Dave Smith analyzes Vivek Ramaswamy's debate performance, praising his strategy of targeting Nikki Haley and Chris Christie while adopting controversial narratives like the "Great Replacement Theory" and claiming the 2020 election was stolen by big tech. Smith argues that Ramaswamy effectively mimics Donald Trump's 2016 tactics to gain media attention, suggesting that if Trump faces legal issues, roughly 80% of his voters would shift to Ramaswamy rather than other Republicans. Ultimately, the episode posits that the political establishment has atrophied due to its failure to adapt to new communication landscapes, leaving space for figures who weaponize demographic fears and conspiracy theories to mobilize their base. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Government Too Big00:15:16
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.
What's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
I am Dave Smith, your loyal host.
I'm flying solo this episode.
Robbie the Fire Bernstein is out doing some stand-up comedy shows.
Me and Robbie will both be together doing a New Year's Eve show, by the way, in just a couple weeks here.
Can you believe 2023 is almost over?
Me, Robbie the Fire Bernstein, and Chris Fega, my brother, we're all going to be doing a stand-up comedy show and then a live part of the problem podcast and then a meet and greet afterward.
It's a big New Year's Eve extravaganza, a big long event.
It's in East Rutherford, New Jersey.
So if you don't have plans for New Year's, come on out.
If you're in the tri-state area, come on out for that.
I just got a ticket link, so it'll be up on my website in the next day or two, comicdave Smith.com.
Come on out.
It's going to be a lot of fun.
And then just setting up the schedule for 2024.
I'm going all over the place this year.
So I will be coming to a town or a city near you.
So look out.
Look out for that.
Okay.
So for today's episode, as I'm going solo and doing this by myself, I wanted to kind of discuss where we are at in the presidential election.
We are, believe it or not, in December.
Today, as I record this is December 8th.
So we are officially less than a year, closer to 11 months.
And who knows exactly, give or take, how long these elections these days take to figure out.
I think it was several weeks, if not months, for the last presidential election.
But we are around 11 months away, less than a year away from the 2024 elections.
And there's, look, now I'm not saying, I'm not trying to say what everybody else always says, which is this is the most important election of our lifetime.
I've heard that about every single election for my entire lifetime.
So if that statement is true, then it was always true or getting truer and truer.
But this is without a doubt, the wildest and with the most moving parts election that I've ever seen.
I mean, we've, for example, so we're going to talk a bit on this show about the, they just had a Republican primary debate.
How crazy is this?
Okay.
How tell me another presidential election where this was the case, where every single debate so far has not involved the Democratic and Republican frontrunners.
Neither of them have been involved in a debate yet, but we're having all of these debates.
Anyway, it looks like we just had the last debate because the RNC has decided that they're not going to do any more of these.
So that was it.
They held a few, what was it, four or five debates without the frontrunner and the frontrunner by miles without him.
And that's it.
It seems like they're done now.
Now, who knows?
They may go back on that, but that's what they're saying as of right now.
So I want to kind of talk about what happened in this last debate and where we are in the bigger picture of things going into this next year, 2024, which is just sure to be a huge year, you know, for this country, for this show, and for the state of American politics.
This is going to be quite a year.
So let's get into the debate.
I'll give you first my kind of takeaways from this last debate.
Look, obviously, I'm a little bit biased in all of this.
It's kind of impossible to remove all of your biases from this type of analysis.
But this was a masterful performance for Vivek Ramaswamy.
I have been, you know, I've had Vivek's been on the show three times now.
And so we have we've we've spoke for a while.
We spoke a bit off air when he came in and we did the live episode in the studio.
I, as I've always said personally, I'm personally very impressed by the guy.
I think he's a very, very smart guy.
There's obviously a lot of policy agreement that we have.
There's some pretty important disagreements as well.
And I, as always, as I said, said to you guys, I'm always skeptical about trusting anyone running for office.
I just, my, my default is always I can't trust you.
And sometimes with Vivek, I feel, and I don't know if this is completely fair, but I feel like he's so smooth and even perfect at times that it makes me suspicious of him.
Anyway, that being said, he is obviously on policy issue when it's these four guys who are in this debate.
So it's Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, Chris Christie, and Vivek Ramaswamy.
Obviously, he is clearly my favorite.
But I think I'm just making sober analysis when I say this.
I'm not just talking about who I agree with on the issues.
I have, while I have been impressed in the past with Vivek's intelligence, with how well read he is and how good he is on so many important issues, I have really come to be kind of blown away by how politically savvy he is.
And that was really demonstrated in this debate.
I thought in this debate, there were some, there were essentially kill shots for, I think, a couple of the presidential campaigns.
I'd say two out of the four.
I think both Chris Christie and Nikki Haley.
Ron DeSantis is still limping by, but it just seems obvious he's going nowhere.
