Part Of The Problem - Dave Smith - Tucker vs the Candidates
Aired: 2023-07-16
Duration: 56:46


=== Robbie Fire Bernstein in Cleveland (01:18) ===

[00:00:00]  Fill her up.
[00:00:02]  You are listening to the Gash Digital Network.
[00:00:09]  We need to roll back the state.
[00:00:10]  We spy on all of our own citizens.
[00:00:12]  Our prisons are flooded with nonviolent drug offenders.
[00:00:16]  If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
[00:00:22]  Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
[00:00:34]  What's up, everybody?
[00:00:34]  Welcome to a brand new episode of Heart of the Problem.
[00:00:37]  Hope everybody's doing good out there.
[00:00:38]  Robbie the Fire Bernstein is off today.
[00:00:41]  He is out gallivanting around summer porching.
[00:00:45]  So we wish Rob the best of luck and he'll be back with us for the next episode.
[00:00:50]  So first, before we get started, I should tell you, me and Robbie the Fire Bernstein are coming down to Cleveland, Cleveland Hilarities.
[00:00:57]  We're doing a weekend stand-up down there.
[00:00:59]  Come check that out, Comic Dave Smith for those tickets.
[00:01:01]  And then I'll be all over Florida for a little bit.
[00:01:04]  Check it all out, comicdave Smith.com.
[00:01:07]  And then, of course, the Legion of Skanks theater tour is coming up soon.
[00:01:09]  So looking forward to all that stuff.
[00:01:11]  For today's episode, I wanted to talk a bit about something that I thought was a pretty incredible event that happened yesterday.

=== Establishment Agenda and Trump's Absence (15:32) ===

[00:01:19]  And it really, it got me thinking a lot about just kind of how much of a revolutionary time we're living in in terms of politics and media.
[00:01:32]  Of course, I'm referring to the presidential town hall.
[00:01:35]  I don't know exactly how they presented it, but it was, they had an event with, I think, all of the Republican candidates sans Donald Trump.
[00:01:47]  So Trump was not there, which was kind of interesting.
[00:01:49]  I'm not exactly sure why that is, that he didn't come.
[00:01:52]  I think if I had to guess, Donald Trump, somewhat understandably, is trying to not legitimize the other candidates in the race.
[00:02:03]  I think he's like, look, I'm the former president.
[00:02:06]  What he's telling his people is that he was never really, he never really lost an election.
[00:02:11]  So he's the obvious candidate for this next year.
[00:02:14]  But anyway, all of the other candidates were there.
[00:02:17]  What was so interesting about this was that number one, it was hosted by the Blaze.
[00:02:24]  And number two, and the biggest one, that Tucker Carlson interviewed all of the presidential candidates, which is really incredible.
[00:02:32]  I don't know if people can appreciate, or I hope people can appreciate what a big deal this is.
[00:02:38]  The way that the establishment controlled the narrative of political discourse for my entire life has been that they owned the corporate press.
[00:02:51]  And then the corporate press decides what the range of allowable opinion is.
[00:02:56]  This has always been the way the game is played.
[00:02:58]  You have a range of allowable opinion.
[00:03:00]  And if you're outside of that range, you're simply, you're a kook, just by definition.
[00:03:06]  And that had nothing to do with whether the American people actually agreed with that.
[00:03:13]  They set their own range, and then that was it.
[00:03:15]  And if you got kicked out, you were out.
[00:03:17]  No one could really hear from you.
[00:03:18]  There was no social media.
[00:03:19]  There was no alternative media.
[00:03:22]  I mean, there were, you know, there was alternative media, but literally what the alternative media would be would be like subscription magazines, pamphlets, things like that.
[00:03:33]  That was all that we had.
[00:03:36]  And you would see, as Noam Chomsky described it, there would be like a ferocious debate between a very narrow, like within a very narrow window.
[00:03:48]  So you would see, for instance, Democrats and Republicans, even in my lifetime, not that long ago, to some of you younger people might seem like a long time ago, but 10, 15 years ago, you would see very heated debates about whether we should send surge 40,000 more troops to Iraq or 20,000 more troops.
[00:04:13]  Like that would be where the debate was allowed to be had.
[00:04:16]  Like, obviously, we're in the war.
[00:04:17]  Obviously, we're sending more troops in, but what should the number be?
[00:04:20]  And then, oh, go at it.
[00:04:22]  And you're allowed to really argue about that.
[00:04:24]  But you would never see the debate being whether, you know, America should intervene in the Middle East at all.
[00:04:30]  Like that, that was just like a kooky outside of the allowable opinion view.
[00:04:35]  However, if presented correctly to the American people, a lot of people might actually like that.
[00:04:40]  A lot of people might actually understand that perspective.
[00:04:42]  Anyway, the point is that when someone goes outside of that allowable opinion and they get, let's say, fired from their news network, that's it.
[00:04:55]  That person's gone now and they can no longer talk to their audience.
[00:04:59]  That's the way it always was, the way it always was.
[00:05:03]  And this was true in major publications as well.
[00:05:05]  This is like what Bill Buckley was famous for, who was really kind of like the godfather of the modern, you know, the Republican conservative movement, say kind of from post-World War up to like the George W. Bush years, is that he was known for running all of the people out who didn't fall into the, you know, the within the mainstream orthodoxy.
[00:05:30]  So he was like, he got like the Rothbardians and the John Birchers and all the kind of paleo-conservative types.
[00:05:36]  He got them all out of the conservative movement.
[00:05:40]  And it was like, no, the conservative movement is going to be the neocons.
[00:05:43]  That's who's going to run the show.
[00:05:45]  And what's happened just now, obviously slowly over the last, say, decade, this whole system has really changed.
[00:05:53]  We don't just have the big corporate news channels anymore.
[00:05:57]  It's not just what's on ABC or CBS.
[00:05:59]  Now we have social media.
[00:06:01]  Now we have all of these independent journalists.
[00:06:03]  This has really been accelerated since Elon Musk bought Twitter.
[00:06:08]  You see some of these Twitter spaces.
[00:06:10]  I've been, you know, I've really enjoyed participating in a few of them.
[00:06:13]  You see these Twitter spaces that are blowing up, getting hundreds of thousands of views, millions of views in some cases, with all of these alternative reporters just doing really good journalism.
[00:06:23]  It's pretty incredible to watch.
[00:06:25]  And of course, while this is happening, at the height of all of this, the number one guy in the number one cable news show in America, Tucker Carlson, gets fired.
[00:06:36]  He then goes to Twitter.
[00:06:39]  I think the reason he's allowed to do it too, which is very interesting.
[00:06:42]  And I don't know exactly what the legal defense here is.
[00:06:45]  I know that Fox News, their lawyers sent Tucker a cease and desist to stop doing his show on Twitter because I believe he's still limited by his contract with Fox News.
[00:06:57]  So oftentimes these huge contracts will have a thing where even if they fire you, they have to continue paying you your salary, but you're also under exclusivity to them.
