Dave Smith and Robbie Bernstein dissect Hunter Biden's laptop nightmare, exposing alleged IRS cover-ups involving a withheld 2019 FBI-verified device and whistleblower claims of deep state election interference. They critique Republican figures like Devin Nunes for voting to expand government power while claiming anti-corruption stances, labeling them "Washington Generals" against the true opposition. The discussion highlights evasive responses from White House officials regarding Hunter's Chinese contacts and Attorney General Merrick Garland's refusal to address specific corruption allegations, arguing that conservatives fail to dismantle the concentrated state power driving these systemic failures. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Magnesium For Deep Sleep00:01:39
Fill her up.
You're listening to the Gas Digital Network.
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We need to roll back the state.
We spy on all of our own citizens.
Our prisons are flooded with nonviolent drug offenders.
If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
You're listening to part of the problem on the Gas Digital Network.
Here's your host, James Mitch.
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.
What's up, brother?
Nothing much.
How are you, Davey Smith?
I'm doing good.
Is that, do you have two COVID vaccines going into you right now?
Is that what they are?
I'm trying to catch up.
I'm two years behind this schedule.
So you are, you're seven boosters late, Rob.
You really got to get moving.
No, you got to get the mRNAs in you before they release the aliens.
Yeah, they say the science would say just take them all right away.
Just as many as you can.
There's never too many.
There's just more.
You're just getting more immunity to it.
That's what we're doing.
More antibodies.
That's what it's all about.
All right.
Let's not get this video demonetized too.
Why?
This is the first time we're actually making the recommendations of this TDC to follow best practices.
That's right.
I mean, we are, we're actually following the science for once.
Maybe they should like extra monetize us for when you follow like if we even go beyond the CDC, like I'm saying more, whatever they say, one more, one more than that.
Okay.
Do I get extra for that?
I don't know.
I'm still trying to navigate this new world.
It's a it's a weird place.
Isn't it funny too?
Because like our last episode got demonetized because we talked the whole time about the hot, what's his name?
That Dr. Hotez or whatever.
Scientists aren't allowed to debate.
That's not the way science works.
But is it it's such a crazy, I mean, I know I'm just kind of beating a dead horse, like everyone knows this at a certain point, but I'm like, they don't have to tell you anything.
So they just, they just demonetize it.
And it's like, you're like, you point to one thing that we said in there that's wrong.
And like one thing that we said that's wrong.
Like I'm literally looking at a study and saying, if you don't control for natural immunity and comorbidities, then this isn't a good number.
Like what, what about that is wrong?
Argue with me that those aren't factors.
You know what I mean?
Like, so it's kind of frustrating.
But then it's also this weird thing where like, I'm, I'm just, I'm kind of okay with it.
I'm like, just don't like, don't ban me.
You know what I mean?
I'm like, okay, fine, whatever.
It's like, I don't care about you're like, could we just like not get like, I don't know.
It's like, at least just let me say it.
So then it's fine.
But it is this weird kind of like smack with a ruler on the knuckles.
You know what I mean?
Like they're like, it's, it's, it's just strange.
The whole thing's bizarre.
And now I probably just managed to get this one demonetized also.
It's got a particular nurse ratchet quality to it.
And then they just tell you after careful review, we've decided that this is against the guidelines.
So me using my little slick little Jew lawyer brain, I always respond.
I'd love to be, I'd love to have better guidance of how I could be a better contributor to the YouTube community.
Would you mind telling me specifically what I got wrong so that I know best practices?
And of course, they're not going to respond to that because they know better than to put a particular line item onto.
They don't want to take a specific opinion on anything.
So it's easier just to say, hey, you're not allowed to have this here.
What can I have here?
They won't tell you.
Yeah.
And obviously they're doing it just to protect themselves because if they, if they actually even believed in their, their own line, they'd want to tell you so you don't do it again.
Right.
It's like it was right.
So like, let me know what I'm not allowed to do on your platform.
Right.
But they don't want to have to defend a particular point of view.
Right.
Right.
But I'd really challenge anyone.
It's like, tell me, you know, like, I don't want to get things wrong.
Just tell me what I got wrong.
Tell me and then we can we can look at it.
Anyway.
All right.
So let's get into a few big things that are happening that are seem like very big deals.
First, and this is a big one.
There it seems to be some potential for some type of civil conflict in Russia going on right now.
There's Putin himself has addressed it.
And it looks like a military base or two have been seized by this Wagner group.
There's some crazy videos that have come out.
I don't know.
What are your thoughts on this, Rob?
And then I'll jump in.
I got so many thoughts.
You're handing me the football early on this.
I'm headed it over to you.
I got my own little rant that I'm working on here, but go ahead.
All right.
Well, just off the bat, you just got to say we have no fucking clue.
This couldn't be more interesting.
The Wagner Group is a fascinating organization.
And that like, talk about running a protection mob where you're not even, usually you pretend like you're the government.
This is a branch of Putin's, you know, elite wing where it's a military force that's slave labor out of, you know, literally just plucking prisoners to go fight on the front lines and then also running protection rackets in Africa.
It's very bizarre also because they're technically a private like militia, but that's also illegal in Russia.
Like it's illegal to be a private militia and yet they are a private mercenary group, whatever they would call themselves.
And but they are.
