Whereas the fact is, as we talked about a couple episodes ago, you know, if you had something like this, like under pure market conditions, where let's say a big business didn't have the government bought off, and let's say like they'd be held responsible for any property that they damaged or they'd be held responsible for any people who they poisoned or got sick.
These things would be enormously expensive to do and you'd have to get them insured.
And those insurance companies would have a lot of demands of their own and they might actually be quite a bit more demanding than government regulations are.
You know, like for an example, if you think about like in like the banking sector, you know, you might have, you know, you have an incredibly regulated industry, one of the most regulated industries in our entire economy.
And yet you have what?
What do we have?
What are our reserve standards now?
I think they're zero.
I think technically speaking, there's no reserve standards since since COVID.
You can literally be a commercial bank and just loan out 100% of the money that people give you.
Now, I don't know exactly what it would be under market conditions, but I'd imagine there might be market forces that made it much, much tougher to do that.
So there might be some truth here, but of course, it's the same problem.
It's the problem is just that it's all a racket.
And like, you know, as you pointed out, Donald Trump put someone in there who's been a top industry guy.
Like, yes, that's what everyone does in every single regulated industry.
So anyway, just absurd argument from these ladies, but no surprise there.
Anyway, pretty funny to try to find a way to blame this whole thing on Donald Trump and point out that it's really not.
It's really meaningless that he goes there and nobody else does.
All right.
Let's say.
Okay, we did the view.
What do we got next here?
I got a couple topics.
Then we have the Trump video talking to Ukraine.
Yeah, this was pretty interesting too, especially since just on the last episode, we were talking about how DeSantis kind of came out opposing, at least partially opposing the war in Ukraine.
Ending The Ukraine War00:14:36
Donald Trump came out with, I'd say, a much stronger statement.
Yeah, let's play that clip.
World War III has never been closer than it is right now.
We need to clean house of all of the warmongers and America last globalists in the deep state, the Pentagon, the State Department, and the National Security Industrial Complex.
One of the reasons I was the only president in generations who didn't start a war is that I was the only president who rejected the catastrophic advice of many of Washington's generals, bureaucrats, and the so-called diplomats who only know how to get us into conflict, but they don't know how to get us out.
For decades, we've had the very same people, such as Victoria Newland and many others just like her obsessed with pushing Ukraine toward NATO, not to mention the State Department support for uprisings in Ukraine.
These people have been seeking confrontation for a long time, much like the case in Iraq and other parts of the world.
And now we're teetering on the brink of World War III.
And a lot of people don't see it, but I see it.
And I've been right about a lot of things.
They all say Trump's been right about everything.
None of this excuses in any way the outrageous and horrible invasion of Ukraine one year ago, which would have never happened if I was your president, not even a little chance.
But it does mean that here in America, we need to get rid of the corrupt globalist establishment that has botched every major foreign policy decision for decades.
And that includes President Biden, whose own people said he's never made a good decision when it comes to looking at other countries and looking at wars.
We have to replace them with people who support American interests.
Over our four years in the White House, we made incredible progress in putting the America last contingent aside and bringing the world to peace.
And now we're going to complete the mission.
The State Department, Pentagon, and National Security Establishment will be a very different place by the end of my administration.
In fact, just into my administration, it'll be a very different place.
And it'll get things done, just like I did four years ago.
We never had it so good.
We'll also stop the lobbyists and the big defense contractors from going in and pushing our senior military and national security officials toward conflict, only to reward them when they retire with lucrative jobs, getting paid millions and millions of dollars.
Take a look at the globalist warmonger donors backing our opponents.
That's because they're candidates of war.
I am the president who delivers peace, and it's peace through strength.
There was a reason we had no conflict.
There was a reason we didn't get into wars because other countries respected us.
I entirely built all right from the beginning, rebuilt our military.
It's a big reason for that.
They didn't want to mess around with the United States, and now they're laughing at us.
We could end the Ukraine conflict in 24 hours with the right leadership.
At the end of my next four years, the warmongers and frauds and failures of the senior ranks of our government will all be gone.
And we will have a new group of competent national security officials who believe in defending America's vital interests above all else.
Thank you very much.
Well, pretty good.
Pretty good, Rob.
I got to say.
I mean, really, it seemed like something that Scott Horton could have written for Trump to say.
He's like, here's how you say it.
And be as braggadocious as you want to.