[00:07:07]  So he can't go, at least this is my understanding of it.
[00:07:10]  I don't know how else his lawyers would send him a cease and desist.
[00:07:13]  He can't go to CNN and do a show there.
[00:07:16]  Fox News still owns him in that sense.
[00:07:19]  So not that CNN was ever going to hire Tucker Carlson, but just in theory.
[00:07:24]  However, now he goes to Twitter and he's doing a show that has no advertising on it.
[00:07:31]  Tucker Carlson, I don't believe, is making a dime off of his Twitter show.
[00:07:36]  And so I don't think legally speaking, they can shut him down because now it just kind of falls under your free speech.
[00:07:41]  Like he's just talking.
[00:07:43]  He's just putting a camera on himself and talking.
[00:07:44]  So what are you going to do?
[00:07:46]  And the craziest thing about this is he goes on Twitter.
[00:07:49]  He had the biggest show in cable news.
[00:07:51]  And now his show is orders of magnitude bigger than it was on cable news on Twitter.
[00:07:57]  Substantially more people are watching Tucker Carlson sit down with Andrew Tate like he did the other day or talk about the war in Ukraine than we're watching him on Fox News.
[00:08:07]  I would also venture to assume it's a younger audience.
[00:08:09]  I don't know, but just I think it's an educated guess to assume that the Fox News audience is much older than the Twitter audience.
[00:08:16]  But this is incredible.
[00:08:18]  And this has nothing to do with your political views.
[00:08:22]  I mean, I suppose if you really support the status quo in the establishment, this would be bad to you.
[00:08:27]  But even if that's the case, if you like the establishment, if you're a left-winger, a right-winger, a liberal, conservative, anything in between, this is like a monumental development.
[00:08:37]  The idea that the guy with the number one cable news show gets fired used to mean you're relegated to obscurity.
[00:08:45]  Now it means you're bigger than you ever were before.
[00:08:49]  Pretty incredible.
[00:08:50]  And in a pretty short period of time, like I remember very vividly, the number one guy in cable news getting fired from Fox News.
[00:09:00]  For you young people, you may not know him.
[00:09:02]  His name was Bill O'Reilly.
[00:09:04]  He was the biggest thing in Fox News.
[00:09:06]  He got fired.
[00:09:07]  Now he got relegated from being like the A-list of news to being like some random, I don't know, D-lister at best.
[00:09:17]  He's, I mean, he's got a show online and he talks to a few people, but like he's not, he's not in the national conversation.
[00:09:24]  He's not moving the national conversation in the way he used to be.
[00:09:28]  Bill O'Reilly was the guy who Tucker took over for.
[00:09:32]  Tucker was the 9 p.m. hour when Bill O'Reilly was the 8 p.m. hour.
[00:09:35]  Like this was his predecessor.
[00:09:38]  And then he, so it's just like, it's a pretty short period of time that this all happened in five or six years we're talking about.
[00:09:45]  I don't remember exactly what year Bill O'Reilly got counted.
[00:09:49]  So it's pretty, so that's just incredible.
[00:09:51]  And now to see the Blaze, it's not CNN who's running this, this town hall with all the presidential candidates.
[00:09:59]  It's not Fox News.
[00:10:01]  It's the Blaze.
[00:10:02]  It's an independent internet news outlet.
[00:10:06]  And they tap Tucker Carlson because he's the biggest, most influential guy in the right wing in America.
[00:10:12]  And so now Tucker Carlson gets to grill these candidates and he grills them in a much different way than anyone in the corporate media world would.
[00:10:22]  You know, like it's, it's from such a different perspective.
[00:10:25]  And it's so beneficial to have this.
[00:10:27]  It's incredible how this guy, the number one guy, Tucker Carlson, his influence has grown so much since losing that show.
[00:10:34]  Not only did it not hurt him, it tremendously helped him.
[00:10:39]  And Tucker Carlson just goes through.
[00:10:43]  And I mean, it was quite a spectacle.
[00:10:46]  He just ruined the careers of several Republican candidates for president, just was tearing through them like a hot knife through butter.
[00:10:56]  It was like if you were just an establishment puppet, you were done after last night.
[00:11:03]  And the only people who like remain standing after this are the ones who at least are saying they're not, at least are saying the right things.
[00:11:10]  So there's a bunch of video clips that I want to go through today that were all just, I thought, very interesting.
[00:11:17]  Let's start.
[00:11:18]  The first one is the one that's gone most viral.
[00:11:20]  I also will say has been somewhat unfairly interpreted, but it still was just devastating, just devastating for the former vice president, Mike Pence.
[00:11:30]  Look, this is a guy who was the former vice president who's running for president.
[00:11:33]  He certainly isn't doing very well in the polls.
[00:11:36]  I don't think he ever had a real chance, but the guy was the vice president.
[00:11:39]  He's not like a joke candidate.
[00:11:41]  This isn't some random, you know, person just running.
[00:11:45]  This is a former vice president.
[00:11:47]  And he was the vice president with the most popular president in the Republican field.
[00:11:53]  So anyway, let's play the clip and then we can discuss.
[00:11:57]  I mean, he signaled incredible weakness, especially after that disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan.
[00:12:02]  And all along the way, the Biden administration has been slow in providing military support.
[00:12:08]  Make no mistake about this.
[00:12:09]  We promised them 33 Abrams tanks in January.
[00:12:12]  I heard again two weeks ago in Ukraine.
[00:12:14]  They still don't have them.
[00:12:15]  We've been telling them we'll train their F-16 pilots, but now they're saying maybe January, we'll let somebody transfer some jets.
[00:12:22]  I'm sorry, Mr. Vice President, have you, I know you're running for president.
[00:12:27]  You are distressed that the Ukrainians don't have enough American tanks.
[00:12:32]  Every city in the United States has become much worse over the past three years.
[00:12:37]  Drive around.
[00:12:38]  There's not one city that's gotten better in the United States.
[00:12:41]  And it's visible.
[00:12:42]  Our economy has degraded.
[00:12:44]  The suicide rate has jumped.
[00:12:46]  Public filth and disorder and crime have exponentially increased.
[00:12:52]  And yet your concern is that the Ukrainians, a country most people can't find on a map, who've received tens of billions of U.S. tax dollars, don't have enough tanks.
[00:13:01]  I think it's a fair question to ask.
[00:13:03]  Like, where's the concern for the United States in that?
[00:13:06]  It's not my concern.
[00:13:08]  Tucker, I've heard that routine from you before, but that's not my concern.
[00:13:13]  I'm running for president of the United States because I think this country's in a lot of trouble.
[00:13:17]  I think Joe Biden has weakened America at home and abroad.
[00:13:21]  And as president of the United States, we're going to restore law and order in our cities.
[00:13:24]  All right.
[00:13:25]  You can, you can stop it there.
[00:13:26]  What a lot of people are jumping on here, and I do think unfairly is that when he said that's not my concern and trying to make it seem like he was saying that, oh, he's not concerned with the cities in America falling apart.
