Dave Smith and Robbie the Fire Bernstein critique aging elites like Mitch McConnell and Joe Biden for clinging to power despite health risks, linking their stagnation to dangerous neocon foreign policy. They condemn "de-banking" as a threat to free speech while analyzing CNN's biased reporting on Florida families fleeing gender-affirming care bans, arguing that geographic relocation offers a pragmatic solution over universal liberty loss. The episode concludes by questioning U.S. responsibility for the Ukraine war through RFK Jr.'s claims about the Minsk Accords, challenging mainstream narratives of American innocence. [Automatically generated summary]
So I was going to guess seven hours and 23 minutes.
I was calculating for, you know, meals and shit.
So you throw that in there.
It probably will now.
It comes 10 easy.
Yeah.
With your two and a half hour shit policy.
All right.
We're off on a weird track here.
Anyway, we'll be at Cleveland tomorrow and Saturday.
And then the following weekend, we got a little Florida run.
Dania, Dania, I don't know how you pronounce it.
Daytona Beach.
And what's the final song?
Back in Tampa.
That's right.
ComicDavesmith.com.
All the tickets are there.
And then, of course, after that, I'm going on the Legion of Skanks theater run, which is going to be incredible.
New Hampshire, Boston, and Massachusetts.
ComicDaveSmith.com.
Go there for all the tickets for that stuff.
There are still some tickets available for all of these shows, but they're all moving pretty fast.
So come on.
I'm a little disappointed.
I'm on the road because I would have been very curious to see Skanks in the theater.
I think that's very cool.
It's going to be, I'm curious to see it too.
It's going to be awesome.
I'm looking forward to it.
Of course, RobbyTheFire.com for all the summer porch tour dates and all of Rob's other shows and his other podcasts, Run Your Mouth.
Go check all of that stuff out.
All right.
So quite a moment yesterday that I'm sure I would guess just about everybody who's listening to the show has seen.
And this, of course, was Mitch McConnell, the top Republican in the Senate, the Senate minority leader, had a, I don't know, some type of medical event.
My first thought was a stroke.
I saw a lot of other people speculating it was a seizure.
I really don't know what it was, but it was something.
It was uncomfortable.
Let's take a look at it and then kind of discuss.
Do you want to say anything else to it first?
We'll take break.
Let's go back to you.
Go ahead, John.
All right.
And there it is.
It was uncomfortable and bizarre and kind of sad.
Also, probably the most compelling speech Mitch McConnell's ever given.
But that's we're grading on a curve.
Yeah, I don't know.
It's horrible, obviously.
Lexi, go ahead.
I think this shows how much of a badass he is.
That firstly, everyone's tolerated a whole career of him talking so slowly that it took 30 seconds before they even realized that he wasn't continuing.
It is true.
You're like, there was like a good 30 seconds there where the rest of his guys were like, nah, this is just what he does.
Yeah, he's just taking his time.
Don't worry.
He's got slow but steady wins the race.
That's also the most composed medical failure.
You know, that's like when there was this scene in It's Always Sunny when Dennis Reynolds hits like the boxing machine and he goes, woo, and then he turns to his friend very composed and he goes, I just broke every hand in my body.
That's what this was like.
Like that's a full-fledged freak out.
But whatever way that guy's such a super politician of being in public together is he doesn't shit his pants.
He doesn't convulse on the floor.
He doesn't start, you know, having his hair dye leak.
He just stands there silently and stoically.
That's pretty incredible.
It was something.
I mean, not a lot of information has been.
Oh, producer with breaking news that we don't know that he didn't actually shit himself.
And you know what?
You're right.
I should be.
You were fact-checked in real time.
There has been no evidence that he didn't shit himself.
It's look, what this really gets at, and it's interesting because this moment kind of brought it up.
And now I see a lot of people talking about it.
And it's a dynamic that we've talked about a bit on the show before that kind of fascinates me.
And I got to say, I don't exactly understand why this is, but there is this class of boomer politicians who like simply refuse to give up the reins of power.
It's very bizarre.
And I mean, it's not like a, you know, just like one or two figures.
It's like so many of them.
I mean, just reading off here.
So Mitch McConnell, who we just watched, he's 81.
He's a year older than the president, Joe Biden, who is 80.
Trump, of course, who's running again, is only a couple years shy of 80.
Nancy Pelosi is 83.
Diane Feinstein is 89.
Chuck Grassley is 89.
The list goes on and on.
And it's very bizarre.
For someone my age, I'm 40.
And I remember being like a teenager when all of these guys had the same job they have now.
Okay, Biden was a senator and not the president, but like all of these guys were still there.
And it's gotten to a point, it's not like, okay, they didn't resign at 65 when, say, like is the typical retirement age or whatever.
I don't know if that's actually true for most working class Americans anymore, but typically it's been around there in your 60s.
So they kept staying on for there, but they didn't just stay on for another five years, another 10 years.
It's like 15 years, another 20 years.
And now you've gotten to a point where it is like outrageously dangerous that these are the guys at the helm controlling so much political power.
Like, I don't think at a certain point, it's not unreasonable to say, like, look, I mean, if you saw this out of like your pilot on an airplane, you'd be like, whoa, I mean, we, I don't mean to be rude, but someone's got to check in and decide, like, I do not think this is safe for this person to be flying a plane.
And I think you could argue that making decisions on war and peace, making decisions on the economy, making decisions on energy policy, like all of these things are analogous to like flying a plane.
Like people die if you get these decisions wrong.
These are life and death issues, literally.
