Dave Smith critiques establishment media for mocking the lab leak theory, now supported by intelligence agencies, while exposing how U.S.-funded research and institutional lies erode trust. He dismisses Zelensky's demands to send Western troops as authoritarian overreach, arguing that reclaiming Crimea is impossible given the region's demographics and the 2014 coup that voided Russia's naval lease. Ultimately, Smith concludes that Western goals in Ukraine are unrealistic strategic failures comparable to imposing foreign ideologies, suggesting the conflict stems from unachievable geopolitical ambitions rather than genuine security needs. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
|
Time
Text
COVID and Government Overreach00:01:35
Fill her up.
You are listening to the Gash Digital Network.
We need to roll back the state.
We spy on all of our own citizens.
Our prisons are flooded with nonviolent drug offenders.
If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
You're listening to Part of the Problem on the Gas 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.
Robbie the Fire Bernstein is out today off doing some stand-up comedy.
He'll be back with us the next episode, I'm sure.
Thank you guys all very much for listening.
Before we get into today's show, me and Robbie the Fire Bernstein will be out in Pottsville, Pennsylvania on March 10th and 11th at Soul Joel's Comedy Club.
A bunch of stand-up comedy shows, four stand-up comedy shows, and a live Part of the Problem podcast.
If you're interested in coming out, go to my website, comicdave Smith.com.
Ticket links are up there, as well as all of our dates coming up in the near future.
We're coming all over the place to a town near you.
So come check us out.
The live stand-up shows are a lot of fun.
The live podcasts are a lot of fun.
And yeah, look forward to seeing you guys out there.
So for today's episode, there are two things that I want to talk to you guys about.
And they're really the two issues that I have prioritized over the last few years.
The Lab Leak Conspiracy Joke00:16:12
Maybe issues isn't even the right term.
Crises, impending disasters, something like that might be better.
Of course, they would be the COVID insanity and the Ukrainian insanity.
Now, on both fronts, there was what I would describe as kind of a major shift over the last few days.
And I think that's worth talking about.
So let's start with the COVID stuff.
And I think most of you guys probably know what I'm talking about already.
So a few days ago, the Department of Energy came out and in kind of a stunning, at least that's how it's been described in a lot of the corporate outlets, in a stunning development.
And I got to admit, a little bit stunning to all of us probably.
The Department of Energy, you could say, concluded, or perhaps you could describe it as admitted, that COVID likely originated in the coronavirus lab in Wuhan.
They did say that they determined this with low confidence, but that this was their view that this was the most likely origin of COVID.
And that in itself is kind of a big deal.
It's interesting to see a federal department coming out and saying this thing that, you know, I don't know what to say.
It's 2023 right now.
It is, as we record this, still technically February, but very close to March of 2023.
And where, you know, where could you have heard this?
Well, you could have heard it here in March of 2020.
That is when we first talked about the possibility of what became known as the lab leak theory.
It was in March of 2020.
We talked about this right here on Part of the Problem.
In April of 2020, we discussed it a little bit more.
But I will say this, we probably said it with low confidence at that point.
In 2021, very early in 2021, it became clear that this was the most likely, you know, like overwhelmingly the most likely, most plausible scenario was that this came from a lab in Wuhan, China.
It's interesting to see now.
almost three years after we were talking about it here on this podcast.
And of course, a lot of other people who are being honest, it's not like that we were geniuses who figured this out before anyone else had.
In fact, there was a major paper in China in February of 2020 that came to this conclusion that it was most likely, you know, that the lab leak was the most likely scenario here.
So this was something that's been out there for quite a while.
Of course, for a very long time, this was deemed a conspiracy theory and people were really damaged who would dare to publicly say that they believed this.
Luckily, I guess we weren't, but many others were.
So anyway, the Department of Energy came out and said that they believe that this is where the COVID pandemic originated from.
I think this is a very big deal.
We'll get into why.
I think this is a very big deal.
But of course, this set off quite a reaction from kind of the, you know, the establishment media, the establishment entertainment shows and stuff.
There's a whole bunch of clips that we could play for you out there of, you know, the way that this was handled.
Anyway, we just kind of randomly picked this one, but let's check out how some of the comedians were handling this.
Here is a clip from Comedy Central in response to the Department of Energy's recent announcements.
This is, what's his name?
Hassanj.
Sorry, I always blank out on this guy's name.
I don't even understand who hosts the daily show anymore.
I don't know.
Is it him?
Is it Chelsea Handler?
Is this a separate show?
This is how removed I am from what's going on in Comedy Central.
But anyway, this guy in a velvet jacket, this was his response to this news.
How can you conclude something with low confidence?
That's not a conclusion.
I think the word you're looking for is guess.
By the way, conclusion with low confidence is such a f ⁇ ing boy move.
Like you're dating someone and they go, babe, what are we?
And you're like, Sarah, I can tell you for sure.
I don't know.
How even though they had low confidence, the Department of Energy came out and said COVID was a lab leak.
And now every f ⁇ ing idiot I went to high school with is like, apologize to me right now, Hussin.
I told you I was right.
And if your hand is bigger than your face, you're gay.
