Dave Smith and Robbie the Fire Bernstein expose how journalists Jack Posobiec and Michael Tracy dishonestly edited Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s speech to falsely imply war support, while Smith ranks RFK as the top candidate for opposing the Ukraine conflict and challenging the deep state. They critique Joe Scarborough's "Main Street" strategy for Ron DeSantis, arguing voters demand anti-woke conservatism over moderation, and speculate that establishment forces like Hillary Clinton might prevent Trump's return via document leaks or FBI firings, ultimately suggesting Republican success relies on base outrage rather than policy shifts. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Humanitarian Interest in Ukraine00:14:02
Fill her up.
You're listening to the Gash Digital Network.
We need to roll back the state.
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Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
You're listening to part of the problem on the Gas Digital Network.
Here's your host.
What's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
I'm Dave Smith.
He is Robbie the Fire Bernstein.
Thanks for joining us today.
What's up, brother?
How you feeling out there in Texas?
Oh, dude, I had a great weekend.
Chilled.
It was a blast.
Got to hang out at Rogan's place a little bit.
I'm having fun.
Oh, awesome.
Awesome.
Awesome.
Yeah, I'm excited.
I'm going there June 9th through 11th.
I don't know if there's any tickets left, but go on the website and check out if there are.
If not, you missed it.
But looking forward to seeing all you guys out there.
And of course, this weekend, me and Rob will be in Syracuse at the funnybone, comicdave Smith.com for tickets.
Bunch of dates coming up through the summer and fall and stuff.
We will be on the road quite a bit.
And of course, you can go to robbythefire.com and find all of Rob's dates and all the stuff he's got coming up.
All right.
So I want to start off the show today by talking about an exchange that I've been having this morning with a few people on Twitter.
I did not intend to get into a war this morning on Twitter.
This was not part of my plan.
But it's for whatever reason, this turned into a whole thing.
I want to go through this on the show.
So I opened up Twitter this morning.
My daughter left the house for school.
I was feeding my boy some breakfast and I opened up the Twitters to see what's going on.
And I had been tagged quite a bit in this clip of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
I guess because I had him on the show recently and we've done several podcasts about the guy and we have been, let's say, impressed with a lot of the things that he's running on.
So I guess now we're kind of tied together.
And so when this clip came out, a bunch of people started sending it to me.
Dave, this is your guy.
He's saying this awful stuff about Ukraine.
And yeah, so I guess because we've done so many episodes talking about RFK, people felt the need to send this over my way.
I don't know what's in it at the end of this.
I better get like, I better be hanging out with some Kennedys.
Rob, they better find a Kennedy woman to marry Rob.
We better get something out of all this Kennedy coverage that we've been doing.
I don't know.
Wait, hold on.
Your mic's muted.
I was saying, I'll take the last name, by the way.
I'm not typically a feminist, but if I'm marrying into the Kennedys, I'm a Kennedy now.
Oh, Kennedy is a real upgrade from a Bernstein.
Let's get real.
They look down at that Jewish money.
They're like, you call that money?
All right.
Anyway, so I better be drinking some of the best Irish scotch with these boys soon.
But okay, so the clip, I just want to, so I, when I first saw the clip, I did, for a minute, I was like, whoa, what's he saying here?
And then I remembered that I had seen the speech pretty quickly after it.
It's from his campaign, you know, kickoff speech that we covered on the show.
So I knew exactly what was going on.
Let me just show you just to, so people can understand how dishonestly edited this video that was circulating is.
I'm just going to you guys make the decision.
I'm going to play both of the clips, the longer one and the shorter one.
And then you tell me what you think of how honest a portrayal this is of where this guy stands on the war in Ukraine.
So let's play the longer unedited.
I mean, I suppose they're all edited because it's from a speech that's over an hour, but let's play the longer version with context first.
It's a five-the-minute and change speech.
We'll play the whole thing so you guys can listen to it here.
This is what he said about Ukraine in his speech where he announced his candidacy for president of the United States.
Here's RFK John.
I want to talk about the war in Ukraine.
And we need to have a national conversation about this war.
We need to have a mature conversation that allows for nuance and that allows for complexity.
And we need to do it respectfully.
We can't be telling one side that they're Nazis and the other side that they love Putin.
Everybody in this country loves our country.
And we have to respect differences of opinion and we have to respect the people's capacity to ask questions.
And some of the issues that we need to talk about is: number one, is this war in the U.S. national interest?
We just need to isolate that question.
Is it in the U.S. national interest?
And there are some of the leading Panjerums of most respected people of our national diplomats, let's say Henry Kischer, Jack Matlock, Larry Wilkinson, who's Colin Powers' chief of staff.
They all have said definitively: if you just want to ask, is it in our national interest?
It is not.
It is not in America's national interest to push Russia closer to China.
That is a cataclysm.
Number two, it's not in our national interest to do something that could involve us in a nuclear exchange with a country that has more nuclear weapons than ours.
Having said that, I want to say that we are in the Ukraine for all the right reasons.
We are there because we are a good people.
And, you know, Abraham Lincoln said America is a great nation because we're a good nation.
And we continue to be a good people.
And we are there because of our compassion.
The Ukrainian people who have been brutalized, who have been illegally invaded, and have shown extraordinary valor and courage defending their country and defending their families and their beliefs and their liberties and their independence.
