Dave Smith and Rob Bernstein critique the prosecution of Donald Trump as a weaponized misdemeanor that ignores alleged war crimes by other presidents, while condemning Anthony Blinken's Ukraine ceasefire warnings as strategic blunders aiding China. They dismiss new UN climate reports as political alarmism designed to justify lockdowns, arguing that forced technology adoption like electric vehicles will cause starvation rather than solve issues. The hosts conclude that common sense dismantles fear-based narratives, asserting true accountability requires ending deep state bias and rejecting government coercion in favor of global cooperation. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Campaign Finance Violation00:09:51
Fill her up.
You are listening to the Gash Digital Network.
We need to roll back to state.
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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 Heart of the Problem.
I'm Dave Smith.
He's Rob Bernstein.
We got quite an episode for you today.
What's up, brother?
How are you feeling?
I'm doing good.
We got that live podcast this weekend.
That's a great club you guys are playing.
Oh, Comedy Connection out in Providence, Rhode Island.
I love that club.
Great people who run it.
It's a great club.
I hope to see a bunch of you guys out there.
This is going to be a fun one.
Rob's off this weekend.
Chris Fega will be taking over for the stand-up shows.
And then Rob's coming out Sunday for the live podcast.
So it'll be a whole lot of fun.
And maybe we'll do a little bit of stand-up on that Sunday show.
Yeah, that's what I'm talking about.
Yeah.
And then you're going to be out skiing.
Steamboat doing two shows at Schmiggity's.
It's my third year in a row of being out there, which is cool.
It's been fun every year.
Hell yeah.
Also, you know, we got a whole bunch more dates coming up.
ComicdaveSmith.com with all the dates and ticket links and everything like that.
Just recorded, just before I got on here, just finished recording with Russell Brand for his podcast.
That was a lot of fun.
I really, I'm a big fan of that guy, and it was fun to talk about.
Talked about anti-war stuff and libertarianism.
And yeah, so that I think is going to be out in the next couple of days.
Go look for that.
All right.
So let's jump into this.
So the big story that's been looming over the headlines for the last few days has been that Donald Trump is potentially getting arrested today.
So far, nothing has happened.
It's 1.10 p.m. as we're recording this on Tuesday.
So Donald Trump announced March 21st, just to mark this date in history.
So Donald Trump announced last week on, I guess, on Truth Social.
I don't know where, but he said that he has been told he's being arrested today.
This seemed to be confirmed by the Manhattan Southern District attorney there that this is true.
They're looking to arrest Donald Trump.
Then there were reports that there was communication between the prosecutor's office and the Secret Service about exactly how they would arrest him, whether he would be handcuffed and perp walked, whether he'd be processed, how exactly it would go down.
There's so much that's interesting about all of this.
I hadn't even thought about that, that if you spring on the president, he's got secret service there.
So you potentially got to duke it out with Secret Service.
I didn't even thought about that.
Yeah, it's a real interesting little thing where they really got to like come to an agreement beforehand.
Like, yeah, you can't just like take a president from the Secret Service.
Like that, you got to have their permission going in.
So that's a whole interesting detail.
Is there a Secret Service going to jail with him?
Like they got to sit in the cell with him while he's there.
I don't know what the details are, but certainly you can't just throw Donald Trump in like a holding cell with a bunch of people.
So it's unclear what the details are of this.
Let's start kind of with the specifics of this case, which again, he hasn't been indicted yet.
So it's hard to even exactly know because none of it really makes sense.
But we'll see.
We'll see what ends up happening.
So from what we're So, okay, so now Brian is just saying there's just been a report that says now they're not expecting this to happen till next week.
So we'll, we'll see what happens.
We really don't know.
This kind of feels to me like what I've been talking about, that they almost test the news stories first.
This seems like this might be one of those where they wanted to do it.
So they leaked the story to see how the public would react.
They realized everyone is acknowledging that if you're arresting Trump for this, it's an admission that after 10 years of hard work, you couldn't bust him on anything else and that this wasn't going to actually stick.
So I wouldn't be surprised if they walk it back.
It makes no sense.
So the what the charge would be from what's been reported again, this isn't like officially like this is like what the prosecutors have come out and said because they haven't indicted him yet.
So they haven't like made a statement on this.
But what the reporting is that this is all over the hush money to Stormy Daniels.
And there's a few different theories on how exactly Donald Trump could be charged for this.
Of course, Donald Trump, Donald Trump had a lawyer pay off Stormy Daniels to shut up about them having an affair.
Stormy Daniels, of course, did not shut up and told everyone, which does seem like you should give the money back.
Anyway, but so anyway, but so the claim that many have made is that this constitute, this constitutes a violation of campaign finance laws.
Now, I just want to say I'm no lawyer, but this is an astoundingly weak claim.
Like it's just incredibly weak.
There was actually a case, there's precedent for this where they tried to indict, what's his name?
God damn it, I'm blanking on his freaking name.
But he was the guy, oof, this is going to drive me crazy.
He ran for president on the Democratic Party, John Edwards.
He ran against Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
It came out that he had had this affair.
He had given her money and they tried to claim basically like, well, the argument is that this was going to damage your campaign if this came out.
And so you paying her off was like for PR for your campaign.
And therefore, it's campaign money and you didn't report it.
Therefore, it's a campaign finance violation.
The case failed and they couldn't get they couldn't get him on it because first of all, it's it's such a loose broad definition of what is an official campaign expense.
And if you're just saying that, like obviously with Trump or in any of these cases, you could also just, they're married.
You could also just say, oh, there's other reasons why I'd want this to not come out that have nothing to do with the campaign.
Right.
And if you're just going to say it looks bad, therefore it's a campaign expense.
Well, then couldn't everything that looks good be a campaign expense?
