Dave Smith and Robbie the Fire Bernstein critique Donald Trump's admission of past cabinet errors while arguing Ron DeSantis is finished for 2024. They dismiss DeSantis's Jake Tapper interview, where he avoided opposing Ukraine aid despite calling it non-vital, as evidence of his inability to capture the political zeitgeist compared to RFK Jr. The hosts contend that DeSantis's vague stance on "sustainable peace" and failure to explicitly reject the war disqualify him, rendering him irrelevant against rivals like Vivek Ramaswamy and Cornell West. Ultimately, their analysis concludes that DeSantis lacks the conviction required for a viable presidential run. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Not Typical Trump Critics00:14:09
Fill her up.
You are listening to the Gash Digital Network.
We need to roll back the state.
We spy on all of our own citizens.
Our prisons are flooded with nonviolent drug offenders.
If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
You're listening to part of the problem on the Gas Digital Network.
Here's your host.
What's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
I am Dave Smith.
He is Robbie the Fire Bernstein.
We are the dynamic duo spreading liberty across this here land.
How are you, sir?
Oh, I'm doing great.
How are you, Davey Smith?
Very good.
Can't complain.
I am, we're recording late night, and I'm getting up early tomorrow morning to go fly down to Fort Lauderdale, scouting out retirement homes.
Listen, Rob, we're a couple of Jews.
We're going to end up with Ari Shafir retiring in Fort Lauderdale.
So I'm going to go down there early and just start thinking what's a good spot.
What's a good spot for us?
While I'm down there, I'll be doing Patrick Bett David's show.
So that'll be just to kill some time while I'm looking for retirement communities.
This will be it.
I see myself in an old age home in the next five to 10 years.
That's my life trajectory.
But before we do that, before we retire down to Florida, we will go to Cleveland and do a weekend at Hilarities.
That's coming up in about a week.
So go check it out.
I'm going to retire without having played Cleveland.
I can't do it.
I wouldn't be able to live with myself down there in Miami without at least one time doing a full headline weekend at Hilarities in Cleveland.
Go to comicdave Smith.com to get all of the ticket links.
And of course, Rob's coming around with the Summer Porch tour.
Go to RobbieThefire.com for all of those dates.
Anything else you want to plug real quick before we get into this shindig?
Run your mouth.
Check it out while you still can.
I just got another strike, dude.
Really?
Strikes are, I thought strikes were like a 2020, 2019 thing.
I got a COVID strike last week.
I don't know how we've managed to survive, but we do.
Somehow we do.
Somehow we've managed to survive.
And there was a time where I was really worried about it, and now I've kind of stopped being as worried about it.
But yeah, it is a bizarre, a bizarre world.
I guess we've, I don't know.
I think maybe you're a little bit more reckless on Run Your Mouth, but I don't know.
You dive deeper, I think, into some of the topics that get you like, are more likely to get you the strength.
Okay, you're right, Brian.
I don't want to create any bad karma in the world.
I don't know.
Things have happened and they happen.
I never say anything offensive on the show.
Okay.
Oh, there's quite a few things that I wanted to talk about today.
I want to start off with Donald Trump.
You familiar, Rob?
Donald Trump?
He was president for four years.
He was a pretty good guy.
He couldn't build a wall.
Prove election fraud.
That guy, right?
Same guy.
Yes, that same guy.
Okay, so he was on Maria Bajaramo's show.
I've done her show before.
I don't remember.
She used to do a show.
I don't know if it still is, but it used to be like crazy early in the morning.
But I did it one time.
Anyway, so she has a show on Fox or Fox Business.
I don't know what it is.
But Donald Trump did an interview with her.
And there was a moment in this interview that was fascinating to me.
And it was fascinating because I have never seen Donald Trump address this issue before.
It's one of the issues that I criticize Donald Trump for all the time.
And I've never, you know, as is one of Donald Trump's great flaws, and there's plenty, but one of the major ones is that he seems to never be able to admit anything that he did wrong and will kind of defend anything that he did no matter what.
You know, like I was talking to, well, I won't even say who, but I was talking to somebody else who let's just say is a very big deal in this, in the world of podcasters.
And I was talking to him about Donald Trump and how he's like totally still stands by the COVID vaccine.
And this guy, who's one of the bigger, you know, like podcasters out there, everyone listening would know who I'm talking about, but I don't want to reveal his name because it was a private conversation.
And so I was talking to him and he goes, he goes, does Trump still stand by the vaccine today?
And I was like, oh, yeah, of course.
Because he launched Operation Warp Speed.
And therefore, it's tremendous.
That's it.
It's tremendous because he did it.
And so therefore, it saved millions of lives.
It was tremendous that we got it through.
They used to always take much longer.
We made sure they did it very quickly.
You know, like that's it.
And so it's a true weakness of his that he can never acknowledge this.
And one of the worst things that Donald Trump did, of course, were his appointments.
So some of the people he put around him.
And there's this weird dynamic.
And I have, as someone who's been a pretty, I've been a pretty sharp critic of Donald Trump.
You have too, Rob.
But I will say that I think at least most people who listen to this show, I think would grant us that we're not critics of Trump from the same perspective as the typical Trump critics are.
Like we're not out here saying, oh, Trump was a Russian spy or Donald Trump incited an insurrection.
We're not like criticizing him for all of the things that the corporate press would be criticizing him for.
In fact, in many cases, we're criticizing him for the exact opposite reasons.
We're saying like, I wish he was a Russian spy.
Why didn't you incite an insurrection?
Stuff like that.
Just, you know, I say that in jest, but there's some truth to that.
But anyway, so let's play the clip and then discuss this a little bit because I don't know why.
And I think you'll agree with me, Rob.
I thought this was a fascinating moment.
Here it is.
If there's anything that you could look back on in 16 that you think maybe you want to do differently this time around.
Well, the mistakes would be that a lot of people, for instance, say you should have been softer.
