Dave Smith and his co-host dissect a pro-Palestinian Capitol insurrection, contrasting it with the January 6th event where Espionage Act prosecutions allegedly punished minor offenses like broken windows. They critique Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s independent presidential run, specifically his proposed 3% mortgage rates which they argue would trigger a 2008-style housing bubble, while condemning Douglas McKay's seven-month prison sentence for joking about texting Hillary Clinton to vote as egregious voter suppression. Ultimately, the episode exposes perceived judicial corruption and right-wing hypocrisy regarding free speech and election integrity. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Rolling Back The State00:07:51
We need to roll back the state.
We spy on all of our own citizens.
Our prisons are flooded with nonviolent drug offenders.
If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
You're listening to part of the problem on the gas digital network.
Steer your host.
What's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
We are recording this the very day that me and Rob are about to head out over to the other side of the pond to London, to Ireland, to Scotland, and to the Netherlands.
I should probably just give the cities.
Just, you know what?
We'll be in that country.
Come find us there.
London, Glasgow, what's it called?
Belfast and Amsterdam.
Going to all those places.
ComicdaveSmith.com.
Few tickets still available.
Go grab them.
Come see me on Robbie the Fire, Louis J. Gomez, and Zach Amiko in Europe.
Excited for that.
Anyway, let's jump into today's show because there's one particular topic that I wanted to talk about quite a bit, Rob.
I'm sure you saw there was another insurrection the other day.
We're doing a lot of insurrections as a country now.
This time, there was a pro-Palestinian insurrection.
They, yeah, they tried to...
Was the FBI there to open up doors for them?
It's, you know, you never know one day out what exactly the FBI was doing.
That takes years.
That takes years to figure that stuff out.
I'm sure.
I'm sure that Director Ray will not comment on any ongoing investigation.
That is my thing.
It was a pretty big scene, though.
There were certainly from the pictures I saw, there were thousands of people at the protest, thousands outside, and at least several hundred who did manage to get inside.
There was some struggles between with the protesters and with law enforcement.
I didn't see anything much more than that, like some struggles between.
At least people would just learn their lesson.
You don't get a prize for getting in the building.
It's not like you then own the government.
There's no like mantle of, oh, you got into the building.
Now we'll hear you out.
People like almost, it's almost like the Wizard of Oz, where they think if they look behind the curtain, if you actually get there, your wish is granted.
Like you're just like, if I grab that gavel, then I'm the speaker of the house.
Right.
What do you think you're going to accomplish by going in other than potentially getting in trouble?
Yes.
I would not, and I'm sure you would say the same thing.
I would not advise anyone I loved and cared about to enter the Capitol building during a protest.
And go, what's the risk first reward here?
Now, of course, there has been this triggers, for lack of a better word, a huge reaction on social media.
And I think that particularly from say like right-wingers, and I mean that in a broad sense of the word, but right-wingers certainly, which I fully support and totally understand, they immediately were just calling out the hypocrisy of this that, oh, okay, yeah, like, you know, think about what happened to the people at January 6th.
What a big deal that was made of.
We're not going to see nearly the same type of thing now.
And so that's kind of, I think, legitimate to point out that January 6th was made out to be this thing that was so far removed from reality.
Like you still see people will make these these crazy like assertions about what January 6th was.
And they'll say, though, this was an attempt to, you know, put in a, overthrow the government and install a dictator for life.
I've heard that a lot, a dictator for life.
And you're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Like, how did you, first of all, have to jump to so many levels to even get that this was an attempt to overthrow the government or that this was an attempt to install Donald Trump.
But then you're also jumping to the conclusion that he no longer would have sat for elections going forward.
Like the attempt of January 6th was that there were, not only do we not want this election certified, because all that would have happened, right, if the election wasn't certified, if my understanding of the constitutional process is correct, is it would get kicked back down to the states to then get sent back to the federal government.
So there's no mechanism by which Donald Trump is just installed.
You know what I mean?
It still have to go through a process.
But now you've jumped to the conclusion that not only is he installed, but also that's it.
There's never any election.
Because they don't want this election certified, that means they don't want any elections ever.
So there's just a lot of weird, goofy stuff completely removed from reality.
And you don't see the same type of the same type of insanity from the corporate press over this for obvious reasons, because it's not like this isn't what the situation was then where they could use it to their advantage.
You know, they could paint Donald Trump supporters as domestic terrorists and talk about, you know, what they always love to talk about, which is how our democracy is at risk and all of this stuff.
So you don't see that now.
But there was another thing.
So I understand right-wingers pointing out the hypocrisy.
However, there was another dynamic to this that I found not only disturbing, but just, I don't know exactly how to put this.
It's just a moment of you're like, yeah, yes, right-wingers.
This is why you guys always lose.
And this was the, and this was not just a few people.
This was over a pretty overwhelming amount of people on the right.
And I was tweeting about it and listening to responses from all these guys.
And they were rooting for these people to be treated like the January 6th guys.
Like this was the sentiment was like, hey, they threw the book at January 6th.
Let's throw the book at all these guys.
What?
I don't want to live in a world where left wingers can storm the Capitol, but right-wingers aren't allowed to.