[00:13:41]  I don't think that's what he was saying.
[00:13:43]  I think he was saying that it's not my concern that Ukraine hasn't gotten enough, whatever.
[00:13:46]  So there's just for the record, people, there's no need to make this worse than what it already is.
[00:13:52]  We can just go with what it is.
[00:13:54]  Here's what's so amazing about this moment.
[00:13:57]  It's a perfect example of what I was saying about the range of allowable opinion, what the great Tom Woods refers to as the three by five index card of allowable opinion, where there's this much bigger picture, but you're only allowed to talk about this.
[00:14:11]  What Mike Pence is doing here is typically how politics worked.
[00:14:16]  This is what they do.
[00:14:18]  This is how the establishment perpetuates its agenda.
[00:14:24]  Joe Biden comes in.
[00:14:25]  His policy is we have a blank check to Ukraine.
[00:14:31]  We will fund them till the end of time, until they win.
[00:14:34]  No matter what, they get as much money and weapons as we can possibly pour in.
[00:14:39]  He's already pledged something close to $200 billion.
[00:14:45]  Just insane.
[00:14:47]  That's the choice that we are all in on a proxy war of choice on Russia's border.
[00:14:54]  Okay.
[00:14:55]  And then Mr. Republican here comes in and says, those weapons aren't getting in fast enough.
[00:15:02]  And then that is the debate.
[00:15:05]  This is the way the system works.
[00:15:07]  Then that's what we debate.
[00:15:09]  We can have, and there's democracy for you.
[00:15:11]  You got a choice between the guy who pledges all the support till the end of the world, perhaps quite literally, and then you get a Republican who goes, you're not pledging enough support quickly enough.
[00:15:21]  And they can have that debate.
[00:15:23]  That's what a typical presidential debate would look like with some hack moderator like Chris Wallace sitting there and going, well, fact check, Mr. President, those javelin missiles didn't get in quick enough.
[00:15:34]  And then, you know, Biden goes, no, they did get in quick enough.
[00:15:37]  And then the whole debate is over whether or not we're doing a good enough job supporting Ukraine.
[00:15:41]  And in one second, Tucker Carlson just blows this entire thing up and says, instead of this, this allowable three by five card, you know, the index card, I'm stretching the overton window all the way to over here.
[00:15:54]  And we're going to be talking about whether we should be involved in this at all.
[00:15:59]  Why the hell are we even involved in this when our country is collapsing?
[00:16:04]  That it really is just so obvious.
[00:16:06]  Tucker's point is so obvious.
[00:16:08]  Like, dude, you can't walk through a city. in this country without there being just like human feces on the ground.
[00:16:16]  We have homeless encampments in almost every major city of this country.
[00:16:21]  Our schools are propagandizing our children.
[00:16:24]  We're in 30 plus trillion dollars of debt.
[00:16:28]  We're pitted against each other in this crazy culture war.
[00:16:31]  Our currency is being devalued.
[00:16:34]  The amount of problems that we have in this country that we're sitting there going, we need to protect the borders of Ukraine.
[00:16:41]  We need to, by the way, Ukraine, who's in a war with the holder of the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons in the history of the world.
[00:16:49]  Like, wait, what?
[00:16:50]  Why do we need to be involved in this?

=== Capita CPA and National Problems (03:09) ===

[00:16:52]  Why?
[00:16:52]  When, you know, you can't, I can't take my family to go see San Francisco anymore because I would never put my wife and little girl and baby boy in a situation like that.
[00:17:04]  That's modern America.
[00:17:06]  That I can't take my family to one of like the coolest, most beautiful cities in the country without being concerned.
[00:17:12]  That's America.
[00:17:13]  And yet somehow it is a priority of ours that the Donbass, the Donbass region not be ruled by Moscow, but instead be ruled by Kiev.
[00:17:25]  What?
[00:17:26]  That makes no sense.
[00:17:27]  Why are we only allowed to have the debate over here in this little area?
[00:17:30]  Let's ask that question.
[00:17:32]  And it's just like, Tucker Carlson does a masterful job of this.
[00:17:35]  And you can just, it just exposes Mike Pence.
[00:17:38]  Then after that, he can say, oh, no, I'm running for president because we're weak and I want to make us strong.
[00:17:43]  But it's like, no, dude, your concern here is think about how insane this is, that your concern is that we haven't given Ukraine enough.
[00:17:52]  That's your concern.
[00:17:54]  To put things in perspective here, we have given Ukraine more than Russia's entire military budget.
[00:18:02]  Think about that.
[00:18:03]  We've given them more than their enemies' entire military budget.
[00:18:09]  But Mike Pence is very concerned that they haven't gotten there fast enough.
[00:18:13]  Man, these people just cannot, they cannot not jump on any excuse for war.
[00:18:19]  It's pretty unbelievable that Mike Pence is just getting destroyed on the internet over this.
[00:18:25]  It's beautiful to watch.
[00:18:27]  Just incredible.
[00:18:28]  All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Capita CPA.
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=== Tyrannical Laws and Business Survival (15:27) ===

[00:20:01]  It's everything that we believe in, that businesses shouldn't have been, you know, shut down by these tyrannical laws.
[00:20:08]  And also tax credits, less taxes going to the government is always better.
[00:20:11]  Capitacpa.com slash P-O-T-P.
[00:20:15]  That's where you got to go.
[00:20:16]  Or you can click the link in the episode description one more time, capitac P-O-T-P.
[00:20:24]  All right, let's get back into the show.
[00:20:25]  Okay, next moment that we're going to go to.
[00:20:28]  Another hat candidate was with Tim Scott.
[00:20:31]  So let's check out that video.
[00:20:33]  You know, a nation that great has to beware of threats to its very existence.
[00:20:38]  Absolutely.
[00:20:39]  Yesterday, Biden mobilized reserves.
[00:20:43]  What do you think of that?
[00:20:45]  And are you concerned that we're moving, as we seem to be, toward war with Russia?
[00:20:50]  Yeah, so I would say that without any question, we should never allow American soldiers to be engulfed into the challenge between Ukraine and Russia.
[00:21:04]  Our boots on the ground should not be there.
[00:21:06]  The ability.
[00:21:13]  My mama wanted to preach her, so I'm going to stand up and do it.
[00:21:16]  Stop that way.
[00:21:16]  Preach!
[00:21:17]  Hallelujah.
[00:21:19]  So literally, so I think one of the failures of President Biden has been his inability to articulate America's national vital interest in the conflict or the genocide in Ukraine.
[00:21:33]  America's national vital interest is degrading the Russian military.
[00:21:37]  When we degrade the Russian military, we make sure that our home front is safer and that our NATO ally partners that would cause us to send soldiers over is safe.
[00:21:49]  When we have the land contiguous with Ukraine safe, we keep our American soldiers at home.
[00:21:55]  And our primary objective should only be to engage when America's vital national interests are being engaged.