But I was under siege by people that were very dishonest.
If I was soft, I wouldn't be talking to you right now.
Believe me, I wouldn't have been able to finish out one of the most successful terms as president to a point where it was so successful that I'm leading by 50 points right now.
You know, I mean, that wouldn't have happened.
The mistake would be people.
I mean, I wouldn't have put a guy like Bill Barr in.
He was weak and pathetic.
I wouldn't have put Jeff Sessions in.
There are some people that I wouldn't have put in.
You know, most people were good.
But I had some people.
We had Esper.
I didn't like him.
He was incompetent, I thought.
We had other people I didn't like.
Why did you put them in the job then?
Because every, look, every president, you put somebody in, you think they're good.
But one thing that has happened, and I find it very interesting, and this is the way life goes, I put people in.
I was there 17 times in Washington, D.C. in my whole life.
Okay.
I never stayed overnight.
The press actually reported 17.
I don't know if it's right, but it's probably pretty right.
I never stayed overnight, ever.
And then all of a sudden, I'm the president of the United States.
And it's like a different society.
I was New York and, you know, it was a different thing.
So I didn't know people.
I became president.
I'm riding down Pennsylvania Avenue with our first lady.
I had 250 motorcycles.
I had armies.
I had everything.
I said, you believe it with president.
Take a look.
This is wild, right?
But I know.
All right.
So pause it right here.
We're going to continue it.
But Rob, is it just me?
I've never seen anything like this out of Trump before.
And I just thought that, oh, as soon as I saw this, I was like totally glued to it.
Like, whoa, he's actually finally admitting that there's now, of course, he's admitting this in a very Trumpian way, but there's a lot that's very interesting about that.
Of course, he still doesn't exactly get it.
It's very clear that he still doesn't get it.
And also, look, there's this dynamic where as somebody who's been a sharp critic of Donald Trump, it's remarkable, truly remarkable, how much his supporters will bend over backward to make excuses for him.
You know, and what's interesting about it is that it's not, look, there's, it's one thing when you, if I argue with someone who say is a liberal who thinks Fauci was great and all of the COVID, you know, policies were wonderful and I'm just denying the science, you know, or whatever.
That's kind of one thing.
And of course, you have a certain type of argument with that person.
But it's there.
There's something almost more frustrating about arguing with a Trump supporter who absolutely will acknowledge that all the COVID policies were terrible, that the vaccine was sold based off lies, that the lockdowns were horrific, all of these things.
And then I'll go, but Trump's the guy who made Fauci the face of the pandemic response in 2020.
Like, how do you defend that?
And they agree with every one of our positions on that, but they'll still go, well, he was misled or he was, he had no choice to, but to do that.
And you're like, yo, wait, what?
Like, he was misled.
And so he fell for it.
That's his fault still, you know?
And so it's interesting to hear Trump at least kind of acknowledge this.
Oh, yes, some of the people weren't that good.
But, you know, first off, I'll also say I agree with him on to a certain extent where he says, people said I was too harsh, but actually, if I, if I was any softer, I wouldn't even be here right now.
And I agree with that.
I, I personally, I don't think, I don't think Donald Trump should have been harsher on like the American people, but harsher on the elements within his own government who were trying to sabotage him.
Yes, I actually think he was way too soft on them and should have been harsher.
But it's anyway, it's at least something very fascinating to see him admit, hey, yeah, this bar guy kind of sucked.
And I probably shouldn't have made him the head of the Justice Department.
Hey, something there, right?
To me, this is exactly the way people without character behave, that you're on the campaign trail.
I'll get it done in one day.
No one's ever been more competent.
No one's better.
Give me one week.
Everything will be solved.
I'm a winner.
You'll win too.
I'll get it done.
Well, you didn't get anything done.
What happened?
Oh, I didn't know how to do the job.
And so I hired bad people.
That's called not having character.
Yeah, like you're out there going to the job.
That's the job, dude.
And look, he can say, and look, I will say, I find something about this kind of endearing because it's like, I've never seen this out of Trump before.
There's a real moment there where he goes, look, I'm from New York.
I had like never been to Washington before.
And I'm looking at Melania and I'm like, can you believe it?
Can you believe we're in the White House now?
Okay, I get that.
But at the same time, it's like, yeah, dude, this is ultimately the problem with Donald Trump.
The job was to have once read a book about something.
To know something, dude.
To know, like, how do you not know?
Like, how are you this?
How are, how do you have this much bravado that I'm going to drain the swamp and still not know that fucking Bill Barr isn't the guy to do that?
I mean, Jesus Christ, is this too much to ask?
And by the way, he mentions like a few people there, but there's so many more.
There's so many.
I mean, freaking, dude, like, you know what?
Maybe we'll get into it in a second, but like, you know, I mean, you're talking about Mike Pompeo and John Bolton and Fauci and Ray and like everybody and Mattis and McMasters and I mean, all of these people, fucking Mattis resigned.
And Donald Trump accepted his resignation because Donald Trump wanted to pull out of Syria.
He campaigned on wanting to pull out of Syria.
And then he selected a fucking secretary of defense who, when he actually gave the order, resigned rather than seeing it through.
Like you didn't figure out whether you were whether your secretary of war would end the war that you were running on ending?
Mike Pence's Resignation00:16:32
Like you did, it was literally just like Trump liked his nickname and liked the way he looked in a suit.
Here, here's another one.
How about Mike fucking Pence?
You chose him to be your vice president.
You're in your mid-70s at the time.
If something happens to you, he's the president of the United States of America.
Where is Mike Pence?
You know, I tweeted something about this.
Yeah, I tweeted something about this the other day where it's like so funny how all of these MAGA people are like celebrating how Tucker ended Mike Pence's political career the other day, which is like, you know, they're rightfully, they should be celebrating that.
But you're like, does it even like, does it even fuck with you for a second that this is the guy Donald Trump tapped to be his VP?
