Part Of The Problem - Dave Smith - Trump Gets Booked
Aired: 2023-08-29
Duration: 48:18


=== Tucker vs Joe Rogan (15:39) ===

[00:00:01]  Fill her up.
[00:00:02]  You are listening to the Gas Digital Network.
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[00:00:11]  We spy on all of our own citizens.
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[00:00:27]  You're listening to part of the problem on the Gas Digital Network.
[00:00:31]  Here's your host, James.
[00:00:34]  What's up, everybody?
[00:00:34]  Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
[00:00:37]  I'm Dave Smith.
[00:00:38]  I am rolling solo this episode.
[00:00:40]  Robbie the Fire Bernstein is out doing gigs.
[00:00:43]  Hope everyone's doing good.
[00:00:45]  Thanks for watching or listening.
[00:00:47]  I just got back from Austin, Texas.
[00:00:50]  Just did another episode of the Joe Rogan experience, and I was promoting the release of my brand new comedy special, which is up right on my YouTube page.
[00:01:00]  If you're watching this on YouTube, it's right here right for you.
[00:01:03]  If not, go on over there and check it out.
[00:01:06]  It's been pretty incredible.
[00:01:07]  The special's been out for a couple of days now, and the response has just been unbelievable.
[00:01:12]  So it's very cool.
[00:01:13]  Thank you guys all so much for those of you who watched and enjoyed it and said nice things.
[00:01:18]  I appreciate that.
[00:01:19]  And thanks to Joe Rogan, of course, for letting me go promote it on his show and doing shows at the comedy mothership is always just the best time.
[00:01:28]  So I had a great time.
[00:01:29]  I just got back today.
[00:01:31]  I did not sleep much last night as I had an early flight in and a late night of shows.
[00:01:36]  So I apologize.
[00:01:37]  This episode might be a little bit on the shorter side, but I did want to come talk to you guys about some of this stuff because, whoa, a lot's happened.
[00:01:46]  Even since I just recorded the Joe Rogan experience the other day, I mean, we kind of knew this was happening, but of course, that night you had the presidential debates, the Republican presidential debates.
[00:01:59]  You had Donald Trump do his thing with Tucker.
[00:02:01]  And then today, Donald Trump was booked in Georgia.
[00:02:06]  So let's get into a bunch of this because I think there's a lot of interesting things here to talk about.
[00:02:10]  Number one, I believe it was just on the last podcast that I was talking about this dynamic of the Trump mugshot and how I've always thought this was a big thing that they were going after.
[00:02:21]  And they got it.
[00:02:22]  They got the Trump mugshot today.
[00:02:25]  This clip caught my eye because it was really kind of confirming what I had just been talking about on the last show, that this really means a lot to them.
[00:02:34]  Let's just quickly watch this Danny Deutsch, Donny Deutsch over at MSNBC.
[00:02:39]  I want to focus on the mugshot today because that's a big deal.
[00:02:43]  That is a big deal.
[00:02:44]  That will be Donald Trump's image throughout history.
[00:02:48]  That one photograph will be one of the most important photographs in the history of this country.
[00:02:52]  And we are a visual world.
[00:02:54]  And think if you're creating an ad or you're writing a story, you just need to show that image.
[00:02:59]  You don't have to tell any other story.
[00:03:01]  An ex-president with a mugshot.
[00:03:03]  Of course, the outcome of the case is the important thing, but even that visual that will stand through time.
[00:03:08]  And once again, if I'm doing anything, if I want to do anything against Donald Trump, if I'm creating an ad, that's the image I use.
[00:03:14]  And Donald Trump, who's a guy who's so concerned with his appearance, the way he looks, his image, his legacy, this will be something that will just stick with him in the deepest, deepest gut.
[00:03:26]  So Donny Deutsch there basically just says the quiet part out loud, exactly what I was talking about on the previous show, which I think sounds might sound a little bit nutty when we talk about it, but then they just come out and admit it.
[00:03:37]  That's really what it's all about.
[00:03:38]  Donny Deutsch, if you don't know, he's a very personal issue with Donald Trump.
[00:03:42]  You could see he couldn't help but just smiling through that little point that he's making there, that this is really what it's about.
[00:03:49]  Look, we got the shot of him.
[00:03:50]  We got the shot of him now.
[00:03:52]  Look, it's so damaging.
[00:03:53]  It doesn't even really matter what story you tell.
[00:03:56]  You just have this image.
[00:03:57]  You have this image of him as the story that he committed some grotesque crime as the story that the entire legal system is being weaponized against a political opponent.
[00:04:05]  That doesn't really matter, but look, look at this guy.
[00:04:07]  Doesn't he look like a bitch?
[00:04:09]  Doesn't he look like a criminal?
[00:04:10]  Does it like that's it?
[00:04:11]  And that's what they, that's one of the major things they've been going for here.
[00:04:15]  So they got that today.
[00:04:17]  Today was a crazy day, a crazy day.
[00:04:19]  It wasn't just Donald Trump.
[00:04:21]  It was a whole bunch of his lawyers and supporters, like Mark Meadows and Rudy Giuliani and all these guys all getting booked and Sidney Powell and all of them.
[00:04:33]  A whole bunch of mugshots coming out of it.
[00:04:35]  And it's hard to not look at this and just think like this is undeniably one of the biggest stories in the history of the United States of America.
[00:04:48]  I mean, like having, having the former president, the current frontrunner for the Republican nomination, like with a mugshot, with all of his associates getting mugshots too.
[00:05:03]  That's a big deal.
[00:05:04]  Nothing like this has ever happened before in my life.
[00:05:06]  And I don't think in the history of the country.
[00:05:08]  I don't think anything like this has happened before.
[00:05:11]  And there's how whatever you want to say about the what's really going on here.
[00:05:18]  I mean, I, I, uh, on Rogan's podcast the other day, I, if you think in a pretty in-depth way, I broke down how this entire thing, you know, basically since 2016, the entire legal system has been weaponized against Donald Trump.
