Dave Smith and Robbie Bernstein dissect the Russia-Ukraine conflict, analyzing drone strikes near the Kremlin as potential false flags while criticizing U.S. proxy involvement. They pivot to allegations against the Biden family, citing House subpoenas for FBI files on Hunter Biden's Burisma dealings and speculating these leaks aim to remove Joe Biden from office. The hosts dismiss a new Florida bathroom law as trivial compared to government overreach, arguing biological sex distinctions matter more than identity claims in restrooms. Ultimately, they frame current political scandals and social debates as symptoms of radical ideological shifts rather than genuine conservative principles. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
|
Time
Text
Escalation and False Flags00:14:50
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.
What's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
I am the Libertarian Tupac Dave Smith.
He is the king of the caulks, Robbie the Fire Bernstein.
What's up, brother?
How you feeling?
I'm doing good, Davey Smith.
How about you?
Doing good.
Doing good.
Can't complain.
Happy to be home for a couple weeks after being out on the road so much.
So that's nice hanging out with the family.
And then in a couple of weeks, me and you are back at it again.
What's the next stop?
I believe it's Tampa side splitters in Tampa.
Then we got the funnybone up in Syracuse, New York.
And then June 9th through 11th, I will be headlining the comedy Mothership, Joe Rogan's brand new club.
So very much looking forward to that.
A lot of fun stuff coming up.
Yeah, anything else you want to plug, Rob, before we get into this?
Yeah, Cafe Bohemia every Wednesday, 8 p.m.
It's just $5 tickets code FIRE.
I get to work on new stuff, put up friends.
It's a fun show.
And some report store dates coming soon.
Yes, very good.
Very good.
All right.
So let's start off with what has got to be the biggest story going on in the world right now, which is that apparently there was two drone bombs that hit the Kremlin.
The Russians are claiming it was an assassination attempt against Vladimir Putin.
They are also claiming that the bombs were intercepted so they didn't do too much damage.
According to Russian authorities, Vladimir Putin was not in the building at the time.
He's been unaffected by this strike.
And yeah, so it's kind of one of these moments.
It's very similar to when those missiles hit Poland a few months back, or you just kind of, it's a moment where you realize how serious this game that we're playing is, how bad this can potentially go.
And from my perspective, therefore, how absolutely reckless it is for the U.S. to be involved in this war at all.
A war with a country that is not a NATO member, where there is absolutely no threat to our national security, just a proxy war of choice on Russia's border.
I mean, obviously, that's my take on it, but there's some more interesting details, I guess, to get to with this.
So Zelensky, in a televised address in English, by the way, which I do think is noteworthy here, denied that he has ever, that this was them or that they ever were going to strike within Moscow.
They said they only fight on their territory.
They're only trying to repel Russians from their territory.
Said they don't have the weapons to waste on attacks like this.
And so that's where we're at.
He claimed that it was either a false flag or it was his guy, one of his top guys claimed it was either a false flag or it was Russian dissidents who did it.
So that's where we are at in terms of that.
It should be noted that in those leaks that came out last month, one of the interesting things that was leaked was that evidently the U.S. was very concerned over Zelensky's plans to launch strikes within Russia.
Do with that what you will.
What are your thoughts on this latest incident, Rob?
I think it makes no sense that you have these little sparklers up in the sky right above a building, doesn't actually hit anything, gets intercepted at the last minute.
I don't understand.
It didn't look like it was large enough to actually explode anything.
I would think if you were doing a false flag, you'd have to do something that actually exploded so that you could get your people all worked up.
I don't even understand why the Ukrainians wouldn't want to engage in offensive activities if you're trying to win a war and get people to give up.
The only thing I can think of is that maybe the Ukrainians did it to be like, look, we could get you.
Or like, look, we could be getting things right above your buildings.
And it was like a little sparkler warning just to put some glitter, like a glitter bomb, just to annoy Putin.
You know, look, I will say this with when you look at something like this, of course, this just happened.
We don't have a lot more information.
Hopefully we'll get more coming up.
It's not beyond the realm of possibility that you could have a false flag type event like that.
Countries have done this before in war, you know, a false flag event that then gives them an excuse to escalate.
It's theoretically possible.
I do agree with you in this particular case.
Like there's some cases where you're like, okay, like the Nord Stream pipeline, it would make no sense for that to have been a false flag because this actually seriously strategically hurts Vladimir Putin.
So why would he do that to himself?
Whereas something like this is more within, it's plausible that that could be something that he would do to then give him an excuse to launch like a major offensive.
Don't you need something more dramatic than sparklers?
Probably.
But that being said, I think you have a fair point there where this does seem to be.
If this was the false flag, then what exactly does this benefit?
You know, how exactly does this strategically benefit Putin?
That certainly seems to be unclear at the time.
And the other thing that is worth noting that was, you know, kind of came about, was revealed during those leaks last month is that there seems to be some indications that Zelensky does not really have control of his own special forces and that they were noted in a couple different instances to blatantly be ignoring orders.
And that's another thing to keep in mind here too, is that Ukraine is in many ways.
Look, like this is true for a lot of countries in the world.
There's a lot of countries in the world where the lines on the map were not drawn by God to perfectly represent where one nation starts and the other nation ends.
They were drawn in, you know, like random places that one ruler decided or in some type of international deal, they agreed that you get this section, you get that section.
So in the situation with Ukraine, you have a country that was a part of the Soviet Union for decades, was flooded by Stalin with ethnic Russians to try to kind of like crack down on their own national camaraderie.
And now after 1991, they get their independence from Russia.
Then you have, you know, all types of interference from Western NGOs and Western money.
