Part Of The Problem - Dave Smith - "Go F**K Yourself"
Aired: 2023-12-04
Duration: 56:58


=== Free Speech vs Corporate Blackmail (15:12) ===

[00:00:00]  Fill her up.
[00:00:02]  You are listening to the cash human.
[00:00:08]  We need to roll back the state.
[00:00:10]  We spy on all of our own citizens.
[00:00:12]  Our prisons are flooded with nonviolent drug offenders.
[00:00:16]  If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
[00:00:21]  Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
[00:00:26]  You're listening to part of the problem on the Gas Digital Network.
[00:00:30]  Cheers, James Smith.
[00:00:33]  What's up, everybody?
[00:00:34]  Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
[00:00:36]  I am Dave Smith.
[00:00:38]  He is Robbie the Fire Bernstein.
[00:00:40]  How are you doing today, sir?
[00:00:41]  I'm doing well.
[00:00:42]  And people, you got to come out for the shell next weekend.
[00:00:45]  Not doing a full end of year thing, but got a bit of presentation in the works.
[00:00:49]  New Hampshire people, come on out for Robbie the Fire Bernstein.
[00:00:53]  I've heard nothing but great things about the shell.
[00:00:55]  And of course, New Hampshire is the home of the Free State Project and a lot of our good people up there.
[00:01:03]  I like to show up there and take my pants off.
[00:01:05]  Experience of freedom.
[00:01:06]  Yeah.
[00:01:07]  It's a nonviolent act.
[00:01:10]  I thought this was the free state.
[00:01:11]  Oh, yeah.
[00:01:12]  I'm getting arrested now.
[00:01:14]  I thought we were free up here in New Hampshire.
[00:01:16]  Can't you take your pants off in public?
[00:01:18]  All right.
[00:01:19]  Yeah.
[00:01:19]  So let's get into it.
[00:01:22]  Big news that has been going basically everywhere.
[00:01:28]  One of the most viral videos of the year is Elon Musk, who was recently interviewed and he had some choice words for his for the advertisers who are giving him grief.
[00:01:44]  If somebody's going to try to blackmail me with advertising, blackmail me with money, go fuck yourself.
[00:01:53]  But go fuck yourself.
[00:01:58]  Is that clear?
[00:02:00]  I hope it is.
[00:02:01]  Hey, Bob.
[00:02:02]  You're in the audience.
[00:02:04]  That, of course, was a direct reference to the Disney CEO.
[00:02:10]  So that was Elon Musk.
[00:02:12]  Now, the question was posed in a way where they asked him if going to Israel was like an apology tour.
[00:02:20]  So I think part of that also is that they were almost kind of implying like, oh, you're being a bitch.
[00:02:24]  And then he had to like kind of let them know that he's not.
[00:02:27]  Anyway, there's been a wide reaction to this.
[00:02:31]  And I'm sure that if you were, let's say, I don't know, let's say you were like in advertising sales or something like that for Twitter.
[00:02:43]  You probably wouldn't be thrilled that the owner of the company is out there saying that.
[00:02:48]  I have a little bit of a different take on it, but let's first, before we get into my take or your take, Rob, we got to go to the expert.
[00:02:57]  And these days, he's somebody who, he's someone we always look to for guidance, and he's been sorely missing in our thoughts and in our hearts.
[00:03:07]  But here he was weighing in on this because he's still such a powerful voice that he's still relevant enough to keep landing on his fat little feet.
[00:03:15]  So here he is, our favorite little piggy, Brian Steltar.
[00:03:19]  Bottom line here is that he can call it blackmail.
[00:03:21]  He can say advertisers are trying to blackmail him.
[00:03:24]  But I think another way to frame that would be this is a version of a freedom of speech debate.
[00:03:29]  Advertisers have a choice about where they spend money and where they don't spend money.
[00:03:33]  That's what sponsors can decide.
[00:03:35]  The same is true here on television with News Nation.
[00:03:38]  Advertisers choose where to put their messages.
[00:03:40]  That's what's happening here.
[00:03:41]  It's very much a free speech issue.
[00:03:43]  So he can call it blackmail, but I think this is of his own making.
[00:03:47]  And he did acknowledge on stage, advertisers might kill his company.
[00:03:50]  If really no one's willing to advertise on X, then that is going to kill his company.
[00:03:54]  But that's the free market deciding.
[00:03:57]  Right.
[00:03:57]  He wanted it to be the ultimate free speech, the home of free speech, essentially, the ultimate town square, as he's talked about.
[00:04:04]  But to your point, now free speech, you know, it works both ways.
[00:04:08]  And the advertisers have their free speech.
[00:04:10]  Okay, let's let me just say first, Rob, is News Nation just the place where like failed corporate press people go to continue doing the same thing they did at CNN or Fox News or whatever?
[00:04:22]  I just, I don't exactly understand it.
[00:04:24]  But isn't it just.
[00:04:26]  I mean, these people just have no shame that, oh, all of a sudden you're all for the free market.
[00:04:32]  Oh, really?
[00:04:33]  Oh, as soon as they can evoke it in a way that they, you know, like benefits their endgame, all of a sudden, yeah, this is the free market, man.
[00:04:41]  We're all about free speech and capitalism.
[00:04:43]  Of course, you have nothing but contempt for free speech and free markets in every other scenario.
[00:04:51]  But now all of a sudden you'll invoke it to kind of call him out for being a hypocrite or something like that.
[00:04:56]  The thing is that blackmail, like this whole talk, he goes, well, I wouldn't characterize it as blackmail.
[00:05:03]  I'd characterize it as free markets.
[00:05:06]  Like, well, yes, blackmail, that's what it is.
[00:05:10]  I mean, but like if you're saying like, oh, I have a right to say what I want to say, like it's a free speech issue.
[00:05:17]  It's like, yeah, that's kind of consistent with what blackmail is.
[00:05:20]  It's like, I know something about you and I have a right to say it.
[00:05:24]  So I'm going to say it unless you do X, Y, and Z for me.
[00:05:28]  That is blackmailing somebody.
[00:05:30]  It's also consistent with, you know, free speech.
[00:05:33]  So it's, this is just how you want to think of it, one way or the other.
[00:05:37]  The point is that people like you, Brian Stelter, and everybody who thinks like you, which basically is the entire corporate media, were furious with Elon Musk before he ever did anything when he just said, I'm going to buy Twitter to make it a free speech platform.
[00:05:55]  And these giant advertisers, people like, say, Disney, who pulled a whole lot of advertising from Twitter, you can say that, oh, that's just the free market and they have a right to pull their advertising.
[00:06:11]  But the reality, as we all know, is that these giant companies are completely in bed with government.
