Dave Smith and Robbie Bernstein dissect the bizarre 2024 GOP primary, condemning Ron DeSantis as a cowardly failure who avoided ending Ukraine aid while Chris Christie and Nikki Haley faltered. They critique Vivek Ramaswamy's strategy to oust Trump for Haley's sake and highlight his media attack on the collusion hoax and Wuhan lab theories. The hosts conclude by mocking Nancy Pelosi's claim that the economy needs selling, arguing this admission proves voters are unaware of their own prosperity, signaling a deep disconnect between leadership and public reality. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Chris Christie's Bold Move00:13:48
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What's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
I am Dave Smith.
He is Robbie the Fire Bernstein.
How you feeling today, Robbie?
I'm having a good week.
How about you, Davey Smith?
Very good.
Very good.
And I'm very excited.
We got some fun gigs coming up.
Of course, we'll be at the Brea Improv on January 20th.
That is one night only in Brea, California.
And then the following week, we will be out in Bridgeport, Connecticut at the Stress Factory, Rosemont, Chicago, St. Louis, Dallas-Fort Worth, bunch of dates coming up.
ComicDaveSmith.com.
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So you can actually get tickets there.
Whereas last time when I said that, I might have been lying to you.
But now you can.
Go to comicdave Smith.com.
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Okay.
So we're only a few days away, Rob, from the Iowa Coke Eyes.
And as King of the Cawks, you know this process well.
For people who aren't familiar, it's a just ridiculous chicken dance that they do up there in Iowa, where you like, you have to go into these rooms and then people make arguments and you can like walk over to one group or the other.
It's not like a typical primary.
Anyway, that's neither here nor there.
But going into it, it's just the whole thing is so fascinating right now.
It's just a primary unlike any primary I've ever seen before.
And I don't know, and it's one of the weird things about me that I just basically all of my political views are that I hate government, but I really just am like, I love politics and I'm fascinated by the whole thing so much.
I don't know.
But I've just never seen anything quite like this.
So there was a debate the other day that was just between DeSantis and Nikki Haley.
It was as boring as that sounds.
I don't know what to say.
There's just no substance at all.
It's all just ridiculous.
But so you have this debate that involves two people, even though this is now a four-person race.
And you have this dynamic where, at least in the polls, Donald Trump is overwhelmingly in first place.
And Vivek is trailing DeSantis and Nikki Haley.
But it seems like the only possibility here, it's like one of two possibilities that either Trump wins or Trump is somehow removed.
And if Trump is removed, Vivek, the guy in fourth place, has positioned himself to be the clear most likely guy to inherit most of the first place guys' votes.
It's just so bizarre.
And Donald Trump, of course, the former president, who's the overwhelming frontrunner, has not participated in any of these debates and has barely been running a primary campaign.
I mean, he's been doing some speaking events and stuff.
But anyway, the whole thing is just really fascinating.
And of course, the biggest, the latest development is one that me and you hits us pretty hard.
But our guy, Chris Christie, not in the race anymore.
Not since Mike Pence dropped out have I been so shocked.
You know, the Chris Christie jokes, they all write themselves.
I don't know what to tell you.
You look at the guy and your first thought is, I bet you that guy could win a race.
He was, someone said on Twitter.
I don't know why I should credit whoever the person is, but it was just, I mean, it's so stupid, but it really did make me laugh.
We said Chris Christie was the most well-rounded candidate.
It's great.
Almost a perfect circle, if you ask me.
It's great.
Anyway, so yeah, so Chris Christie ran what can only really be described as a ridiculous campaign.
There, you know, there were, it's hard to believe that there was a time when he was kind of viewed as a serious person.
And I guess he was the governor of New Jersey.
And the, this campaign, you know, when he first started, they were saying like in the corporate press, they were like, well, Trump's in trouble now because Christie's like such an excellent debater and he's so sharp.
And all I think anyone remembers from him was that cringy Donald Duck line and just how ridiculous as a person he looks on stage.
And anyway, he ran his whole campaign as being the anti-Trump guy.
And in a field that overwhelmingly loves Donald Trump, it went about as you would predict.
I don't know what else to say.
But he got out there.
He did his part.
He made some noise.
He tried to drum up the storylines.
You got to try it.
You know, the deep state sat around like, hey, maybe someone can drum up that Donald Trump's a loser and look at all the problems he caused.
It's time to move on.
I mean, that's how Biden won.
Hey, I'm the old establishment.
Let's get back to normal.
So they at least had to try it.
And now that it's over, you know, DeSantis, I guess, gets whatever his deep state position is, whatever, whatever the next job is that gets a nice payday for going out there and doing his part.