And he's this awful on such an important issue.
And then like people will give me nothing but excuses.
Well, Trump had no way of knowing.
What do you mean he had no way of knowing?
We knew.
It's like the same thing with COVID shit where they go, well, I mean, it's easy to say now, but the science changed.
It's like, no, it was actually easy for us to say at the time.
Why?
Why should I give an excuse for the guy who's the president of the United States of America, Mr. Billionaire, Mr. We're going to be winning so much you'll get tired of winning?
Why should he get an excuse when I could figure it out at the time?
It's just insane.
Here is how we should answer.
You ready?
Donald Trump.
Out there.
This is what you should say.
The deep state did me dirty.
You wouldn't believe what I pushed through to even get done, what I wanted to get done.
And now, if you put me back round two, I know how to handle it and i'll get rid of them.
Day one said, day two, I got you a wall.
Day three, I got you out of the Ukraine War.
And by day four, we're on the beach.
Well, what i'd like, what i'd like to hear him say, is something along the lines of, um, if he goes look, I thought I would be able to go in there and I understood what needed to be done.
What needed to be done was that a wall needed to be built.
We needed to end these wars.
We needed to cut taxes.
We needed to blah, blah, blah, whatever the things are.
Like I knew this is what needed to happen.
I totally underestimated how corrupt the whole system was and I trusted people I shouldn't have trusted.
And the next time I'm in there, I'm not putting any establishment people in.
It's all going to be anti-establishment outsiders.
And we are going to chop down with an axe all of the institutional power that the deep state has.
Something like that would be very nice to hear.
I got a Donald Trump boner right now.
If you were to say it.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
All right, let's let's play the rest of this clip and then, cause there's a little bit more here and then we can discuss.
Wild, right?
But I never was involved in that.
And so you didn't know what to expect.
No, no, well, I didn't know the people.
I know the people now better than anybody's ever known the people.
I know the good ones, the bad ones, the dumb ones, the smart ones.
Well, you think you didn't drain the swamp.
Like you said, you didn't drain the swamp.
I did.
I fired Comey.
I fired it for a second.
I found the people I had.
You fired Comey and appointed Ray, the guy who's currently prosecuting you.
What a win.
Like, what?
Okay, fine.
But of course, this is ultimately the flaw in Trump.
He can't have any humility.
He just can't admit it.
So he's got to go, listen, I know the good people, the bad people, the corrupt people, the good people.
I'm tremendous.
I know them better than anybody else.
It's like, what a fuck, man.
So demonstrate that you know him better than anyone else.
You know, the problem is that you're still fucking, he's still to this day cheerleading fucking Lindsey Graham.
So like, no, I'm not convinced.
I'm not convinced that you actually do know who the good people and the bad people are.
Sorry.
Like, like, and Maria Bertaramo is totally right to say, but you didn't drain the swamp.
Who can argue otherwise?
Who can argue that you actually did drain the swamp?
God, just, this is frustrating.
All right, let's play the rest of it.
I fired.
I fired Comey very early.
And, you know, there was a question as to whether or not you could.
But I fired Comey.
If I didn't fire Comey, I don't think I would have been able to serve out my term because that was a plot.
And you know, these other guys that are running, they think, oh, well, you know, they're going to go nice and smooth.
No, they'll create phony stories on them.
They'll create their own Russia, Russia.
These people are sick.
Guys like Adam Schiff, he's a sick person.
I mean, he's really a sick person.
They make things up, and then you have to spend time getting out of it.
They do it now.
He may become a senator.
He may become.
Isn't that a crazy thing?
Well, maybe not.
He's running against some people that are much better than him.
He's a sick person.
He made up a thing on Russia, Russia, Russia, and Ukraine where he actually talked about my call with President Zelensky.
He didn't know we had the call taped.
Fortunately, it was taped.
And he made up a speech.
He made a speech in Congress about what my call was, where he was actually reading the speech of what I said.
And then when I released it, I said, you know, we happened to have a tape of that.
It was a total lie.
I said, he ought to be prosecuted for what he did.
But when you go to Congress, believe it or not, you can say anything you want.
You don't get prosecuted and you can't get sued.
And I think it's terrible.
But no, this guy's got, I mean, he's very sick people.
Look.
All right.
So then he kind of just pivots to Adam Schiff and how terrible he is.
And like, yeah, look, I get Adam Schiff is terrible.
And I get that.
But the point is you can't control that.
You know, like, okay, you can't control what, but you can control whether or not Mike Pompeo is running your State Department.
You can control whether or not Mattis is running your defense department.
You can control whether or not Anthony Fauci is on your COVID task force.
Like, come on.
And it's just, so anyway, it's interesting that Trump at least finally acknowledges, finally, correct me if I'm wrong.
I've never heard this acknowledged before, but at least he finally acknowledges like, yeah, there were some people I put around me.
I didn't know Washington that well.
Like, okay.
Now he's kind of vaguely saying, oh, I know it now.
But this is an admission of such a monumental failure by Donald Trump.
Like the fact is that, you know, it's almost like, look, I'm not going to say Donald Trump being elected was technically speaking a revolution, but it was almost something close to in that ballpark.
You know what I mean?
Like there was something close to a revolution to have Donald Trump become president, to have the guy that the entire political class.
I mean, it's not just like, oh, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and like all of the Democratic establishment said this guy is so dangerous and unacceptable.
You're talking about Mitt Romney gave a speech.
Do you remember this, Rob?
In 2016, Mitt Romney gave a speech toward the end of the election, the previous Republican nominee and said, anybody but Trump, it cannot be Donald Trump.
A whole speech about how Trump was the antithesis of conservatism and all of this.
Everyone in the media class, academia, Hollywood, the entire establishment was like, this guy cannot win.
And he still won.
Enough Americans still voted for this guy that he won.
And the fact that he couldn't be counted on to have the most basic level of understanding, you know, like, Rob, if you were elected president tomorrow, I'm not saying you'd do a perfect job.