And anyway, there's, look, like I said back, if you remember, I told you guys this was months and months ago, but I told you when Mike Pence, when his kill shot was, and it was with Tucker Carlson.
Tucker Carlson took out Mike Pence's presidential campaign when he grilled him about caring more about Ukraine than he cares about what's happening in America.
And after that, it was just a lifeless corpse showed up to a few more events, but there was nothing left in that campaign.
And I think Chris Christie and Nikki Haley both suffered those campaign assassinations during this debate.
So we'll kind of go through that a little bit and then get into what I think Vivek did that was pretty incredible here.
Let's start with the first clip, which was the death of Chris Christie's campaign at the hands of the assassin Megan Kelly.
Let's watch it.
You even said that you got into this race just to stop President Trump.
His approval rating with Republicans is currently at 81%.
Yours is at 25.
Your best state is New Hampshire.
And even there, two-thirds of GOP voters say they would be angry and disappointed if you won.
Respectfully, Governor, you have not stopped Mr. Trump.
And voters may wonder how you could possibly become the nominee of a party that does not appear to like you very much.
Yeah, well, look, Megan, it's often very difficult to be the only person on the stage who's telling the truth and the only person who is taking on what needs to be taken on.
I look at my watch now.
We're 17 minutes into this debate.
And except for your little speech in the beginning, we've had these three acting as if the race is between the four of us.
The fifth guy who doesn't have the guts to show up and stand here, he's the one who, as you just put it, is way ahead in the polls.
Even said that you got into this race just so that was just, ooh, God, was that devastating?
Chris Christie, by the way, at one point during a commercial break, there were people who had video of it from like up in the stands that he like ran up to Megan Kelly and was furious with her.
I will say it was interesting, also an interesting dynamic to have kind of these, to have someone like Megan Kelly who, and you know, I've done Megan Kelly's show a couple of times.
I like her a lot.
I've really enjoyed the conversations that we've had, but she's this just kind of an interesting figure.
Now, I don't agree with her on everything or far from everything, but she's an interesting figure where she's somebody who was at one point number one in cable news, moved over to have this huge NBC deal, is then canceled and is now in her kind of life after cancellation phase.
And people like that are like a little bit more, I don't know, they're a little more dangerous.
They're a little bit more like, then when they get back in there and they get to host a presidential debate, it's a little bit, there's something a little raw about how they, but anyway, look, I mean, she just laid it out right there for you.
Just Chris Christie, you said the reason you're running is to stop Donald Trump.
And the overwhelming response from Republican voters is, screw you.
We're not interested in stopping Donald Trump.
We're trying to get Donald Trump elected again.
Just devastating.
Oh my God, in your best state, two-thirds of the voters say they'd be furious if you won.
And what he comes back with that is like a dodge of the question.
These people say they're, you know, they're not even dealing with Donald Trump.
I'm telling the truth.
Just politically speaking, however you feel about the substance, that's just death.
You just watched a campaign die.
Not that there was that much life left in them, but it was, if it was twitching around on the ground, someone just put the boot right over that thing.
You know, it's one of the things that's interesting is that we live in this totally new political landscape.
It's there's been a revolution, nothing short of a revolution in the way particularly presidential campaigns are run.
I mean, if you don't agree with me on that, just look at Donald Trump 2016.
This is everything you thought you knew doesn't exist anymore.
And the means of communication that you thought you knew, they don't exist anymore.
And all of these people, there's this entire industry of very handsomely paid political consultants who tell you what you can say and what you can't say and what works and what doesn't work and all of that.
And then Donald Trump came in 2016 and did the exact opposite of what all of them would have recommended.
I mean, think about this, right?
Think about Donald Trump.
Okay, think about all of the people and the millions and millions of dollars that political consultants and campaign managers have been paid over the years, right?
Like the experts, the experts who tell you how to run a political campaign.
And once you get to a presidential campaign, you get the best, right?
The Dick Morrises and the, you know, Leon Panettas and the people who really know how to run.
Podesta.
I'm sorry, not Leon Panetta.
John Podesta is who I met.
I get those Podesta Panetta names confused.
Anyway, think about that, the top level campaign guys, right?
And if they were giving you your advice, and let's say you're running as a Republican candidate for president of the United States, and one of them was saying to you, they go, let's say an interviewer brings up John McCain's military service.
What should I say about that?
Well, what would these people who get tens of millions of dollars to do this for a living because they're the experts?
What would they say that the answer is if you're trying to be a Republican presidential candidate?
What are you supposed to say to that?
Well, obviously they would all tell you everyone knows.
What you say is that you thank John McCain for his service and you respect him as a war hero and you blah, And then what if you were to say to them, you go, you know, I'm thinking I go a different direction.
I'm thinking that maybe I say, I think he's a loser because his plane got shot down.
And I like winners.
I don't like losers who get shot down.