Well, I'm really glad you said that because it kind of leads into my next point that I was going to make.
But anyway, look, if Chris Christie truly was this anti-Trump guy, then of course it makes sense for him to drop out and he should have dropped out a long time ago because what are you doing really other than like Chris Christie's support, whatever his support is, is not going to go to Donald Trump.
Nobody who was supporting him on his I'm against Trump campaign is now going to support Donald Trump.
So it's going to go to Nikki Haley, most likely, possibly some to Ron DeSantis.
And so all he was doing was splitting off that, you know what I mean, the anti-Donald Trump GOP vote.
So if your whole thing is to get rid of Donald Trump, well, then you should just, you know, not be running for president.
You know, he was caught on a hot mic saying that Nikki Haley just can't, she can't win.
She can't beat Donald Trump.
And he's right about that, but clearly she's better positioned to do it than you are, you know, and so it just makes no sense.
Anyway, I did want to mention.
They decided the pretty one.
Remember, I said they lined up the black one, the fat one, and the pretty one.
So they're starting to consolidate to the pretty one.
Yep, fat and black are out.
Pretty is still hanging around.
So the Reason magazine had a piece out about this.
And this was a piece that came out yesterday.
And I just, listen, I commented to them on Twitter and, you know, I don't take any pleasure in ratioing Reason magazine.
Okay, I take a little bit.
But I do want to just break this down because I think this is such an important understanding.
And I think this really is a great, like this to me really separates like what we call the red pill, blue pill distinction.
People who see what's really going on for what it is and people who are missing out on the big picture.
And so this is a piece by Eric Bohem.
I do not know Eric.
I know a lot of the people over at Reason.
like a lot of people at Reason magazine or Reason in general.
Anyway, this is, I'm just, I'm not going to go through the whole piece.
Go check it out if you want to, but this is the title is Chris Christie tried to break Trump's hold on the GOP.
It didn't work.
The former New Jersey governor was the only candidate in the Republican field with the courage to attack former President Donald Trump.
So the Reason account tweeted this out.
They said farewell to Chris Christie, the lone candidate in the Republican race with the courage to directly challenge Donald Trump.
I quote tweeted it and said, Chris Christie had the unimaginable courage to take the identical positions as the establishment in both major parties, the CIA, FBI, Justice Department, all of academia, the corporate media, and Hollywood.
So obviously the point that I'm making is that actually, no, it doesn't take any courage to say exactly what the deep state wants you to say.
And there is this dynamic where you can kind of see on the surface, if you don't scratch one layer, but just look at it right on the surface, you can understand where Reason Magazine makes the identical argument that MSNBC makes when they say, you know, who really had some courage was Liz Cheney, because she's a Republican who stood up to Donald Trump.
And then look, she gets blown out in her reelection campaign, gets absolutely destroyed.
And so you could on the surface of it go, well, look, they took a position that's drastically like that's extremely unpopular amongst their base.
And they pay a political cost for that.
So there, that's courage.
The problem is that once you scratch the surface even a little bit, you recognize the position.
So now you're saying that it takes courage to stand up to who?
The people.
To stand up against what the people want and stand up for what the deep state wants, that takes so much courage.
But don't you see already what the problem with this is?
And you already hit the nail on the head, Rob.
And that's why I said it was a good lead into this.
What courage does it take when you're going to, you lose a race that you were going to lose anyway?
But where do you think Chris Christie's next step is going to be?
Let me ask you, where do you think Liz Cheney's next step?
What's her next gig going to be?
Do you think that's it?
She's out on the street and she can't get a lucrative job anymore?
Or are all of the powerful people going to be lining up to give her whatever she wants and she's going to make a shit ton of money in something that is somewhat politically connected?
You know what I mean?
So no, I'm sorry, this doesn't take any bravery at all.
It doesn't take any courage.
It's the exact opposite of that.
It's guaranteeing yourself a position of wealth by standing against your own voters for the powerful people within the government apparatus and then claiming that you have some type of like there was something noble about it because he was the only one to get up there and criticize Donald Trump.
And then on top of that, I'll just say, look, me and you are both critics of Donald Trump.
There could be a campaign that was criticizing Donald Trump where you would go, oh, that was kind of a courageous campaign.
This isn't it.
Liz Cheney and Chris Christie were criticizing Donald Trump for what?
January 6th or for being brash or saying he really won the election.
Those things don't matter.
That's the least of what's awful with Donald Trump.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
I got, I get some of these because I, you know, I, like I said, I, I made this tweet or I made this X.
