Dave Smith and Robbie the Fire Bernstein critique Sam Harris's intellectual unraveling, his past support for torture, and his refusal to debate Brett Weinstein amidst rising distrust in institutions. They dismiss Chris Christie's strategic madness regarding Ukraine and China while condemning Union Square riots sparked by influencer Kai Seenot's free PS5 giveaway as opportunistic looting. The hosts argue that coddling such mobs mirrors the destructive ideologies libertarians once justified during 2020, asserting that chaotic violence demands police intervention rather than moral relativism or further state expansion. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Government Too Big00:03:36
Fill her up.
You're 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, Jay Suit.
What's up, everybody?
It's a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
I'm Dave Smith.
He is Robbie the Fire Bernstein.
How are you feeling this lovely morning, early afternoon?
How are you, sir?
Two full days at home.
I feel well rested and well read.
Yeah.
It is nice when you can put a couple together back to back like that.
Yep, and then back out on the road soon enough.
I'm leaving the day after tomorrow to go on the Legion of Skanks theater tour.
Very excited about that.
New Hampshire, Boston, Massachusetts.
Come on out.
Still a few tickets left.
These shows are going to sell out, though.
ComicDavesmith.com.
Robbie the Fire Bernstein has the Summer Porch Tour.
We are in Summer Porch Tour season.
RobbieThefire.com.
What are your next dates on that?
Oh, man, dude, this is a wild run.
But this weekend, it's basically a Kentucky road trip starting in Louisville, then going over to Nashville, then Birmingham, Alabama.
Then I'm home for a couple of days, and then I go out west for two full weeks, which is going to be Denver, Seattle, Portland, Reno, and Salt Lake City.
So pretty wild run.
Nice, nice, nice.
Pretty incredible what the Summer Porch tour has become over the years.
I mean that very genuinely.
Have fun in Kentucky.
Say what's up to Rand Paul, Thomas Massey, and Mitch McConnell.
I would love nothing more than Thomas Massey if by some chance you're listening to this and you want to join me at the Angels Envy Distillery this Friday.
I gladly buy you a beverage.
Ooh, the Angels Envy Distillery.
Oh, yeah.
I'm going right there when I land.
Oh, that sounds like a fun drunk time.
What do you do there?
Well, I mean, I happen to love their, man, they should be paying us money for this.
I love their rye.
Like, they have a particularly good rye.
They have a good rye.
They have a good bourbon, too.
Angels Envy is very good.
They have this like apple-flavored rye that is unavailable.
You can't find anywhere.
I've never heard of that.
It's like chilled.
It's like a $300 bottle.
It's crazy.
So I'm hoping that that's there.
And if that's not there, even so, just to sit there and have a nice glass of whiskey, wherever they make it, pretend like I'm interested in some guy explaining it to me, which I'm not.
But, you know, I just want dude, I went to this.
I don't think I've ever been to like a whiskey, you know, what do you call it?
What's the term for it?
I think distilleries, though.
Distillery.
But I went to the in Amsterdam when I was 18.
I went to the Heinegun brewery.
I've heard about that.
And, you know, like they give you this tour, whatever.
I don't even remember much from the tour.
But at the end with your ticket, you get like two free Heinegans at the end, you know, like on the tap and like little plastic cups or whatever.
When you go out there to the, all right, we were such pieces of shit, as all 18-year-olds.
And, but there's like a bunch of people didn't take them.
Like a bunch of people come for the tour and just don't take these two drink coupons.
So there's like a bunch on the floor.
So me and my degenerate friends just literally just sat there having beer after beer, picking up others from the floor coming back.
And like they, they're watching us do it.
They just are like, I don't care.
Like I work at the Heineggen brewery.
Like if you want to pick that up, fine, pick it up.
Viral Peterson Controversy00:14:50
Or just, and we just stayed there for like an hour just chugging these like, you know, out of a plastic cup, Heinegans.
But like, I just can't explain.
Like when you're 18, that is winning.
It is just winning at life, dude.
Like, you're like, what?
We're getting hammered for free.
Anyway, anyway, I don't know.
Sparked that random memory.
Okay.
So on the docket for today, I wanted to first bring up there's a viral clip of Sam Harris going around that I thought would be fun.
We've done some Sam Harris clips of a few times over the years, particularly over the COVID, Trump COVID years.
I must say, Sam, leading intellectual who turned mentally ill and is now walking proof of why you need God in your life.
Yeah, it's unbelievable.
He may have done more to reinvigorate interest in religion than any other figure, ironically.
If you don't know Sam Harris, he was, he first, he's a neuro, a neurologist, a neuroscientist who he's written a bunch of books.
I actually quite enjoyed one of his books I read way back in the day, Waking Up.
It's an interesting book.
He's a very smart guy.
And I believe he was like, I believe I have this right that his like his mom or dad like created the Golden Girls.
He was like kind of born into like some wealthy family like that.
He became famous as one of the four horsemen of like new atheism, him and Christopher Hitchens and a few other guys.
And they would go around and argue for atheism.
And there's something very interesting about how at the time, it just seems like so many things have radically changed like in the last 15 years.
And that at the time, it seemed like this was really connecting with the zeitgeist.