[00:22:03]  And unfortunately, President Biden has no ability to understand and appreciate what that looks like.
[00:22:10]  This is the first part.
[00:22:10]  We're going to play the second part of this clip.
[00:22:12]  But just to be clear here, this is such a BS cop-out answer.
[00:22:19]  And look, it's nice for you to sit there and say, oh, well, you know, we have to make sure that it's not U.S. troops.
[00:22:26]  You know, we're just going to prop up Ukraine.
[00:22:28]  We're just going to send them weapons and money.
[00:22:29]  It's like, oh, okay.
[00:22:31]  That's easy to say until something happens where you get drawn into it.
[00:22:35]  And by the way, we've already figured out from leaks, not from them telling us that there are NATO troops that are already in Ukraine.
[00:22:44]  They may not be on the front lines doing the fighting, but they're there.
[00:22:47]  And this really starts to muddy the waters.
[00:22:49]  You know, you can just imagine so many different scenarios where then maybe if you keep flirting with this war, there's no choice but to get U.S. troops in there.
[00:22:58]  I mean, for example, let's say, like, so then what do you do when the Ukrainian army is exhausted?
[00:23:05]  Then what do you do when you've already pledged this support and that you won't let Ukraine lose?
[00:23:12]  Or, you know, on the other hand, what if Russia starts to lose?
[00:23:16]  What if Russia starts to lose and Vladimir Putin thinks he's going to die?
[00:23:20]  What does he do then?
[00:23:21]  Who knows?
[00:23:22]  When he thinks America, when he knows Americans are the ones who are giving the weapons that are being shot at his military, what does he do then?
[00:23:31]  I don't know.
[00:23:31]  Lots of things or possibilities.
[00:23:33]  And it's very easy to like kind of say like, well, we're going to dip our toe into this war, but we're not going to jump into it.
[00:23:39]  It's like, okay, that's how a lot of wars start.
[00:23:42]  And then there's factors that you can't account for.
[00:23:45]  So this is all just nonsense.
[00:23:46]  Well, Biden hasn't been able to articulate a clear vision of what the mission is here.
[00:23:51]  It's like, okay, so you do it for me right now.
[00:23:53]  All right, let's play the second half of this.
[00:23:56]  So you're saying that it's in our national interest, vital national interests, to degrade the Russian military.
[00:24:01]  In other words, to fight Russia with other people's soldiers.
[00:24:05]  I would say it this way.
[00:24:06]  If you think about the world order that we established after World War II, you think about a rules-based system.
[00:24:14]  Where does the rules-based system come from?
[00:24:16]  It comes from this nation, our Judeo-Christian foundation, that says that there are rules of the road, that there is something called absolute truth.
[00:24:25]  And we established that.
[00:24:27]  As a part of that absolute truth, what we're trying to do is make sure that our home front remains safe.
[00:24:33]  Keeping our home front safe means that evaluating the actual threats to our country, the most immediate military threat that could happen is Russia.
[00:24:43]  Why is a good question?
[00:24:45]  You look at their sixth generation jets.
[00:24:48]  You look at their hypersonic weapons.
[00:24:49]  You look at their nuclear arsenal.
[00:24:51]  Everything that we do that degrades the Russian military is good for America.
[00:24:55]  You look at the long-term threat to our nation.
[00:24:58]  It's China.
[00:24:58]  Their existential threat that we face long term becomes China.
[00:25:02]  You look at this rising axis of evil that we're seeing being formed.
[00:25:06]  It's Russia, China, and Iran.
[00:25:09]  Breaking that to pieces before it gets started, I think, is in our vital interest.
[00:25:14]  All right.
[00:25:15]  So I don't even know where to start there.
[00:25:17]  Here's Tim Scott's deep, deep thoughts.
[00:25:20]  You know, the post-World War II rules-based order comes from what, what did he say?
[00:25:26]  Our Judeo-Christian values or something.
[00:25:29]  It's Jesus, basically.
[00:25:30]  The American empire, you understand, is that's just Jesus.
[00:25:34]  U.S. dominance over the world is just, that's just what Jesus wants.
[00:25:37]  That's always what he wrote about.
[00:25:38]  It's just our Christianity and our goodness and how we follow rules.
[00:25:43]  In reality, what they call the rules-based international order, which basically means American empire, American hegemony, America running the show, what it comes from objectively is us dropping two nuclear bombs on Japan and then being like, we are the only country in the world that has nukes and we're ready to use them.
[00:26:03]  Now we run the show.
[00:26:05]  And this rules-based order doesn't really apply to us.
[00:26:10]  Like we, there are rules.
[00:26:13]  We don't follow them.
[00:26:14]  I mean, there's tons of examples of that.
[00:26:17]  Every single war of the last 20 years, America has violated the rules and the rules-based order.
[00:26:22]  Back in the 90s, Bill Clinton wanted to go to war in Serbia to break off Kosovo, and he couldn't get a UN resolution for it, which is what the rules of the rules-based order say you need because Russia was on the Security Council and they could veto it.
[00:26:37]  And so they couldn't get it.
[00:26:39]  So he just did it anyway.
[00:26:41]  He just used NATO and did it anyway.
[00:26:43]  That's the rules-based order.
[00:26:46]  We don't follow any rules.
[00:26:47]  And it damn sure doesn't come from Jesus.
[00:26:49]  And, you know, the Constitution, okay, our supposed rules, the Constitution is very clear that only Congress can declare wars.
[00:26:59]  Do you want to fight a war?
[00:27:00]  Congress has to declare it.
[00:27:01]  Okay.
[00:27:03]  Of the wars over the last 20 years, of the war in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, the war in Libya, the war in Syria, the war in Yemen, the war in Somalia.
[00:27:11]  You know how many of them have had a declaration of war for Congress?
[00:27:15]  You know how many times Congress has declared war for those wars?
[00:27:18]  Zero.
[00:27:19]  Not a single one of them.
[00:27:20]  Not a single one of them.
[00:27:22]  last time Congress declared war was World War II.
[00:27:26]  You might be thinking, haven't there been some wars since World War II?
[00:27:29]  I think there was a war in Korea.
[00:27:30]  I think there was a war in Vietnam.
[00:27:31]  I think there was a war in Iraq.
[00:27:33]  Yep, none of them have been declared.
[00:27:35]  Don't give me this garbage about the international rules-based order.
[00:27:39]  And to just think about, you know, how stupid, how shallow and just arrogant this view is that he just goes, well, you know, we're better off if Russia's degraded.
[00:27:54]  That's in America's interest if Russia is degraded.
[00:28:02]  Maybe, quite possibly not.
[00:28:05]  And it's like, this is what they always say.
[00:28:06]  Oh, it's in America's interest if Saddam Hussein is gone.
[00:28:09]  It's in America's interest if Muammar Gaddafi is gone.
[00:28:13]  Well, no, it's not necessarily.
[00:28:15]  And in fact, it might be way worse.
[00:28:17]  You know, the idea that you're just going to degrade this country.
