Part Of The Problem - Dave Smith - Public School Propaganda
Aired: 2023-08-31
Duration: 01:06:33


=== Intimidating Trial Dates (11:40) ===

[00:00:00]  Fill her up.
[00:00:02]  You're listening to the Gas Digital Network.
[00:00:07]  What's up?
[00:00:07]  What's up?
[00:00:08]  Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
[00:00:10]  I am Dave Smith.
[00:00:11]  He is Robbie the Fire Bernstein.
[00:00:13]  Hope everybody out there in Internet Land is doing well.
[00:00:16]  How are you, Robbie?
[00:00:17]  Oh, we're dressed like we're in a band together or something like that.
[00:00:21]  We're really on point, really doing the tag team thing here.
[00:00:24]  How are you, sir?
[00:00:25]  I think we just both own a lot of black t-shirts.
[00:00:27]  Yeah, well, that might be part of it too.
[00:00:29]  That might be, you know, for the people listening, we did not collaborate on this.
[00:00:35]  It did just organically happen.
[00:00:37]  Also, for everyone listening, my brand new comedy special is available for free on YouTube.
[00:00:43]  Please go check that out.
[00:00:44]  I really am excited for you guys to see it if you haven't already.
[00:00:48]  I've gotten a wonderful response from it.
[00:00:51]  I really enjoyed the whole process.
[00:00:53]  It's got 200,000 views, I think, in the first week.
[00:00:56]  Look, the truth is this special is not going to be pushed by the algorithm.
[00:01:03]  We have a very political channel and a channel that they are not interested in helping to grow.
[00:01:08]  So the way this thing is getting views is just because you guys are watching it.
[00:01:12]  You guys are sharing it.
[00:01:12]  You guys are sharing it with friends, promoting it on social media and stuff like that.
[00:01:16]  So thank you so much for all the people who have been doing that so far.
[00:01:18]  If you haven't, it would mean a lot to me if you go check it out and share it around.
[00:01:23]  So thank you very much.
[00:01:25]  And then, man, we got a bunch of stuff coming up.
[00:01:28]  Me and Robbie the Fire Bernstein are going to be at Skankfest.
[00:01:32]  We're going to be touring in Europe.
[00:01:35]  A bunch more dates coming up in the fall.
[00:01:37]  Next one for me is Governor's.
[00:01:40]  I will be there in a couple of weeks.
[00:01:42]  Rob won't be on that one, but I got Chris Vega, who I know all you guys love.
[00:01:46]  He's coming out and doing the shows with me there.
[00:01:49]  So a lot of fun stuff coming up.
[00:01:50]  Rob, what do you got coming up in the near future?
[00:01:53]  Oh, well, this Saturday, we got this biggest summer porch tour yet.
[00:01:56]  It's the last time at Max's.
[00:01:57]  That's the OG porch.
[00:01:58]  He's got the private bar, and I've got an incredible roster.
[00:02:00]  I got five comics coming out for this one and my friends from the Shedcast.
[00:02:03]  So come out.
[00:02:04]  And then last gigs of the Porch Tour Run are going to be Vegas, Tucson, Arizona, Phoenix, Arizona.
[00:02:10]  Next week, I'm out in LA back with Brian McWilliams and then also doing Laguna Something, California.
[00:02:16]  So porch tour is coming to a close.
[00:02:17]  Come hang out.
[00:02:18]  Hell yeah.
[00:02:19]  Hell yeah.
[00:02:19]  I've heard nothing but great things about this year's porch tour.
[00:02:23]  I always hear great things, but particularly this year, it seems like it's really taken on a life of its own.
[00:02:29]  So definitely go check out the last few of the summer.
[00:02:31]  You'll have to wait till next summer.
[00:02:33]  And who knows?
[00:02:34]  At some point, Rob might graduate from porch touring.
[00:02:36]  This might be your last opportunity.
[00:02:37]  Who knows what Rob will be doing next year this time?
[00:02:40]  Could be wraparound porches only and there's less available shows.
[00:02:46]  I don't know.
[00:02:46]  I don't know what's happening.
[00:02:48]  Graduate to garages.
[00:02:49]  Who knows what the future holds for Robbie the Fire Bernstein.
[00:02:53]  Okay, so let's let me say, Rob, this is something I know me and you have both experienced many times, but it's just, it's real.
[00:03:03]  The thing that's cool about being right about everything is that it really does, it builds this good track record, you know?
[00:03:11]  And then like a few, it's like, and then when people look back, they go, oh yeah, I guess he was right about all that.
[00:03:17]  It's just, it's crazy to me that I went so hard on this last Rogan appearance talking about how clearly the legal system is being weaponized against Donald Trump and that this is all political.
[00:03:28]  And I tried my best to go because I think a lot of times with these things, it sounds, if you haven't been following this stuff like the way we've been following it, it's more difficult to see the full picture.
[00:03:42]  You know, that's just the way these things work.
[00:03:44]  Like if you don't, you know, just for example, like if you, if there's a guy who was like seen at a house, there was like several eyewitnesses.
[00:03:56]  They were the last one who saw him at a house before there was a murder.
[00:03:59]  And he's like, no, I did not do this.
[00:04:01]  And I'm like, yo, this guy definitely murdered these people.
[00:04:04]  And you're like, well, I don't know.
[00:04:05]  I mean, he was seen at the house, but that's not really like enough evidence to necessarily know that this was, he's the one who did the murder.
[00:04:13]  But if I was like, oh, well, can I tell you that over the last five years, we know for a fact that he's murdered 20 people alone in their house.
[00:04:21]  Now all of a sudden, the evidence that he was seen at that house just is much more compelling to the average person.
[00:04:27]  So if you know when you tell people the whole backstory, it makes these things a lot more compelling and you see that, oh, there's a pattern going on here.
[00:04:35]  So that's one of the things that I was real excited to talk about when I was on Rogan's podcast this last time.
[00:04:40]  Like with all these indictments happening now and the fact that me and you were like, we were so all over all the Russiagate hoax stuff.
[00:04:48]  Like that was our bread and butter for years.
[00:04:52]  So it was like, oh, okay, it's cool.
[00:04:54]  Let me go through everything about this story and kind of how it happened.
[00:04:57]  But anyway, I did, you know, you get some pushback from some people.
[00:05:00]  Whenever you're on Rogan, whatever position you take, you always get some pushback because there's so many people listening.
[00:05:05]  And they were like, these aren't, you know, these aren't political at all.
[00:05:08]  He tried to overthrow the election, blah, blah, blah, all this stuff.
[00:05:12]  And oh, I just love it.
[00:05:14]  It's just so listening to people try to do mental gymnastics to pretend that this is a coincidence has just been so funny.
[00:05:23]  So if you guys don't know, which I'm sure many of you know, what I'm already getting at, is that they just set the trial date for Donald Trump's chart, the one out of Georgia.
[00:05:34]  So they set his first trial date, which he must show up to, by the way.
[00:05:39]  And it just happens to be very coincidentally on the most important campaigning day in the presidential primary election, which is the day before Super Tuesday.
[00:05:54]  Super Tuesday, for those people who don't know, is the single day that has the most primaries in it.
[00:05:59]  So that is the day where it's the most important to get to do rallies, get people out, get them there so that they're there for the polls.
[00:06:08]  This is the type of, if you remember how Trump campaigns on a day like the day before Super Tuesday, he would typically do like five or six rallies and be like on his private chat flying from like the most important primary to the next most important primary.
[00:06:23]  And that was one of the things, if you remember that used to always blow us away about Donald Trump and just however you feel about his politics, it would be insane that he could do it.
[00:06:30]  He would just do rallies all day long and just vamp.
[00:06:33]  Like Trump never does scripted shit.
[00:06:35]  He just gets up there and vamps.
[00:06:37]  He's like, what's up with you?
[00:06:38]  You know, it's just like this like, you know, I don't know, the stream of conscious comedy show that he does or whatever you want to describe it as.
[00:06:46]  But of course, that is the trial date the day before Super Tuesday.
[00:06:51]  It has been hilarious to watch people try, progressives particularly, just try to just go, well, that's just when it happened to happen.