Couldn't you deduce from that that like anything like, well, I got to, you know, I got to whatever.
I got to live in a mansion because that makes me look pretty awesome, you know?
So therefore, that's a campaign expense.
Like it just does, it really doesn't make any sense.
But the other major issue is that that's a federal offense.
That would have nothing to do with the district here in Manhattan.
So all of this speculation to me seems to make no sense.
Like they couldn't charge him for campaign finance violations.
And anyway, even if this was true, it's like these are the type of things that result in a slap on the wrist usually, unless you're Dinesh D'Souza, in which case they want to like put you in jail.
They usually don't, people don't go to jail for this stuff.
So it's just maybe there's something else that he's going to be charged with that they haven't like let leak out yet that we don't know.
It does seem like there's no question it's going to be something that at least from a court of public opinion standpoint.
Obviously, there's the people who hate Donald Trump and the people who love Donald Trump who probably won't be swayed either way.
But it does seem like it's going to be something pretty weak.
Like it's, you know, it's funny to go these years.
He's, you know, he's a puppet of Vladimir Putin who conspired to steal our election.
And then they're like, what'd you get him for?
And like, campaign finance violation.
You know, it's just, it's not going to pack the punch that they want it to.
So yeah, beyond that, I don't know what the specifics exactly will be if he's charged, but it just, it doesn't make any sense.
Of course, the reporting was also that it was a misdemeanor, that the DA here like marked up to a felony.
It all seems pretty shady.
And some of the I've heard from some liberals.
Well, I've seen, I've heard two things.
One is claims that, well, at least we're finally getting rid of the guy.
And you're so foolish if you're going to champion political prisoners just because the system doesn't like the guy.
That's not a good, like, that's not a system that we want to live in.
So first, you guys claim that he was a Russian asset.
Then you claim he's got nuclear materials.
Then you claim he overturns the election.
And then you bust him on a $130,000 hush punning payment to, you know, this feels like when OJ got busted for stealing his own stuff, which Norm McDonald had a great joke about.
But it's like, this should not be the thing that he gets busted for.
And if he does, then we have a problem.
That's being a political prisoner.
Like, and are you really admitting that there wasn't a single other thing that this guy really did after 12 years?
This is the, you're basically, if anything, validating that Donald Trump is actually a saint of a human being, that this is the only thing that you can get him on after a concerted effort for 12 years.
And of course, in a sense, that's not true.
I mean, there are lots of crimes that Donald Trump has committed, much like all of the presidents.
We could go through like all the presidents and the crimes that they've committed.
Trump's Political Prisoner Status00:02:22
Maybe we'll do that.
That could be fun.
But they don't want to bust him for any of those real crimes because then that sets a precedent that what?
They're all on the table.
You know, like if you want to charge Donald Trump for being a war criminal or something like that, or like fighting unconstitutional wars or whatever, well, then geez, I mean, how do you do that?
And then not and then just go, yeah, but we're not going to charge Bush or Obama or Biden, you know?
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All right, let's get back into the show.
So let me say, there's what a lot of the talk is.
Presidents Above The Law00:15:43
I mean, this will, we could, sure, we could, we could run through the presidents and their crimes.
Let's just go, we could just do like in my lifetime.
I'm going to be 40 in a few months here.
So I was born in 1983.
And yeah, I'm old.
And so I was born, Ronald Reagan was the president when I was born, when I was a baby.
So even going through that, because a lot of people will say, this is a big talking point right now on in the corporate press and on social media and stuff, is that what this proves is that no one's above the law, even the president.
Even the president is not above the law, right?
Like that's see, because he can still be charged.
But of course, that's so ridiculous.
And then I've even seen some of the like, you know, like the, I don't know, whatever you want to call them, the kind of like Beltway libertarian types being like, yeah, this is what libertarians believe in.
You know, that presidents aren't above the law.
And it's just so misguided.
It's so stupid because it's like, no, the precedent, like if Donald Trump were charged for, you know, conducting a genocide in Yemen for every day of his administration, if he were charged for that, you know, I'd be out there cheering it on.
Because yeah, that would set a precedent.
And then you could start really like, like, you know, pushing the idea that all these other guys should be charged and that no, any president in the future would have to think twice about getting whether they're going to get away with that or not.
Yeah, you could actually go to jail, dude.
So like you better not, you know, you better not start any illegal wars.
But of course, that's not what's happening.
And what's really happening here?
Okay, so it's something that lots of other politicians do that almost any of them could be charged for, right?
Almost any of them, you could find these petty charges.
This doesn't do anything to like clean up corruption.
I mean, the Obamas, what are they worth?
Like over $100 million or something like that now?
Because they came into office.
They had a few million dollars.
Same with the Clintons came in and had a few million dollars.
They're worth like $300 million now.
It's not, you know, not cleaning up any corruption.
The precedent, the only precedent that is set by this is that if you are an outsider or if you're a president who is, you know, opposed by the deep state, you can go to jail.
So this is like, it's like, it's hard to explain how naive, especially from a libertarian standpoint it is to think this is like setting some type of good precedent.
It's like, no, it's the worst.
It's the worst precedent.
It's like, it's letting them know that if you ever actually wanted to like, if you ever actually wanted to drain the swamp, you might go to jail.
Like that's what you might go to jail if that's what you wanted.
Yeah, I'm sorry.
They're saying $40 million or $70 million, the Obama's net worth is whatever.
Anyway, something.
It's a lot more than it was when they came in.
But that's the precedent that would be set.
Now, again, because I have to spell this out for some people, that's not to say that Donald Trump was actually draining the swamp, right?
And that's not to say that Donald Trump actually was bringing down the deep state, but it's pretty much beyond debate that he was opposed by them.
They tried to, you know, they tried to frame him for treason for four years.