I'm not saying like you wouldn't, you know, maybe there are things about the job that would be like, fuck, you didn't see this coming or that coming, but you would see enough not to make fucking like Mike Pence your VP and Mike Pompeo your secretary of state and Mattis your defense secretary and to put all of these people around you to seek the counsel of like Lindsey Graham and all these people.
You'd at least know enough to go like, oh, no, no, no, those guys are the fucking bad guys.
Bill Barr isn't going to be my guy.
You know what I mean?
Like you'd at least go like, oh, okay, no, I'm not going to put Fauci as the fucking face of COVID.
You're going to put like, you know, whoever, Dr. McCullough or someone like that.
You'd know at least enough to know like, these are the guys who are like the outsiders who are actual critics of this system.
And not to say all the outsiders are perfect, but you'd at least know that.
You know, what did he give us?
Did he appoint Janet Yellen?
No, maybe Obama appointed Janet Yellen.
So he gave us Jerome Powell.
He gave us Gina.
What's her name?
The CIA director that he picked?
Haspel.
Is that her name?
That one I don't know.
The torturer.
You know, I mean, he just, I mean, appointment after appointment after appointment, just surrounded himself with the swamp.
And like, okay, he had a few appointments who were like outsiders, or at least to some degree outside of the establishment, who like they kind of targeted and got out of there, but only a few.
And then he filled them up with like fucking regular pay.
John Bolton.
John Bolton was made the national security advisor.
I mean, come on, dude.
Yeah, they got rid of the guy from Breitbart immediately.
He didn't even survive a month.
Bannon was kicked out of there very quickly.
Yeah, that's for sure.
Rex Tillerson, but that guy was Exxon.
So he was in government.
And, you know, but Trump got rid of him immediately also.
He got out quickly.
There was Masters who was totally undermining him the whole time that he was in there.
It was bad.
And then when he said Sessions, Sessions was horrible, of course.
You know, just it just had the worst effects.
What was that incident where someone bragged that they straight up lied to Trump about some like troop dad or something?
It was an article that was written.
I believe it was a Reuters article.
I can't remember, but they bragged that they lied to him about the number of troops in Syria when he was trying to remove the troops and that they misled the president.
It's insane.
And look, I understand that to some degree this is going to happen.
Look, this is what I will tell you is much, what's appealing about Vivek Ramaswamy, unlike Donald Trump, is that he at least comes, and I don't know if it's actually a workable plan or not, but he at least comes with like a plan on how to drain the swamp, if that makes sense.
Like he's like, okay, this is the statute we have to use.
This is the authority the president has.
Donald Trump's just like, I picked all the wrong people, but believe me, I know the good people and the good people are the good people.
It's like, yeah, dude, this just isn't doing it for me.
That's just not going to convince me.
All right.
Okay.
Anyway, so Donald Trump obviously is the still, despite whatever's happening with him legally, is the frontrunner on the Republican side.
The number two guy by a wide margin is Ron DeSantis.
Ron DeSantis has coming off of his interview with Tucker Carlson and just did an interview with Jake Tapper.
There was a couple things I want to talk about here.
So number one, there was a little bit of a viral moment, I would say.
But so Ben Shapiro had a tweet about Ron DeSantis' take on Ukraine.
Or maybe it wasn't even about, I guess it was.
We have to invade Ukraine.
If we don't invade Ukraine, then we won't be at war.
We got to send more troops into Ukraine.
We got to end that yes, Cardi.
People say that I am a white supremacist.
I don't know if you've noticed this tiny little hat in my head.
This is a Yamaka.
And so actually, I'm going to, okay.
Anyway, we need to send more money to Israel and then also to the Ukraine.
So actually, I'm sorry.
I apologize.
The tweet was actually, it wasn't about Ron DeSantis.
We'll get to him in a second.
I think it was actually about Mike Pence at the moment.
So I talked about this on the podcast a couple episodes ago.
You weren't on this one, Rob.
You were at Porch Torin.
But you saw the moment with Mike Pence and Tucker Carlson.
Okay.
So this is about those cities.
That's not my responsibility.
I don't care.
I'm not sure that's exactly what he was saying, but it was still a very bad moment for Mike Pence.
And Ben Shapiro, who is one of the more popular kind of conservative commentators, he weighed in on this.
And I thought it was kind of interesting, worth talking about.
And then I want to play what Ron DeSantis said recently about the situation.
So Ben Shapiro tweeted and he said, Ukraine is becoming a litmus test for Republican candidates because of the bad faith arguments that if you think we must fund Ukraine in its war against Russia, you don't care about American poverty.
This is wrong.
The two issues are not connected.
Now, he's pretty clearly talking about Tucker Carlson here, but he's not mentioning him by name, but fair enough.
He's just taking it on.
So he says the two issues are not connected.
Let's hear what he has to say.
He says, first off, pouring money into poverty-ridden areas does not result in prosperity.
That has nothing to do with Ukraine.
Government spending means prosperity.
So, quote, government spending means prosperity, end quote, is a lie.
Half the people now promoting that lie know it and have spoken out openly against it in the past.
You could be skeptical of Ukraine, of Ukrainian military aid while still being in favor of entitlement reform.
Okay, so.
Well, the first half of that's trash.
That last line's okay.
Well, yeah, I mean, that line is fine, but let me let's just take this apart a little bit.
Supply Chain Spending Debate00:13:04
Um, he says it's a first off, Ukraine is becoming a litmus test for Republican candidates.
Thank God.
Thank God.
And God bless Tucker Carlson for like insisting that this is a litmus test for Republican candidates.
Okay.
Now he says it's become a litmus test because of the bad faith argument that you think we must fund Ukraine in a war against Russia, that if you think that, then you don't care about American poverty.
This is wrong.
The two issues are not connected.
First off, pouring money into poverty-written areas does not result in prosperity.