Now, to everybody touchdown dancing about this, how long have you been rocking with the Department of Energy?
Oh, you've been with them since day one?
Hey, what's your second favorite report from the Department of Energy?
Now, personally, I love their report on walk-in freezers and coolers, but hey, that's just me because I'm a real one.
But here's the key detail everybody's forgetting while they got the Twitter fingers.
The energy department is one of nine intelligence groups that have assessed COVID's origins.
Two have said lab leak.
Five say it came out of natural causes and two say they don't know.
And you know what?
I personally side with them.
I don't know what the f ⁇ is going on.
FBI says this.
NIC says that.
I'm holding out until the DMV chimes in.
Now, here's the thing I'm wondering.
Okay.
Why did this whole lab leak versus wet market thing become the Yankees versus Red Sox of the culture war in the first place?
And to me, I think it's because when some people started saying it came from a lab, other people were like, hey, you can't say the Chinese are trying to poison everybody on planet Earth.
That's racist.
You should say COVID came from a wet market where Chinese people eat weird animals.
All right.
So it's, I don't know what to say about this exactly.
It's so interesting, just the desperation of still trying to make the people who were claiming that this was a lab leak all along the butt of the joke.
Like, yeah, you see, you're still the stupid ones, you see, because, oh, you're all bragging on Twitter about how you were right and we owe you an apology or something like that.
But really, you're stupid.
Cause like, when what other, you know, how long have you been rocking with the Department of Energy or don't you know there's these five other intelligence agencies?
By the way, referred to the Department of Energy as an intelligence agency.
I don't think that's right, but whatever.
But you're so stupid because there's these five other agencies that have said they don't believe it's a lab leak or something like that.
And it's just, look, as somebody who has dabbled in comedy for the, you know, the better, the last 15 years or so, it's just, look, if you're just trying to follow what's funny or what's hilarious here, the obvious butt of the joke would be the people who were denying that this was a lab leak theory.
You can come to this joke late in the game, as Jon Stewart kind of did last year, when he really did a masterful job, comedically speaking, of pointing out how hilarious it was to deny the likelihood of the fact that there was a coronavirus lab in Wuhan when there was an outbreak of a novel coronavirus in Wuhan.
You know, like there's, there's a lot of funny angles to go with here, but how desperate you have to be to do these mental gymnastics to say, no, the real joke here is the people who think this is an own for them or something.
Okay.
How long have you been rocking with the Department of Energy?
Well, yeah, that's not really the point.
Now, is it?
I'd be quite happy to abolish the Department of Energy.
I think it's ridiculous to have a federal department of energy.
And I think that they are, let's just say, a net negative to our energy, you know, needs.
But the point here really has nothing to do with that.
And for, you know, the funny thing is at the end there, Hassan's conclusion, if you really think about it, kind of, even though he's trying to point out how ridiculous it is that like, oh, you're saying it's like, well, the reason you couldn't say this is because it's racist.
You couldn't say it came from a lab leak because that would be racist.
And so what you're supposed to say is like, yeah, Chinese people are eating bats out in wild conditions and they're like, okay, right.
So yes, you're kind of correct in your comedic observation at the end there.
It's ridiculous to say that one of those is racist, but the other one isn't.
And in fact, you could make a really strong argument that it's more, whatever this means, that it's more like racist or it would be creating more of a negative, you know,
impression of Chinese people to say that this virus emerged because Chinese people are like selling bats in these crazy wet markets that led to this outbreak of a global pandemic versus like they were operating on, you know, splicing up and enhancing viruses in a sophisticated lab.
One of those sounds way more primitive and insane and the other one sounds like, you know, advanced and scientific, still crazy and evil.
But anyway, the comedic point that he's making there is somewhat true.
But what's the conclusion of that?
It's not that.
So why was it off limits to say the first one and not the second one?
Well, because obviously it paints an entirely different picture.
Like, look, it is one thing to say that COVID, this virus that upended the world and changed more about this country in a couple years than has changed in this country in my entire lifetime.
And a lot has changed in this country in my entire life, like a lot, but nothing upended everything more than the response to COVID.
Okay.
But it's a whole different ballgame to say that like, look, this is just one of those things.
Like there are these wet markets in China and they're doing these crazy things that seem insane to us, but this is what they do there.
And they're selling bats or whatever.
And someone had some bat soup and a virus came out of that and it's spread around.
It's just kind of like, oof, what the hell are you going to do?
It's a very different thing to say there is a lab funded by U.S. tax dollars that is working on gain of function research and this spilled out into the world and created this global pandemic.
Like, obviously, there's so many levels of implications that are radically different from that scenario than the other one.
And the reason why people are like dunking on you on Twitter isn't because they have some vested interest in the fact that this came from a lab rather than came from a wet market.
They're dunking on you because you and people like you.
And look, I don't even know what Hassan would have said about this, but I know.
You know, you don't have to know, but you know, that you would have just been mocking ruthlessly these people if they had said this two years ago or three years ago, as I did.
You'd have just been mocking them and not just mocking them, but like people were ruined over this shit.
People were ruined over this.
People's like medical professionals, scientists had their careers destroyed.