Things that Americans have to admire.
My own son, Connor, I'm very, very proud that Connor joined the Foreign Legion and fought in the Ukraine during the Kharkiv offensive as a machine gunner for a special forces group.
But I think that we need to know as Americans, and we have a right to know, what is our government's chief objective in this war?
Now, we were told initially that the objective was humanitarian.
And that is a good reason to be there.
And what that means is trying to end the bloodshed and minimize it as much as possible.
But in recent times, President Biden said that one of our objectives, at least, is regime change of Vladimir Putin.
And this is the same strategy that did not work well for us in Iraq.
And it's many of the same people who are around the neocons, who are around President Biden, who have been talking about that for a long time and have been engaged in geopolitical machinations in the Ukraine since 2014.
And then President Biden's Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, validated President Biden's statement by saying that our objective in the Ukraine is to exhaust and degrade the Russian army so they're incapable of having battles anywhere else in the world.
Now, and indeed, many of the steps that we've taken in the Ukraine have seemed to indicate that our interest is in prolonging the war rather than shortening it.
So if those are our objectives, to have regime change and exhaust the Russians, that is completely antithetical to a humanitarian mission.
If we're there for a humanitarian mission, it means to reduce bloodshed and bring an end to the war quickly.
If we're there to exhaust the Russians or regime change, then doesn't it mean that the Ukraine is just a pawn in a geopolitical battle between two great superpowers?
And that our strategy is to put the flower of Ukrainian youth into an abattoir of death in order to exhaust Russia.
And if that's true, then we need to know about it.
If it's not true, then we need a pretty good discussion with the President and the Secretary of Defense and others to tell us exactly what are we doing there.
Okay, so that was a longer cut from what Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had to say about his position on Ukraine.
And it leads one, the takeaway from that, I think more or less, is that he's saying we need to be trying to end this war, not prolong it.
That it's not in the U.S. interest to push Russia and China closer together.
It is not in the United States' interests to provoke Russia into what could turn into a nuclear conflict.
And that if we actually care about the Ukrainian people and we want to be humanitarian about this, we would be working to end the war rather than what they're currently doing, which seems to be working to prolong the war.
I think that is the only reasonable takeaway from this.
Here is the clip that was going viral because it was shared by several huge accounts.
Here's the clip that they were sharing that I was getting sent this morning.
Here you go.
I want to say that we are in the Ukraine for all the right reasons.
We are there because we are a good people.
And Abraham Lincoln said, America is a great nation because we're a good nation and we continue to be a good people.
And we are there because of our compassion.
The Ukrainian people who have been brutalized, who have been illegally invaded, and have shown extraordinary valor and courage defending their country and defending their families and their beliefs and their liberties and their independence.
Things that Americans have to admire.
My own son, Connor, I'm very, very proud that Connor joined the Foreign Legion and fought in the Ukraine and during the Kharkiv offensive as a machine gunner for a special forces group.
So granted, when you just take that part of it, it doesn't look great.
Okay.
Right.
But is this not, I mean, Rob, just to see that, isn't this the most obvious, like, oh, you took that out of context and left out the entire point?
Like one, when you look at the longer clip, you come away with the obvious impression, this guy is against the current policy and for ending the war.
And when you just play that little snippet, it sounds like he's supporting the whole thing.
101 slam dunk, very basic.
This is a misleading edited video out of context.
Am I wrong?
No, that's very misleading.
I mean, I think he even started with we have to have a nuanced conversation.
Yeah, they took that part out too.
Yeah, this would be like when you talk about, hey, I care about homeless people.
I feel bad for homeless people, but they can't just be in our streets.
And someone took just the first part of I care about homeless people and said, look, Dave likes homeless people in your community or in your school or in your whatever.
It's like, or I mean, this is like classic, like, hey, we got it, you know, we have to care for our elders, but if like you were like a real conservative and you were like, but we got to take care of spending cuts.
And then you just took out of the, but we have to do spending cuts.
And you said, look, this guy cares about social welfare goods.
The Nom Nom Dog Food Viral Video00:02:43
Yes.
It's right.
It's just that.
I mean, it's, it's his play.
So I'm getting flooded with this.
Now I notice the, so this morning, I noticed this is going, you know, like when I go on Twitter, everyone's sending this to me.
It's going crazy.
Crazy.
Go ahead, Rob.
Oh, I was just going to say with that said, while it does sound like Kennedy's on the right side of this issue, he's being a little bit too much of a politician here where he wants to allow people to feel good.
And so when he says we're in it for the right reasons, at least my interpretation is that he's talking about the American people are supporting this because for the right reasons.
But he has a full understanding of the fact that this is just profiteering and, you know, just really bad policy as he explores later on saying, hey, it's clear that, you know, Biden doesn't have us in here for moral reasons.
Yes, that's how I took it as well.
And of course, also on lots of other interviews and speeches, including with me right here on this program, he explained his position much clear.
And he really knows his stuff.
I mean, he knows all about how NATO expansion was a provocation about the 2014 coup.
I mean, he was talking about this on the show without me like leading him to do so.
So he knows all this stuff.
And yes, I agree with you.
I think that was what he said.
He's also, look, he's running for president as a Democrat.
He's trying to kind of have a uniting, a unifying message here.
Anyway.