And it's kind of unbelievable that we find ourselves in this place where every last one of these boomer politicians, all who, you know, have been on a government salary for three or four decades, who all happen to be worth tens of millions of dollars.
It's not always clear exactly how does Nancy Pelosi have a net worth of over $100 million?
I don't know.
What has she been making?
300K a year her whole career?
I, you know, get some really good investments.
But like, it's like this whole class that's just been like getting rich and controlling power for so long will not leave.
And they've now put us in a situation where it is dangerous.
Like it's incredibly dangerous that these are the people, you know, at least to some degree holding on to the reins of power.
And it's, it's kind of like astounding that we've let it get to this place.
And it's, it's just interesting.
Like I don't even know exactly what it is.
I think there is something to the fact that the boomers in general are kind of just an incredibly self-absorbed generation.
This obviously I'm painting with broad strokes here, but that they are really like have kind of always been about themselves.
They've the boomer generation under their custody is really when the country kind of transformed into not thinking about the next generation at all.
I mean, look, again, I know some boomers.
I love some boomers.
My mom's a boomer, you know, nothing against him.
She's a great lady.
But the boomer generation in general, speaking of them in general terms, you know, these are the, this is the generation who saw their, the value of their houses explode.
I mean, so many of them got rich off of the fact that they owned a house.
You know, like if you, if you, I know like where I grew up in Brooklyn, I know this is true for a lot of people.
This is true for where my wife grew up.
This is true for so many people across the country where we grew up in this age where like at the, when we were little kids, you could get a house for under $100,000 in one of these very nice areas.
And now you look at it and it's like $3 million for the very nice houses there.
And, you know, the people who owned those houses in that time just got rich off of just owning a home.
And it seemed like the their response to that was like, oh, great.
I can take out a HELOC and renovate my house or take out a HELOC and go on a great vacation or something like that.
There's, you know what I mean?
Like just, and, and there seemed to be almost no concern, almost zero concern voiced, which would be, I don't know, I think to me would be like the obvious first thing I would think of is I'd go, wait, this is like really bad for my kids generation.
like okay i'm getting all of this money for not really doing anything other than than living here and owning a home but what about my kids who are now going to come up and completely be priced out of this this area because wages have not kept up with this pace you know what i mean like how is this going to work and that's just one example it's it's also the mentality of a of a country that would allow itself to be 30 plus trillion dollars in debt and at the same time what are the boomers uh um Like,
again, in large numbers, speaking in generalities here, what are their like what they call the third rail of political issues?
What is the thing that they call the third rail of politics?
You better not touch my entitlements.
That's the concern.
You better not cut social security.
You better not touch Medicaid.
It's a political, you know, like killer to, you know, talk about any type of entitlement reform because those same boomers, their big concern is not like, oh my God, our generation, while we were in control, left $30 trillion for you guys to figure out how to pay off.
Their concern is like, I also better get my Social Security.
It's just, so it's not, I'm just saying this is somewhat a characteristic of that generation.
And the people who will not relinquish the ring, the reign of power here are also in that generation.
I think there's something to that.
I think that in the boomers time, really starting kind of with the late 60s and the counter revolution, the sexual revolution, all of this stuff that, which is what they come out of, there was this hyper focus on you, on what made you happy and what made you feel fulfilled and what made you, you know, like, and that was very different in American culture from previous generations.
Not saying previous generations were perfect, not even close to it, but that aspect was different.
And so there's something to that.
I also think that perhaps these people are controlled in a lot of ways.
People have dirt on them.
They've been around for years.
They can be counted on by very powerful entrenched private interests to serve their needs.
And they're not quite ready to get out of the way.
Although I got to say, I mean, is it that impossible to find a crop of newer, you know, controlled people with dirt on them?
It's just, it's very strange to me, this dynamic.
And it also seems like, you know, Diane Feinstein, I don't know, did you follow that at all, Rob?
She was like hospitalized and is refusing to give up her seat.
Even when other people wig.
That's the way I see her.
But isn't it like, even like some of the other people, even the Democrats are like, hey, you know, you really, you can't make the votes.
So like you really maybe should pass the torch to someone else.
And she just refuses to.
This lady's almost 90.
It's like, why does she even want to do this?
It's the whole thing is very bizarre to me.
Yeah, I didn't realize.
I thought she didn't want to step down.
Does it go to a vote if she steps down?
Is that the concern?
No, I think they appoint.
I believe they appoint someone.
So she's just screwing over shift.
Yeah, I guess.
I guess something like that.
It's just very bizarre.
It's very bizarre that so many of them seem unwilling to just kind of like go off into the night.
Debanking The Big Banks00:18:04
Like you had your run.
It's almost like they're addicted to the drug of having power.
Maybe that's it.
Well, I guess as far as jobs go, I guess if you can't get fired and you're in your older years, you know, I'm just saying from like a totally personal thing and you get to hold on to that piece of power and a little bit of dignity of showing up to an office and pretending like you still have it.
I guess I can understand why for selfish reasons as an old person, that's kind of the ideal gig.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
Yeah, I also do feel, though, that there is this, there's something about being in that generation.
I talked about this a little bit when I had Vivek Ramaswamy on, but there is something where you kind of feel like the people in that generation are a little bit stuck in their time.
And I'll tell you, as like I'm 40 and I'm starting to get that feeling a little bit.
I'm starting to understand it.
Understand the feeling where you're always kind of in your time and judging the current time by the standard of your time.
And I really do think that particularly for these politicians in their 80s who they're really their time was like 30, 40 years ago.
And there is this thing where it's almost like they're still living in, you know, it's like they say the thing like, you know, you're born on third base and you feel like you hit a triple.