People were kicked off of social media.
People were labeled every vicious name in the book for even suggesting that maybe this was the case.
And at the best, were mocked for it.
And why was that?
Not because that was racist, as you just pointed out.
It's just as racist to say it came from a wet market as that, right?
So why were they?
that would point to the idea that the entire establishment was guilty in some way of creating this whole thing.
Like if you accept the idea that a lab that U.S. tax dollars was funding created a global pandemic, then at best, in the best case scenario, these people are so dangerously incompetent that they ruined hundreds of millions of people's lives, killed millions of people,
and ruined hundreds of millions of people's lives with the response that they then participated in.
And that's at the best.
And at the worst, it's like, what?
Maybe it was intentional or something like that.
So I mean, just the possibilities of how messed up the scenario is drastically change once you consider this possibility.
Whereas if it just came from a wet market, it comes back to one of those, like, oh, it's just one of those things.
So no, it had nothing to do with one theory being racist and the other not being racist, as you correctly kind of point out.
But what did it have to do?
It had to do with protecting the elite class.
So that was the difference.
And so that's why people who kind of oppose the elite class are dunking on you on Twitter.
That's why, you know, your friends who you went to high school with, who you consider idiots, are like pointing out that, no, actually, you're the idiot.
You're the one who was wrong this whole time.
So like, come on, man, if you want to do some really great comedy, the butt of the joke here should be you.
The butt of the joke should be the people who never, you know, who were so confident.
Like even now, he'll go like, look, I'm in the class of I don't know.
Protecting the Elite Class00:02:06
And like, okay, fine.
But then mock the people who pretended that they knew with certainty, the people with power who pretended they knew with certainty that the lab leak thing was such a wild conspiracy that that couldn't possibly be true.
That would be like the fucking awesome thing to do.
And if you, if you structure it the right way, it would be the hilarious thing to do.
To mock those people, because obviously this is a loss for them.
All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is stamps.com.
Stamps.com has everything you need to make your life a whole lot easier.
It's the 24-7 post office that you can access from anywhere.
No lines, no traffic, no hassle.
Stamps.com is your one-stop shop for your shipping and mailing needs.
For more than 20 years, stamps.com has been indispensable for over 1 million businesses.
Get access to the USPS and UPS services you need to run your business right from your computer.
With inflation on the rise, every dollar counts.
Protect your margins with major discounts from the United States Postal Service and UPS rates, up to 86% off.
Use stamps.com to print postage wherever you do business.
All you need is a computer and a printer.
And if you need a package picked up, you can easily schedule it through your stamps.com dashboard.
Rates are constantly changing with stamps.com switch and save feature.
You can easily compare carriers and rates.
So you know you're getting the best deal every time.
And if you're running an online store, stamps.com works seamlessly with all the major shopping carts and marketplaces.
Right now, you can sign up with the promo code problem at stamps.com for a special offer that includes a four-week trial plus free postage and a free digital scale.
No long-term commitments, no contracts.
just go to stamps.com, click the microphone at the top of the home page and enter the promo code problem, stamps.com, promo code problem.
Normalizing the Lab Leak Idea00:08:25
All right, let's get back into the show.
Anyway, it's just, it's really something to see how they could handle almost anything could be thrown at them.
The thing that was a wild conspiracy theory that would get you ruined not that long ago, we're talking like, you know, last year.
definitely two years ago.
Now all of a sudden it comes out that powerful people agree that you were actually right.
And it's like, oh, you idiot, you had no way of even knowing that.
Maybe you just got lucky or maybe it's not even true or whatever.
Whatever the way they figure this out is.
And by the way, I'm not like, I hope people can kind of remember because I'm not exaggerating this in the slightest.
And there's a million clips we could show you.
We got one that I'll pull up and show you.
But the way that the suggestion that this could have originated in a lab was treated a couple years ago, like it's hard to overstate how vicious the response would be.
Here's one.
We have one clip here.
Let's play that about one guy, Senator Tom Cotton, who actually, you know, had the courage to suggest that maybe this was true.
Let's see how he was treated.
One of Donald Trump's staunchest allies in the Senate suggested that the virus might have originated in a high-security biochemical lab in China.
In the 1980s, I remember when the far left trafficked in rumors about HIV having been invented in CIA labs, the far right has now found its own virus conspiracy theory.
President Trump, for his part, fuels the fears by emphasizing how the disease came from China and how he heroically saved American lives by closing the border in late January to people coming from China.
In fact, public health officials stress the importance of comprehensive public health systems that can safely and speedily test lots of people, isolate and provide care to those infected and issue clear guidelines for the rest of us.
So there is Farid Zakara, who is a, he was caught, he's a plagiarist, was caught literally lifting a piece that he wrote from someone else.
Just took the like the way a kid would get caught cheating on his homework.
He got caught with that years ago.
But so here he is just saying that it's like, yeah, this is like saying the CIA created AIDS and, you know, whatever, which is, you know, by the way, I've never looked into that conspiracy theory, but knowing the history of the CIA, I wouldn't rule it out out of hand, but I don't know.
But that was the way they were treating this.