This has nothing to do with Ukraine.
Quote, government spending means prosperity is a lie.
Half the people now promoting that lie know it and have spoken out against it in the past.
Now, what's so what Ben Shapiro gets completely wrong here is that the idea that if we are pouring, let's say, tens, maybe hundreds of billions of dollars into a foreign country while our country is damn near collapsing.
The idea that that's like some type of false dichotomy is ridiculous.
The money is being extracted from our country.
It's now going to some foreign country.
It's literally, I mean, okay, a lot of it's going to the CIA and to Lockheed Martin and Raytheon and companies like that, but it's being extracted from our country and being sent to some other country.
So it is absolutely resources are finite and it is absolutely reasonable to say, hey, we should not be extracting these resources from our country.
Now, when he says, you know, quote, government spending means prosperity is a lie.
And a lot of these people pushing it know it's a lie.
And the idea that pouring money into poverty-written areas does not result in prosperity.
Well, just to be clear, this is what's so fucked up about this.
And what he's what seems disingenuous, but maybe he's just getting it wrong, is that, look, if we were to advocate that we shouldn't be spending all of this money funding a proxy war on Russia's border, that we have no business funding, and we were to, and someone were to make the point, as Tucker Carlson did, that, hey, we have all of these problems at home, and yet we're funding this.
He's not necessarily saying that therefore we should have some welfare program here to fund the problems in, say, San Francisco.
He could just be saying, you know, it's like I tweeted about this the other day, but like libertarians who propose we don't spend this money over there because we have all of these problems here aren't necessarily saying, therefore, we should have a social program here.
We could just be proposing the radical idea that the government just not spend the money, right?
Like, look, the government has very few options of how to take the money or how they can acquire the money that they're going to send over to Ukraine.
What are the options?
I mean, they can tax the people or they can print the money, right?
So if they print the money, they're robbing from the value of the dollar of people who are currently holding dollars.
If they tax the money, they're directly robbing people's money and spending it over there.
To say that they shouldn't do that is not the same thing as advocating that they should tax the money or print the money and spend it in some other government program.
The point is that they could just not extract the money from these communities and that that would be helpful.
So it's not at all in conflict with kind of like the conservative notion that when you tax too much or when you print too much, you're ripping off the local, the domestic population.
The point is like, just don't do that.
That's what we would prefer.
That you, that you just not take that money and spend it.
Now, by the way, I don't think the strongest argument for not supporting the war in Ukraine is that like we could use the money here.
I do think it's a strong argument, but I think there's stronger.
I think there's a much stronger argument to say, hey, we like it's not worth the risk of World War III in a nuclear conflict, or it's, you know, we had a large hand in provoking this conflict.
We should now be trying to, you know, work toward peace, not escalate it, not draw the war out to hurt Russia or some shit like that.
But it's just, it's just ridiculous to say that, as he says, that this is somehow predicated off of the idea that you believe in government spending at home, if you're saying that we shouldn't extract this money from the economy and spend it abroad.
So for example, like if we spent like, you know, if we spent, let's say, several trillions of dollars on the war in Iraq and Afghanistan and Syria, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan, you know, all of these places, trillions and trillions of dollars.
And you went, yo, we're spending all this money over there.
We have problems here.
You couldn't just say if the response to that was, oh, so you're saying government spending programs at home work great?
It's like, no, that's that, that doesn't follow at all.
I'm just saying don't spend the money over there.
That doesn't mean I say the government should spend the money here.
I'd like government to not spend the money at all.
That's a perfectly reasonable position to take.
So he gets this completely wrong.
And at the end of it, he says, you can be skeptical of Ukrainian military aid while being in favor of entitlement reform.
You sure can.
Me and Rob are both skeptical of Ukrainian military aid and pro-entitlement reform.
He says, second off, the notion that America has no interest in Ukraine is untrue.
We have an interest in the Russian military being defanged so they do not invade surrounding nations, thus threatening global supply chains and strengthening American opponents.
We have an interest in deterring China from invading Taiwan.
Oh my God.
Let me at him.
Let me at him, Dave.
Go ahead.
Go ahead.
Oh, my God.
Firstly, you're ignoring just countless deaths, but fine.
Let's just go with strategic interests.
We don't care.
You and I, we don't care about human lives.
Kill as many Ukrainians as you want if it's in the American interest.
Let's just imagine that scenario for a second.
All right, so you're securing supply lines.
What the fuck are you talking about?
You just took out a pipeline that had trade between Russia.
They're talking about all these breadbasket issues of people not being able to get enough food.
And guess what?
If we weren't all tied down in this Russia thing, you might have a better chance at actually opposing the Taiwan thing.
Yeah.
I mean, look, what is even worse for supply chains than America picking a side in this war?
It's just like it's just bonkers, man.
It's like anyone can come, they can always come up with these rationalizations.
Like, you know, I'll have people still to this day.
But the point is, and not caring about death, completely ignoring the fact that you've destroyed a country and you're losing a ton of life and pretending like these strategic interests are actually worth that cost.
And even if they were, which I don't think they are, and you'd be really evil to take that perspective, one, you got no proof that Russia was invading any other countries.
You got no proof of that whatsoever.
And two, everything you just labeled as a strategic concern, you actually have a bigger problem with now.
Well, it's funny because I get this a lot where you'll argue with people and say, like, you know, if you just go like, look how evil the American empire has been over the last 20 years.
I mean, how fucking horrible the war in Iraq and Afghanistan and Syria and Libya and Yemen and Somalia and all these wars have been over the last 20 years.
And people, they almost like can't even argue with you on that, but they'll say things like, yeah, but if we didn't do it, then China would do it.
You know, it's like you have no, you have no actual argument.
You can't defend the actual policy.
So you just go, yeah, but if we didn't do it, then something would have been worse.
You know, so like, oh, if we didn't fund this war, then Russia would have invaded seven more countries.