And there's, I get, I got some responses from some of these like blue-pilled libertarian types.
And it's insane because obviously, if you, if you listen to the tweet that I just read you, what I was mocking was the idea that what Chris Christie did took courage.
And so immediately you get these people.
It's like this binary thinking where they start responding to you and they're like, well, actually, you know, Trump's spending was reckless and his COVID policy was bad and he was bad on foreign policy and he was bad on all of these things.
The Mayor's Second Term00:11:27
And it's like, yeah, I didn't say he was good.
I, what do you think any of this is news to me?
You think I haven't been talking about this for the last fucking six years?
Yeah, Donald Trump was bad as a president, had a lot of policies.
Me and you could sit here and do five episodes in a row without doing any research, just talking about all of Donald Trump's awful policies.
But the point is that's not what Chris Christie was criticizing him for.
That's not what Liz Cheney is criticizing him for.
They are not mad at him for the things that he did bad.
They're actually, in some cases, mad about some of the good things he did.
And also, they're just against him because he has been deemed unacceptable by the CIA.
That is different.
We can both oppose someone and oppose them for very different reasons.
So anyway, any thoughts on any of that, Rob?
R.I.P. Chris Christie.
Curious to see where he lands next.
You know, maybe if the deep state manages to get rid of Donald Trump, he gets a cabinet position.
And if not, I'm sure we'll see him.
We'll see that loudmouth somewhere.
Yeah, I guarantee it.
Liz Cheney probably already is in some cushy position.
I don't know.
I haven't even been following what she's doing now, but I guarantee it.
If she's not already, she'll be there soon.
I guarantee Chris Christie will.
And I can make this guarantee very comfortably because this is what happens to 100% of these people.
It's always what happens.
They always go and get some lucrative job in one of the fields that they were just regulating or aiding or funding or something.
It's the, this is what people call the revolving door.
It's this is how it always works.
Or just a nice book deal for some book that I don't think anyone actually reads, but somehow makes it into every Costco, the front of every Barnes and Nobles, and then gets purchased and burned somewhere.
Yeah.
You ever see it?
You ever just be like walking through the airport and you see those books just like on a display case somewhere in some bookstore and you're like, who the fuck is like, I gotta, I gotta grab Mitt Romney's new book for this flight.
Like no one is buying this.
I've never won all those books that I see there in the airports.
I've never once walked onto a plane and seen anyone in there with that book in their hand.
Never seen them actually cracking that open.
Like, ooh, you know, it's like, I got to get Chris Christie's new book.
This is going to be really interesting.
Like, what everyone knows.
They don't even write the books.
You know what I mean?
They have someone else write the books for them.
They get some fat check, some fat check from a publishing company, and that's it.
Nobody's reading this shit.
Hey, maybe he'll go on to become an artist.
He can get that Hunter Biden money.
I could see Chris.
There's big money in that.
I could see him being a great finger painter, just slapping the fat hands down on canvas.
Oh my God.
Chris Christie really is.
He was the only candidate running that you were like, I think Joe Biden's going to outlive that guy.
Okay.
So anyway, there's just, there's a few interesting dynamics with the presidential race.
So there was something that Vivek Ramaswamy said last time he was on the show here that was pretty interesting.
And I probably should have asked some more questions about this, but there was just, we started talking about other things.
But he was throwing out the idea that he thinks that quite possibly there isn't some other candidate coming in to replace Joe Biden and that that's not the play from the regime, that it's not that Gavin Newsom is going to come in or Michelle Obama or any of the people that are being speculated about being the Democratic nominee, but that in fact, what the move is going to be is to get Trump out,
get Nikki Haley the nomination, and have her run against Joe Biden.
And that they're, and that that's really their endgame.
Now, I don't know.
I don't know if this is right.
And I'll tell you why I don't think that that will work if that was their play.
Now, I grant Vivek Ramaswamy the point that I think the establishment is very comfortable with Nikki Haley.
And I think they have recognized that DeSantis has been a bust, which is, I mean, the DeSantis campaign, by the way, maybe let's pause and do DeSantis first.
The DeSantis campaign has really been remarkable.
And I don't know, you know, I'm trying to find a comparison.
I think Rudy Giuliani might be something that was kind of close to it, where Rudy Giuliani was enormously popular after 9-11.
He was basically just for being the mayor of New York and walking down there.
But it was an emotional time and everyone talked about what a great job he did, which was always kind of funny to me because he didn't do anything.
He just kind of walked down.
What else were you going to do?
But 90s Giuliani wasn't 90%.
He was king.