And you would think, you know, like if these people had any shame or decency or an ounce of integrity, there would be like apologies coming from these people.
But instead, it'll be like, you know, just mock the people who were right about this.
And there's really, you know, there's something about that that's pretty crazy.
It's really quite a crazy thing to live through.
And I would just say that, you know, when you think about this and think about the fact that of what we know right now, like if you really take it all in, what we know, and I'll be, I will say, look, I don't pretend to know for sure.
I somewhat, I have like some sympathy to that guy, Hassan, when he says, he goes, I'm with the people who don't know.
I'm not a virologist, you know?
And like, okay, fair enough.
I'm not either.
And I guess I don't really know.
And if there were some compelling evidence that came out that suggested, like, no, no, no, I know it looked like the lab, but here's why it really didn't come from the lab.
It came from some wet market or something like that.
Like, okay, fine.
I could be persuaded, you know.
But here's what we know.
This is what we know for sure.
We know that there was a lab in Wuhan that was experimenting on coronaviruses.
We know that the U.S. was funding it through like subsidiary groups of the National Institute for Health.
Okay.
We know that Barack Obama had basically outlawed gain of function research with like a caveat that under emergency situations, it could be allowed.
We know that that caveat was invoked.
And we know that Dr. Anthony Fauci was the signature on invoking that caveat.
And we know that a couple of scientists who were working at that Wuhan lab in, I believe it was November of 2019.
It could have been December.
I can't remember.
Double check me on this.
That they went to the hospital and were treated with COVID-like symptoms.
I think there were three of them.
Okay.
And we know that people who brought up this theory were denounced as conspiracy theorists, that they were banned off social media, that their livelihoods were ruined.
We know that.
And we know that Fauci, because we've had his emails revealed, was warned by many other top scientists that it looked like this came from the Wuhan lab.
And we know that Fauci was then involved in getting those people to come out and say that this was a wild conspiracy theory that couldn't possibly be true.
And we know that now it's been more and more accepted that this is the most likely source of the virus.
And also we know, which is just beautiful, that a couple days after these two clips that we just showed you, and this is only like three days ago, these clips, and then it was just earlier today that the FBI came out and also said that they believe that COVID most likely originated from the Wuhan coronavirus lab.
So like, put all of that together.
I'm not saying that it's conclusive, like 100% proof.
Nothing, I guess, is ever 100%, but like, my God, what a picture it paints.
What a picture all of that paints.
It just lets you know, like, what's really going on here.
Now, the other thing that I think probably should be mentioned is that this seems, okay.
So after this being the most dangerous conspiracy that you're not allowed to talk about, and in fact, if you are, you're trafficking in right-wing conspiracy theories.
And believe me, that clip we played from Farid Zakaria, that was just one clip.
There's a million others of everyone in the corporate press just like viciously trashing anyone who would suggest the lab leak theory.
Fauci, of course, originally was very, you know, harsh against it.
Then ultimately admitted that like, oh, he's kind of agnostic on the subject and all of this.
But I, the idea that it is a complete coincidence that the Department of Justice a few days ago comes, I'm sorry, the Department of Energy comes out a few days ago and acknowledges this.
And then the FBI also follows right on their, on their heels, and they also acknowledge that this is the most likely scenario seems to be quite a coincidence.
It seems more likely to me that they're normalizing this idea.
YoDelta Sponsor Segment00:03:02
And okay, this is what they're going to try to do.
They're going to try to normalize this thing that a couple years ago, you could have been ruined for suggesting.
And now it'll be like it's totally fine to suggest it.
All right.
We get that game.
We know what they're doing.
I'll just say this.
Okay.
So I did, I did, I recorded an episode earlier today with Michael Malice, which I believe just was released.
So probably by the time you guys are hearing this, it'll be up there.
We recorded an episode on the topic of national divorce, and we're going to do another, like a part two of it on part of the problem.
So we did one part on you're welcome.
We'll do another part on part of the problem coming up soon.
So this was one of the points that I was talking about.
And I said this in the context of like pushing kind of radical ideas like a national divorce.
All right, guys, let's thank our sponsor for today's show, which is yo delta.com, the official Delta 8 sponsor of the gas digital network.
If you are an adult over the age of 21 and living in a state where Delta 8 is legal and you want to get high, go check out yo delta.com where you can stock up on high quality lab tested delta 8.
Now, a lot of people know about CBD, okay?
And much like CBD, Delta 8 is naturally found in hemp and it can legally be shipped to various states.
But unlike CBD, Delta 8 does get you high.
So know that going in.
At yoDelta.com, you can find a mix of gummies and vapes.
They have great quality stuff.
All the stoners at Gas Digital Network seem to love this stuff.
So go check it out.
Delta 8 from yo delta.com, the official Delta 8 sponsor of the gas digital network.
And if you use the promo code GAS, you get 25% off your order.
One more time, yoDelta.com, promo code GAS for 25% off your entire order.
YoDelta, home of the official Delta 8 sponsor of the Gas Digital Network.
All right, let's get back into the show.
Let me just say this.