And I certainly understand their, I understand the point that, yes, if right-wingers, if Trump supporters enter the Capitol, there is going to be a much different reaction than if left-wingers enter the Capitol.
And that's not right.
I get that.
But the answer to that is not that the left-wingers should have the book thrown at them too.
That's not, you know what I mean?
It's like, like if there are two people in a room and a third guy enters and just stabs one of them and doesn't stab the other one, you're like, this is unfair.
And you'd be like, yeah, okay.
And so, but the answer isn't stab the other guy too.
The answer is that it's insane that they threw the book at January 6th.
I mean, it's insane that they, what was it, a 17-year sentence for one guy who like broke some windows?
And then they charged him.
They said that, well, him breaking the windows was the entry point.
And therefore he like led an insurrection and they charged him under like the Espionage Act or something like that.
It's just utter madness.
It's 17 years for breaking a window, which by the way was built by taxpayer dollars and was replaced by taxpayer dollars.
It's not even like there was any, the only victim was the taxpayers in this situation.
All Lives Matter Hypocrisy00:02:36
But anyway, but to root this stuff on, and I just like, I had so many, you know, so I was tweeting about this a bit, right?
So I said, so many right-wingers lose the plot when they're trying to call out hypocrisy on the left.
Now, this is, by the way, a theme that I've noticed quite a bit over the last week as many right-wingers have lost their mind.
And as Glenn Greenwald put it the other day, they've been like put in a time machine to 2002.
And they're back to being George W. Bush right-wingers, it seems like with a lot of them.
But so this was, I was bringing this up when I don't know if you saw it.
Did you see Pete Davidson's opening to Saturday Night Live monologue?
So Pete Davidson was hosting Pete, who you knew Pete back when we first started comedy, right?
Like, yeah, Pete, we kind of, we were, all three of us were around like the New York comedy scene when Pete first started.
He took off and got SNL and became very famous.
But like I don't know Pete very well these days, but I knew him back in the day pretty well.
And I was, I got to say, I was kind of, I was proud of him.
I thought it was kind of a beautiful moment.
He told this story about how his dad died in a terrorist attack and it was a really tough time in his life.
And that he listening to Eddie Murphy's, either delirious or raw, I can't remember which one, that it was like, really like kind of carried him through a very difficult time.
And he said it was like the first time he remembered like laughing really hard since his dad had died.
And then it just kind of said this thing.
He goes, I know right now that there's innocent people on both sides who are going through things like that, like losing family members.
And so what we're going to do tonight is just try to be funny.
And, you know, then, you know, and then like made a couple jokes in there.
But I thought it was like a beautiful sentiment.
Like it was a very nice thing to do.
Yes, in the wake of like a terrorist attack and an ongoing war, have a little note of seriousness at the beginning of the show and then be like, look, we're just trying to be funny throughout the show.
A very nice message about what comedy can mean when you're going through a really tough time.
Anyway, I just thought it was great.
And then I see an overwhelming amount of right wingers calling out the hypocrisy of someone like Pete Davidson for they're like, oh, so I guess all lives matter is what you're saying, because he said the thing about like innocent lives on both sides.
So in other words, this is supposed to be the Jews' lives matters, but now you're saying all lives matter.
Public Opinion Limits Power00:15:52
So look at you, you hypocrite.
You used to say that all lives matter was like a fucked up thing to say.
And you're like, okay, yeah, look, even if you're calling out their hypocrisy, how much of a hypocrite are you being right now?
Because now you're the one who's offended by the all lives matter sentiment, right?
So it's like you're, and this constantly happens with the left and the right, where they're calling the other one out for hypocrisy, but they're also engaging in the same hypocrisy themselves.
So you're calling out the left for, you know, whatever, supporting the book being thrown at January 6thers.
But if you're calling out their hypocrisy, if you're asking for the book to be thrown at these guys, then you're every bit the hypocrite that they are.
So how about just don't be a fucking hypocrite?
Like actually stand for something, actually stand for what's right, which is that like, no, these guys shouldn't have the book thrown at them.
Anyway, so I tweeted out.
So I said, so many right-wingers lose the plot when they're trying to call out hypocrisy on the left.
No, we don't want this to be treated like January 6th.
It was insane then and it's insane now.
People stormed the Capitol demanding a ceasefire.
I'm supposed to oppose this.
Why exactly?
So anyway, that's just, I'm just looking at this like a bunch of people with huge banners that say ceasefire stormed the Capitol building.
And I'm supposed to look at this and be like, let's ruin their lives because someone else's lives were ruined?
I just, this, this makes absolutely no sense.
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So I've gotten, I got a lot of responses like this.
Okay.
So this was one of them.
And I mean, I got hundreds like this.
So one person said to me, they said, no, we want equal treatment under the law.
One Sixers got the book thrown at them.
I do want the same for these people because that would be equal treatment under the law.
The only way these people will learn not to put the boot on others is if the boot is put on them.
I just read this one tweet because this captured the sentiment of a lot of people who were who were responding.
And then a lot of people would say kind of like, see, this is the problem with libertarians.