[00:28:20]  I mean, that's what they said.
[00:28:21]  It would be in our best interest if Muammar Gaddafi was gone.
[00:28:25]  But then it turned out Libya turned into a failed state and there's open air slave trade markets now.
[00:28:30]  Oh, and there was a huge migrant crisis from Northern Africa into Europe now that he's gone.
[00:28:37]  And now that leads to all of these like reactionary political movements in Europe rising up.
[00:28:41]  And this, whoa, what is it so clear that this is in our interest?
[00:28:44]  Oh, well, it's actually hard to predict five moves ahead what's going to happen when you just start treating the world like it's a chessboard that you're just moving pieces around on.
[00:28:53]  And with Russia, it's so much more dangerous because you're talking about, again, the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons in the history of the world.
[00:29:01]  And so is it so obvious?
[00:29:04]  What like, is it so obvious that let's say if Russia's degraded, let's say that leads to the collapse of their government.
[00:29:10]  So Putin is overthrown.
[00:29:12]  Is it so clear that what will rise up after Vladimir Putin is thrown is what?
[00:29:17]  Some type of dove?
[00:29:19]  Some like Thomas Jefferson will take the reins and start instituting constitutional republicanism or something like that?
[00:29:26]  What's more likely?
[00:29:28]  That or an even more aggressive right-wing authoritarian type?
[00:29:34]  You tell me what you think is more likely.
[00:29:36]  And this was the same idiocy in Iraq.
[00:29:39]  The idea that if we overthrew Saddam Hussein, what was going to rise up in that was like some budding democracy.
[00:29:44]  Like, why exactly?
[00:29:46]  Why exactly does that seem likely?
[00:29:48]  Look around at who the groups are.
[00:29:51]  Who's likely to rise up in Iraq if Saddam Hussein gets overthrown?
[00:29:54]  Well, it's quite possibly going to be like a radical Islamist group, you know, because that seems to be what there's a lot of in that country.
[00:30:01]  You know, look, go, go look at some of the other powerful factions in Russia right now, the ones they just had a big dispute with.
[00:30:07]  They're not nice guys.
[00:30:09]  It's not so clear things will be better.
[00:30:11]  And in fact, it's quite possible things would be much, much worse than for America too.
[00:30:15]  And then this whole thing about the new axis of evil, Iran, Russia, and China.
[00:30:22]  I mean, I'm old enough to remember when it was Iraq, Iran, and North Korea.
[00:30:27]  You know, that was what they were saying there.
[00:30:28]  I guess North Korea, the heat's kind of been off North Korea for a while.
[00:30:32]  I guess they gave up on that project.
[00:30:34]  But this is all just ridiculous.
[00:30:36]  This is all just like nonsense fear-mongering.
[00:30:39]  That is not the threat to America.
[00:30:42]  That is not like that access is not why I was locked in my home.
[00:30:48]  That is not why I wasn't allowed to go to a restaurant because I didn't get a bullshit jab.
[00:30:54]  That is not why our culture is being degraded.
[00:30:57]  That's not why I can't go to San Francisco.
[00:30:58]  That's not what, like, none of that.
[00:31:00]  None of that is because of Iran.
[00:31:03]  Okay.
[00:31:03]  It's because of our corrupt government.
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[00:32:05]  All right, let's get back into the show.
[00:32:07]  All right.
[00:32:08]  So what do we got next here?
[00:32:09]  Who is the next one who we took out?
[00:32:11]  Oh, yes, Nikki Haley.
[00:32:13]  Let's check out Nikki Haley getting shredded by Tucker Carlson.
[00:32:17]  United Nations.
[00:32:18]  There were two things our enemies never wanted us to have.
[00:32:21]  They never wanted us to be energy independent and they never wanted us to have a strong military.
[00:32:26]  We have to always have both of those things.
[00:32:29]  Well, speaking of energy in the military, who blew up the Nord Stream pipeline?
[00:32:37]  I mean, I don't know.
[00:32:39]  I'm not claiming you did it.
[00:32:41]  I'm just kidding.
[00:32:43]  No, I don't know.
[00:32:44]  I mean, that's what I'm saying.
[00:32:45]  Do you know who did it?
[00:32:47]  Seems pretty obvious.
[00:32:48]  It was backed by the Biden administration, I would say.
[00:32:50]  I mean, I think all the evidence suggests that, but I wasn't there.
[00:32:54]  But I just, I mean, that seems like a huge step.
[00:32:58]  This is the largest industrial sabotage in history, sent more carbon in the atmosphere than any act ever.
[00:33:05]  And like, there's weirdly no curiosity about who did it.
[00:33:08]  And I think that's strange.
[00:33:10]  What do you think?
[00:33:10]  There's a lot of things that are strange with the Biden administration.
[00:33:13]  This is our first one.
[00:33:17]  I guess what I'm really saying is if you were running against the Biden administration to do something like that and shaft our closest allies in the world, which would be Western Europe, and deprive them of the energy they need to run their manufacturing sector and destroy their economy, which it is in the process of doing, like that's a major sin to have done something like that.
[00:33:37]  You just betrayed our allies and no one on the right is accusing the Bidens of what they clearly did.
[00:33:42]  So I don't know why.
[00:33:43]  Well, no one is accusing the, well, the Bidens aren't being accountable on anything.
[00:33:47]  I mean, you look at the cocaine that was just found in there.
[00:33:50]  That's a whole nother issue.
[00:33:52]  Whose was that?
[00:33:52]  So let me tell you this.
[00:33:54]  No.
[00:33:55]  Go ahead.
[00:33:55]  No one's watching.
[00:33:56]  Just what do you think?
[00:33:57]  No, it's this is really important because I have been into that area of the White House.
[00:34:04]  This is not as much as they want to say.
[00:34:08]  And don't forget the pot that they just said was found there last year, right?
[00:34:12]  So everything that they're saying is that hundreds of people went through this area.
[00:34:18]  No, I've been to that area.
[00:34:21]  The rest of her point is just about how like, oh, you can't get in there with cocaine.
[00:34:24]  All right, look, Tucker Carlson, he let her off the hook a little bit there.
[00:34:28]  But it's just phenomenal to watch him, to watch him go at these people because it's like, you can just see how they're all, they're like prepared for this political game that he's just not playing.
[00:34:39]  You know, she's just saying her thing.
[00:34:41]  She's like, oh, you know, they want, we have to have a strong military and be energy independent.
[00:34:46]  And that's what, blah, And he's like, yeah, who blew who blew up the Nord Stream pipeline?
[00:34:50]  Yeah, okay.
[00:34:51]  And you can just see how uncomfortable she is and how much she doesn't want to answer the question.
[00:34:55]  And he's just like, yeah, no, it was clearly backed by the Biden administration, right?
[00:34:58]  So what is this?
[00:34:59]  And Tucker is bringing up, first of all, an act of war against a NATO ally.
[00:35:10]  One of, if not the biggest um environmental terrorist acts in in human history.