It's hard right now to understand the significance of all of this, to understand the significance of how many people in America see this and see that they're going to try to take an idea that just a year or two ago made you the worst person in the world and someone who needed to be ruined to even suggest.
By the way, in that video of Tom Cotton, he didn't say that like, oh, this did come from a lab.
He said it's quite possible.
Like you weren't even allowed to like consider that possibility just a couple years ago.
What is the long-term impact of that?
Failed Policies and Lies00:08:07
And here's the truth.
None of us know.
None of us know exactly how profound that is.
You know, when you think about something like the war in Iraq and basically everyone, and I mean everyone, like almost every regular person today, whether you're talking to your most, like if you were talking to someone, say, and I know a lot of people, like I, I'm like, you know, I'm from New York City and I grew up in Brooklyn and I lived on like the upper west side of Manhattan for many years.
And now I live in a very like red country town.
And I, you know, because I do this podcast, I just, I know a lot of people from every different political persuasion.
And almost no matter who you talk to, from the most crazy, you know, like really like far left person or like a liberal person or like a conservative person or a crazy far right person, you know, you talk to any of them and you'd go, hey, what happened in the war in Iraq?
And if you were like, we were lied into a war, we were lied into a war where hundreds of thousands of people, to a million people ended up dying and trillions of dollars were spent and thousands of American soldiers were killed and then thousands more came back and, you know, blew their brains out, or you know, and thousands more were just like critically injured or any of this stuff, like they all agree.
No, you could find someone from all of those groups that would be like, yeah, I mean obviously, that's what happened.
Now, what was the result of that?
Well well, that alone, I don't know.
It's kind of hard to parse out, but what was the result of the war in Iraq being such a bold-faced lie, and the war in Afghanistan being such a failure, and all the subsequent wars, and what was, and the result of uh, you know, the the financial crisis in 2008 that led to the worst recession in like 80 years, or something like that, and and the failures of the Obama administration and all this?
Well, what were the results of that?
I mean, it's it's.
It's hard to parse out exactly what caused what, but all of that happened and what are the results of it?
It's where we are right now I don't know it's Donald Trump being elected president.
It's the, it's Antifa in the streets, it's the Proud BOYS and the.
You know like the and january 6th and the.
You know like I don't know the transgender movement and everything, like everything spinning out of control in many different ways, and i'm not like even blaming any one of those groups.
I'm just saying how crazy things have gotten are a result from how catastrophic these failed policies were, and not just how catastrophic the, the policies were, but how clear it is that it was all bullshit, that that you were just lied to.
The absolute um evaporation of trust in mainstream institutions.
That's the result of all of that.
Like there's so much that was like, yeah, this is what it led to.
And so, you know, if you were to say, what was the cost of the Iraq war?
Well, you could put like a number on it.
I don't know, whatever it was, like $2 trillion or something, $2 trillion, a million lives and like whatever.
20,000, let's just say, you know, American lives or something like that.
I mean, it was less than that in actual combat, but if you consider the soldier suicides and so, you know, whatever.
So, okay.
But that's just like the clear, but then the bigger cost is like, holy shit, this entire system is eroded.
And the COVID regime, you know, you go from the fact that there were like this, this novel virus comes rolling through the world.
And the response to it is that you must trust all of these experts.
You must kind of like give up all of your individual sovereignty, all of your presumption of rights and freedom to, you know, your governor who's going to dictate what policy is.
And they're going to say, they're going to, you know, make these outrageous claims like it's now a crime for you to go to work.
It's a crime for you to have a funeral for your mother.
It's a crime for you to be with your wife as she gives birth.
I mean, they're like insane, intimate details of people's lives that were deemed illegal by executive fiat.
And then to have the whole vaccine, you know, regime rise up and, you know, people were fired.
They lost their livelihoods because they wouldn't take this vaccine.
And, you know, they weren't allowed in restaurants.
They weren't allowed in sporting events and all of these things.
And for it to come out that all of that was bullshit.
All of that was bullshit.
That the lockdowns did not mitigate the virus.
And in fact, all of the places that were being celebrated, like New York, New York City, Governor Cuomo was being celebrated as, oh my God, he did such a great job through the pandemic.
And then like when the dust settles, you're like, they had the worst death rate and also he's a predator, you know, like just insane shit.
And then all of the people who were demonized, like, you know, say Florida and Ron DeSantis, well, they, they actually did the best with all things considered.
And then to see, and then the vaccine regime and you find out, oh, the vaccine doesn't work in any, nearly the way it was sold to people.
And now the big Pandora's box of like, oh, what does the vaccine actually lead to?
Oof.
Let's see how much we figure out about that over the next few years.
And that's like, what does all of this mean?
And here's the truth.
Like much like this Hassan guy says, what does that mean?
We don't know.
We don't know.
In the same way that it would have been really hard in 2000, let's not say really hard, impossible.
In 2005, when the Iraq war got really bloody and it was really clear that we were lied into the war and there weren't weapons of mass destruction and it wasn't going to be a cakewalk like they sold us it was going to be and it wasn't going to be any of these other things, you know, and things were like really going bad.
And you went, man, what's the cost of this going to be?
It would have been really hard to say Donald Trump and Antifa and the financial crisis.