You have a color-coded revolution there in 2004, another coup in 2014.
You're left with a civil war from 2014 to today, where there really is, it really seemed like, you know, I remember listening to people, there was a lecture where this Russian scholar was breaking down the, I think maybe it was a John Mearsheimer lecture.
I can't remember, but he was breaking down the election results of 2010 when Yanukovych won the presidency.
This is the guy who was overthrown in 2014.
And when you looked at kind of like the different areas that voted for him, you know how kind of like in an American election, you could look at, you know, there might be one county that's 85% voted for Donald Trump.
And then there could be some other county that's, you know, 85% voted for Hillary Clinton, like, you know, or whatever.
In the case of Ukraine, it was like the whole East was huge for Yanukovych and the whole West was completely against him.
And these were, there were, in the following years, there were major issues, issues about in the preceding and following years, issues about joining the EU or joining a trade partnership with Russia, joining NATO or, you know, not, like all major issues of what direction the country is going to go in.
And you almost would go like, okay, it seems like maybe you guys should split.
It's like, since it's so neat, the way you could like divide it.
I mean, of course, these things are never perfect, but you're like, why exactly are you guys all one country?
At least that was at the time.
Things have changed a lot since then.
I think probably Vladimir Putin has united the country to some degree.
People, however you feel politically, don't tend to like being invaded much.
Anyway, then even within, say, the anti-Russian portion of the country, you have many different groups there.
It's not so clean.
I mean, look, there is a major neo-Nazi faction within Ukraine.
The whole Azov battalion, you know, the C-14 guys, the right sector guys, Savoda Party, all those guys.
I mean, these are like real deal, like grandsons of the S-escalation, real deal neo-Nazis.
Like hate, you know, go look at what they were saying about Milakunis and stuff like that.
They really, really don't like Jews, really, really like Adolf Hitler, like those guys.
Zelensky's Jewish, you know, like it's not as if they're, they have a common enemy in a sense right now, but it's not as if these guys are like, I don't think any of the C-14 guys are like, oh, hail our great leader, Zelensky.
You know what I'm saying?
So I don't know exactly what the dynamic between some of these like Ukrainian special forces types and Zelensky is, but those leaked documents seem to imply he doesn't really have control over them.
And one wonders how much control Zelensky really has at all.
You know, I mean, is he at this point kind of like a Western puppet who's trying to like find a way to deal with the more radical elements of his own, you know, military at this point?
Cause they've been absolved into his military.
It's hard to say.
Either way, you start to realize, at least from my perspective, like I said, it's just so obvious.
You're like, I mean, you realize the complexities of this situation and how dangerous the downside is.
You're like, what in the world are we doing here?
Like, why would we possibly be a part of this?
Why?
I mean, if this does turn out to be a Ukrainian strike on Russia, it almost seems like Vladimir Putin will have no choice but to escalate.
And what is escalation exactly at this point?
I don't know.
You know, I don't think this is going to be enough to get him to drop a fucking nuke.
But Jesus, like we're only like two or three escalations away from that at most.
It's just seems like a dangerous, dangerous game to be playing.
So I agree that this is a dangerous game.
I agree with everything you said, except I feel like if there wasn't an escalation over Nordstream, I don't think these sparklers are going to be the thing that Putin goes, you know what, Ukraine, this Ukraine war wasn't enough.
We're going for even more.
Look, that's a fair point.
But on the other hand, this was inside Russia, Russia proper.
Yeah, what about that bridge that was blown up?
Wasn't that in Russia proper too?
Yeah, okay.
The bridge, the bridge was, yeah, I guess technically in territory that Russia now claims still seems a little bit different than sending missiles at the Kremlin.
You know, there's a certain, like, I get your point.
There's no question the Nord Stream pipeline was more of a, it was more of a serious, devastating event.
And look, it's true.
Vladimir Putin has, and this is a story you won't hear anywhere else or in the corporate press, but Vladimir Putin has actually showed restraint in several of these situations where he could have escalated.
I don't know if you remember, but years back in Syria, there were American forces that killed a few Russians and Vladimir Putin didn't respond to that.
People were real concerned, like, oh, shit, this might be like a real moment where he escalates.
So hopefully that's not the case.
But I do agree.
The second I saw it, I was like, ah, shit.
Like, what are we doing here?
We're just trying to make things worse when, you know, we should be making all efforts to de-escalate.
And so, yeah, we're all playing a losing game here and this is stupid.
And that looked bad.
Oh, my God.
You're actually striking at the Kremlin.
It just doesn't really add up to me how small, like I didn't see much.
There was like a little pop in the sky above like the flag.
The only thing that would make sense is, I guess, if Ukraine's threatening to go, look, we could get things in over here.
It just doesn't really make sense as a false flag.
And it doesn't make sense as a serious attack.
Well, here's the thing.
Here's where it would make sense as a serious attack is what Russia's claiming.
Now, again, I'm despite what some people online may say, I don't actually get my information from Vladimir Putin.
I've seen the checks.
Don't joke around about that, Rob.
There's some black socialists sitting in jail for a decade right now.
We did not get any checks from Vladimir Putin.
They really did not do much more than us, except evidently get some type of funding.
Who knows?
Anyway, but I would say that it's quite possible.
I mean, look, governments lie to their own people.
Vladimir Putin lies to his own people all the time.
And during war, they'll certainly, governments are not in the business of telling the truth.
They're in the business of saying things that are strategically advantageous for them.
So I don't, it's possible that everything Russia is saying about this is completely wrong.
As I mentioned, it's possible it's a false flag.
I don't know.
But if what Russia is saying is true, then I don't think you're correct.