I think there's a lot.
I saw that a lot of times with the people like my parents generation who lived in these homes where the home value exploded.
And they kind of felt like, no, listen, I did the right thing.
I got rich because I bought in the right market.
And in hindsight, it's easy to kind of convince yourself that it was all your doing.
This is why it worked.
That really what it was was, you know, like government policies that bit up the prices of housing.
You know, that's really more the case than you were so wise to know that owning a brownstone was going to make you a multi-millionaire.
But so there's a lot of these guys came that their time was a time when America was just this dominant superpower.
And there's this kind of feeling like we could do no wrong.
And this is what, you know, like the whole neocon project for a new American century mentality was that it was like, yo, this is our century and here's our plan for taking out over the next century.
And the Soviet Union just fell.
We're the lone superpower.
We can do whatever we want.
And there was some truth to that at first.
I mean, we were like the most powerful nation in the history of the world.
However, that power also breeds corruption.
It breeds hubris and that breeds missteps.
And you see it a lot with this war in Ukraine, where it was just kind of like so many of these guys just had the attitude like, nope, we're deciding.
We're bringing Ukraine into the EU into NATO.
Russia doesn't like it.
Well, guess what?
Too fucking bad, Russia, because we're America and we decided we're going to do it.
And oh, what?
Vladimir Putin just crossed over the line.
We told him not to cross over.
Well, that's it.
We decide you're done now.
And then you look at it and it's like a year and a half later and you're like, oh, so war's not going so good for us.
Ukraine's military is getting slaughtered.
We still need to send in more and more and more weapons.
Oh, we don't really have the weapons that we need to send in.
Wait, now the Chinese are backing the Russians.
Oh, okay.
Like half the powerful countries outside of Europe are also now backing the Russians and the Chinese.
Like, oh, yeah, because we're not living in the 1990s anymore.
They kind of feel like we are, but we're not.
And we kind of need somebody who's like at least involved in the world as it exists today.
And you wonder what some of these guys like Mitch McConnell and Joe Biden, like, do they even know that it's a different world than the 1990s?
Are they even aware of this?
Like, it's, and it seems like judging by their policies, perhaps they're not.
That's kind of like the way boxers and fighters need someone to retire them.
Yeah.
You know, because they just, they always still think they have it.
I even had my grandfather said growing up, it was always his funny story that he was, he had a partner at his law firm who finally one day he had to tell the guy, you can't work here anymore because he showed up to court without his teeth.
And that was finally the day where they realized that Judge Zone can no longer operate as a lawyer.
And so it was my grandfather's duty as his partner to walk in and go, that's it.
That's it, Judge Zone.
And my grandfather said that it was his dream to basically go until someone retired him as well, which happened.
I mean, he didn't go to court without his teeth, but it happened that, you know, it was noticed that he could no longer do the job.
And so he was finally told, no more doing the job.
I guess with these politicians, you know, they're holding on to a little bit too much power that maybe there's no one who gets, maybe, and maybe there almost needs to be a branch of government that's there to basically tell people, hey, grandpa, we're taking the keys.
Yeah.
Yeah, maybe.
That's an interesting point.
Now, I remember having a thing in my family when we had to convince my grandfather that he couldn't drive anymore.
Yeah, it's tough.
And it was brutal.
It was horrible.
And it's awful.
You know, it's an awful thing to have to do that to somebody.
And also, because he's kind of like losing it a little bit, he doesn't get it, you know?
Right.
And like, so he thinks you're wrong.
And he thinks, you know, and you're like, listen, you crashed the car yesterday.
You could have hurt yourself.
You could have hurt somebody.
And he was like, I didn't crash yesterday.
You know, and you're like, no, but you did.
Like you said, I swear.
I swear you really did.
There was a, I mean, this is tragic, but funny was at one, at one point, the keys were taken from my grandfather.
My grandmother said, you can either have this car or I'm throwing out this car.
And I said, I don't want it.
I know that he still wants it.
I think it's better if it sits on the driveway.
She goes, you got two options.
I'm either throwing this out or you can take the keys.
And I said, all right, I'll take the keys.
That's a big help in my life.
I can start doing road gigs.
I swear there was a year of that guy's life where he was sitting in a chair thinking he couldn't go to work because I hadn't returned his car to him.
It is.
It's tragic, but it's kind of like there's humor in these dark stories sometimes.
Anyway, less so, it's less like sad when you're just talking about these blood-soaked monsters who have been destroying our country forever.
But yeah, they got to go.
It's just unbelievable.
And, you know, this, I feel like this used to kind of be fair game to talk about because the politicians weren't all so old.
Now it's like, I don't know.
It's just a very bizarre situation.
But it doesn't help when you replace them with people like Federman.
Yeah, that's real.
No, and it almost the conspiratorial part of your mind almost goes like, is that why they like this Fetterman guy so much?
Because he makes all the old guys be like, what?
Oh, right.
I'm as sharp as this whipper snapper over here.
All right.
So, okay, I wanted to talk about this because this actually was on my radar last week, but we never got to it.
But not even necessarily the specifics of it, but just the kind of general idea that is very creepy, which is something we've touched on a little bit in the past, but it's this new term, relatively new over the last few years.
We never really needed a term for it before, and it is de-banking.
I don't know if you saw, Rob, that Nigel Farage was recently debanked.
And evidently there's been some recourse for that.
I think someone from the bank actually resigned over it.
And it looks like he might be getting that back.
But of course, this was a major factor in the freedom protests in Canada a couple years back.
This has been a major thing with political dissidents, however you want to phrase it, people who have gotten their banks shut down.