Like it would have been really hard to predict that.
This is a thousand times bigger than that.
What's the cost of this going to be?
That's the really important question to start pondering.
And that's what's so interesting about the whole lab leak theory is that it gets right to the heart of this whole thing.
It's like, well, wait, what caused this?
And how deep does this well go?
Like, whew, once you consider the fact that it's a lab leak, you got to consider a lot of other things.
You know, how reckless was this?
And was it just reckless?
Or is there something even more nefarious going on?
And holy shit, if that comes out, what does that mean?
These are all the really profound, interesting questions to be asked.
And man, what does all of this result in?
That's what's really interesting about all of this.
That's why it's such a big deal that like even major, you know, major institutions are coming out and admitting it.
And they think they can just kind of admit it, mock the people who thought it was true and then sweep it all under the rug.
SheathUnderwear Sponsor Spot00:02:30
I'm telling you, that is not going to work.
There is a price owed.
I don't know exactly what that price is going to be, but it's going to be something for sure.
And so anyway, the point I was making on Michael Malice's show was that I think now in a way, this is kind of my defense of pushing the idea of a national divorce is that now is the time in the same way that, you know, Ram Emmanuel or Henry Kissinger or these guys will go, you know, Henry Kissinger will say, a great crisis is also a tremendous opportunity to enact policies you could not enact before.
It's like, okay, well, from that perspective too, maybe this is a huge opportunity for us to really push a radical message that you could not have pushed before that might resonate with a lot more people where it's like, yeah, let's kind of push the idea that these institutions can never be trusted again.
And maybe even we shouldn't be governed by them.
All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is sheathunderwear.com, the underwear of legends.
And as one of those legends, I must tell you, sheath underwear is the best pair of underwear you will ever put on your body.
They're comfortable.
They're high quality.
They're made out of a moisture wicking technology.
The second you put these on, you're going to be like, wow, I feel good about myself.
I used to put no thought into the boxer briefs that I wore.
It was just like, whatever, a six pack of this, a six pack of that, doesn't matter.
But then you put on a nice quality pair of sheath underwear and you just feel good about yourself.
And here's something crazy.
Sheath has been advertising on this podcast for over three years now.
I just realized I still have my original pair of sheath underwear that they sent to me and it still feels great every time I put it on.
It's the only underwear I wear.
I highly recommend you guys check them out.
Just incredible.
High quality underwear from sheathunderwear.com.
They also have Gatornecks and hoodies.
They have t-shirts.
They have a lot of other stuff.
Go check them out.
A great company that's supported this show for a long time that makes a great product, sheathunderwear.com.
And use the promo code problem20.
That will get you 20% off your next order.
Sheathunderwear.com, promo code problem20 for 20% off.
Ukraine War Goals Shifted00:15:33
All right, let's get back into the show.
So anyway, that's okay.
So that's, broadly speaking, the first topic that I wanted to talk about for today's show.
The second topic has to do with the war in Ukraine.
And I also think there was a big turning point in that.
So it's been a big week.
So I think something pretty major happened this week.
And it was kind of, I think, an unforced error by Zelensky, who was giving a press conference and said something, and this ended up going viral.
And this is something that I think might have actually moved the needle in a positive direction.
I'm not sure about it yet.
This just happened the other day.
Let's play the clip.
The U.S. will have to send their sons and daughters exactly the same way as we are sending their sons and daughters to war.
And they will have to fight because it's nature that we're talking about.
And they will be dying.
God forbid, because it's a horrible thing.
All right.
That was the quote right there.
That basically, if we cut off aid to Ukraine, or if we do not continue to send, what, I don't know, another $100 billion, another $200 billion.
We don't know exactly.
He's not specifying.
But if we don't support Ukraine in this fight, then the U.S. will have to send their sons and daughters to fight and die for this war.
So this guy, this authoritarian dictator, which is what Zelensky is right now, a man who has banned his political opposition, has nationalized media companies, has installed slavery in terms of like the conscription, the draft, forcing people to fight.
He now says if you don't support him and his fight, that the U.S. will have to send their sons and daughters to fight and die over whether the Donbass region is ruled by Kiev or Moscow.
Like, look, and he says, because this is NATO, except he's not in NATO.
He's not a NATO member.
Just imagine the nerve.
And this was in response, by the way, to the fact that the majority of Americans are no longer supporting this, that it is the support for funding this war in Ukraine is plummeting.
And that's what he's saying.
Oh, you better support us or it's your sons and daughters who will fight and die.
Look, I'll say first, the unmitigated nerve of this fascist who's in bed with legit Nazis to say that we somehow to not sit there and say thank you.
How about fucking thank you for the unbelievable support because we would have been crushed if it wasn't for the $100 billion that you guys have already sent us.
And oh my God, I'm so sorry, but we're going to have to ask for more.
But to say you better send us more or it's your sons and daughters.
First off, no, it isn't.
No, it motherfucking isn't.
And I will tell you this, and I got to be careful.
I got to like choose my words on this one correctly.
I don't want to get too pissed off for no reason.
But as someone, you know, he mentions sons and daughters, and I have a son and a daughter.