Like that was really connecting with kind of like young men who were interested in ideas and were like, yeah, like they were really on board with that kind of that group.
And that really changed.
Personally, I think a lot of it was the experience of a society based around atheism and how much that devolved into some craziness.
And then figures like, I think Jordan Peterson played a big role in this, but a lot of other figures who came in and were like, ah, you know, actually, I think there's a lot to be said for this idea of having a society somewhat based around religion or at least a society that is not built around atheism.
So then Sam Harris, he was still kind of like included in that crew too.
He kind of went from the four horsemen of the new atheism or whatever they called themselves and then kind of had a seat at the table in what was dubbed the intellectual dark web, which was like Jordan Peterson and I guess Ben Shapiro and Rogan and Brett Weinstein and all those guys.
He would have debates with Ben Shapiro.
He would have debates with Jordan Peterson.
He really blew up when he had that moment on Bill Maher's show where he was arguing about radical Islam.
And of course, his opponent was maybe not the most capable was Ben Affleck, who just called him racist or whatever.
And it was a moment where he made Ben Affleck look rather silly, even though I personally never agreed with Sam Harris in many ways on a lot of that stuff.
But anyway, I have always been somebody who is not a fan of Sam Harris.
I never liked his positions on the wars in the Middle East.
I never liked his kind of like his demonizing of Muslim cultures while kind of sweeping the role that the U.S. government has played in all of that under the rug.
I always found him to be an intelligent man, but one who was making very poor arguments.
So I must admit, I've kind of enjoyed his unraveling, which is not the greatest thing.
You should never really enjoy another man unraveling, but I confess I have to some degree.
He is remarkably lost in like astounding amount of influence.
He's gone from being one of those guys who it was almost like universally respected in this world, whether you agreed with him or not, to being like the target of ridicule and very well deserved.
I mean, he's, he's worked for it.
We, one of the last clips I think we played of him was the one where he was, he was engaging in the hypotheticals about why you, you know, he's like, well, let's just say, imagine the vaccine, you know, stopped transmission and imagine instead of, you know, a 1% death rate, there was a 10% death rate.
Well, then we wouldn't be challenging all that.
And by the way, this is exactly how he used to argue for torture back in the day.
This is how he used to defend torture, which always drove me crazy.
He'd be like, well, imagine, you know, someone has information and there's about to blow up 300 little girls.
Would it not be appropriate to torture them to get the information out of them then?
It's like painting some hypothetical where you're right.
You can't deduce from that that you're right in this real world situation.
Actually, he's had a big falling out with Brett Weinstein.
I messaged back and forth with Brett Weinstein after our last episode when we took on the last Sam Harris clip.
And I don't want to say what he said because it was a private message or whatever, but I'd say what I said to him was we talked about the episode a little bit.
And I was just like, hey, dude, from my perspective, he's always been this guy.
This isn't like a new thing.
It's like you guys are all just noticing it now because it's so apparent.
But like he was always like this when he was defending the torture regime and the warfare state and all of that.
Anyway, that's neither here nor there.
He's had a bit of a falling out with that crew, I think.
I mean, I don't know exactly how personal it is.
I know him and Rogan were friends at one point.
I think him and Weinstein were friends at one point.
It doesn't seem like they are anymore.
He, of course, also had the moment where he talked about how if Joe Biden had children's bodies in his basement, it still wouldn't matter because Trump is so evil.
So he's been on a lot of wild shit.
This was from a podcast, I think, within the last week or so.
And this clip with him kind of talking about this has been going viral.
So why don't we watch it and give our thoughts?
I had someone sent me a clip from Joe Rogan's podcast where he and Joe were talking about me and Jordan seemed to be talking about me.
It's like a cautionary tale.
Like, look what can happen to if somebody.
And Joe said something like, oh, I still have hope for Sam.
And they're, in my view, they are in this contrarian echo chamber, right?
Where, you know, mRNA vaccines are terrifying.
COVID was no big deal.
January 6th was maybe a non-event, right?
The Libtars are trying to ruin everything.
And there's already, let's already pause it right there because it's like, for, I don't know, for a guy who was, look, and this is what's satisfying for me is that for so many years, he was like put forward as like, well, this guy is a serious intellectual, no matter what you think of him.
And could it his opening here is just blatant strawmen?
Like just not, you know what I mean?
Like, it's just like, you're not, not taking on one argument that Rogan or Jordan Peterson has ever put forward.
And this is it's perfect evidence of like why they're saying he's a cautionary tale or I root for him to maybe like come back to reality someday that you are incapable of actually responding to anything that anyone is saying.
So like I don't think anybody has said that that COVID was no big deal.
I don't think people are just saying, ooh, mRNA vaccines are spooky.
And I certainly don't think anyone is saying January 6th was a non-event.
January 6th was an event.
It's not what the corporate press is making it out to be.
It was not an armed insurrection.
It was not a white supremacist insurrection.
It was like, I don't know, a mini riot, like a partial mini riot, a partial outburst, a partial police assisted walking tour.
Like it was, it was a lot of things.
I wouldn't call it a non-event.
I actually thought it was a very major event.
It just wasn't what the corporate press was portraying it as.
And I've certainly never heard Jordan Peterson or Joe Rogan claim it's a non-event.