[00:35:18]  Um, and Nikki Haley is like, oh okay, let's talk about a bag of cocaine found at the White House.
[00:35:25]  That's her critique.
[00:35:25]  What a fundamentally unserious person.

=== Nikki Haley and Government Hypocrisy (10:26) ===

[00:35:28]  That's what.
[00:35:29]  That's what she'd like to talk to now.
[00:35:30]  Don't get me wrong, there is something I will say.
[00:35:33]  There's a fair point to hitting the government for their just like demonically evil levels of hypocrisy.
[00:35:40]  Where they will literally they, they will throw people in jail for decades for having or distributing this substance.
[00:35:48]  They will send a swat team in to kick your door down and shoot your dog if you're suspected of having this substance in your home.
[00:35:57]  And yet when it's found in the White House, it's just like, yeah, we investigated, we can't figure it out, you know whatever?
[00:36:01]  No big deal.
[00:36:01]  So there's some hypocrisy there.
[00:36:03]  But I mean, we're talking about international terrorism and you're transitioning to like, well, what about this bag of cocaine?
[00:36:11]  Just absolutely ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous how the cheerleaders of this war in Ukraine can like how unserious they are and how dishonest they are and they have no interest in this.
[00:36:23]  And Tucker makes the best point there.
[00:36:25]  You're like, and it really kind of exposes the whole game where Tucker's like, well okay, so if the Biden administration did this and you're running against that administration, why wouldn't you play that card?
[00:36:40]  Why not point out, hey, it seems like you guys either committed, or certainly at least backed, a major act of terrorism against one of our closest allies.
[00:36:55]  That's a pretty good thing to run against him on.
[00:36:59]  And yet they have no interest in doing that.
[00:37:01]  And doesn't that kind of expose the whole thing like that's the whole game.
[00:37:04]  Right there is that they're not actually running against the Biden administration.
[00:37:08]  That's not how this political system works.
[00:37:10]  Democrats aren't really running against Republicans.
[00:37:13]  Republicans aren't really running against Democrats.
[00:37:15]  They're all participating in this show to preserve the status quo.
[00:37:22]  That's how it really works.
[00:37:24]  It's all kind of this game where the elite get what they want, no matter who wins, and so no, it doesn't actually like.
[00:37:32]  If that's the case, then yet no, you wouldn't really want to run against the the Biden administration on that, because then you're kind of exposing, like how truly sick and evil the forces are running our government.
[00:37:45]  If, if you're in the game of beating that that side, then you probably would want to expose that.
[00:37:50]  But if you're in the game of act actually protecting those forces, then you'd want to dance around it and talk about a bag of cocaine.
[00:37:56]  That's what you'd prefer to do.
[00:37:58]  Um, all right, let's move on to the next one.
[00:38:01]  What do we got up next?
[00:38:02]  I guess it's uh uh, Ron De Santis, um Desantis.
[00:38:06]  Uh, he did okay in his uh his, his interview here.
[00:38:10]  But let's uh let's, play this clip, crane.
[00:38:12]  So in uh, the spring, you described the war in Ukraine as a quote territorial dispute.
[00:38:18]  You issued a statement saying it was a territorial dispute that was not central to America's national interest.
[00:38:22]  There's an outcry over this.
[00:38:24]  And then pretty soon after you describe, you seem to interview and describe Putin as a war criminal and say that it was central to America's foreign policy.
[00:38:31]  Why did you change and where are you now?
[00:38:33]  So the last part I did not say, I served in Iraq during the Iraq campaign in Fallujah.
[00:38:40]  I was attached to U.S. Navy SEAL Team 1.
[00:38:43]  And remember, it started on what, WMD.
[00:38:45]  Then we had al-Qaeda in Iraq.
[00:38:47]  Then it was created democracy.
[00:38:48]  Then it was that.
[00:38:49]  And so the lesson that I learned from there is if you're going to commit to do military, whether it's aid or whether it's troops, you need to have a concrete idea of what you're trying to achieve.
[00:39:02]  And so from the time I got out of the sandbox and landed back in the United States 15 years ago until the present, I've always felt that.
[00:39:10]  And so my critique of the DC foreign policy elite is that they are doing a blank check policy without telling us when we will have achieved our objective.
[00:39:21]  And I believe that today and I believe that then.
[00:39:24]  Now, because you dissent from the DC foreign policy elite, they then try to smear you and say, oh, you must be for Putin.
[00:39:31]  I've always thought Putin's a bad guy.
[00:39:33]  I still think he's a bad guy, but that's a separate question for a leader who's got to look at the world in very clear-eyed glasses.
[00:39:42]  You know that it's not all peaches and cream out there.
[00:39:44]  And you have to make a judgment about what's in America's national interest.
[00:39:48]  And so that's the position that I believe.
[00:39:51]  And I also believe that I wish the DC elites cared as much about our border as they do about the Ukraine-Russia border because there's people pouring into this country.
[00:40:02]  We have people dying from fentanyl overdose.
[00:40:05]  The cartels are running the show.
[00:40:07]  And what I've said is this is something on day one, declare a national emergency, mobilize all resources, including the military.
[00:40:15]  Stop the invasion.
[00:40:17]  Yes, build the wall.
[00:40:18]  But most importantly, authorize the border patrol.
[00:40:22]  Authorize our military.
[00:40:23]  So look, DeSantis survived that question.
[00:40:28]  He survived.
[00:40:29]  And I think for most of these candidates going in here, it was just like, it's like, get through this thing.
[00:40:34]  It's like you're going out and you're fighting Mike Tyson.
[00:40:36]  You're like, don't get knocked out.
[00:40:37]  That's the goal of this.
[00:40:39]  And some of the other ones did take knockouts.
[00:40:41]  So DeSantis survived.
[00:40:43]  He did okay.
[00:40:44]  Later on, he had portions.
[00:40:45]  He came out very strong against a central bank digital currency.
[00:40:49]  Had some good positions.
[00:40:51]  I don't know how much we can trust him.
[00:40:53]  I mean, I operate under the assumption that you can't trust anybody who's running for office.
[00:40:59]  But this answer on Ukraine is good enough to survive, but it's just not good enough.
[00:41:06]  It's just not good enough.
[00:41:08]  I'm sorry.
[00:41:09]  Like there's other candidates who are just doing a much better job.
[00:41:12]  Donald Trump hits it out of the park when he's asked about Ukraine.
[00:41:15]  Vivek Ram Swami, who did fantastic in his interview with Tucker, hit it out of the park when he's asked about Ukraine.
[00:41:23]  DeSantis does not.
[00:41:25]  DeSantis manages to not strike out, I suppose.
[00:41:27]  He did a decent job of trying to transition this back to like, oh, we need to take care of our problems here at home.
[00:41:32]  Okay.
[00:41:33]  Kind of capture some of that America first energy.
[00:41:37]  The problem is just when you, when, when your criticism of the wars are, so when he talks about the war in Iraq and he's talking about how, well, the mission kept changing.