They just kind of exist, even though they're technically not supposed to.
It's very bizarre.
Well, just the fact that in 2023 that you have a private militia group with this much power that seems to operate the way usually governments only can, it's kind of like the highest form of mob that you could have.
So it's a little, it's almost impressive in that regard.
The fact that this guy came from being a caterer and now he's uh duking it out with the Russian generals.
Uh, so just the backdrop of the Wagner Group, off the bat, is i'm not endorsing it, but i'm just saying, from a watching television perspective, this is the kind of shit you'd think you'd see in a movie about something that happened 100 years ago.
It's fascinating that it's happening right now.
Now the Wagner Group's been a significant uh element, from what I understand, of the Ukraine war in terms of them being on the front lines and actually battling uh, and what makes this interesting is we don't know yet this could just be cover of trying to pretend like there's some sort of shenanigans going on in Russia as cover for moving troops around and like some large offensive.
Or even though I don't agree with the Ukraine war and I think that this is a loss for you and I, people who enjoy free trade, who would like to see, you know, Germany get cheap energy from Russia.
The way we see the world, it's not a win.
But if they get a civil war going and they actually upend Putin, I mean talk about a win from the deep state that you know, few people saw coming.
I actually mentioned this on run your mouth a while ago, when the Wagner Group started sparring with the other generals over UH supplies not being sent to them on the front lines.
So i'm just saying there is a possibility that there is an actual civil war happening right now in Russia, and it's because the other generals are so corrupt that they weren't getting the proper supplies to the Wagner Group.
And this guy's actually turning back around as a fuck.
You, we're going for Moscow.
Well, it is true, we could actually the, the?
U.s.
DEEP State could actually walk away with a win here.
Yeah, well it I.
I suppose that would depend on how you define a win, but I I get your point.
It's, it's a fascinating development.
It's a very dangerous development also, and one of the things that I find so crazy is seeing all of the UH like the, the cheerleaders for this war, all just celebrating this like it's so wonderful that you oh, there could be a.
You know, there could be a coup inside of Russia, there could be a civil war inside of Russia, and isn't this great, because maybe this could bring Vladimir Putin down.
And it's like all of these people have not learned the like the most basic lesson that you would take away from from the history of wars.
And so, if you just like, if you know anything about this stuff and and very recent history too, I mean, it's not like this is.
It's not like Iraq or or Libya are like ancient history.
These are things that happened within the last 20 years uh, last 12 years, 13 years for Libya.
Um, but look, Woodrow Wilson uh, the worst president in the history of the United States Of America.
He, even though he ran on keeping uh, America out of World War One um, when he got America into World War One, he said his words were that he was going to make the world safe for democracy.
Um, and the world certainly wasn't safe for democracy at the time.
Europe was ruled by a bunch of monarchs and he, they overthrew them um, or some of them, and uh they, at the time, you know, there was a monarch in in Germany and in Russia as well and uh, those governments fell and then what came up out of the ashes of that was Adolf Hitler in Germany and Lenin and Stalin in Russia,
and there's a pretty obvious like lesson.
So, first of all, not really a win for democracy uh, but also just not a win for humanity, and there.
The kind of obvious lesson here is that when you topple a regime, it is not at all a guarantee that what's going to come after it will be better.
Like there's.
There's lots of other factors involved here, and it's almost as if nobody none of the cheerleaders of this war are even considering the possibility that like, if Putin were to fall, something much worse could come.
It's like they have this like kind of cartoon, you know, version of the world in their head where it's like, you know, Putin is bad guy.
Bad guy gone.
That means good, but the world is actually much more complicated than that.
And who's to say, even for any of the things that that you don't like about Vladimir Putin, that we don't like about Vladimir Putin, who's to say that what replaces him is not worse?
Then, in fact, I think a strong argument could be made that it's likely that would.
What would replace him would be worse.
There's no, it's not a given that there wouldn't be someone more hawkish, someone more extreme than Vladimir Putin would rise up if he were to fall.
Um, and especially when you have, I mean there's, there's a large degree, there's a lot that indicates that Vladimir Putin is very popular in Russia.
Now I don't know exactly how much this war has affected that.
Wars do tend to be unpopular, especially the longer they go and the bloodier they are.
Um, but what would be able to say, kind of like, if you have these, if you have factions within Russia who love Vladimir Putin and factions who who hate Vladimir Putin, what would be more likely to pull that all together?
You know, like some, a peaceful dove or an authoritarian strongman?
Well, history would tell us that an authoritarian strongman is more likely to come out of that.
Um, and you know, when you're dealing with a country that has the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons in the history of the world, to just be like celebrating that we're rolling the dice on this is is insane to me.
I mean look, Vladimir Putin is at least the devil we know.
We've been you know what I mean like the world's been dealing with Vladimir Putin since Bill Clinton was in office.
Um, or was it Clinton?
Maybe it was after, it was after Clinton, but whatever, it's been a long time.
It's been 20 years or so of dealing with Vladimir Putin.
Um that okay yes, he has.
Like he's had uh, military um operations in in in Georgia, in Syria and, of course, this war in Ukraine um it's not great.
I would argue they were all responses um to western uh aggression, But it's like, don't think it couldn't be worse, you know, and like whatever people can caricature this is, I'm sure there will be idiots who caricature this.