I mean, you have no evidence for that at all.
It certainly doesn't seem like they would do that.
There's no reason to assume they'd do that, but okay.
I guess you're just going to say it's in our national interest to defang Russia and that we have an interest strengthening supply chains because that's yes, that's totally what we've been doing since we've been in this war is strengthening supply chains.
It's been so great now that the supply of goods from Russia has been flowing everywhere.
And it's so great that the Nord Stream pipeline has been blown up for supply chains.
And it's so good, you know, all of this has been great for supply chains.
And, you know, Ukraine, who was, you know, they had a pretty big impact on European supply chains as well.
And it's so great that we've drawn out this war this far, much farther clearly than it would have been drawn out if the U.S. hadn't intervened.
Okay.
And we have an interest in deterring China from invading Taiwan.
First of all, it is remarkable how much talk there is over China invading Taiwan without anyone ever pointing to the reason why they expect that to happen.
And I'm not saying it can't happen.
I'm not saying China won't.
Maybe China will invade Taiwan.
But it's just so amazing how much that's used as a justification for this when China hasn't made any moves on invading Taiwan.
You know, and the truth is that maybe if we go all in, like, okay, you could argue in theory that if Russia was able to invade Ukraine and they win the war fairly easily, that that would encourage China to go, hey, we could invade Taiwan.
I understand the argument there.
I mean, even if that is true, then you could also go, hey, maybe we shouldn't have like, you know, poured billions of dollars into Ukraine for decades.
Maybe we shouldn't have backed a coup in Ukraine in 2014.
Maybe we shouldn't have sent John McCain and Lindsey Graham and all of these people into Ukraine to talk about how they're going to go kill the Russians.
Maybe once we overthrew the government, we shouldn't have sent weapons in to an act of civil war where ethnic Russians were getting killed, because then maybe that would provoke Russia into some type of intervention there.
And then maybe that would encourage China to invade Taiwan.
So you can make that argument as well, but you could also make the argument that maybe if America puts all of its might into defending Ukraine and fails, then that would push China to a position where they'd go, ooh, the Americans probably can't do that again.
So now we're, you know what I mean?
So like even if you buy the idea that China's about to invade Taiwan, still you could certainly make a lot of arguments that, whoa, well, what we've been doing is not helpful in terms of incentivizing that.
But instead, it's just, no, no, no, if we didn't do everything we're doing, then, you know, China would invade Taiwan.
Putin's Long Game00:07:15
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All right, let's get back into the show.
All right, so Ben Shapiro continues on, but we are now stuck in this weird binary strawman situation in which we are told that either we must fund Ukraine, quote, until they win as long as it takes without defining winning or quote, as long as it takes, or quote, we must stop the war in Ukraine without defining what stopping looks like.
Does it mean withdrawing all aid?
Stopping's a lot easier to define.
Yeah, it sure is.
Thus leading Russia to take Kiev.
What about the position that we have interests in Ukraine, that they do not match the Ukrainian interests entirely, and that we should fund Ukraine so as to prevent their takeover while pushing for a peaceful agreement that cedes certain territory to the Russians while granting security guarantees to the Ukrainians.
All nuance is lost in politics pretty quickly.
It's always much easier to malign your opponents as uncaring about their fellow Americans, but demagoguery comes at a pretty high societal cost.
Now, just so it's clear what Ben Shapiro is arguing for here, and he made this very clear in another comment that he made recently, is that what he's arguing for, and this is watch this, everybody.
Watch this.
This is what the neocons are going to switch to now, is that, okay, some territory is going to be given up.
Some territory is going to be given up, But the rest of Ukraine has to be a part of NATO.
That's what they're talking about when they say security guarantees given to Ukraine.
So, okay, Putin gets Crimea and the Donbass.
We're not going to fight over that anymore.
But the rest of Ukraine gets to join NATO.
And then if Putin is at war with them, he's at war with all of us.
And their argument will be this will deter Putin and this will deter China.
And this way, we can guarantee that this won't happen again.
The problem is that he's ignoring, as so many people, including the current CIA director, seems to be ignoring his own words when he wrote the Nyet Mins Nyet memo in 2008, that that's what the whole thing was about.
That's what this whole conflict was about, was Ukrainian entry into NATO.
And people can deny that as much as they want to, but the truth is that Russia for, you know, Putin was in there for, I don't know, even if you want to count it toward 2014, when he first took Crimea, he was in there for like 14 years before then.
Russia has been separated from Ukraine since 1991.
So it's been like, whatever, how many years?
Is that 35 years almost since then?
And they never moved on Ukraine.
And in fact, the tensions never began until after the Bucharest summit, when NATO announced that Ukraine would be joining NATO.
And even then they didn't move on Ukraine until after the government there was overthrown.
And then NATO started doing joint military exercises with the Ukrainian army.
And then the US started shipping weapons in to Ukraine.
It wasn't until after all of that that Vladimir Putin invaded.
Now, for you simpletons out there, that doesn't mean I'm justifying the invasion.
But it does mean that the idea that there's no connection between Ukrainian entry into NATO and why Vladimir Putin invaded is ridiculous.
And to say that, to say that the idea is that it's like, you know, it's always like this thing where they'll go like, well, maybe there's a nuanced position.
It's like, you know, some of you guys are saying we should go carpet bomb this random country.
And some of you guys are saying we shouldn't, when really we should do a little bit of it.
You know what I mean?
It's like, no, no, the correct answer actually is that we shouldn't.
We just shouldn't be involved.
We should not be involved.
Like whatever it is.
And people get so fucked up on like the specifics of this shit.
And they'll go like, you know, be like, so are you saying it's okay that he invaded?
No, not saying that.
Like, I don't think it's okay that America intervenes in Mexico, which we do quite a bit of.
We have our DEA agents, you know, doing all types of operations down there.
We had Fast and Furious.
There's a whole FBI operation down in Mexico.