[00:06:17]  And this is all, they're all kind of representative of the establishment.
[00:06:22]  And there's actually Vivek Ramaswamy did a very good job in his book, what was it called?
[00:06:28]  Woke capitalism, of kind of breaking a lot of this down, where these like diversity, equity, and inclusion, you know, rules don't just come out of nowhere.
[00:06:41]  It's, you know what I mean?
[00:06:42]  Like it's quite often that you'll have like, say, the people who manage the pensions of public sector workers for different states.
[00:06:50]  We're talking about hundreds of billions of dollars worth when you add them all up.
[00:06:54]  We'll only allocate that capital to companies that have these standards.
[00:06:58]  And there's all this type of like, just this blob of cronyism.
[00:07:04]  And so, yes, when these giant corporations are all threatening just this one social media company with pulling out their advertising, it's not exactly just like, oh, this is just a free speech and free markets issue.
[00:07:16]  I don't know.
[00:07:16]  Any other thoughts you have on all this stuff?
[00:07:19]  Yeah, I mean, I agree 100%.
[00:07:21]  It's not a free markets thing.
[00:07:23]  It's pretty obvious that all these corporations are getting together and saying, we're going to involve ourselves in censorship.
[00:07:29]  You know, that's when Disney made a statement, what was it, pulling jobs out of Atlanta over abortion.
[00:07:35]  Like, you know, and it's because of money.
[00:07:38]  I can't point the direct route, but it's because of money that's injected by the Fed and who it's made available to or what kind of protectionism you're getting from people in government or you're getting a call from some legal group that's saying, we're going to make some trouble or waves.
[00:07:53]  You got to get on board with this.
[00:07:54]  This is not free market stuff.
[00:07:56]  The free market solution over time is going to be if these companies get so displaced by other advertisers that come onto the platform.
[00:08:04]  And because there's less competition to reach those audiences are able to get better rates and substantial profits.
[00:08:10]  So like, for example, you know, if an independent movie studio creates, starts creating movies and very successfully promotes them on Twitter, or if, you know, everyone stops buying crest toothpaste, or if you see what happened to Bud Light or some of these other beer brands that kind of stepped into that market and said, hell yeah, I'll sell to conservatives.
[00:08:30]  So, you know, without the total grip on freedom, people like information, people like competition.
[00:08:37]  And so these corporations in my, and I think they're going to lose out long term where they just see enough profits getting displaced as they're bidding each other up just to be on the mat of the NHL because that's the only thing that they've deemed is safe.
[00:08:51]  And so they're all competing for just to have their company name on the NHL rank, which how much of an impact does that really make?
[00:08:57]  Listen, over enough time, like I'm not afraid for that Twitter is going to fold.
[00:09:01]  And if you don't think other advertisers aren't going to step in because there's better rates because all these major corporations don't want to be there, that signals to me, hey, there's an opportunity.
[00:09:09]  These rates are going to be lower.
[00:09:10]  Yeah.
[00:09:11]  Well, look, I mean, I agree with all of that.
[00:09:14]  And there's just when you look at these things, you go like, okay, so what happens here is Elon Musk.
[00:09:24]  And look, he's not been perfect.
[00:09:26]  I'm not like in any way saying he's been perfect in the way he's run Twitter.
[00:09:29]  I do think it's been an improvement over the old Twitter.
[00:09:34]  I wish he had lived up to what he promised a little bit more.
[00:09:37]  There's, you know, I don't know Elon Musk personally.
[00:09:40]  I don't know what was in his heart.
[00:09:43]  I also do not know what it must be like to be dealing with all of the forces coming after him since purchasing Twitter.
[00:09:52]  He has not kept to his word and like ended censorship and made it a true free speech platform.
[00:09:59]  There have been people who have been suspended.
[00:10:02]  There are people who have been kicked off.
[00:10:04]  There have been, you know, certain words and phrases and things like that that they've said aren't allowed on the site, which I think is not right.
[00:10:13]  And it's not what he promised.
[00:10:15]  All of that being said, the fact here is that Elon Musk said he was going to buy Twitter to take it private and then make it a free speech platform.
[00:10:29]  And he ended up buying Twitter.
[00:10:31]  And then he released the Twitter files, which were demonstrated blatant interference from the federal government, the FBI, the CIA, Biden's presidential team, blatant, you know, interference in this company.
[00:10:50]  And then when he did that, they all started going after him.
[00:10:53]  So if you're like a free market person, the takeaway from that isn't like, hey, well, this is the free market when all of these giant crony corporations try to punish you for the crime of exposing that the government was interfering in the old Twitter and kind of bringing about this censorship regime.
[00:11:10]  No, that's not right.
[00:11:12]  And, you know, if you just, if you just take this one aspect of it and go, hey, look, the free market at work, you're missing the big picture about what's really going on here.
[00:11:22]  All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is yokratom.com, home of the $60 Kilo, longtime sponsor of this show and this whole network and SkankFest.
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[00:12:01]  All right, let's get back into the show.
[00:12:03]  The thing that I find really interesting about this, and this was something I don't, I think we never actually talked about this on the podcast.
[00:12:09]  So there's just been a lot of stuff going on over the last month or so.
[00:12:13]  But there was that moment where Dana White was on Theo Von Vaughn's podcast, and it was a really great moment.
[00:12:21]  I really loved it where Theo Vaughn was basically talking about how a sponsor was trying to get him to take down the episode that he had RFK on.
[00:12:33]  And Dana White made him name the sponsor.
[00:12:36]  And then they just like, they just named him and like shamed him.
[00:12:39]  And like, there's something powerful about it because here you have these two people in Theo Vaughn and Dana White who are huge.
[00:12:47]  You know what I mean?
[00:12:47]  Have massive audiences.
[00:12:49]  And it's like, oh, look, this, this to me is actually like a free market solution.
[00:12:56]  There's got to be some line where, okay, if you're going to say, you know, look, let me put it this way.
[00:13:04]  What the, what the left-wing activists who are essentially useful idiots for the powers that be, one of the major advantages that they've had with pushing the woke shit is that there are these consequences for not being woke that there aren't for being woke.
[00:13:23]  And we've seen for the first time this year in 2023, this start to turn around a little bit with things like Bud Light and Target, you know, as the big examples.
[00:13:36]  Excuse me.
[00:13:37]  And part of this, right, is because there's this natural asymmetry between the left and the right.
[00:13:44]  The left will protest.
[00:13:47]  They will boycott.
[00:13:48]  They will show up with picket signs.
[00:13:50]  You know what I mean?
[00:13:50]  Like they're not gay.