It's like, you want to just look the other way and this is how we lose because the book gets thrown at us and doesn't get thrown on the other side.
And I think the way this guy put it really got to the heart of what's so wrong with this mentality.
Okay.
And this is where right wingers need to learn a libertarian lesson.
This isn't the weakness of libertarians.
This is libertarians actually understanding what's going on here.
So this guy said it.
He gave away the game.
He goes, he goes, you know what?
I want equal treatment under the law.
And so if the book was thrown at people on January 6th, I want the book thrown at them.
Maybe this will teach them not to have their boot on the necks of others.
But here's the problem with that.
They don't have their boot on your neck.
Look, left wingers may have supported what happened to the people who protested on January 6th, but they didn't do anything to them.
You know who did something to them?
The feds.
That's who put their boot on the neck of January 6thers.
It was the federal government, the Justice Department, the FBI, the people who entrapped them into the riot and then threw the book at them for getting caught up in it.
That's who has the boot on their neck.
What, you think Palestinian advocates have their boot on your neck?
You think they're the ones who are dominating you?
So you're not advocating that something be done to the people who have their boot on your neck.
You're actually advocating that the people who have their boot on your neck put their boots on somebody else's neck as well.
You're asking the feds to come in and throw the books at these people, but the feds are the ones who are supposed to be your enemy.
How is that not clear?
How after the entire domestic war on terrorism, is it not clear to right-wingers that the enemy isn't some freaking free Palestine flag holding guy?
The enemy is your own federal government.
So if you want to hold someone accountable for what happened on January 6th, holding left-wing activists accountable isn't going to do anything.
You should hold the feds accountable.
I don't know.
Any thoughts, Rob?
I mostly agree with you.
And I think the more sophisticated argument would be to look at this and go, look, no one thinks that these people should be punished.
So isn't that lesson learned that this is not that flagrant of an offense that people should be going to jail for?
Unless you're on the left and you look at this and go, hey, that building is so sanctimonious that these people went in there and I feel that they should be punished.
That's proof of the concept that going into that building is not that big of a deal.
And we all need to have a conversation about, you know, releasing these people who are being jailed for January 6th.
That's the more sophisticated way of framing this.
I do think that there's a relationship between government and public opinion and that, yes, government will push forward as far as they can with, you know, removing and stripping freedoms, but it's a game of what they can get away with.
I think the most recent example would be when they tried doing that Orwellian, you know, look over the internet with that Mary Poppins singing lady and everyone was like, no, this is ridiculous.
And so they go, oh, we were never going to do that.
And then people brought the records like, no, you were clearly trying to do that.
No, we were never going to do that.
I think January 6th is kind of the same way.
If you even had people like civilians on the left going, this is ridiculous.
That was just a civil protest and there's no reason for these people to go to jail.
I don't think the FBI would have gotten away with as many resources put into it.
But like the starting point is kind of, can the FBI spin the story to the American public that these people need to go to jail?
And then can they push forward with it?
And then can they put the people in jail?
That's kind of why, now I'm ranting a little bit here, but that's kind of why they have the gag orders and what they're doing with Donald Trump is that they kind of know that there is an element of public opinion.
That's how Cosby ended up going to jail was that public opinion kind of, or even Epstein, public opinion found out about the Epstein story.
And then all of a sudden the Justice Department had to go, oh yeah, we're just as angry as you are.
And now the guy's going to jail.
So to me, there is an element of public opinion and what the government can get away with.
I think that's why they're starting to de-escalate and maybe even walk away from the Ukraine war.
And I think what the conservatives are saying is good.
This is a lesson learning opportunity that if we're going to say that going in there's a flagrant offense, let's go do it.
And then everyone's got to sit with the discomfort of, oh, I guess this isn't something that you should go to jail for.
Maybe we shouldn't get that.
That I'm totally fine with.
If the goal is to move the conversation to it, even if you wanted to say in a way like, hey, do you, you really think all these people's lives should be ruined because they entered a sacred building with ceasefire signs?
Is that really right?
And if that can make them kind of open their eyes to things, then yes.
And I totally agree with you that, look, I mean, I think that's the essence of why I do what I do is because I do believe that like if you can have an impact on public opinion, you can move the needle in a certain direction and that, you know, tyrannical governments can only really get away with what they're able to propagandize their own citizens to believe is acceptable.
And if they don't have that belief in them, then their authority basically vanishes.
So I agree with all of that.
By the way, it is interesting.
Just as you mentioned, it does seem like there is a possibility that this now will be the out to walk away from the Ukraine support.
And isn't it funny how, you know, the way all of this propaganda works and the way these insane like fear campaigns where, so for so long, right, as I've been probably, what has it been at least a couple years of arguing about this, this Ukraine stuff.
I've done several debates and talked about it on many, many, many podcasts.
And so what have we heard from the other side?
Well, if Vladimir Putin wins, then that's game over.
Then he's going to invade Poland.
He's going to reconstitute the Soviet Union.
But even now, as it seems like we might be backing off of funding this war, and it seems inevitable that Vladimir Putin's going to win, watch hearing no talk of that.
Like, watch, you're going to hear no one even talk about that.
It's going to be as if they never even said it was true.