[00:05:31]  And that continued while he was the sitting president of the United States for four years.
[00:05:36]  It has continued in the two plus years since he's been out of the White House.
[00:05:44]  Whether you, that's your view or not, I think it is objectively the correct one.
[00:05:50]  In terms of how this plays out right now, it seems like at least the majority of both sides are dug in here.
[00:05:59]  And there is going to be the Trump haters who see this as like proof that he's a criminal.
[00:06:06]  I mean, look at him.
[00:06:07]  There's a mugshot of him.
[00:06:08]  Obviously, he's a criminal now.
[00:06:10]  But for the entire, I would say, base of Trump supporters and probably most independents and, you know, kind of centrist types, this looks like what it is.
[00:06:24]  This just looks like a political hit job.
[00:06:26]  In the middle of a campaign that Joe Biden, where Joe Biden is clearly in trouble, they are just rounding up and arresting their political adversaries.
[00:06:37]  And say what you will about America, and there's a whole lot of bad things to say about the American government.
[00:06:42]  There's a whole lot of good things to say about America as a country.
[00:06:46]  But this is different.
[00:06:48]  There's a lot of really bad things that the American government has done, you know, start wars and, you know, lock people up for bullshit charges and shit like that.
[00:06:58]  This is different.
[00:06:59]  I'm saying it's the worst thing we've ever done because we've done a lot of bad shit, but this is different in kind.
[00:07:06]  The idea of just seeing the like, what could you even compare this to?
[00:07:12]  Imagine a situation where, you know, you think about like Barack Obama when he was running for president or Bill Clinton when he was running for president or even like any of these, George Bush or any of them, like at the beginning of a presidential campaign.
[00:07:25]  Or even just like the ones who didn't win, but like looked like they had a chance to, you know, John Kerry or something like that, Al Gore.
[00:07:33]  Imagine just Al Gore and his four top, you know, legal counsel and advisors all being arrested in the middle of the campaign.
[00:07:44]  It's just like a wild thing.
[00:07:46]  And it's, you know, Donald Trump came out.
[00:07:49]  He was booked quickly and got out.
[00:07:51]  He's already on his way back home, but he came out and gave his first, you know, like brief comments and basically just said what you'd expect Trump to say, which was that, you know, he's like, I believe the election was stolen and I have every right to say that.
[00:08:08]  So that's going to be his talking point.
[00:08:10]  And Donny Deutsch, whether you like him or don't, which I don't particularly, he's right in the sense that this is going to be on every attack ad against Donald Trump.
[00:08:24]  This is going to be a thing that Democrats use.
[00:08:26]  This is going to be a piece of propaganda for them.
[00:08:29]  How powerful?
[00:08:30]  I'm not sure.
[00:08:30]  We'll see.
[00:08:31]  But anyway, it's going to be interesting to see where this comes, how this all comes down.
[00:08:36]  I feel like if I had to guess, I think that they've gone so far with all this stuff at this point that they almost like they have to go for the jugular now.
[00:08:50]  I don't think they can just indict Donald Trump this many times and then not get a conviction or not do something more extreme.
[00:08:56]  I kind of feel like that has to happen at this point now.
[00:08:59]  Like there's, it wouldn't make sense for them to take it this far and not just finish the job.
[00:09:03]  The damage is already done.
[00:09:05]  I mean, I don't know.
[00:09:06]  I don't know if you could lose.
[00:09:08]  I don't know if Donald Trump's plane went down under like mysterious circumstances.
[00:09:13]  I don't know if the Donald Trump supporters could be even any more disillusioned with the system than they already are.
[00:09:18]  All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is YoKratom.
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[00:09:58]  I don't know.
[00:10:00]  All right.
[00:10:01]  So anyway, the other night, last night, there was also a very interesting moment.
[00:10:10]  It was the first Republican primary presidential debate, and Donald Trump pulled a Donald Trump power move and he bailed on it.
[00:10:22]  And then at the last minute, announced that he was going live with Tucker Carlson on Twitter or X, whatever X, I guess is what it's called now.
[00:10:33]  So he was going live on X, which as far as I'm aware, I did not know was a feature.
[00:10:42]  I never knew you could do that on Twitter.
[00:10:43]  I think this might have been made brand new for them.
[00:10:47]  Like, I note there were, there's spaces and things like that where you could go live on, but I don't know.
[00:10:51]  You could just like live, like do interview.
[00:10:53]  I've never seen anyone do that before.
[00:10:55]  Do like a live interview on Twitter.
[00:10:58]  But he announced he was doing it with Tucker Carlson.
[00:11:03]  And, you know, it's hard to, there's a lot of speculation about what these views really mean, the way Twitter measures views because they're saying it got something like 200 million views or something like that.
[00:11:14]  I'm skeptical that that's actually the number, but it, it does seem like it probably got more views by a substantial amount than the Fox News presidential debate.
[00:11:26]  And that in itself is just like such a big deal.
[00:11:29]  It just like shows you how it's, it's all of this stuff.
[00:11:32]  It's just like you realize you're like, yo, we're in a whole new territory here, like in a whole new landscape that is nothing like the past.
[00:11:41]  And that's kind of an keep that theme in mind because that was kind of an interesting theme to me during the actual debate.
[00:11:48]  We're in this new world and it seems like some people kind of haven't adjusted to it.
[00:11:54]  The anyway, so Trump goes on with Tucker.
[00:11:59]  I will say I thought the interview was a little bit lackluster.
[00:12:04]  One of the first things I noticed, and I'm curious, you know, guys, let me know like on social media or whatever, what you thought about this.
[00:12:11]  One of the first things I noticed, I thought Trump looked like he's lost weight.
[00:12:15]  I thought his face looked like sucked out a little bit.
[00:12:20]  And because of that, I think he looked a little bit older.
[00:12:23]  And I just kind of made me wonder, like, how much of a toll all of this is taking on Donald Trump.