[00:13:52]  Huh?
[00:13:53]  And the right isn't gay.
[00:13:54]  Yes, there you go.
[00:13:55]  That's pretty much it.
[00:13:56]  Yes, exactly.
[00:13:58]  And the right tends to have these pesky things like jobs and families, you know?
[00:14:05]  And it's like, oh, I can't actually show up and like go to some stupid protest.
[00:14:10]  But so with this dynamic, there kind of has to be some line where there are some consequences for these corporations on this side.
[00:14:23]  Because like you said, Rob, we know this is all about incentives.
[00:14:26]  We know this is all about maximizing profits.
[00:14:28]  Now, whether that be what corporations are going to end up doing, particularly ones that get very big, are they're going to be trying to maximize profits.
[00:14:36]  And if that's by, you know, seeking government contracts or seeking easy money from the Federal Reserve or avoiding who's going to protest you or stuff, all of these things are going to be a factor.
[00:14:49]  And so what was great about the Dana White Theo Vaughan thing is it's like, God damn, this company has the nerve to tell you you can't speak to a presidential candidate who, by the way, is polling very well.
[00:15:03]  This is a presidential candidate who's a, he's the, the biggest by the polls right now, the biggest third party presidential candidate in 30 years.

=== The Real Cost of Political Ads (07:14) ===

[00:15:12]  This is not some random guy.
[00:15:15]  And the nerve that you're going to tell me you're, and that is blackmail.
[00:15:18]  It is a threat of some sort, whatever you want to call it.
[00:15:21]  You'll tell me that I can't exercise my free speech or you're going to cost me this money.
[00:15:26]  Okay, fine.
[00:15:28]  But now here's what you got to deal with.
[00:15:31]  These two people with enormous platforms just blasting you.
[00:15:37]  So now think about that, companies.
[00:15:39]  About that advertisers, that this might be a cost associated with you trying to do something that the vast majority of people don't want you to do, which is shut down political conversation with, with threats of pulling money away from people.
[00:15:54]  Look, we know, you know this is a perversion of of free markets.
[00:15:58]  It's not what Brian Stealth.
[00:15:59]  Look, here's a real easy way to to see what's really going on in the free market.
[00:16:03]  Look at the audience of Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson and look at the audience of Brian Stelter.
[00:16:12]  Okay, there's your free market for you.
[00:16:14]  And if if, advertisers are all much more comfortable advertising with Brian Stelter than they are with Tucker Carlson, that tells you something about how perverted this free market has gotten.
[00:16:26]  You know what I mean.
[00:16:28]  That's not, that's not normal, that's not, that's not correct.
[00:16:31]  That's not the way, just like laissez-faire capitalism works, is that these, these advertisers really want to get in front of a tiny audience and not in front of a giant audience.
[00:16:41]  As soon as you see that, you just go.
[00:16:43]  Something else is at play here, something else is going on, but so the same.
[00:16:47]  I feel the same way with Elon Musk that and this guy's got like the biggest megaphone in the world or up there, and so for him to just be at least blasting these companies, I at least feel like much like with BUD Light, much like with Target.
[00:17:03]  At least there is a vehicle by which to fight back, because previously it seemed like there almost wasn't one, and I think that that's a really good development.
[00:17:14]  It's something I I don't know who's gonna win at the end of this or what.
[00:17:19]  Um, I I know Twitter has, they've had some issues uh, and they've particularly, I think, launching this subscription model.
[00:17:26]  I do not think worked very well for Elon Musk and I think he has lost a lot of advertisers.
[00:17:32]  But he also kind of laid out a thing there where he was saying that you know and I think this wasn't in the part that we, we played, but he was essentially saying that these advertisers could destroy the company if they all pull out.
[00:17:50]  But let it be known that that's what you did and at least like, let it be known to people that it's like, oh yeah, one guy tried to, or at least said he was trying to make this a free speech platform and you destroyed it because of that.
[00:18:04]  That now I agree with you.
[00:18:05]  I don't think Twitter's going anywhere.
[00:18:06]  I don't think they're going to be destroyed anytime soon, but that there's got to be.
[00:18:10]  If that could happen, if we, if we live in a world where a guy says he's going to make something, a free speech platform, it will be the only social media site that the feds don't have a grip of.
[00:18:23]  And then he's punished by a bunch of companies who are all in bed with government.
[00:18:28]  Like, first of all, the people who believe in free markets should oppose, should not be on board with that, and second, we should.
[00:18:37]  We should really hope that there's some mechanism by which to punish people who would do something like that.
[00:18:43]  Uh, i'm registering in my head that there's a degree of uh, just kind of nonsense here and that if his advertising worked really well, people would purchase it.
[00:18:53]  And I have to say that on instagram, I occasionally will end up clicking on an ad because they service something to me that i'm like, oh, that seems interesting.
[00:19:00]  I almost never on face.
[00:19:02]  I, I almost never.
[00:19:03]  I can't even tell you the last advertisement I saw on twitter, or if I did, it was like for some dumb China, whatever thing, like what.
[00:19:10]  Also, Elon Musk has brands like I don't know.
[00:19:13]  Every time i'm there i'm not seeing, you know, ads for Teslas or ads for his internet service, you know.
[00:19:19]  So it could also just be a function of what his back end looks like.
[00:19:23]  It's like any other technology, if there's enough value there, people are going to pay for it.
[00:19:27]  Well, I think I, I think and, and look, i'm like i'm speculating on the situation with Twitter to some degree here, but you know how there's just like, how there's like so many like Boeing commercials on on like yeah, there's a whole universe of uh, what's actually just socialism and government contracts and FED monies.
[00:19:47]  That it's just.
[00:19:48]  But it's just kind of like an excuse for them to cut a check to Msnbc yeah, to kind of like give them a pat on the head like they're not really trying to like get in front of Msnbc viewers to sell them fighter jets.
[00:20:01]  You know what I mean.
[00:20:02]  Like it's, it's it's just kind of like yeah here yes okay, good job, meet the press, good little boy now here take uh, take a few million bucks, and I think that that probably a lot of these people paying all this money to the old Twitter regime is probably something fairly similar to that.
[00:20:22]  So uh, there it's kind of like, yep, you went along with the feds.
[00:20:25]  I mean, you know, even when and this is how a lot of this stuff uh works but even when you saw it was whatever the money that the FBI was paying uh, the old Twitter was like a couple million dollars or something like that.
[00:20:36]  That they gave.
[00:20:36]  That they gave them.
[00:20:37]  We found this out in the Twitter files, but that's chump change.
[00:20:40]  You know what I mean.