And if you say they're going to fight and die for the cause of Ukraine, fighting against Russia, let's just say, okay, I won't say for risk of messing up my for getting kicked off of platforms or something like that.
I won't say what I would do to make sure that that doesn't happen, but it would be a lot.
Maybe I'll just say what you'd have to do to me to make sure that that does happen.
You bet, like, I don't know.
You better bring a SWAT team.
You better have at least one man to grab each arm and each leg and drag me away and have like, you know, like a fucking cell ready.
Cause it's, it's going to take a lot.
And that's, I don't just speak for myself.
I think what you don't realize is that there are millions, tens of millions of Americans.
You say our sons and daughters will have to fight and die for Ukraine's fight.
There's millions of Americans who will fight and die to make sure that ain't the case.
So be careful, you pompous fascist asshole.
I have no idea what it is.
Like just to say that so casually, that it's going to be Americans.
Why?
We're on the other side of the fucking planet from you, dude.
We have no obligation to make sure Ukraine is protected so that your corrupt government rules Ukraine rather than Russia's corrupt government.
I'm sorry.
I don't care.
We should cut off all aid and support to Ukraine.
And we should have never given it to them to begin with.
We should cut it all off immediately.
But I'll tell you this.
Here's the positives in him saying that.
This was an overreach.
And this is while support for this war amongst Americans is already crashing.
This was the worst thing he could have said for his cause.
So thank God for that.
And this, I think not coincidentally, came a day later, a day later on NBC.
This is something that we heard that I thought was really beautiful.
It's something that should be mentioned is that with all of the wars, there's been with all of the wars, let's say in the last 20 years, there's been, you could go back even further than that, but with all the American wars in the last 20 years, the real issue from a from a logistic standpoint, not from like a moral standpoint.
The issue is like all the innocent people dying from a moral standpoint, but just from like, from the perspective of like the logistics of all of this, the issue has always been like, what is the end goal here?
What is the plan?
What is the strategy?
How does this work?
What means success?
You know, like in the war in Iraq, we overthrew Saddam's government like very quickly.
But then you're like, okay.
And then remember that's when George W. Bush had that whole, you know, he came in on the fighter jet and was like, mission accomplished and all this.
It's like, okay, but we're still there.
So what's the goal?
Okay.
If the goal was to topple Saddam's government, okay, your mission accomplished.
But now you're saying we're going to bring democracy to Iraq?
Oh, that's a whole different goal.
How the hell do we do that?
That doesn't seem.
And then in Afghanistan, it's like, okay, what do you want to do?
You want to bring feminism to Afghanistan?
You know, like all these different military conflicts.
And the goals always seem like something that you're like, yeah, but that can't possibly be achieved.
And you have to ask yourself the same thing.
What's the goal with this war in Ukraine?
What are they saying the end game is?
What is it?
It's to what?
Get Russia to like initially, uh, last year, when Russia invaded, they said the goal was to get Russia to go back to not, you know, undo the invasion of 2021.
Like okay, that's the goal.
But then uh, Zelinsky has now said that the goal is also that uh, they take back Crimea, and which is like okay, that's a whole different goal.
It's a whole different goal.
They, Russia took Crimea in 2015.
They didn't take it last year, and then that was kind of accepted for quite a long time.
They're like okay, that's going to be Russian.
Um, so now we're doing that.
And then, of course, like Lindsey Graham and Joe Biden and a lot of people like that have said well, the goal now is to like uh, overthrow Putin.
Like okay, that's a whole different goal.
Like what the is the goal here and how plausible is it that this could be achieved?
So anyway that, all that being said, let's uh, let's play, bring it back to the beginning.
Let's play Andrea Mitchell here, uh on, uh on on NBC NEWS on sunday to take back Crimea.
How realistic is that?
The people there whom you spoke, to view themselves as Russian.
That's right.
From those people that we spoke to, it seemed unrealistic.
And Andrew, I want to show you some new picture that we filmed yesterday at the port of Sevastopol.
Now, this is the closest that any U.s news crew has got to the Russian Black SEA fleet in many, many years.
What you're seeing here are president Putin's ships at that port.
Why it's important is because uh, Vladimir Putin will be determined to defend, to defend that port, to not have it uh taken away from him.
Uh, he may well do pretty much anything to try to achieve that, and and The reason why is because it is so strategically important to Russia.
But here's the irony, uh, the fact, since he launched that uh invasion a year ago in Ukraine, Ukrainians now will be determined not to have the Black SEA fleet there, potentially threatening their uh coast for years to come.
So it is a very, very dangerous standoff that suggests that this could pan out for some time to come.
It's hard to see how you reach a negotiation over that.
And there in Sevastopol Andrew, i've got to tell you I mean, there was just military everywhere, absolutely everywhere.
Uh, it is a military town.
So again when, for example Victoria, Victoria Newland talks about, at the very least, we want Crimea to be demilitarized, I found myself standing there and wondering how on earth does that happen?
Yeah okay, so we can.
We can stop right there.
So that's pretty interesting that on Msnbc I said in NBC before it's Msnbc, but Andrea Mitchell's an NBC reporter as well um, that they're at least acknowledging that.