I like winners who don't get shot down.
What do you think about that?
Right?
What would the response be from any of those guys?
They'd all be like, okay, well, I own a $15 million home because I know you can't do that.
Except here's the thing.
Turns out you can.
Again, this is, I'm not, this is not a value judgment.
I'm not saying whether you agree with it or don't agree with it.
And we could get into that.
And you guys probably know where I stand on that.
But I'm just saying the reality is that that worked.
It didn't hurt him at all.
And so the means of communication, you know, shows like this, that we're living in this brand new world.
And so it's interesting to kind of see how there's this traditional political machine that's now trying to operate in this new world.
So as I'm sure you guys know, if you're somewhere around my age, like if or my age or not too much younger, maybe let's say 30 and over, okay?
And you've been through a few presidential cycles, even if you just like were kind of paying attention to them, you kind of know how this works.
It's a whole bunch of candidates are on stage who are all representative of the establishment.
That's basically all they all represent the same thing.
And you have this every single year.
Like it's always like, what is the real substantive difference between Marco Rubio or Jeb Bush or Mitt Romney or John McCain or whoever?
They're all kind of the same.
But they try to have a lot of different versions of the same thing because that creates the illusion of democracy, which is all just an illusion in this country.
The Illusion of Choice00:04:26
But you have this illusion of like, look, we get this choice.
We get to pick between all of these different shades of gray.
And then, you know, we can pick one of them.
But the answer is you will pick gray.
This is this year, the versions of this have been, you know, Nikki Haley and Mike Pence and Chris Christie, and they're all the same, but they run a bunch of them because maybe they just want to get one issue inserted here or maybe they just want to give you the illusion that you have more choice than you actually have.
Chris Christie is running uh, in the same way that Liz Cheney is still a thing that the corporate press talks about because he is the Anti-trump Republican and they want someone to carve out that space.
But now he's dealing with this new reality of the world where someone like Megan Kelly once you were fired from FOX NEWS and and and NBC or she wasn't fired from FOX NEWS once you left FOX NEWS and get fired from NBC, you'd have to go away and no one would ever hear from you again.
But now she's got a popular enough uh, uh radio show, slash podcast that she gets invited back to these things, and now she's going to actually really grill you and ask you uncomfortable questions and you just watch him die in front of her, just evaporate in front of her.
That's a lot of matter to evaporate um, but this is uh, this is it's a constant dynamic that you see today.
There is the, the atrophy of the establishment, which is a result of them being too powerful for too long and just not needing to adapt.
You don't need to adapt if you have a monopoly.
It's like when was the last time you went to the post office and you were like whoa, the technology in this place is crazy, you know.
It's like it doesn't happen because they don't need to adapt.
Um, and so you have the atrophy of the establishment during this kind of revolutionary time and they are trying to use the same old procedures to deal with this radical new world and it's just not working anymore.
So that anyway, I love that.
I just love that.
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PrizePicks Injury Insurance00:11:48
All right, let's get back into the show.
All right, let's let's move on to the next clip.
Ramaswamy, when discussing your Hindu faith in September, you seemed to take a shot at Ambassador Haley, who is also Indian American and who converted to Christianity as an adult.
You said, an easy thing for me to do being a politician is to shorten my name, profess to be a Christian, and then run.
Make Vivek Vicki or whatever, end quote.
Are you questioning Nikki Haley's Christian convictions?
And why has your campaign made a point of referring to Ambassador Haley by her given first name, Nimerata, even though she's gone by Nikki for her whole life?
Well, my whole deal is if Nikki Haley, of all people, should know how to pronounce my name correctly.
The rest of the news media can learn it.
My deal is I'll call her Nikki when she can say my own name right.
That's our little fun side bet there.
Here's what I will say is deeper.
I don't question her faith, but I question her authenticity.
And I think that's deeper here.
We were just talking about the trans issue.
This is a symptom of a deeper cancer in American life, identity politics.
This new religion that says your race, your gender, and your sexuality are your identity.
It is anti-American.
It is meritocratic.
It's anti-meritocratic.
And it is dividing this country to a breaking point.
And I've spoken about this to the left.
My books are all about this.
I've preached this to the left, but it's even worse when Republicans try to play the same game.
We're talking about that trans issue.
And Nikki Haley's campaign launch video sounded like a woke Dylan Mulvaney Bud Light ad talking about how she would kick in heels.
At the first debate, she said that only a woman can get this job done.
That's what she said.
After the third debate, when I criticized Ronna McDaniel after five failed years of leadership of this party and criticized Nikki for her corrupt foreign dealings as a military contractor, she said that I have a woman problem.
Nikki, I don't have a woman problem.
You have a corruption problem.
And I think that that's what people need to know.
Nikki is corrupt.
This is a woman who will send your kids to die so she can buy a bigger house.
This is the problem.