[00:20:41]  But like, you go along with them and then you get like a 20 million dollar ad buyout from Disney or something like that and it all kind of like works together, like you know, and I think part of this is that like oh okay well, you're not playing that game anymore, so you're not getting this pat on the head anymore.
[00:20:58]  However, to your point, then it does become on Elon Musk at a certain point, like I, I like that he blasts them like let's call them out for what these guys are they're.
[00:21:08]  They're taking away this money because i'm not playing this game.
[00:21:11]  But at the same same time, then it is on you to create a business model that actually works like.
[00:21:16]  If it's not like, and and it may be the case that yeah, Twitter advertisement was never really with it, I mean, I didn't even really think about that till.
[00:21:22]  You mentioned it, but I don't think i've ever clicked on an ad um on on Twitter.
[00:21:27]  Uh, so it's quite possible that maybe that's the case.
[00:21:29]  It's just that there was nothing of value there and so there's really nothing to draw in new advertisers and or very little of value, you know.
[00:21:39]  And if that's the case, then yeah, it's kind of on you to like figure out a subscription model that works or figure out an advertising model that works or whatever it is, because there this might be kind of like bowing advertising on MEET The Press, like there's no real thing here, there's no need for them.
[00:21:56]  You're not actually offering anything to them other than basically, your um compliance.
[00:22:02]  So We'll see.
[00:22:04]  We'll see what happens going forward.
[00:22:05]  Really hope.
[00:22:06]  I really do hope that Elon Musk is able to keep Twitter going and keep it a place where I'm a little bit less worried I'm going to get kicked off, which essentially is what it is right now.
[00:22:20]  All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is X-Bar.
[00:22:25]  We're thrilled to have them on board.

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[00:23:18]  All right, let's get back into the show.
[00:23:20]  Okay.
[00:23:21]  So a couple other things that I wanted to talk about.
[00:23:23]  We just had Tucker Carlson on the show, which was, which was very cool.
[00:23:29]  I really enjoyed talking to the guy and I thought it was a great episode.
[00:23:33]  I guess that was two episodes ago now because we recorded one before that, but then I put the Tucker one out first because I just wanted to get that out.
[00:23:40]  Got to get it out there.
[00:23:42]  So one of the things, and this is interesting has happened sometimes, is sometimes there'll be a moment.
[00:23:50]  Like if you had, if the second the cameras went off when we were done with that episode with Tucker, if you had told me to give you like 10 takeaways or what were the big moments of the show or something, I never would have mentioned this.
[00:24:01]  I just didn't even like, it didn't even register to me as this was a thing.
[00:24:04]  And maybe that's my own bias because I'm just, I come from the world I do.
[00:24:09]  But at one point, I said to him, I brought up William F. Buckley and I said, I view him as one of the one of the great villains of the 20th century.
[00:24:18]  And Tucker was like, I could not agree more.
[00:24:21]  And this went super viral in conservative in the conservative world.
[00:24:29]  And the boomer cons are furious about this.
[00:24:34]  It really, you know, they're like, what do you mean?
[00:24:37]  I need some education here because I watched that segment.
[00:24:39]  I thought it was fascinating.
[00:24:40]  I don't know anything about this Buckley fella.
[00:24:42]  Okay.
[00:24:42]  So I'll tell you that the world I come in, I come from, it's just so obvious that he was like a villain that it's not even like a controversial thing to say.
[00:24:54]  But Tucker is still like the biggest guy in the conservative world.
[00:24:58]  And to every conservative who's like 50 or over, they're like, well, I grew up being told he was a good guy.
[00:25:04]  He's Mr. Goodguy.
[00:25:06]  So William F. Buckley was probably, so the first thing, I guess I would say is that he worked for the CIA.
[00:25:14]  Now, I think officially the claim is like, but then he stopped.
[00:25:20]  But, you know, I don't know about it.
[00:25:22]  It's like Brennan when he went to CNN.
[00:25:24]  Yes, yes, right.
[00:25:25]  He's no longer with the with the CIA.
[00:25:27]  Now he's just in the news media and saying all of the CIA is talking points, you know, but like no connection there anymore.
[00:25:33]  So anyway, he's William F. Buckley, he founded National Review and he was the host of the firing line with William F. Buckley.
[00:25:45]  And these became probably the most influential like publication and television show in conservatism.
[00:25:53]  And he really largely transformed what conservatism was, say from the post-war period till for the rest of the 20th century.
[00:26:06]  There were still old tie, like the old right, as Murray Rothbard calls them, where there were people who were really, like Robert Taft used to be, he was called Mr. Republican.
[00:26:20]  That's what they call, because he was like the most Republican guy you could be.
[00:26:23]  That's what it was to be a Republican.
[00:26:25]  And he, he was against joining NATO at all.
[00:26:30]  He like, because the old school of the conservative wing of the Republican Party were always like non-interventionist.
[00:26:38]  Their whole thing was like that they basically rose up in opposition to the New Deal under FDR because they thought that was too much big government.
[00:26:48]  So imagine how radically libertarian they are compared to any political figure today who dare with the exception with the lone exception of like Thomas Massey and Rand Paul and maybe like two or three other guys.
[00:27:03]  Could you imagine any Republican even daring to propose pre-pandemic level spending?
[00:27:11]  You know what I'm saying?
[00:27:13]  Do any of them even propose that?
[00:27:15]  Think about how outraged Republicans pretended to be over how high Barack Obama's spending was.
[00:27:23]  Not one of them would be radical enough to propose a return to Obama level spending.
[00:27:29]  Okay?
[00:27:30]  Like that's a, these guys were like, they were against the New Deal.
[00:27:35]  They were against like the federal government's doing stuff.
[00:27:38]  This is crazy.
[00:27:39]  We're against it.
[00:27:39]  So like that was his position.
[00:27:42]  He was a big fat guy who was into doing nothing.
[00:27:44]  Yes.
[00:27:44]  It's our favorite type of politicians, fat and lazy.
[00:27:49]  He was lazy personally, but he was against that.
[00:27:52]  So there was this kind of concept.
[00:27:58]  And I'm not saying they were like perfect libertarians.
[00:28:00]  They certainly weren't.
[00:28:01]  Many of them were protectionists.
[00:28:04]  But what they believed in the size of government was something that should be drastically, drastically smaller than we have right now.
[00:28:14]  It would be unrecognizable to anyone in the conservative movement.
[00:28:17]  And then this is something that the conservatives, like this is kind of the history of the conservative movement in the 20th century is always talking about small government as the government gets bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger, and then always talking about small government, but never seriously proposing that we actually like slash it to pieces.