They worked against him at every turn.
So if we ever got someone who actually was trying to drain the swamp, then the only precedent set here is that they can, the justice system can be weaponized against them.
So again, when they say, oh, presidents aren't above the law, it's like, okay, so let's go through in my lifetime, Ronald Reagan, okay?
Ronald Reagan in his first year in office.
I mean, he took this over.
I think Jimmy Carter started this, but he funded both sides of the Iraq-Iran war, where that's our thing.
Yeah, right.
So something in the neighborhood of 500,000 people on each side died.
It was like an incredibly bloody war.
I think it was last six, seven years or something like that.
And Saddam Hussein invaded Iran with the backing.
of the United States of America.
This was, by the way, when Saddam Hussein was actually at his most brutal age, he was a really brutal dictator, but the worst thing he ever did was this 1980 Iraq-Iran war, used chemical weapons against the Iranians.
It's horrible, horrific.
Again, like I said, somewhere in the neighborhood of like 500,000 people on each side died, like a million total people died.
Just horrible.
Had the full support of the U.S. government while he was doing it.
They greenlit it.
In fact, this was the strategy back then was to support Saddam Hussein to contain Iran.
Of course, he also, though, was caught up in the whole Iran-Contra scandal where he was also selling weapons to Iran and then rerouting them to the war in Nicaragua, where he was illegally supporting one side of that war.
And then to help those Nicaraguans, he let them ship drugs into the United States of America while he was ramping up the drug war.
Literally was his people were shipping cocaine into urban American cities, and he was arresting the people who took it from them and then started distributing it.
So, okay, it's a criminal on every level, but he never got charged for anything.
And by the way, none of this, none of what I just said to you is even like speculation.
This is all like come out that it's happened.
It's never charged for any of it.
Of course, then you have George H.W. Bush.
I don't even know where to start with him.
Of course, led the war, the first war in Iraq, which was supposed to, they were all celebrating how this was a quick, easy, decisive victory.
Remember the desert storm war in Iraq when we were all little kids?
And it was like, yeah, this just showed you how easily America can just go in there and just win a quick war.
Except 30 years later, we're still there.
So it turns out it wasn't so quick or successful.
George W. Bush was George H.W. Bush, rather, was also the head of the CIA and committed a whole bunch of crimes there as well.
You have Bill Clinton, who, you know, just aside from personally being, you know, a rapist who was pals with Jeffrey Epstein, who was on his flight logs going to Thailand, going to Thailand with Jeffrey Epstein.
That sounds pretty end if I've ever heard of one.
Yeah, I mean, it sounds like you're pretty above the law if you get away with that.
But of course, his president also launched a legal war in Serbia, just blatantly illegal.
Couldn't get a UN resolution.
I mean, it'd still be illegal under the Constitution if you don't have a declaration of war, but couldn't get a UN resolution because Russia had veto power.
So he just launched it with NATO, just went in, started a war.
Also had the brutal bombing campaigns of Iraq with no congressional authorization.
You know, just tons of crimes, not to mention all the like corruption stuff that I guess they never really got to the bottom of.
And if you really want to get petty about it, also was guilty of perjury.
Now, he was impeached over this, and he lost his, he lost his license to practice law, but no one ever, you know, thought about indicting him or arresting him for that because he was above the law.
Do we even have to do George W. Bush?
Let's do it.
What do you even do?
Let's do it.
He was illegally stupid.
He was so stupid, it should be a crime to be stupid.
He instituted torture, lied the American people into war.
That seems like a pretty serious crime.
Barack Obama committed treason, which is not hyperbolic in the slightest.
He armed, knowingly armed al-Qaeda in Syria.
Not to mention also, you know, served as their air force in Libya and Yemen, but actually sent them weapons and money in Syria with the goal of overthrowing Bashar al-Assad, which was also an illegal war where he could, he never got, you know, congressional authorization for any of these things.
Also killed American citizens, Anwar Alaki and his 16-year-old kid with no charges, no due process, kept secret kill lists, you know, like some pretty serious crimes.
And then if you want to go to Donald Trump, he also killed an American citizen who was related to the Alaki family, an eight-year-old girl.
He continued the war of genocide in Yemen through his entire administration, launched illegal strikes in Syria, in Iraq, you know, just a lot of shit there.
And all of those crimes, the presidents all got away with.
So don't tell me like, oh, this proves that the presidents aren't above the law.
They are.
They're all above the law.
And everyone knows that.
All this proves is that if the political class deems you an enemy, you no longer enjoy that privilege of being above the law.
So like, this is nothing for anyone who's, you know, a fan of liberty or civilization or anything like that to celebrate.
This is all just corrupt politics.
That's all that's happening here.
So yeah, there's, we'll rattle off that little list for you.
I will say this.
And this is, I'll almost say this as an admission of sorts.
So obviously I'm the guy who's always talking about how politicians are criminals.
And they should all be like my position is that all of these presidents should be arrested for all their war crimes.
Like, yeah, I don't know.
I don't think like they should be above the law.
I actually don't think they should be above the law.
Actually, I mentioned that to me is essentially the anarcho-capitalist position is that these people ought to not be above the law.
But that we could get a little bit more into that in a second.
But that's always been my position.
Like all these people should be arrested.
And I'm like a radical libertarian.
I'm not a conservative.
You know, I might appear on some conservative shows or talk to conservatives.
And when there's a Democrat in office, me and you might sound kind of like conservatives sometimes because they like to pretend to support the free market and small government at times.
And they, you know, pretend to oppose the corruption of the Democrats and were actually for and against all those things.
The conservatives would always have this thing.
I don't know, Rob, if you ever like knew any conservatives in your family or just listen to like Fox News during like Mitt Romney's run for president or something.