Using identity politics more effectively than Kamala Harris is a form of intellectual fraud.
And actually, there's her donor puppet masters wielding their puppet right up here tonight.
This is how this game is played.
The puppet masters put up their puppet, and I reject the use of identity politics in this party.
It has been a cancer coming from the left, and I'm sick and tired of the double standards the people of this country are too.
Having two X chromosomes does not immunize us a place.
Thank you, sir.
I mean, that was vicious.
And look, I'll tell you, there's something I think.
Okay, first, there's a few things here, right?
Number one, one of the things that's happening here, and it reminds me a lot of 2016.
And look, Vivek borrowed from Donald Trump in his little quip at the end there, but he's not wrong to do it.
Is that.
I don't know if you guys remember, if a lot of you guys used to watch the primary debates in 2016, but there'd be a lot of points where Donald Trump would get booze in the crowd and he'd be like crushing in the polls, but the crowd wouldn't really be that uh for him and he would point out that he was like these are donors, that's who's here in the crowd like it's donors and people who are like connected to the RNC that get these tickets to these debates in like disproportionate numbers,
let's say.
And so there, you know, you'll see some of these things sometimes where, like Vivek kind of nails her, but the crowd is there's a portion of the crowd that's way behind him and then there's kind of a bigger portion of the crowd that starts like kind of booing toward the end of his comment and he starts pointing them out like these are the donors.
This is what Donald Trump used to do um, but i'm just saying, knowing what I know about like the base of the Republican Party, forget what you're hearing in that room.
This is this.
Totally plays with the base.
Now, I didn't.
You know, i'll be honest, before this moment I had never really thought too much about, like the Indian thing there, and why Vivek is going so hard at Nikki Haley, like she's always the one he's just totally like there to try to destroy.
But i'll tell you, I think at least part of it is also a very wise political move.
And this is one of the things I really took away from this debate is that Vivek is a much um, he's much more savvy with his political maneuvering than I ever really understood.
See, I think he knows what he's doing.
So I think Desantis is falling flat on his face.
Um, but Desantis has also kind of been unwilling to take strong positions on a lot of issues.
Think about where he was on Ukraine.
I mean okay, he'll take a strong issue, a strong position on Israel, but Nikki Haley is willing to do that both on Ukraine and on Israel, both on a lot of this stuff.
And I think what Vivek is realizing is that as the establishment as we've seen, there's some evidence of this that as Desantis starts to not be viable, they're trying to get behind Nikki Haley.
He's like i'm gonna take her out and let the kind of this zombie candidate who is not just, does not have any of the qualities like again, removing how you feel about the policy, does not have any of the the um, strong political qualities that Nikki Haley has, like he's not sure of himself and he he isn't, you know, like I don't know.
He doesn't have like uh um, identity boxes checked and he, you know, can't figure out how to smile into a camera for whatever reason, and you know, whatever um has to wear high heels, but he's not a woman, that type of thing.
He's like i'm gonna take this chick out and be left with you.
And what he's doing here really and we'll get into this more in a little bit, but what he's doing here, it's kind of brilliant is that he is just, he knows he can't take Donald Trump out, and i'm I don't think that's necessarily even his goal, But what Vivek Ramaswamy is doing is positioning himself to be the backup to Donald Trump.
And it's probably the best thing he could possibly do.
So he's saying, if anything happens where Donald Trump can't run, which is a pretty big question, Mark, who's going to inherit that support?
And I mean, I think he's going to inherit 90% of it.
I think the polling right now does not tell you how good of a position Vivek Ramaswamy is in.
Because it's not a matter of, you could say, let's say the polling is like Donald Trump's ahead by 50 points.
And then after him is, you know, DeSantis.
And then after him is Nikki Haley.
And then after him is Vivek Ramaswamy or something like that.
That's not it.
That's not right because you're not looking at it the right way.
The truth is that nobody here can beat Donald Trump in a straight up, let's just let the Republican voters vote.
Nobody.
It's Trump and no one else.
There's no first, second, third.
There's only first.
But that's not the question.
The question isn't who wins if we just have a vote amongst Republican voters tomorrow.
We all know the answer to that is Donald Trump.
The question is, what if Donald Trump is taken out of the equation?
Who do his voters flow to?
And so if you look at it like that, it's Donald Trump in first place and Vivek Ramaswamy in a strong second place.
I think that's what he's doing.
The guy's made, you know, what is it, billions or hundreds of millions of dollars.
He's a tad, he's a tad bit crafty, this fellow.
All right, let's go to the next clip.
Here's the dirty little secret in American politics today.
The people who we elect to run the government are not the ones who are even actually running the government.
It is the bureaucrats in those three-letter agencies that are writing regulations that Congress never gave them the authority to write.
And the good news is a U.S. president can absolutely fix that.
That takes a U.S. president with a spine.