[00:12:31]  Because you would imagine it'd be, even though Donald Trump is like not made of the same things as regular human beings, and he seems kind of like unflappable in many ways, he is, I'm pretty sure, a human being.
[00:12:46]  And I mean, he's, he's facing quite a few indictments right now with the most powerful interest in the world clearly pretty hell-bent on putting him in jail.
[00:13:00]  And I'd imagine that'd be a stressful situation to be in.
[00:13:03]  And that just made me wonder.
[00:13:04]  It was like the first time I ever saw, I ever saw something that kind of looked to me like, oh, I think he's feeling this.
[00:13:10]  So anyway, that was just interesting.
[00:13:11]  Tucker Carlson asked him some interesting questions.
[00:13:13]  I don't think Donald Trump gave too many really interesting answers.
[00:13:17]  He had one funny moment where he was trashing Kamala Harris for how she talks and it was pretty entertaining.
[00:13:24]  Tucker asked him at one point if he was concerned that they were going to try to assassinate him, which I just, that was really interesting.
[00:13:32]  It's crazy for like that to be like just like that's the dynamic in America now.
[00:13:37]  That the biggest cable news channel can have the Republican primary debate.
[00:13:43]  Donald Trump can say, nope, I'm going on Twitter with Tucker Carlson and get way more eyes on it.
[00:13:48]  And the questions he's being asked, the questions that the frontrunner is being asked by the guy who like, okay, I understand they both have left their old occupations, but you've got the guy who was the biggest show in cable news and the guy who was the president of the United States of America, both not that long ago.
[00:14:05]  And the question he's getting is, do you think the government's going to try to assassinate you?
[00:14:10]  I just thought that was a crazy moment.
[00:14:12]  Like, there's something I got to say that I really like about it.
[00:14:16]  It just demonstrates like how much this Overton window has been pulled way over here.
[00:14:23]  The idea that it would even be plausible that the government would assassinate its enemies seemed like something that wouldn't be discussed in polite society in the mainstream very recently.
[00:14:35]  But now you realize like this is the mainstream.
[00:14:38]  It may not be the corporate press, but this is the mainstream press.
[00:14:42]  Like Joe Rogan is the mainstream.
[00:14:44]  Tucker Carlson is the mainstream.
[00:14:47]  Because if not them, who is?
[00:14:48]  Donny Deutsch?
[00:14:50]  You think he's the mainstream and Joe Rogan's the like alternative space?
[00:14:54]  I don't think so.
[00:14:55]  This is the mainstream.
[00:14:57]  And this is the type of question.
[00:14:58]  So I think there's something kind of cool about that because, you know, I, my kind of starting point for how I understand the world is that governments are criminal organizations.
[00:15:12]  And I think it's kind of cool that maybe people are more open to that message because I think that's just an objective reality.
[00:15:21]  The government is, you know, the government is the mafia.
[00:15:27]  It's the dominant mafia who takes over the legal system and also, you know, pretends to be a human rights organization, essentially.
[00:15:38]  That's what governments are.

=== Ron DeSantis Political Winner (04:42) ===

[00:15:40]  So anyway, there were a couple other questions he asked about Jeffrey Epstein.
[00:15:43]  Trump didn't have much interesting to say on that.
[00:15:46]  I thought that was kind of, that was a failed opportunity in a way.
[00:15:49]  I was, I kind of, when Tucker started asking about it, I was like, oh, that's really interesting.
[00:15:52]  I thought maybe Trump would like, you know, be like, yeah, obviously something shady is going on here, but he didn't at all.
[00:15:59]  And he was like, no, he probably killed himself.
[00:16:01]  It's fine.
[00:16:01]  Yeah, it's probably.
[00:16:02]  All right.
[00:16:03]  Anyway, I'd say just politically speaking, the big winner of the last two days, the big winner, there's two.
[00:16:14]  And I think it's pretty obvious who the two winners are.
[00:16:16]  I don't even think, I don't even see how anyone could dispute this, but there's two big winners, politically speaking, over the last two days.
[00:16:26]  And the first one is obviously Donald Trump, because politically speaking, him being seen as a target of the state, but being seen as a target of the institutions who so many Americans have lost all trust in just helps him.
[00:16:46]  And to me, I think pulling this power move of skipping out of the debate and going like, I'm just going to go over here and do something bigger than this whole debate itself makes way more sense than him sitting there.
[00:16:59]  It's not exactly what I would choose, what I would like to see for my own entertainment value and whatever.
[00:17:06]  I would rather just see Trump go in there and fucking do what Trump used to do.
[00:17:09]  It was always so much fun to just see him battle everybody at those debates and, you know, come up with nicknames and, you know, whatever.
[00:17:15]  If we're going to be living through a crumbling empire, let's at least get some entertainment out of it.
[00:17:20]  So I would have preferred that.
[00:17:21]  But politically speaking, strategically speaking, I think this was a smart move for Trump.
[00:17:26]  He went and just went like, yeah, I'm not going to sit here and fucking argue with Chris Christie.
[00:17:30]  You're not on my level.
[00:17:31]  I'm going to go do a thing that's bigger than anything you can do.
[00:17:35]  So I thought he was a big winner.
[00:17:37]  And then the other big winner, I was actually shocked by how much of a winner he was on this night was Vivek Ramaswamy.
[00:17:48]  And if you watched the debate, one of the things that was really pretty, it was kind of amazing to see.
[00:17:57]  I mean, you have this debate where you have, so you have Mike Pence, who is the last vice president, okay?
[00:18:07]  The last vice president running for president.
[00:18:10]  You have Ron DeSantis, who is the most popular Republican governor in the country.
[00:18:17]  You have these guys like right in the middle.
[00:18:19]  And yet who was the person who everyone was coming after?
[00:18:23]  Who was the person who everyone had their knives out for?
[00:18:27]  It was Vivek Ramaswamy, some like political non-entity up until this year.