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Responding to Dishonest Editing Claims00:15:21
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All right, let's get back into the show.
So I noticed this morning this video is going super viral.
Everyone's sending it to me.
I noticed two big accounts that have tweeted it out.
So there was a Jack Posebiak.
I apologize, Jack, if I'm butchering your last name.
I'm never quite sure how to pronounce that, but he goes by Jack Poso on Twitter, probably because I am not the first one to butcher his name.
So I apologize.
But so he shared, he's a journalist.
He's got millions of followers.
So he shared it and Michael Tracy both shared the video.
Now, I responded to, because everyone's sending this to me.
So I responded to a few different people.
And then I responded to Michael Tracy, or I should say I quote tweeted his sharing the clip of it.
And I said, this is really dishonestly edited.
It's essentially his disclaimer before he goes on to explain why he opposes the war.
Have whatever problems you have with RFK, but he's solid on Ukraine.
So that's what I said.
Now, I like Michael Tracy.
I think Michael Tracy is a good journalist.
Michael Tracy was great on the Russia Gate hoax.
He was good on COVID, I believe.
Like he's a good journalist.
I'm not trashing him.
I'm just saying like, hey, I think you got this one wrong.
You know, like listen to the full clip.
And then I went and then I posted the full clip.
Now, Jack Posebiak, to his credit, I didn't even respond to him.
He DMs me and he goes, hey, dude, got this one wrong.
Someone sent it to me the clip.
I didn't say, I thought it was a new video.
I didn't realize this was from his announcement speech.
I just saw the whole thing you posted.
He goes, I deleted it and I'm leaving yours up.
Handled with integrity.
Perfect.
That's literally, that's the reaction you're supposed to have, right?
I just don't get why that's so hard.
We've all gotten got before on Twitter.
I've shared videos before where I was like, ah, crap.
I thought that was new, but it's old.
Oh, I didn't realize it was out of context.
Whatever.
It happens.
So I said this to Michael Tracy.
And by the way, I didn't think there was anything like shitty about what I said to him.
I like the guy.
I wasn't trashing him.
I said, this is really dishonestly edited.
It's essentially his disclaimer before he goes on to explain why he opposes the war.
Michael Tracy responded by saying, what?
This clip is not, quote, edited.
What's dishonest is to claim that the clip of a segment from a politician's speech is somehow maliciously edited.
I didn't have to edit him rousing the crowd into applause about his son hauling off to fight as a machine gunner against Russia.
And a good old-fashioned double down.
I was like, wait, what?
And so I say to him, I go, did you, I just posted the unedited version.
Did you check that out?
Can you honestly look at this and say it's not misleading?
And he goes, this was his response to me that really blew me away.
He goes, you falsely claimed that I somehow deceptively edited footage that I did not edit.
Please retract your false claim.
And I go, wait, you're asking for a retraction from me?
I go, dude, the biggest account who shared this just retracted it.
You should be retracting this, not me.
So I responded, I said, are you kidding me?
I said, I didn't claim that you edited it.
I said the clip is dishonestly edited and out of context.
I assume you just shared a clip you saw and upon seeing the whole thing would make a correction.
I'm surprised by your reaction.
He responded and said, you said, quote, this is a really dishonest edited about the clip that I posted, but you weren't claiming that I disedited, that I dishonestly edited the clip.
That makes absolutely no sense.
So I said, I said, sorry, if I were, I said, what?
Just because you shared the clip doesn't mean you cut it.
The point is that the version you shared is misleading and the longer version makes it clear.
I don't understand why you can't just admit that.
This was not meant as a personal attack on you, but you should correct.
To which he says, I did cut it, though.
I cut the segment from his speech where he claims, blah, blah, blah, that his son fought against the Russians, that the U.S. military presence in Ukraine is quote, for all the right reasons.
No editing required.
It's RFK's own words.
To which I responded, okay, I stand corrected.
You dishonestly edited the clip.
What do you want me to say?
So anyway, he is just getting, I mean, just ratioed like crazy over this.
And I got to say, and I've never had anything against it, but he deserves, he deserves this.
So finally, the last thing I've seen, he's probably still tweeting at me while we're recording here, but the last thing I said was he said, notice how instead of addressing the actual words that came out of his mouth, the Kennedy cultists scream about, quote, editing, as though it's now suddenly a mortal sin to quote lengthy excerpts from a politician's speeches, to which I replied, sir, I am a Ron Paul cultist, not a Kennedy one.
Anyone can watch the full context and see how misleading your cut was.
Just take the L. Jack Pasebiak handled this with integrity.
You can too.
So I don't know what to say here, Rob.
I did not choose this war, but I will say that like, especially since coming on the show and the fact that I think he's been really great on this issue, I'm just, I'm, I'm not going to stand by while they like try to pretend the guy is something that he's not.
And I'm not really sure where this is coming from or why they would be trying to do this.
I think it's fair to categorize taking something out of context as a misleading edit.
He's trying to, he's trying to be technical and saying that unless you're splicing together two different things, like if you're that you would have to take two different chunks of material or two different points and actually slice it in order for it to be considered edited, which is making a technical argument to try and backpedal, but I think it's a fair categorization to say something taken completely out of context where you're giving your warning.
Hey, I understand the following, but here's my opinion.
If you don't take that, but here's my opinion part and just take the front part.
That is a misleading edit.