So what I've said is in my administration, by the end of year one, we will have a 75% reduction in the number of federal bureaucrats.
We will shut down government agencies that should not exist.
We will rescind any regulation that fails the test of West Virginia versus EPA, which is the most important Supreme Court case of our lifetime, that said if Congress didn't delegate that to an administrative agency, then it's unconstitutional.
These are seismic changes.
These are big changes that the next president can deliver without asking Congress for permission or for forgiveness.
And I want people to understand that distinction because people have been sold myths by politicians for a long time saying, I'm going to work with Congress to do this or that.
Much of what you've heard on the stage from the other politicians fit that description.
They need Congress.
The things that I'm promising you, this is what the leader of the executive branch gets to do under Article 2 of the Constitution.
Thank you, sir.
Cut down the bureaucracy.
That's how we grow our economy and put the Federal Reserve in its place as part of the crypto discussion.
No, no, no.
90% of California.
You're out of time.
You see how even the moderators are kind of trying to cut him off.
But what up, listen, however you feel about Vivek Ramaswamy, I know my audience is a little bit split on him.
Some are really big on him.
Some are very skeptical of him.
Look, we should all be grateful that this guy is in this race and is saying this stuff because what an important statement.
Look, I mean, this is something that I say on Rogan's podcast almost every time I'm on there.
I try to find a way to say this in one way or another.
And it's really great that he said this at a presidential debate.
Because, I mean, I think I said this when I was talking to Tucker Carlson the other day, that, look, the truth is that the people who we vote for and elect, and we kind of have this idea that they're running the government, but we all know anyone paying attention to this knows that's not right.
That's not actually true, that those people don't run the government.
You know, if you want to compare what your like your representative in Congress, you know, whoever you voted for in the House of Representatives, you think they have the power that the CIA or the FBI or the NSA has?
It's not even close.
And so like, what like to have a Republican candidate just saying that and look, obviously we had, we have the greatest hero in America, Ron Paul, said a lot of this stuff when he was running.
And then you had Donald Trump say this.
And now you have a Vaik saying it.
But in terms of Republican candidates, I don't really think there's much more than that in recent American history.
And to just have that point be made and made very clear that what you're talking about is the government isn't actually the government.
You can't get to what the real problem is or what the potential solution to that problem is unless you at least acknowledge the reality that we're living in.
You know, it's kind of like if you're, I don't know, I'm trying to think of like a good analogy to think of here, but you're like, if you have like a chair and you're saying to yourself, you know, this house isn't really working.
This isn't a very sound house.
Switching to Fume00:02:45
And like, why is it?
I don't know.
Is it the roof?
Is it the walls?
And then someone points out, oh, it's not a house.
It's a chair.
That's a big thing to just understand the reality of what we're talking about before we can get to solving any problems.
And so it's pretty incredible.
Anyone who would make that statement, I think it was worthwhile that they ran for president, particularly someone who's getting a lot of attention, that they would say, look, it's not a matter of the people we elect.
That has nothing really to do with it.
And the only thing that should matter is like who is saying we're going to, we're going to cut the deep state.
We're going to really take a wrecking ball to the three letter agencies.
That's all that fucking matters.
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Dog Whistling Politics00:13:09
All right, let's go to the next clip.
This is a good one.
Other colleagues on this debate stage is all three of them have been licking Donald Trump's boots for years for money and endorsements.
Ron DeSantis, you've been a great governor, but you would have never been one without actually begging Donald Trump for that endorsement.
And you except a year ago.
Same thing with Chris Christie as a lobbyist, begging them for COVID money for his special interests in New Jersey, prepping him for the debates last time around.
These people are now Monday morning quarterbacking some decision he made.
I think the real enemy is not Donald Trump.
It's not even Joe Biden.
It is the deep state that at least Donald Trump attempted to take on.
And if you want somebody who's going to speak truth to power, then vote for somebody who's going to speak the truth to you.
Why am I the only person on the stage at least who can say that January 6th now does look like it was an inside job?
That the government lied to us for 20 years about Saudi Arabia's involvement in 9-11.
That the great replacement theory is not some grand right-wing conspiracy theory, but a basic statement of the Democratic Party's platform.
That the 2020 election was indeed stolen by big tech.
That the 2016 election, the one that Trump won for sure, was also one that was stolen from him by the National Security Establishment.
And actually clear the Trump-Russia collusion hoax that they knew was false.
There's a reason why I'm the only person on the stage who can say these things.
That's what it's going to take, not people who were licking his boots one time and now Monday morning quarterbacking and criticizing him when it's convenient.
Governor Chrissy.
So that was, in my opinion, the moment of the debate.
And again, first of all, I'll say I think there was a lot of great stuff in there, but I want you to almost remove whether you, however you feel about it, I'm saying just politically speaking, this was political genius.
That's what we just watched right there.