I mean, the guy got rid of crime in New York City, which from what I understand is partially that he did strong arm some people, but then also that property prices went up.
And so all of that.
That was a huge part.
Yes.
But then also, do you remember he used to have all the, didn't he used to have like all the New York Yankee rings?
The Yankees were always winning champions.
Him and his son were at every game, man.
And they were, and so, and also it was the Yankees.
The Yankees had been in like a horrible dry spell for like 30 years.
And then they put together this like dynasty team.
And so he was like right there as the city had come back and the Yankees had come back.
And yeah, so he just had that whole thing.
And then after, yeah, after 9-11, he walked down there.
I used to joke around about like, how could you get that wrong?
Like, what are you going to do?
You're going to walk down there and be like, this is terrible.
It's like he walked down there and go, this is great.
I think this is wonderful that this happens.
They're like, ah, shit.
I really mishandled that one.
There's not much to do other than go, there was a building there and now it's gone.
Someone take a picture of the gone building.
I'm standing next to it.
I just like to say for the record, I'm against this.
I think this, I would have preferred this not happen.
Anyway, so he was a big national figure after this.
And he was initially polling very well.
I think he was the frontrunner when he ran for president in 2008.
And then the whole thing just completely fizzled out.
And he, of course, was in no way suited to actually be the GOP nominee.
He was like, it's like amazing that no one noticed it, but they were like, oh, he's like, first of all, he's a very liberal New York Republican with a lisp who's like pro-choice.
Like there were just like so many things where you're like, yeah, this is just never going to work.
And the whole campaign like just fell apart.
And of course, Ron Paul took his soul.
But all of that, it's even that isn't a great comparison to DeSantis simply, if nothing else, for the fact that it was, you know, 9-11 happened in 2001 and he ran for president in 2008.
So it was seven years later.
Ron DeSantis was the man last year.
I mean, much like Giuliani, and this is the reason I make the comparison is like what you were talking about with Giuliani had a track record.
I mean, look, he was a mayor, not a governor, but being mayor of New York City is almost like being a governor.
You know what I mean?
Like running the biggest city, one of the biggest cities in the world and the biggest city in the United States of America.
And, but what he had was a track record that was tangible that you could point to.
Like you could look at old picture of Times Square and new picture of Times Square and go, look, this was a place you were scared to walk through.
And now this is a place that's the center of commerce.
You know what I mean?
Like I did that.
However you feel about what actually caused it, he had a, he had a narrative about what his track record was.
And DeSantis very much had that too.
I mean, look, DeSantis, like he took a purple state and made it a deep red state.
He took a state that was a governor race was going to be decided by a few thousand votes and made it one where it's a 20-point blowout.
And he did that.
Why?
Because he got it right during COVID or at least was, you know, I'm saying that's his narrative.
The truth is more like he was the least worst or the second least worst governor on COVID.
But look, even people like me and you, who probably have a lot of issues with Ron DeSantis.
But if you were asking us in 2021 or in 2022 about Ron DeSantis, you probably would have heard nothing but nice things coming from the two of us.
I remember when there were groups of libertarians who were criticizing him for one thing or another, criticizing him for going too far and like banning private mandates and things like that.
And I was just like, yeah, dude, I'm just not, I'm not criticizing this guy.
I mean, fuck that.
Like compared to all the other governors I got to criticize right now, the one guy who reversed course on lockdowns and then kind of like fought the COVID regime Regime during the height of it, during the height of global insanity.
You know, this guy was like a desperately needed voice of reason.
And so he goes, he's in one.
I mean, how long has he been campaigning for now?
What has it been six months?
I mean, he went for in half a year.
He went from being like debatably the biggest hero in the GOP to being a laughing stock.
Like, my God, was it just in hindsight, and maybe you could argue you should have seen it at the time, but in hindsight, what a terrible decision for him to run for president and not just sit back and almost just play this role of like having real, first of all, if he hadn't run for president, there'd be some Republicans who were saying they wish he had.
So he'd be that guy.
And then he could say like, no, no, no, this is Trump's year, you know, and I think that it's, it's only right.
He got robbed of his second term and he deserves that second term now, would have made himself even more popular with Republicans.
You know what I mean?
He can tout his record as governor of Florida and he would have been very well positioned to come in the future and run for whatever he wanted to.
And now he's just like, I don't know.
He's just a laughing stock.
And a lot of it is just his own limitations that he's not very good at at the gig.
He's not good at running for president.
He's horrible.
I mean, he's just like, have you seen these images of him where he does that forced smile thing?
And he just looks like an insane person.
The thing with the shoes is weird.