So because if what they're saying is true, they're saying that we intercepted these drone attacks, and that's why it was just a little sparkle.
But they might be saying if we had not intercepted them, which is quite easy to do, then this could have like been a major, devastating event in the heart of Russia.
So if that's the case, which is a big if, but if that's the case, then no, this was a major attack inside of Russia.
It was a thwarted attack where Vladimir Putin didn't happen to be there.
How Wars Spiral Out of Control00:04:54
But from their perspective, from Putin's perspective, he could easily say, man, one thing's a little bit different.
We miss one of those.
We don't intercept one of those missiles and I happen to be there.
That might have just been a successful assassination on me.
So that's where my concern is about how this could be really seen as crossing a line that has not been crossed before.
But again, we're going to have to wait and see on some of this.
All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Sheath Underwear, the underwear of legends.
Go grab a pair at sheathunderwear.com.
As you guys know, you've heard me talking about them for years now because they've been such a loyal sponsor of this show.
They really are the best pair of boxer briefs you're ever going to own.
The only underwear that I will ever put on my body at this point because they're just so great.
Sheath underwear, they're quality.
They have the dual pouch system, which separates your man parts.
It's incredible.
You don't have to use it.
You can just wear them like a regular pair of boxer briefs and they'll be the most comfortable ones you've ever owned.
But I recommend checking out those dual pouches.
They are amazing.
They have supported us for so long.
Go support the sponsors of our show and get the most comfortable pair of underwear you will ever own in the process by going to sheathunderwear.com.
Use the promo code problem20.
That will get you 20% off your next order.
Sheathunderwear.com, promo code problem20 for 20% off.
All right, let's get back into the show.
It seems like there has been an uptick in shellings and what appear to be like sabotage operations within Russia.
Have you seen any of this, Rob?
There was like a train derailment that seems that it was an intentional derailment.
There was an oil facility that was that was blown up or something like that.
And these were all inside Russia.
Who exactly is doing this?
There's some speculation.
As I mentioned earlier, the other angle that people have been speculating about is that these are like Russian dissidents within Russia who are opposed to the war.
That is also a possibility.
There are, you know, whether you're talking about in Ukraine or in Russia, when you're fighting these wars, you know, this is part of the statist mindset.
It's like, as I was saying before, breaking down all the different conflicting interests within Ukraine.
You know, people have this kind of status mindset of like a country is a thing, you know?
So like on whatever, you know, this way people will be like, China unleashed this virus on the world.
And then there'll just be some random guy in China who's like, I didn't unleash anything.
You know what I mean?
In the same way that if Joe Biden does something and you're like, America did this, we're kind of like, could we not be a part of that group that did that?
Cause we're not really for it.
When you're looking at Ukraine fighting Russia, the tendency, it's just the way human minds work also is we think in terms of patterns and we try to simplify things so we can understand them and interact with the world.
But you think of, okay, Ukraine and Russia and they're at war.
But really, this war is being fought by two conscripted armies.
People are being forced to fight a war right now, you know?
And the reason you force people to do things is because you're not confident they would do them voluntarily.
That's, you know what I mean?
Like that's, that's typically why governments use force.
And so they are for, you know, there are armies of people who are being forced to fight a really gruesome, bloody battle against each other right now.
And a lot of times this engenders resistance.
A lot of times there might be a lot of military-age males in Russia who aren't so thrilled with the prospect of fighting this war and vice versa.
And there are always political disagreements within these countries, you know?
And so it's just all of these things are possibilities.
We really don't know right now.
It'll be interesting to see if we get some more information.
I do tend to be with you, Rob, that I do not think this is the escalation that is going to like really lead to some type of disaster.
My takeaway more from this is much like the missiles hitting Poland, it just shows you how easily that escalation could happen, how easily it could happen, whether initiated by one side or the other, whether a false flag event or from dissidents within one side or from the opposing military.
It doesn't really matter.
It's just the potential for how easily things can escalate beyond where you thought they would be.
Again, this war is an example of that.
In 2015 and 2016, it seemed like Vladimir Putin taking Crimea and a little bit of a civil war squirmish was where we were at.
And look at where we are now.
Things can escalate and get out of control.
Leaks Suggesting Family Corruption00:10:46
whoever you assign blame to on them.
That isn't even really the issue there.
The issue is just like, hey, let's do everything we can to not escalate the situation.
And damned if I see how pouring $100 billion of American weapons into the conflict does that.
So anyway.
All right.
Anything else you want to say on this, Rob, or do you want to move on?
I think we got it.
All right.
So another big story is that evidently, and I never would have guessed this, but it's starting to look like Joe Biden might be a corrupt politician.
Could you have imagined, Rob?
I mean, I always say about politics, if you make it 40 years, you're probably on the up and up.
You know, you're not going to be a corrupt politician who makes it 40 years in Washington, D.C. You'd have to be clean to survive all that time.
Turns out I'm wrong.
Joe Biden, it looks like the House has subpoenaed an FBI file on Biden's role in a criminal scheme as new whistleblower emerges.
This is according to the New York Post's Stephen Nelson.
Yeah, it looks like there was a whistleblower who keed off the House of Representatives to a file on Joe Biden's role in his family's business dealings in China, Mexico, Russia, and Ukraine.
The House is going to subpoena this.
The alleged corruption supposedly involves other countries.
We don't know about it.
Two sources say that the whistleblower is not the same person as the IRS agent who anonymously came forward last month, alleging a cover-up in the criminal investigation of Hunter Biden.
So this seems to be a separate issue.
We don't know, again, take with a grain of salt whenever you hear anonymous sources reported.
However, the House has subpoenaed this document.