Obviously, none of that's going to happen.
And it'll just be like, oh, whatever.
We're talking about Israel now, dude.
Like, who cares about this shit?
Isn't it kind of funny that it's like when it acts, there is no real concern right now out of the political class or the media class to be like, wait a minute, but we're walking away from Ukraine.
This is going to be a disaster because now Vladimir Putin's going to invade Poland.
Let me correct me if I'm wrong.
Who do you see saying that?
Yeah, that would be the funner.
That's like that's OJ Simpson level lying right there when you're like, and I'm running the Howard Stern, I think, asked him that question.
How's the investigation going in for the actual killer?
This is kind of like that, where it's like, wait, listen, the Gaza strip, I get it's terrible, but we can't have Putin taking over all of Europe.
So why is Biden even flying over there?
He should be flying back over to Ukraine.
I mean, Putin's about if you de-escalate, he's going to take over all of Europe.
I mean, I've been told pretty consistently for two years that that's what's going to happen here.
And now, are we doing this now?
Because I mean, yeah, no, it was pretty funny to just.
Yeah, let's not get distracted by some little situation in Gaza.
Maybe a couple thousand civilians on each side.
We got a Putin's taking over Europe.
Oh, Jesus.
All right.
Let's.
All right.
I guess that's that's enough on the Capitol, the storming of the Capitol.
Let's hear, we wanted to play this.
I had seen this and then you sent it over to me afterward.
And I was like, yeah, maybe this is worth this is worth talking about a little bit.
So RFK, we haven't really talked about this much because I think right around the time he announced, pretty shortly after that, this whole stuff in Israel happened and that's been kind of consuming us.
But it is a pretty big deal that RFK moved over to running independent this year.
Certainly the first since Ross Perot, the first independent presidential campaign on this level, you know what I mean?
Like a guy who is polling around 20% within the Democratic Party pretty consistently, as a guy who's drawing tens of thousands of people to his speeches, obviously has tremendous name recognition and has been on, you know, been on a lot of the kind of corporate media and a ton of the alternative media, you know,
and a guy who is who is a serious threat to get a decent vote total.
You know what I mean?
Like somebody who is not at all inconceivable that, I mean, look, it's not inconceivable that he could win.
It certainly is a long shot still, but it's really not like, it's really not that unlikely that he could get 10 or 20% or something like that, which could have a huge, huge impact on the race.
We've really never had anything like that.
I mean, you know, the Libertarian Party is the third biggest political party.
And the biggest vote total they ever had was Gary Johnson.
And I think he got like 3% or something like that.
But the idea of something like RFK, really, the only thing I could compare it to in my life is Ross Perot, who was leading the polls at one point, was in first place, then kind of bailed out of the race and still ended up with a decent vote total.
But yeah, I don't know.
What do you think about RFK running independent?
I love it because firstly, if he even gets up to 10 or 20%, then all of a sudden I think there's a lot of people that don't feel like they're necessarily throwing away their votes for other smaller parties.
And then I think it creates more opportunities for the more of an established independent party that you can have, the more, the higher likelihood you have of breaking either the Democratic or Republican party.
And I think those two things would happen in tandem.
Because like, let's say, let's just say as a theoretical Bernie Sanders ran as an independent and let's just say he picked up 25% of that party, right?
So if you have a break between kind of your far socialists and, you know, your more traditional Democrats, you'll see the same exact thing happen on the right where you're more conservative Christian, like, you know, loving war Republicans kind of go one way and you're more moderate Republicans.
Now you got four parties, which means for a Libertarian party to come in and then start actually maybe putting together a winning coalition is not unheard of anymore.
Yes.
No, that's right.
And that's part of the reason why this kind of duopoly, as libertarians call it a lot, or the una party, there's like these two parties that are really very lockstep on many of the most important issues.
You can see that with this war in Israel right now.
But this is why this system has persisted for so long because it's really beneficial to them that no outsider can really gain control of the system like that.
But yes, now you would see a situation where if like if that were to happen, like what you said, let's say we went from two parties to four parties, well, now all of a sudden it might be much easier for, say, somebody who cares about like what we care about, you know, peace and free markets and stuff like that.
It would be much easier for us to maybe like, oh, okay, well, now maybe you can coalition with one of these groups on certain issues.
Perhaps now the goal isn't that you have to get whatever.
You don't necessarily have to get, you know, 51% of the electorate to win a race.
You may only have to get 20% in order to win a race.
You may maybe even less than that.
Cracking Two Parties00:03:36
So it certainly would be great.
I'd imagine just about anybody, I'd imagine anybody who listening to this show or anybody who just libertarian or not, if you just see the corruption of Washington, D.C. right now, how could you not think that cracking these two parties would be a great thing?
You know what I mean?
That it would just be, it would, it would be a necessary step to any type of solution.
If you're polling a 20%, are you technically invited to the presidential debates?
You know, as of right now, I believe, yes.
I believe you would have to be.
I think the rule was 10% at one point, but they changed the rules a lot.
But then they'll also, you know, they're, they're shady motherfuckers.
So like they do.
Like I remember, I think if I'm getting this wrong, but I believe Gary Johnson broke 10% in a couple polls.