[00:18:35]  This like skinny 38-year-old Indian dude with a weird name.
[00:18:41]  And he's the guy everyone wants to attack.
[00:18:43]  Now, that in itself, I thought put him in a position to be the winner.
[00:18:49]  They almost like made him such a bigger entity than he was coming into this.
[00:18:54]  And I think my guess is he's really going to benefit from this night.
[00:18:59]  I thought the losers, I mean, the big one was Ron DeSantis.
[00:19:07]  The big one was Ron DeSantis.
[00:19:09]  Man, his campaign has just been a disaster, just an absolute disaster.
[00:19:13]  And he, you know, this thing was started as essentially, it's a two-man race.
[00:19:19]  It's a race between Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis.
[00:19:22]  And if that's the case, and then you go into this debate where Donald Trump's not there and it's you versus all the JV guys kind of, you kind of have to dominate.
[00:19:32]  You have to do something.
[00:19:33]  And I just felt like I thought his whole thing was forced and just didn't land.
[00:19:38]  He had these incredibly bad moments that were subtle, but were really like exposing him.
[00:19:43]  I don't know.
[00:19:44]  You guys can go online and see it.
[00:19:45]  I don't have the clips of this ready, but there's the one where they asked if Donald Trump won the nomination, but was convicted if you'd still support him.
[00:19:52]  And Vivek immediately puts his hand right up.
[00:19:55]  And then Ron DeSantis like looks around at everybody else and then kind of slowly puts his hand up.
[00:20:00]  And it was, it was, I know it's, I know this is a subtle thing, but that's death if you want to be an alpha leader.
[00:20:07]  Like you, you can't be looking around to see what everyone else does and then make up your mind that, yeah, I guess I'm going to be brave now.
[00:20:14]  That was bad.
[00:20:14]  And then there was the thing where he gave that smile that was the creepiest, weirdest fake smile ever.
[00:20:19]  Anyway, a very bad night, I thought, for him.

=== Defending Our Own Border (16:12) ===

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[00:21:58]  All right, let's get back into the show.
[00:21:59]  Let's play.
[00:22:01]  Let's play the video of, we got a couple of clips here that involve Vivek Ramaswamy.
[00:22:06]  Let's play the first one.
[00:22:07]  Ramaswamy, you would not support an increase of funding to Ukraine.
[00:22:11]  I would not.
[00:22:11]  And I think that this is disastrous that we are protecting against an invasion across somebody else's border when we should use those same military resources to prevent across the invasion of our own southern border here in the United States of America.
[00:22:25]  We are driving Russia further into China's hands.
[00:22:29]  The Russia-China alliance is the single greatest threat we face.
[00:22:33]  And I find it offensive that we have professional politicians on the stage that will make a pilgrimage to Kyiv, to their Pope, Zelensky, doing the same thing for people in Maui or the south side of Chicago or Kensington.
[00:22:46]  I think that we have to put the interests of Americans first.
[00:22:49]  He was referring to our own border instead of somebody else's.
[00:22:52]  And the reality is this is also how we project strength by making America strong.
[00:22:59]  One of the things you'd notice with these presidential debates is that the audience does not represent the GOP voter base.
[00:23:09]  So I know in 2016, this is one of the things Donald Trump used to point out, how they would give the tickets to the donors and he would point them out and call them out as they were all booing him.
[00:23:20]  And he'd be like, I know that guy.
[00:23:21]  He's a big donor.
[00:23:22]  He's a big donor.
[00:23:23]  That's all who's here.
[00:23:24]  And they wouldn't let his people in.
[00:23:25]  He'd always be saying, and you see that where there's, you know, there'll be a split in the crowd where it seems like the majority of the crowd like supported the war in Ukraine and then like a loud minority opposed it.
[00:23:37]  But that's just not representative of the whole GOP base in the same way that Donald Trump was getting booed at those debates, but he was dominating all of the primaries after them.
[00:23:47]  Like it's just not.
[00:23:48]  And I think that this message that Vivek Ramaswamy had here is a very appealing message.
[00:23:55]  This is the essence of the America First pitch.
[00:24:00]  And I got to say, I think like, how could this not be appealing?
[00:24:03]  You know, the Republican voters are not in a neocon moment.
[00:24:08]  That's why so many of the neocons have abandoned them and gone to the Democratic Party.
[00:24:14]  This idea that we should be worried about fighting wars all over the world while our own country collapses, his message of like, hey, how about let's use that military to stop like illegal immigration is just going to be much more appealing to them.
[00:24:29]  So I thought that was a strong pitch.
[00:24:31]  Then he ended up having fire.
[00:24:33]  He had fiery exchanges with almost everybody.
[00:24:35]  This is what was crazy about this debate.
[00:24:37]  I mean, Vivek had fiery exchanges with Pence, with Chris Christie, with all of them.
[00:24:43]  And here's the next one coming up.
[00:24:45]  Let's play that.
[00:24:46]  Governor Haley, you did not raise your hand, meaning that you would support more funding for the Ukraine war.
[00:24:54]  You have said of Governor DeSantis that you didn't appreciate it when he initially called it a territorial dispute.
[00:25:02]  Why?
[00:25:03]  First of all, the American president needs to have moral clarity.
[00:25:06]  They need to know the difference between right and wrong.
[00:25:09]  They need to know the difference between good and evil.
[00:25:12]  When you look at...
[00:25:13]  Can you just pause it already?
[00:25:15]  I just, man, I love this.
[00:25:18]  The way war propaganda works is always so funny to me.
[00:25:21]  It's like you always have to take it down to like, look, let's look at this through the eyes of a seven-year-old boy.
[00:25:29]  You know, like you have to know good and evil and right and wrong.
[00:25:33]  It's literally like you just start speaking like a child.
[00:25:36]  It's just, that's how you have to think of these things.
[00:25:38]  You have to get people into this propaganda.