We prop up cartels.
We fuel a civil war that's been going on on and off for years in Mexico.
I don't think America should do that.
But if Vladimir Putin came over and started funding the other side of the war in Mexico and then like toppled the pro-U.S. regime and like, you know what I mean, recognized the anti-U.S. Regime, and then at some point started funding them up against the U.S. forces, you'd be like, yo, Vladimir Putin should get the fuck out of Mexico.
Because what business does he have being over here?
And if then someone was like, well, I mean, sure, there's some people who say he should do nothing in Mexico and other people say he should do everything in Mexico.
And I'm saying he should only take part of Mexico, you know, and declare that part of his military alliance.
You're like, no, that's not more reasonable.
The obvious answer is get the fuck out of here, dude.
Capturing The Moment00:02:22
It's 5,000 miles from your country.
This has nothing to do with you.
And you're not helping.
You're only prolonging the suffering.
So anyway, this is just fucking insane.
All right.
Any thoughts on that?
Because I want to go to the DeSantis thing before we did this interview with Jake Tapper.
It seems that DeSantis' campaign has not been going as well as some of his supporters hoped it would.
Still early, a lot of time before the first primaries, but he it does seem that the kind of start of his campaign, the tone of it just has not been what people were hoping for.
He went on and did this interview with Jake Tapper.
And I got to say, I don't know, did you watch this, Rob?
I've not seen this yet.
It just, I don't know.
Between his interview with Tucker Carlson the other night, I kind of felt like he survived it.
It was fine, just not that good.
I'm watching this with Jake Tapper.
And I got to say, maybe it's a little early, but I've kind of given up on there being any chance that DeSantis does anything.
I just don't see it happening.
I don't think he has the energy.
I don't think he's connecting with the moment that we're living in.
There's also a lot of his policies that are just not good.
It's just there's something about him where he's not capturing the zeitgeist.
He's not capturing the moment that we're in.
And you're like, dude, for you to take out Donald Trump, this just is not going to cut it.
There's a reason why RFK is generating so much excitement.
And it's because he is in his own authentic way.
You know, he's not pretending to be somebody else.
He's just kind of being who he is.
That he is everything he says is the harshest repudiation of Joe Biden, of the establishment.
Even though he's not vicious personally toward any of them, he's like, he's like, hey, the COVID vaccine didn't work at all.
You know the thing this guy was trying to force on everybody?
Vital American Interests00:06:21
Well, it's complete bullshit and it kills more people than it saves.
And also, by the way, the war in Ukraine is complete bullshit.
You know, the biggest thing this guy is supporting?
It's all complete bullshit.
And it's just like he's capturing this kind of energy.
Donald Trump did this in 2016.
He captured this energy of like this whole ruling class is stupid and it's a joke.
They lied us into wars.
They're bankrupting the country.
All of this.
DeSantis just isn't capturing any of that as far as I'm concerned.
Here is DeSantis with Jake Tapper talking about the war in Ukraine.
Policy, because obviously that goes hand in hand with military policy in many ways.
As a congressman in 2015, you strongly backed arming Ukraine after Russia invaded and seized Crimea.
As a presidential candidate, you've said that the conflict is not a vital national interest.
So as president, what will your policy be?
Will you want to stop arming Ukraine?
Will you stop financial support for Ukraine?
So first, a vital national interest to me means we would potentially send troops there.
And I don't think anybody wants to see troops in Ukraine.
And I would believe that in 2015 as well.
It's more of a secondary or tertiary interest.
So my policy is going to be very simple.
Our number one threat to our country is from China in terms of foreign threat.
We also have a threat of being able to not secure our own border.
Tens of thousands of people are dying every year because the cartels are run in fentanyl.
So you got to be strong at home if you want to be strong abroad.
We are going to approach the world instead of Europe being the focus like it has been since World War II.
And it was understandable why it would be after World War II.
NATO stopping the Soviets, I get it.
But now the Asia Pacific really needs to be to our generation what Europe was to the post-World War II generation.
And so what we're doing is how much hard power can we marshal as much as possible to deter China?
I think we're in a situation now with how weak we've been that we are going towards maybe having a conflict with China.
I think the way to deter that conflict with China is to be strong.
So I would have the Europeans do more in Europe.
That's more in their backyard.
That's more of an interest for them.
You know, I would be willing to be helpful to try to bring it to a conclusion there, but I am not going to diminish our stocks and not send to Taiwan.
I'm not going to make us less capable to respond to exigencies.
And you got to care at least as much about your own border as you do about foreign borders.
So when you talk about trying to bring an end to the conflict, would you push Zelensky to make concessions to Russia to cede land that Russia seized in its attack?
So what I would say is the goal should be a sustainable, enduring peace in Europe, but one that does not reward aggression.
And there's going to be different levers that you're going to be able to pull.
We will pull some levers against Russia.
We're going to be much more aggressive on energy and export because I think that's been Putin's lifeline.
I want the Europeans dependent on the United States for that, not him.
We're also going to turn the screws on the Iranians.
The Iranians have been one of Putin's biggest benefactors and they've benefited from Biden's approach there.
So we'll use the leverage that we have, but the goal is going to be a sustainable peace that does not reward aggression.
What do you say to the argument that Xi Jinping is watching the U.S. response to Ukraine to game out how the U.S. would respond if China invaded Taiwan?
President Biden has said that U.S. forces would defend Taiwan if China invaded.
Would you do the same?
Would you order the U.S. military to defend Taiwan?
Well, two things.
So first, how does China view this?
I mean, it's somewhat speculative.
I think what they would like to see in Russia-Ukraine is a multi-year stalemate and quagmire where the West is pouring in $100 billion, another $200 billion of weapons.
Our stocks continue to decline.
They don't really care about the Russians.
Russia will be more dependent on China as a result of that.
So I think that's what Xi would like to see, ideally.
Now, in terms of Taiwan, that is a significant interest of the United States.