But you know, they'd always talk about these things.
Like they'd be like, he didn't have his flag pen on or something like that.
Or Obama took off his jacket in the Oval Office.
You're not supposed to take off your jacket.
And they really care about these like traditions and things.
And I've always kind of rolled my eyes at that stuff.
Like I just, who cares whether he has a flag pin on or he took his jacket off?
I will say when they were, when the report came out about throwing Donald Trump in handcuffs, there was some part of me, this is an admission, that was like, yo, they're going to put the president, like they're going to put a president of the United States of America in handcuffs.
That's pretty crazy, you know?
It's like, dude, they didn't do that with anyone.
They didn't do that with Nixon.
They didn't do it.
Like, it really, it's like, and I'm not someone, don't get me wrong.
I'm not saying like, oh, don't disrespect the dignity of the office.
I guess my thing is more like, if you're going to do it, you got to make this one real.
Like, you can't just do that for these purely political reasons.
Like, if you did that, arrest them for war crimes.
And then you can kind of spin it like, listen, this is how serious our country and our system is, is that you need to let, you know what I mean?
Like this person has to be held to account.
But what a thing to do.
What a like powerful image that would be to be like, you know, we're putting, you know, to everyone who voted for Trump, we're putting your president in handcuffs.
Anyway, I don't think that's going to happen.
That's my guess.
I think they got to at least be smart enough to realize that you're just making him a martyr to the right wing.
You would just, unless you're going to like get this guy to do jail time, you're really helping his presidential campaign.
And so my guess is they're not going to do that, but still just pretty crazy to think about.
I got to watch a little bit of MSNBC the other night.
I was hate watching it.
And actually, I was also hate watching NPR, a bunch of them.
This is my grandfather.
He watches the news.
I get to see what these people are talking about.
And they're yelling about the senators and congressmen that have been taking issue with this and how I guess they're obstructing justice and an ongoing campaign and that they're going to be using wasting taxpayer funds.
And I just thought there were so many aspects of it that were so laughable.
But the biggest one just being, well, what would be the mechanism to review bad prosecutions if Congress or senators can't go, hey, I think that this is a political persecution.
I mean, I forget even the idea of, oh, taxpayer dollars from MSNBC in terms of like obstructing an investigation.
That was just, that's even just too much to take on.
But just like, what is the mechanism by which, like, they don't even want to defend why he's being pulled in.
They were just going, he's finally going to get arrested.
And can you believe that people are taking issue with it without even trying to defend why he was being arrested for this?
Well, it's kind of like it, it reminds me.
And this is what the Trump derangement syndrome kind of thing is.
And this is where you see people like Sam Harris who had that.
This is like all of their attitudes.
You remember the clip with Sam Harris where he's like, look, even if we found children's bodies in Hunter Biden's basement, or even if Joe Biden was so corrupt, we already know that Donald Trump's a trillion times more corrupt.
It's like the starting assumption is just like, we know he's guilty of everything.
So just like, yeah, if they charge him with this, he's guilty of this.
He's guilty of everything.
He's the devil.
You know, like it really, again, it's funny for someone like Sam Harris that it's such a clearly like religious impulse.
It's like, look, this is, this is the devil.
So like, I don't know.
If you're talking about the devil, Rob, and I'm like, I can get him on this charge.
It's like, yeah, get him on that charge.
Like, get him on whatever you can get him on.
He's everything evil.
And if he goes away, we don't have to deal with evil anymore.
So like, yeah, that does make sense if you're a religious fundamentalist talking about the devil.
It doesn't make sense in this context.
Anyway, let me just elaborate on what I was getting at before, because I think this is kind of what I've always thought was interesting about this debate about whether the president is above the law is that to me, this is the essence of like the libertarian insight, which is that like, yeah, by their nature, they're above the law.
That's what a government is, or at least that's what a state is for the people who want to make that distinction.
But that's what it is.
It's by nature.
They're above the law.
And so it's just funny to kind of even have this conversation.
Look, everything that we're talking about, like the law is that murder is illegal.
Yet they all murder people constantly.
They may call it war or call it a military, you know, strike or whatever, but they kill people.
They're allowed to.
They get away with that.
And like theft is illegal, but the IRS isn't like being brought down anytime soon.
Like all these things are imprisoning people, you know, kidnapping people is illegal, but they do it constantly.
It's like, yeah, by the very nature of this whole thing is that they're above the law.
There's a set of laws that apply to everyone else.
And then there's exceptions carved out for the state.
That's kind of the whole libertarian insight.
So it's, it's so goofy to see people even like talk about this.
Like, I don't think the president should be above the law.
Like that's, that's what the position is.
The position.
It's like saying, I don't think the king should be above everyone else.
But that's what it is to be a king.
That's the nature of it.
So, like, yeah, of course they're above the law.
And this, and they will continue to be.
Prosecution Possibilities Explained00:03:11
And Donald Trump being indicted isn't going to change any of that.
Anyway, we'll see what happens with this whole thing.
There have been some Republicans who came out.
It's really weird to see the kind of like the DeSantis versus Trump like jockeying for position that's going on amongst a lot of right-wing commentators and amongst Trump, but not so much DeSantis.
Like, I don't know if you've noticed that.
He's just not playing into it, but he did come out and he found a way to spin it that I thought was actually pretty good, like good politics where he just goes, Oh, yeah, this is another Soros DA, and that's why I oppose them.
That's why we got rid of one of these Soros DAs here in Florida because these guys are just terrible and like just kind of like spun it like that.
But so he's on record, like, I'm against this, but at the same time, he's also not like really like digging into it.
You know what I mean?
And yeah, like you said, there were a few like Republican congressmen and stuff who were speaking out against it.