But then again, there's also the things that are really his fault that like he just ran a race, the race of a coward.
And like he ran an entire race not wanting to offend big donors.
So he would commit to nothing.
I mean, other than Israel's war, he committed to that.
We are so for Israel, you know, destroying Gaza.
But if you remember on the Ukraine thing, I mean, at the debate last night, he tried to hit Nikki Haley for her support of Ukraine at one point.
New Hampshire Campaign Chaos00:14:23
And it just came up so flat because it's like, dude, you haven't been running on cutting the fate, the aid to Ukraine.
When asked directly about it, you start talking about how there's too many trannies in the military.
And then he'd say something like, well, there's, you know, the problem is that there's not a clear goal.
We need to have a clear goal.
But that's not, that's not saying you're going to end support for this proxy war against Russia.
And Nikki Haley.
So the fact that you've just been vague and unwilling to say you're going to end it, but Nikki Haley is saying, no, I definitely won't end it.
You can't hit her on that.
You have no leverage.
So that's something Trump or Vivek could hit Nikki Haley on.
But anyway, the DeSantis campaign to me is, it is kind of historic in what an epic failure it has been.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
All right.
So anyway, back to the Nikki Haley thing.
Nikki Haley has been since the establishment donors have basically circled the wagons around her and abandoned DeSantis.
She has been doing better.
She has been doing better in New Hampshire.
There was a recent CNN poll that had her only a few points away from Donald Trump.
And so I think the Nikki Haley game plan here is that she has to win New Hampshire.
And if Trump wins Iowa, which is what it looks like is going to happen.
And if Nikki Haley can pull off New Hampshire, their game plan is then at that point, she has the momentum to say, like, it's between me and Donald Trump.
This is a two-person race here.
You know, kind of demand he debates her.
Maybe this gets all of consolidates all of the anti-Trump GOP voters toward her.
And then she, that's her shot to go on and win.
I see this as being totally impossible.
I think short of Donald Trump being removed from the primary process, I think there is no way that Nikki Haley can win it.
It's still, Trump is still the favorite in New Hampshire.
He's still, even that CNN poll, he was still up.
And there's other polls where he has a stronger lead.
But the fact is that even if Nikki Haley were to win New Hampshire, there's just, there's such a self-imposed ceiling with amongst the GOP voters with her positions.
And it's just, I just don't think the anti-Trump GOP voting block is just so tiny that you can't, there's no way to actually win off of it.
So short of Trump being removed, I don't think Nikki Haley can possibly win.
And as I've been saying for a long time, if Trump is removed, I think the Vaik Ramaswamy is the one who benefits from that.
So I just don't see any path for Nikki Haley to be able to win.
So if the Vaik's right and this is their plan, I don't see any way that this plan doesn't fail.
I don't know what you think about it.
I think if Nikki Haley wins the Republican nomination, we can declare that this no longer has an honest system.
Yeah, something, something fishy is up.
However, third parties this time might be like, we might be in for an interesting presidential race.
If you actually have RFK teaming up with Tulsi, I think that that could be a pretty popular thing.
And I think if he launches that, it might create an opportunity for the deep state to come in with another third party and try and run maybe Nikki as a I just think if that if the RFK thing really gets off the ground and you start splitting votes a little bit, there's going to be a lot of opportunity for other people to step in.
And, you know, we might, we might still be locked into, you know, and maybe I'm going with the more outlandish thing of thinking that the Republican and Democratic parties can be unseated, but this could be an interesting election with Biden being so remarkably unpopular.
Trump also unpopular.
This has to be the least popular race of all time, even though, you know, I get the Republicans love Trump, but I think if he pulled like the polling of people that would, who would ideally like to see two different people.
Oh, he's got very high negatives nationally for sure, like, you know, especially if you include Democrats and Independents in there.
I know, I think the 2016 was previously the two most unlikable candidates for obvious reasons.
But yeah, I wouldn't be surprised after four years of Biden if he even edges out Hillary Clinton, the ice queen herself.
But yeah, no, I think you're right.
I think it's very interesting.
And I do find, you know, the Obviously, RFK has just totally ruined so much about what was special about his campaign.
Jews will do that to you.
It's one of our superpowers.
But anyway, there's, but so his, his campaign is really just, it's really tragic that he was so bad on the Israel issue.
But still, there have been very interesting elements to his campaign.
His positions on COVID and vaccines and on Ukraine and things like that have been very interesting.
And just in itself, he's the first major third party candidate polling-wise since Ross Perot.
That's kind of interesting.
Obviously, the libertarians are going to have, I believe Michael Rechtenwald will be their nominee.