Because if you notice what he's doing, and this is the thing that Vivek Ramaswamy, this is the line he has to tread, which is not 100% honest, but is really smart politics.
Is that he was critical of Donald Trump in one of his books, maybe more than one of his books.
And that's what DeSantis tried to interrupt him with for a second.
But you understand, if you're playing the political game that Vivek Ramaswamy is playing right now, you can't be critical of Donald Trump because you're positioning yourself to inherit his support.
That's the game you're playing, right?
But so what he does is he brilliantly hits the other three, which is totally fair to say, look, all of these guys, Nikki Haley was his ambassador at the UN.
Ron DeSantis came asking for his endorsement.
Chris Christie was the first guy who endorsed Donald Trump in 2016 of the establishment Republicans.
All you guys were fucking, you know, blowing this guy until it wasn't politically, you know, expedient for you to do it anymore.
And now you're all up here trashing the guy.
So he's like, well, look, screw that.
And then for him to separate himself, and this is a really interesting thing.
You know, Donald Trump in 2016, I think this was a thing.
And I used to, if you go back, for those of you guys who have been listening to this show for years, and most of you haven't been, because the audience has gotten a lot bigger since it was back then.
But for those of you guys who were like fans back in 2016.
If you remember, this is a point I used to make a lot, that they would always accuse Donald Trump of dog whistling, which is the same thing Vivek gets accused of after this comment.
But they'd always say he was dog whistling racism.
And they would point to a lot of things that he said.
And then they'd make this claim dog whistling, which is, you know, it's a weird claim when you say someone's dog whistling because you basically get to say that even though they didn't say it, I'm telling you they really meant this.
You know, so that let's just say, I'm not saying nobody ever dog whistles or says something that's kind of a wink and a nod towards something, but you can see where that's ripe for abuse to get to claim that someone, even though they said a thing I can't argue against, here's what they really meant.
And that's really horrible.
Okay.
So anyway, the point I would make back in 2016 was that they would say that Donald Trump was dog whistling racism.
I always thought he was much more dog whistling conspiracy shit.
Like he was always kind of giving a wink and a nod to people who might believe that some conspiracies are afoot.
And that is really what Vivek does here, where he separates himself from everybody else and goes, listen, I'm the only one who's willing to say these things.
Let's talk about it.
And the reason why, obviously, there are a lot of crazy conspiracies out there that aren't true.
But man, there's a lot of really crazy conspiracies out there that are totally true, you know?
And so it's kind of interesting that he separates himself by saying, I'm the only one who's willing to say the following.
How about this?
January 6th was an inside job.
And, you know, the 2020 election was stolen.
And they tried to steal the 2026, the 2016 election.
That, that's really interesting.
But the big one, which was a total no-no, was he goes, and the great replacement theory is not a conspiracy theory.
That is the democratic, you know, plan.
And so just saying, let me say a few things about all of this.
What this does, this is to what I brought up before.
And again, I'm trying to tie this all together because this is what I think is really interesting here, right?
Living in this new world, this post-revolution world with the establishment trying to play their old games.
You remember when I was saying about what a political strategist would have told you you're allowed to do versus what you're not allowed to do?
We know they all would tell you, you can't bring that up.
What?
You can't bring up the great replacement theory.
It's unanimous.
The New York Times and the Atlantic and the Washington Post all agree that is off limits to say, you know, but he's saying that.
He's saying that thing.
And this was a thing that Donald Trump did a lot.
And this is something I think Vivek has learned from Donald Trump.
And in many ways, he's a smarter, younger, more well-read version of that.
Now, you know, not the same, but what's interesting is that he went out of his way.
No one asked him about it.
went out of his way to bring that up and to kind of insert that into the conversation.
And there's a couple things that happen here.
Number one, you know, you're going to make the whole news cycle about you.
Now, this is what everyone's going to talk about, that Vivek Ramaswamy brought up the great replacement theory.
That is now going that, and it has been.
That's been the news cycle since then.
And number two, you now get to put yourself in this position where you make the entire establishment media stake out a position against you that they're going to have a very tough time defending.
Again, this is something.
So I, for people, again, for like, you know, this, this show that I do, it grows every year.
And I've, I've got a lot of people who will from say like every Rogan appearance I do, there'll be a lot of people who is like, that's when I found you.
And then I started listening to your show.
And I've done it a lot.
I've been on Rogan's show like 11 times now.
So there's all those different times that someone's like, that's the time I found you.
Or that's the time I found you.
I got a lot during COVID who people go, dude, it was in COVID I found you.
People were looking for dissident voices around that time.
There's other shows, Ari Shafir's show and Tim Poole's show and like other shows that I do where people are like, oh, I found you on this.
And then I started listening to your show.
But if people don't know, back in like 2017, I had several conversations with people who were in what was known as the alt-right back then.