I don't know.
Do you want to do the other two things that he mentioned here?
I don't think anyone, us included, but certainly not.
Joe Rogan is not saying, ooh, mRNA vaccines are spooky.
They're terrifying.
What he's saying is that there are a non-insignificant amount of people who were injured by these vaccines and that we were that they were lying to us how they sold them.
They were saying you can't get the transmit that you can't transmit the virus even when they were well aware that that was not confirmed.
They lied.
And then they were saying they're safe and effective and they're not.
And the fact is that there were large swaths of people who it didn't make sense to get the mRNA vaccine and they were pretending like everyone should and that that's just the obvious settled science.
That was what Rogan was saying and he was right about that throughout the entire time.
You know, the big controversy when I was on, it was one of the big, big controversies was the episode I was on a couple years ago now, was that Rogan said his advice to young people, to young, healthy people, would just be to be really healthy, exercise a lot, take care of your immune system.
That was what was considered so controversial.
And as far as the idea that saying COVID was no big deal, I certainly don't think anyone is saying that.
Our position is not that COVID was no big deal.
COVID, particularly the early strains of it, was something you really did not want to get if you were old and sick or just very sick.
Like if you, if you had several underlying major health conditions, you did not want to get COVID.
It was a nasty virus.
But we were also saying for young, healthy people, there's not much of a risk associated with it.
So take on that argument.
If you want to talk about how people like us are in an echo chamber and we're all just kind of like, you know, talking about the libtards or something like that, then take on one of those arguments.
I don't know.
Any thoughts, Rob?
Well, you made excellent and refined points.
And I would just like to point out that he looks like Ben Stiller playing the Joker.
And I'm not sure what's wrong with his mouth, that he looks like a CGI person, that he, they seem so depressed, he doesn't even want to open up his mouth and speak.
Well, that is, by the way, I know it's, you're kind of almost like playing it like I was making the real points and you're just being silly, which is true to some degree.
But like there is something to this.
It's almost like both.
And this is one of the things that's interesting about this clip is that there are, there are like these two worlds.
And that's not to say that everyone in the world we're in agree with each other about everything.
We have lots of disagreements around with people, but we're at least living in the same world as like Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson.
You know what I mean?
And then there's people like Sam Harris who somehow are still off in this other world.
And I'll be the first to admit, I don't understand how they're there.
You know, I don't get it.
And I know he clearly doesn't understand why we're here.
But so when you try to kind of work through these things, it's funny that they're, from their perspective, it's kind of like, oh, you guys were broken by COVID.
And we're like, no, you were broken by COVID.
And it is somewhat interesting to see how the people in our world, like, I'll go hang out with Joe Rogan and he just looks great and he's happy and he's in great shape.
And he's like, dude, I open this comedy club.
It's the biggest comedy club in the city.
Oh, we're doing this with the podcast.
We're doing this.
Everything's great.
I'm going to hit the gym.
I'll meet you later.
We'll get lunch.
Then we'll go do shows.
It's like this great thing.
And everyone in that other world looks like they're shriveled up and dying.
It does kind of add to the idea that we're not the ones who were broken.
But in the world we're living in, we're like, oh, wow, it's pretty much concluded that the entire response to COVID was wrong.
That all of the scientific evidence points toward lockdowns doing basically nothing to mitigate the virus, yet causing all of these other, you know, like horrible outcomes, that the vaccine was not at all what they sold it to us as, that they were lying, that there was all types of shady things going on, that there were mass censorship campaigns against people who were telling the truth while the establishment were perpetrating these lies.
That seems so obvious to us, but they're existing in a world where like, nope, we did it all right.
It's kind of baffling to see.
And this is, it's one thing when you're arguing with like Corinne Fisher and the dummies who listen to her podcast.
And it's okay.
Like I can at least understand that these are people who are just like, I don't know, they're just going based what they heard on CNN.
They've done no deep thinking or research about this at all.
But this is like an intellectual trying to make these arguments.
And so, of course, the only thing he has is to just straw man what the opposing position is.
That's all.
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Lost Trust in Marriage00:04:44
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All right, let's get back into the show.
All right, let's play.
Let's play a little more of this clip.
And there's a whole picture of sort of audience capture and information skewing there, which I understand.
I mean, that's sort of how like if I look to my left, I can see all that.
But if you're only there, there's just a lot of half-truths kind of ricocheting around that echo chamber, which, Yeah, I mean, it's, I'm happy to talk to both those guys, but it's just they're not in the in the lane I'm in and trying to maintain, you know, despite the crosswinds, trying to maintain a straight course in there's that's only half the story, right?
So it's um and I just think people are genuinely confused now because two things are true.
We have lost trust in the normal channels of information and normal institutions post, you know, during COVID and post-COVID for obvious reasons, but we desperately need institutions and a media that we can trust.
So this seems, and we've, we've dealt with this, uh, with this talking point quite a bit on the show.
And this seems to be almost like what they fall back to.
And somehow these two things are true, that we've lost trust in these institutions and in the media during and after COVID, but we need institutions and media.
The fundamental problem with this is that you start by, again, brushing the substance under the rug.
It is, and I know I've used this example before.
I'll probably use it again, but it is as if you were in a marriage and you were constantly cheating and your wife found out that you were cheating.