[00:07:00]  And so, you know, what's, I don't know, is that weird?
[00:07:03]  I mean, sure.
[00:07:04]  He was charged for an alleged crime where they have to bend the statute to prosecute him in a way that nobody's ever been prosecuted before.
[00:07:13]  And they happened to charge him three years after the incident.
[00:07:18]  And then they had to pick a trial date.
[00:07:20]  And that just happened to no one even noticed.
[00:07:24]  That happened to fall the day before Super Tuesday.
[00:07:28]  I mean, give me a fucking break.
[00:07:31]  And so I assume it's not going to be a one day trial.
[00:07:33]  So that's got to take him out of commission for probably most of the primary process.
[00:07:37]  Yeah.
[00:07:37]  Well, I know he has to at least show up then that day.
[00:07:40]  I don't know.
[00:07:41]  You know, like with these things, sometimes you're allowed to just send your lawyers, but this one, the first trial, like you have to be there.
[00:07:46]  But I don't know how long they're going to keep him.
[00:07:48]  And the other thing that's very, very interesting that we've touched on before is what exactly, what type of gag order or what type of, you know what I mean?
[00:07:56]  Like what type of thing are they going to say?
[00:07:58]  I know there's been examples in the past where they've said, you can't talk about this case.
[00:08:04]  And if they imagine saying that to Donald Trump right now, what would that be other than like blatant election interference?
[00:08:10]  You can't talk about what will be the biggest issue of the presidential election.
[00:08:15]  It'd be like saying he's not allowed to talk about Ukraine.
[00:08:19]  It's insane.
[00:08:21]  I believe they already did that.
[00:08:23]  I thought that was part of the, was saying that it would intimidate the witnesses for him to comment on the case even on social media.
[00:08:30]  So it was reported that this was going to be part of the deal, that he couldn't be intimidating witnesses, but it hasn't exactly been clear what the, like what exactly, like it was reported that this was anticipated that the judge would say this.
[00:08:46]  They also anticipated that it was going to be a $200,000 bond.
[00:08:50]  We know that is true.
[00:08:51]  But it's not exactly clear what exactly he can't post about on social media.
[00:08:56]  And it's also not clear how broadly that will be interpreted.
[00:09:01]  You know, like the things that were reported, and this was reported on CNN and I believe in the Washington Post as well, was what you were saying, that he couldn't intimidate witnesses or jury members in the trial.
[00:09:14]  Now, they interpreted January 6th as him inciting violence.
[00:09:19]  So any case, like anything he says about the case to just say, I'm free, I'm innocent, and this is ridiculous is him intimidating.
[00:09:26]  Exactly.
[00:09:27]  So if the like that in itself sounds reasonable enough, you can intimidate people.
[00:09:33]  So like, you know, yes, okay, we could all understand if you were saying you can't tweet or, you know, what's his thing?
[00:09:41]  Whatever on his social media platform, you can't truth social saying, you know, hey, jur, find me not guilty or so help me, God, you know, like, okay, we understand that.
[00:09:52]  But the question is, how do you interpret these things?
[00:09:54]  And as you're saying, if Donald Trump, you know, if him saying, you know, I want you to march on the Capitol and I want you to peacefully demonstrate is inciting an insurrection, then yeah, probably him just saying, this is, I'm being framed and this is going to backfire.
[00:10:10]  They'd be like, whoa, that's, it's going to backfire.
[00:10:13]  What do you mean?
[00:10:13]  Is that intimidation?
[00:10:15]  It's all about, you know, the devil's in the details with these things.
[00:10:18]  So it does seem pretty clear that this is, they're in a full court press.
[00:10:25]  They're going to do everything they can to lock him down.
[00:10:28]  They're going to drain time and resources from him while he's on the campaign trail.
[00:10:35]  They're going to intimidate people from working with Donald Trump, which is a whole nother element to this too, because they're also going after a lot of his people.
[00:10:47]  And you could imagine, right, Rob, like if Trump wanted you to come work for him on his campaign, this would be something that would probably be a disincentive from doing that, that you're like, oh, shit, I get wrapped up with you.
[00:11:02]  Next thing you know, I might just be one of the people who go down.
[00:11:07]  There's already been several of these people whose lives have been ruined.
[00:11:11]  And, you know, that's an aspect to all of this too.
[00:11:17]  And perhaps they're even going to go as far as moving to imprison the guy.
[00:11:22]  And we will see.
[00:11:23]  At this point, I can't say it's crazy to think that that might happen.
[00:11:30]  And it's also got to be a little bit scary to be Trump's lawyer at this point.
[00:11:33]  All the other lawyers are trialed or, you know, what's his name was even sent to jail the last go around.

=== Establishment vs Sanders (17:17) ===

[00:11:40]  Yep.
[00:11:40]  It's, yeah.
[00:11:42]  You don't know if you want to represent him.
[00:11:44]  You don't know if you want to work for his campaign.
[00:11:46]  It's there.
[00:11:47]  There's a big element to all of this, what they're doing.
[00:11:50]  All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is CrowdHealth.
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[00:13:29]  All right, let's get back into the show.
[00:13:30]  The crazy thing is that it seems to be backfiring, at least in the national conversation and polling and stuff like that.
[00:13:40]  But it's a very weird place to be.
[00:13:44]  I don't know, Rob, did you see there was a poll that just came out, a Fox News poll?
[00:13:51]  I believe it was Fox News poll, but there was a poll that showed that Donald Trump's approval rating amongst African American voters was 20%.
[00:14:00]  Did you see that?
[00:14:01]  I'm surprised it's not higher.
[00:14:03]  Well, look, I mean, yeah, I understand what you're saying, but 20% is like no, no presidential figure in my lifetime, I don't think has ever done that well.
[00:14:16]  You mean Republicans?
[00:14:17]  Republicans.
[00:14:18]  I'm sorry.
[00:14:18]  I'm sorry.
[00:14:18]  Republicans, I should say.
[00:14:20]  No Republican has ever done that well.
[00:14:22]  And if you look at it, if that is true.
[00:14:25]  Now, this was just one poll.
[00:14:26]  Don't take it with a grain of salt.
[00:14:28]  Who knows exactly if this can be duplicated or not, if that's real.
[00:14:34]  But it does just kind of make you go like, whoa, you know, if the Republicans get 20% of the black vote, Democrats cannot win.
[00:14:42]  In fact, I've seen this broken down before where there's not a single state in the union that they can win if they give up 20% of the black vote to the Republicans.
[00:14:51]  And so that's very interesting.
[00:14:54]  If Trump somehow is able to survive all this stuff, and if that is true, we're looking at a completely different landscape.
[00:15:00]  What it does seem to indicate to me more so than whether or not it is 20% or whether it stays at that level or is actually at that level.
[00:15:10]  It does seem to indicate that his support amongst black people is going up.
[00:15:15]  And he got more votes.
[00:15:18]  He got a higher percentage of the black vote in 2020 than he did in 2016.
[00:15:23]  And now it seems like his support from black people is going up.
[00:15:27]  And that's interesting for a lot of reasons.
[00:15:30]  One, just because it's just a delicious, you know, like story for the corporate press to even have to deal with.
[00:15:40]  Of course, they'll just ignore it, but it's like, okay, yes.
[00:15:42]  So explain that.
[00:15:44]  Explain that, CNN.
[00:15:46]  In your worldview, how does it make sense that Donald Trump's African-American support keeps going up?
[00:15:53]  Tell me, riddle me this.
[00:15:55]  Are the black people so dumb?
[00:15:58]  Or is it that you just haven't done a good enough job explaining to them that they just don't believe you?
[00:16:04]  And they believe him.
[00:16:05]  And all this of what a horrible racist he is after all this time, they're not buying it.
[00:16:10]  I would love it if so many African-Americans switched over to Republican support that the Democrats had to be like, you know, the problem in that community is that there's no dads.
[00:16:21]  Oh, and the funny thing about these politicians, you know, they would do it at a second, too.
[00:16:24]  Oh, yeah.
[00:16:26]  Oh, it'd be worse than that.
[00:16:27]  It'd be like, yeah, of course.