And after that, the alt-right just became kind of like a pejorative that people use to be like, oh, he's an alt-right racist or something like that.
At the time, there was an actual group of people who were identifying as the alt-right.
I don't think that, as far as I know, that doesn't exist anymore.
Maybe I'm sure there's some, but I don't really know anyone who like is out there saying I'm alt-right.
The name was tarnished and rightfully so.
But I would talk to a lot of those guys about it.
And I, people would give me a lot of shit for this, that I would be somewhat sympathetic to this point about the great replacement.
And here's the reason why.
So I, as some of you may know, so my political origin story starts in 2007 when I found Ron Paul and the Ron Paul, what's known as the Ron Paul Giuliani moment.
Go look that up if you haven't seen it already.
But anyway, so I was really interested in this Ron Paul guy.
I kind of fell down the rabbit hole and got totally obsessed with libertarian theory and politics and history and all this stuff.
And I started at the time.
There's a different time.
I was a much younger man and I was single and childless and I just was doing stand-up comedy at night and I was making just enough money to like pay the bills, you know, and not always make all the bills, but I was really, you know, I was broke, but but that's, but I, but I was just at the level of like not having a day job, you know, so I was like, could just make enough money doing stand-up to be late on my bills.
But anyway, so I had a lot of free time, you know, I was just working at nights.
And so I got totally obsessed with this stuff.
And I used to just all, all day long, I was just reading everything I could get my hands on.
And I would, uh, I would read all of the corporate media and I would watch all of the corporate media.
Like I, I used to watch MSNBC all the time.
they weren't quite as bad as MSNBC today, but regardless.
But so here's the thing.
I'd read all the left-wing media.
I'd watch all the left-wing media and the right-wing media as much as I could.
And so I remember even back then that they would openly talk about this.
They would all openly talk about it.
And they didn't call it the great replacement or whatever Vivek is referring to it as now.
What they called it was the Browning of America.
But they would talk about this openly.
And I remember reading about this, like in Pat Buchanan's books, he would have all the quotes by them and I'd be like, yep, I heard that lady say that.
And they would all talk about this, how this was their plan.
And their plan was that they go, look, with the immigration numbers that we have, where we take in about a million legal immigrants every year, and they're disproportionately from South America and or, you know, Central and South America.
And then you have all the illegal immigrants on top of that.
And so the numbers are just like the projections are that white people are going to be a minority in this country.
And they would all openly talk about how this is going to lead to Democratic permanent majorities because Latino Americans overwhelmingly vote Democrat.
And so as the country becomes more and more Latino and less and less white, Republicans are going to have no chance of winning.
They would just openly talk about and talk about it about what a great thing it is and how these Republicans are done.
Because look, say whatever you want, make your arguments about marginal tax rates, but we've got the numbers.
We've got the reinforcements coming in.
CrowdHealth Sponsorship00:02:47
This was openly discussed.
And so this is back in like 2008.
So by 2017, when there were these alt writers who would be talking about how like this is their plan.
And then everyone else would be like, oh, you're all a bunch of racists for saying this shit.
And by the way, for the most part, they were a bunch of racists.
Not arguing with that.
But I'd be like, they're not wrong about that.
And then people be like, what the fuck are you talking about, dude?
You can't say shit like this.
So it's just kind of interesting to see him bring this up on a presidential debate, kind of knowing what I know about the history of all this shit.
Now, again, I'm not saying you don't have to feel one way or the other about whether this is good or bad.
I'm just saying this is how it went down.
Then this is a fact that the Democrats were like, hey, look, here's our plan.
And this is what's going to give us permanent control of the country.
And then some right-wingers were like, this is their plan.
And they're doing it to get permanent control of the country.
And then those same Democrats turned around and went, what a Nazi.
Who would say something like that?
This is pretty wild.
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Becoming the Minority00:08:20
All right, let's get back into the show.
So anyway, as a response to this Vivek, and I thought this was just the best thing I've ever seen.
And I don't know, I don't think I had ever seen the video, the second, but not the next one.
I'm going to pull up, but I don't think I'd ever seen the second one, but I'm telling you, I've seen a million like it.
So it was just, it was just gratifying to see this.
Anyway, Van Jones, who is like a, I did a few shows with him back on SE Cup show back in the day when I was on that show.
And anyway, I always liked a few things about Van Jones because he at least is smart.
And he's, we, we actually had some interesting conversations off air back in the day when I was a contributor over at SE Cup show.
But so Van Jones, who is still at CNN, I have long been, my contract has long been not renewed, but he's still there.
So he was on a panel discussing Vivek Ramaswamy's comments after the show.
And this is what he had to say.
Smug, condescending way that he just spews this poison out is very, very dangerous because he won't stop Trump, but he's going to outlive Trump by about 50 years.
And you're watching the rise of an American demagogue that is a very, very despicable person.