And then they were like, oh, we get to go to the debates now.
And then they were like, oh, well, we just changed the rule that it has to be five polls and it has to be these five polls.
And, you know, like they, so who knows what they would actually allow to happen.
But I think the question is more like, look, Gary Johnson probably like in his best polls got like 10.
He may have even had one where he got like 15% or something like that and then ended up getting like 3% of the vote when it actually came down to it.
But there's, there'd be a difference between that and somebody who was like consistently polling at 20%.
It would just be much tougher to not include that person.
You know what I mean?
Like it would just, it'd be much more difficult because there'd be so many people behind that candidate who were like, you know, would make a lot of noise about it.
As we're going to see in a second, Kennedy is flagrantly bad on some issues.
Yes.
Well, look, there's no question about that.
And he's very good on some issues.
He's very bad on others.
The issues that he's good on, I guess I hold out some hope because they're really important issues.
And the same as, you know, the Libertarian Party is hoping to get someone into the debate that can wake up the masses.
There are some big topics that he still is educating people on, which is really regulatory capture, that we need free speech, that we can't have government regulating the internet.
Like there's some really big things that would be nice to anti-war.
Anti-war unless Israel is involved.
Right.
We don't fight.
We only fight wars for the Jews.
Nobody else.
There are some things.
Look, the corruption of big pharma and their marriage with big government.
There's a lot of things that he's really good on.
On the Ukraine war, he is like flawless and just excellent.
So there's a lot of things that he's very good on.
And he is a very compelling figure.
I mean, he gets people like excited about a lot of these issues.
And I think he has woken up a lot of people.
And there's also something still, even with all this other craziness going on today.
And believe me, it's we know as well as anybody just how dangerous the current state of foreign policy is.
But there's still something about the fact that he is, he has made himself like by being so critical of the COVID vaccine and not just like to the level of like, you know, it's not like he's up there and he's saying like, you know, I, I, I don't believe in mandates.
Housing Booms And Rationing00:15:32
And if you want to take the vaccine, take the vaccine.
If you don't, don't.
I mean, he's going to the level where he's like, no, this vaccine is injuring people.
They lied.
They totally misrepresented what the clinical trials showed.
I mean, and he's really like, and because he's done that, he's made himself like an embodiment of a repudiation of the COVID years.
And I can't overstate how much value I think that has in it, that there's somebody out there, because what we're going to have here, most likely as of right now, is we're going to have Trump who's going to say, everything we did in 2020 was great.
And we saved hundreds of millions of lives by creating the vaccine.
I just wouldn't have mandated it the way Biden did.
And then you're going to have Biden who's saying Trump didn't do enough in 2020.
He should have gone further.
And only because we mandated it did we get out of this pandemic.
So between those, it is so invaluable to have a third guy there who's like, no.
And he doesn't even have to say it anymore.
It's like just his existence.
Like if he just stands there, it's like that guy represents a repudiation of all of it.
And so I really do love that.
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All right, let's get back in the show.
I will tell you, I'm a little bit, I talked with RFK Jr. on the phone and with some people in his campaign before the move happened.
I was a little bit skeptical about going independent.
I mean, and I expressed this to RFK and to others.
I obviously decision maker in this campaign.
And they weren't like, well, we can't do this until you're on board, Dave.
But I did express that.
And my thinking on it was like, look, man, like you are a Democrat.
Like you are a Democrat.
You're Bobby Kennedy's kid.
You're Jack Kennedy's nephew.
Like you are a Democrat.
And like, I kind of felt like we need someone to be the best Democrat.
And that this, in a way, I thought there was a lot of power with him being a Democrat.
But I think their perspective is that they're in this to win.
And the Democrats have rigged the game to the point that he can't win that nomination, but they believe he can win as an independent.
So take that, do with that, what you'd like.
But I do think that that is their perspective.
And maybe, maybe they're right.
I don't know.
It certainly seems like to put it mildly, it would be an uphill battle.
But maybe.
He should just every single day wake up, tear off his shirt like a, you know, like he's going to go wrestle someone and just go, look how good I am at climbing stairs.
And just go down, up, down every morning.
Just shoot.
If you're really serious about trying to win this thing, you're going to need to not have a shirt on most of the time.
A lot of stair work.
Yeah.
That is the, if you really want to take this thing to the next level, a lot of stair work.
Yeah.
And just constantly with no falls, just up and down the stairs.
Just have like the stairs up to your private jet, like those really long stairs, but you're not flying anywhere.
You're just going up and going down and going up and going down.
It's all on a stream.
It's on your YouTube channel live, the whole thing all day long.
You go up, you sleep for a couple hours in the jet at night and then back to the stairs the next day.
That's, that's our advice, but I don't know you want to.
You want to be president or not anyway um okay so yes, there are, as as you alluded to before, there are some areas where RFK is very bad on policy and, as you alluded to, we are about to see one.
So this was uh, this was a video that that uh, Bobby Kennedy just put out.
Let's play it.