[00:28:37]  But so William F. Buckley, CIA man, he comes in and really transforms the conservative movement from being the movement that cared about small government, you know, individual liberty, sound money was a big part of it, and being non-interventionist.
[00:29:02]  We're not trying to go around the world.
[00:29:03]  These were the people who opposed U.S. entry into World War I and opposed U.S. entry into World War II.
[00:29:10]  They were like, no, these are crazy wars between European monarchs.
[00:29:14]  Who cares?
[00:29:15]  Like, why should we fight in World War I?
[00:29:17]  That has nothing to do with America.
[00:29:20]  And William F. Buckley was largely instrumental in turning that all around.
[00:29:26]  I think I have the quote up.
[00:29:28]  I was reading it earlier today.
[00:29:29]  There's a great piece, if you've never read it, by Murray Rothbard, who, you know, if you ever, if there's ever anything that happened in the 20th century or the 19th century for that matter, and you're just like, yeah, what's the correct way to think about this?
[00:29:43]  Just go like, go to Mises.org and just figure out what did Rothbard write about this?
[00:29:47]  But anyway, this is a really great piece where Rothbard just dissects his whole thing, but it's in response to a piece that Bill Buckley had written.
[00:29:59]  And if I could sum up the piece that Bill Buckley had written, he basically, it was him, this was in the 1950s, I believe, and it was him laying out his vision for why basically we had to go from the old right to what became the neoconservative.
[00:30:17]  you know, right or whatever you want to call it.
[00:30:20]  And he starts off by basically giving libertarians and the old right our due.
[00:30:28]  And he basically go, basically the thesis of it is this.
[00:30:31]  It's like, he goes, listen, as conservatives have always understood, the great battle of man is between tyranny and liberty.
[00:30:41]  And government is an instrument of tyranny.
[00:30:44]  And that's why we hate government because we want to be free and we don't want to go in the direction of tyranny.
[00:30:51]  However, however, there's this Soviet Union thing.
[00:30:57]  And this represents big government, the worst possible imagination of big government.
[00:31:02]  And the only thing that can really fight that is big government.
[00:31:06]  And so we are going to have to embrace it in order to fight the Soviet Union.
[00:31:11]  But don't worry, you know, it's just because of the Soviet Union, right?
[00:31:14]  As soon as that thing's gone, we're going to go right back to being a freedom-loving people, which of course, that part never happens.
[00:31:24]  I guess it's that perverting concept that once you admit that government can be the solution.
[00:31:30]  So then why would you line up any other problem and go, well, they can't solve that one?
[00:31:34]  Yes.
[00:31:34]  Now, so anyway, so here's the exact quote from him.
[00:31:38]  Okay.
[00:31:41]  He says, we have got to accept big government for the duration, meaning for as long as the Soviet Union poses this threat.
[00:31:49]  And as long as there's COVID and as long as there's global warming.
[00:31:52]  Right, right, right.
[00:31:52]  Yes.
[00:31:54]  We love freedom, but current threat.
[00:31:56]  You know what I mean?
[00:31:57]  That's always how it goes, right?
[00:31:58]  So for neither an offensive nor a defensive war can be waged except through the instrumentality of a totalitarian bureaucracy within our shores.
[00:32:12]  So he literally calls for, in his words, a totalitarian bureaucracy.
[00:32:19]  This is what this guy did.
[00:32:21]  He transformed the conservative world, the conservative movement, to be pro-domestic totalitarianism.
[00:32:31]  And it gave us, and now, of course, what happens is, okay, so in 1991, the Soviet Union collapses.
[00:32:38]  And so then, of course, the whole neocon establishment that, you know, everybody, you know, that got built up out of Buckley's movement, they all went, okay, good.
[00:32:50]  Well, now we can return to loving freedom because the duration is over, right?
[00:32:55]  No, they were like, hey, we got to go fight a war in Iraq.
[00:32:58]  Now we got to go see about Saddam Hussein.
[00:33:00]  You know, okay, so sure, the Cold War is over in 1989.
[00:33:03]  So we don't have that threat anymore.
[00:33:05]  But, ooh, I don't know, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait.
[00:33:09]  So we must continue that.
[00:33:11]  And in fact, this is when all of those conservatives who followed in his footsteps, that this is when they go, oh, it's the unipolar moment.
[00:33:20]  Now we can take over the whole world.
[00:33:22]  Oh, now we can remake the Middle East.
[00:33:24]  Oh, now we can expand NATO.
[00:33:25]  Now we can, like, this is all that happens.
[00:33:27]  Now, it should be noted that there were principled conservatives in the movement.
[00:33:34]  And the most notable one is probably Pat Buchanan, who basically bought this Bill Buckley stuff, but he really believed it.
[00:33:42]  And he really believed.
[00:33:43]  So when the Soviet Union fell, he was like, oh, this is so great.
[00:33:47]  We can go back to being a normal country now.
[00:33:50]  You know, and then he totally opposed continuing this emergency through everything else.
[00:33:55]  But anyway, that's so Tucker Carlson is somebody who understands, I think very intimately, I think as you could, you know, learn from that the episode that we just did.
[00:34:07]  There's somebody who understands how much control the CIA has over the flow of information in this country, understands how evil the modern neoconservatives are.
[00:34:18]  And so at this point, I think probably my guess is this isn't something Tucker would have agreed with 15 years ago.
[00:34:23]  But today, when I say to him, Bill Buckley, it was one of the great villains of the 20th century.
[00:34:29]  He's like, absolutely, absolutely he was.
[00:34:33]  Because look what he did.
[00:34:35]  He took a conservative movement that flawed as they may have been, cared about their country and left you with a conservative movement who, no exaggeration, the United States of America seems to be their last concern.
[00:34:53]  Like the good of the country seems to not even register as in the hierarchy of priorities.
[00:34:59]  So two separate ADD thoughts here, but one thing that comes to mind is in Stockman's book when he talks about Reagan and he goes, you know, for the guy who was supposed to be the great conservative and unwinding government overspending and he outlines what he did in terms of increasing the defense and military budget and how that was really the death of like the conservative movement and, you know, going back to not overspending, which kind of just comes to mind as you're talking.
[00:35:27]  I also, I just loved your tweet back to the Blaze when they were like some podcaster.
[00:35:32]  You're like, I've been on your network twice.
[00:35:35]  The Blaze tweeted out interviewer says so-and-so.
[00:35:39]  And then Tucker Carlson responds to this.
[00:35:41]  You go, I've done Glenn Death's show three times because I can't get my name in there.
[00:35:46]  Screw you, Blaze.
[00:35:48]  I told him they're on my list now.
[00:35:50]  You're also amongst the villains of the 21st century.