[00:16:29]  Of course, these thugs want to support Donald Trump, you know?
[00:16:32]  Yeah, all of a sudden, every time they looted or protested, they'd be going right to jail.
[00:16:35]  Yeah.
[00:16:36]  Yep.
[00:16:36]  Well, I'll say, I think I don't know about this 20% number.
[00:16:42]  I don't know.
[00:16:44]  But I think there is, it would not surprise me that if Donald Trump, say, in 2020, had increased his support amongst black voters, if that increased, if that trend continued, that would not surprise me at all.
[00:17:01]  And I think there's several reasons for it that really, again, this is much bigger than just Donald Trump.
[00:17:10]  If they're opening to supporting Donald Trump, they're probably going to be open to supporting a Republican in general.
[00:17:15]  And whoever that is now, if that vote is in play now, it changes things for Democrats.
[00:17:21]  And, you know, I don't like, as you guys know, I don't really like focusing on this, like, you know, like how people vote by race.
[00:17:27]  It seems to kind of miss the point to me.
[00:17:29]  There's a lot of other variables that probably are more relevant.
[00:17:34]  You know, I think like a black dentist who lives in Westchester probably does not have that much in common in any way, including how they vote with like, you know what I mean, like someone living in the projects in Chicago or something like that.
[00:17:50]  I think there's, you know what I mean?
[00:17:51]  Like, but regardless, if you do look at the numbers, this changes the landscape tremendously for Democrats' ability to kind of dominate the national elections, which they have done.
[00:18:02]  You know, look, Democrats, even when Trump won, he lost the popular vote against Hillary.
[00:18:08]  And even when, you know, was it George W. Bush lost the popular vote and won against Al Gordon?
[00:18:15]  Republicans haven't won too many popular votes in the last 20 years or so.
[00:18:22]  But it kind of makes sense that black support for Republicans in general, or at least their kind of disillusionment with Democrats, would be trending in this direction.
[00:18:33]  And I mean, look, when Joe Biden first came in, his number one policy, at least for the first year of his administration, was getting this goddamn jab into as many arms as possible.
[00:18:49]  And this was something that black people were one of, if not the demographic that was the biggest resistor of this.
[00:19:01]  They were not on board with it.
[00:19:02]  And not just not on board, like they didn't want to do it, but also like they were just like, they didn't believe it.
[00:19:08]  You know, it's, it's, uh, they were nowhere near the compliance rate of the general population.
[00:19:17]  And so that makes sense to me that, you know what I mean, that this would have turned some black people off from the Democrats.
[00:19:27]  I mean, they went all in on this policy of like mass forced vaccination.
[00:19:32]  And here you have a group who doesn't very much like that for understandable reasons.
[00:19:37]  And so that seems like, yeah, there's sometimes it's hard to appreciate in the moment.
[00:19:42]  We're just kind of like, oh, they're not going along with this policy.
[00:19:45]  But you're like, yeah, but what does that mean for like voting patterns going forward?
[00:19:48]  Is it possible that that could really change things?
[00:19:51]  Seems pretty possible to me.
[00:19:54]  I also saw Chris Christie, who, you know, if there's anyone who's just channeling the mouthpiece of the deep state, he was going off on their newest sales pitches.
[00:20:02]  We have to get away from supporting Donald Trump now because there's a chance that he's going to be going to prison and we can't win an election with him.
[00:20:11]  So if we want to win an election, we have to move on now.
[00:20:14]  So, I mean, it's just twofold interesting.
[00:20:16]  One, you could see the strategic plan in place of we can't beat him.
[00:20:20]  So let's try and tie him down with these court cases and say that he's a criminal and how can we back this criminal.
[00:20:25]  And it's fun that even the Republican Party is taking that approach of, hey, let's not be backing this criminal because it might cost us the election.
[00:20:33]  But it's also like it's showcasing like that's the plan here is make the guy a criminal.
[00:20:39]  And then yeah.
[00:20:40]  No, and then the one thing about it is that you just know that that's so not going to play in the Republican base.
[00:20:45]  All right.
[00:20:45]  It's kind of backfiring.
[00:20:47]  It's amazing that the strategy is not quite working because Donald Trump's doing a good job of selling this as, hey, this isn't just an attack on me and it's an attack on you.
[00:20:55]  And there's something true to it that, you know, listen, you and I don't like Trump, but at some point you're like, we do, he's an outsider.
[00:21:02]  The whole machine's turned against him.
[00:21:04]  Fuck you, machine.
[00:21:05]  And then it's funny because it's actually not a victory for us once he gets in because he won't do any of the things that he promises.
[00:21:09]  He's not going to make any good changes.
[00:21:11]  It'll probably just be, I mean, it would be interesting to see if maybe he actually turns against the deep state a little bit, tries to get rid of the FBI, frees Assange, all this fun stuff that will probably never happen, even if he gets back into office.
[00:21:24]  But he does have quite a sales pitch of, hey, if you don't like the current government, clearly they don't like me.
[00:21:30]  And this is a way to get at them.
[00:21:31]  Well, and look, that it is, it is true that, you know, like when he says the reason they don't like me is because they don't like you, he's right about that.
[00:21:42]  It's not just a good talking point for him and he uses it because it's a good talking point and it's politically expedient, but it's true.
[00:21:49]  That is the reason why they don't like Donald Trump is because you, look, you are not allowed to be a right-wing populist in this country.
[00:22:00]  It is the thing that the establishment fears the most.
[00:22:04]  And look, Bernie Sanders, there was this old article that Murray Rothbard wrote.
[00:22:12]  And it was one of his more controversial pieces.
[00:22:14]  I think we might have read this on the on the show once, me and you, years ago.
[00:22:19]  It was one of his more controversial pieces.
[00:22:21]  I think it was like titled like a paleo-libertarian strategy or something like that.
[00:22:25]  And this was in the 90s when he left the Libertarian Party.
[00:22:27]  He was supporting Pat Buchanan's run for president.
[00:22:30]  And he wrote about David Duke's campaign for governor.
[00:22:35]  And people pounce on him because they're like, he's defending David Duke, which he's really not, if you read the piece.
[00:22:41]  That's not what he was saying.
[00:22:43]  He starts the piece off by saying they he goes, they finally got David Duke, but he scared the bejesus out of him before that.
[00:22:52]  And what he's talking about is how there was this like this insane level of like this insane campaign to destroy David Duke when he was running.
[00:23:02]  He was polling very good, running for governor of Louisiana, I believe.
[00:23:06]  And so he, so he's running, everyone comes crashing down on him.
[00:23:10]  And he, Rothbard was just making the point.
[00:23:12]  He was like, well, what is really the problem with David Duke?
[00:23:15]  It's not that he was a former Klansman in his early 20s because look, you got Bird, who's the lion of the Senate or whatever, and he was a former Klansman.
[00:23:24]  No one cares about that.
[00:23:25]  When it's an establishment Democrat, it's no big deal if you used to be a Klansman.
[00:23:29]  It's not that he was a segregationist because look at Strom Thurman, you know, or like any of these things.
[00:23:33]  Like, that's not really what this is.
[00:23:35]  And his argument was that basically what it was is that he was a real hardcore right-wing populist and that there's something about right-wing populism that gets a reaction.
[00:23:46]  You can see this today.
[00:23:48]  It gets a reaction out of the establishment unlike anything else.
[00:23:54]  That's not to say there aren't other groups that they dislike, but no one gets the response of right-wing populism like no one else.
[00:24:03]  And why is that?
[00:24:04]  And this is my kind of, this is what I'd say about it, all right?
[00:24:08]  I think that Bernie Sanders was clearly unacceptable to the establishment.
[00:24:17]  I think there's no question about that.
[00:24:19]  He was just had a little bit too much hatred for billionaires and bankers.
[00:24:25]  And our system is run by billionaires and bankers.
[00:24:29]  So they don't very much like the guy who's out there ginning up hatred against them.
[00:24:35]  And I think that he also couldn't be counted on to make sure, let's say, Goldman Sachs got their favorable policy that they like.
[00:24:45]  But it wasn't, it wasn't like as much of a vicious mission to destroy Bernie Sanders as it was with Donald Trump.