That is a fair way to describe it.
And cutting something is editing it, right?
If you open up like an editing program, one of the first options they'll have for you is to cut things.
So, I mean, like, okay, if he wants to like, even just like get into this ridiculous semantic debate, and I fine, I'll concede whatever editing means, whatever you want it to mean.
You dishonestly cut this video to remove the context.
You put up a clip that would lead to someone having the takeaway that he's for this war.
Whereas if you listen to the whole thing, the clear takeaway is that he opposes the war.
How much more like, I don't know, call that whatever you want it to.
It's fucking dishonest journalism.
And like, you know, it is one of these things where it's weird when you're in this space where like he's got an account.
It's somewhere around the same size as me, but it's 300 something thousand followers.
Jack, who has a much bigger account than either of us, he has millions of followers.
I mean, but he did the right thing.
But initially, before he had retracted it and before all of that, the reason it's like, I have an account big enough, like that it's like, okay, well, I can put this out there so like a lot of people can see the broader context here.
And then like, it's just, I don't know, it's like, well, then we kind of have to do that because otherwise all people will see is this.
And then they'll be like, oh shit, look, he just, and it also comes off like people don't realize that this was from his campaign introduction, like the first speech.
And they're like, oh, did he just say this today?
Is he backing off of his is something when it's like, no, that's not at all what's happened.
He was coming out against the war and he's doubled down on that in every interview he's been in since.
So there's, you know, it's just like, you almost feel like a bit of an obligation to correct the record.
I guess if you're this guy and now you're saying that that's not an edit, well, what was your goal here?
I mean, it seems like you're trying to present him as being pro the Ukrainian war when clearly his statements were that he wasn't.
So why are you trying to present it in that way?
Yeah.
I mean, it just, it just makes no sense.
And like, look, in a way, you're kind of like, look, dude, we're obviously, and I haven't, I know Michael Tracy has been really solid on a lot of different, really big issues.
Like I said, he was really solid on the Russiagate stuff.
He was really solid on COVID.
He was, he's been really solid on kind of like woke insanity and college campuses and stuff like this.
Like he's been good.
And clearly he's coming at, he's criticizing RFK from the position that, look, he supports this war, which is a terrible war.
So, okay, so you're on our side, right?
Like we're, we're all in the same view that like, yes, this is bad policy, what's going on now.
But so then why are we attacking a Kennedy challenging the sitting president and who's great on this issue, right?
Like this just doesn't make any sense to me unless, you know, like you're like maybe supporting Trump or DeSantis or something like that.
And so you, you're trying to like box him out and position him as being like, oh, he's really bad on Ukraine.
So the only good ones on Ukraine are these guys.
That's the only thing I could think of that would be like a reasoning for this or just like some personal grudge against Kennedy.
But again, like I said, hit Kennedy for all the positions you want to.
Even disagree with him on this position.
Fine.
Just don't like misrepresent what his position is.
That was my only like real beef with this is it's like, let's just, let's just call a spade a spade here, right?
Like I, I, this just seems nutty to me.
Um, anyway, we'll see what happens.
I'll say, happy to have Michael Tracy on the show, as I always kind of say in these situations.
To have him on and we can discuss this.
I just don't understand where where, this stubborn reaction is coming from.
Uh, the other thing is that it's I.
I kind of got it wrong in my assessment.
My assumption was that he fell for this, you know like oh, which again totally understandable, it happens.
You know, like I, I assumed he just saw this clip and fell for it, but then he kind of revealed that no, he clipped it.
So he went into that speech and took that one chunk out.
And that I don't see how you get to there from not a dishonest starting point.
Maybe he'll make the argument that anyone who sees this as a moral war will actually come to support it.
And so he's taking the perspective that that little front loading thing to make Kennedy said that to front load his opinion to make it sound a little bit more palatable to people who have been brainwashed about the fact that this is a moral war.
Well, yeah, the example you gave was a good one too, where you're like the example with the homeless, where if I say something, I'm going to be like, listen, it's terrible that there's homeless people and my heart goes out to them.
And the fact that anyone lives on the street is awful, but we can't just have tent cities when there's people who want to like walk around with their kids.
You're doing it so that, right, you're just making it more palatable.
You're going, because if you just say, we can't have fucking tent cities, you know, and then in my neighborhoods, I want them the hell out of here.
Then it kind of sounds to some people like, oh, but are you, aren't you being a little heartless?
Don't you not?
So you're kind of like, you disclaim what you're saying by being like, well, look, no, I'm not saying that you can't feel for these people.
I'm just saying this.
And that's what he was doing.
And it's as dishonest as just like clipping that first part and then going, see, Dave's fine with the tent cities, just like you said.
It's the same thing.
It's the same thing as what you're doing to him here.
You know, libertarians have been, you know, there's been some libertarians who have pushed back on me a little bit for, say, giving some glowing coverage of RFK.
And they'll be like, well, look, he said this about guns.
He said this about climate change.
He said that he's had bad takes on these things throughout the years.
And that's fine.
Like, I think that's legitimate to point out where he's bad on things and where he's been bad in the past.
You know, like that's fine.
I'm not saying like, don't hit the guy for positions that you disagree with.
I'm just saying definitely don't hit the guy when he has the position you do agree with and try to make it look like he has the position you don't agree with.
That's all I'm saying.