But this is going to, I mean, the possibilities here, I guess, are that this is going to obviously be a shot in the arm for Donald Trump because it just proves how much he's taking on the establishment.
The other thing is that he did, Donald Trump, when he announced that he was going to be arrested, he told his people to protest this, right?
I think those were his words.
Protest this, which is something to see coming out of Donald Trump.
I tweeted the other day, I was like, hey, Trump supporters, if you're out protesting this and you happen to see a guy in his 50s with a buzz cut and a barrel chest and he's screaming, storm the courthouse, maybe just don't listen to that guy.
Because that is the other concern about this, right?
Is that this could result in another January 6th type thing.
And then, oh, here we go.
Now they have their excuse to crack down even more.
So really hoping that doesn't happen.
Just don't go because you don't want to get caught up in the moment.
And then suddenly you turn around and you're like, how the fuck did I end up in this building?
I said I wasn't going to go into any buildings.
Jamie's like, I'll be honest, I've been drinking since morning.
This was more of an event than anything else.
This is more of just like a fun day.
I thought this was part of the bar crawl.
So anyway, we'll see what happens.
There's a few possibilities here.
And then I guess the other one, which I think is the most unlikely possibility, is that they actually come out with some charge of substance and try to actually make it stick and really prosecute Donald Trump.
I suppose it's possible.
It's shocking that with how much this guy has been investigated and with what scrutiny, like the microscope that he's been under, the idea that if there was any like major charge here, they haven't found it already seems very hard to believe.
But I don't know.
I guess time will tell.
Michael Cohen seems like such a jackass of a lawyer.
And you've seemed to have turned him.
You guys didn't do anything more illegal than this in the whole time that you were working together.
Yeah.
You got his right-hand man trying his personal lawyer trying to avoid jail time, being perfectly willing to throw Trump under the bus.
Shifting Global Alliances00:12:08
If there was ever the time where, okay, we're going to get him for whatever crimes he committed, you'd think that would have been it, right?
I don't know.
We will see.
Okay.
So there was another big piece of news that really caught my eye, as I'd imagine for any of you guys who have seen it, you could imagine.
This was here.
I'll just read you a title on this, read from a little bit of the article from Radio Free Europe.
This was where this article was picked up.
Blinken tells UN Security Council to be wary of unconditional ceasefire proposal for Ukraine.
You got to be wary of these ceasefires, Rob.
We have a real problem in this country with forever ceasefires that just don't end.
Spreading ceasefires throughout the world is not what America is all about.
Let me read a little bit from this.
U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has warned the U.N. Security Council not to be fooled by calls for a temporary unconditional ceasefire in Ukraine as the council met to mark the one-year anniversary of Russia's invasion.
Blinken's warning came just hours after the Chinese called for a comprehensive ceasefire as part of a 12-point plan that largely reiterated its approach since Russia launched the invasion in February of 2022.
Any peace that legitimizes Russia's seizure of land by force will weaken the UN charter and send a message to would-be aggressors everywhere that they can invade countries and get away with it, Blinken said.
The U.S. Secretary of State said, you know, this could set a precedent where people think they can just invade countries.
And if there's anything that we're against, it's that.
Again, what precedent does it set that there's no punishment for all of the U.S. NATO invasions over the last 20 years?
You know, if this sets a precedent for it, then what else could?
But isn't this something here?
You have China, who just brokered a deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran to normalize relations there, which is doing a lot to, I think, bolster the ceasefire in Yemen that's now been going on for almost a year.
There couldn't be anything better for that than normalizing relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
You could maybe end the worst humanitarian crisis on the planet Earth over the last eight years.
And there seems to be real progress going on there in Yemen.
Now they come in and they're trying to stop the bloodshed.
You know, the point of a ceasefire is basically that you're like, okay, we're going to kind of pause this war and give you an opportunity to talk to each other and maybe try to figure out how to come to a compromise for peace.
And the U.S. is now on record saying we oppose that.
So it really should like, I'd hope that like some of the people who out there claim to be like these big champions of the Ukrainian people would be like, yeah, who's really the enemy of the Ukrainian people right now?
I mean, obviously it's Russia.
I'm not denying that.
But imagine this.
And just how, how just sad and despicable and tragic is it that we, the United States of America, is allowing the Chinese Communist Party to fill this role.
We're letting them be the adults in the room.
You know what I mean?
They're the ones who are coming in saying like, hey, maybe we should work toward peace.
And we're going, no, keep the war going.
As long as it takes, we'll give them another $100 billion.
You guys just all keep killing each other.
For this bullshit justification that, well, because it would normalize what, you know, it would normalize what Russia did and invade.
No, the only way we can have a ceasefire is if Russia takes full responsibility for this, as if there's any chance of that happening.
If there's any chance.
Could you imagine, like, no matter what war you were against, could you imagine, like, if there, let's say, like, in 2006 at the height or 2005, at the height of the bloodshed in Iraq, if someone had said, hey, look, we've negotiated a ceasefire between the Sunni insurgency and the U.S. military and the Shiite militias there.
We've worked out a ceasefire and i'm someone who's against the war in Iraq right, it's like what would your position on that be?
Like oh, that's fantastic news.
This is like a really bloody war.
You guys are working out a ceasefire.
That's great.
What a great first step.
But imagine if I go, no ceasefire until George W Bush takes full responsibility, leaves all of the land that he invaded and apologizes on the way out and then maybe turns himself over to an international court so he can be tried for war crimes.
Like wouldn't you just be like okay yeah, I get where.
Maybe you'd want that, but that's not gonna happen.
Like that's just not in the cards, and we have an actual ceasefire proposal on the table right now.
So why would we not just like, take this.
It's the logic of it is absurd.
And then it goes to show like what the real goal of the war here is.