[00:24:54]  You know what I mean?
[00:24:55]  I mean, they were going to rig the system against him.
[00:24:57]  They were going to make sure he couldn't win.
[00:24:58]  They'd do whatever they had to.
[00:25:01]  But ultimately, the reason why is Bernie Sanders himself and the movement that Bernie Sanders inspired.
[00:25:10]  So Bernie Sanders himself, what could he be counted on to do once they rigged the system against him?
[00:25:16]  He could be counted on to be a good little boy and go endorse Joe Biden, go endorse Hillary Clinton, throw his support behind them.
[00:25:23]  What do you guys need?
[00:25:24]  You need my campaign data.
[00:25:26]  Do you need my donor list?
[00:25:27]  You need this.
[00:25:28]  I'll come out.
[00:25:29]  I'll give speeches for you.
[00:25:30]  All that.
[00:25:30]  I'll be good.
[00:25:31]  Okay, it's going to be the exact opposite of what I claim I wanted, but it's not as bad as Donald Trump.
[00:25:37]  I'll tell you that.
[00:25:37]  As long as I can make my book sell money.
[00:25:39]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:25:40]  So he could kind of be bought off.
[00:25:41]  He's also just kind of a bitch.
[00:25:43]  You know what I mean?
[00:25:44]  He's not, he's not, you know, like, do you remember we used to like roast him for this shit, but where he would, he would say, he would say this when it was down to one-on-one debates with Hillary Clinton.
[00:25:56]  And he would go, I'm the only person on this stage who hasn't taken money from the big banks.
[00:26:01]  And you're like, the only person on this stage, it's you and one other person.
[00:26:05]  Just call her out, you know?
[00:26:07]  And then he would be like, they'd be like, I'm not calling anyone corrupt, but do you think Goldman Sachs doesn't want something for that donation that they got?
[00:26:15]  Or do you think?
[00:26:16]  And you're like, no, but you are calling them corrupt.
[00:26:18]  You just don't have the balls to do it.
[00:26:20]  If they're not corrupt, then why is it a problem if big banks give them money?
[00:26:25]  Right.
[00:26:25]  The only reason it's a problem is because they're going to do something in return for this money.
[00:26:30]  So he just never had the courage.
[00:26:31]  Whereas there was just Trump would just like blast anyone.
[00:26:36]  So that's part of it.
[00:26:38]  But the other part of it is the people who they talk to.
[00:26:42]  You know, Bernie Sanders was inspiring, you know, male feminist gender studies majors to take to the streets.
[00:26:55]  But that's just not so scary to the powers that be.
[00:27:00]  It's just not for obvious reasons.
[00:27:03]  You know, that group just doesn't scare them.
[00:27:06]  But when you have a right-wing populist like Donald Trump, who is evoking these powerful reactions out of right-wing Americans to hate the elites because the elites have screwed them over and it's time that they get their revenge on them, which is really the essence of what populism is.
[00:27:28]  Who's he inspiring?
[00:27:30]  He's inspiring like all the barrel-chested, tough working men in America.
[00:27:40]  He's inspiring these kind of like blue collar tough men.
[00:27:46]  And by the way, the cops are somewhat sympathetic to him.
[00:27:50]  The military's somewhat sympathetic to him.
[00:27:52]  Like all the toughest people in America are now inspired in this anti-elite message.
[00:27:59]  This is why right-wing populism scares the establishment unlike anything else, because they know the biggest threat to them is that all of the toughest motherfuckers in this country unite against them.
[00:28:14]  That's how regimes get overthrown.
[00:28:16]  The ones who are actually willing to do something about it.
[00:28:19]  And so when Donald Trump says, it's not like me, it's you.
[00:28:25]  There's a lot of truth in that.
[00:28:27]  There's a lot of truth in that.
[00:28:29]  They want those people put to sleep and not engaged and definitely not angry.
[00:28:35]  And this is why every Republican candidate is always the biggest bore you've ever seen in your life.
[00:28:43]  This is what they like.
[00:28:44]  They're like, hey, you know, barrel-chested trucker and local cop and, you know, whatever, welder and Roofer and whoever it is.
[00:28:54]  You know who your leader is?
[00:28:56]  Mittens Romney.

=== Polling Habits and Fume (04:33) ===

[00:28:58]  That's who's your leader.
[00:29:00]  If the establishment had its way, that's how it goes.
[00:29:03]  Donald Trump, not so much.
[00:29:06]  And he's out there just cursing people out and calling people a bitch and gay or whatever Donald Trump's doing.
[00:29:11]  And it's like, yeah, he's kind of giving them permission that they can be that level of angry too.
[00:29:17]  This is a big part of the reason why he's always been unacceptable to them.
[00:29:21]  And this is something I think Trump always recognized.
[00:29:24]  And I think to some degree with January 6th, I think he was he was using that.
[00:29:27]  Like, I don't think, I don't think it was like necessarily his plan to have them go into the Capitol.
[00:29:32]  I don't think so.
[00:29:35]  I think even he would have realized that that would backfire.
[00:29:38]  But if you remember in 2016, there was a point where Donald Trump started winning a bunch of primaries.
[00:29:45]  And now it had transitioned from, it's not just like, oh, he's polling really good, but it was like, oh, he's polling really good.
[00:29:52]  And this is translating.
[00:29:53]  This wasn't just a fad.
[00:29:54]  Like, this is, he's actually winning.
[00:29:56]  And it started to become obvious that really no one else could catch up to Donald Trump at this point.
[00:30:01]  You know, we're like five, six primaries in.
[00:30:03]  He's won the majority of them by landslides.
[00:30:06]  He's still polling number one.
[00:30:07]  He's going to win this thing.
[00:30:09]  And the RNC floated out the idea of changing the rules at convention.
[00:30:14]  I don't know if you remember this, Rob, but they floated out the idea that they would change the number of delegates you needed because they can do that.
[00:30:20]  They can arbitrarily change the rules anytime they want to.
[00:30:22]  They could just make it something insanely high.
[00:30:25]  And then they could say no one reached this insanely high goal.
[00:30:28]  And therefore, we just pick who our nominee is.
[00:30:31]  So this idea was floated out that they could steal it from Donald Trump.
[00:30:34]  And I'll never forget Donald Trump's response when they said this is he goes, there'll be riots in the streets.
[00:30:44]  That's what Donald Trump said.
[00:30:45]  And they backed off and they didn't do it because he was probably right.
[00:30:49]  He was like, yo, you can't steal this from me.
[00:30:52]  Like my people will not tolerate that.
[00:30:54]  And my people are not the type of people you want to have an issue with.
[00:30:58]  Like they're, you know, and that to me is a huge part of all of this.
[00:31:03]  This is, this is why right-wing populism is so demonized, even when it makes no sense, when it just makes no sense at all.
[00:31:12]  Like the whole problem is that they're all Nazis or something like that.
[00:31:15]  Like, what?
[00:31:15]  It's just not right.
[00:31:17]  That's not what right-wing Americans are.
[00:31:19]  If anything, they're just really proud that their grandpa beat the Nazis.
[00:31:22]  They're not Nazis.
[00:31:23]  They don't like, you know, they're not even racialists, really.
[00:31:27]  And like, there might be some of them who kind of have something, but no more so than like black Americans or woke Americans or anyone, really, you know, probably less so.
[00:31:38]  So it's not that.
[00:31:39]  It's that they're a threat to power.
[00:31:41]  All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is fume.
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=== Schools as Propaganda (15:59) ===

[00:33:31]  All right, let's get back into the show.
[00:33:33]  Typically, it's a good rule of thumb.
[00:33:35]  If you ever see the powerful all coalesce around hating one group, it's because that group is a threat to their power.
[00:33:43]  Not because they're just animated by moral outrage or something like that.
[00:33:46]  You know, like, listen, we have a genocide to continue in Yemen, but I am just morally outraged by how racist Trump voters are.
[00:33:53]  That's probably not it.
[00:33:56]  Anyway, going to be interesting to see where this goes.
[00:34:00]  So we'll be following it.
[00:34:01]  All right.
[00:34:01]  There's, I will say, here, quickly, we could, do we have the video of the Gatson flag thing?