Talk about how great you are.
And everyone knows you're always right about everything.
But here's the point of what you got to get to.
I got to say, man, it's very nice to see that it looks like that'll be Joe Biden's challenge.
At least he's going to have to defend this policy against someone who's telling him this is insane and you should be trying to end the war rather than someone who's saying, this is insane.
You should be giving them more billions of dollars, which is what like Mitch McConnell would have Joe Biden's opponent bait.
This feels like old school Trump.
I mean, Trump has been on nothing but losses and whining for two years.
And this is the kind of thing that if he made this his signature issue, I mean, I would potentially, if someone really gets up and goes, we are ending the Ukraine war tomorrow.
They are marching us towards World War III and this is insanity.
Maybe you and I are completely ignorant of how the rest of the country thinks, but I really do think that that's a winning card if you play it and you're aggressive about it.
Yeah.
I mean, it's a compelling case, you know, to support the guy.
And look, he's not just saying that.
He's saying we're cleaning out the Pentagon and we're cleaning out the deep state.
Now, of course, the problem, you know, when Donald Trump says we need to do this, it's hard.
And I don't want to be the guy who's like picking on him when he's kind of saying more or less the right thing, but we got to just kind of discuss the reality of the situation is that it's he's like, oh, this is what we have to do.
And it's kind of like, well, this is what you had to do.
This is what needed to be done.
And you didn't.
And that's just like what's not true is when he sits there and goes, oh, and there was nothing but peace when I was the president.
Like, no, it's really not true.
Like, you know, there might have been some people in your own administration who lied to you about how many troops you had deployed in different areas, like in Syria or whatever, but they were there.
They're still there.
You never got them out.
And the truth is that even in his lame duck session, when Trump finally hired Colonel Douglas McGregor to be a top advisor over at the Defense Department, and he wrote out the presidential, whatever it is, a directive issuing that we're removing all the troops immediately from Afghanistan and Syria.
And Donald Trump signed it.
And then the next day he rescinded it.
And I don't know who got to him when he was there, but he took it back.
And he could have done that.
And he didn't.
And also, by the way, how do you hire Colonel Douglas McGregor only after you lose the election to Joe Biden?
He should have been in there day one.
You know, I'm not claiming to know everything exactly that goes on behind the scenes.
All I'm saying is that you did have a crack at this and you failed.
And he could try to spin this into like, no, I did it great and we'll go right back to being great there.
But like, no, that's just not true.
And in fact, it was Donald Trump.
You guys remember from the Ukraine gate impeachment, all that nonsense where he got impeached for calling up Ukraine and trying to get the Zelensky government to investigate the Bidens?
Well, it was all what they got him for, the reason, the justification for impeaching him was a quid pro quo.
They were saying he basically like threatened to withhold a weapons shipment into Ukraine.
But what rarely came up in those impeachment hearings is that Donald Trump caved and he sent this huge weapons package into Ukraine.
And this is before Russia invaded, obviously.
This is before, you know, this is years before they invaded.
And this was seen as a major provocation by the Russians.
And in fact, even Obama.
who backed the coup in 2014 in Ukraine, even he wouldn't go as far as to send them these weapons because he knew how dangerous that was, what a dangerous game that was going to be.
He also knew, I think, how many really bad guys he supported in that coup attempt.
It didn't really want to send all those Ukrainian Nazi groups a whole bunch of weapons.
But Trump sent it to him.
And so it's just like, it's nice.
It's nice now that he's kind of saying the right things as a candidate.
But man, it's just really seems like such a long shot that he's actually going to get in there and do it.
And there is a, you know, I'll say there's, look, there's no question Donald Trump put a huge target on his back by being heavily critical of the deep state as a candidate in 2016.
And he's doing that again.
He's putting a huge target on his back by saying we're going to like actually running on we're going to clean out the Pentagon is a ballsy thing to run on.
Just kind of makes you wonder like, do you actually have a plan of how to get this done?
Because he didn't seem to last time.
I don't think we'll clean out the Pentagon or uproot the deep state, but I do think he would walk us out of the Ukraine war and probably at least curb their plans for four years until they come up with some other Russia collusion nonsense that makes it difficult for him to do anything.
Now, I just look forward to the potential of having debates where Biden's got to try or someone from the Democratic Party has to actually defend what's going on in Ukraine against honest opposition of, no, they're not winning the war.