I think that will be an interesting campaign.
I think Vivek Ramaswamy is running a very interesting campaign.
And of course, Donald Trump is always interesting.
Like there's just something about the guy that's very different from the other 45 presidents that we've had.
This was a very interesting clip that Vivek Ramaswamy had the other night.
I wanted to play this.
This was Vivek Ramaswamy, who's done more, he's done more events in Iowa than all of the other candidates, and he's really banking on a surprise and outperforming the polls in Iowa.
That's going to be an important element too.
I should have said before with the whole Nikki Haley thing, the only way I see her winning is if they would somehow have to get Trump and Vivek out of there.
So if Vivek does very poorly in the first few primaries and has no justification to be able to stay in the race and then they get Donald Trump out, that would be the only way I could see a path to the nomination for Nikki Haley.
So hopefully Vivek stays in there.
The good thing about Vivek's campaign is that he's a rich guy and he's self-funding a lot of it.
So he can, he also gets that.
Like that's his play.
So I think he will be incentivized to stick around.
Let's play this clip from Vivek Ramaswamy talking to some Iowa voters in front of some media from last night.
Yes.
And I'm just kind of curious.
I know some of these guys we've been following some of you guys.
I'm curious if there's any national media who actually believe that they were born.
Actually, it's a good question, Eddie.
Eddie's one of the, you guys are kind of colleagues, two of the top state reps here.
And I think that that's a good, it's a good thing to be curious about.
Just by show of hands, who here is willing to admit that the Trump-Russia collusion hoax was indeed incorrectly reported by the mainstream media?
Is there anybody here able to admit that that was incorrect reporting?
Why not?
Why would that be inappropriate?
I think it would be inappropriate.
Just pause it for one second.
Because if you're, I know a lot of people listen to this audio only.
The reporter said back to him, I think that would be inappropriate of us to answer that question.
It's so funny.
All right, let's keep playing.
We're doing our job asking.
Was the public lines or did that media report on this set of facts that were provided?
Can you pause there?
Because I thought that that was so telling.
Just repeat what she said because the audio isn't great.
So everyone didn't hear it.
I might already be misquoting her and it was two seconds ago, but was the it was were we doing bad reporting or were we reporting the facts that were provided to us?
Yeah, she said, were the American people lied to or were we reporting facts?
Right.
Well, then in other words, you're state-run media.
If your entire job is that you take whatever the talking points of the government are and you get out there and you just run with that, you're saying, oh, we're state-run media.
I just run media.
I have no, there is nothing, there's no line of argument that makes my blood boil more than this.
And when people do it on COVID, oh, the science changed.
When they do it on Russia, Gate, oh, we were working off the information we had.
When they do it off the Hunter Biden laptop, oh, we were working off what we were told at the time.
And the reason why is, I'd say, probably fairly obvious to listeners of this show.
Because I'm sorry, I got it right at the time on all of these issues.
So don't give me that shit.
You don't get this like that, like, no, you don't get credit for like, oh, well, you know, that's just what we knew at the time.
Well, then how come me and Rob Bernstein, two jerk off idiot comedians, got all of these things right at the time?
Every single one of them.
Go back and play the tape.
We were on top of all of these stories at the time because it was actually very easy for anybody who was paying attention to see what was going on with all of these things.
I'm sorry.
This is such bullshit that if the when the CIA comes out and says Russia interfered in the election and provides no evidence to back that up, your default position shouldn't just be, well, I trust the CIA.
I'm just going to parrot their talking points uncritically.
Sorry, that's what we call failing at your job.
Like that's, that's not just something you would say, wow, you're going off the information.
No, you don't, no, you weren't.
There was never any evidence, any that was, that was given that Donald Trump was involved with the Russians in a conspiracy to steal the 2016 election.
That evidence does not exist.
It was never given ever.
There were people who claimed there was evidence.
There were congressmen who said they had seen the evidence and all of us would see it soon.
But if you're a journalist, then I'm sorry, that's just not fucking good enough.
You don't just report that narrative for three years because politicians said it.
This is insane.
All right, let's keep playing.
So that's a fair question.
I actually think that the public was lied to long after the media systematically still understood that this was the product of the steel dossier.
The steel dossier was a piece of Russian disinformation provided by the Hillary Clinton campaign that was served up to the federal government as a basis for issuing a FISA warrant to then potentially infiltrate a member of the opposition party.
If this was Bush and Cheney doing it to John Kerry, this would have been the stuff of scandal, impeachment and worse.
And yet, I think it was an intentional lie that the media said that that account, which we now know to be true, was actually the Russian disinformation.