[00:41:51]  And so that's the problem with the war in Iraq is that the mission kept changing.
[00:41:55]  And so we have to have a clear, concrete mission when we go to war.
[00:41:59]  I mean, it's true that the mission changed.
[00:42:02]  He didn't exactly go through all of them, but it started actually with Saddam Hussein was in on 9-11.
[00:42:09]  That was how they first started it, is that Saddam Hussein was working with Osama bin Laden.
[00:42:13]  They did 9-11 together.
[00:42:14]  Oh, and he's got weapons of mass destruction.
[00:42:16]  And so now because he was already working with these terrorists, he could hand off one of these weapons of mass destruction to the terrorists.
[00:42:23]  And then that instead of 9-11, we got nukes going off in America.
[00:42:26]  Can't have that.
[00:42:27]  We got to go overthrow him to take away these weapons.
[00:42:31]  When it became very clear that that was a lie, then it was like, well, we're overthrowing Saddam Hussein to spread democracy through the region.
[00:42:37]  When an insurgency built up, then it was like, well, we have to defeat the al-Qaeda that are in Iraq.
[00:42:41]  Okay.
[00:42:42]  So yes, the mission did keep changing.
[00:42:43]  But the takeaway from the war in Iraq shouldn't be that the problem was that the mission kept changing.
[00:42:49]  The takeaway from the war in Iraq should be the problem was that they lied us into a war where a million people died.
[00:42:58]  That's the issue.
[00:42:59]  They lied us into a war where a million Iraqis died.
[00:43:02]  Thousands of Americans died.
[00:43:05]  Tens of thousands of Americans came home and blew their brains out over what they had seen over there.
[00:43:10]  And it destroyed the country and destabilized the region.
[00:43:13]  That's what was wrong with the, so when you don't really like, when you don't get that right, then you look at the war in Ukraine and you go, oh, the problem here is that they haven't defined a concrete mission while not defining a concrete mission yourself.
[00:43:27]  That's not good enough.
[00:43:29]  What you need to understand is that the military industrial complex is run by sociopathic, blood-soaked monsters who lie us into wars where their friends make billions of dollars and real people die.
[00:43:43]  Babies get exploded to death and Lockheed Martin rakes in profits.
[00:43:47]  That's what happens.
[00:43:49]  That's the problem with these wars.
[00:43:50]  And if you don't have that attitude, how the hell am I trusting you to actually get in there and take on the most entrenched, powerful interests in the history of the world?
[00:44:00]  Just not good enough, if you ask me.
[00:44:02]  Just not good enough, not even close.
[00:44:05]  Overall, those were the clips that we had ready for the Tucker thing.
[00:44:09]  Like I said, Vivek did a very good job.
[00:44:12]  I thought he really helped himself.
[00:44:15]  I don't think anyone else helped themselves.
[00:44:17]  A lot of people bodied themselves.
[00:44:19]  There was one clip too with some other guy.
[00:44:21]  I'm blanking on his name.
[00:44:24]  Tucker asked him, the clips going super vival.
[00:44:27]  Tucker asked him, how many COVID vaccines did you get?
[00:44:30]  And how do you feel about it now?
[00:44:32]  And because I guess the guy was a proponent of the vaccines.
[00:44:35]  And he goes, well, Tucker, how many did you get?
[00:44:38]  And Tucker's like, zero.
[00:44:39]  How many did you get?
[00:44:40]  It's just a great moment.
[00:44:42]  There were lots of other little great moments.
[00:44:44]  It's very cool that they had Tucker Carlson doing this.
[00:44:47]  All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Mango.
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[00:45:43]  All right, let's get back into the show.
[00:45:45]  But I should, moving away from this blaze event with Tucker Carlson now, I should mention that, you know, I mentioned that Ramaswamy does a very good job when asked about the war in Ukraine.

=== Ron Paul and Military Expansion (10:14) ===

[00:45:55]  Got to admit that Trump does a great job when asked about the war in Ukraine.
[00:45:58]  Now, again, I'm not saying any of you should trust politicians.
[00:46:04]  You know, it's one thing to say the right thing.
[00:46:06]  It's another thing to actually get in there and do it.
[00:46:09]  So that you got to figure out for yourself if any of them you think are trustworthy.
[00:46:13]  But I must mention that there was one other presidential candidate who was recently asked about the war in Ukraine and gave the following answer.
[00:46:24]  And I think it would be unfair of me to not give credit where credit is due.
[00:46:30]  He's somebody who I probably would disagree with on many, many issues.
[00:46:34]  In fact, we could probably do 25 episodes in a row on issues that I disagree with Cornell West on.
[00:46:41]  But this is what he said about the war in Ukraine on CNN.
[00:46:45]  If Russia had missiles in Mexico and Canada, the United States government would probably blow them to smithereens because that's how empires behave.
[00:46:53]  We had the same challenge in Cuba in 1962.
[00:46:55]  So what we end up winning with a criminal invasion.
[00:46:59]  And I know some of my left-wing comrades who know it's an invasion, criminal invasion, but a criminal invasion provoked by the expansion of NATO, which is an instrument of U.S. global power.
[00:47:12]  And we have to be able to conceive of a world where when we look at China, when we look at Russia, when we look at Ethiopia, when we look at Haiti, when we look at Brazil, we got to see precious human beings rather than these competitive nation states that are trying to devour more profits, more land, and more territory.
[00:47:33]  Can we conceive of such a world?
[00:47:36]  Can we pursue such a world?
[00:47:39]  I think we have to.
[00:47:39]  What's at stake?
[00:47:40]  The destruction of the species, the destruction of the planet, the destruction of democracies as we know it.
[00:47:46]  So we're cutting against the grain, but always with a smile.
[00:47:49]  Practically speaking, what would you accept in Ukraine?
[00:47:52]  Like what?
[00:47:53]  I mean, Trump claims he could fix it in 24 hours.
[00:47:55]  What would that look like for you?
[00:47:56]  Oh, what I would do, I would bring in the Chinese, the Turks, the African rulers.
[00:48:04]  I would sit down with the Ukrainian leaders and say, we must stop this war, stop these war crimes, the cluster bombs on a variety of different parties, and make sure that we begin a diplomatic process for a just peace.
[00:48:19]  And that just peace is going to have some serious concessions across the board.
[00:48:23]  Russian troops have to leave.
[00:48:25]  There's going to be debates over the territory.
[00:48:28]  There are going to be some kind of consensus over the territory, but stop the killing.
[00:48:31]  Why?
[00:48:32]  Because the Ukrainian brothers and sisters are precious and they are bearing so much of the suffering with this proxy war between the American Empire and the Russian Federation.
[00:48:45]  So there's responsibility and blame across the board, but the American Empire does bear a significant responsibility here, even though it is not the sole or exclusive responsibility and it's in no way a pro-Putin.
[00:48:58]  So there is Cornell West, who is a, he's, he's quite a character.
[00:49:05]  He's a bit of an eccentric fellow, and he is a real leftist.