And then the other thing about it is that, by the way, which is I think sometimes libertarians do have this, a real bad tendency to fall into like binary thinking on this stuff.
And I think sometimes have a tendency to be a little bit autistic about things.
That is, of course, libertarians' strength and weakness.
And it's like, look, dude, the thing, it's not that I agree with Robert Kennedy on everything.
He's not a libertarian, you know, like, of course, we don't agree with him on everything.
And he's not perfect.
And even like, even when we were doing the episode the other day, when we were doing the one talking about him versus Crystal Ball, and then you had at one point where you just said, you go, well, what he should have said is this.
And you just said it perfectly.
And I'm like, yeah, okay, right.
He's not, even when I agree with him, there's, there's kind of better ways he could say some of these things.
But I think sometimes libertarians will be kind of, and this is why I say autistic.
I say it tongue in cheek, although in some cases it's literally true, but they'll, they have this tendency to like focus on like exactly what the correct position is and what the incorrect position is and go, yes, but he's not correct about this, this, or this, and therefore this, this, and this.
Whereas, like you have to sometimes in these moments, kind of zoom out and take more of like a human perspective on these things and go, look, Robert Kennedy's son is running for president of the United States Of America and he's leading on bringing an end to the war in Ukraine.
And how the whole COVID regime was built off of lies and was tyrannical in nature, and how big business and big government are in bed together, and how the, you know what I'm saying?
Federal Reserve Policy Alignment00:03:26
Like the, he's leading on being good on COVID, good on Ukraine, good on the deep state, good on like all of these things, and that that's what his campaign is about.
And that is something worth recognizing that like, oh, that's awesome, you know, like, yes, that doesn't mean he gets a perfect 100% score on correct policy on everything.
It just means that like, wow, that's cool that that's happening.
Obviously, Democrats and Republicans, left-wingers and right-wingers are all different varieties of statists and they're wrong for that.
That's what we're against.
That doesn't mean that there aren't different flavors and different shades and different things within there.
Tulsi Gabbard, when she ran in 2020, was bad on a lot of different issues.
But what her campaign was about was being good on war.
That's what it was about.
That was the center of it.
That's what differentiated her from everybody else up there.
And oh, by the way, all the things she's bad on, everybody else up there was bad on too.
So it's still a positive that she was running that year.
You know what I mean?
It's still like, like, it's just, it's not, these things aren't binary.
It's more of like, what is the purpose of this campaign?
What is it doing?
And, and, and it's great that RFK is running.
Look, man, whoever the, the Libertarian Party candidate is for president and whoever the, um, the, you know, that, that candidate should be up on a press conference standing right next to RFK and Vivek.
What's his name?
Ramaswamy.
Raswami.
The three of them should be holding a joint press conference together and saying, this is our list of grievances and our demands of the federal government.
We all, look, we, we all come at this from completely different perspectives, but we agree on these five main things.
And you know who did that was Ron Paul did this with, God, why do I keep wanting to say Dennis Kucenich, but no, with Ralph Nader, when they were both running back in 2008, they stood up there and went, listen, I'm the most libertarian person in the country and he is the most liberal person in the country, but we agree on these five things.
And it was like end the war, transparency at the Federal Reserve.
What are they actually doing with our money?
You know, breaking up these like incentivized partnerships between big business and government agent.
Like, you know, it's just like five really key things that they both agreed on.
And debt was actually one of them too.
Ralph Nader was like, I'm sure he had some like tax the rich type of vision of it, but he agreed that it was completely wrong to be saddling future generations with debt.
But that's what they should be doing.
You should be recognizing like recognizing what this campaign actually means and how to best galvanize people around it.
And then, of course, like at the appropriate time, also pushing that like, no, we, we're, we're also good on guns and climate change and all these other things.
We're not just good on these, the three most important issues.
But, you know, the other thing, by the way, is RFK is good on the Federal Reserve too.
I mean, I don't, I don't think he's Ron Paul, but I think he's like, he's like aware of how corrupt the Federal Reserve is.
And we talked about that briefly when he was on the show.
Primary Election Polling Strategies00:10:48
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Anyway, I just think that that's more or less my takeaway.
And I will say this, and I tweeted this out recently.
And this got, I got quite a the tweet went like viral.
And then I got a lot of people agreeing, a lot of people disagreeing.
But I said, basically, I said, if I had to rank the top four candidates from the major parties in order right now, it would be RFK, Trump, DeSantis, Biden.
And then, of course, I get a lot of these binary thinking libertarians like, so you're endorsing RFK or something like that.
It's like, well, no, I didn't say that.
I'm just saying if I had to rank out of these four people, these are the four people, because there's really only four candidates in the Democrats and Republicans who are like polling anything that you could even measure.
And out of those four, those are the rankings right now.
And RFK is number one because he's the best on all the most important issues and he's actually like read a book about them.
On several, he's written a book about them.
Whereas Donald Trump just saw something on Hannity is like saying the right thing.
And Trump is edging out DeSantis as of right now because he's taken a firm stand on the war in Ukraine, which is by far the most important thing for a president.
You know, like if you were going to be a governor in the year 2020, you might have a million policies, but by far, what mattered the most if you were a governor in 2020?
It was where are you on lockdowns?
Where are you on COVID?
Because on that subject, you're the dictator of what happens in your state.