Now, Shauna, I would be charitable in my interpretation of that if it were just one instance.
Let me give an easier one.
Just by show of hands, does anybody believe the media's reporting about the origin of COVID-19 ran flatly in face of the facts that you have a Wuhan Institute of Virology that was now the likely origin of the COVID-19 pandemic?
You all said that it wasn't for a long time.
By show of hands, was the Wuhan lab the likely origin of the COVID-19 pandemic, everybody, media or not?
So you have reported the same media that has reported that the COVID-19 pandemic did not originate in the lab in Wuhan is willing to even say, I'm willing to admit today.
That part came out in 2021.
So I guess it was known that there was a Wuhan Institute of Virology where they were conducting gain of function research, the very city which was the origin of a global pandemic.
And yet the media's explanation was that somehow it could have been any source other than actually having started in the lab.
I just think that that's systematic, systematically unacceptable.
The Hunter Biden laptop.
Is the Hunter Biden laptop story as reported by the New York Post, which was shut down, had the Twitter account locked for anybody who is even sharing the story of the Hunter Biden laptop found on the eve of the last election?
The media reported that it was Russian disinformation on the eve of that election.
Does anyone here agree that the Hunter Biden laptop story as reported by the New York Post was indeed accurately reported and was not Russian disinformation, but was in fact a factually owned laptop of Hunter Biden?
Turning Away From Mainstream Media00:05:15
I mean, you got to, man.
I mean, your paper reported it.
Does everybody else seriously not believe that?
I mean, I'm Hunter Biden, Rudy Giuliani over the laptop, so I don't think that's.
So you don't believe...
So you think that he actually can cut it there.
But you basically get the gist of this.
This was such a great moment, man.
And this is enough to really make you appreciate that Vivek's running for president.
I love this stuff.
I mean, I know I said to him when he was on the show.
And at the end, I was like, well, listen, dude, if nothing else, like you're really inserting a lot of these important ideas into the conversation.
And his attitude is like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm not running a Ron Paul campaign here.
I'm not just trying to insert ideas.
I'm going to be the next president and we're going to do, you know, and look, we'll seek.
But regardless of that, I just think it's so great for moments like this.
Just to the media's face.
And he does a great job here of like laser focusing on a few stories that are undeniably some of the most important stories of the last five, six years.
Like, how could you deny that like, okay, if what I'm saying is correct here, then the sitting president of the United States of America was framed for treason and you guys ate it up.
At best, you fell for the plot.
And at worst, you were an active part of it.
That's kind of the range of where you could be if you were reporting Trump-Russia collusion.
Okay.
And then you have the laptop story where it's like, you know, this was blatant election interference to suppress a story.
And he's just putting them on the spot of like, can any of you actually tell me that you don't believe that this was Hunter Biden's laptop?
And he goes, you have to, because all your papers have reported on it now.
Okay.
And then just listening to the uncomfortable woman be like, well, I believe he's in a lawsuit with Rudy Giuliani right now.
It's like, oh, yeah, you don't want to answer the question, do you?
I just love, I love shaming and humiliating These people because I think that's a really important step into like breaking their grip on information.
Where it's like, no, you should, if you're going to, if someone from CNN or NBC or like that is going to go out and cover a Vivek Ramaswamy town hall, I want them to be like, fuck.
Oh, man, why did I have to get this assignment?
Because he's just going to make me look like an asshole.
You know, like, there's just no way you can't look at that and go, because so much of what they rely on is this like smug sense of superiority, you know, when they're just like in, you know, at their job, when they're not out in an environment like this, where they're like, we report the facts and there's fake news out there and there's this and that.
And oh my God, the rise of anti-democratic forces or whatever the fuck they talk about.
And I love just looking at, no, no, no.
You tell me this.
The biggest stories, were you all dead wrong on that or not?
So were you just really stupid or are you lying?
Which one is it?
And oh, by the way, isn't it interesting that all of these big stories all went in one direction against Donald Trump and you got them all wrong in that one direction, right?
Oh, that's convenient.
Anyway, Vivek Ramaswamy is doing God's work out there.
I love that film angle where the camera guys have to be like, shit, is he talking to me?
I'm not supposed to do that.
I'm not waiting.
And like, they're just wondering in the monitor.
Am I supposed to be turning off the camera right now?
Oh, yeah.
I love their thing of, you know, I think it'd be inappropriate for us to answer questions.
I think we should be asking you the questions.
I think that's like, why?
Why can't he ask you a question too?
Wouldn't that be interesting?
Is this not newsworthy?
This is more newsworthy than anything you'll ever see on cable news.