Taiwan is a strong ally.
Taiwan is important for us economically and for a variety of other reasons.
Also, a potential Chinese attack on Taiwan successfully would have big reverberations in the Asia Pacific.
But our policy is going to be very simple.
We're going to deter that from happening.
China respects hard power.
If you have hard power, if you have strong alliances with the Japanese, I visited there a few months ago.
The Koreans and the Japanese are getting along now.
They never used to get along because they both see the threat posed by China.
So we're going to work together.
We're going to be much stronger.
We're going to project power and we're going to deter that from happening.
Let's talk about that.
All right.
All right.
So let's just pause everything.
We're going to work together.
We're going to be much stronger.
We're going to project power.
Blunks.
Just saying nothing.
It's just like, dude, are you willing to take a stand on anything?
And look, the whole thing of like, we're going to negotiate a peace, but we're going to do it in a way that doesn't reward aggression.
Like, what the fuck do you mean, dude?
If you're like, if you can't just come out and say, look, Biden is funding a proxy war of choice on the border.
of the country with the biggest stockpile of nuclear weapons in the history of the world over whether Luhansk is ruled by Moscow or Kiev.
You can't just be against that.
You can't just go, this is crazy.
We oppose that.
You have to go like, well, I think that you have to understand whether something's of vital interest to America or a secondary interest to America.
And so what we're really going to do, first, we're going to crack down on the Chinese and the Iranians because that's what's really, we have to be real hawkish on them.
And then as far as how hawkish we will be on Russia, well, we can put the screws to them in other ways and we can maybe push towards something.
Dude, just get the fuck out of here.
Get the fuck out of here.
If you can't just be against this, I'm not even listening to you.
I don't care.
Desantis Completely Disqualified00:06:22
You know what you should say?
Well, listen, Jake, when I was waterboarding a guy for his 36th time, he told me.
He's going to come forward.
Man, he told me.
He said, you give up Ukraine, you give up Taiwan.
That's what he said, Jake.
He said it through a lot of gargling, but you know, that's what he said.
We really had to work that information out of him.
So you know that it's valuable.
I got a lot of shit from some of the old guard in the Libertarian Party types who they gave me a lot of shit because I said, as you guys listening might know, I'm a member of the Libertarian Party.
I was involved in the Mises caucus kind of taking over the whole party over the last year.
And I got a lot of shit from them because I said at one point, I came out very publicly about this, and I said that I don't think libertarians should challenge DeSantis for governor in Florida.
And my thinking on that was that, look, you know, COVID was the most like important issue, particularly for a governor over the last few years.
And that DeSantis, although he stumbled at first, as almost everyone did, almost, I think everyone except one governor did, that I said, the fact that he stopped so early and vowed to never do lockdowns and mandates again.
And the fact that he kind of took on the world, really put all of his political capital in on being opposed to the COVID regime.
And in doing so, ensured significantly more freedom for the people of Florida than just about anyone else in the country enjoyed.
I thought that was enough that we should respect that and go, no, listen, we're not just partisans who care about our political party.
What we really care about far way above that is liberty.
And so we'll have enough respect that we're not going to try to like, we're not going to do something that might help you lose in a Democrat win.
And the response to this was that like, oh, Dave's just going to support DeSantis for president or something like that.
You know, oh, he's a DeSantis guy.
I could not be more unimpressed with the campaign this guy is running for president at this point.
And I got to tell you, he was heroic on COVID in a lot of ways.
But where you are on lockdowns or vaccine mandates right now, if you're running for president, is it's so eclipsed by where you are on this war in Ukraine.
It's just way more important as president.
And this, this to me, he's just completely disqualified.
Completely disqualified.
If you can't come out against this insane policy and you have to like do whatever the hell it is that he just did, whatever that is, just say nothing and ramble about how you're going to be more hawkish on these other countries that also, by the way, pose no threat to us.
Oh, Iran.
Yeah.
You know what the answer to the crisis in Ukraine is?
We should bomb Iran.
And that's the answer.
This is just too insane to me.
And I think from what I've seen of where the Republican base is at, certainly where that audience at the Blaze event that Tucker Carlson was hosting, where they're at, I think this is not going to be good enough for them either.
I think DeSantis is toast.
And at least in my eyes, I'm just like, that guy's done.
There's nothing.
I have no interest in DeSantis' campaign if he can't just come out against this war.
And I'll tell you, you know, there's a lot of people who he's got a lot of, say, like big neocon donors.
A lot of them are donating to him because they see him as the anti-Trump option.
And there was kind of this debate between whether he would, whether he's actually a tool of those donors or he's actually a real renegade and they just don't realize it.
You know what I mean?
And so they're going to support him until they find out, oh, this guy's for real.
The fact that there's two options here.
There's two possibilities here, I should say.
Either he actually opposes this war, but doesn't have the balls to say it because it might offend his donor class, or he actually supports the war, but doesn't have the balls to say that he completely supports it because that'll offend his voting block.
Either one, to me, disqualifies him.
If he actually opposes this war, but doesn't have the balls to say it to offend his donors, then how can I count on you when you actually get in there to do the things that are going to offend all of these powerful people?
And if you support the war and are just trying to win votes, then you're disqualified to me as well.
This is the most important issue, and he is failing it.
So I'm done with DeSantis.
I'm interested in the campaigns that RFK is running.
I'm interested because you can't not be.
It's just too entertaining in Donald Trump.
I'm interested in Vivek Ramaswamy, Vivek Ramaswamy.
I'll get it right eventually.
I'm interested in who the Libertarian Party is going to put up as their candidate.
I'm interested in Cornell West.
I find all of these guys interesting.
DeSantis is done to me.
That's where I'm at right now.
All right.
I like it.
Good slogan.
DeSantis is done.
DeSantis is done.
2024.
All right, guys.
That's our show for today.
Thanks, everybody, for listening.
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