And if you're good on that, the people of your state are going to enjoy much more freedom than they otherwise would have, you know?
And when you're running for president in 2024, the most important thing is where are you on World War III?
Where are you on this push toward war with Russia and the push toward war with China?
Where are you on those?
That's what matters.
And so RFK is one.
Trump is number two.
DeSantis falls to number three because he's just been completely unclear about where he stands on Ukraine.
You know, he was asked recently about it and he like on Fox News and he just went on for like two minutes about how the military is woke and he'll get rid of all the wokeness in the military so that we can start recruiting people again.
And you're like, yeah, dude, that really ain't good enough.
That really ain't good enough.
And then Biden, of course, because he's a decrepit old, you know, dying animal who is the one responsible for this curtain policy.
He's dead last.
So anyway, I just don't, I think that like you can, you can have your binary of like what's good policy and bad policy, but then you can also live in reality and recognize what's better and worse.
You know, abolishing the income tax would be great.
Reducing it is still better than not.
I also think we're playing for keeps right now with some issues that shouldn't even be on the table.
Like whether or not we're allowed free speech and to criticize government policy shouldn't be on the table.
And you look at the Biden administration, like their policies kind of rely on not having free speech and not being able to engage on the internet and share actual information.
You know what I mean?
Like that shouldn't be on the table.
Free speech should not be on the table at all.
Also, like policies that government can mandate.
You're getting vaccines that are clearly only for corporate profit if you're doing a look back and domestic terrorism titles, the FBI going after American citizens.
You know what I mean?
There's just like some in the entire green ESG woke agenda.
This all relies on a censorship of free speech because otherwise it won't last.
And it relies on government enforcing policies that benefit corporate interests.
Like it would, so RFK is at least a little bit of a return of normalcy within the Democratic Party.
And at least from what I'm seeing, I think it would probably get us out of the Ukraine war, maybe roll back a little bit of this stupid green agenda and at least allow us to have free speech.
Like, you know what I mean?
There's just certain things that we're playing for keeps that it shouldn't even be on the table.
So if we can get RFK, push them ahead, maybe edge out Biden, you know what I mean?
To even just educate the Democrats on, hey, these aren't liberal values.
You know what I mean?
100%.
No, 100%, dude.
And I think even short of that, look, one of the things that was so valuable about Ron Paul running for president was that you had this guy who was like the squarest of squares.
You know what I mean?
Like country doctor from rural Texas, Republican next to his name, the most conservative person.
You know what I mean?
Like married to the same woman for over 50 years.
Wouldn't know what pot smelled like if he smelled it.
You know what I mean?
Just like the square, this country doctor, conservative Christian who's going, I am hardcore against the wars.
Hardcore.
So now it lets you know this isn't some liberal, like leftist hippie position.
You don't have to like, but you know what I'm saying?
Like it gives you, as Scott Horton always put it, he goes, if you like your identity, you can keep it.
Like you don't have to abandon your identity.
And now am I some type of like America hating hippie if I'm against these wars?
No, sir.
You're the squariest conservative from Texas.
That's who you are.
You know what I mean?
Like there's something really powerful about that.
And it is not a coincidence that Ron Paul got all of that excitement.
And then the next guy who won the Republican nomination, Donald Trump, was completely against the wars.
It was almost like he gave them permission that you're allowed to have this.
And there is something incredibly valuable about a Kennedy, a liberal Democrat taking all of these positions and letting like the Democratic average voters know that you don't have to be some right winger.
You know what I mean?
In order to like have these basic, like, like to have these basic views.
You don't have to be a right winger to believe in sanity is basically what RFK is saying.
And he is polling right now, despite all of the negative coverage, if any coverage from the corporate press.
He's polling it like 20%.
The other thing about that is that let's say he loses the primary to Biden, but does really respectably.
Like let's say he gets 20, 25, 30% and loses to Biden.
That is still so great because you know that that lets all of the powerful people in charge know, shit, even 30% of our own party's base are not going along with this program.
That might be the difference between them not implementing the next draconian policy.
Because as we both know, Rob, they do this all the time where they put their finger in the water to feel how much they can get away with.
And then if there's too much pushback, they pull back.
And if there's not, they go through with it, you know?
And look, man, as bad as things are right now in the country, we would be in such a worse place right now if they had been able to get everything they wanted in.
You know, like we would have had a national vaccine passport.
That's what the Biden administration was floating out.
Like this is, you know, things can always get a lot worse.
And so the RFK, him running for president and running on the things that he's running on is truly heroic.
It's truly heroic.
And we have no idea how impactful and like monumentally important this can be.
So that's all I'm saying is like, you know, the role here for libertarians, I'm not saying you got to vote for the guy or you got to like campaign for him or donate money to him.
I would understand why people would do all of those things, but the role at least is to not try to tear him down.
It's like we want him in there challenging Biden.
It's obviously so much better.
It's either this or there's no primary, which Marion Williamson is not putting up a fight against Joe Biden.
And, you know, like, you know, she can be counted on to roll over and just endorse him when this whole thing's over anyway.
But now, rather than Biden just getting to like not have a primary, if he doesn't now, that looks incredibly weak, right?
Because it looks like he can't take this guy on.
And this is so much better.