[00:34:08]  Because that was fairly interesting.
[00:34:10]  This has been blowing up.
[00:34:14]  Do we have here?
[00:34:15]  Let's let's let's play that.
[00:34:16]  I don't know how great the audio is of this, but let's let's let's give this a shot.
[00:34:22]  Do they know what the Gatson flag is?
[00:34:24]  That it's a smart old flag.
[00:34:27]  So they're the reason that they do not want the flag, the reason that you do not want the flag is due to its origins with the row slavery and slave trade.
[00:34:43]  That is what was as the reasoning behind them not wanting to play the Gatson button the don't tread on me, which is the Gatsby button.
[00:34:57]  Okay, so he, he, um, just pause already.
[00:35:04]  I just love, I just love the side-by-side shot of this kid.
[00:35:08]  What is he, 11 or 12 or something like that?
[00:35:10]  And him just like giggling while this lady teacher is scolding.
[00:35:14]  It's just, I don't know, there's something about that that's just so perfect.
[00:35:17]  Like, oh, God.
[00:35:19]  I just feel so bad for kids that they have to go through school because I went through school and just living with bureaucracy and everything about this lady.
[00:35:27]  It's like the same way like cop investigators just talk like cop investigators and they ask their leading assumptive questions the way they ask their leading assumptive questions.
[00:35:37]  This is just bureaucratic at its best.
[00:35:39]  If some lady doesn't really even have a stance here, but there's a part that really pisses me off.
[00:35:45]  I just hate authority so much and I see it and it just kind of gets me going.
[00:35:49]  But this lady, she likes playing the card.
[00:35:51]  It's going to come up of the, I would just love to see her kid in class as if this is a non-issue while she's bringing it up as an issue.
[00:35:58]  She removed a person from a classroom over something and then goes, listen, if you can just acquiesce to my authority, we can just go back to the way it was.
[00:36:05]  And I'd prefer it be the way it was.
[00:36:08]  Yes.
[00:36:08]  So just for anyone who's not following this, and by the way, I want to give a shout out to Connor Boyak.
[00:36:13]  He's who I saw share this thing.
[00:36:14]  Connor is a great, he was on the podcast years ago, but he is the author of the Tuttle Twins series, which is like actually books for little kids that actually teaches them some good stuff that you'd want your kids to know.
[00:36:26]  So he's out there fighting the good fight.
[00:36:29]  But yes, so we're talking about the Gadson flag here, the snake wrapped around a stick saying, don't tread on me.
[00:36:35]  And wasn't that originally Ben Franklin's?
[00:36:37]  Wasn't that originally his design?
[00:36:39]  I don't know if it was his or not.
[00:36:40]  I don't know.
[00:36:41]  Maybe you're right about that, but it was a sign from like the Revolutionary War.
[00:36:45]  Conflating it with the slave trade.
[00:36:46]  It wouldn't have even made sense.
[00:36:49]  Why would that be the sign of the slave trade?
[00:36:51]  Obviously, it's kind of contradictory toward the whole idea of slavery.
[00:36:54]  It was the, you know, like, it was a F you to the British Empire.
[00:36:59]  But anyway, but so saying that this is problematic.
[00:37:03]  And so he's removed from class for this.
[00:37:05]  All right.
[00:37:05]  So let's keep playing.
[00:37:07]  I mean, he is able to go.
[00:37:08]  I was actually just telling him, like, I was upset that he's missing so much school.
[00:37:13]  I'm like, ah, so I asked it, can you just take his stuff out of his bag and go back to class?
[00:37:17]  Like, I just wanted to go back to class, but the bag can't go back.
[00:37:20]  It's not patch on it because we can't have that in and around other kids.
[00:37:24]  So that's what I was trying to.
[00:37:24]  And then you said you were close.
[00:37:26]  So I was like, oh, yeah, it has nothing to do with slavery.
[00:37:28]  That's like the revolutionary war patch that was displayed when they were fighting the British.
[00:37:32]  Like that wasn't, that's the revolution.
[00:37:34]  Maybe you're thinking of like the Confederate Confederate pod.
[00:37:40]  Okay.
[00:37:41]  So I am here to hear you.
[00:37:46]  I am here to enforce the policy that was provided by the district.
[00:37:50]  And definitely you have every right to not agree with it.
[00:37:55]  I mean, because ACWU says that he's allowed to wear that if you like go on their website.
[00:38:00]  It's like says in the big so I all I'm saying is that pause again.
[00:38:08]  I'm just here to blindly enforce the little piece of authority that I have.
[00:38:11]  And I'm not really prepared for you to push back on it at all because I'm mindless and just here to enforce authority.
[00:38:17]  So if we could just let me enforce authority, then your child can go back to class.
[00:38:21]  Look, this is, look, this is a problem with bureaucracy in general, both public and private.
[00:38:27]  You know, like when you're screwed over by a corporation and you have to get on the phone with them and you're like yelling at somebody and there is a point where like, and the guy's like, sir, this is just my job.
[00:38:37]  I don't know what I can tell you to do.
[00:38:39]  And, you know, and you're like, yeah, I know.
[00:38:40]  I know.
[00:38:41]  I'm just mad at you.
[00:38:42]  And you have no power of this because you know what?
[00:38:45]  I can't actually speak to the fucking CEO of this company.
[00:38:48]  I can't actually, and it's just annoying because basically you're just like, you're getting screwed.
[00:38:53]  And yeah, sir, I don't even have an argument for you.
[00:38:55]  I can't even tell you a reason why.
[00:38:56]  Yep, that sure does sound right, what you're saying to me, but you're going to just kind of take it on the chin or whatever.
[00:39:01]  You know, even if it gets rectified, it's like the inconvenience of all this.
[00:39:04]  You're just going to eat that.
[00:39:07]  That happens with big bureaucratic institutions.
[00:39:11]  The issue with public schools is that the institution is in the business of propagandizing your children, which seems like a really important industry.
[00:39:20]  Okay, let's play a little bit more of it and then we'll discuss.
[00:39:24]  Patches, period.
[00:39:25]  Like you said, there's no patches allowed at the school.
[00:39:27]  You cannot display what you think or anything like that or what tier or like that.
[00:39:33]  I think it's like one-sided, you know, because you allow some patches, but not other patches.
[00:39:45]  Yeah.
[00:39:46]  That was like flown during the revolution.
[00:39:51]  Yeah, I just don't understand that at all.
[00:39:55]  So what I can do is if you go on to the ACLU's website, yeah, let's talk.
[00:40:02]  I can have you speak to Jeff Yogan again.
[00:40:06]  And then he can refer you to our person at the district level.
[00:40:11]  Because like I said, we're following district laws is what we're doing.
[00:40:18]  The last thing I want is him out of class.
[00:40:19]  Yeah, I want to say he takes his classes seriously at studies.
[00:40:24]  He wants to get straight A's.
[00:40:25]  He did that.
[00:40:26]  He made audible when he was here before.
[00:40:28]  He intends to do that again right now, but it's hard because he keeps missing class for this.
[00:40:34]  So I understand that.
[00:40:36]  Yeah.
[00:40:36]  And I mean, we teach him to always stick up for your beliefs.
[00:40:39]  And I mean, you're going over the revolution this for seventh grade.
[00:40:43]  I mean, the founding fathers stood up for what they believed in against unjust laws.
[00:40:48]  This is unjust.
[00:40:50]  Okay.
[00:40:50]  I, like I said, we're upholding a policy that was provided to us, which we have to uphold.
[00:40:56]  All right.
[00:40:56]  We can say that.
[00:40:57]  It goes, as I said before, I have no counter argument.
[00:41:01]  I just want to make that clear, ma'am.
[00:41:03]  I have no response to your excellent point.
[00:41:06]  I'm sitting under an American flag right now.
[00:41:09]  I'm the biggest hypocrite in the world.
[00:41:11]  It's just that we don't appreciate a sign of freedom here in this school.
[00:41:16]  I guarantee you he could have a Black Lives Matter patch on.
[00:41:20]  He could have an LGBTQ support thing or whatever.
[00:41:25]  You know what I mean?