And then the way you described it was you go, well, look, here's the thing is that she's over here in her echo chamber where she's very upset at me.
But, you know, I'm here trying to like sail with headwinds blowing at me.
And I recognize two things.
Number one, that we've lost trust in this marriage.
And number two, that we need a healthy marriage where we have trust.
Like, what would the problem with that summary be?
It would kind of be like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, but it's not like you just lost trust.
Trust didn't just go away out of nowhere.
You lost trust because people found out you were lying to them about incredibly crucial information in many cases, which destroyed their lives.
So that's why trust was lost.
And this is after this, a lot of people woke up to the fact that these institutions had always been lying to them.
Like your wife found out, you've actually been cheating for 20 years.
I don't know if we're ever going to regain trust here.
And it's fine to say in this abstract view that like, well, we need institutions.
I kind of agree with that.
Like it'd be nice if we had medical experts who were trustworthy and gave us really good information during COVID.
But the problem is that they didn't.
And in many cases, they knowingly didn't do that.
And so, no, the answer there isn't just that like your wife should start trusting you again.
The answer there is that you should stop cheating and that trust would be a consequence of that.
And as long as you're not doing that and you are still lying to her, then it's actually a healthy response for her to not trust you.
Seems fairly obvious to me.
Might as well just say, hey, I'm supposed to be in charge and lured above you people and you guys are supposed to get in line.
And I don't like that you guys are getting out of line right now.
You might as well just get Dennis Reynolds to play this character.
Refusing Rational Debate00:05:02
That's what this guy is.
Isn't it funny?
Because I remember the last time we played a clip of his, I remember you kind of distilling it down to this same point.
And it's like, yeah, that seems to be the underlying value.
It's just, it's kind of crazy to me.
And it's interesting to watch.
Again, like, I don't know.
You know, there is something about the landscape of like news and entertainment and stuff today where it's very easy to not know what's going on.
You know how like when we were teenagers, Rob, it would be almost impossible for there to be like a top 40 band that we had never heard of.
Like I'm not saying you liked them or knew all their music, but you had heard of them.
There weren't like popular TV shows that you had never heard of.
Like you knew it.
You maybe didn't watch it, but you knew what it was.
But today there could be like someone and you're like, oh, who's that?
And they're like, that's the biggest singer in the world.
You know what I mean?
Like you just, it's very easy to be removed from it because you go to your sources.
So like, I don't even know exactly what Sam Harris is these days.
I know that like the response to him online is just like universal mockery.
But he for a period there, he had like one of the biggest podcasts that was out.
This guy was like, and he was, he always did this thing, which really bothered me.
I don't know.
Did you ever listen to his podcast?
I believe it was called Waking Up also, just like same title as the book that I liked.
But his podcast would always, he would do this thing where he was like, now a lot of people have different bias from different perspectives.
But as an intellectual, it's our job to look at all perspectives and discern the true position here.
And it was always just this thing of like, this tone of like, I'm going to let you know that I'm the rational voice in the room.
And it's like, just make your point, dude.
You know what I mean?
I don't need all these like smoke and mirrors.
Like just fucking, just talk to me like a human being.
And if your point is so rational, then I'll be like, hey, that was a really rational point.
Okay, fine.
But he always kind of like had this status as being like the true rational intellectual, which is what a lot of these fucking like militant atheists kind of rely on.
And it's funny to just see that guy making just such pathetic arguments.
Just really pathetic and embarrassing.
And as I said before, I should not enjoy the downfall of anyone, but I am.
I am enjoying it.
Well, I mean, it's just, he speaks to the wrong talking point.
Why do I need faith in organizations if they're giving me bad information?
And the reason being because you just feel like there's supposed to be a compliant like world group below.
And since when, and since when did faith become a virtue, Mr. Militant Atheist?
That's a good point.
Right.
But I think the reason, it's not so much that you take pride in someone's downfall, but I think it's just showcasing how corrupt their worldview is of look at where this got you.
Firstly, people don't agree with you.
And you look, honestly, I'm not trying to like, you seem unwell.
This seems like you're on a crybaby tour where you're really committed to points of view that I seem to, that seem unfactual and not popular.
So why not just make a change?
Well, and the other thing is that I believe he has refused to debate Brett Weinstein on this topic or on any of this stuff.
And if you remember, we talked about this.
I believe we played on the podcast where Brett Weinstein.
I think he was in Epstein's Island and they got dirt on him.
Same as Neil deGrassy.
It sounds like he got some people who got us.
Yeah, I'm just saying that that sounds like that at that point, where it's like, nope, I got my marching orders.
Listen, I get your point.
But I believe we played on the podcast where Brett Weinstein said to him, because he like made a video about how wrong Brett Weinstein was, and Brett Weinstein was like, okay, look, at this point, since we're both so big in this world, we were both kind of in this loosely connected group together at one point.
He goes, I think if you're going to make these videos, then you kind of have an obligation to like, let's hash this out.
And he goes, we can do it in whatever format you want to.
It can be a one-on-one conversation.
There can be a moderate.
There can be a moderator of your choosing who's there.
Like he goes, whatever format you want, we'll do it.
And I believe he's refused to do that.