This has happened in America to several people, and obviously in Canada and here in the UK.
You know, I first found Nigel Farage back in the day when I first became a libertarian.
There was this website called The Daily Paul, which was it just every day had updates about the latest like Ron Paul speech or the latest Ron Paul event or the latest article.
And then it just had like other kind of things in that world.
And people kept posting these videos of this guy, Nigel Farage, and they were like, yo, this guy's like the UK version of Ron Paul, which was not exactly true.
He was not like a pure libertarian like that, but he was fighting for Brexit all the way back then.
And he really was like the lone voice on talking about how England should secede from the European Union.
And it was very cool at the time.
It had no popular support at the time.
He was just out there constantly giving speeches about, I think he was in the European parliament at one point, and he would just be giving speeches about how, you know, how awful and authoritarian they all are and how dare you guys have the right to set regulations for that, you know, for supposedly sovereign countries and stuff.
And it was amazing that this actually worked and he won.
And so there was something just I found really fascinating about the guy where it's like, it's, you know, at the time, the idea of England leaving the EU, I mean, look, it's not quite like a secession in the United States, but it seemed fairly close.
Like something that seemed so daunting to actually achieve.
And they did it.
So that always kind of made him an interesting figure to me.
But evidently he was debanked over political views that he held.
This is something that is, it's a truly, truly creepy precedent to set.
It is one thing to get kicked off of social media companies.
That's pretty creepy too.
It's one thing to kind of get fired from your job or something like that.
But to actually have the bank like shut down your bank account seems like a real, it's almost like, oh, you wouldn't even need political assassinations anymore.
You could just have some type of system of debanking.
And particularly when you had things like the trucker protests in Canada and this was their go-to for that was like, okay, well, we'll shut down your bank accounts and then let's see how much, you know what I mean?
How much fight you got left in you there when you don't know how you're going to get groceries tomorrow.
And the fact that this has already happened in America to several people because strictly because of their political views being unpopular, obviously for anybody who values liberty, especially in a political setting where that's not the popular position, and particularly during a time of a crisis, it's never popular.
Man, this is a pretty creepy thing that we ought to think about.
There's this, you ever watch, there was a show called The Venture Brothers?
I don't know if you ever came across that.
No, no, no.
Very odd Cartoon Network cartoon that was one of my favorite comedies at one point.
And I played this on Run Your Mouth a little while back, but there's a sequence where there's like cartoonish villains in that show.
And one of the villains had this scheme where he was going to legally, he was going to make a name illegal.
And the reason he was going to make the name illegal was because it was the name of his nemesis.
And he went on this Tyrant about how if the name was legal, the guy couldn't sign paperwork.
He couldn't access his money from the bank.
Essentially, he would be depersoned.
And it was like a very easy way to just ruin someone's life very humorously.
But like, it was funny to me that that's now what they're doing to people.
And that, yeah, it's annoying.
It sucks if all of a sudden I get strikes on my YouTube channel, which actually just happened last week.
It sucks.
You can't make money.
You can't grow your platform.
You're limiting your audience.
It sucks.
It's not as bad as not having access to my bank account where I don't know.
How am I paying my insurance bill?
Do I got to show up to the office in person?
Do I have to like lose days out of my week to start figuring out who will actually even take cash payments from me?
I mean, think about like, I don't know, can you get a credit card without having a bank account?
I know mine is through Chase and Visa.
I would imagine you can't.
But then what happens?
I can't rent hotel rooms or I have to have $20,000 in cash every time as a deposit.
And then I got to trust that they're going to give that back to me.
You're looking at, and I mean, this all plays into kind of the idea of what they might be able to do if like they're tracking us on our phones with mandatory health passports or other technologies or, you know, central backed digital currencies and the ability to just turn you off from your money at any point in time.
And it all comes back to even just the fact that we don't live in a free world where someone can just open up a bank.
That doesn't exist.
I can't just open up a bank.
I have to be part of the big players in the big, like the big system.
And there are new alternative technologies, which like, God bless Elon Musk that he might have his own digital infrastructure with his satellites and Twitter and maybe even like a payment platform so that there actually is a free enterprise and we'll be able to, you know, at least interact with other people if everything goes to shit and they start throwing everyone off every other platform.
You know what I mean?
Like there would be an infrastructure.
But I don't know if people quite realize what it means to have the possibility that the government can just say, and this guy was a big enough politician that he was able to, you know, people are able to find out about it.
If that were to happen, let's just say you and I were only comedians and we didn't have the large podcast and we made some joke in a club that the government decided they didn't like.
And so we're being debanked.
Where do you go?
Who do you tell?
You become a crazy guy in your street corner yelling about how the government took your money.
And everyone's like, well, what is that guy talking about?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Now, of course, from the libertarian perspective, I think what we tend to look at this and go kind of what you were, what you were getting at, that it's like, well, look, these rules are all set up to basically consolidate banking power.
So there's very few big banks.
This would be much better.
A great solution to this would be to say, just allow for, like, look, the market would have broken up all of these big banks back in 08.
And, you know what I mean?
You'd have many more options.
It would be much more difficult to get you debanked from every bank.
You know, like one of the scary things now is that there's only so many big banks that you're like, oh, so it's, you know, if they convince the five to debank you, then you're kind of like almost not a person in modern world anymore.
You've really been unpersoned.
There wouldn't be five.
There would be 70.
You know what I mean?
If we had more of a free market and it'd be much more difficult to convince all of them.
You also wouldn't have the fact, you know, people say, oh, well, you can go to these other, you know, you can go to some of these smaller banks or credit unions or things like that.