No, you guys forced NATO in there.
You provoked it.
People are dying and nobody wants to be spending this money over there.
We can de-escalate it.
And then when they go, oh, yeah, but he's a war criminal.
All right.
Well, what did we do when we went into Iraq and Afghanistan?
Are we that respectful of other people's borders?
Let's quit trying to bully everyone.
That's not a winning strategy.
Even though there's an interesting dynamic that Donald Trump has where it's like, even someone like me or you might say, if Donald Trump were to call others war criminals, you'd say, dude, you're a war criminal for keeping the fucking war in Yemen going every day, your administration, or for keeping, you know what I mean?
Like all these different military actions.
I mean, Donald Trump actually really took the gloves off and actually upped the rate of like drone strikes and things like that when he came in.
But it'll be very, very hard for Joe Biden to attack him from that angle.
You know, Joe Biden can't be like, you're a war criminal.
If you're like, what?
Who's the war yet?
You know what I mean?
So like he, he's got to play it like, oh, you're this isolationist, America first star.
And so it will, it will be very interesting to see that, you know, Donald Trump, he really does have, you know, leave aside, this is always for better or worse going to come with Donald Trump.
Leave aside him saying how I got everything right and everything was perfect with me and I'm so great.
That's always going to be a part of Donald Trump's, you know, shtick.
But Donald Trump is really getting so much of this right.
Like he's telling the truth.
He's even down to the fact that always talking about bringing Ukraine into NATO is a huge provocation.
And like that this was a big part of the reason.
This is a big part of the thing that provoked this war.
And of course, as we've like, I think broken down pretty well on the show here, that even people within the national security apparatus knew this.
They knew this at the time.
I read memos from Burns, from the head of the CIA today in 2008, when NATO announced Ukraine was coming in, going, hey, here's the catch.
This could really lead to fucking, you know, of Putin taking some type of serious military action in Ukraine.
You have Gideon Rose, the editor of Foreign Affairs magazine in 2014 saying that to Stephen Colbert there on his show, going like, okay, well, here's the risk here that Vladimir Putin could knock over the chessboard, as he says, and just invade Ukraine.
That's the risk.
So we want to steal Ukraine without provoking Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine.
Like, it's not as if this is like, and then after the fact, they'll go, this is completely unprovoked.
No one could have seen this coming.
Like, you all saw this coming, or at least saw the possibility of it coming.
So, so it's interesting that Trump is going to take that, that angle and then really talk about how dangerous it is that you're provoking World War III.
And that, yeah, I completely agree with you where if nothing else, at least that would be a great, like, that'd be the debate you want to have in front of the country.
That would be like the thing you'd want to be the topic of conversation.
At least with Donald Trump running, it seems like maybe that's what we'll get.
So yeah, very happy that he's talking like that.
On the flip side, you know, just look at this.
That's how Donald Trump's talking about Ukraine.
And here is how Joe Biden is talking about the conflict with Russia.
And I wanted to ask you about something Vladimir Putin said.
He said that Russia is suspending participation, cooperation in the nuclear treaty with the United States.
What's your message to Putin on that?
It's a big mistake to do that.
Not very responsible.
But I don't read into that that he's thinking of using nuclear weapons or anything like that.
I think it's not sure what else he was able to say in his speech at the moment.
But I think it's a mistake and I'm confident we'll be able to work it out.
He is saying he's going to suspend participation in this nuclear treaty.
Rhetoric is one thing, but we're a year into this war now.
Does it concern you when he says something like this?
And are we less safe?
Look, I think we're less safe when we walk away from arms control agreements that are very much in both parties' interests and the world's interest.
But I've not seen anything.
We've not seen anything where there's a change in this posture, what they're doing.
The idea that somehow this means they're thinking of using nuclear weapons, international continental ballistic missile.
There's no evidence of that.
Okay.
Well, I mean, I wouldn't say there's no evidence of that.
What were you saying, Rob?
I was just saying it's very casual for the topic of nuclear weapons.
I mean, no evidence.
He loves throwing around the no evidence.
No one's saying that.
Well, they did just say that it's on the table.
And at least threatened it several times.
They weren't discussing that.
So I love this.
Yeah, I love this.
This is one of the points I made the last time I was on Rogan, where I was just like, the narrative of this war is so absurd on its face, where they're like, this guy is a psychopathic war criminal.