[00:35:54]  I mean, whatever.
[00:35:55]  And I'm happy to go back on your show, but the whole time I want you to call me interviewer.
[00:36:02]  Anyway, so, well, yeah, no, I mean, look, this is kind of the, look, this is the history of the conservative movement.
[00:36:09]  And all of these, whether it's the neoconservatives of like Bill Buckley's type or the ones who followed like Leo Strauss and that whole camp, or it's like the Reaganites or any of that, they talk about small government.
[00:36:23]  They talk about how budgets are out of control.
[00:36:25]  They will mention, you know what I mean?
[00:36:27]  Like they'll talk somewhat of a good game about deregulation and abolishing abolishing departments and stuff like that.
[00:36:36]  But when the chips come down to it, their priorities are always the warfare state.
[00:36:42]  Always, you know, Reagan might talk a lot about cutting spending, but when it comes to it, that spending never got cut.
[00:36:50]  But the military budget definitely did go up.
[00:36:53]  George W. Bush or all those neocons, they could talk about how basically, well, we want to eliminate this department and we want to cut spending and we want to do this and that and we want to have this war in Iraq.
[00:37:05]  But when it comes down to it, the spending cuts never come, but the war in Iraq sure does.
[00:37:10]  That's their priority.
[00:37:12]  And you can look, you can, an easy way to observe this with all of these establishment Republican types is to just see what pisses them off more.
[00:37:23]  What pisses the, like if I were to say to Ben Shapiro or to anyone, you know, like in the Republican establishment, and I were to say, hey, you know, I think we need to, we need to increase spending next year.
[00:37:37]  Think about how angry they'd get about that versus if I said, no, we can't fight this war.

=== America First Healthcare Priorities (02:27) ===

[00:37:43]  Which one would piss them off more?
[00:37:45]  What's their real priority when it comes down to it?
[00:37:47]  So this is, and I don't mean to like, obviously I'm talking about decades worth of history in a short period of time.
[00:37:54]  I'm not trying to suggest that like Bill Buckley is the only one responsible for this, but he was very quite possibly, I would argue, the most influential person on the modern conservative movement in the second half of the 20th century.
[00:38:09]  And so, yeah, he gets a lot of the blame for this.
[00:38:13]  Some people were saying it goes up because I said one of the, he's one of the great villains of the 20th century.
[00:38:18]  And I got some people being like, I mean, you know, you got Stalin and Hitler and Mao Zedong and Pol Pot.
[00:38:23]  And I'm like, yeah, I didn't say he was top four.
[00:38:27]  He's like right behind those guys.
[00:38:28]  Like, you know what I mean?
[00:38:29]  Like, right?
[00:38:29]  Not quite as bad.
[00:38:30]  Not quite as bad as those guys, but chasing them.
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=== Henry Kissinger's Geopolitical Legacy (03:06) ===

[00:40:10]  All right, let's get back into the show.
[00:40:12]  Okay, so then anyway, I guess the next thing that we could talk about, because it's kind of on this theme of the villains of the 20th century, is that Henry Kissinger died today as we're recording this, or yesterday he died.
[00:40:29]  So yeah, there's that.
[00:40:31]  Henry Kissinger died the day that we put out the Tucker Carlson episode.
[00:40:35]  Some say that's what pushed him over the edge was hearing Tucker's comments about Bill Buckley, his old pal.
[00:40:41]  So yeah, another kind of interesting, you know, villain from my perspective of the 20th century.
[00:40:49]  Henry Kissinger was a fascinating guy.
[00:40:51]  Both Henry Kissinger and Bill Buckley were very smart.
[00:40:55]  If you can't say anything else about them, Henry Kissinger, he was really, though, just like a cartoon character of this just kind of like, well, the global strategy of geopolitics is, you know, is a really strange character.
[00:41:10]  But yeah, he was a guy who was responsible for a whole lot of death and destruction.
[00:41:16]  You know, certainly prolonged.
[00:41:18]  If people don't know, he was Richard Nixon's Secretary of State.
[00:41:23]  Was it was Secretary of State and National Security Advisor at one point?
[00:41:28]  But what was remarkable about the guy was that he not only survived the Nixon administration, which not too many people did.
[00:41:40]  There weren't too many people who were like in the Nixon administration and didn't go down.
[00:41:44]  I mean, not necessarily go to jail or something like that, but like still had a career in politics afterward.
[00:41:50]  He was certainly one of them.
[00:41:51]  But not only did he survive it, he was an advisor to every following president.
[00:41:58]  Every single following president would meet with Henry Kissinger to get advice because he was considered to be such a geopolitical, you know, mastermind genius.
[00:42:07]  And so no one else understood bombing Cambodia like he did.
[00:42:11]  Yeah, that's right.
[00:42:12]  And so if you want to figure out who can, you know, help you bomb some random area.
[00:42:17]  He was the guy to talk to.
[00:42:18]  Yes.
[00:42:19]  And so, right.
[00:42:19]  So as a guy, we're not even in war over there.
[00:42:22]  What are you talking about?
[00:42:23]  So that shouldn't stop you.
[00:42:26]  So, you know, again, I'm not saying like he's the only one.
[00:42:30]  He takes sole responsibility for this.
[00:42:32]  But if you look at U.S. foreign policy from, you know, the 70s to now, the 50 years or whatever, well, here's a guy who was very instrumental in that foreign policy.
[00:42:44]  And it's been pretty much an unmitigated disaster.
[00:42:47]  Now, I will say Henry Kissinger was probably preferable to the neocon establishment who followed him because like as evil as Henry Kissinger's view was basically that the world is basically pieces on a chessboard and you have to completely remove morality from your decision making.

=== Absence of Morality in Strategy (11:37) ===

[00:43:17]  And then you're just simply trying to play geopolitics and see what is in the strategic interests of the United States.
[00:43:26]  But of course, that vision kind of relies on the idea that America is an empire and should be ruling the entire world.
[00:43:33]  And it also, you know, just thinks of, let's say, slaughtering millions of people as a move on a chessboard.
[00:43:41]  I understood it a little bit differently.
[00:43:43]  And I haven't read in, but I thought it was a little bit more nefarious and kind of villain logic.
[00:43:48]  And I don't read as much as you do.
[00:43:50]  And sometimes I piece things together from random articles and I get it wrong.
[00:43:54]  But my understanding was he looked at it that you and I are subject to the rules of morality.
[00:43:59]  We can't go kill.
[00:44:00]  We can't go steal.
[00:44:01]  We can't go rape.
[00:44:02]  All these things would be morally reprehensible if we went and we went to do them.