The problem is that those institutions don't get preferential treatment from the Federal Reserve.
And so you're much less protected in many ways than those banks.
So there's lots of issues like that.
However, I don't think it's unreasonable for libertarians to say, short of this, short of a free market in banking, which we're pretty damn far from, you know, short of like tearing apart the whole Federal Reserve structure, which obviously would be the ideal solution, that this just should be illegal.
It just should be illegal for banks to de-bank someone over their political views.
And I'm sorry, I mean, you can make it, you know, in the same way that it should be illegal for you to like leave the Senate and then go work for Raytheon and get paid $100 million a year.
Like it's yes, ideally, we would just not have the government, you know what I mean, like funneling money into Raytheon.
But given that we do, you shouldn't be allowed to do that.
And given that basically all of these big banks have been propped up by the taxpayer and by the U.S. dollar, if they're going to take that type of government assistance, they absolutely like, it's, it really does seem like it's kind of necessary.
Like the First Amendment really means nothing if you can't be protected in some way that, you know what I mean?
Like certainly at the very least, the government should not be allowed to, you know, communicate with big tech companies and request censorship of people.
They shouldn't be able to request that from banks.
And I would even go further and say these big banks that are all completely essentially government institutions, they just, they should not be allowed.
They should be forced to respect the First Amendment in that sense.
You have the right to say what you want to say without getting debanked.
It's just this, this is madness.
Yeah, I even had an interaction with the IRS once that I was requesting some forms from them.
Sympathy For Illegal Acts00:17:26
And in order to get the forms, I needed a credit card, which I didn't have at the time.
And I, and I, and I purposely didn't want a credit card because I didn't have a lot of money at the time.
And I'm also an idiot.
And I was like, I don't want access.
Like, I very purposely didn't have a credit card.
It's not something I wanted.
I'm not as dumb now, but I certainly was that stupid at the time.
And I did think that it was just funny that the government was requiring me to have a product I didn't want from a private company in order to get the information I needed from them.
To avoid jail time.
Well, yeah, I guess in order to pay my taxes properly.
But the point I'm just like, it's also that I don't know how new rules exist on the books of the only way to validate your identities in some way because you've been tied to a bank.
And that comes from government.
So you don't really have an option of like being totally outside of the system of no credit cards, no, like, by the way, even being on the roads now, like I'm literally talking about you want to drive on the roads.
At some point, you're hitting tolls.
Tolls don't accept cash anymore.
I guess if you want to spend your whole life having to go through your mail and having to actually write in chip, but who wants to, who wants to like, practically speaking can't exist.
I would be in jail without EasyPass because I don't have the time every month to actually sit down and go through the envelopes of what I owe on toes and actually send in a check.
I'm not, I can't operate that way.
And I'm actually more disciplined than your average schmuck.
So I'm just saying like we live in an infrastructure now where through force of government, you don't really have much of an option other than interacting with banks.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, that's exactly right.
No, you can't really be a person participating in modern life without, you know what I mean? Without this.
So it's really, that's, that's, that's why it's like so creepy.
And don't get me wrong, all the YouTube and Facebook and formerly Twitter, I guess still some Twitter censorship, that's creepy too.
But this is like a whole different level of like, whoa, like to go after people like this is so insane.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
All right.
Uh, moving on.
This was just, uh, Rob, you sent this to me and it was just, I don't know, it's hard to explain how delicious this was.
Uh, what is it?
This is CNN.
Is that who it was?
Did a piece on the exodus from Florida.
Um, I'm sorry, what exactly did they call this here?
I want to find it.
Uh, yeah, I was here.
All right, let's let's pull up the video.
You know what I'm talking about, Brian.
Where we could get to beaches.
I just never thought that I would have to flee a state for the good of my children.
The SB 254, uh, this will permanent outlaw the mutilation of minors.
I remember Tori coming to me one time and in tears, which she doesn't normally do, and I asked her what was wrong, and she said, DeSantis.
And like the fact that a governor would be making my kid cry, that's a messed up government.
We're absolutely moving because of the political climate and the laws in Florida.
We didn't want to move when the Florida Board of Medicine started meeting and we realized that they were going to ban gender-affirming care for our kids, that we might need to leave because that is life-saving, essential medicine and treatment for our daughter.
I was very relieved when we decided to leave.
I had never really heard that much about trans people.
And until I was like 11 or 12, I didn't even know trans people existed.
So I was just used to being uncomfortable.
I started hormone blockers pretty soon after that.
Wow.
I mean, there were times before she started getting hormones and stuff that she was suicidal, but after she transitioned, she was much more outgoing, much more like comfortable with herself.
Okay, careful.
We are seeing many families that are leaving.
I really think if you were to ask a member of a trans family, they would tell you they go to bed at night dreaming of how to get out of the state.
So that, yeah, that's the dining room right here.
And then this is the living room.
My hope for the McKee family is they are able to find a community that embraces them.
We're lucky that we're able to get out.
We're able to afford to leave.
A lot of people can't, or it's going to be very difficult.
I feel really bad for the people that have to stay here.
It's been difficult to access my hormones.
I'm not honestly sure how I would continue to access care.
Even if I wasn't trans, I wouldn't be comfortable here.
It's just not a safe environment for queer people in general.
I do care for my daughter's safety.
And just the fact that somebody might want to hurt her just for her being her, for her existence is scary.
I worry about her every time she goes out.
Almost the wide open view.
Yeah, sunsets are great from here.
No.
I'm looking forward to just being in a place where I don't feel under attack, where I don't feel oppressed.