Hey everybody, i'm in St Petersburg Florida, and I stopped, I pulled over in this parking lot because you guys all know that i've been talking about creating three percent mortgages to get to launch a new housing movement in this country, to get American middle class back into homes again, so they can have equity, so they can have a stake in their community, so we can begin rebuilding the middle class in this country.
Well, I didn't think this idea about myself.
My uncle Jack, President Kennedy, thought of it, and behind me is a an example of one of the many hundreds of buildings that he built along that model.
This building was built on three percent interest loans, guaranteed by a section that he created called 202 and it's been fully paid for.
There's 180 people lived there literally over the years, since the 1960s.
Thousands of families have come through here.
They pay 800 maximum per month and it's a sliding sale depending on your.
If you make less, you pay less here and uh, there are five others, four or five others of these right here in St. Petersburg.
There are buildings like this all over Florida and I wanted to show it to you so you know that this system is going to work and we are going to revive it in my administration and we are going to get Americans back into homes again.
If you like this video and you want to learn um look, I do want to preface this by by saying that I really do.
Um, I have a tremendous amount of respect for, for Bobby Kennedy and that um, just look.
Genuinely, I just I like the guy um, I find him very impressive and knowledgeable and I think his uh, his current campaign is very courageous and I'm glad that he's doing it.
But I can't not point out how awful a proposal like this is, and it's uh unfortunately man, it's just like, as usual.
Libertarians are the only people uh, who understand economics, and so you're, they're just like.
It's almost like you have to start in order to respond to something like this.
You have to start by like let's have like a very rudimentary economics lesson, just using thought experiments, right like look, if this is such a good idea, if this is such a great common sense solution, let's.
Let's uh give people mortgages at three percent interest, right like let's just make sure it's no higher than that.
Well then, like why three?
That seems totally arbitrary that you just picked that.
How about no interest?
Why don't we just give them mortgages with no interest on it at all?
Wouldn't that be, is my plan better than your plan now?
Did I just beat you?
Do I have a better plan for housing?
Because mine's lower than yours.
See, yours is lower than where the market rate is today, but mine's lower than yours.
And, you know, while we're in this game, if we're, because really what are interest rates, I mean, they're prices, right?
It's the price of money.
It's the price of borrowing money.
So once we're in the game of fixing prices, it's like, I gotta, I got some more economic plans.
Let's make food cheaper.
In fact, let's make it the cheapest.
Let's make it free.
Let's say all food is free.
Do you know what that would do to help people?
You no longer have to pay for food.
Gasoline too.
Let's make that free.
Or $1.
I mean, whatever you want to say.
Does anyone start like at a certain point?
Wouldn't you start to realize that like, oh, there's got to be a reason why we can't just do that, right?
There's got, there has to be a reason.
And the reason is because price fixing always fails.
And it always has throughout history.
You can't, you can't just come in and say, we're going to make something cheaper.
That has to come from somewhere.
Okay.
So that's like what I would just start with.
The idea of if you think this is a good idea, why can't you just do this across the board everywhere?
Why not?
And if anyone's got a good answer for that, I'd love to hear it.
But why can you do it right here?
And why at the number 3%?
And why can't you just decide to do this all across the board?
I don't know.
Any initial thoughts to this, Rob?
Well, I agree with everything you're saying.
I don't want to interrupt it.
My big thing is you could replace the word boom when he goes, if we had 3% interest, we can have a housing boom.
The word bubble, the word bubble would be the better word there.
You can recreate the housing bubble and you could see how that works out for the American people.
And then I love when he starts showing the stock photos because it's like, let's see what's actually going on inside these apartments.
You're right there.
You got your film crew.
You're telling me of all those units, you can't knock on a couple doors, find some happy people.
And then what you're implying is more that with the price fixing, and this is what happens is you end up with rationing.
And so government does this all the time.
They go, look, here's a great policy and we're helping out these people.
And then they can go showcase the couple people that they're helping out.
But it's like, yeah, there's a lottery ticket winner.
Every single time they run a lottery and someone gets to win that lottery and it's real great.
So yeah, I bet the people that get the rent controlled apartments inside of this, they might be living really good than they otherwise would have.
Seems like a lottery ticket to anyone.
Well, right.
So if you let's say whatever, like I was just saying, we're talking about price fixing.
So what would happen if you just fixed the price of anything?
Like if you just right away said, you know, bananas, I'm writing a law that says you have to charge, you have to give bananas away for free or a penny, let's say, you know, you have to sell bananas for a penny.
Well, I could certainly go down to the grocery store the next day and they've got these, they've got these bananas in their store and now they can only sell them for a penny.
And like selling them for a penny is better than nothing, I guess.
So they'll sell them for a penny because the government's going to whatever, arrest them or shut them down if they don't.
So they'll sell them for a penny and I could interview a few of the customers there and they'd be like, hey, look, I just got a banana for a penny.
This is so much better than what I was normally paying for for bananas.
I'm very happy with this.
But what's going to happen after that?
And why wouldn't we do this?
Because that store is really going to no longer sell bananas.
Because they're like, well, there's no point in us purchasing these bananas anymore because we can't make a profit off of them.
And so, and then, and then you're going to have this crazy shortage and this crazy crash and a crash in the banana world.
Housing's substantially more important than bananas.