Oh yeah, this goal of taking Crimea and, of course, when Andrea Mitchell says uh, demilitarizing Crimea it's, it's almost the same thing.
It's just so absurd.
So absurd for anyone who knows anything about the situation there.
It said they're basically one in the same.
To say one is to say the other.
And it's interesting that they're acknowledging this now.
It almost seems like maybe they're trying to walk off of this ledge to at least go, okay, you know, like, it's like if it was the war in Afghanistan and you're like, well, we want to defeat al-Qaeda and we want to overthrow the Taliban and we want to install feminism.
You might go, the people here say they don't want feminism.
So at least maybe that's not going to happen.
It's something similar to that, where, you know, okay, you want to repel Russia from Ukraine.
Okay, that's already a pretty lofty goal.
Now you want to get him out of the Donbass region as well.
Like, okay.
And now you want to get him out of Crimea.
You're like, oh, okay, that.
And he says the people we've talked to here, now they all, they want to be part of Russia.
And yeah, of course, there was actually a plebiscite in 2015 where they overwhelmingly voted to be a part of Russia, which, by the way, was backed up by independent polling.
And everyone knows this has been true, you know, from forever, that if you just, everyone knows that if you just had a vote, if you just had a referendum in Crimea about who their loyalties are to, they would have all voted for Russia.
It's majority ethnic Russian.
So, you know, here's the thing, right?
So this is basically the history of it for people who don't know, but when the Soviet Union broke up, Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, right?
So when they left, it was like whatever deal there was between Ukraine and Russia before the Soviet Union dissolved.
Well, it didn't really matter because it was like they were all part of the Soviet Union.
But this in Crimea, the naval base there is the, I believe it's the only year-long warm water port that Russia has.
So in other words, that boats can, you know, can move around year long.
And this is, so this is a strategically very important naval base for the Russian military.
And so when they first gave Ukraine their independence, I believe it double checked me on this, but they signed a lease.
I think it was a 100-year lease.
It was something like that.
It was like a crazy, like they were like, okay, we'll give you your independence, but here's the deal.
We get to lease this naval base from you, Ukraine, which at the time was an independent country.
It was not, you know, a puppet of the West as Zelensky is.
And so they said, okay, fine.
So they have this crazy long lease, and that was enough to guarantee it to them.
And after the 2014 coup, which overthrew the Yanukovych government and put in a much more pro-Western government, they said, you know, screw you, we're tearing up the lease.
We're tearing up the lease.
You don't have this naval base anymore.
You guys are evicted, essentially.
And Vladimir Putin said, no, no.
And he said something in his kind of like dry sense of humor, Putin-esque way.
He said, I forget exactly his quote, but he said something like, you know, we were thinking about coming and visiting NATO in Crimea, but we thought it might be a lot better if NATO came and visited us in Crimea, something like that.
And so Vladimir Putin, now they say he invaded Crimea is the way that it's talked about in the, you know, the corporate press here.
It's not exactly true.
Eviction from Crimea00:02:43
I mean, he definitely sent in some reinforcements, but it's not even really like he needed to invade them.
He has his naval base there.
Basically, they left the base and came out.
It was a bloodless coup de main, as they call it.
No one like, like, was slaughtered in Vladimir Putin's, quote, invasion of Crimea.
I mean, I think if you actually look up the numbers, I think like four people died.
Right four, maybe six, something like that, and it's not clear that they were killed by the Russians.
It's like there were some protests that broke out and some people died.
It's it's not exactly clear, but it was like that.
It was under 10, you know what I mean.
People that died.
It wasn't like some bloody invasion, they just kind of came out of their naval base and were like, no, this is ours.
Then some reinforcements came in and everyone was like well yeah okay, and most of the population agreed with them, most of them wanted that.
But so the?
So just to be clear here, the idea of repelling Russia out of there is not going to happen and the idea of saying, oh well, we don't want to repel them, we just want to demilitarize it, that's the same thing.
You're saying that you need their naval base kicked out of there.
That's not going to happen.
It is not going to happen, it's impossible.
And that's not saying that it should happen or it shouldn't happen.
It's kind of like the conversation of spreading feminism to Afghanistan.
I'm not really even.
You don't even have to take a position on whether you think that would be a good thing or a bad thing.
It's just not going to be a thing.
That's the point and this is what they're kind of acknowledging.
This is what Andrea Mitchell and her guests here are finally acknowledging like yeah, this ain't happening and that's, that's at least a positive sign, at least a positive sign.
So here you have this guy Zelinsky, demanding that American boys and girls fight and die, and then you have Msnbc of all places going.
You know a lot of his demands, don't they seem like they're not too realistic, I gotta say, as infuriating as it is to hear Zelensky demand that.
I hope he keeps talking like this.
I hope he does, because I think this is the best thing for the prospects of actually winding down this war, or at least winding down American support for it, which will ultimately wind down the war.
I think that's good.
Keep telling us the truth, Zelensky.
Please, please, keep telling us what you want for our children.
All right.
That's our episode for today.
Thank you guys very much for listening and indulging me as you always do.