It's just so sad that our country and our society are in this place of denigrating people like that and making them feel like they have no place.
It's just hard to start over all over again.
All right.
All right.
Where to begin with this one?
You know, of course, Michael Malice has that line where he says that the corporate press is often factual, but not truthful.
The fact of the matter is, and this is just undeniable, objective reality, is that over the last three years, people have been flooding into Florida.
That's just reality.
I know dealing with objective reality is not exactly the strength of this whole movement, but that is the reality.
People have been flooding out of New York and California every year by the hundreds of thousands, and they've been flooding into Florida.
It's actually one of the issues with Florida right now.
Like rent and buying housing is incredibly expensive right now because there's such demand because so many people are flooding into Florida.
And yet rather than kind of give you that impression, they'll be like, hey, let's talk about one example of a family leaving Florida.
Now, they're not technically lying and saying more people are leaving Florida than coming in, but it is certainly the spirit of it is dishonest.
And I wonder how many, correct me if I'm wrong.
Anybody send it in.
How many personal stories like this of people who were fleeing from say lockdown states did CNN cover?
Because that was happening in orders of magnitude, larger numbers than the, I mean, I don't even know that that's an understatement.
This was happening by the millions across the country, while I don't know what the numbers of trans people fleeing Florida actually are, but I would venture to guess they're very small.
Again, not saying you can't do a piece like this, just it is very convenient to kind of paint a narrative when it's really removed from reality.
And all of that stuff about the struggle of like having to start over and all of this, and how there are some people we're just lucky because we have the means to be able to afford to move, other people don't.
Yeah.
Well, that was true, again, in incredibly much greater numbers.
That was true for a lot of people who wanted to get out of lockdown lockdown states, who wanted to get out of uh um states where the unvaccinated were discriminated against.
You know what I mean.
Like this was.
This was true for this.
This is that situation of wanting to leave but not being able to due to tyrannical policies by state governments has been the story for millions of Americans over the last few years.
And the fact that they only highlight a story of that in the state that was relatively speaking not doing all of this crazy tyrannical stuff where everybody wanted to flood into over the last three years and give an example.
of how people are flooding out of that is just the.
It may not be factually wrong, but it is such a perversion of the truth.
Well said.
Preach.
Preach, Davey Smith.
No, I think it's so important to see the way that they can highlight things.
I mean, that's why they did such a good job pushing the COVID story, showing you single instances of horrible outcomes of people who are getting sick and, you know, potentials for hospitals being overrun.
And it works because you watch it and you go, oh my God.
But like, I would almost, I'd love to do my own journalism.
Where's all the news stories of every family that lost their business over COVID and where they're living now, moving back in with fam?
Like you could probably do thousands of stories of the people who were forced to get vaccinated because of their jobs and maybe have had some health effects from that or still haven't gotten paid or still haven't gotten their job back because they refused to be involved in that tyrannical policy.
I mean, the amount of stories that you could showcase that would be significantly more horrifying that we just saw that we haven't seen.
Yeah, no, I know Angela McCartle, who's the chair of the Libertarian Party, she was involved in a documentary about this.
I'm blanking on the name.
This was a couple of years ago, but she did a documentary that followed like four or five people whose lives were destroyed by the lockdowns.
And it was like, I watched it with my wife was in tears watching it.
Like, is it horrible?
Like, ruin people's lives.
Where's the special interest story about that on CNN?
It's like, it's like, why is it?
Look, I'm not even saying, by the way, I know people get very reactionary these days and they get into their camps.
I'm not saying I have no sympathy for this family.
Like, let's assume this is all real and it's not just lies and propaganda.
I'm not saying I have no sympathy.
Clearly, from my perspective, their son is suffering with some mental illness, you know, and like, okay, now I think there's a very strong argument to be made.
You know, they're talking about how he started taking these hormones at 12 years old.
He said there.
I think there's a very strong argument that that should be illegal.
Okay.
That doesn't mean I have no sympathy for the situation this family's in.
And like, it seems like it's not great for them.
But like, why, why is it that we're only supposed to have sympathy for the family who's not allowed to put their 12-year-old on hormones, but no sympathy for the people who like just wanted to run their business that they've been putting their blood, sweat, and tears into for maybe 20 years?
Like, why is it that we're not allowed to focus on them?
And so, you know, again, it's like, it's just, it's very revealing of the CNN bias that this is the story that your heart must bleed for.
That this group is leaving Florida because they say it's harder to get her hormones now than it was.
I don't even know exactly what the details are.
She wasn't claiming that they couldn't get her kid the hormones.
They're saying it's harder.
Okay.
Again, there's just a very strong argument that like, yeah, really, maybe minors are not capable of making these type of decisions.
And, you know, like the, when, when they just start referring to it as gender affirming care, when they call it life-saving care, this is all, you know, it's, as is often the case with the, the transgender argument, what they do is they just start by assuming their conclusion.
You know, they just assume the conclusion.
It's life-saving care.
It's affirming your gender rather than denying your gender.
Like, okay, but that's just, you haven't actually made an argument here.
You're just assuming the conclusion.
So whatever, you know, I have sympathy for this family and what they're going through, but it's not so clear that it's obvious that this should be legal.
I mean, we have children can't consent legally in lots of different ways.
And that's pretty important, actually.
And then I also kind of wonder, is there maybe something not so negative about this?
It's like we kind of, if we want some type of solution to a lot of these problems that somewhat approximates liberty, I'm not saying this is ideal, but is it maybe not the worst thing in the world if there is some geographic relocation?