So this is some degree of this is real.
We'll see what we get on that document.
What do you got?
What do you think about this whole situation, Rob?
Well, this is wildly scandalous.
The thought that the FBI has, I guess, direct evidence of the president, I guess, being involved in illegal activity, or maybe it's evidence that while he was vice president, he was being bribed.
Whatever it is, if they have-while he was vice president is what the allegation, at least what's being reported is the allegation right now.
But if they have direct evidence of an active politician being bribed by a foreign government, and then oddly enough, the documents unclassified and yet not released.
My biggest.
Not only that, I'm sorry, Rob, not to get you off.
Not only that, that then not only did the FBI not, we didn't see an FBI leak of these documents like during the campaign or something, as this guy is now, as this corrupt politician is now running to be president, but actually they came out and lied on behalf of him to carry him over the finish line when they said Hunter Biden's laptop was all bullshit.
This is the very laptop that gave us information about Joe Biden's corruption, if you believe that he's the big guy or whatever, right?
So as you said, the implications of this story, if true, are like astounding, just to be clear.
Sorry, continue.
And it's not beyond the scope of what we could see the FBI doing.
If we look at the scandals of the FBI over the last couple of years, one, we know for a fact that they either have or misplaced Epstein's safe.
They overlooked Epstein's activity for a number of years.
They've been pushing for January 6th domestic terrorism titles.
They may or may not have been involved with the actual episodes of January 6th.
So the idea that the FBI has such materials would not be incredible to me.
Or the idea that the Bidens are a corrupt family enterprise, maybe owned by the Chinese or other, also not incredible claims to me.
What's incredible to me is the idea that we're ever going to actually see proof of it.
And the idea that it's so easy to have these materials and then just claim that they're classified so that nobody can see them or you're not allowed to put them out there or it's a part of an ongoing investigation.
It would just seem to me like there's a lot of ways for the FBI to be holding on to this information for their own purposes without ever releasing it, that the idea that there's an unclassified document with bombshell evidence that now a whistleblower is going to announce to us and is just going to get released, also kind of calling bullshit.
Well, here's what I'll say here.
I want to get into that a little bit, which is what I have a little bit of a conspiracy theory on this that I think maybe it's not bullshit.
But let me know.
No, I'm not.
By the way, just to reiterate, I don't think that the FBI doesn't know about the Biden's criminal activities or that they might not have evidence of it, but the idea that they're so sloppy that it's on a single one-page document that they accidentally unclassified and a whistleblower knows about and they'll have to release sounds a little unlikely.
That was clear.
It was clear to me what you were saying, but I'm glad you clarified that in case anyone listening didn't kind of understand that.
Yes, you're not saying that it's unlikely that Biden actually is a criminal or the FBI actually has information on him or something.
I mean, look, if we think about this, and I'm not saying this is like complete proof that you could get a conviction in a court of law.
I'm just saying if you, if we just think about what we know already of the idea of Joe Biden being involved in these corrupt business dealings, you just kind of look at it on its surface and you go, okay, well, look, why was Burisma putting Hunter Biden on their board?
Why were all these Chinese companies giving them hundreds of thousands of dollars a month?
Why are they doing that from their perspective?
It is not that this crackhead maniac adds any value inherently to their company.
I think we can all reasonably agree on that, right?
Burisma was not like, hey, this guy who doesn't speak our language and has zero experience in the energy sector will really turn things around here for our company.
That was not what they were doing.
We all know the reason they were paying him off is because he's Joe Biden's son, the vice president at the time.
Okay.
So then like, what are they trying to do there?
Clearly, they're trying to bribe Joe Biden.
It's just, it's inconceivable that there's any other goal from their perspective than to try to, you know, curry favor with the sitting vice president of the United States of America.
Okay.
We also know that from the Hunter Biden laptops through his emails, there are numerous references to the big guy who gets, what was it, I believe 10% of whatever he gets.
So he's saying somebody who's known as the big guy is taking a percentage of what Hunter Biden makes from these companies.
And Bobolinski already said that the big guy.
Yes.
And then we have Hunter Biden's business partner who has told the public and the FBI that the big guy is Joe Biden.
He's met Joe Biden several times, has discussed this with him, and that's who they're paying off.
Now, I'm not saying that alone would get you a conviction in a court of law.
Maybe not.
Maybe there's other information here that we don't know, and there's another explanation for all of this, but the circumstantial evidence seems to be fairly damning.
Like it's all pointing in one direction.
And if that's true, it is a humongous scandal.
I don't know how else to put it, right?
Like the president of the United States of America, who has been in the Senate and the vice presidency for the last 40 years or so, minus the four-year Donald Trump presidency.
He's been in the highest levels of government the entire time is evidently bought and paid for.
And he's now the president of the United States.
Like this is a huge, huge story.
But so that's what we start with here.
And then, you know, to so anyway, so yes, it's like, yeah, it seems overwhelmingly likely that he is in fact guilty of all of this stuff.
Okay, that's one point.
The second point here is, and this is the thing I've been floating out for a little while.
And I'm again, I just want to disclaim this by being perfectly transparent.
I'm not saying I know this for sure.
It just does seem like a very plausible scenario.
And that is that.
You know, as you said, you kind of said, well, you know, the idea that the FBI has this all and it's on one page and then some whistleblower comes out and then says, hey, here's the one page you got to subpoena.
And then they subpoena this one page.
I'm just, I'm open to this possibility and try to keep these things in mind.
Okay, look, while Donald Trump was being impeached, is there, there has been one president.
I'm sorry, there has not been one president in the United States of America who's ever been impeached and removed from office.
That's never happened.