But yeah, I don't have to worry about him using nukes.
Come on.
And he's getting his ass kicked in Ukraine, but also he might take over all of Europe.
Like it's like, which one is it, dude?
Like, what, what are you, how can you say both of these?
Manipulating Fear In Taiwan00:08:28
And it's, it's interesting to notice the way they, they manipulate fear or the lack thereof.
Like COVID, you had to be scared out of your mind, right?
Climate change, you should be scared out of your mind.
Nuclear war, the country with the biggest nuclear arsenal is pulling out of nuclear treaties and threatening to use nukes.
Like, come on, get out of here.
Sure, there's a war right on their border and they're facing the threat of extinction, but like, what are they going to, they're not going to use no nukes.
When their policy is not benefited by you being afraid, they have no interest in trying to drum up fear.
But when their policy is benefited, they are very happy to drum up fear, even though the idea of you being afraid of climate change is ridiculous.
And the idea of you for most people being afraid of COVID is ridiculous.
But being afraid of this makes perfect sense.
It's insane not to be.
So when there's a real fear, they just casually, very blasé, blow it off.
But when there's, when there's something that's, that's a ridiculous thing to spend your life crippled by fear of, they're the first to try to push that on you if it will help them get their agenda thrown.
Really, really like evil, manipulative shit.
Is the directive now also, if you're going to be talking to Biden, you have to stand at going in for a kiss range?
Yeah, and he will touch you.
And you know, he's going to touch you at some point.
Yeah, and I bet his old man breath right up in your face because he can't, they just tell you, like, listen, he can hear you and he's going to be breathing on you a bunch.
But if you're wanting to take the interview, you got to be right up in his face.
This is a must.
Or you don't need, or maybe you don't get the access.
And no sitting down because he'll fall asleep.
It's got to be standing up now.
Now, he's not very good at standing up, but he's going to have to be standing up.
It's so bizarre too.
Like Joe Biden has this weird, like he's so awkward and old, but he's still got this weird confidence about him, you know?
Like, you know, like when he puts his hand on the guy's shoulder and in his mind, he's like, I just totally worked that guy.
Like, you still got it, Biden.
Like, he's what a bizarre, a bizarre human being Joe Biden is.
But yeah, that's, I mean, just compare and contrast those two, like Donald Trump's take on the war in Ukraine and Joe Biden's.
And it's, again, like I said before, and this is someone who's been, I've been highly critical of Trump's presidency and just Trump's performance over the last couple of years.
But man, compare and contrast what they're both saying in this situation and Trump, it's a big win for him, I think.
And I think that going to Ohio, like all this stuff, you're like, this was a big, you're seeing a little bit of like where Donald Trump, he's got a shot.
He's got a shot at this thing, which is kind of crazy.
Really crazy that this, that is, that those words could even come out of my mouth is just insane, given him and his last year in office and everything the country is going through.
It's really, it's like only Joe Biden could keep Trump's hopes alive.
Just unbelievable.
It's going to be an odd ending for this Ukraine war because China's ramping up its involvement.
And I think at a minimum, they just kind of want to make the U.S. look bad, which is fine.
We can look bad.
They can look bad.
That's billionaire.
Like, who gives a shit?
The fucking ego is like, let's not have death.
It's not that big of a deal.
Just in the scheme of things.
And also, I don't look bad.
Biden looks bad.
Anyways, I think they're going to continue to ramp up pressure to try and make the war more costly so that we have to basically just walk away from it.
And then I guess on the U.S. side, if it looks like they're going to lose the election over it, they're going to have to try and ramp up to try.
Like, in other words, the timeframe for them to try and walk away with the victory is shortening, particularly as Russia and China will escalate the costs of this on us.
So it's a weird little game being played out, which tragically involves human life.
You can't forget the fact that these are sick, evil people in power who are choosing to allow death so that they can have the ego of walking away with a win.
But that is the game that we're watching being played out.
Yeah.
You know, no, 100%.
I saw there was this interview with Victoria Newland yesterday, and she was being interviewed by one of those CNN international ladies.
And she asked her at one point, it's real interesting when you see how they're, you know, within their little worldview, like these questions come up.
But so she asked, she was asking her about China, kind of like stepping in and supporting Russia in several different ways in this war.
And she goes to Victoria Newland.
She goes, well, what are the Chinese even thinking?