Those are pro-Putin talking points, but it's like, no, to say you shouldn't topple the German monarchy is not a pro-monarchy talking point.
It's just like, look, Adolf Hitler rose up next.
That was worse.
If you think it can't get any worse than this, you're incredibly naive.
And you're rolling the dice with the biggest nuclear power in the world.
So to me, I mean, you can accuse me of confirmation bias here, but it's just kind of like more evidence that we never should have gotten involved in this to begin with.
It's an incredibly dangerous situation that so many people seem to be watching like, oh, yay, the bad guy might get it.
Like, yes, we're on the good team and he's on the bad team.
And you're like, yo, guys, there's a lot on the line here.
This is, it's a very dicey situation.
And this came, this came on the heels of Putin making some like nuclear rearrangements and moving nukes around and stuff.
It's like, this is, you know, the other thing about this here is that like, I, I, to me, it's really like only simpletons who don't with any seriousness consider the weight of how dangerous this situation is, like root for Putin to be overthrown.
Like, they're just like, yeah, that's the best case scenario, you know?
Like, this is what Lindsey Graham or Joe Biden or any of them have said many times.
Like, that's the best case scenario.
Putin gets overthrown.
And it's like, okay, even if that were true, right?
Even if you, even if you like eliminate my grave concern that like something worse could rise up after him, how about the concern about what that process looks like and what Vladimir Putin might do?
You know, like all the concern from the establishment has always been that Putin could win the war.
And then if Putin wins the war, he, whatever they say, he goes to take Poland, you know, whatever the ridiculous domino theory of the day is.
If he wins the war in Ukraine, then he owns England all of a sudden or something like that.
After he struggles through this war, he's just going to conquer all of the NATO countries.
Some ridiculous fantasy.
But it's like, okay, but what about if he loses the war?
What if he loses a war on his border and is humiliated in front of the world?
And then his people are turning against him.
And then there's a threat that he could be overthrown by his own people.
What does he do then?
Feels like there should be some more consideration given to that scenario, because that actually seems to me to have much more of a potential downside than him winning.
That doesn't mean that I think it's the moral answer is that he wins the war.
Just in terms of where there's more potential danger to the world, the worst case scenario to me seems to be Vladimir Putin thinks he's getting killed anyway.
That seems to be a real bad scenario.
Putin's Dangerous Miscalculation00:03:58
So I agree with you 100% that this is a dumb gamble.
These are not the decisions that I would make.
If I'm a dumb hippie, hey, let's all get along and trade.
Products and services will be cheaper and life will be great.
That's the way I look at it.
You're a very free market for a hippie.
I'll say that.
Okay, fair enough.
But empire doesn't think this way.
And I just want to put a couple other variables on the table where this might play out in the favor of the U.S. Empire.
Now, I agree with you.
These are not gambles that I would want to take.
It's not what I like.
But one is we might have actually just made this costly enough that Putin actually walks back the Ukraine thing.
It's possible.
I'm not saying that that does happen, but there might be enough turmoil between his generals that he actually needs to somehow solidify kind of his oligarch power play and he needs to go back to the drawing board.
That's option one, be a victory for the U.S. deep state or the war machine.
Option two is we're actually working with the Wagner group.
This thing works out.
Maybe that, what's his Milvane?
What's the guy's name who's been in prison forever?
Maybe one of our assets actually gets thrown into power in Russia and maybe that works out great for us.
Third possibility, and this is where, in my head, China kind of plays in, is that in the U.S., we're kind of used to a stable empire.
We haven't really seen regime change.
But if you look at the history of China overall, I think, you know, emperors have come and go.
And now we're, you know, Russia is kind of come and gone.
So the ability of the U.S. to go, hey, listen, if you aren't playing ball with us, yeah, like we're not going to be able to go to war with you, but we do have ways of kind of upending.
And we seem to like chaos.
I mean, look at what we did with ISIS and Iraq and Syria that seemed to benefit, you know, Israel in some regards of upending, you know, established countries at their borders.
So I agree with you.
I don't like the risk of escalating with Putin and the possibility of him going crazy and whatever, but it could be they have the intelligence that maybe he's a more noble dictator.
And when the dictators lose, they actually do go, all right, I lost this game.
I don't need to nuke the planet.
But just to lay out the possibilities here, you're not.
Yeah, I'm not denying there's these possibilities.
And I think that what the, what our own, you know, what the American empire, what the deep states kind of goals here are, aside from just, you know, raking in money, there's obviously a big money scheme.
There's the, you know, big weapons companies have made tons of money off of this war already.
But I think the goal here is to hurt Russia.
And if that's your goal, then yes, this is somewhat being achieved for sure.
And you're right.
There is a possibility that this, the, the way this works out is, is Vladimir Putin pulls back.
I think it's a very unlikely one.
And I think that Vladimir Putin, you know, is going to, he's in a situation, which I think he has been for a long time, where he sees this as a must-win.
And I think he's probably not wrong about that.
And so the likelihood of him pulling back, I think is very low.
We will see.
We will see what happens.
But it's quite a gamble to take.
Quite a gamble to take to what?
Try to damage Russia, you know, make sure that they are not a European power.
That was always the neocons language around it.
And I guess deter China from moving on Taiwan or something like that.
And I'll also say, and I'm not saying that this is a good perspective for the world or a good perspective to have.