Richard Nixon resigned before it could happen.
Perhaps it would have.
But Bill Clinton was impeached, but wasn't removed.
Donald Trump was impeached twice.
But in the middle of Donald Trump's first impeachment, when this is like we might be doing something that we've never done in the history of the United States, impeaching and removing a president.
And it was over him pressuring Zelensky to investigate Hunter Biden.
At that time, our federal government was investigating Hunter Biden.
And no one, including Donald Trump, knew this.
And there was not one leak.
Like my point is just that it is very easy for them to actually control these leaks or maybe not very easy, but they're able to do it when it's helpful to them.
You don't see all of these leaks just coming out.
So why is it that all of the sudden over the last few months, really since the midterm elections, we've seen leak after leak after leak damaging to Joe Biden?
We saw a lot of leaks that were damaging to Donald Trump.
Most of them, the overwhelming majority turned out to not be true at all.
But why is it now that we're seeing leaks about corruption in the tax case against Hunter Biden?
We're seeing leaks into the investigation on him and now it leaks into this.
And I wonder if this is not a signal from some very powerful people to get Joe Biden out of the way.
Because there is no question that there is enormous resistance to him running for reelection.
Why Biden Leaks Are Escalating00:02:09
And we've seen this when we've talked about it before, even when they'll ask people like AOC, will you support Joe Biden if he runs for reelection?
And she goes, well, we'll just have to see who's running.
And you're like, that's very bizarre.
That's very bizarre that a Democrat who's claiming Joe Biden's doing a great job won't just give him an endorsement.
We've never seen that in politics.
That's not how it works.
You, of course, say you're going to support the president in his reelection campaign.
And there's just, I'm just saying, I'm not saying I know this for sure.
I'm just saying it seems possible that there are, in fact, that maybe it's not such a coincidence, Rob, that they have this all on one sheet of paper that they're now going to allow to be subpoenaed.
And we're seeing these leaks.
It's worth entertaining that possibility, I think.
All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is fume.
Cold turkey might be great on sandwiches, but there's a better way to cut back on your bad habits.
And fume is something you have to check out.
Fume has been a longtime sponsor of this show and everybody knows at this point, but I'll tell you again anyway.
It's a great innovative award-nominated device that helps you cut back on the bad habits.
Instead of electronics, fume is completely natural.
Instead of vapor, fume uses flavored air.
And instead of harmful chemicals, fume uses all natural, delicious flavors.
It's a habit that you're free to enjoy and it makes replacing your old bad habits easy.
Your fume comes with an adjustable airflow dial and it's designed with movable parts and magnets for fidgeting, giving your fingers a lot to do, which is helpful for de-stressing and anxiety while you're breaking your habits.
Stopping is something we all put off because it's hard, but switching to fume is easy, enjoyable, and even fun.
Fume has served over 100,000 customers and has thousands of success stories.
There's no reason you can't be one of them.
Join Fume in accelerating humanity's breakup from destructive habits by picking up the journey pack today.
Head over to tryfume.com and use the promo code problem to save 10% off when you get the journey pack today.
That's T-R-Y-F-U-M.com slash problem.
Save an additional 10% off your order today.
All right, let's get back into the show.
Trade-Offs in Political Damage00:08:49
So it's certainly fun and interesting that the Biden family corruption stories are actually seemingly escalating.
For one, we know for a fact that Blinken had sent a letter to the CIA to create the, you know, the narrative that it was Russian misinformation.
We also have that Grassley and I forget the other one might have busted Blinken for lying to them about the relationship with Burisma and communications with Hunter Biden.
You've got the IRS whistleblower, which seemingly for now has gone away.
And now this most recent one, which is the biggest potential bombshell, is that the FBI actually has evidence.
So all of this seems to be ramping up, which would maybe support your theory, but leaves me with two questions.
One, with Kennedy pulling at 20%, who exactly do they have as a replacement?
And two, if the Bidens actually get busted for family corruption, doesn't that reflect poorly on the Democratic Party?
Doesn't that become a like, especially with the yellow, the way that they were yelling and screaming and got rid of Trump?
I would think if it turns out that the Bidens were, you know, definitively criminals, that that would reflect poorly on the entire party and not just, you know, the Bidens.
I think, I think, no question it would.
The question becomes, do powerful people within the Democratic and deep state apparatus think that that, you know, they're comparing how bad that is versus how bad having Joe Biden as your candidate is.
And so who's coming back?
We got Michelle Obama stepping into the ring.
Hillary Clinton's coming out for a second, second.
I don't think it's going to be Hillary Clinton.
Gavin Newsom, perhaps.
I don't know.
They literally have a candidate who you've got to look at here and say, it's still a year and a half.
And this is a guy who at any moment can collapse, like both, both literally and metaphorically.
It's almost surprising it hasn't happened already.
Yes, yes.
It's almost surprising.
And this is only because they've been able to protect him so much.
And I think also when you're looking at the prospects of an election, it's look, they're floating out these ideas.
Like they're saying we won't debate anyone in the primaries.
And perhaps they're going to try to do that in the general election too.
It's not 2020.
In 2020, he was handed a real gift that was COVID was at its height.
Or actually, I guess 2021 COVID technically was at its height after we got the vaccine, bizarrely.
But anyway, in 2020, the COVID hysteria was at its height.
And Joe Biden was able to spin hiding in his home as I'm doing the responsible thing.
Look, while Donald Trump's out holding these rallies, these super spreader events, if you remember, Rob, they used to call them.
While Donald Trump's holding these super spreader events, I'm being responsible and only giving you pre-edited videos from my home.
They will not be able to get away with it again this year, next year.