[00:49:10]  But you just, I got to say, he's just absolutely right about that.
[00:49:14]  I mean, he is just absolutely correct in what he's saying there.
[00:49:17]  And that is the type of answer I'd like to hear.
[00:49:20]  I don't think it's too much to ask for that somebody actually just blurt out the obvious truth.
[00:49:27]  And it's amazing.
[00:49:28]  And this is, by the way, if for people who know, who have followed me, what got me politically radicalized, what sent me down this path where I've become the psychotic person who you all know and hopefully love, was the Ron Paul Giuliani moment.
[00:49:43]  And this was essentially the same, it's a very similar point to what Ron Paul was making, where it's unbelievable how many people in this country who support the American military machine are just allergic to making a very modest attempt to put the shoe on the other foot and just say, okay, how would we react if someone were doing this to us?
[00:50:11]  How would we feel?
[00:50:12]  Would we take this as some type of provocation, some type of, you know, aggressive act?
[00:50:18]  You know, imagine Vladimir Putin was expanding his military alliance to Cuba, Mexico, and Canada, and it was encircling the United States of America.
[00:50:28]  Might the American political class have a reaction to that?
[00:50:33]  And as soon as you even start asking that question, the obvious is so, the obvious answer is so clear.
[00:50:39]  It's like, oh yeah, they'd go to fucking war over that.
[00:50:41]  Are you out of your mind?
[00:50:43]  And this happened, as he mentioned in 1962, when the Soviets put nuclear weapons in Cuba.
[00:50:48]  And Jack Kennedy said, and this is largely considered the correct answer by the American people.
[00:50:54]  He was like, that's an act of war.
[00:50:56]  We will go to war with Russia if you don't move those nukes.
[00:50:59]  And then behind the scenes, they negotiated and the U.S. pulled some missiles back and Russia pulled those missiles back.
[00:51:07]  What's so crazy about that?
[00:51:08]  You know, the term blowback was, it was not coined by left-wing activists like Cornell West.
[00:51:16]  It was not coined by libertarians like Ron Paul.
[00:51:20]  It was a term coined by the CIA.
[00:51:23]  And what they define the term blowback as is they said it was results of U.S. covert policy.
[00:51:35]  So the definition was unintended consequences of covert U.S. policy.
[00:51:41]  And so what happens is you have these covert U.S. policies that then have unintended consequences, also often engendering hatred against America.
[00:51:52]  And because the policies were covert, when the reaction comes, the American people see it as something just coming out of the clear blue sky.
[00:52:01]  Like, whoa, 9-11, why'd they do that?
[00:52:05]  Why do they hate us?
[00:52:06]  That was the question we all asked after 9-11.
[00:52:08]  Why do they hate us?
[00:52:09]  And the answer that the George W. Bush administration came in to give us was, oh, because we're free.
[00:52:14]  They hate us because we're free.
[00:52:16]  That's it.
[00:52:16]  They're just freedom makes them so angry.
[00:52:19]  Except the problem is that you have Osama bin Laden's declaration of war against America.
[00:52:26]  You can go read it.
[00:52:27]  You can still find it on the internet.
[00:52:28]  And he's not just saying, oh, we hate you because you're free.
[00:52:32]  He's saying we hate you because you prop up brutal dictators in the Middle East, because you bomb and kill civilians, because you prop up Israel because the sanctions in Iraq have been starving babies there.
[00:52:44]  It's like a whole bunch of reasons.
[00:52:45]  Now, there are like these binary thinkers who are only capable, if you say that, of going, oh, so you think Osama bin Laden's good.
[00:52:54]  So you think 9-11 was justified.
[00:52:57]  It's like, no, that's not the claim at all.
[00:53:00]  But let's understand what happened here.
[00:53:02]  And for anybody who actually knows something about the history here, it's ridiculous to argue that there was no provocation of Vladimir Putin.
[00:53:12]  Not only have we been expanding our military alliance right up to his borders, we've been expanding our military alliance through Eastern Europe for decades.
[00:53:23]  We've been sponsoring color-coded revolutions in Eastern Europe for decades.
[00:53:28]  We backed a coup in 2014 in Ukraine and overthrew a president, a democratically elected president, who was much more favorable to Vladimir Putin than the ones who were installed afterward.
[00:53:42]  Yeah, that might provoke a response.
[00:53:45]  It also led to a civil war in Ukraine from 2014 all the way through Vladimir Putin invading in 2022.
[00:53:54]  It's just ridiculous to not look at any of that.
[00:53:57]  And it's, you know, it's absolutely absurd.
[00:54:01]  Not to mention, by the way, throughout that whole time, we're also framing him for overthrowing our elections, framing him for putting bounties on U.S. soldiers' heads in Afghanistan.
[00:54:11]  How could you see any of that and not think it's a provocation?
[00:54:14]  Not think like, yo, you're poking at this bear and be careful because the bear might respond.
[00:54:19]  And he might, his response might even be to fucking kill some innocent people.
[00:54:23]  That doesn't justify that.
[00:54:25]  But if you want to avoid this in the future, it behooves you to understand that.
[00:54:30]  And then, of course, Colonel West has the exact right take on what to do now.
[00:54:35]  He's like, okay, well, the thing to do now is to try to get the bloodshed to end.
[00:54:39]  This is a very volatile, dangerous situation where real human beings are dying.
[00:54:43]  Let's try to get that to stop.
[00:54:46]  Okay.
[00:54:46]  Is Vladimir Putin just going to just leave and say, okay, we're going back home.
[00:54:53]  We'll accept that we've lost.
[00:54:55]  We get nothing in return.
[00:54:56]  You know, maybe that would be nice if he did, but it's not going to happen.
[00:55:00]  So like, what can we make happen?
[00:55:02]  What's the best we can come up with?
[00:55:04]  What's a deal where there are some concessions on all sides, but we get the war to stop?
[00:55:11]  And as I've pointed out before, and I posted on Twitter about this, I talked about this on a recent episode of the podcast.
[00:55:18]  The U.S. holds the ultimate chip here, the ultimate chip in negotiating, because Ukraine cannot continue to fight without our blank check support for them.
[00:55:27]  And they know that.
[00:55:29]  And the thing that Vladimir Putin wants more than anything else would be for the U.S. to leave NATO.
[00:55:35]  So we can offer those things and probably get a lot back for it.
[00:55:40]  I personally think we could get the war over tomorrow with just the promise of U.S. leaving NATO, because that'd be the biggest win for Vladimir Putin.
[00:55:48]  By the way, it'd also be a win for us.
[00:55:52]  Why the hell do we need to be signed up to defend other countries that we don't have the resources or the political will to actually defend?
[00:55:59]  Why the hell do we need to subsidize the defense of rich European countries when we're $30 trillion in debt ourselves?
[00:56:06]  That to me sounds a lot like madness.

=== Madness of Subsidizing NATO (00:36) ===

[00:56:09]  All right.
[00:56:09]  That's our episode for today.
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