And literally, I was shaking listening to him talk because a lot of people don't know that is one step away from Nazi propaganda coming out of his mouth.
But the good thing, Van, you can...
And the smug condescending.
So, so there's Van Jones, by the way.
So just to hear what he's saying, it's like, whoa, this is so scary.
This idea that he is floating out there this replacement theory, this theory.
I mean, that's Charlottesville, dude.
That's saying the Jews are going to replace us.
You know, this is scary.
This is Nazi shit, right?
Like he is truly, you can tell in his soul, he is really disturbed by what's being said here.
I mean, the idea that they're what?
The plan is to get the majority of American people, that the white population has to be transformed into the minority.
This is stuff out of tiki torch carrying people saying the Jews are going to replace us.
Now, leave aside the fact that Vivek never said anything about Jews.
He never said anything about Nazis.
He never said anything.
What he said is that this is what the left wing in America wants.
That they do want to replace the majority of Americans.
That's what he was saying, right?
But Van Jones is just appalled by this.
Just appalled.
So Vivek Ramaswamy found an old Van Jones clip.
Let's play that.
Asking the white majority to do something is difficult.
And I think it'd be easier if we just acknowledge that it's difficult.
No ethnic majority group in 10,000 years of human history that I could find ever went from being a majority to being a minority and liked it.
And that's basically the request from the racial justice left is that we want the white majority to go from being a majority to being a minority and like it.
That's a tough request.
And the reality is that change is hard.
Change that you want is hard.
Change that is good is hard.
So there you have it.
And I mean, this is the dynamic over and over again.
I mean, I've heard people like Joy Ann Reed over at MSNBC brag, boast about what she called the Browning of America and how this was going to be a huge game chainer and Republicans can suck it because this is just what's going to happen.
And that's that.
And, you know, and then also, then I've heard her later turn around and say that anybody that suggests that the Democrats have this plan is a Nazi.
That's their game.
That they're like, hey, this is what we're doing.
But thank you, Van Jones, for at least admitting this, this basic truth, that it's like, look, here is the left's ask.
We're asking the majority to become the minority.
And nobody in history, no majority ever is going to agree to that.
So anyway, when it comes to this stuff, and what Vivek said is just that it's not a conspiracy theory, that it's real, that this is a real plan.
I find this to be undeniably true.
Now, you could still argue that it's, you could still argue that you're for it, but you can't argue you're for it and say it's illegal to argue that you're against it or that somehow it makes you a terrible person, particularly like imagine this, right?
If you're, and I'm not a Democrat or a Republican, okay?
Just to be very clear, as I'm sure most of you listening know, but I'm saying that if you are a Democrat and you're arguing that these changing demographics are going to lead to a situation where Democrats have a permanent majority control.
Well, understand where if you're not a Democrat and you're a Republican or a libertarian or anything else, that if you look at that, you'd be like, well, maybe I don't like that.
I don't want the Democrats to have a permanent majority.
I wouldn't like it if the Republicans were saying, hey, look, we have these demographic changes coming and this is going to make us a permanent majority.
But so why are you not allowed to like if you're going to go, hey, this is our strategy and this is going to result in this, you know, outcome, but you're not allowed to even say, hey, this is their strategy.
It's going to result in that outcome.
And I don't like that.
No, you're a, you're a bigot if you say that.
See, this is the game that they're playing.
And I got to say, just however you feel about any of this stuff, politically speaking, I think Vivek made a great move by bringing this up.
I think politically speaking, it was very wise.
And I think he's really positioning himself to do great in this election.
Now, he's not going to do great short of Donald Trump being removed, but that's a big question mark right now.
That's a big question mark.
Donald Trump, there's been rumors now that this judge in DC is not going to let him leave, that they're going to hold him in jail if he's convicted.
That's a big deal.
I mean, they might actually do this and not let him run.
And ask yourself, who do you think's look?
The question isn't, is DeSantis number two?
The question is, if Trump is removed from the equation, where do his votes go?
Ask yourself that.
Where do they go?
Would you think they're going to Nikki Haley?
They're definitely not going to Chris Christie.
Are they going to Ron DeSantis?
I don't think so.
I think they're going to Vivek Ramaswamy.
I think that's where they're going.
I think 80% are probably going to Vivek Ramaswamy if Donald Trump is removed from the equation.
Joe Biden, he could drop dead any day.
We have no idea what's going on with him.
But anyway, so that's just, that'll be the episode for today.
But I thought it was an interesting debate.
A lot of people were like, oh, this debate is irrelevant and doesn't matter.
I was like, no, I think there's something really interesting that happened here.
So anyway, that's the episode for today.
Catch you guys next time.
Come out, New Year's Eve.
If you don't have plans, you're in the tri-state area, East Rutherford.
The ticket link will be up on my website in the next couple of days, comicdave Smith.com.