You know, I don't think it's unreasonable for one area to say, look, we think giving irreversible hormonal treatment to minors and gender mutilating surgeries to minors should be illegal.
I think that's reasonable for an area to assert that.
And if there are people who are like, well, if those are the rules, then I'm going to get the hell out of here.
In the same way, if there were people who are like, well, if these are the lockdowns are the rules, then I'm going to get the hell out of here.
And they're going to go to somewhere that isn't doing lockdowns.
Look, that's not ideal.
Ideally, to me, we would just have liberty everywhere across the board.
But that's maybe better.
It's even better for this lady because she gets hang out with other people who think they're ladies.
That's what I'm saying.
The man lady farm.
Maybe at least as something that's not better than just liberty being, you know, in all 50 states, but maybe better than the status quo is you can kind of go to where people think this ought to be legal and other people can stay where they think it ought not be.
Look, DeSantis, after doing all of this stuff, after winning by less than one point, he won re-election by 20 points.
It seems to be pretty overwhelming that people approve of the job he's doing there as governor.
His state is doing pretty good.
That's, I got to say, like, it's kind of like, okay, well, maybe this isn't the worst thing.
You know, personally, as somebody, and I'm not, I'm not a conservative.
I certainly wouldn't call myself a conservative.
But I moved from at the very beginning, on March 1st, 2020, I was living on the upper west side of Manhattan.
It was one of the most progressive areas in the world.
And I now live in a very conservative town.
Now, I don't necessarily agree with everybody on all of their politics because I'm not a conservative.
I'm not a Republican.
If you drive around here, Rob, you've been around my house.
You may have noticed there's Trump 2020.
There's one guy has a Trump one in 2020 sign that he hangs outside of his house.
It's, you know, it's, it's a nice area.
And it's, so it's not like, it's not trashy, but it's, it leans one way.
And you talk to people and I've, as I've gotten to know a lot of people who live around here, it's the, the politics leans one way.
Now, politically speaking, I probably have a lot of disagreements with them.
However, from 2020 through 2021, 2022, it really became very clear to me that, in terms of um, political alignments, the most important thing to me um uh, to have a political agreement with, about my neighbors, was that we're not doing any of this stupid covet.
Masks And Gender Transition00:03:38
That was by far the most important thing to me, and I would tell you i've I know i've told stories on the podcast before and I know i've talked to you about this.
Just, you know privately um, when I was go, when I would go back to like, visit my mother uh, I was back in New York City for a while when my when my son was first born and had to have surgery and was in the niqi for for several weeks um, and it would, you'd be like back amongst these people who were still this was still in the height of we're doing covet insanity who wanted their three-year-olds to be in masks, who wanted, you know, like all of this crazy stuff, and so I had to move,
I relocated my life around people who shared those views with me that we're not putting our three-year-old in a mask, we're gonna let them play at the playground and you know what, we're not gonna wear masks either and we're gonna sit down and have a conversation with each other and pretend that we're human beings, and when a whole other group was not doing that.
Now, to me, that was the most important political like view to have alignment on within my community at the time, because this is what affected my kids lives.
Um, you know, whether we agree on tax policy or monetary policy, me and my neighbors is not as important to me as like, whether we agreed that our kids can play without masks.
Um, so I moved and found a community that aligned more with what the most important values for me were, and I would prefer if, everywhere just I would prefer if the upper West Side also didn't buy into the crazy mask shit and they were still being normal people.
But, short of that, it was very clear to me that like, this is better for everybody, as I I can't even explain, rob like, when I was there in two in 2021, when I would go back to the Upper West Side, it wasn't just like.
It wasn't just that I hated that all of them were in masks all the time.
It's like they hated me.
Like I, literally I would get dirty looks from other parents at the playground because my daughter, who was three at the time was not in a mask and i'm just like yeah well sorry, she's never worn one and she's not going to start now.
And i'm like, by the way, i'm kind of pissed off that you have your kids in masks um, and you just kind of realize.
You're like hey, you know what.
This is better for everyone involved if I remove myself from this community and put myself in this community that shares similar political views to me it, it?
It just seems to me like maybe this is not the worst thing.
Now again, I can relate to this uh uh family here.
I mean, I look, I I relocated over the Covid uh uh policies right, like i'm a refugee of the of the lockdowns okay um, so I get it it's, it's a lot to have to move, to have to move your family, to move your whole thing.
There was a lot involved in with that.
For me it's.
You know, I had to um uh um, I used to come in and we recorded this show at the GAS Digital studios.
You know we can't do that anymore.
I had to spend quite a bit of money to put all this together and so you know okay, But it's also, at least there's a place where you can go, where people more align to what you view.
Seems like not the worst, not the worst solution as far as I'm concerned.
Yeah.
And if you're willing to swap out your penis for a vagina, I think you can go through the process of moving.
You can swap out Florida for a virus.
It can't be worse.
I mean, you got to earn your right to be a lady.
And so part of that origin story is that you pick up and move.
And here's the nice part about getting to new locations.
If you can find other neighbors, you might be able to get like your, you might be able to buy the hormones in bulk, cheaper for everybody.
Yeah, there you go.
That's you can start your own little trans Costco or something like that.
It's a, it's not a bad thing.
It could be like getting pedicures.
Sheath Underwear Sponsorship00:02:28
You all sit around comfy chairs.
You get the hormones right into the arm, little drip.
There really is a hilarious joke there.
It's just like, what?
You're worried about transitioning states?
I mean, come on.
Transitioning is your thing.
This is your expertise.
The up is down.
Down is up.
We're not in Florida anymore.
We're in Alaska.
Whatever.