Now, rather than there being no primary, Joe Biden is going to get pushed on his policies on these vaccines that he that, by the way, if he had had his way, would have been mandated for all companies with 100 employees or more under this OSHA mandate that he tried to jam through.
It was blatantly unconstitutional, as the Supreme Court decided, but he would have, if he had his way, that would have been through.
Now he's going to be challenged on that.
He's going to be challenged on his position on Ukraine.
He's going to be challenged on a whole host of really important issues.
Come on, this is so much better than if the RFK wasn't running.
So if anything, our role now should be to boost that signal, should be to be like, oh, this is great.
Be supportive in some way.
And then, of course, I'm not saying we shouldn't run our own candidate because we got other issues that we want to talk about too, because we don't want to just be good on three things.
We want to be good on everything.
Democracy at Risk If He Wins00:13:18
And we want to let people know that there's a reason why we're great on everything.
It's because we've got this kind of unified theory of liberty that allows you to understand the correct political positions across the board.
But, you know, whatever, feel however you feel about the guy.
As I said at the beginning, knock him when you think he's bad on something, but then also give him credit for what he's good on.
And definitely don't knock him on the things he's good on and pretend he's bad on them.
I think that's, I think that's fairly reasonable.
Anything else?
I'm still right.
Yeah, I just don't get it.
By the way, I did just see as we're, this all like just happened.
So I just saw that Michael Tracy did send me a message.
It's a DM, so I'm not going to like read it on the show or whatever, but it's, he did just send me a message.
Yeah, just send me a dip, guys.
Here it is, right?
He wants to hang out.
Hey, guys, I take back everything I said.
This guy seems cool.
This guy seems super cool.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
Yeah.
Anyway, so that's that.
Let's here.
We got a little bit of time left.
This took up more time than I thought it would.
But Rob, Brian, sorry.
I sent you another video.
Let's play that.
It was something, I think it was a morning Joe.
Yeah, it was Joe Scarborough on Ron DeSantis' campaign.
I found this pretty entertaining.
Listen, I think I don't agree with the conventional wisdom about Ron DeSantis.
I think right now he's even money.
And I know a lot of people would laugh at that.
I think Ron DeSantis right now is even money to be the next Republican nominee for president.
I do think that if he learns how to get out of his way, and we're still, you know, nine months off from elections, he could beat Donald Trump because he is so much more competent than Donald Trump.
And he's supposed to come without the baggage that Donald Trump has.
As he said in his press conference, he doesn't know a whole lot about paying off porn stars.
So he can't really answer those type of questions.
There could be a great contrast, but here's the deal.
If he runs as Trump Light, he loses.
If he runs as a Main Street Republican who is for balanced budgets, a strong military conservatism, I think he wins going away.
And he is a really formidable opponent for Joe Biden in the fall.
But saying that Disney sexualizes kids is not going to get you from here to there.
That just gets Donald Trump renominated.
Well, before you get to the cartoon stop.
All right.
So that's, I just, I find it really funny that these guys in the corporate press have still never grappled with why Donald Trump won.
And they still, they're just so in their own bubble that he actually says like, I mean, you know, if DeSantis wants to try to channel how, you know, parents are furious that they're pushing this sexualized propaganda on their kids.
That's that, that's not going to work.
I mean, but you can, if you, if he talks about budgets, I think that'll get him elected.
That could beat Donald Trump.
That's the energy that could beat Donald Trump.
He's talking about balanced budgets.
By the way, I'm for balanced budgets, but let's get real.
Let's get real, dude.
No, that's not what's going to.
Basically saying, if he would just be Mitt Romney, he could win.
If he would just be Jeb Bush, then yeah, he could.
He could destroy Donald Trump.
Did you not watch 2016?
Did you not see what happens?
No, the only way Desantis can win and no, he's not even money.
Trump is a huge favorite right now.
This is David versus Goliath.
For Desantis to have any chance, any chance here, the only way Desantis can win is if he can somehow make the the case that he is a better Trumpist than Trump, that he can actually, as Thoe Bishop said, punish Trump's enemies in a way that Donald Trump was not able to, that he will actually drain the swamp where Donald Trump was not able to.
That is his only chance to win.
The idea that if he just runs as like, no, I'm small C conservatism and I'm one that's trained to the government and I want to, you know, like these pledges that Republicans always make that we know are always lies.
No chance.
The only chance he has is to tap into that outrage amongst his base.
That's this is why he's so popular.
Mickey Mouse.
And everyone's like, yeah, Mickey Mouse.
I'll hold him down.
You beat him with a bat.
That's his shot of winning.
It's just so funny to me that someone like Joe Scarborough, who does this for a living and makes millions of dollars doing it, is so out of touch with even the like, look, you're talking about amongst the Republican base, amongst the Republican base, you really think that's what they want?
Move away from this fight against wokeism.
That's really, it's what?
Wokeism is really popular amongst Republican voters.
This is insane.
I'm hearing the same as we were like, hey, Kennedy could be a return for the Democrats to classic liberalism, which is what we prefer, an anti-war party that, yeah, they want too many social benefits and they want wealth distribution, but they like freedom of speech and they don't like war.
Let's get it back to that.
I'm hearing him say the exact same thing about the Republicans, which is, hey, if we can get a deep state war hawk that's on the exact same team as Joe Biden on the things that I'm supposed to be on this network pitching, well, then we can support it and pretend like that's what the American people want, the same as we do with every issue.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, I think that's exactly right.