[00:25:40]  Yes, there's a clear good versus evil.
[00:25:42]  And your problem is you don't know who's good and who's evil.
[00:25:45]  It's just childish thinking.
[00:25:47]  The ridiculous.
[00:25:48]  All right, let's keep on.
[00:25:49]  American country that was invaded by a thug.
[00:25:53]  So when you want to talk about what has been given to Ukraine, less than three and a half percent of our defense budget has been given to Ukraine.
[00:26:02]  If you look at the percentages per GDP, 11 of the European countries have given more than the U.S.
[00:26:08]  But what's really about like the bullshit this lady, Nikki Haley is just so goddamn awful.
[00:26:16]  Those are the bullshit that she's given.
[00:26:17]  So she goes, look at the money we've given.
[00:26:19]  Don't just say the number because the number might sound like a lot, you know, if we go, oh, we've, we've pledged over $100 billion to him.
[00:26:27]  That kind of sounds like it's a lot of money, you know, to regular people.
[00:26:30]  But she, but so she starts going, well, if you look at it as a percentage of our military budget, then it's only like three and a half percent, which by the way, like three and a half percent of the largest military budget in the history of the world is still quite a lot.
[00:26:45]  And then she goes, if you look at the amount of money other nations have given as a percentage of GDP, then some other countries have given more than us.
[00:26:56]  Like, what?
[00:26:57]  Why is it that?
[00:26:58]  Why is that even relevant?
[00:27:00]  Why is that even relevant?
[00:27:02]  Like, it's like, imagine if you were in a fist fight and I was trying to help you and I go, hey, dude, here's a gun.
[00:27:13]  I could give you a gun.
[00:27:15]  And you're like, that's going to change this fist fight for you.
[00:27:17]  But then someone else came along and said, well, I can give you a paperclip.
[00:27:22]  And you were like, okay.
[00:27:23]  And then I asked you like, who gave more?
[00:27:26]  Like, who helped your fight more?
[00:27:27]  The guy who gave you the gun or the guy who gave you the paperclip?
[00:27:30]  It'd be pretty obvious.
[00:27:31]  You'd be like, the gun helped a lot more.
[00:27:33]  But then if I were like, well, you know, that paper clip was a bigger percentage of what that guy had to offer than, you know, all he like he had two paper clips, but I had 10 guns.
[00:27:47]  So I only gave you a 10th of my GDP, but he gave you 50% of his GDP.
[00:27:52]  So he contributed a lot more to this fight than I did.
[00:27:54]  It's literally on that level.
[00:27:56]  It makes no sense to even conceive of this as who's giving a bigger percentage of their economy.
[00:28:03]  What difference does that make?
[00:28:04]  The point is that we've given more than anyone else has by far, by far.
[00:28:08]  That's what actually is relevant.
[00:28:10]  And that's relevant because that's what is relevant to the fight.
[00:28:14]  Who's contributed more to the fight?
[00:28:16]  We are the reason why Ukraine has been able to keep fighting this war for this long.
[00:28:21]  If we hadn't given them that money, they would have had to negotiate with Putin and the war would be long over by now.
[00:28:27]  Okay.
[00:28:28]  The war is only still going on because we've contributed this.
[00:28:31]  So pointing out that some European countries contributed a higher percentage of their GDP than us just means nothing.
[00:28:38]  It's just like an empty talking point, empty talking point for all this war propaganda bullshit.
[00:28:44]  All right, let's keep playing.
[00:28:45]  Held hands, shook hands before the Olympics and named themselves unlimited partners.
[00:28:51]  A win for Russia is a win for China.
[00:28:54]  We have to know that.
[00:28:55]  Ukraine is the first line of defense for us.
[00:28:58]  And the problem that Vivek doesn't understand.
[00:29:01]  Let's pause it again.
[00:29:03]  I just imagine that this world.
[00:29:06]  Ukraine is the first line of defense for the United States of America.
[00:29:10]  Now, I know what you might be thinking.
[00:29:13]  Isn't Ukraine like 5,000 miles away from America on Russia's border in the further most eastern parts of Europe?
[00:29:23]  But yes, you see, that's actually the first line of defense for us.
[00:29:29]  Ukraine, you see, is so strategically important for us, for the United States of America.
[00:29:36]  It's totally unreasonable when Vladimir Putin says that Ukraine is strategically important for Russia, but it's totally reasonable for us to say that that's the first line of defense against us.
[00:29:47]  We have to know that.
[00:29:48]  Ukraine is the first line of defense for us.
[00:29:51]  And the problem that Vivek doesn't understand is he wants to hand Ukraine to Russia.
[00:29:56]  He wants to let China eat Taiwan.
[00:29:58]  He wants to go and stop funding Israel.
[00:30:01]  You don't do that to friends.
[00:30:03]  What you do instead is you have the backs of your friends.
[00:30:05]  Ukraine, it's a front line of defense.
[00:30:08]  Putin has said, if once Russia takes Ukraine, Poland and the Baltics are next.
[00:30:14]  That's a world war.
[00:30:15]  We're trying to prevent war.
[00:30:17]  Look at what Putin did today.
[00:30:18]  Let's pause it right there.
[00:30:19]  No, he hasn't.
[00:30:20]  Putin hasn't said that.
[00:30:22]  That's just not true.
[00:30:23]  Putin has never said he's invading Poland next after Ukraine.
[00:30:27]  That's just not true.
[00:30:29]  Point me to the club where he said that, please.
[00:30:32]  Okay, let's keep playing.
[00:30:37]  When I was at the UN, the Russian ambassador suddenly died.
[00:30:41]  This guy is a murderer, and you are choosing a murderer over a cruel American country.
[00:30:50]  First of all, first of all, first of all, how much do you hate Nikki Hitler?
[00:30:56]  Like, I just can't stand this bitch.
[00:30:58]  She's just doing this girl-like fucking boss thing where she's just shaking her head after she says that.
[00:31:03]  And it's like, what?