Yeah.
You should be the most resilient amongst us.
Anyway, it is something.
It's also been quite entertaining.
Quite entertaining to watch the response to that piece that CNN put online.
You almost feel like what it's like for CNN to make these things and then to go post it on Twitter.
You know what I mean?
It was like they just know, like, you know, when they post it, they're just walking into the actual like, oh man, we're going to get so like it's literally almost like this feeling of like, you're like, I got to go into the projects and yell the N-word.
This is what my boss is making me do right now.
You're like, you're posted to Twitter and everyone's like, fuck you, you pedophile.
I hope you all die.
You know, anyway, it's a wild, wild world we live in.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
All right, before we wrap up, I just wanted to play this clip of RFK.
He was on with Hannity the other day, kicking ass as usual.
RFK Explains Geopolitics00:05:54
RFK, people, you know, people say that I speak too highly of the guy, but I don't know.
Tell him to stop doing awesome shit and maybe I'll stop complimenting him.
But I don't know.
Here, let's play the clip of RFK.
He was in a town hall with Sean Hannity.
Of course, Sean Hannity is one of the few people in the corporate press who will have him on because he wants to hurt Biden.
But nonetheless, here we go.
Peace through strength with all my heart.
Control our borders.
All these things.
I believe that educational school choice.
We agree on these things?
Yeah, we agree on all those things.
One area.
I don't like the fact that America is bearing the brunt and the burden of financing most of the war against Putin in Ukraine.
I think we agree on that part.
Why isn't Europe, why don't they ever step up and defend their own continent before they asked for U.S. involvement?
And why would Joe Biden veto Poland, given Zelensky fighter jets to actually fight to win the war after they were invaded?
Well, the more disturbing thing is that on two occasions, the Russians tried to sign a peace agreement with Zelensky.
You trust Putin?
Can you just pause it for a second?
Just the dirty tactics of Sean Hannity, who's such a neocon at heart.
Like, he wants to start with like, well, you know, the real shame is that we haven't given him more weapons.
And then, of course, RFK very brilliantly pivots to, you know, what's even worse than the fact that we haven't armed Ukraine more is that on two occasions we've stopped them from a peace agreement.
That's actually bad.
And he immediately cuts him off with, so you trust Putin?
So you're saying you love Vladimir Putin and think he's an angel.
Like, God, RFK having to explain geopolitics to this lunkhead, which by the way, I remember him doing the same thing to Ron Paul back in the day, but even more viciously because he knew back then that his own base was with him, whereas now he knows his own base is probably much more with RFK.
Let's keep playing.
End up with settlements or one or the other.
And he never trusts the guy on the other side.
You use language art.
You use the design of agreement.
So Ukraine, to appease Petin, Putin, rather, who I think is evil, they've already given up Crimea.
It was annexed.
So what they now they have to give up, the Donbass area.
You know, Ukraine, because of our pushing the Ukraine into the war on two occasions.
When he pushed them into it or did Putin?
Well, let me tell you, let me answer your question.
In 2019, France, Germany, and Russia all agreed to the Minsk Accords.
That year, Zelensky ran for president.
He was a comedian.
He had no political experience.
Why did he win?
Because he ran on one issue, signing the Minsk Accords.
As soon as he got in there, Victoria Newland and the White House told him he couldn't do it.
Putin sends 40,000 troops in.
That's not enough to conquer the country.
Clearly, he wanted us to come to the negotiation.
He wanted somebody to come to the negotiating table.
Zelensky came to the negotiating table, signed a new agreement that was the Minsk Accords 2 in 2022.
And that would have allowed Donbas to stay and Lugans to stay to remain as part of Ukraine.
We said Putin signed it.
Zelensky initialed it.
And Putin, in good faith, began withdrawing troops from the Ukraine.
What happened?
We sent Boris Johnson over there to torpedo it because we don't want peace.
We want the war with Russia.
Why are you blaming America's role in this?
Look, I am, Putin to me is an evil murderous later thing.
I mean, can you just, I just love it.
And that's all.
We don't even need to play the rest of it.
But do you just see how RFK starts just explaining how this happened?
He's like, look, this is what happened.
Okay.
And by the way, he can talk a lot more about this stuff because I know he did it when he was on the show.
He's like, he has actually done his homework on this and actually knows about what led to this conflict.
And isn't it interesting for him to be like, look, the reason Zelensky is president is because he ran on signing the Minsk Accord, which would have kept all of Ukraine minus Crimea, but it would have kept the rest in Ukraine and just agreed to peace and a ceasefire and some autonomy for the Donbass regions, just end the shelling.
Okay.
And then the West is doing everything it can to undermine that agreement.
I shouldn't even say the West, the US, the US is, because some other Western countries were actually trying to get it done.
And then he's kind of like, and then we kept pushing him for, there's a lot more points he could have made there, but it's TV, so he doesn't have that much time.
And then Sean Hannity, this is like a great representation of the two sides of this debate.
Sean Hannity comes in and goes, wait, but why are you blaming America?
Putin's evil.
That's their level on this.
Putin evil.
Like you sound like a third grade boy trying to explain a conflict.
Well, but the other side is evil.
Our side good.
Why you make our side sound evil?
Okay.
That's your understanding of it.
And that's why we should keep arming one side of a proxy war.
Both sides bad.
I vote less death.
Yeah, like, right.
It's like, almost like, that's how you have to speak to them.
All right, guys.
Thank you, Chief.
That's our show for today.
We'll catch you guys out on the road in Cleveland and Florida.
And of course, we'll be right back here with a brand new episode for you real soon.