But if you do watch the news like television, we just got an interesting plot twist.
Oh, yeah.
Interesting.
Yeah.
Well, listen, we don't, I mean, look, we hate a lot of this stuff, but, you know, like if all these problems were solved, we would be put out of a job.
So that's, I don't know.
Covering Up Criminal Orders00:17:25
I just got to really hone on these jokes about my family that I got and really take that to the road because as soon as you're like, oh, the Fed's abolished and there's no more war?
You're like, what's today's episode?
All right.
Anyway, yeah, all pretty crazy.
And this is an actively developing situation.
So I'm sure we'll be talking about it a lot more.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
All right, let's let's switch gears a little bit.
Let's talk about the big domestic story that has grabbed the attention of the nation.
And of course, this is Hunter Biden.
He is back in the news in a big way.
And yeah, there's a lot of stuff to get into here.
I do almost want to preface this by saying that Hunter Biden himself is like, he's, he's not really the interesting part of this story, but the figure that is Hunter Biden is so goddamn hilarious.
It's just so fun.
The man is just this crack smoking, hooker banging, like spoiled kid of a career politician who's just, I mean, Rob, he, he, he deducted prostitutes on his taxes.
I just learned you can do that.
The balls, the balls that you have to have to actually do this, to submit this information to the IRS.
You know, like, it's just, I, I, I marvel at it, to be honest.
I mean, if you're gonna, it relaxes you for uh, when you're next going to have to deal with high stress negotiations with the Chinese who haven't made their payments to the vice president.
So that's a tax deduction if I've ever heard of it.
Do you want me to go in full bald to that meeting?
That's what you're telling me.
It's going to be hot.
I got to be cool on this one to get the big guy paid.
Yeah.
Um, anyway, it is all something.
So basically, what there's a couple things that kind of sparked this whole new round of conversations here.
Um, the big ones are that Hunter Biden has formally entered into a plea deal with the Department of Justice.
Uh, now, this has not been approved yet by a judge, um, but uh, I'd say typically deals like this are approved.
I don't know exactly what the percentage is, but I think it's pretty rare that if the prosecution and the defendant come to an agreement that the judge like doesn't, but the judge has to agree on this.
Um, and it is a Trump appointed judge, I believe, who they're going to be in front of.
Uh, now, of course, that doesn't mean much because as we all know, Donald Trump wanted perhaps his worst quality as a president was that he appointed terrible people.
So it's not as if like, oh, Donald Trump appointed someone, that means that'll be someone who gets to the bottom of like some deep state plot or something like that.
It's just not, we've seen this over and over again.
doesn't mean that at all.
So he basically got a sweetheart deal, pled down to a couple of misdemeanors on gun possession and tax charges and will get no jail time.
I heard crack makes you a better shooter.
So I feel like that whole thing was overblown in the media.
I feel like crack is either going to make you a much better shooter or a much worse shooter.
You know what I mean?
Like I feel like it's not going to have like a slight effect.
You might shoot at the wrong target, but you'll hit it.
But you'll bullseye.
Did you fucking see that?
So while this comes out, there's also now a second whistleblower.
So there's two whistleblowers at the IRS who have basically come out and given us some interesting information that the things that we probably would have guessed were true, but that the that basically the Justice Department has been slow walking this whole thing and kind of covering for Hunter Biden.
So it seems pretty overwhelming at this point that this is a very, you know, there's a whole lot of corruption afoot here.
Any other like takeaways that you have from it?
Well, I thought the most interesting claim was a conversation on WhatsApp between Hunter Biden and a Chinese partner where at least Hunter was claiming that his dad was there waiting for the Chinese partner to make good on their end of the bargain and make the payments.
Now, that could have been a total bluff, but in conjunction with everything else we've seen that does tie Joe Biden to Hunter Biden and other evidence that exists of payments to Joe Biden in connection with Hunter Biden.
I would have thought that a more robust investigation would have been forced upon the Justice Department in order to walk away hands clean from this and say, hey, we looked into it.
As opposed to what they did is gone, they figured out a way to weasel out of this and basically try and close the books on it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's if you haven't seen it, the text message is basically just saying, you know, he's like kind of shaking down the Chinese and he's saying, I'm here with my dad right now.
I'm in the room with him.
I better get a call back.
It better be from you, blah, blah, blah.
And he says this thing, you know, about how something about how he has a capacity to hold a grudge and he will make sure your life is a living hell.
It's it's a little bit of a window into how this all worked.
You're right.
He could have been bluffing.
Even if he is bluffing, that's an interesting kind of window into how this, these corrupt kind of shakedowns go.
Yeah, it's there's a lot there.
So what I actually thought was the biggest takeaway from all of this was not that those text messages.
What I thought was the biggest takeaway, which was very interesting, is that this guy, the FBI, excuse me, the IRS whistleblower is claiming.
So they were basically they had a criminal investigation going of Hunter Biden.
And this is back in late 2019.
There's already had this criminal investigation going.
And he's claiming that, so they were basically working with the Justice Department to proceed on this criminal investigation of Hunter Biden.
And he claims that the FBI had verified the laptop already by late 2019.
So this is a full year before this becomes the big story that it became, that the FBI had already verified that this was Hunter Biden's laptop.