And it's going to be a huge talking point.
Look, I really do think like at the end of the day, we're all chimps, you know?
Like, we're all just like super intelligent monkeys.
And there's something about electing a president is like electing the alpha.
And you can't, if you hand the opposition the talking point of like, this guy's afraid to face me, I really think it's going to, it's going to be very damaging.
And Joe Biden's just so weak and frail and getting weaker and frailer.
And I just think it's quite possible that even though you're right, they know this would be very damaging to the Democratic Party, that they might still go, it's the trade-off is worth it.
Or they weasel out of the debates if it's Trump by going, that man's a reprehensible racist rapist who was just accused by this teacher, just accused by Stormy Daniels.
It's only that the Republican nationals are such disgusting people that they'd even put this guy up and I refuse to share a stage with him.
Well, that's going to be, that'll be the angle if Joe Biden's the nominee.
I mean, I think.
That'd be my guess.
And it'll be the oddest election ever where it's, do you, you're going to, the same thing.
You're going to pick the soul of the country.
Are you going to pick dignity and me caring about you?
Are you going to go with this accused rapist?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, it does seem like that'll be how they put this Russian rapist, racist.
What do you want?
You want the soul of the country or Russian racist rape?
You pick America.
By the way, have you been the Carol, whatever story?
Have you been following it at all?
A little bit.
Yeah.
So what's going on there?
So it's, listen, I think based off, I mean, that lady's a nut.
And it's hard to win a case when you win on the news coming out as pro-rape.
That's not an easy court case to win.
Your lawyers would tell you not to.
Yeah.
With that said, and I also think that it's a shame that we can't see these court cases.
I think if the nation learned anything from the Johnny Depp drama, it's actually being able to see and hear the witnesses and what's going on in court makes a big difference to your perception.
It's a really good point.
It's a really good point because what you have like the Johnny Depp example, and I'm not saying this is the case in every, you know, domestic, you know, allegation or something like that, but you have like these accusations in ink, you know?
And it's just kind of like, okay, a woman says he did this.
But then when you see them testify, and I'm not saying this is how convictions, you know, should be decided, but when you actually see people on the stand, you go, oh, this bitch is crazy.
Okay.
Now, now I know what I'm dealing with here.
This is a crazy, but like, I don't care how much she's trying to hide it.
I can just see this quite plainly.
This is a crazy woman.
I know crazy women.
That's what we're looking at here.
And that doesn't even prove that he never like hit her.
I'm not even like convinced Johnny Depp never hit her.
I'm just convinced she's crazy too.
And they were in a crazy thing.
And this is not as black and white as, oh, I'm this like oppressed woman who was, you know, like, and the story is just that, that black and white.
Anyway, I'm sorry.
Continue to make a point.
I think what makes this one kind of dark is that the storyline sounds somewhat plausible.
They have a secondary witness of similar behavior without an actual rape incident.
You hear about the Trump behavior, like, all right, that all, that all kind of sounds like something Trump might do.
There's a secondary witness that she called someone a day later and we might be seeing a crazy lady because of she lost her mind because of the incident.
Now, with all of that being said, I think you can't really mount a very good defense 30 years later of coming up with where you were on the day of being accused, security footage that may or may not exist.
And as we just saw with Kavanaugh, who I guess is just a rapist on the Supreme Court, the idea that people can't come forward with fake stories or with something as high profile as the president, you can't have a friend who goes, yeah, she called me 30 days later, or you can't have one random reporter who was also hit on and says, hey, this is clearly the way the guy behaves.
I don't know, closed door hearings against sitting presidents years after the incident took place also just doesn't seem like a reasonable approach, especially behind closed doors.
Yeah, absolutely agreed.
Isn't it crazy?
You just think about the Kavanaugh thing because that feels like a million years ago now.
And it's like, why don't we hear from leftist activists that there's a rapist sitting on the Supreme Court?
Citing cases like abortions, a guy who actively raped or tried to rape within his lifetime, what kind of sympathy would he have for the victims?
Right.
I mean, like, what it's so weird how much that talking point was just dropped.
And it's quite obvious because it's like, number one, he's already been confirmed and it's a lifetime appointment.
So there's just no political benefit of it.
And number two, they never really believed it.
It's not like they really are convinced this is the truth or they would still be talking about it.
It was just an opportunistic thing.
You had one woman who made one accusation, not of rape, by the way, not of rape, an accusation of throwing her on a bed at a frat party 30 something years ago.
Couldn't give you the address, the location, the date, the time, anything like that.
Multiple other accusations that either retracted or were completely disproven as bullshit.
Opportunistic Accusations Explained00:02:38
And so it's just like, oh, yeah, we just did this to a guy.
We just framed him for this and now we're going to move on.
Oh, well, we didn't win.
We just move on.
And there's like no price to pay for it.
There really is something when you think of it.
Just as you're saying that, I'm like thinking about that.
Like, wow, that's, yeah, that's, that happened.
It's all just over now.
That's just kind of like, I don't know, Matt Damon had a funny Saturday Night Live sketch about it and let's move on.
And I don't even think, by the way, this isn't even a, from what I understand, it's not even a criminal court case.
It's a, I believe it's a defamation case that she wasn't able to get her book published because he called her out for being a liar.
And oddly enough, it might then also get thrown out because Donald Trump was president at the time.
So this is potentially a lawsuit against not Donald Trump, the individual, but the United States of the government, United States government, because he was president at the time.
What I see in both this and the Stormy Daniels case is just them being able to drum up the, hey, look, this guy's a despicable individual.
And that's why he has to defend himself in two court cases in regards to his, you know, rapey activities.