Because if your goal was to protect, you know, a humanitarian crisis and you wanted to like protect the lives of the Ukrainian people, you'd jump at the chance for a ceasefire and then i'm sure you'd push for more after that.
But if the goal which several in the administration have stated is to bleed Russia dry, is to give them their own Afghanistan.
Um then you would do exactly what they're doing and opposed to ceasefire.
The bleeding Russia dry strategy is not working too great because, for one, it still leaves us with our own Afghanistan.
Uh, we're spending as much money as we were spending in Afghanistan and Ukraine.
But also, I mean, the strategy only would have made sense if China and India would have gotten our backs.
We didn't even confirm that before.
We started this thing, and look at the way it's playing out now.
So you got, China is going to be over here uh, being the bigger man, possibly brokering a peace deal.
You've got, Saudi Arabia is now sitting down with Iran.
China and India are still trading with Russia.
We're just kind of losing global influence.
Not that i'm into global influence.
It's not the thing that's important to me.
I think the the whole system's stupid.
I'm a big old hippie.
I think everyone can get along and trade with each other, but i'm just saying, if you are interested in an American empire, the blunder of this war, without checking with China and India first, to basically be like hey, you guys on board with this, and then finding out no, and then going, oh well, we have had wealth expansion for the last 20 years, where we just have had reckless fiscal policy into covid, into supply chain issues.
Maybe this isn't the time to be picking this fight, especially if no one else is going to get our back.
I'm not saying that the entire world is going to move away from our currency or that you're going to end up with some sort of a new structure where Saudi Arabia, Iran are redoing OPEC and trading exclusively not in dollars, but i'm just saying you look at the way like the global playing field is looking at the moment and if you are interested in an American empire, it seems like you've made the biggest strategic blunders the last year.
Yeah well, it's like there's.
This is kind of.
I think one of the problems that permeates the whole like uh, war machine is that the it's a generational thing to some degree that these guys are old, like they're not all as old as Joe Biden, you know, but like the youngest guy in the room is what in his 50s, you know?
Like Joe Biden is 80.
So Joe Biden was doing my math here.
What Joe Biden was born what?
In the 1940s, something like that.
Um, you know, it's a very different time and the these guys are just of a different generation, and there is this hubris, especially amongst these people who have been in the upper echelons of U.s power yeah, 1942 he was born, so they've been in the at the highest levels of of power within the United States Of America's federal government for a very long time Now, I remember there was this, there was one comment that George W.
Bush made during the war in Iraq, when they were asking about the insurgencies, like killing American Soldiers.
And he said something like, he was like, bring it on.
We have all the force we need to destroy these guys.
And he got in a lot of trouble for this because like families of dead soldiers were like, could you not like taunt them to kill my son, please?
Like, what are you doing?
And I think he actually did apologize for that remark.
I could be wrong about that.
But the point is that there's just this tremendous like hubris.
Like, what?
We're America and we say we're taking over your country.
That means we do it, period.
Because what the hell are you going to do?
We're the most powerful military that's ever existed.
And that is true, but even that power, there are limits to, you know, and I do think that there's this view amongst a lot of these guys.
And this is why I think they didn't like see a lot of this going the way it wants to go.
Because like you said, you may not be in the game of international influence or keeping the dollar, you know, hegemon as the world reserve currency, but these people sure are, you know, like that's the game they're in.
And so how could they, how could they make such a blunder?
And I think a lot of it's just like, because we can do it.
Who can stop America?
You know, I don't think Joe Biden and too many people in his camp for that matter really have an understanding of what decline this country's in because then they'd have to acknowledge that they were the ones who like ruined it.
And so, no, I think it's just kind of like, look, if the U.S. says you can't come into Ukraine, that means you can't.
We'll wreck you.
And it does, it seemed like, remember at the very beginning when Biden first put on all the sanctions on Russia and he was bragging, remember about how this was going to destroy the Rupal?
And he was bragging about how we were going to, I really don't think any of them in his inner circle saw that like, oh, shit, there might be a complete changing of the guard here where all of a sudden China backs up Russia and Saudi Arabia joins with China.
And now Iran's in on the action because they're like, hey, we're moving away from the U.S. hegemon.
Okay.
I'm on board with this.
And all of the sudden, you have a power, you know, that's like, I'm not even saying that's the dominant power in the world, but all of a sudden, you're not living in a unipolar world anymore.
You're at least living in like, you know, like closer to what a bipolar world, closer to what they, you know, we had with the Soviet Union, where there is, okay, there's, there's Europe and America, but now there's this other force over here.
And then you see where a few more of these dominoes fall and you're like, oh, I don't know.
This might, things might be a little bit different.
And yeah, it's just, it's pretty crazy, but it is transparent in terms of this, like the narrative that the Biden administration likes to put out that like, we're the good guys here.
We're there because Vladimir Putin's the bad guy who invaded and we're the good humanitarians.
I mean, sure, we're not so concerned with the humanitarian crisis in, say, you know, Palestine or Yemen or Syria, you know, that we're not so concerned with.
But we are really, really concerned with the humanitarian crisis that undermines Russia's power right on their border.
That's the one we care about.
But even that, you're like, okay, but now you're on record opposing a ceasefire.
Really hard to keep that narrative going at that point.
It's really hard to claim you're the good guys when you're against even temporary stop to the bloodshed.
And I love the fact that it's over the precious borders because we have a secure border to our South.
It's so important to us that nobody violates borders.
And also, what about all the wars that we fought over the last couple of years?
Like, did Russia, China, everyone get up and go, oh, we can't have America just going into other countries and droning their kids?
Climate Change Context00:13:05
So that's it.
Their leader's a war criminal and we won't stop until like, you know what I mean?
It's just such a fictional statement about that borders are, you know, the most sanctimonious of all places.