And so he also claims that they refused to give the laptop over to the IRS, who wanted it because they thought there was information that would be relevant to their criminal prosecution of them.
So now you have the Justice Department having verified the authenticity of the laptop, refusing to give it over to the IRS when there's a criminal investigation going.
So that's kind of an interesting, there's evidence that he's, that they're, um, they're protecting Hunter Biden, who was, you know, the son of the former, or the son of the former vice president at the time.
However, the bigger implication about all of this is that when the laptop came out in 2020, when the story came out, and you have these, the 51 intelligence people signing this letter, four former heads of the CIA, all stepping up to say that this has all of the earmarks of Russian disinformation.
You kind of view that through a whole different lens now, knowing that the FBI was well aware that this was, there was no ambiguity about it.
They were well aware that this was Hunter Biden's laptop.
And now, you know, looking at things in full, like this really is Donald Trump's kind of Watergate moment.
It's actually a lot more corrupt, but that there's this active cover up by the deep state to in with the clear goal of influencing the outcome of an election.
And we also know, of course, that we learned a couple of months ago that it was Merrick Garland who made this demand of who at the time was running Joe Biden's campaign, that he made the ask for them to, excuse me, not Merrick Garland.
I apologize.
Who is it?
Blinkett.
That's right.
So who's now the Secretary of State?
He's the one who made this demand that they do something about it, that they say this is Russian disinformation.
But the fact that the deep state would knowingly cover up, knowingly lie about what they knew was Hunter Biden's laptop with the goal of influencing an election at the behest of the political campaign.
I mean, that's about as big a scandal as you get.
That's about as big as you can get influencing the outcome of an election, direct election interference to unseat the current president of the United States, which makes it even more of a scandal, in my opinion, at least, makes it even more of a scandal than if they were interfering to help a president, if that makes sense, because at least in that case, there's still some semblance of the president has control of his executive branch.
You know what I mean?
Like there's at least some sense.
Whereas now, when you have this, when you have them working to unseat a democratically elected president, there's much more of a treasonous vibe to that.
If that makes sense.
Yeah.
Well, by all indications, whatever this Biden storyline was with Hunter, it doesn't seem like we'll ever get the details or they're going to get busted for it.
And the main reason I say that is I watched quite a bit of the Durham interviews.
He was in front of Congress the other day.
For those interested, the most interesting of that whole series was Matt Gates.
Yes, you know what?
In fact, let me send this over to Brian right now because I meant to send this to you earlier, but I forgot about this one, but it really is great.
And since it just came up organically, let me send that over to Brian right now and we can play that because really everyone should see this.
Yeah, Matt Gates, I just sent it to your email, Brian.
Matt Gates really, this was, as I retweeted Though Bishop, who shared it, and I would agree with his assessment, it was masterful.
It was really just perfect.
And so, yeah, whenever you get that, Brian, let's pull that up.
But as masterful as it was, it would seem to me like the machine is going to move on from that moment.
Yes.
It's not like the machine went, oh, Matt Gates really pointed out something scandalous that we better look into.
It's more like a little asterisk on the record, the same as when you break like the record and they put a little asterisk on it.
You go, yeah, he was on steroids.
So we're moving on from this with a little Matt Gates at asterisk.
Yes, that's exactly right.
Well said.
All right, let's check it out.
That you're disappointed that the FBI didn't cooperate more, right?
That was your testimony.
Said that.
Yeah, so we're disappointed too, but the difference is when regular folks do things that are wrong and unlawful, there's typically greater effort to try to get those people before a grand jury to utilize criminal process where appropriate, not for other purposes.
Oh, well, Bill Prestep, the guy who might have set this whole op in motion, he just didn't want to talk to you about certain things and you were real accommodating to that.
And then Mifsud, the person who juices Papadopoulos to create this predicate that you find improper.
You guys, I mean, did you ever know who his lawyer was, Mifsud's lawyer?
We talked to his lawyer in Europe.
I don't know if he's a- You could find the guy's lawyer, but you couldn't find him?
We contacted somebody that we knew had represented him in part of the effort to try to locate him.
And you got the lawyer.
And then now you're sitting here in front of the judiciary saying you could find the guy's lawyer, but you couldn't effectuate the service of a subpoena because you couldn't find him.
As you may or may not know, we wouldn't have the authority to serve a subpoena overseas.
The lawyer didn't know where Mifsud was.
He was in communication with him, but he claimed not to know where he was.
And we were trying to arrange an opportunity to talk to Mifsud.
Did you take possession of two BlackBerry phones from Mifsud in any way?
There were phones that were provided to us by the guy.
Do you see how silly this looks?
Like you found the lawyer, you found the phones, but the actual dude who got ordered by Western intelligence to go start this thing you couldn't find?
It's kind of laughable.
It seems like more than disappointment.
It seems like you aren't really trying to expose the true core of the corruption that you were trying to go at it another way.
Yeah.
As we said in the report, and as I said in my opening remarks, we pursued the facts as best we could.
Well, how about this we have?
How about this fact, Mr. Durham?
The entire Mueller team does a hard reset on their Apple phone in synchronization to wipe away evidence.
Did you investigate that?
I've read that.
Well, why didn't did you investigate it?
Who gave the order on the Mueller team to wipe the phones?
Yeah, that was not something that we were asked to look at.
No, that's not true, Mr. Durham.