[00:41:26]  That would be no problem.
[00:41:27]  But this, this like, leave me the hell alone.
[00:41:30]  Don't tread on me.
[00:41:31]  I want to be a free person.
[00:41:33]  That's a dangerous message to be sending out.
[00:41:36]  And look, this does kind of play into what I was saying before about why they hate right-wing populists so much.
[00:41:41]  It's like, it's also why they hate, it's why they hate masculinity so much.
[00:41:45]  It's why they hate, like, it's why they want to feminize men.
[00:41:48]  It's, it all break up families, all of this stuff.
[00:41:51]  It all kind of goes together.
[00:41:54]  Look, this is just something that evidently the kid, I believe he did get suspended.
[00:42:02]  Let me just double check that.
[00:42:04]  Oh, maybe I'm wrong about that.
[00:42:06]  No, I'm sorry.
[00:42:06]  I misremembered that.
[00:42:08]  Connor just said he was kicked out of class.
[00:42:12]  The school, the school's director said via email that the patch was, quote, disruptive to the classroom environment.
[00:42:20]  But that means that at a top level, someone actually made a decision that this flag is dangerous and then somehow educated everyone all the way down to the teachers that if they saw a kid have this, they need to be removed from a classroom.
[00:42:33]  Think about just all this stuff that's going on in school, all the things that teachers would have to keep an eye out for or decide to enforce.
[00:42:40]  That means that there was a very clear directive at some point in time of, hey, we can't have this in a school, which, I mean, bring that guy in front of Congress to defend that.
[00:42:51]  Why is the school board taking an active decision against the, you know, the flag of liberty?
[00:42:58]  Yep.
[00:42:59]  And for what seems to be a good kid who the teacher is even.
[00:43:02]  Oh, that's also funny.
[00:43:03]  It's like I would have been such a shitbagger in that room, but like, you know, just the fact that it's actually a nice kid who wants to learn.
[00:43:09]  I mean, like, leave the nerds alone.
[00:43:12]  Well, look, I mean, I got to say, the lesson in all of this is for, look, for people like, if you're listening to this show, I would assume you fall into this group.
[00:43:25]  If you have kids and you are outside of the progressive woke ethos and you don't very much believe in that stuff, maybe you recognize it as being insane or anti-human or anti-civilization.
[00:43:44]  You no longer have the luxury to not to not care about where your kids are going to school.
[00:43:52]  That's the truth.
[00:43:54]  Is that they are um, they have, they've always been propaganda factories to some degree, but they have dialed it up to 11, and if you are somebody who believes in freedom, understand that the people who are most likely spending more time with your kids than you are.
[00:44:10]  If you have them in one of these public schools, they are propagandizing your child to hate what you believe in.
[00:44:18]  That's a pretty serious thing and I would I would say look, I understand, I am in a um, i'm in a better situation than many are, where it's much easier for me uh, to shield my kids from this type of stuff.
[00:44:34]  Um, I mean, I have very little kids right now, but going forward, it just will be easier for me.
[00:44:38]  I understand a lot of people um, don't make very good money, don't have as much flexibility as as I have in uh, in my career but look, I would just say some things have to be like uh non-negotiables, and I would say that that is a non-negotiable, that your kids are being propagandized by people who hate what you believe in, and I would say that that has to be like,
[00:45:05]  your top priority is to make sure your kids aren't in that type of environment, because this really it is creepy to think that they're like, yep, that's where, that's where your kids are is.
[00:45:15]  Uh, they're in an environment where you could you could literally be attempting to trans kids, but you can't stand up for freedom.
[00:45:24]  That's why you got to send them to private uh, religious schools.
[00:45:26]  They can be propagandized for what you do believe in.
[00:45:29]  Well look, I mean it's all kind of that look and and, and I will say there are some people who just are in situations where they can't get and when I say that I mean where they actually can't like a divorced dad who's against this stuff, but the mom wants the kids in this school and actually is powerless to like stop this from being the school that the kids go to.
[00:45:47]  And if that is the situation then man, you really got to work overtime to make sure that your kid is aware of everything that's going on.
[00:45:55]  I will say, just from that little snip, it seems like that mom is doing a pretty good job of at least making sure this kid, like you, could already tell their conversations when they go home.
[00:46:05]  Yeah, this is all bullshit.
[00:46:07]  I'll teach a course for people that have to send their kids to public school.
[00:46:10]  It'll be called everyone's retarded and why you should show them no respect.
[00:46:14]  And day one course i'll go listen.
[00:46:17]  I know that you're going to be showing up to these classrooms and there's going to be teachers there.
[00:46:21]  Most of them are teachers because they suck at life, and that's why they're there teaching you now.
[00:46:26]  There might be some that really love their core subject and there might be a couple that are good around the law along the way, but for the most part, these guys are failures and that's why they're teaching you at this level.
[00:46:36]  So just know that you don't have to respect them.
[00:46:39]  Dude, I love Michael Malice's.
[00:46:42]  That's great.
[00:46:43]  That's a great class.
[00:46:45]  I would take that.
[00:46:46]  I would ace that class.
[00:46:48]  You're like, listen, do you know why I'm here?
[00:46:51]  Because a lot of shit didn't work out for me.
[00:46:53]  That's why I'm here teaching this class.
[00:46:55]  Okay.
[00:46:56]  But Michael Malice's line, I don't want to get it wrong, but he said, he said, public schools are literal prisons.
[00:47:03]  And in many cases, the only place where people will deal with bullying and threats of physical violence in their lives.
[00:47:12]  And it is just like insane to me.
[00:47:14]  Like the whole, the whole concept of school is really nuts when you think about it, that you're going to kind of like lock kids into this kind of like, it's like a, okay, so you have the, the, the aspect you were talking about before, where it's just like a bunch of really unimpressive people as the authority figures in your kids' lives.
[00:47:39]  We're going to like sit them in rows of desks and make them focus on memorizing and regurgitating information because that's what'll, but you know, whoever kisses ass the most is going to rise to the top.
[00:47:52]  Whoever is an outside of the box thinker, a creative critical thinker, they're going to struggle and have a tough time.
[00:47:59]  And then for most of the time, since the kids outnumber the teachers by, I don't know, 30 to 1, 40 to 1, whatever it is in that school, they're basically in a lord of the flies type situation where they're, you know what I mean?
[00:48:13]  Like they're just like with no supervision or guidance are dealing with kids and deal with bullying and threats of violence and all of these things.
[00:48:21]  You know what I mean?
[00:48:23]  Like that's pretty nuts.
[00:48:24]  And they went, yep, that's the best we can do.
[00:48:26]  That's how we raise kids.
[00:48:28]  That's how we support raising kids.
[00:48:30]  It's really crazy.
[00:48:31]  But when this shit's going on, as this thing is getting dialed up so much and it's so insane, it's just something that parents have to be more and more aware of.
[00:48:41]  And you got to think about what your options are.
[00:48:43]  And I think we have like this thing is so crazy.
[00:48:47]  It's so crazy that we accept this.
[00:48:49]  And I think a lot of us have just become too complacent and taken it.
[00:48:56]  It almost becomes like an excuse that it's a given.
[00:48:58]  Well, I can't, I really can't do it any other way.
[00:49:01]  And that's really not true.
[00:49:02]  It's like a lot of times you can do it another way.
[00:49:04]  It's just a matter of how much you prioritize that.
[00:49:07]  That's the truth in a lot of cases, not saying in all of them, but in a lot of cases, that's the truth.
[00:49:12]  You know, there were our grandparents and great grandparents were far poorer than you are and they figured that out, you know?
[00:49:20]  So like, no, you can figure it out.
[00:49:22]  It's just a question of what you're, what you might have to sacrifice in order to do it.
[00:49:27]  But anyway, yeah, crazy story.
[00:49:28]  Really great video, though.
[00:49:29]  Really kind of sums up everything.

=== Untrustworthy Bill Maher (17:02) ===

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[00:51:31]  All right, let's get back into the show.
[00:51:32]  I think Toe Bishop tweeted something about it where he had like a freeze frame of the kid smirking and the teacher like scolding.