It's so funny, though.
It's like, because like we don't like, we want to see like the Democrats reject this push for war and wokeism, but we don't want to see the Republicans go back to embracing neoconservatism.
Like that's just, that's the most insane thing ever.
But that is what Joe Scarborough is essentially saying that he's like, look, man, if you can just not be like, you're getting the people too angry about our agenda here.
And if you could just go back to being a boring neocon and say some things about balanced budgets when really we're going to explode budgets while we push for a war with Iran, then yeah, you have a shot.
Then you could win.
But look, this makes sense if Joe Scarborough is saying what he thinks, like what he likes.
But the fact that he's saying this is what the voters will like is just so removed from reality.
He's just doing that game where he's pretending like he has influence.
Like, hey, listen, if you do all of these things, then we'll endorse you and you know how big my audience is here.
And that if I tell them they're going to do something, that's what's going to win you the election.
Yes, because if there's if there's one thing that Republican voters see, you know, they're completely in line with one entity, it would be MSNBC.
That perfectly encapsulates where Republican voters are at.
It's just everything that Mika Brzezinski thinks is what they think, right?
It's just so, so ridiculous.
But in a way, you know, like with a lot of these things, sometimes it does make sense if you just like add in the assumptions that they're making.
Because like maybe when he's saying Trump or DeSantis could win if he does this, what he means is that like, well, we'll allow him to win if he if he takes this take, you know, like Hillary Clinton said recently that she said, uh, you know, like it was a pretty typical Democratic thing to say, but she could, you know, she was like, democracy is on the ballot.
And if Donald Trump wins the presidency, we don't have a democracy anymore.
And a bunch of people were like dunking on her for this take because it is a really stupid thing to say that if the person I don't like is democratically elected, then it's not democracy.
But you could almost look at that in a very different way and be like, oh, she might be honestly admitting something here.
Like she might be saying that if Donald Trump wins the election, we won't have democracy anymore, meaning they won't let him in.
Like that could be the claim here as well, in which case what she's saying is literally true.
If he wins the election, we won't have democracy anymore because her friends at the CIA are simply not going to allow Donald Trump to be president again, which I got to say, I and I want to make sure I say this the right way because I don't want to give like a misleading, like I don't want, I want people to understand what I, what I believe here.
I think that's right.
Now, I'm not claiming that, like, I don't know, as I've said a million times on the show, I've never seen any evidence to back up any of the like actual like voter fraud claims that Trump and his lawyers were making.
I don't know if Dominion flipped any votes.
I mean, it's not like my worldview would be shattered if I found out they did.
I've just never seen any evidence to it.
And I don't think there is any.
And so I don't really believe things absent evidence.
But I will say, I do not believe that under any circumstances, Donald Trump will be allowed to be president again.
And I think that if he were to win the election, something will be done.
I just do not think that the powers that be will allow him to be president once again.
For him, I think he would have to win so overwhelmingly that they were basically just like, oh, shoot, we have no option here because it would be such like it was an indictment for him to win the one time, but for him to win again would be such an indictment of the entire establishment.
I simply think they just can't let that happen.
And he might actually go ham.
He might release classified documents.
He might fire people from the FBI, might release Snowden.
He might really get after people.
It's possible.
And also possible that he wouldn't because he didn't do it the first time.
But it is, you know, like I also like, I just don't trust Donald Trump in that way.
Like, I also think it's quite possible that what's really motivating him is just that he lost and he wants to win and he wants to be a two-term president and that once he wins, he doesn't even care.
Like it's like that's once once the story is how great he is, he doesn't really care.
Because then he's a winner again.
Yeah.
And then that's that.
And then he proved his point and he beat all the losers and he's the winner.
And then I guess he can go to his grave a happy man because it's just like the one thing he hasn't done yet is be a two-term president.
I don't know.
So I don't trust that he would do all those right things, but I really, I really do not think there's, I don't think it's possible that they let him in.
I remember even back when I was saying that I thought Donald Trump would probably win the election in 2020.
If you remember, I was predicting Trump wins until we found out the voter by vote by mail shit.
And then I was like, yeah, I don't, nah, this isn't going to go good.
It's just this is going to favor the Democrats too much.
I remember Jeff Dice said, he said, I have no idea.
This is well before the election of 2020.
He said, I have no idea who's going to win the election, but Joe Biden will be appointed president.
Like Joe Biden will be the next president.
And I, you know, I kind of, I, I'm feeling that way a lot about 2024.
We will see.
Do not accuse me of what's my, I might be accused of denying election results into the future.
Wrapping Up the Night00:01:01
But anyway, Rob.
Being thrown out of my hotel room.
Oh, you're being thrown out.
Okay.
All right.
Well, it's good time.
I thought you were just saying goodnight to the gentleman who you had over last night.
Okay.
Well, if you're getting thrown out, this is a good time.
We keep that off there.
Later, Rick.
Thanks for a hot night.
All right.
Okay.
We'll wrap up there since you're getting booted out and we were just about out of time anyway.
All right.
Thanks for listening, everybody.
ComicdaveSmith.com.
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Rob, any other plugs you want before we sign off?
I'm actually home tomorrow, so some report store dates are going to start going up.
So go to the robbythefire.com, see where I'm going to be.