That is not true because I'm holding the document that authorizes your activity.
And it specifically says the investigation of special counsel Robert Mueller.
It's in par, Mr. Chairman, I seek unanimous consent to enter into the record the order that says that you're supposed to investigate these things.
And so like whether it's the Mueller team, Mifsud, how about Azra Turk?
Azra Turk, what's Azra Turk's real name?
Do you know that?
I'm not going to be disclosing the names of FBI personnel that otherwise aren't available.
So the FBI sends somebody to go honeypot George Papadopoulos.
Who gave the order to do that?
I think that's beyond the scope of what's in the report.
That's literally the scope of what your charging order is.
Who put it in motion?
We get after it was put in motion, the FBI did a bunch of wrong and corrupt things.
Totally understand.
We're trying to deal with that.
But when you are part of the cover-up, Mr. Durham, then it makes our job harder.
Yeah, well, if that's your thought, I mean, there's no way of dissuading you from that.
I can tell you that it's offensive and that the people who worked on this investigation have spent their lives trying to protect people in this country and pursue within the law.
What it is that we're doing.
Let's stop it right there.
I thought that was one of the most fascinating responses.
Like that, that's the world that we live in.
That's how this machine works is that when you start making just excellent points like that Matt Gates is making, like undeniable, I don't know how anyone could deny that these are excellent points.
Like you're going, listen, everybody on the Mueller investigation all wiped their Blackberries at the exact same time.
Who gave that order?
Like that, how would you deny that's a good question?
That's a reasonable question that we should know the answer to.
He's going, who gave the order to go honeypot Papanopoulos?
Like who gave that order?
That's okay.
This is like very, very relevant information.
And his response is like, all of the sudden, the FBI turns into like a freshman gender studies major.
Like his response on the record is that that's really offensive.
I just want to tell you that that's really offensive.
That's like totally offensive to me and the FBI agents who are like totally the good guys.
Who Gave The Honeypot Order00:03:31
Like they, we're, we're the ones who are good and we're on the side of ending oppression.
And really, it's a microaggression.
I mean, that really should have been his response to that.
You totally just microaggressed on me.
Like, what?
That's your cop out?
And look, Matt Gates goes on brilliantly to break it down.
He's like, and he said it right there in the clip we just played.
You're part of the cover-up.
That's your role in this whole thing, Durham.
And it's so obvious, man.
We've been saying this for years now on this show, right?
That him and Barr and all of these guys, it's so clear that these guys are there to cover this thing up.
And what did all of them do?
Barr and Durham and all of them, what did they do?
They came out and they told the American people, yep, this happened.
Nothing's going to come of that.
That's it.
In effect, that's what happened, right?
They basically came out and said, everything Dave Smith and Rob Bernstein have been telling you for the last six years about how this was all a big hoax.
This was an attempted coup attempt by the deep state to unseat a democratically elected president.
Yep, you're right about that.
Now let's move on.
That's, you know, like just as you said, put an asterisk on it.
Okay, Matt Gates at this moment.
Now we're going to move on.
That's the whole thing.
How is that not part of the cover-up?
And he goes on to break it down.
Now he was, he's, he was, he went 0 for three, essentially.
I mean, he got one conviction on the guy who, um, on the FBI agent who wrote the FISA warrant, but he did no jail time.
The guy who blatantly lied to the FISA court to get the surveillance of Carter Page, that guy did get convicted, but gets no jail time.
And the other two cases he brought were were dropped.
So anyway, pretty great moment.
I'm glad you brought that up.
So I remembered to play the video because it's worth seeing.
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Republicans Attack Washington Generals00:15:17
Okay, so you were, I believe the initial point you were making that led to this whole, that led us to talking about this was that you see this kind of, this is the same way the Hunter Biden investigation is going to go is that basically, yes, it'll come out.
We'll kind of, we'll, we'll learn enough to know that we were right about this the whole time and no one will actually be punished.
I believe that was more or less where you were going.
Yeah, and the Republicans don't do, aren't seemingly doing a good enough job of highlighting these storylines and, you know, pinning the powers that be to the corruption.
So in whatever way, you know, deep state is used and hiring these prosecutors and actually looking into the things and bringing the people in for the congressional hearings.
I'm just saying the Republican side, if they did care to actually highlight this corruption, find the Bidens accountable or whoever managed to run the deep steep to essentially unseat Donald Trump.
They're not doing a great job.
Well, it's funny because Matt Gates goes on to call Durham the, what's it called?
The Washington Generals.
Like in that clip, he goes on to call him the Washington Generals.
And it's almost like Gates, and I want to say this because I think it's like, no, did anyone ever tell you that you're playing for the Washington Generals?
It's like Matt Gates is the coach that has to pretend like he's upset at the Washington Generals for losing.
It's part of the.
My personal guess is that I think Matt Gates really doesn't want to be the Washington Generals.
But it's like, just so you know, you're a Republican.
Like that's your team.
You're on the Washington Generals and you're complaining to the rest of them that you're like, you guys are acting like the Washington Generals out here.
It's like, yeah, that's the team.
Put the jersey on, man.
That's what the Republicans are there to do.
You're there.
It's like, this has been the game forever.
And by the way, this is why the Republicans have always, I mean, I'm not just saying now, like always, my entire life and longer than that, have always vaguely claimed to believe in the principles that we believe in.