Yeah, just kind of like that thing where if they can go 18 of his cabinet members were charged, you know, even if when you start to look into the charges, they were all kind of like nothing.
Yeah.
So that is, that is interesting.
Well, I guess we'll see what happens with that.
All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Moink.
Did you know that 60% of U.S. pork products come from one company owned by the Chinese and their hogs are given something called ractopamine, which is banned in 160 countries, including China.
Yet you find it in your grocery aisle every day.
There's a better way.
Let me tell you about it.
It's Moink.
Moink delivers grass-fed and grass-finished beef, lamb, pasteurized pork, chicken, sustainably wild-caught Alaskan salmon, all straight to your door.
Moink farmers farm like our grandparents did.
And the result is that the meat tastes like it should because the family farm does it better.
Moink delivers a difference you can taste and you can feel good knowing you're helping family farms stay financially independent.
You choose the meat that's delivered in every box.
Choose from things like ribeyes, chicken breasts, pork chops, salmon fillets, and much more.
Plus, you can cancel anytime.
It's really incredible.
The meat is delicious.
I highly recommend it.
Jamie Simonoff, who's the founder of Ring Doorbell, he invested in Moink.
This is a great company.
Go check them out.
Moinkbox.com/slash P-O-T-P.
Go there right now and listeners of this show get free bacon in your first box.
It's the best bacon you will ever taste, but for a limited time only.
Trans Rights vs Totalitarian Narratives00:13:08
M-O-I-N-K-B-O-X dot com slash P-O-T-P.
Moinkbox.com slash P-O-T-P.
All right, let's get back into the show.
All right, as a, let's, let's move on and talk a little bit about this new Florida law that is getting a lot of attention on social media and in the corporate press.
I swear, Rob, I would really be happy to just never talk about trans shit again.
Like, I just, it's every time it even comes up as a topic, I'm like, I can't believe we actually are talking about this, but the world simply will not let me stop talking about trans shit.
It's just so thrown in our face all the time.
And it really does prey on like my Achilles heel, which is my autistic libertarian brain, that there's just these arguments being made.
And I'm just there like, well, that's not technically right.
So let's expand on that.
Anyway, I guess evidently, I have not, I'll confess, I have not read the entire text of this bill.
It's also, I don't care.
It's not really what I'm interested in about this topic at all.
It's like, I don't know.
Evidently, it bans using a bathroom that isn't the bathroom of your biological sex, right?
Like if you're born a man, you have to use the men's room.
If you're born a woman, you have to use the woman's room.
And that essentially seems to be the gist of it.
Please correct me if I'm wrong and I'm missing something great or horrible in the bill.
That's not really what I care about.
Personally, I would, I think property owners can decide what the rules for their bathrooms are and make that clear to their customers.
And then that will pretty much solve the problem.
Obviously, it doesn't solve the problem of government-owned public spaces.
But I also just, I don't, I just don't care.
It just doesn't, it's just, I don't care.
It doesn't seem like honestly, with all of the things we deal in here, of the horrific things that governments do, if they were to say, you know, trans women can't use the women's room or trans women can use the women's room, either one of those just like doesn't even register to me.
It's not even a blip on the radar of the awful things governments do.
It's like, I don't really, I don't know.
I don't care.
There would be something more compelling about like, if we were talking about like showers or locker rooms or something like that, I even see that as more of an issue.
The truth is with most bathrooms, at least in the women's room is really what we're concerned about.
Let's get real.
We're not really concerned about biological women going into men's room.
It's just not the same thing.
And in the women's rooms, it tends, I believe, to be stalls, right?
There's no women's urinals.
So I don't know, go in your stall.
I don't really care about this issue.
However, it's just, it gets everybody so worked up.
And I think there is like an interesting, it speaks to kind of like the divide amongst Americans on the way we see these issues.
And that to me is more interesting than anything else.
There was a, I saw someone tweeted recently, which was really, it's entertaining to me.
This is like, to me, the most blue-pilled of the libertarian takes where they said, you know, something along the lines of, man, Republicans, they want a government so big that it'll tell you what bathrooms you can use.
The Republicans don't stand for small government anymore.
As if the Republicans once stood for small government, but now they've stood, now they stand for this government so big that it's even going into your bathroom.
And Bob Murphy, it was very funny.
He responded and he said, so you believe that if you went to any conservative in the 1950s or 1980s or 1990s and said, should it be legal for grown men to use the women's restroom?
They would have all been like, yes, we support that.
It's just, anyway, the point of this, why I bring this up is because it's easy for people to almost like create this narrative that this is conservatives going in some type of like totalitarian direction.
When what's so obvious is that, no, this is like a drastic push in the woke direction that no one would have even considered as an issue.
Like as of a few years ago, let alone a few decades ago.
They would have looked like you like you were insane if you had suggested something like this in the 1950s.
Like, come on.
This is not like, it's not that once the right wing has gotten so crazy and out of control here.
It's like, no, we've moved into such a radical woke direction that we're even having a conversation about this.
Anyway, that was one aspect to me.
I'd love to know how much resources are going to be put into policing this.
I like the idea of a lady making a call to detective and going, that was no lady sitting next to me in there.
They send out a whole team to investigate.
I'm on the case.
And he just puts out a cigarette on his desk.
God damn it.
We got another one.
They stack up as soon as I saw it.
I solve one.
I got five more on my desk.
They got a fecal unit team that's got to come in and take specimens of smells and otherwise to go whether or not what kind of rectum was actually sitting there.
It just comes in and smells it.
It's like, oh, that's man shit right there.
30 years on the job will teach you a thing or two.