This is actually like getting at like the heart of it.
How you guys lie, systematically lie to the American people with the intention of changing political outcomes.
I think that's pretty big.
I don't know about you.
I think everyone sees that.
It's just, it's so, it's just, it's so damning.
How do you not see clearly presented the track record of the way the media has lied and misrepresented these stories and then still just go, yeah, I'm just going to watch the news?
I mean, if you're a younger kid and you see this clip on Twitter, you ever turning on CNN?
Like, do you ever reach that point in your life where like you become like, I don't know, whatever the age is of 37, 38, and you just realize you're home or maybe it'd be nice to know what's going on in the world.
And so you turn over to CNN.
I feel like anyone who sees a video like this, they're never going to make that conversion of life of being a person who goes, yeah, I'm going to start getting into the news and then turning on CNN, MSNBC, or otherwise as a reliable source.
Well, this is what's so amazing about it.
And that's why moments like this are so incredible.
And I really think important because, you know, you add into that too, that like young people particularly, they're not, there's a big difference between me and you when we think about when we were young, that it's not that they're on the TV and they'll turn over to CNN.
Earning Yield In Gold00:05:44
They're not on the TV.
They're on their computer or they're on their phone.
And now you have like all these different options of what you would turn to on there.
It's like you wouldn't, you wouldn't even think to turn on CNN.
It's like now, no, you, you're getting your, your information from some source online.
And right, like you said, I don't think after this, you're like, yeah, I don't think I'm going to CNN.com.
I think I got to find something else.
So I think the more we can do of this, the better.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
All right, we're going to we're going to wrap up a little bit early on this episode because I got to go in.
I'm doing the What Bitcoin did podcast with Peter in New York City.
So I'm going to have to head out in a second here.
But I did want to just play the Morning Joe clip before we get out of here because it's kind of one more example of a theme we've been talking about for a while, but this is just so goddamn funny to me that this is going to be a little preview into Joe Biden's campaign, I suppose.
But here is Nancy Pelosi on the set of Morning Joe.
How does that message, how do we connect that?
Because even conservatives, even a conservative like Gerard Baker, who is the editor emeritus for the Wall Street Journal, talked about winners and losers.
Winner of the year, America's economy.
And he said, sorry, I know I'm going to upset a lot of people.
But as Caddy says all the time, America's economy, Joe Biden's work and America's economy is the envy of the world.
How do we get that message out to voters?
Well, again, I used to say when I was, Speaker, I can bake the pie or I can sell the pie.
It's hard to bake and sell at the same time.
He's been working very hard and now he has to sell it.
Right.
He has to sell it.
And again, this is a very responsible, knowledgeable, values-based person who takes his responsibility seriously.
Now it's time to campaign, make the public aware of it.
And that's almost ready.
The pie is really good.
No, I'm here.
They're coming out of the gate.
I think they're going to start really pushing harder.
Isn't that just amazing, Rob?
Isn't it just incredible?
And I love the way they think too, where they go, look, even the editor of the Wall Street Journal acknowledges.
You know what I mean?
Like it's always got to be for that.
It's like, look, Rob, there is consensus here from the Washington Post to the Wall Street Journal.
Okay.
And doesn't that just cover the entire spectrum of possible thought?
The economy is great.
This is the Joe Biden campaign.
The economy is great.
We just have to make sure you understand that.
Doesn't that just lead to the obvious question of if the economy is great, why would you need to convince people of that?
Like, wouldn't they already know it?
Don't people already know if they're doing really well?
It's like here's the thing is that people are doing really well.
We've done the job.
We've made the pie.
We've baked the pie.
So people are doing really well.
We just haven't had a chance yet to explain to them that they're doing really well.
So they think they're...
Just service the pie.
I mean, if you got delicious pie, just serve it to us and then we'll go, hey, that was delicious pie.
Yeah.
It's like, it's more like, cause, cause the making the pie and selling the pie is like, it's totally not analogous, right?
Like that doesn't, if you, if the economy is good, then you've already made it and given it to everybody, right?
Delicious.
So it's more like, oh, I just served you a slice of pie, but I haven't been able to convince you that you're eating pie yet.
So you're just out there eating a piece of pie, feeling like you're not eating anything.
Because you're so stupid, you don't even know you're eating pie right now.
That's more or less what she's going on.
Maybe that's what it is.
Yeah, maybe this is bad pie.
And now they got to figure out how to sell their bad pie.
Yeah, that sounds a little more likely.
All right, listen, we got to wrap up there.
Thank you guys very much for listening.
And we'll be back very soon with a brand new episode.