Go ahead.
No, in your banana example, or is it theoretical, then they're going to have to make a new law that they have to carry a certain amount of bananas.
You'll never be able to get your hands on the bananas because they're going to be rationed.
There's not going to be, they'll do whatever the mandatory requirement is.
And then guess what will happen?
They're going to have to charge you more on other things to make up for the banana losses.
Yep, exactly.
So you're never, you're never winning with these policies.
That's right.
Because look, the reality at the end of the day is that resources are finite.
And so you can't just legislate away the costs that are involved in them because there are costs associated with their production and there's not a limitless supply of them.
But look, to your point, you would think at least when someone starts talking about how we are going to have artificially low interest rates that will lead to a housing boom, you know, even if you didn't use your word bubble, which is probably a more accurate word, but shouldn't anybody who lived through 2008, when they hear we're going to have artificially low interest rates to induce a housing boom?
And how does that end again?
I'm pretty sure it ends in a bust.
So this is not a good plan.
This is not the plan that you want to fix, you know, whatever issues there are right now with the middle class in America.
And there certainly are plenty of them.
And again, I'd need to see more of the details of this plan.
Like I don't exactly understand.
I don't know the details of it.
I just saw this video.
I've heard him talk about this before, but I don't know like what exactly are you suggesting here?
Are you suggesting the federal government's going to lend this money to people at 3% interest?
Are you going to make banks lend this money to people at 3% interest?
The truth is that even at 3% interest with the, you know, the with real estate prices the way they are today, it's not like you're still not putting, strapping mortgages on people.
And so what exactly does all of this look like?
If I had a more detailed plan in front of me, I think I could do a more detailed rebuttal to it.
But right away, the idea of like the government's going to get involved in micromanaging like affordable housing, when is this ever not a disaster?
Just point me to the industry where the government gets involved in micromanaging the prices and it works out.
Hey, potentially great for your first four years in office, though.
If you can figure out how to print the money, and it probably isn't that immediate of inflation outside of the housing market, the housing market would be instantly inflated, as would construction costs.
Like there'd be entire sectors, but for the first four years, you can get people into houses.
You get the construction industry going.
You might even be able to ride that to eight years till the whole thing bubbles up on you.
But at the end of the day, you're just creating a new asset bubble.
You're just redoing 08.
Well, look, I mean, I know they had, you know, like where I grew up in Brooklyn, New York, there were, they had these rent-controlled apartments.
Which is still a win.
Every once in a while, you meet some rich kid who's inherited their rent control New York City apartment and will never give it up.
And like I said, it's a lottery ticket.
What's better?
What's better than somehow holding on to that rent control department and passing it through the generations?
Well, it was, it became, particularly in New York City, I don't really know exactly how much how valued they are in other cities, but I know in New York City, because literally the rent rent is always so insanely high.
Rent Control Lottery Tickets00:08:34
And people, so it's such a thing when you know someone who has that and you're like, wait, what?
You have a three bedroom apartment for like $900 a month.
This is insane.
Like this would be like a $4,000 a month apartment.
And they just, you know, but what happens there also is that, again, because this is the nature of things.
And as you used the example in the grocery store, that they just raise the rents on everybody else in the building.
So everybody else's rent goes up more because this one person has it.
And of course, because it's a government program, as the examples you're alluding to, it's not like they're actually doing a good job of like, oh, the person who really needs it and can't afford it gets this rent control department.
It's so much, so much of the time it's somebody who just as easily as the other person who's paying rent could be paying this.
They just happen to like get this rent control department or inherit it or something like that.
But the, yeah, the landlords just raise the price on everybody else.
So like you said, one person wins the lottery and everyone else is forced to buy a lottery ticket.
Everybody else is made poorer.
And on net, it's just a disaster.
So these type of plans are just not, this is not where it's at, man.
Anyway, Kennedy for new financial bubbles.
Yeah.
Anyway, I hope I've heard whispers that Kennedy is going to be delivering some type of address on the war in Israel.
So I'm waiting to hear what he has to say about that because I really did not like, as we mentioned on the podcast a couple or week and a half ago or whatever, when we were up at in Connecticut, his first tweet on it was very, very bad.
So I'll wait.
I'll reserve judgment until he elaborates further on it.
But I just, I hope that RFK on this on this independent run, I wish him the best and I hope he hammers on the issues that he's really good on and a little bit less on this stuff.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
Before we wrap up, I did want to mention the story that you sent me, Rob.
I had not actually seen this, but that the what's his name, Douglas McKay, who was posting under the alias Ricky Vaughan, was sentenced to seven months in federal prison over what they call, I mean, it's really just hilarious, what Politico calls his 2016 voter suppression scheme.
Right.
This is just, I mean, so goddamn appalling.
So he basically he tweeted, it was pretty goddamn funny too.
He tweeted, avoid the lines, vote from home, text Hillary to 59925, just telling people that they could vote by text, which is obviously not a thing.
But it seemed pretty clearly to just be a joke, kind of like mocking like, wouldn't it be funny if we tricked all of the Hillary voters into not going and voting because they thought there was an easier way.