Because like Russia's getting destroyed in this war.
They're obviously losing.
So like, why would they come in and side with a loser?
Like, it doesn't make sense.
You're picking a bet that's clearly going to lose.
And Victoria Newland's response was something like, well, I can't tell you what's going on inside the heads of these Chinese officials.
Kind of reminded me of what Kirby said the other day.
I'm not going to pretend to know what's going on in their head.
And you're like, yeah, it's interesting that you see it that way.
It's like, well, here's one possibility, which is a pretty obvious one.
They think they're picking a winner.
They think Russia is going to come out on top in this and basically that it's going to call the West's bluff.
It's going to be like, okay, well, even with you sending in, you know, tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars of weaponry, it's like, I don't know, Russia's got, Russia can win this war the way Russia always wins wars, which is that they just throw more people at it.
And that's kind of been the way that Russia's won wars historically, that they'll just throw more and more people.
You can say, whatever.
Oh, my God, 100,000 Russian soldiers are dead.
It's like, okay, here's 300,000 more.
Now deal with that.
And then what happens when they win?
I mean, what's the West really going to do?
You pour all these resources in and then Russia still wins the war.
And what?
It wasn't a NATO country that was attacked.
So what do you want to do now?
You know, like maybe that's the bet China's making, or perhaps the bet China's making is that their interests are better served by Russia having a better chance in this war than just simply allowing the precedent to be set that the West can win this war while the president of the United States is talking about how they will militarily defend Taiwan's independence.
Maybe that, I mean, it's like, there's just so many like obvious, like, you know, she poses this question and Victoria Newland's just like, well, I can't get inside their head.
But there's so many obvious like plausible reasons.
You know, that's an interesting China variable is that if the United States walks away with a big L here, think about how much America is going to care about the Taiwan situation.
Right.
So if you're China and you want to take Taiwan and you can make this more costly, the amount of public backing that would exist for getting involved with China saying they're taking Taiwan would basically be none.
Right.
And the direct inverse of that, which is imagine it's a big W. Right.
Well, now all of a sudden the Taiwan situation, it's like, hey, we just did this, right?
We did this effectively for Ukraine.
Let's do the same thing for Taiwan.
I mean, it's like, yeah, it's like, it's not much of a like a reach to think that China would see this as being somewhat in their interest and related.
And the fact that you have this like at the same time that we're fighting this is just strategically so stupid that Biden comes out and says we will militarily defend Taiwan, that Nancy Pelosi is taking trips to Taiwan.
Like, why would you be doing this in the middle of this?
If you were trying to get China to back up Russia in this, you couldn't do a much better job than what they've done.
So it's all just so bizarre.
So bizarre.
Here's what we got to do.
We make Puerto Rico a state and we pretend like we conquered it.
Like it was opposing resistance.
They didn't want to be a part of the United States of America.
And then everyone gets one and we all get to feel like winners.
Yeah.
And then we let Russia come take it over.
Yeah.
Oh, Russia just took Puerto Rico from us.
And then we could just be like, all right, we're all even.
We took Ukraine.
You took Puerto Rico.
But the whole time, we didn't even really care about Puerto Rico.
See, now you're thinking, Rob.
Now you're thinking with your head.
Libertarianism And Cultural Lessons00:12:49
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All right, let's get back into the show.
All right, before we wrap up today's show, I did want to play this clip and mention that there is another Republican who has gotten into the race.
It's now Ron DeSantis is still unofficial.
It's Trump.
It's Nikki Haley.
And it is this gentleman who's I'm familiar with him, but I always butcher his name.
What is it?
Vivek?
Ramaswamy.
He's got a fun name to say.
So he was on Glenn Beck's show on his radio show recently.
I was just on Glenn Beck's show the other day, right there in those studios that he's got there.
And he came in and the topic of libertarianism came up.
He had a couple of interesting things to say that I thought we would just kind of respond to.
I'm not going to make this like a full debunking or anything like that because he didn't go that much into it.
But here's a couple things that he mentioned about libertarians.
And I wanted to kind of...
Can I mention a word about the fellow?
Sure.
He wrote a great book called Woke Inc. and he's been one of the big voices combating kind of ESG scores.
And I believe he also created a fund, which is like the anti-ESG fund, specifically gearing more towards capitalist investments and not this, what I've described as the elites not wanting to compete.