[00:51:44]  And he was like the state of American politics.
[00:51:48]  Something like, yeah, he's just said politics in 2020.
[00:51:51]  And it's just like the kid like holding in a smile and the woman being like, hmm.
[00:51:56]  And it's just like, yeah, that really is like, which character do you want?
[00:52:00]  Which character do you want to be?
[00:52:01]  The smirking kid or the like fucking pissed off teacher who can't defend her own her own dumb policies.
[00:52:09]  Okay, before we get out of here, there was another video I really did want to touch on.
[00:52:14]  This was a bill, a clip of Bill Maher on his podcast.
[00:52:18]  Bill Maher, of course, as everybody knows, is the political comedian, probably either, maybe aside from John Stewart, maybe him and John Stewart, probably the most like most famous political comedian of our time.
[00:52:34]  And he's doing a podcast now and he had John Mellenkamp on the show because when you want to get down to what's going on, you need Bill Maher and the Cougs to sit down and really hammer shit out.
[00:52:47]  Bill Maher, it's funny because he is, he has kind of woken up to a lot of the craziness of modern times.
[00:52:59]  But man, he is still so incredibly blue pilled on certain issues.
[00:53:05]  Anyway, this was really something.
[00:53:06]  Let's play the clip and then we can talk about it.
[00:53:09]  Everybody's late on everything.
[00:53:11]  As Joe Friday used to say on Dragnet, we're recruiting from the human race.
[00:53:16]  Yes, we're all schmucks and we're all late.
[00:53:18]  Obama was late on gay marriage.
[00:53:19]  Kennedy was late on civil rights.
[00:53:21]  Lincoln was late on slavery.
[00:53:23]  Everybody's always late.
[00:53:24]  Biden's late now on pot.
[00:53:26]  Everybody's fucking.
[00:53:27]  Hold on for a second.
[00:53:29]  I, unlike you, do not believe a fucking single word that comes out of any of that.
[00:53:40]  I just don't believe it.
[00:53:41]  You don't believe gay marriage was illegal and then became no, no, I believe that.
[00:53:45]  Okay.
[00:53:46]  But I don't believe anything that the government reports.
[00:53:51]  All right.
[00:53:52]  So let's pause for a second here.
[00:53:54]  So what's already so cool?
[00:53:57]  Yeah, he sure does.
[00:53:58]  Well, I mean, the guy wrote Pink Houses.
[00:54:00]  I don't actually know if he wrote it, but he's saying it pretty good.
[00:54:03]  But so it's just, so Bill Maher goes through this like everybody's late on things.
[00:54:09]  And then John Cougar Mellenkamp or John Mellencamp, I don't think he likes being called Cougar anymore.
[00:54:15]  He responds with like, yeah, I don't believe any of this.
[00:54:18]  And I think what he's basically, at least what I took it as, is he's saying like, yeah, I think it's probably more like once gay marriage was more popular than unpopular, then Obama started supporting it, which is the case, by the way.
[00:54:30]  It was right when it broke 50% of popularity.
[00:54:32]  He went, oh, yeah, I'm on the other side of this.
[00:54:34]  Okay.
[00:54:35]  And it was wildly popular amongst his base.
[00:54:38]  That's why he did it.
[00:54:39]  Because at first he was like, no, the rest of you have to suffer like me and dress up your man as a wife.
[00:54:44]  He goes, gay marriage?
[00:54:45]  Oh, you guys are going to get off easy?
[00:54:47]  You know what I had to do?
[00:54:48]  You know what I had to go through for my gay marriage?
[00:54:50]  Yeah.
[00:54:51]  Anyway, I don't, for the record, I haven't bought into that conspiracy, but it is fun.
[00:54:58]  But so I think that was his point that it's like, oh, no.
[00:55:01]  Like, actually, I think they're, I don't think they're late to this.
[00:55:04]  I think they're just doing whatever is politically expedient.
[00:55:06]  I don't trust anything they say.
[00:55:08]  And then Bill Maher's like, wait, so you don't trust that gay marriage was once illegal and then was illegal?
[00:55:11]  He's like, no, not that.
[00:55:12]  Like, what?
[00:55:13]  No, I'm saying, okay, let's hear Bill Maher's response.
[00:55:17]  Nothing.
[00:55:18]  Like the unemployment figures?
[00:55:20]  That's what Trump says.
[00:55:22]  Maybe.
[00:55:23]  Trump, Trump, when he ran the first time, I mean, it's Trump, so you have to like just use it for comic effect.
[00:55:30]  But like the unemployment rate is saying it's, it's 4%.
[00:55:35]  It could be as high as 35%, 40%.
[00:55:38]  That pulled it right out of his ass.
[00:55:40]  That's not what I'm saying.
[00:55:42]  What are you saying?
[00:55:43]  What do you think the unemployment rate is?
[00:55:45]  I have no fucking idea, but I'm not.
[00:55:47]  You think it's wrong what they were telling us?
[00:55:50]  Whatever it is, it's wrong.
[00:55:52]  I don't trust the guy.
[00:55:53]  I do.
[00:55:54]  You trust the government?
[00:55:55]  I trust the people who work in the deep state.
[00:55:58]  I trust these fucking bureaucrats.
[00:56:00]  Yes, I do.
[00:56:01]  The people with failed pizza on their desk and cold coffee who just do the job of making sure that your life is as cushy as it fucking is and most people's lives are.
[00:56:12]  Because a lot of nameless, faceless people doing boring jobs do things like yes, compile.
[00:56:18]  He's just such an idiot.
[00:56:21]  There's no other way to say it.
[00:56:22]  Listen, dude, we've been wrong about everything.
[00:56:25]  Time to pack it up and go home.
[00:56:27]  This will be the last part of the problem, boys.
[00:56:29]  I didn't realize after all these years, you could trust these guys.
[00:56:32]  No, it's not so much that you can't trust any given pencil pusher.
[00:56:37]  It's that people organize the pencil pushers.
[00:56:39]  It's like in any company, the CEO, he's calling up someone like the guy who's supposed to do the whatever.
[00:56:45]  The accountant there is not bad.
[00:56:46]  It's when he gets a call from the guy up top and goes, I need the numbers to be orchestrated this way.
[00:56:50]  And they figure out how to do it.
[00:56:52]  Or the numbers go up to his desk.
[00:56:53]  And before he sends them along, he changes the number.
[00:56:55]  That's how you get ahead in bureaucracies is you go, oh, I don't like that number.
[00:56:59]  We're going to have to report a different number.
[00:57:00]  And that's the way they do it.
[00:57:01]  Let's just play the last little bit of what he says.
[00:57:03]  And then, yeah, let's try to respond to this in totality.
[00:57:06]  Data on unemployment.
[00:57:07]  I do.
[00:57:08]  I trust those stats generally.
[00:57:10]  And you, and so, so you, I suppose, you trust science also, right?
[00:57:15]  It depends on what science you're talking about.
[00:57:17]  When we were when we were kids in the 70s, we were going to enter an ice age by the year 2000.
[00:57:28]  This is all scientific bullshit.
[00:57:30]  Look it up.
[00:57:31]  I understand.
[00:57:32]  I know where you're going with this.
[00:57:33]  And it's like, what?
[00:57:36]  It's not going to happen.
[00:57:37]  No.
[00:57:38]  Right now, right now, climate change to me is the core of the fucking earth eating up.
[00:57:44]  I agree.
[00:57:45]  I've always been on that page.
[00:57:48]  And a piece of fucking plastic laying in the street is not going to make a goddamn bit of difference.
[00:57:53]  We are not going to kill this earth.
[00:57:55]  It's going to kill us.
[00:57:57]  Right.
[00:57:57]  Well, that's what we're trying to avoid.
[00:57:59]  Okay.
[00:57:59]  All right.
[00:58:00]  Let's pause it.
[00:58:01]  I think we're done with this because then they just go into a whole climate conversation, which is a topic for another day.
[00:58:05]  But just on this idea of Bill Maher being like, I trust the deep state because really, who is it?
[00:58:13]  He goes, it's somebody with cold pizza and a cup of coffee just trying to get me the numbers of unemployment.
[00:58:22]  The Pentagon does a great job with its books.