And if any world leader violates it, we need all hands on deck to ensure that borders are protected.
Yeah, it's just, it's absolutely ridiculous.
It's amazing that they can even, you know, say it with a straight face.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
Oh, there was one other thing, by the way, I'll send over to you right now, Brian.
That was a great topic that I wanted to talk about.
So let's move on and try to get both of these in as if we can here.
So the other thing we wanted to mention quickly was that there was this new report on climate that came out, Rob.
I know you messaged me about this and then I sent a video over on the topic.
So yeah, turns out a bunch of governments agree.
It's real.
Climate change is here and it's a really, really big deal.
And we might, you know, I don't know, Rob, maybe we need a round of climate lockdowns.
What's really going to solve this problem?
We're doomed.
We've already ruined the planet, but it's our last best chance because if we do something now, then 10 years from now, the point of no return might not happen.
It might also happen, but this is our last best chance to start taking this seriously.
My God, they can't sell this story.
Yeah, it goes, we've passed the point of no return, which is why we need to impoverish everybody now to make sure that we maybe have a shot at a new point of no return, which maybe we won't pass.
It's incoherent.
Let's play the video.
This is how CNN, they had a climate activist on to explain this to all of us.
CNN, a dire warning about the state of the planet.
The new UN report warns the climate time bomb is ticking and the world is running out of time to avoid catastrophe.
So that assessment comes from the world's most authoritative body on climate change, which says the Earth is going to pass this critical warning threshold now, much earlier than expected.
I mean, we're tearing it down.
They're talking about the early 2030s.
CNN chief climate correspondent Bill Ware is here.
So please tell me we can stop this bill.
Oh, I'd love to tell you that.
We have to believe that.
And we can.
And that's really the takeaway is that the tools are in our hands.
There are no miracles needed when it comes to technology.
It's all right here.
It's all about political will.
But let me explain the context here.
Every year, thousands of peer-reviewed papers around the world look at the ice or the clouds or the penguins or every little aspect of our changing planet.
The IPCC, these are scientists from 195 countries, have to synthesize all that information.
Their governments have to approve the language and then they put this report together and give it to lawmakers in time for this next cop that's coming up in the United Arab Emirates.
And it is the most unequivocal.
There's no such thing as climate alarmism anymore.
The time bomb is ticking, but we have the guide on how to defuse the bomb right in our hands right here.
But it's interesting to look at.
There you go.
You can just leave that.
That's their take on it.
It's like, oh, yeah, there's all these scientists.
I mean, who could believe this after COVID, right?
Well, all the scientists get together and then the governments approve the language and their conclusion is that there's no such thing as climate alarmism anymore.
And then goes on to say, it's a ticking time bomb.
Yep.
Can't accuse us of alarmism anymore.
We're all going to die.
So is he saying that there was a time period of climate alarmism?
Because who are the scientists and protocols that brought us to the alarmism point?
And what has changed since then that it's no longer just the alarmism?
So you're saying that they were lying for the last 50 years, but now it's real?
Right.
So like when Bernie Sanders said that climate change is going to make the world uninhabitable for our children, was that alarmism then?
I mean, I know there's no more now.
Like he could say it now and it's not alarmism, but was it alarmism then?
And are you telling me that my children won't be able to live on this planet?
Because if that's not alarmism, then I don't know what the term means.
So anyway, just really goofy stuff.
Look, man, as we've talked about a bunch on this show, we can do more deep dives in the future.
I'm sure we will.
But this whole thing as such.
But just all I need, I'll tell you for now is that as much as all of the official science TM around COVID was bullshit the whole time, all of this stuff is bullshit.
The idea that like we are there's a ticking time bomb and the future of the earth is in peril and all of this.
It's nonsense.
And all of these, you know, all of these policies, we have the tools.
We know what we need to do.
It's like, even if that's true, and he goes, it's just a matter of political will.
It's like, okay, but if you don't get China and Russia and India and all these other countries on board, then even by your own projections, by your own projections, this means nothing.
All you're going to do is impoverish a bunch of people for it.
You're also just lying.
If you had the tools and the tools worked, then people would use them because people like tools that work.
There are a lot of people out there that are very concerned with climate.
You've sold it.
There's a lot of liberals out there.
If you had a technology that worked even remotely similar to me being able to use fossil fuels, people would embrace it.
The point is that you don't actually have that technology.
I was reading an article today.
I think it was on Zero Hedge with these with the electric cars that basically get into one accident and they got to throw them out because you can't really replace the battery packs.
And all of like the carbon benefits don't come until like years basically nine and 10 of the cars.
So if you get a lot of these things that are being decommissioned in year one and two, they're actually just more of a cost to the environment.
But I bet if you look through the entire line item of most of the things that they're doing to try and benefit supposedly the planet, the only way that they're able to initiate them is through government force and through laws that require to use those technologies.
So those technologies don't have to be that good.
So their entire structure by which to try and, I guess, better the planet, it's a failure.
I can tell you, just by the rules of the game, it will be a failure.
You're going to try and embrace technologies that don't work through government force.
Those technologies then won't be improved and they will come at some sort of a cost.
Either the cost is that people are starving.
They can't heat their homes.
There's massive economic costs that will keep us from the technological breakthroughs that we would have gotten to, or you'll just get in the way of like technological development.
Like, who knows?
We've had the combustion engine for 100 years.
We could have got to a point where maybe you get 200 miles to a gallon.
I don't know.
I'm not a scientist, but like we weren't at the end of that technology.
Yeah.
No, for sure, for sure.
It's, yeah, the whole thing is just insane, but it is, it is, it is funny to watch them try to spin this narrative.
I think it's going to be tougher and tougher to sell.