So yeah.
Thus far at least, his public figure has been one of good causes.
Yeah, I agree.
And I think all of that stuff is great.
And I know he used to call himself a libertarian.
So to whatever degree, he still has some libertarian leanings or at least recognizes the threat of the rise of ESGs and DIE and all this stuff.
Okay, great.
All behind that.
But I just thought, you know, it was interesting that someone mentioned libertarianism to him.
And this is what he said.
So let's talk about it.
So why did you change?
You said you were a libertarian.
Why did you decide you were a conservative over a libertarian?
I used to be a libertarian in college, actually.
And I had this discussion with folks in New Hampshire yesterday, too.
There was a couple of libertarians that came to one of my rallies last night.
Free staters.
Here's the thing.
Libertarians, I got two issues.
One is they're too meek, actually.
So they'll talk about the free market and they say they don't want to make political expression a civil right, as I believe we need to in this country.
Yet they don't actually touch the other protected classes like race or sex or religion or national origin.
And so my view is these libertarians today, with all due respect, have their heads in the sand because you can't have it both ways.
That's problem number one.
But problem number two is deeper, which is, you know, what do we do in that free world?
Even when the state's out of our hair, there's still the deeper question of purpose as a citizen, how we live our lives, how we live virtuous lives.
And I care about virtue in civic life and in family life and in faith-based life too.
Not to say that the government necessarily should be involved or mandated those things, but those things matter for human flourishing, for American flourishing.
And libertarianism has nothing to say about that.
That is why I call myself a conservative today in contrast to 15 years ago when I thought I was a cool kid in college calling myself a libertarian.
So we're talking about faith.
So let's get over there.
Can I just say, listen, I'm not, I don't know enough about this guy.
And what I know about him is pretty good.
So I'm not trying to trash Vivek.
But dude, you were never a cool kid in college.
Let's just be honest.
Okay.
I don't know.
The guy went right into hedge funds and made a lot of money.
So it depends on your definition.
That's never what the cool kid does, Rob.
Yes, he's successful out of college.
That's a very different thing than being the cool kid in college.
Look, I just think that this is, and like, I don't really care what label you call yourself, but the first, the two points he's made there are just so weak.
It just doesn't make any sense.
Now, first off, he goes, oh, like, you know, libertarians don't want to make political expression a civil right or whatever exactly you mean by that.
He wasn't clear, but they don't want to touch any of these other civil rights like race or nationality or ethnicity or something like that.
Wrong.
We do.
We don't want the government mandating any of these things.
Like it's, it's all, and now that we've had all of that, how's that going for us?
Not so good.
Okay.
So that's just not true.
I mean, maybe you've talked to a few milquetoast libertarians who won't touch any of those more controversial issues, but that's not true.
And certainly isn't true for the philosophy of libertarianism.
Now, this other part that he mentions, it's not exactly wrong.
It's just not in any way a criticism of libertarianism.
I mean, he himself even goes, hey, look, libertarianism just has nothing to say about living like a deeply moral life.
And I'm not saying that should be mandated by the government, but I care about those things.
It's like, yeah, but if you're saying they shouldn't be mandated by the government, then that's the libertarian position.
This is, as I've said many times before on this show, this is like if you were living during slavery and you were like, I'm an abolitionist because I want to abolish slavery because it's just an evil institution that's holding back human civilization and is just horrible and wrong.
And then someone said, well, I don't consider myself an abolitionist because being an abolitionist doesn't say anything about what job the slaves should have when they're freed.
You're like, well, yeah, but you can have whatever opinion.
If you believe that slavery should be abolished, you're an abolitionist.
So if you believe the government shouldn't have any role in this, then you're a libertarian.
Of course, obviously there's lots of meaningful questions about how to live your life that libertarianism does not address.
That is good.
You don't want your political philosophy to address every inch of your life and how you're supposed to live your life.
That is some cult shit.
That's some Marxist shit.
That's some like, let me tell you in every corner of your life, what you're supposed to do.
You know, conservatism doesn't, I don't know, doesn't have anything to say about lots of important things in life.
Conservatism doesn't really have anything to say about like whether you should spank your children or not.
And like, I think that's a pretty important thing to not do.
But regardless, I'm just saying like there's, there's a million areas in life where like, you know, conservatism doesn't tell you how to pick a wife or how to do like very, very important things.