Yeah, it's all so ridiculous, but it does kind of get down to, you know, because I see a lot of people like the more the woke libertarian types and leftists and stuff.
They'll say this is like big government.
There are, I've seen several people who say that this is like a denial of trans rights, that it's discrimination.
And I just look at this in a slightly different way.
I think that, you know, I remember I went back and forth on Twitter.
This was a couple of years ago, I think.
And this was with a young young kid who's a libertarian who I like very much.
I think at the time he was kind of leaning toward maybe having a touch of wokeness in him.
I think he's probably outgrown that at this point.
He was a kid.
I think he was like 19 when we were having this interaction.
And he was basically saying that, so he was taking the libertarian argument and saying that there shouldn't look, there shouldn't be discrimination under the law in public spaces, which again, I don't think is the correct libertarian argument, by the way.
Let me just put that out there.
I think there's lots of discrimination in public places.
And the question is whether the discrimination makes sense.
In other words, state universities do not have to open their doors to the high school dropout and the valedictorian the same, right?
They have a right to have a preference, not a right technically, but it's more reasonable for them to give preferential treatment to people who finished high school, you know, like it's reasonable for that to be a requirement.
So things like this, that is discrimination in public areas under the law, but it's okay because it makes sense.
It would not be okay if they were just like, no Chinese.
You know what I mean?
Because that's not a justified form of discrimination.
So the question again becomes, is it justified?
So what he was talking about, he started talking about trans rights.
And I was like, well, what rights do trans people not have?
And the rights always come down to like children having the right to transition, which is a whole different story because you're like, look, kids have rights in a sense, but their rights are also kind of in an escrow account.
Like we all accept that, right?
Like that's why we don't allow children to drive or, you know, sign contracts or drink alcohol or gamble or do lots of other things that we let adults do, because we kind of recognize that children, while they don't have no rights, they're not the property of their parents.
You don't have a right to like destroy them or beat them up the way you do your physical property.
But you understand that the parental figures are kind of holding their rights in escrow.
They don't really have, they don't have full ownership over those rights yet.
So that's a whole different issue.
You know, if we can say it's illegal for kids to not be able to get a tattoo and that's not a violation of rights, then it's definitely reasonable to say you can't make a life-altering decision as a minor.
And so I have absolutely no problem with hormone treatments and obviously sex change operations and all that stuff being illegal.
That should be illegal for kids.
Anyway, so first it comes down to trans rights.
Then the rights always become something like the right to compete in women's sports or perhaps the right to go to a women's prison or something like that, the right to use a women's bathroom.
But when you really think about this for more than a couple seconds, that the question there is not rights.
You know, I remember asking my young friend where I said, well, let me ask you something.
Do you think men have the right to compete on women's sports teams?
Not trans, you know, just regular old men, born a man, identify as a man.
I'm a man.
Me, do I have a right?
When I was a senior in high school, did I have a right to just say, you know, instead of playing on the men's basketball team this year, I think I'm just going to play on the women's team.
That seems more fun to me.
Do I have a right to do that?
And he's like, no.
And I was like, okay, so then you're not against discrimination.
That's not the issue.
You're fine with discrimination.
You're fine with discriminating between men and women.
Your issue is that you believe biological males who claim they identify as women should be treated as women.
That's the question here.
Not rights, not big government, not discrimination.
Like if you think it's okay for men to not be allowed in the women's bathrooms, but you have a problem with trans women not being allowed in the women's bathrooms, your problem is not with rights or discrimination.
Your problem is the fact that trans women are not being treated as women.
So that's the argument, right?
That's the argument.
And then you might ask yourself, well, why is it that you're okay with men not being allowed to compete in women's sports or men not being allowed to go in women's bathrooms?
Why is that?
Why are you okay with that?
Is it because of what they claim they identify as?
Or is it because of biological realities?
It seems to me like the whole thing gets fairly simple when you come down to it on that level.
And I know there are people out there, you know, they'll say, they'll give examples of like, they're like, well, I've used the woman's room before when the men's room was broken and my girlfriend stood outside the door and said, hey, give my boyfriend a minute.
He just has to pee.
Sorry.
I'm not saying anyone like that should go to jail.
I'm not advocating even there should be a law about any of this stuff.
If there's one thing I'm confident in, it's that if government comes in to take care of this situation, they will make it worse.
I can guarantee that.
It's just the point that that's obviously very different than just making it a rule and normalizing it that look, what's look in these situations.
What's to stop any man?
It's not this thing, Rob, has gotten so crazy just over the last few years that we now have, you have transgender women who don't even shave their beard or talk with a different voice.
That's a lady.
God damn it.
Well, it would just, it will be a dude who looks just like me, who's just like, I'm a transgender woman.
I can't excel at the sport I want to play as a man without my beard.
I mean, as a lady.
I'm sorry.
Without my lady here, I got confused.
But you know what I'm saying?
So it's like, in that case, it's like, so what you're just saying, any man can say he's a woman and now there can't be any women's spaces that aren't for men.
To me, if anything now, it seems like you're discriminating against women.
I don't know.
If they change this law in Connecticut, I might have to go shower in the men's room again.
I was enjoying the ladies' room.
Better tits in there.
They had nicer soap, fragrances, towels.
Listen, I understand where you're coming from with that.
All right.
Look, on that note, let's wrap up this episode.
Thanks for joining me.
As always, audience, thanks for joining me.
Rob Bernstein, thank you for Tanner filling in for Brian.
Come check us out next up, Side Splitters in Tampa, and then a bunch more stuff.
ComicDaveSmith.com for all those dates.
Robbie the Fire, RobbyTheFire.com for all Rob's stuff.