And it's just like, because he knows Brett Weinstein will fucking wreck you, dude.
He will wreck you on this if you go debate him on it.
So like, I don't know what to say.
There's just his, his positions here are indefensible and they rely on these straw men and then kind of ridiculous assertions about how we ought to have faith in institutions that are blatantly lying to us.
I think we need a conversation in our culture about, you know, your Jimmy Kimmels and your Stephen Colberts and the other victims of Epstein's children.
Funding Global Conflicts00:15:50
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All right, let's get back into the show.
All right.
Well, speaking of somebody who probably never made it to Epstein's island, Chris Christie is, believe it or not, running for president.
And he was just recently on Morning Joe, which is our favorite broadcast.
And this also I thought was pretty interesting.
Talk about like the people living in two different worlds.
Chris Christie, who as far as I can tell, is running against Donald Trump because he's a decent debater and they kind of the establishment needs a candidate in there who is just kind of like filling the role of unapologetically prosecuting Donald Trump.
He's running.
Let's take a look at what he had to say on Morning Joe.
See, Ukraine is the undercard.
It's the undercard because the Chinese who are funding the Russian aggression against Ukraine are watching.
And if we cut and run on Ukraine, the next fight is going to be in Taiwan.
And there, it's not going to be us just supplying weapons.
It's going to be American men and women who are going to be sent three quarters of the way around the world to fight there.
And they're going to have to fight there not only to protect the freedom of Taiwan, but for those who don't care about that, be practical.
Two-thirds of the world's semiconductors are produced in Taiwan.
Everything that runs our cell phones, our computers, our automobiles, and just about every other element of American life now will be controlled by the Chinese Communist Party.
I don't think that's...
Let's pause right here.
So if you didn't catch that, Chris Christie had just come back from Ukraine.
They had a reinforced airplane, I guess, that was strong enough to carry him over there.
And this is now his justification for why we must support the war in Ukraine, because this is the undercard.
And we're getting ready for the main event.
This to me is one of the most hilarious defenses for the war in Ukraine.
You see, we got to fight this war because of this other war, which mind you has not started yet, but is just going to.
Just take that as a given.
It's going to.
China will be invading Taiwan.
And when that happens, by the way, we're not just sending weapons.
We're sending the U.S. military.
This is going to be a direct war with China.
We're going to war with China.
And so the only way to stop. us from going to war with China is to go to war with Russia in Ukraine.
You got that, Rob?
That is actually their defense for this war.
Like, let that settle in for a second.
Because this next war, which hasn't happened yet, means actually a direct war with China.
So we have to go to war with Russia.
Even though the war with Russia is pushing Russia and China into each other's arms.
Don't let that fuck with you.
Any thoughts?
Yeah, it certainly seems like not bleeding up our own resources and not being at odds with the Russians would make it easier to oppose China.
This is their new talking point is that if we let Russia get away with this, then China will have the balls to go take Taiwan.
And I think they also somewhat realized that when China didn't back us up on this one, that maybe China was playing a game of, oh, if the U.S., if this is very costly for the U.S. and Putin is successful because we didn't get their back, then it's going to be harder for anyone to oppose us when we do take Taiwan.
But that makes it a strategic error.
Like it was a strategic error from the outset, the same way like, you know, if Iraq and Iran were natural enemies and you were truly concerned with Iran, it would have makes sense to, you know, take out Saddam Hussein if you were truly concerned with Iran.
And so in this case, if your real concern was China, then you probably really wanted to be on good terms with Russia.
That was a strategic error.
And at the moment, you get a lot of people who are dying.
So why not just like stop the dying?
And then we'll have more resources and then we'll deal with the China thing.
That sounds like, by the way, which is all just speculation.
It sounds like you'd be in a better spot for trying to do that.
So this is certainly one problem is that if you're making this argument, there's a much stronger argument to say like, well, what if we just didn't get involved in Ukraine, didn't prolong the conflict, didn't send in so many resources, and then we were sitting in a position where we had all of those resources to spend defending Taiwan.
Even from your perspective, if that's what you want to have, then okay, fine.
Now, when he, first of all, again, you can't stress enough that like China hasn't invaded Taiwan.
They've been living under this one China policy for quite a long time.
It doesn't seem like there's any real like argument as to why that's about to happen, just that it could.
And therefore we must fight a war off something that's possible to happen is pretty insane.
But even notice now when he gets into this thing, which is another big talking point now amongst like conservative hawks, that like, well, look, all the semiconductors are made in Taiwan.
So even as Chris Christie says, even if you don't care about the Taiwanese freedom, because he's such a good person, you may not be as good a person as Chris Christie, who's willing, very willing to send other people's children to go fight and die over there because he's such a good person.
But you may not be as good a person as Chris Christie.
But, you know, even if you're not, I mean, we got these semiconductors, man.
So we can't let the Chinese take Taiwan, which is, okay, there's a few aspects to that.
But even if you accept that, what is completely unacknowledged in that equation?
It's completely unacknowledged.
goes, yeah, but so you're saying to protect semiconductors for the first time, you're going to have nuclear-armed countries go to war directly.
That's what he's claiming.
He's claiming not just the proxy war type deal in Ukraine, but actually a direct war.