[00:58:25]  Look at how it closes up its budget every year.
[00:58:27]  Those pencil pushers.
[00:58:28]  They're really great at those numbers.
[00:58:29]  It's funny because, okay, look, if you want to include that in like in your definition of the deep state, which is fair enough, if we're in general talking about kind of unelected bureaucrats who serve from president to president, kind of the government that is permanent and is not, let's say, subject to the whims of democracy.
[00:58:51]  Fine, let's let's count some people in, say, like the Department of Labor putting, you know, publishing unemployment stats.
[00:58:58]  And he goes, yeah, I trust those.
[00:58:59]  Like those, you know, now, first of all, what's kind of funny is that, yeah, those numbers are bullshit, by the way.
[00:59:05]  They totally are bullshit.
[00:59:07]  And Donald Trump, maybe he was sloppy in the way he said that, but that doesn't really change the fact.
[00:59:14]  The way they calculate unemployment is they don't count you as unemployed if you give up and stop looking for a job.
[00:59:22]  Did you know that?
[00:59:23]  That you have to be actively looking for a job in order to be counted as unemployed.
[00:59:30]  It's very similar to just kind of like the COVID numbers where you're like, oh, wait, what I'm looking for, and I think most normal people, when you say, what is the unemployment rate?
[00:59:41]  You want to know how many people do not have a job.
[00:59:45]  How many people are not working?
[00:59:47]  Now, they don't want to give you that number because that number would look much worse for them.
[00:59:53]  So they don't count anyone who just fell out.
[00:59:56]  It's like, I just, I can't even find a job.
[00:59:58]  I'm not even trying anymore.
[01:00:00]  I'm not, if you're not actively looking for a job, you're not counted as unemployed.
[01:00:04]  So the real unemployment number is much higher than the government unemployment number.
[01:00:10]  That's just true.
[01:00:11]  Now, of course, Donald Trump used to talk about this when Obama was president.
[01:00:15]  He stopped talking about it when he was president and started using the same numbers to brag about how low unemployment is.
[01:00:21]  Okay, fine.
[01:00:22]  Politicians play these games.
[01:00:23]  It's just kind of funny that even the example you came up with is still something that cannot be trusted objectively.
[01:00:30]  It's not accurate.
[01:00:31]  You know, it's just a number that helps them that does not give you a real impression of what, you know, what the actual number of people who are unemployed is.
[01:00:41]  But, you know, when people talk about not trusting the deep state, that's typically not what they're talking about.
[01:00:48]  They're typically not saying, oh, I don't trust, you know, labor statistics or something like that.
[01:00:54]  Usually what they're saying is they're talking about things like the CIA and the FBI and the NSA and things like that, okay?
[01:01:03]  Which also fall into this kind of like deep state bureaucrats, spies, unelected government officials who, for the most part, operate in secrecy.
[01:01:12]  And the idea of trusting them is ridiculous.
[01:01:17]  And I will give John Mellenkamp credit.
[01:01:20]  I mean, he goes into this thing about the science and how, oh, look, they used to say we were going into an ice age.
[01:01:25]  They were completely wrong about that.
[01:01:26]  How do you know they're not completely wrong about this?
[01:01:29]  But I think if it would have helped more to just stay on the topic of the deep state and be like, dude, just go look at the stuff that's declassified.
[01:01:38]  Okay.
[01:01:39]  That's not, it's not in, it's not debated.
[01:01:42]  It's just a factual thing that happened a part of American history.
[01:01:45]  Look at Operation Mockingbird or Operation Paperclip.
[01:01:50]  Look at Operation Northwood.
[01:01:54]  Look at like things that the CIA has done or planned on doing throughout history and tell me that you should just be trusting these people.
[01:02:02]  Look at what the FBI has done throughout history.
[01:02:05]  Look at what they did spying on civil rights leaders in the 60s.
[01:02:09]  Look at what they did spying on anti-war activists.
[01:02:12]  Look at all this, let alone the Trump-Russia stuff.
[01:02:14]  But just look at their long track record.
[01:02:17]  Look at the NSA, who built up the biggest spying apparatus on the domestic population and then had James Clapper, the head of security, the national director of security, had him just lie under oath about what they were doing.
[01:02:39]  Why should we trust them when they lie to they have a history of lying and lying and lying?
[01:02:47]  So it's not so much that like we like are saying like, oh yeah, yeah, there is, like you said, Rob, there is some bureaucrat who's just like a mid-level guy who's just doing his simple fucking task, probably doing it a lot slower and more inefficiently than anyone in the private sector ever gets away with doing it.
[01:03:04]  Probably has a better pension deal and has better hours and shit like that because they're a government employee.
[01:03:10]  But that's not really what people are talking about when they're talking about the deep state.
[01:03:15]  What they're talking about is the fact that who really runs the government does not seem to be our elected officials.
[01:03:24]  Who really runs the government seems to be people that the Federal Reserve and at the CIA and in the Pentagon who operate in secrecy and are over and over again caught lying to the American people, not for the benefit of the American people, but for the benefit of special interests.
[01:03:45]  Federal Reserve's real great at hitting that 2% target number and predicting temporary or transient inflation, whatever word they were using.
[01:03:54]  Yeah, those people in the deep state, when they report numbers, they're hell accurate.
[01:03:58]  Or remember when the CDC was telling us about all those COVID deaths that later turned out to be people that were dying of other causes?
[01:04:05]  It's always, by the way, the other claim that he made there, which drives me crazy, is the thing where he goes, and they're doing all this work to keep us wealthy and keep us safe so we live nice, cushy lives.
[01:04:16]  This, by the way, is always the defense of government in general.
[01:04:21]  It's always the defense.
[01:04:23]  It's like, oh, yeah, it's easy for you to say you oppose the government, but you sit there having a pretty nice life and that's only because of the government.
[01:04:30]  And then you complain about the life that, you know, that government gives you.
[01:04:33]  And it always relies on this completely hypothetical counterfactual.
[01:04:40]  You know what I mean?
[01:04:41]  Like, well, if they weren't doing this, everything would be way worse.
[01:04:44]  And you're like, why?
[01:04:44]  Hold on, take me through that.
[01:04:45]  Take me through how the government makes me wealthier.
[01:04:49]  Just because on the surface of it, it looks like they steal half my income every year.
[01:04:56]  That's what it looks like upon first glance.
[01:04:59]  So take me through how they're keeping me so wealthy because it seems like I'm doing a lot to keep myself wealthy and they're robbing 50% of it every single year.
[01:05:09]  That's what it feels like from my end.
[01:05:12]  But take me through this and it'll always come down to like, well, if they weren't there, then someone would come and do some terrible thing to you.
[01:05:20]  It's the same thing as like the justification for the war in Ukraine.
[01:05:23]  Well, if we don't do this, then Russia will win and then they'll take over all of Europe and then just a made-up counterfactual with no evidence to actually support it.
[01:05:32]  And in fact, it seems much more likely in either situation that like, no, that probably wouldn't happen because a lot of people would be concerned about that.
[01:05:40]  And there'd be an incentive to kind of work together to make sure that doesn't happen.
[01:05:45]  You know, the idea that we would all just be screwed if it wasn't for the Pentagon extracting trillions of dollars out of the economy and then not even being able to tell us what they did with it.
[01:05:58]  If it wasn't for that, I trust them.
[01:05:59]  You know, I trust them.
[01:06:01]  Doesn't matter how many trillions go unaccounted for.
[01:06:03]  I just trust them because they're the deep state.
[01:06:06]  They wouldn't lie to me.
[01:06:07]  They would never do that.
[01:06:10]  Ah, Bill Maher, so good on some issues, but man, when he's bad, it is just catastrophically bad.
[01:06:17]  You're like, man, you must be getting invited to some cool parties, Bill Maher.
[01:06:20]  I don't know what the story is.
[01:06:22]  All right, look, that's our episode for today.
[01:06:24]  Go check out my comedy special if you haven't already.
[01:06:27]  Come check us out on the road, comicdave Smith.com, RobbieTheFire.com.
[01:06:32]  We will catch you next time.
[01:06:33]  Peace.