[00:44:07]  A state, on the other hand, has a higher objective, which is to represent its citizens and actually has a moral duty to go do immortal acts if it protects the nature of the state.
[00:44:18]  It's almost like so the opposite of like Rothbard in terms of like the like the state being its own identity is that he views it as the state is its own creature and that it needs to play by different rules in order to, you know, force its strength upon other countries.
[00:44:38]  Well, so it's essentially this, right?
[00:44:39]  And it's true.
[00:44:40]  This holds for economics as well, that if you, if you were to like just walk into like a college 101 economics class and it was a micro economics class, right?
[00:44:52]  Because that's how they separate it.
[00:44:54]  They go, there's micro and then there's macro.
[00:44:56]  The micro stuff, and I'm not exaggerating, Rob, you'd probably just agree with it 100%.
[00:45:02]  Your microeconomics would all be about like, you know, supply demand, supply, demand, pricing, marginal restrictions, cleansing, cleansing mechanism of the market, you know, like what's like incentives, things like this that you'd all be like, yeah, that's, they totally get it.
[00:45:16]  They totally understand economics.
[00:45:17]  But then they have macroeconomics where they go, okay, okay, all that micro stuff, that doesn't apply anymore.
[00:45:23]  Once we get up here, then we got to do all of these things that completely fly in the face of every sound understanding of economics down here.
[00:45:29]  And Rothbard was essentially like, no, they're actually no different.
[00:45:33]  They're actually like basic, it's all just still the same thing.
[00:45:36]  And it's true on the morality aspect as well, where essentially Henry Kissinger is like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, there's morality and there's good and evil, but you're talking micro.
[00:45:47]  Macro, you got to throw all of that stuff away.
[00:45:50]  And Rothbard's position is like, no, the moral character of your action doesn't change because you have a lot of power and money.
[00:45:57]  It doesn't change anything.
[00:45:59]  It doesn't mean it'd be okay to do that now.
[00:46:02]  But so anyway, so this is this is more or less Henry Kissinger's view of the world.
[00:46:07]  And I've read, I read one of his books, World Order was the book that I read.
[00:46:12]  And you see it throughout the book.
[00:46:14]  It's one of the things that I remember always stuck out to me in the book is that they, and this just kind of demonstrates the absence of morality in the way he views geopolitics, is that he goes, he said the best president in American history was Truman.
[00:46:34]  And he said, and look, from his point of view, you can understand this.
[00:46:38]  But he said the best president was Truman because Truman not only defeated Germany and Japan, but then brought them back into the global community.
[00:46:47]  And so not, you know, not exactly his words, but basically what he's saying is like, we fucked them up and then made them our bitch afterward.
[00:46:57]  Like that, like we, we, you know, I think I compared this to the Mike Tyson quote, I'll fuck you till you love me.
[00:47:06]  And so, right, if you're completely removing morality and just trying to conquer the world, you could see where you'd be like, oh, yeah, that guy did it.
[00:47:15]  If you have an ounce of morality in you, you'd be like, holy shit, you dropped nukes on cities after the Nazis were defeated and the war was already won.
[00:47:24]  Like, Jesus Christ.
[00:47:26]  And he did it just to scare the commies?
[00:47:28]  Like, this is insane.
[00:47:31]  You know, like, he could have dropped a nuke in the ocean and let everyone know we have it, you know, but he did it on cities.
[00:47:38]  Anyway, but so that's kind of the mentality.
[00:47:42]  But I will tell you, I think that the foreign policy establishment today is substantially worse than Henry Kissinger because at least Henry Kissinger was like, he'd point to a strategy and then point to like a goal that was achieved after it.
[00:48:00]  Whereas the people today, it's like their strategy doesn't even ever work.
[00:48:06]  Even by their own stated goals, like democracy isn't sweeping the region.
[00:48:10]  Like if your strategy was to bring Germany into the global community, like that did happen.
[00:48:18]  Even if you're pro-Kissinger, what are you pointing to as this?
[00:48:21]  I mean, wasn't I once again, my lack of education.
[00:48:24]  I thought Vietnam was, hey, if we don't go oppose the socialists there, the entire region is going to fall and become a puppet of the Soviet Union.
[00:48:33]  And then the domino theory.
[00:48:34]  Domino theory, correct.
[00:48:35]  That didn't even happen.
[00:48:36]  Yes, we lost and it didn't happen.
[00:48:38]  Well, there were.
[00:48:39]  So like, what are the, what are the, if you're a Kissinger fan, what do you point to as going, here were the Kissinger strategic successes?
[00:48:46]  Okay.
[00:48:47]  And there, there were, there were some, certainly opening up trade relations with China.
[00:48:52]  And I'll.
[00:48:53]  From a conservative standpoint, though, you might even look at that as a loss, though.
[00:48:56]  Well, it is.
[00:48:57]  We've empowered the next empire that we now have to oppose in the world.
[00:49:00]  And it is people are all such China hawks that, but they, yeah, right.
[00:49:06]  I get what you're saying.
[00:49:07]  But from my perspective, but that is one of the things that they point to.
[00:49:13]  He did negotiate like the détente with the Soviet Unions, which at least for a time cooled off the threat of nuclear war, which had been a very real threat.
[00:49:25]  This was in the previous administration, which at the time was the Kennedy administration.
[00:49:29]  You know, you had things like the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis and these things that were very, very tense, dangerous moments.
[00:49:36]  He did a good job of cooling that off again, because he was a strategist in that sense.
[00:49:41]  Like he was looking at this through like, okay, nuclear war, that's very bad for America.
[00:49:47]  So that's like, how do we not, how do we make sure that doesn't happen?
[00:49:51]  But then there were like the really horrific things that happened on his watch that are just kind of inexcusable.
[00:49:59]  However, it does seem like, you know, look like I'm just saying like if you, the Henry Kissinger like view of the world would always like it would always lead to believing that you have to, whoever your enemies are, you try to pit them against each other or drive a wedge in between them.
[00:50:17]  So that part of the reason why he went and normalized trade relations with China, the reason why they went and met with Mao Zetong and Nixon had nothing but nice things to say about him was because the Chinese and the Soviet Union were both these communist nations who had were aligned with each other.
[00:50:39]  And he was like, well, let's go here and make friends with China.
[00:50:42]  You know what I mean?
[00:50:43]  And then kind of drive a wedge between them and Russia.
[00:50:46]  Whereas like the Joe Biden foreign policy is like, let's flirt with a nuclear war with Russia and flirt with a nuclear war with China.
[00:50:55]  How about both?
[00:50:55]  Let's drive them both into each other's hands.
[00:50:58]  This is why early on Henry Kissinger came out against the war in Ukraine.