[00:31:05]  She's talking about how he murdered this guy, how he shot down this plane the other day, which I, you know, is all very new.
[00:31:10]  We don't know exactly what happened there, but let's assume Putin killed this guy.
[00:31:14]  The guy openly led a mutiny against Putin.
[00:31:17]  The fuck do you think?
[00:31:18]  What do you think?
[00:31:19]  DC wouldn't do that?
[00:31:21]  What do you think DC would do if somebody like tried to actually imagine not what they're pretending happened on January 6th, but someone actually, look what they did to the people on January 6th.
[00:31:30]  But imagine somebody like actually like imagine some military leader actually tried to overthrow the president and then failed.
[00:31:36]  What do you think they would do?
[00:31:38]  He's a murderer.
[00:31:39]  He's a murderer.
[00:31:40]  Like, you know, like as if there's any government that that doesn't apply to.
[00:31:46]  But imagine thinking that doesn't apply to the U.S. government.
[00:31:50]  We haven't murdered anybody, right?
[00:31:52]  All right.
[00:31:55]  We lead the world in murder.
[00:31:57]  for the last 20 years.
[00:31:59]  It's not even close who's got the highest count there.
[00:32:02]  So anyways, all just ridiculous war propaganda.
[00:32:05]  And all this stuff, it's just, this is how these disastrous forever wars continue is this line of attack, like, you want to give Ukraine to Vladimir Putin.
[00:32:16]  You want to give Taiwan to China.
[00:32:18]  You want to give, you know, it's like, it's like, if you didn't want to fight the war in Iraq, you just want to give the Shiites over to Saddam Hussein.
[00:32:27]  It's like, it's not really saying you want to give anyone anything.
[00:32:30]  It's simply saying this is not our war.
[00:32:32]  Why do we always have to be in a war?
[00:32:35]  Can we fuck it?
[00:32:36]  Like, can we ever?
[00:32:38]  Can we put two years together without being involved in a war?
[00:32:42]  Why is how is that so unreasonable?
[00:32:45]  Six months.
[00:32:46]  Can you give me six months where we're not involved in a mass murder campaign?
[00:32:50]  How about that?
[00:32:51]  Is that too, you know, for a country like the United States of America, where objectively speaking, there is no threat to us.
[00:33:00]  No one poses a threat to us.
[00:33:02]  We got two big oceans, friendly countries on the north and the south, and the biggest, most powerful military in the history of the world.
[00:33:10]  We don't have to worry about being invaded by any other country.
[00:33:12]  That ain't happening.
[00:33:14]  And yet we can't put together six months where we're not involved in a mass murder campaign because we feel like it.
[00:33:23]  And if you, and if you were to make that argument, they go, so you just want to give Ukraine to Putin.
[00:33:28]  It's just painfully stupid.
[00:33:32]  I wish you well in your future career on the boards of Lockheed and Raytheon.
[00:33:35]  I'm not on the back of Lockheed and Raytheon.
[00:33:37]  And you know, we came off of it, but you've been pushing this lie.
[00:33:40]  You've been pushing this lie all week.
[00:33:44]  Let me address that.
[00:33:45]  I'm glad you brought this up.
[00:33:46]  I'm going to address each of those around the false lies of his professional politicians.
[00:33:56]  You have no foreign policy experience.
[00:33:58]  And it shows.
[00:33:58]  And you know what?
[00:33:59]  The foreign policy experience that you already have shows in the forest wars without me too.
[00:34:07]  So look, I mean, obviously she just badges him and talks over him.
[00:34:11]  And just clearly, she's got some of the crowd there who enjoys her thing.
[00:34:16]  I find it to be unbearable.
[00:34:19]  But, you know, Vivek made a tactical mistake there because he actually had a pretty good comeback line there, but he kind of said it while the crowd was exploding.
[00:34:32]  And what you kind of got to do in that moment is stay silent till they come back down and then make sure you get your point off.
[00:34:39]  She was talking to him enough that the moderators were going to have to let him respond at least once.
[00:34:44]  And he had to make sure you have to find a way.
[00:34:47]  It's a little bit tougher when it's a chick because you can be ruder to a man, just this weird like social psychology thing.
[00:34:56]  But he said a pretty good response, but it was completely drowned out by the crowd, which is that essentially the idea of saying you have no foreign policy experience, it's like, you know, that's just not going to work these days because you go, yeah, you got a lot of experience.
[00:35:11]  You have experience in getting everything wrong.
[00:35:14]  What's your foreign policy experience, Nikki Haley, over the last, what, 10 years, 15 years?
[00:35:20]  You have experience?
[00:35:22]  Let me hear about your big success story.
[00:35:24]  What was the big success story in there in all the wars you supported?
[00:35:28]  Okay.
[00:35:29]  That's right.
[00:35:29]  There's not one.
[00:35:30]  There's just catastrophe after catastrophe.
[00:35:34]  Anyway, okay, let's play the rest.
[00:35:36]  Our relationship with Israel will never be stronger than by the end of my first term.
[00:35:42]  But it's not a quiet relationship.
[00:35:44]  It is a friendship.
[00:35:46]  And you know what friends do?
[00:35:47]  Friends help each other stand on their own two feet.
[00:35:50]  So I will lead Abraham Accords 2.0.
[00:35:52]  I will partner with Israel to make sure Iran never is nuclear armed.
[00:35:56]  But you know what I love about Israel?
[00:35:58]  And I've been there probably in the last 10 years more than most people on this stage.
[00:36:01]  You know what I love about them?
[00:36:02]  I love their border policies.
[00:36:04]  I love their tough on crime policies.
[00:36:06]  I love that they have a national identity and an iron dome to protect their homeland.
[00:36:11]  And so, yes, I want to learn from the friends that we're supporting.
[00:36:14]  And what puzzles me?
[00:36:16]  No, I want to learn from those and apply those to protect our homeland.
[00:36:20]  That is the America.