And they really, they came after this kid through the seven months in federal prison for a, for tweeting a joke.
I am sorry, but we do not live in a free society when someone can be locked up for seven months over that.
I guess there's a couple variables I'd be very curious to see.
Now, obviously, it's appalling to me as a person who makes jokes, makes stupid jokes, might even make jokes that are sarcastic and you might have thought I was giving you real information.
I don't like this.
This seems like a bad precedent, but one, I'd like to know how many people didn't end up voting on account of that tweet.
Is there an actual number on it?
Do we have, is it five?
Is it 10?
Is it 100?
I mean, if you're going to prosecute the guy, is there actual damages?
Is there a single.
And for all of the people who ended up voting by text instead of voting, they were too stupid to be allowed to vote.
Like, you know, those people should not be allowed to vote.
I'd love to know technically.
So what was this like an election interference?
Probably what specifically was the problem?
And then if we, let's say we put the number at 5, 10, 100, 1,000, let's say 1,000 people were tricked into not voting.
If we were going to compare this to other things that happened during the election that persuade people to vote or fake votes or whatever, it's unbelievable amidst all the voter fraud claims that were seemingly not thoroughly investigated or the ones I know for sure weren't thoroughly investigated where the people are like, hey, I was working at this voting center and they told me there was lunch and then they locked me out.
Like if all of a sudden we're so careful about five votes, you see what I'm saying?
Like this is very clearly punishing individuals from only one side.
And that's what just showcases the fact this is not a free country.
What is going on here?
We're not that concerned about voter fraud or voter manipulation.
Why is this getting like, I don't know, there's got to be some sort of mechanism for policing that government doesn't just put particular individuals under a microscope.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, I yeah, I completely agree with all of that.
And it's just, it's, it's appalling.
It's transparently corrupt and going after someone for daring to kind of mock Hillary Clinton supporters.
And it's just horrific that they would do this to.
What was the crime?
I mean, also, if government's in the ability of operating in an official capacity, I mean, that's government's business.
So then everyone knows that a random tweet is not from the government, is not an announcement in anything in capacity.
It just makes no sense that some dude just tweeted it and then that's somehow, yeah, the whole thing is ridiculous.
It's like, it's the inverse, even though I don't agree with this concept, but like ignorance of the law is not an excuse for not obeying the law or whatever.
So what happens if someone puts on Twitter tomorrow that I can go commit whatever crime?
Am I allowed to then go argue in court?
Well, I saw an announcement on Twitter that we didn't steal.
So I went to, what do you mean?
I saw an announcement on Twitter.
Like, since when did a posting on Twitter become an official notice of United States policy and law?
And if it's not treated that way, then how can you possibly prosecute someone for posting an item on Twitter and other people interpreting that as being law?
That's not the way that officials.
No, it's no, you're absolutely right.
The logic is non-existent, but it really is something.
One of the more like disturbing things to me about all of this is that it, you know, it's just one more example of kind of revealing the nature of the judicial system too.
Like the fact that this went to a trial and that a judge and a jury looked at this and everybody didn't just laugh this out of the room.
You know what I mean?
Just go like, what?
This is like a joke tweet.
We're not sending this kid to jail over this.
And then they just had it seven months in federal prison.
It's just, it's appalling.
And it does, it's kind of like a reminder, even to people like us who kind of know this stuff already.
It's really a reminder of just how corrupt the, forget all the other stuff in the politicization, which is obvious, but just how corrupt like our court, our courts are.
That you really just can't, you really just can't go like, oh, well, I know this guy did it because he was convicted in a court of law.
It's just like, it's meaningless.
Like the idea that real adults who are paid or tasked to be neutral in a situation went in and saw this and decided this is somebody who belongs in a in a cell is for this for the crime of tweeting to send a text message.
Yeah, that's that's tough because it's like, hey, you go, you go sit and think about what you did and you're sitting there like, what did I do?
It was funny.
It's just been thinking about it for six months.
That's still hilarious.
It's still funny.
Meaningless Court Convictions00:01:26
Every time I think about it.
Yeah.
All right.
Look, we're going to, we're going to wrap it up on that because I got to go, or we both got to go.
We're both taking night flights.
We got to go get a night of sleep on an airplane.
Nothing's quite like it.
I'm so excited for that.
Are you?
Yeah, because you know what it is?
I hate flying.
I absolutely like, I don't like flying.
I really, I dodge long flights, but and while I drink, I always kind of temper my, like I very rarely feel like I'm off the clock and I can just like blow time.
Well, for most of the time too, most of the time when we're flying, we have a show that night.
Right.
You're like, I can't really like get hammered right or I'm coming, or I'm coming home and I got a stockpile of work I got to get to and I'm landing at like three or four p.m.
Right.
You can be a red eye and I, dude, I'm packing the little shooters when I get to the airport.
I'm going to have a couple at the airport.
I'm going to take a Zoom.
I'm going to end up waking up and having flown home.
That's what's going to happen.
Please don't do that.
Please get off the plate in London.
All right.
It's going to cut to me outside of your plate.
My friend's on there.
My friend's still on there.
Las Vegas, Tucson, Arizona, Phoenix, Arizona, the following weekend.