[00:51:03]  And I believe he might have walked that back a little bit as it went on.
[00:51:06]  But at the beginning, he was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, what are we doing here?
[00:51:09]  We're picking a fight with Russia.
[00:51:11]  This is just going to drive them into the arms of China.
[00:51:13]  Like, this isn't how you do Kissinger geopolitics.
[00:51:17]  You're doing it all wrong.
[00:51:18]  And he doesn't give a shit about how many people die in any of these conflicts.
[00:51:22]  He wasn't coming at it from like a humanitarian standpoint.
[00:51:24]  He was just going like, no, no, no, you're moving the pieces all wrong on this chessboard.
[00:51:28]  Like, this is bad strategy.
[00:51:30]  So it's kind of like the U.S. foreign policy now has like all of the killing of innocent people that you loved.
[00:51:39]  Same great taste, but now a whole new flavor of not even having a strategic purpose there.
[00:51:46]  Seemingly like the thing has just gotten so out of control since then that it's really just being run by people who are like, I don't know, pick another fight.
[00:51:53]  We'll make another, we'll make a shit ton of money.
[00:51:55]  Pick another fight.
[00:51:57]  Get another check coming in.
[00:51:58]  And that seems to be more or less how U.S. foreign policy operates today.
[00:52:02]  So yeah, Henry Kissinger certainly should be viewed as a villain.
[00:52:10]  And a lot of a lot of dead people that he's at least partially responsible for.
[00:52:19]  But man, the neocons who followed them, who followed him, I think they were even worse.
[00:52:24]  I mean, you could argue that the thing that you would argue that would make Henry Kissinger worse is just like the scale and the type of fighting in Vietnam was more brutal than anything that we've had in these wars since then.
[00:52:42]  He just like did not care whatsoever.
[00:52:45]  And that was, you know, it was a different time.
[00:52:48]  And I think it'd be tougher to get away with a lot of that stuff today.
[00:52:52]  But he, yes, he did kill millions of Vietnamese people.
[00:52:57]  And again, you could say the ultimate responsibility is on is on LBJ and Richard Nixon.
[00:53:02]  They were the presidents.
[00:53:03]  He was just Nixon's, you know, guy.
[00:53:06]  But he was also the advisor to, you know, he advised every president since then.
[00:53:10]  And he was never advising them to not kill a lot of people for no reason.
[00:53:15]  Let's just say that.
[00:53:16]  And he even advised Hillary Clinton.
[00:53:19]  And she didn't make it into the White House, but it's like they all, Donald Trump went and met with him.
[00:53:24]  They would all take advice from Henry Kissinger.
[00:53:27]  In fact, Donald Trump bragged.
[00:53:30]  I don't know if you remember this, but Donald Trump in 2016, when he was running on the basically Donald Trump was running on let's be friends with Russia because our real enemy is China.
[00:53:44]  That was like a big part of Donald Trump's 2016 campaign.
[00:53:49]  And he went and met with Henry Kissinger and he bragged at the presidential debates that he was like, I just talked to Henry Kissinger and he said, I'm a genius for this plan.
[00:53:59]  He was like, he said, he totally thinks this is right.
[00:54:01]  And that, and you could see where that would be like, yet, like Henry Kissinger would be like, yes, exactly.
[00:54:06]  That's what you do.
[00:54:07]  You go make friends with Russia, turn them on China, which is a real shame that Donald Trump was never able to implement that plan.
[00:54:16]  It would have been a lot better than what we ended up getting.
[00:54:19]  You know, the turn him on China part isn't even necessary, but just like go make friends with this country who you don't have any reason to be fighting with.
[00:54:26]  But anyway, but yeah, and then Hillary Clinton had also in 2016 met with Henry Kissinger.
[00:54:35]  And if you recall this is, I think you might remember this is something that Bernie Sanders beat her over the head with.
[00:54:42]  That because, you know, his base wasn't having that.
[00:54:46]  And he was like, oh, you're meeting with Henry Kissinger over here, I see.
[00:54:50]  And he had that great line where Hillary Clinton went, well, I don't know who your foreign policy advisors even are.

=== Secret Meetings with Henry Kissinger (02:03) ===

[00:54:55]  And he went, not Henry Kissinger.
[00:54:57]  There's a great, a great Bernie Sanders line.
[00:55:00]  It's a, you know, he's a cranky old socialist, but he got, he got a couple lines out.
[00:55:05]  And that, that was one of the better ones.
[00:55:07]  All right.
[00:55:07]  So there we go.
[00:55:09]  Those are my eulogies for Kissinger and Bill Buckley.
[00:55:13]  Screw them both.
[00:55:15]  All right.
[00:55:16]  Anything to add, Rob?
[00:55:18]  Come see me at the show.
[00:55:20]  Doing some.
[00:55:20]  Come see Rob on the show.
[00:55:22]  Got a bunch of other comics on the lineup and a bit of a presentation.
[00:55:25]  So come hang out.
[00:55:26]  Hell yeah.
[00:55:27]  Should be a great time.
[00:55:28]  Go check Rob out if you are in the in the New Hampshire area.
[00:55:32]  Oh, there's one other thing.
[00:55:36]  So by the way, I'm the Tucker Carlson thing.
[00:55:39]  So Megan McCain, the daughter of the late John McCain.
[00:55:45]  Who is the secret lover of Kissinger?
[00:55:48]  That is true.
[00:55:49]  That is true.
[00:55:50]  That has been confirmed.
[00:55:51]  They were, in fact, secret gay lovers.
[00:55:53]  No, so she tweeted out the clip of us talking about Bill Buckley.
[00:55:57]  I meant to mention this when we were talking about that.
[00:55:59]  So she tweeted out, Tucker named his eldest son, Buckley, after Bill.
[00:56:08]  So she's basically saying, oh, you know, how two-faced this guy is.
[00:56:10]  He named his son after Bill Buckley.
[00:56:14]  And then I quote tweeted her and I said, well, his brother's name is Buckley.
[00:56:22]  So it just seems a lot more likely that he named him after his brother than he named him after the founder of National Review.
[00:56:31]  And she responded by deleting the tweet.
[00:56:34]  So that's where we left that one.
[00:56:38]  But anyway, I just thought that was a, I thought that was a pretty entertaining little exchange that we had right there.
[00:56:43]  Megan McCain, I've done a Kennedy show with her a few times and she does not care for me.
[00:56:49]  She is, I am saying she does not like me.
[00:56:52]  Did not like what I had to say on those shows.
[00:56:54]  Anyway, all right, that's our episode for today.
[00:56:56]  Catch you guys next time.
[00:56:57]  Peace.