[00:36:21]  America needs Israel.
[00:36:22]  Okay, Governor DeSantis, Governor DeSantis, you were mentioned at the time.
[00:36:26]  Wait, hold on.
[00:36:27]  Israel's the front line of defense.
[00:36:30]  But I was led to believe that Ukraine was the front line of defense.

=== Paul's America First Moment (08:16) ===

[00:36:35]  I guess whoever needs billions of dollars, they're all the front line of defense.
[00:36:40]  So look, Vivek didn't, he didn't do great in this exchange.
[00:36:46]  Part of it, it's tricky.
[00:36:48]  You got this, this chick just yapping over you.
[00:36:52]  And then she's got a very enthusiastic base in this room who's giving her big cheers.
[00:36:57]  Like I said, he kind of messed up by just kind of talking into the cheers rather than letting her have her moment and then letting it calm down.
[00:37:04]  By the way, this is what Ron Paul did perfectly in the Ron Paul Giuliani moment.
[00:37:09]  And of course, Vivek just isn't as good as Ron Paul substantively, and he just didn't have as good a temperament there because he starts kind of like the move for Vivek there isn't to go, I'll be the biggest friend to Israel and all the, you know, I'll whatever, you know, I'll make sure Iran never gets a nuke.
[00:37:27]  Like, that's not the way to take it.
[00:37:28]  You can't like take this and then try to go, no, no, no, I am a good neocon.
[00:37:32]  Like, forget that.
[00:37:33]  Abandon all of that shit.
[00:37:34]  Iran doesn't have a nuke.
[00:37:35]  They're not getting a nuke.
[00:37:36]  What are you talking about, dude?
[00:37:38]  This is all old fucking bullshit Netanyahu talking points.
[00:37:43]  In the 90s, they were five years away from getting a nuke.
[00:37:45]  And then in the year 2000, they were five years away from getting a nuke.
[00:37:48]  And then in the year 2011, they were five years away from getting a nuke.
[00:37:51]  And then in 2015, they were five years away from getting, guess what?
[00:37:54]  It's 2023.
[00:37:56]  They still don't have a nuke.
[00:37:56]  And guess what?
[00:37:57]  They're not five years away from getting a nuke.
[00:37:58]  It's a non-issue.
[00:38:00]  It's a non-issue.
[00:38:01]  Why are we pretending it is?
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[00:39:01]  If you remember in the Ron Paul Giuliani moment, what he did, that was Giuliani got thunderous applause.
[00:39:06]  And Ron Paul just sat there.
[00:39:08]  Just sat there like, I'm fine with this.
[00:39:10]  Get it out of your system.
[00:39:11]  Go ahead.
[00:39:12]  And then when the applause died, he went, okay, now let me tell you what's really going on here.
[00:39:17]  And that's all.
[00:39:18]  That's what he should have done.
[00:39:19]  And Vivek knows enough about this stuff that he could do that.
[00:39:22]  He could sit there and go, oh, let me tell you how America actually got us into this war in Ukraine.
[00:39:27]  And that would have been a great opportunity to do that.
[00:39:30]  But regardless, Vivek still, even though not doing great in that exchange, he won the night.
[00:39:39]  Nikki Haley is another one of the losers.
[00:39:42]  And the reason is pretty simple.
[00:39:45]  Because this whole moment that Nikki Haley is speaking to has passed.
[00:39:54]  This isn't the Republican base anymore.
[00:39:57]  And this was made very clear with Donald Trump that they're not in a neocon moment.
[00:40:03]  They're in an America first moment.
[00:40:05]  You're not going to win with this shit.
[00:40:07]  They are over this.
[00:40:09]  And it's one of the most positive developments in American politics over the last 10 years, 15 years.
[00:40:16]  But really, you know, since Trump was elected president.
[00:40:20]  But all this stuff, all these kind of like George W. Bush talking points about why we got to go get involved in this conflict or that conflict or that conflict is just not going to appeal to the overwhelming majority of Republican voters anymore.
[00:40:34]  And for obvious reasons, you know, for obvious reasons.
[00:40:37]  I mean, look, the Republican voters were, it's not like they're impossible to fool, right?
[00:40:44]  They were fooled into supporting the war in Afghanistan and the war in Iraq and the Department of Homeland Security and the Patriot Act and a whole bunch of other awful things that really fucked over the country.
[00:40:54]  It's not that they're impossible to fool, but they can only be fooled so much.
[00:40:59]  And that's why the only, look, you have these candidates like Nikki Haley and Mike Pence and Chris Christie and some of these others who are still speaking to kind of like the George W. Bush Party.
[00:41:15]  But we don't live in the George W. Bush Party years anymore.
[00:41:19]  We live in the Donald Trump Party years.
[00:41:21]  That's what the Republicans are today.
[00:41:23]  Like it or hate it.
[00:41:25]  It's just what it is.
[00:41:26]  And these guys who are speaking to that world, they don't have an audience.
[00:41:32]  They don't have a voter base here.
[00:41:34]  Now, DeSantis is trying to, he's trying to not speak to that world, but also not quite speak to this world and just be a little bit ambiguous because he doesn't want to piss off the donor base.
[00:41:47]  The donor base loves the George W. Bush world and they're supporting DeSantis right now.
[00:41:53]  But the voters, these pesky little things called the voters, they like the Donald Trump party.
[00:41:59]  And the reason is just because they can only be fooled for so long.
[00:42:04]  You know, there was a limit.
[00:42:06]  And you can champion all these wars, but after there's so many of them and every last one of them is a disaster.
[00:42:14]  And oh yeah, by the way, Mr. Republican voter, it's your kids who we want to go fight these wars, you know, and you're going to actually have to disproportionately pay the price of this.
[00:42:23]  And every last one of them is a disaster and everything just gets worse and worse and worse.
[00:42:27]  And now you're at a point where our own country is collapsing.
[00:42:30]  Our southern border is wide open.