They claim to believe in limited government and fiscal responsibility and freedom and all this shit.
Because that's what the team who loses all the time is supposed to pretend.
It's like, oh, you have someone fighting for you.
If you, you know, like people who believe in freedom, come join this camp and we will lose over and over and over again.
And that's kind of the way this game gets played.
And that's why the government continues to grow and grow and grow.
And then when the Republicans actually are in power, they all of a sudden we don't hear much about those goals.
You know, like it's, you hear it right now a ton.
There's, there's a ton.
I mean, there's some bad stuff too, but there's a ton of good rhetoric that comes out of Republicans right now.
You'll hear them talking about really like draining the swamp.
Even some of them will go as far as to say abolishing the CIA and the FBI.
Most of them will stick with reform, but even that is like would be better than nothing probably, right?
So they have good rhetoric about that.
All of that.
But, you know, in like, let's say 2017, when the Republicans controlled the House, the Senate, and they had the White House, I didn't hear a lot of rhetoric about abolishing the FBI.
There was no meaningful push for CIA reform.
There was no push at all.
Like that, all of a sudden, when they get in power, this all goes away.
Now, I do think Matt Gates is part of this crop of like younger Republicans who don't want to be the Washington generals.
But the problem you have is that your teammates are in a different place.
And I mean, look, this is the guy that Donald Trump's Justice Department tapped for this.
You know, like I wish some of these guys would make that connection a little bit more.
There was an interesting thing on a Twitter spaces the other day.
I don't know if you saw this, Rob, where Thomas Massey was going at it with one of these big conservative radio show hosts.
Oh, I would love to see that.
I love everything, Thomas Massey.
Well, he's going at him and he's kind of trashing Devin Nunes, who, of course, Devin Nunes was like a Trump supporting Republican who was kind of blowing the whistle on some of this.
Did you run that social media company for him?
He does run that.
Yeah, that's right.
He's over at Truth Social.
I forgot about that.
But so, you know, Massey was basically making this argument.
He's like, like, I forget his exact words on it, but he was like, no, he wasn't good on Russia Gate.
He goes, he's terrible because he voted constantly to give the deep state more and more power.
And he voted that way even after, you know, even after Russia Gate had started.
And they're all kind of like appalled by this.
And they're like, how can you say he's bad on Russia Gate?
He was the best on Russia Gate.
He was blowing the whistle on all of them.
But it's almost like this is the problem that conservatives have.
And this is why they really need to learn their libertarian lesson.
And they never do.
But it's like, yeah, all of that shit is meaningless.
If you don't like, it's like some final boss in a video game with like a bunch of heads and there's one head at the center.
You know what I mean?
And it's like, you're over here fighting one of the peripheral heads.
This means nothing running around and just like talking about how, oh my God, there's this corruption at the FBI.
If you're just going to vote to give them more and more power, you have to go attack this thing at the source.
And that's like, that's, it really does seem to me like libertarians are the only group who seem to recognize that.
You have to attack this thing at its source.
It's the power.
It's these organizations having this much power to begin with.
If you're not going to try to chop that down, then just trying to nag out one little case of corruption here or there is that you're not going to get anywhere.
Okay.
Let's get back to there was some fairly entertaining moments when now that this story about Hunter Biden is becoming a bit undeniable.
This is how, so far at least, how the Biden administration has been handling questions about it.
So let's play.
We got Jean-Pierre and Kirby.
Curly wouldn't answer James's question, though.
Are you going to answer the question?
Not a reasonable question to ask, but if the United States was involved, as this message seems to suggest, in some sort of coercive conversation for business dealings by a son, is that something if he wasn't, then maybe you should tell us.
So here's the thing.
And I appreciate the question.
I believe my colleague at the White House Council has answered this question already, has dealt with this, has made it very clear.
I just don't have anything to share outside of what my colleagues have shared.
And so I would refer you to him and the DOJ.
Just not going to comment from here.
What I can tell you is I know that my colleague has dealt with this.
He addressed this at the White House Council.
I just don't have anything else to share.
I just answered the question.
I just answered the question.
I love, all right, that's enough of that.
I love the claim that I just answered the question.
Like, well, no, you definitely didn't answer the question.
And then this is how Kirby, which they were referring to, here's how he handled it.
The House Ways and Means Committee yesterday released documents, their authenticity nowhere challenged.
That included a July 2017 WhatsApp message sent by Hunter Biden to Henry Zhao, a Chinese Communist Party official, which stated in its entirety, and I quote, I am sitting here with my father, and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled.
Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand and now means tonight.
And Z, if I get a call or text from anyone involved in this other than you, Zhang, or the chairman, I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge, that you will regret not following my direction.
I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father, unquote.
So just a couple of questions about this.
First, does this not undermine the president's claim during the 2020 campaign and the reaffirmations of that claim by his two press secretaries since then, that he never once discussed his son's overseas business dealings with him?
No, and I'm not going to comment further on this.
James, let me just know.
Let me say, let me save you some breath if you're going to ask about this.
I am not addressing, I don't, I know you do more than I'd like you to have.
I am not going to address this issue from this podium.
I'm just not going to do it.
All right.
I'm not going to do it.
Thanks, guys.
Have a great weekend.
And he gets up and walks away.