But you, I don't think you should be looking for that out of a political program.
And so if your criticism of libertarianism is that there's lots of areas in life that libertarianism on itself doesn't address, yes, that's true.
And I think that's to our credit.
Our belief is that people ought to be free and that what people do with that freedom ought to be their choice.
That doesn't mean us as like, as people can't have very strong views about what you should do with your freedom, and I would agree that.
I think that it's um, which is something i've been trying to get libertarians to think about for for years now that culture and values and society, all of these things really really do matter quite a lot.
The issue is that I wish conservatives would ever make this connection is that it's it's precisely where they have deviated and abandoned flat out libertarianism that has led to the decay in our culture and our society.
It is not a coincidence that our government is bigger and more intrusive and more powerful than ever before, and our culture is decayed more than ever before.
That's not a coincidence.
If you tell me, you show me any conservative, show me where this cultural rot is coming from, and I will show you a tremendous amount of government involvement directly leading to that cultural rot.
I promise you, pick any area and I'll show you.
And not just saying like, I'll say like, well, there is some government involvement there.
No, let me show you exactly how it is creating the situation that we live in today.
And so that's what I wish.
It's like, ironically, there's this weird, there's this weird kind of dynamic where libertarians need to recognize like some conservative values.
Like, and you can see that within the libertarian movement, it's like a problem.
It's like, and I'm always pushing back against this, like stop celebrating degeneracy.
It is like, it is, it is, there's nothing noble about it.
It's going to hurt your ability to persuade other people of our message and it's going to undermine liberty itself.
Like low or high time preference behavior is going to undermine liberty if you have it in your society.
So libertarians almost have this like cultural conservative lesson that they still need to learn.
Although I think a lot of us have learned a bit more about it.
And this is not saying, it's not some caricature.
It's not saying like, oh, you have to hate people of different races or you have to like believe in like, you know, like, you know, whatever women shouldn't be in the workforce or like something.
It's not like anything like that.
But it's just kind of like accepting that like, yeah, society is going to have to be built around strong families and strong moral principles.
Something like that.
There's like a real lesson there that libertarians have to accept.
And the lessons that conservatives have to accept is that statism at every inch undermines cultural cohesion and undermines cultural morality.
Every inch of it.
There is not any like Hans Hermann Haba does a great job writing about this where he's like, basically his point is that by the very nature of the state, like what you're doing is you're by force taking something from one group and giving it to another.
Like every inch of what the government does is that to some degree.
A taxation program and a spending program.
They can't do anything but that.
And whatever you're taxing, you're viewing as desirable or good.
And whatever you're giving to someone else, you view as being like giving them something that they needed.
They have a deficiency and so you're giving it to them, right?
Like that's just the very nature of what the government is.
And so just think about the economics of that.
You're inherently day one that you open up and you're a government, you are disincentivizing the good and incentivizing the bad.
You're taxing the good and subsidizing the bad.
So if you have less, if whatever it is, if you have less wealth, you're saying wealth is a good thing to have.
So we're going to put a tax on wealth.
So we're going to disincentivize wealth.
And then if you have less wealth, you get a check for it.
So therefore, we're incentivizing people to have less wealth.
And every inch of this, if you say, you look at Social Security or something like that, you go, okay, we're going to like disincentivize you to be reliant on your community, on your family, on your own hard work, on your own like foresight for your retirement, because the government's going to take it from you anyway and give it back to you anyway.
It's like every inch of the state does this.
And of course, today, if you look at like every example of where the cultural degeneracy is coming from, it's all coming from government programs of one kind or another.
So anyway, I wish libertarians would learn their conservative lesson and about the role of culture.
And I wish conservatives would learn their libertarian lesson about the role of the state.
Anyway, I don't dislike this Vivek fellow.
He's done a lot of good work.
We'll be keeping our eye on him.
I don't know what chance he has to actually win this thing.
That doesn't mean he can't make an impact on the race.
Culture Versus State Power00:00:30
So we'll check him out.
Guys, Pottsville, Pennsylvania, coming up in just over a week.
Me and Robbie the Fire Bernstein, a bunch of live stand-up shows and a live part of the problem out there.
So check that out.
Comicdavesmith.com for all the tickets.
Rob, anything you want to plug before we get out of here?
Yep.
Always check out Run Your Mouth Podcast.
We're at the moment live on Mondays and Wednesdays.