Oh, in their territory, in their neck of the woods, we're going to have a direct war with China, who's sitting on quite a few H-bombs.
Like, okay, semiconductor risk over here, but are you even going to address this H-bomb risk over here?
Or we're just going to pretend like that doesn't even exist.
Like, we're just going to pretend like after how difficult, let's say, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were, that a war with China does not pose a serious threat to the United States of America.
We're now going to war with a country that can press buttons and wipe out American cities.
And that's not even to be, I guess, considered in this equation.
We'll just skip right over that and go to the semiconductors.
Okay.
I also, I hate the given on the semiconductors.
Like we need to fight to keep our semiconductor production facility.
Like, well, why are they all there?
What happened here that we're in the strategic mess, that we're at the whims of China not wanting to take South Korea?
Like, what happened here?
That's South Korea.
I'm sorry.
Taiwan.
I mean, what happened here?
So like, first is, why not just change the legislation so we can actually have semiconductors here is one.
And two is, I don't know, why such lack of faith in the free markets?
Yeah.
Listen, man, even beyond the free markets, like even if you want to be a fucking statist about this, right?
Right.
Look, in World War II, when it was determined that we had no other choice but to go to war, we converted mass amounts of factories into producing weapons.
We had the Manhattan Project where we said, look, you have an unlimited budget.
You're going to figure out this nuclear weapon thing, right?
Like even with statist solutions, how would the response not be, well, then we're going to have a Manhattan project for producing semiconductors?
That's going to be our thing.
We're wiping away all regulations, all restrictions, and we're going to start producing our own semiconductors because like we got to have them.
It's the backbone of our technological economy.
Wouldn't that make more sense than going, no, my plan is direct war with a nuclear-armed superpower?
Like, what are you talking about here?
Like, there's just so many different things you could go to aside from just the free market, even though, of course, Rob, I agree with you that that would be the ideal solution.
But even in your like government-centric brain, wouldn't you just go, well, then we're going to need a Manhattan project for producing semiconductors?
And like, isn't that preferable to a direct war with China?
Seems insane.
All just seems insane to me.
Sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off there.
Any other thoughts you have?
Go ahead.
Well, that's why Chris Christie is actually on MSNBC and doing his job well of pitching the Ukrainian war.
And just you can go.
Yeah, appeal to those old school Republicans.
Isn't it a great fucking thing where it's like, oh, we have a two-party system, and yet this guy who's running for the Republican nomination can just go onto MSNBC and say everything they completely agree with.
Like, okay, yes, you're right there with the Democrats.
Congratulations.
Here, let's play the end of this clip.
It's a place that we want to be in for a practical economic or technological perspective.
And when you look at what's happening here, then go to the Middle East.
The Iranians are obviously coordinating with the Russians and the Chinese to provide more sophisticated weaponry to the Russians.
And the folks in the Middle East, whether it's the Saudis, the Emiratis, the Qataris, are all going to look at this and say, it's not worth it to be friends with the United States anymore.
We might as well cut the best deal we can with the Chinese.
All right, so let's pause it right here because this is what's so raised.
Yeah, the Iranians are working with the Russians to give them the most sophisticated weapons because that's where you go for the most sophisticated weapons is to Iran, as everybody knows.
So this whole part, it's like, yeah, but can't like this is all just spin.
I mean, can't you obviously look at this from the opposite perspective where he's like, well, look, the Chinese are working with the Russians.
They're funding this war there.
The Iranians are coordinating with the Chinese and the Russians and they're all trying to get more weapons in on Russia's side.
And look at all these other players like the Saudis and all these guys who are now, they're kind of open to like, oh, maybe we'll join this community.
And it's like, okay, right.
But what's the other way to look at that is that, oh, yeah, our policy of fighting a proxy war against Russia has actually pushed all of these countries to work more closely together.
And perhaps our policy over the last, you know, what has it been over the last 50 years of just demonizing and doing everything we can to undermine Iran.
Yeah, that's put them in a position where when some other people are grouping up against America, they're probably going to want to jump in.
And perhaps the last 20 years of just catastrophic wars throughout the Middle East have put a lot of Middle Eastern countries in a position to go like, oh yeah, maybe we'll jump over on this side.
And perhaps if the Saudis are this willing to drop us, maybe we shouldn't have been propping them up for all of these years.
Maybe we shouldn't have given them a war of genocide in Yemen and backed them up and refueled their fighter planes and done all of this stuff for them.
Maybe all of that, which you supported, was really bad policy that led to this place.
And instead, he takes that and goes, so, no, see, this is proof that we must continue this neocon hawkish policy, which is like, it's just madness.
It's absolute madness.
I'm surprised he's even allowed on cable.
I could take this guy down with two visual ads.
The first is you take that picture of him when he was sitting out on the beach, and then you put him with the pigs from Animal Farm, and you just put up the rules for thee and not for me.
That's one.
It just says it all, literally.
And this guy's a corrupt individual.
Or here's another one.
I got stuck in that traffic jam.
Just take a picture, get the picture of the bridge on the day he shut down the George Washington Bridge and people died being unable to get to the hospitals and just say, don't let Chris Christie jam you up.
That's it.
That's all it takes.
This guy is a corrupt politician, always has, always was.