[00:42:32]  There's hundreds of thousands of border apprehensions every month.
[00:42:38]  God knows how many people are getting in who aren't being apprehended at the border.
[00:42:43]  That's on top of taking in more immigrants than any other country in the world does legally.
[00:42:47]  So you have this mass migration that this base is completely against.
[00:42:53]  On top of that, their currency has been destroyed and totally devalued.
[00:42:58]  Everything is more expensive.
[00:42:59]  They've lost real wealth through the inflation of the last few years.
[00:43:03]  They also had to deal with all the lockdowns.
[00:43:05]  They had to deal with the fucking, you know, the media supporting the riots.
[00:43:08]  They've also had to deal with the, you know, the political class, the media class, the entertainment class, Hollywood, academia, all supporting the rise of a progressive ideology that they absolutely despise.
[00:43:22]  have to worry about things that they never had to worry about years ago, like their kids being taught this like insane gender theory shit and all of that.
[00:43:29]  And they're watching their entire country transform into something that they do not like.
[00:43:35]  You know, by their very nature, conservatives are not trying to have a progressive transformation in this country.
[00:43:41]  And you're sitting here and it's just obvious.
[00:43:43]  It's just obvious that your priority, what really animates you, Nikki Haley, is making sure we fight a war 5,000 miles away for reasons.
[00:43:56]  You know, like all the things I just laid out about like immigration and inflation and like, you know, the American culture and trans ideology, all these things, right?
[00:44:10]  Like, what do you think the average Republican voter cares more about?
[00:44:15]  Those things or whether Crimea returns to being controlled by Kiev?
[00:44:26]  Why on earth would they ever care about that?
[00:44:30]  And they don't.
[00:44:31]  And they don't.
[00:44:32]  And these guys are, you know, there's certain, there's certain politicians who just they come along at a certain time and you go, you know, like if Barack Obama from 2008, like let's say he ran his same 2008 campaign today, that wouldn't win.

=== Why Republicans Don't Care (02:35) ===

[00:44:52]  It wouldn't win.
[00:44:53]  In fact, it would be like a non-starter.
[00:44:56]  You know, I mean, you could just imagine certain issues, right?
[00:44:58]  Like a Democratic presidential candidate comes out and says, I'm against gay marriage being legal.
[00:45:03]  I mean, that's impossible.
[00:45:05]  You can't win.
[00:45:06]  You're done because that's not in touch with the current zeitgeist.
[00:45:11]  It was in touch with the Zeitgeist in 2008.
[00:45:13]  In 2008, it captured the Zeitgeist.
[00:45:16]  It was like, this is a, you know, this was a thing.
[00:45:19]  And obviously in 2016, Donald Trump captured that Zeitgeist on the Republican side.
[00:45:25]  These politicians, what Nikki Haley's doing here is you're like, you're not capturing this.
[00:45:31]  Yeah, maybe in 2004, this would have been something that would have been sold to the Republicans.
[00:45:35]  Not today.
[00:45:36]  It's not happening.
[00:45:37]  And so what Vivek was able to do for himself here was to position himself as the other Trumpian candidate.
[00:45:48]  He's the other America first guy.
[00:45:51]  You know, Trump is probably still your guy.
[00:45:55]  The idea of Vivek beating Donald Trump in the Republican primary is still quite a long shot, but he positioned himself as being a guy who everyone who supports Donald Trump could support, let's say, if Trump wasn't an option.
[00:46:11]  They could support him and maybe even be okay with that.
[00:46:15]  You know, kind of a younger, skinnier, browner, weirder-named version of Donald Trump.
[00:46:23]  And there's something very wise about that.
[00:46:25]  He never attacks Donald Trump.
[00:46:27]  In fact, he really defends him against having the justice system weaponized against him and other things like that, called him the greatest president in the 21st century.
[00:46:35]  You know, I mean, low bar, but he called him that.
[00:46:38]  It's a nice thing to say.
[00:46:40]  So he has now put himself in a situation where, number one, he is a very eligible candidate to be in Donald Trump's like, you know, cabinet should Donald Trump win.
[00:46:52]  But number two, which I think might be more relevant, is that if Donald Trump is forced out of the race somehow, I do not think those voters go to DeSantis.
[00:47:01]  I think those voters go to Ramaswamy.
[00:47:04]  It's a pretty, to me, that's a big knife.
[00:47:07]  That's a pretty goddamn big victory.
[00:47:10]  Whereas Nikki Haley and Mike Pence and Chris Christie have all attached themselves to positions that are just losers amongst their own base, that are not winning positions.
[00:47:22]  And DeSantis has failed to establish himself as anything.

=== Appreciating Free Speech (00:50) ===

[00:47:27]  That's kind of my takeaway.
[00:47:29]  All right, look, I'm going to wrap up there because I got to get some sleep.
[00:47:32]  I'll go a little bit longer on the next episode.
[00:47:34]  So we'll have Robbie the Fire back and we'll talk over some things going on in the world a little bit more.
[00:47:39]  I love you guys.
[00:47:40]  Thank you all for watching.
[00:47:41]  Again, my comedy special is up on YouTube for free right now.
[00:47:45]  And I really do appreciate all the kind things people have been saying.
[00:47:50]  It's been very well received and that really means a lot to me.
[00:47:53]  Putting out, you know, I love ranting about politics and all this shit.
[00:47:56]  I just love doing it.
[00:47:58]  But I've always liked putting out great comedy specials has always been, you know, the thing that I want to do for the rest of my life.
[00:48:04]  So it means a lot to me that you guys liked it.
[00:48:06]  Thank you.
[00:48:07]  If you haven't watched it already, please do.
[00:48:08]  Share it with a friend.
[00:48:09]  Like it, comment on it.
[00:48:11]  All the things that make the algorithm do what the algorithm does.
[00:48:14]  We must please the algorithm.
[00:48:16]  All right.
[00:48:17]  Catch you guys next time.