This is one of the reasons why I'm optimistic about all this stuff, despite all the craziness.
You know, there's a lot of bad news that we bring you here on this show, but every now and then, you know, God looks down on us and he throws us one.
He's like, all right, you guys have been through a lot.
Let me throw you one.
And what he threw us this week, and we'll close the show on this, is Fauci going to the hood to sell vaccines.
Now, I do not know who allowed this man who went from being Mr. Science Truth to just being, it almost seems like at a certain point, they like turn on these guys and they're like, okay, now you just have to be ritualistically humiliated in front of the entire country.
But here is Fauci and his team going door to door, just talking about COVID.
I know that this video only first arrived on social media recently, but is this recent that he's trying to sell?
I figured that this was from.
I think this is a little bit older, but it's coming out now.
Okay, got it.
People in America are not settled with the information that's been given to us right now.
So I'm not going to be lining up taking a shot on a vaccination for something that wasn't clear in the first place.
And then you all create a shot in miraculous time.
It takes years to vaccinate.
Well, it used to take years.
You know how many years were invested in this approach?
About 20 years of science to get us to be able to do that.
Not enough.
And nine months is definitely not enough for nobody to be taking no vaccination that you all came up with.
The only reason I'm talking to you right now, as close as we are, is that I've been vaccinated.
But if a lot of thousands of people like you don't get vaccinated, you're going to let this virus continue to percolate in this country and in this world.
Something like the common flu then, right?
It's much more serious than the flu.
Well, the flu kills a lot of people annually.
You know how many people died of the flu the last year?
I mean, not this year, virtually none, but the previous year, about 20 to 30,000.
You know, how many people have died from COVID-19 in the United States?
600,000 Americans.
Well, the number that you all given that died, that's once again, that's you all's number.
You're going to pay us.
Yeah, definitely.
Because when you start talking about paying people to get vaccinated, when you start talking about incentivizing things to get people vaccinated, it's something else going on with that.
Something else.
Something else going on.
It is something going on.
There's something else.
You're right.
But I'm going to have millions of people like me and almost everybody here didn't get an incentive.
You know what their incentive was?
Protecting their health and protecting the city.
It's okay because my incentive, y'all campaign is about fear.
It's about inciting fear in people.
You all attack people with fear.
That's what this panel is.
We could stop it there.
Look, I'm not saying this guy has a firm grasp of all the scientific issues going on here, but it is just brilliant.
Like, it's just beautiful.
His like just kind of gut instinct of, I don't trust any of you people, and I know you're all full of shit.
And when they smell that on them, how quickly they're just kind of like, oh, all right.
And they really don't have like a compelling, like, you know what I mean, like response to it.
Actually, scientifically speaking, I think he like kind of got Fauci on one of the points where he goes, they're like, well, if you don't get vaccinated, then this thing's just going to be with us forever.
And he's like, and it'll be like a flu by that point, right?
And then Fauci's like, no, no, no, it kills way more people than the flu.
And it's like, yeah, but you're using like the first variant numbers for that.
Forget getting into the numbers of how legitimate they are or not.
But you're like, yeah.
And it's just funny.
Like, obviously, Rob, as you said, this is from a while ago.
But you're like, this guy's point aged so much better than theirs.
Like, how insane is that?
The clip right before this, there's a lady saying you got to protect your family.
And I think the lady goes, yeah, but you can still get sick.
And they don't have a response to that.
And then, I mean, this one is also just wonderful because it's amazing.
I'm sure that guy hasn't read or listened to as much as we did, but it's amazing how anyone not indoctrinated, it's just common sense of what's going on here that you're trying to sell me on this thing.
It's just funny to have a person.
Right.
And then especially to have the perspective.
And you almost understand where there's like levels to this shit, right?
Where there's someone who's maybe like paid attention a little bit more than that guy and is maybe a little bit more well-educated than that guy.
And they could easily look at him and go, this guy's ignorant.
He doesn't know.
And these guys know.
But then there's people like us who have paid more attention than them and are not educated.
So we're not indoctrinated.
We're educated by the streets.
And then we look at it and go, yeah, you know, when he's saying it takes a lot more time than nine months and Fauci's like, well, the mRNA has been studied for 20 years.
And you're like, oh, Fauci himself said that it would take way more than nine months.
He himself said when he was trying to say, don't count on the vaccine to get us out of this because he wanted to keep the lockdowns going.
He said it would be years.
And even then, you still wouldn't know.
Educated Perspectives On Rumble00:02:07
We played the video on the show.
So it's actually like, oh, yeah, no, dude, he's actually making the same point that Fauci made when he was being honest about it because he wasn't selling the vaccines yet.
So anyway, just, I don't know.
I just like, there's something just beautiful about these people walking away kind of ashamed, just getting like fucking sunned by this dude on his porch who doesn't give a shit.
Get the fuck out of my fucking face.
That was probably when they were filming the Bono documentary.
They probably did one day of filming.
They're like, let's get Fauci out in the streets, talking to people directly, and we'll show him telling them the science and these people deciding to save their families.
And they went about two blocks and realized, nope, not going to work.
This is probably not a good idea.
Yeah.
Anyway, I did really enjoy that.
It gave me some satisfaction.
All right.
We're going to wrap the show up on that.
Guys, this weekend, come on out.
Providence, Rhode Island, Comedy Connection.
Chris Vega out there with me.
Rob will be there Sunday for the live part of the problem episode.
And then we got a bunch more stuff coming up traveling all over the place.
ComicdaveSmith.com for all the ticket links and information of where we're going next.
Go check out Robbie the Fire, RobbyTheFire.com.
Run Your Mouth is his other podcast.
And that's the show for today.
Weekly Wednesday show, Caffey Bohemia, 8 p.m.
Ooh, ooh, ooh.
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