And it's unbelievable that they'll even, and a failed politician at that.
I mean, what'd he pull at 2% the last time around?
And I guess this is the best they got to try and parade the neocon talking points.
Well, they just remediate it.
They need someone who's going to be a pit bull attacking Donald Trump.
And so that's what they, that's what they got here.
Where does this payday come from?
Like at the end of the day, like where does he actually, what is he?
He gets to write another book on the tail of Donald Trump and, you know, it just gets bought by someone for a shit ton of money.
Like, where does the payday actually come from for this shit?
I don't know, but it's coming from somewhere.
It's coming from somewhere.
All right, let's play.
Things get tough.
Americans run the other way.
One of the points of my campaign, guys, is that America has never been great by being small.
And right now, in elements of my party and the elements and some elements of the Democratic party.
Yeah, just pause it right there.
Oh, my God.
It really is so funny.
America's never been great by being small.
We've been great by being really, really obese, like crazy fat.
That's how we're great.
It's like, well, what does that even mean?
We're not great when we're small.
We're great when we're big.
Okay.
Fucking third grade logic here.
Let's play the rest of this.
We are arguing over what I consider to be small issues.
They're not unimportant, but they're small.
The big issues that we have to deal with, and one of them is American leadership around the world.
Those issues are what makes America bigger, stronger, richer, freer.
And every time, going all the way back to 1776, the Civil War, World War II, and the Cold War.
ending in the Reagan era, when we had presidents who said, we're going to make some sacrifices and we're going to go big.
We always came out on top.
We had a country after the revolution.
We had a united country free of slavery after the Civil War.
We just pause, man.
Didn't we go big with Vietnam?
Didn't we go big with Iraq?
Didn't we go big with, you know, whatever the fuck we were doing in Afghanistan for 20 years?
Wasn't that going big?
How did that do?
How did that go for us?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, and even the examples he's giving.
Reagan Era Leadership00:02:28
I mean, it's like, even he goes, American leadership in the world.
Somehow American leadership, the term leadership always involves people being exploded to death.
Like that's always what the term leadership seems to mean.
Wars.
That's what it means.
More and more wars.
And haven't wars worked out so good for us?
And even in the wars he's talking about, it's like, this is our greatness is that, hey, we fought a civil war where 600,000 people died.
Remember, we burned down our own country.
I'm not even like speaking about like whether you think it was necessary or it wasn't necessary.
Just like, you still think when you talk about that, the story isn't just like, how awesome was that?
How awesome was World War II?
The biggest mass murder fest in human history.
But remember, it was big.
Remember how big it was?
That's what America's great when we're big.
All he's pointing to are wars.
That's literally all he said.
The Civil War, the Second World War, the Cold War, which by the way, the Cold War also included the war in Korea and the war in Vietnam.
Tell me about how great that was, that we went so big.
It's just like, it's so unbelievably sick and twisted, this worldview.
And to start with this kind of like, well, maybe you don't care about, you know, Taiwan's freedom because you're just not as good a person as me, but I'm such a good person that I just love wars.
I love mass murder campaigns all over the place because that's what being a good person is all about.
I don't participate in any of them.
I've never fought in one, never been near one, but I sure do support sending other people's kids to go fight them because I'm such a good person.
That's Chris Christie's campaign.
He will be eating donuts while he sends your son off to die in Taiwan.
Vote for Chris Christie.
Go big.
Go big.
All right, let's play the last few seconds here.
Protected a free Europe and a free rest of the world that became the leader of the world after the World War II.
And Reagan in nine years took down the Berlin Wall and in 10 years eliminated the Soviet Union from the face of the earth.
That's the kind of thing we should be doing.
And the Ukraine fight, Joe, is an undercard.
If we do it right, there won't be another fighting rate.
If we do it wrong, I completely agree.
Not going to be good.
Coddling Riot Behavior00:11:01
Wow.
Joe Scarborough completely agrees.
You know, you are full of shit.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
So, okay, before we wrap up, the last thing I did want to talk about was this.
There was evidently like a day of like some pretty chaotic riots in Union Square.
Now, I don't exactly understand, but evidently there was an influencer, a content creator who stirred this up.
Kai Seenot.
I'm not a follower, but evidently he was offering to give out a bunch of free stuff.
And he, yeah, it's PS5s and other things.
And this led to just a mass riot of thousands and thousands of people.
They came down to Union Square right down the block from the Stan Comedy Club, where we do Legion of Skanks every week.
And they just went crazy.
There was several pretty vicious assaults, a whole bunch of property destruction.
And evidently, this influencer has now been charged with some causing a riot or something like that.
There's, yeah, we have some footage of these riots, Brian.
So let's get a little taste of what I'm talking about.
That's a lot of people.
Yo, where the fuck my PS5?
Oh my God.
Yeah, that's not great.
I don't know, Rob.
What are your thoughts on these?
You know, we have, we saw, obviously, these major riots in 2020.
This did seem to be a little bit of a flashback to some of us.
What are your thoughts?
Well, there's something a little bit sad that I guess a PS5 can get this many people to show up to like, it's not a guaranteed free PS5.
You know, I don't know.