So first off, he does.
The funny thing is he answered the question.
He said no, and I'm not going to comment on this.
So he is on record now saying that no, this does not undermine Joe Biden's claims that he had no knowledge of his son's business dealings.
Isn't it amazing?
What a just bullshit clown fake show this whole thing is that they don't even have to answer that question.
They don't even have to go, no, Joe Biden wasn't there.
Hunter Biden just said that.
Or no, or say, no, the text message isn't real or it was doctored or something.
Something.
They don't even have to offer a defense.
It was just, I'm not going to answer.
I'd like to know if Joe ever had to go down on his 10% to help Hunter get a hold of some more crack.
That's what I would ask.
Were there ever instances where the stash was out, so he settled for 8% or 9%?
Or was he firm on the 10%?
It is a fair question.
Yeah.
You go, you got to also like feel for Joe Biden where it's like, you got to trust that you're going to get your 10% kickback from a crackhead.
Like, you know, you got to hit him up right when that money comes in.
You know what I mean?
Like right away.
That's why Joe Biden was in the room with him.
He's like, we're going to sit right here.
We're going to get this payment together.
I want my 10%.
I'm not getting burned again.
Okay.
And then before we wrap up out of here, we got another clip.
This one from Merrick Garland, the head of the Justice Department, Attorney General there.
And this was pretty glorious.
It was in the vein of the answer from Durham.
Let's play that Merrick Garland clip.
Holding the FBI record in contempt.
It's become a talking point on the campaign trail, the alleged corruption in the FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies.
Do the American people have cause to be concerned about the integrity of the components of this Justice Department?
And what do you have to say about how they're acting?
I certainly understand that some have chosen to attack the integrity of the Justice Department as components and its employees by claiming that we do not treat like cases alike.
This constitutes an attack on an institution that is essential to American democracy and essential to the safety of the American people.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
You've all heard me say many times that we make our cases based on the facts and the law.
These are not just words.
These are what we live by.
They are the foundation of the way we make these decisions.
The agents of the FBI, as well as the DEA, the ATF, our deputy U.S. marshals, every day, often at great personal risk, protect the American people and secure its safety.
Our cases are based on their work.
I could not be more proud to work with them.
Could you just imagine, Rob, if you could get away with this, like in any, in any aspect of your life?
Like if you could get away, like, you know, if like my, my wife, you know, like caught me, like, I don't know, my wife finds some other, like, other woman's underwear or something like that.
And she's like, what is this?
Was there another woman here?
And I would go, this constitutes an attack on my character.
And my character is necessary for this household.
And we can't, and I like, you don't have to just be like, oh, no, those aren't like, you don't have to answer the question at all.
You just like go off about how great you are and the people around you.
This constitutes an attack on me and my friends who are absolutely beyond criticism and not something like, oh, this, this IRS whistleblower is lying.
This didn't happen.
We did not have Hunter Biden.
You know what I mean?
Like your answer wouldn't have to be like, no, no, no, I didn't cheat on you.
I didn't like, it's just, it's like mind blowing that this, who, who falls for shit like this?
Like the idea that you wouldn't have to say, oh, it's not true.
The FBI didn't have Hunter Biden's laptop in 2019.
We had not verified that it was his.
Like you wouldn't even at least have to say that because you're going like the idea of saying we're corrupt, we're necessary for democracy.
You're like, okay, well, there's two people at the IRS who are alleging that you actually knew that there was an, that there was this blatant interference going on with our elections and did nothing.
And in fact, even supported it.
So what's up with that?
Right.
Like this is what the allegation is.
Are you going to even respond to it?
Nope, nothing like that.
Just, you know, if people are using this in the campaign, this is wrong and bad and we're good and democracy and couldn't have democracy without us.
That's my answer.
They might as well all just give Kirby's answer.
At least he just walked off.
Just walk off and give us the middle finger while you're walking off.
At least that would be more honest.
At least it would be more honest if they were just like, we're your rulers.
You're our bitches.
And that's the way this works.
I'd respect that more.
All right.
Any final thoughts, Rob?
That's an interesting play.
They're just standing there and going, how dare you attack the integrity of this institution?
The only way we can have a country is if everyone respects that what we say is gospel.
Yeah.
Just get more dramatic with it.
Just start dropping microphones, yelling back.
I'm going to try to start incorporating this into my own life.
I'm going to see how let's just show up late for our show tonight, Rob.
And when they, when they go like, oh, why are you guys so late?
Just be like, how dare you?
The only way a comedy show can work is if you respect me as a performer and you understand that I'm funny.
And so unless I can come up here with your understanding of my importance, I refuse to even just, I guess, get paid.
I don't even know how that works.
It's just sad that so many people at this venue have fallen into the misinformation of attacking the character of the comedians.
Live Shows Across Florida00:00:42
Yeah, we're going to try this.
We're going to try this.
Maybe I'll play this card the next time I'm in New York City and there's a room full of 25-year-olds and I'm just bombing.
Sounds good.
All right.
Look, that's our episode for today.
Don't forget, come on out to our live shows.
Me and Rob are going all over the place.
We got Kansas City coming up, Cleveland, Ohio coming up.
A bunch of dates down in Florida, Dayton Beach, and all around there.
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And go check out Run Your Mouth, Rob's other podcast.