It's like, there's something sad to me that you're, I guess, being able to stay home and play video games is so important to you, but you can't figure out how to make $500 just to accomplish that goal of just staying home and doing nothing else with your time or life.
Yeah, really?
It just seems that seems like a really defeated lifestyle that somebody offering you a PS5, you're showing up like it's a ticket to heaven and that it was otherwise an unattainable goal.
But I'll hand it back to you because I know you had a different perspective of why these people, oh, that's even the wrong way to say it, why individuals might feel motivated to riot.
Well, you know, I was just saying that it's, it's, I think it's time.
Let's say it's, it's long past time for people who, look, if we're in the space that we're in, we're, we're kind of useless if we're not willing to say, like, tell unpopular truths and just kind of like tell it like it is.
And I just think that this type of behavior like needs to not be coddled, particularly from libertarians.
And this was kind of like one of the things that I butted heads with some other libertarians about during 2020 when I just had like absolutely no tolerance for the riots.
And it's it's nuts to me.
And I remember there would be all of these kind of like elaborate narratives that people would weave to at times justify it.
you know, the moral case for looting and that times kind of just explain it away.
Oh, you know, riots are the voice of the unheard and all of this stuff.
And we were supposed to sit there and pretend that this was really people outraged about what happened to George Floyd.
And the truth is that the riots had nothing to do with that.
They had nothing to do with any of that.
It was just pure opportunism and just young, violent people who wanted to break shit and fuck people up.
And that's what it was.
And I don't see why we can't call that out.
And for libertarians, it's kind of like, I don't know, our entire philosophy is based around belief in non-aggression, property rights, order, civilization.
And this is like the polar opposite of that.
And I do think that sometimes a lot of it is the fact that it's being perpetrated by young black men and that therefore people get very uncomfortable to criticize it.
And that it does seem to some degree that even some libertarians have internalized a lot of this kind of progressive ideology.
That if young black men are doing something, well, then that must be because they were victimized in some way.
And that's just bullshit.
It's bullshit.
This is not because these kids have been victims.
You know, to your point, to make five, to hustle together to make 500 bucks in America in 2023 is not an impossible task.
These are not people who live in impoverished conditions compared to so many previous generations who we would have considered it unacceptable to behave in this manner.
And the truth is that this is much more a comment on the culture that these kids are being brought up in, the lack of family units in these in these cultures, and just the incredibly trashy and destructive ideologies that are pervasive and pushed upon this demographic.
And I think the truth is that so much of it is pushed, like, listen, you're the victims of a racist society and you should be given free shit and you should expect free shit.
And all of this stuff, I think, is very, very damaging.
The ideology of victimization and handouts results in this and this kind of insistence that you can never just be blamed for your own behavior.
And I think when you see stuff like this, I go, you know, don't don't spin me any bullshit about the voice of the marginalized.
This is just like savage behavior that is inexcusable.
You know, I'm, I, young people can get into the energy of I want to break shit and fuck people up.
That is something that young men are susceptible to.
The rest of the adult population is not here to make excuses for it or coddle it.
Our job is to put that shit down with whatever force is necessary to put it down with.
I would personally like to see a libertarian society.
I would like to see a society where New Yorkers were not disarmed, you know, short of the criminals.
I would like to see a society where there were private security and they were protecting private property.
That's not the society we live in right now.
Right now, you can't snap your fingers and undo 50 years of disarming New Yorkers.
You can't snap your fingers and privatize Union Square.
But someone could snap their fingers and have the cops put this shit down.
And I know that that rubs some libertarians the wrong way, but if our whole problem with the police is essentially that they violate people's rights, well, a mob like this, I'd much rather, this is what some libertarians got pissed off at me in 2020 for saying, although I was right then, and I'm right now when I say it, that this shit is worse than the state.
It's worse.
A chaotic riot, the mob is actually worse than the state.
Because in both cases, you have violations of rights.
But in one case, you also just have complete chaos.
And you tell me for any libertarian, you know, like even if you don't like the cops, which I don't, but you're just not living in reality if you say, hey, would you rather you and your wife and your kids have to walk up a block together to get home?
Would you rather it be a block that was lined with police officers or what we just watched?
Which one would you prefer?
Which one do you think is more likely or less likely to violate your natural rights?
I guess the cops were afraid to get involved because you can only imagine the looting if they had accidentally hurt somebody in the PlayStation 5 riots.
Yeah, well, but that's the truth.
And then how much those cops would be demonized and then what the response to that would be.
And it's just like something in this cycle needs to break.
And I think it at least starts with us not being too cowardly to call things for what they are.
And where's Sony to speak to this marginalized group and create more opportunities for them to get PS5s?
They're right.
We have to give them more PS5s.
That's really the solution.
I think Sony would maybe drop the price for marginalized groups so that they don't feel like they have to riot in order to play their video games.
I think Sony's actually the oppressor.
Yeah, there you go.
Great corporate coins where only white people can, with rich parents, can stay home and play video games and the other marginalized communities have to riot just to showcase for their voices to be heard about the lack of video games that they have.
Obviously, the only answer here is to give these fine, upstanding gentlemen some free PS5s and then to go fight a war in China to protect the semiconductors, which those PS5s need.
That checks out.
I mean, it's obviously the only common sense policy we really have left.