Dave Smith and Robbie Bernstein dissect the 2024 GOP primary, noting Vivek Ramaswamy's defense of Trump despite calls to remove him from the ballot. They critique U.S. military interventions in Yemen and South Africa's genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice. The discussion intensifies with Dr. Anthony Fauci's admission that pandemic social distancing rules lacked scientific basis, leading hosts to demand accountability for lockdowns and question the lab leak narrative. Ultimately, they argue that official stories like 9/11 and the Iraq War function as conspiracy theories, calling for a public reckoning against elites who weaponized such terms. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Trump's Signal Amplification00:13:29
We need to roll back the state.
We spy on all of our own citizens.
Our prisons are flooded with nonviolent drug offenders.
If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
You're listening to part of the problem on the gas digital network.
Here's your host, Dave Smith.
What's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
I'm Dave Smith, and I'm joined, as always, by Robbie the Fire Bernstein.
What's up, buddy?
Morning, Mr. Smith.
Coming to us from Jeffrey Epstein's apartment.
I have the safe.
So, you know, the powers at B better start paying attention.
We're going to do some blackmailing of our own now.
Let's see what type of dirt we got in there.
Of course, if you want to see everything that's inside the safe, all you have to do is come on out to Brea, California.
Next week, me and Robbie the Fire Bernstein will be there one night only.
It's my first time at the at the Brea Improv.
So I'm very much looking forward to that.
Hope a bunch of you guys come on out and we'll hang out there and have some fun.
And then the following week, me and Rob will be at the Stress Factory in Bridgeport, Connecticut all weekend.
That's January 25th through the 27th.
Rosemont, Chicago, St. Louis, a whole bunch more stuff coming up.
ComicdaveSmith.com for tickets.
Robbythefire.com for all of Rob's headlining gigs.
Go over there and come see us when we come to an area near you.
All right.
So we are recording today's episode.
It is January 14th, one day before the Iowa caucuses.
And ooh, this is turning into quite an interesting race.
Obviously, we've been talking about this for quite a while now.
And it's, as I said before, there's the dynamics of it are just different than any primary I've ever seen.
It just makes it very interesting.
The frontrunner is the former president of the United States.
He's up nationally by like 50 points.
He's also being indicted all over the place.
And there seems to be a concerted effort to get him off the ballot.
You have DeSantis, as we talked about in the last episode.
The rise and fall is unlike anything I can really compare it to.
You have Nikki Haley, who is clearly the establishment's choice there.
And then you have this wildcard candidate, Vivek Ramaswamy, who while he's in fourth place in the polls, he's been working his ass off doing more events in Iowa than anybody else.
And he kind of seems in line to inherit a lot of Donald Trump's support if the support doesn't, if something happens with Donald Trump.
The dynamic between Vivek Ramaswamy and Donald Trump took a weird turn last night.
Basically, throughout the campaign, Vivek has been, let's say, occupying that America first kind of populist space.
And unlike the other candidates, has not been attacking Donald Trump.
The best you kind of get out of Vivek is him saying like, well, I do, I agree with the spirit of so much of what Donald Trump stood for, but whatever.
We have to have someone else in the race in case he's taken out.
Or he'll say things like, you know, I actually have a plan to implement what Donald Trump was trying to do, things like that, but never really attacking the guy.
But last night, Donald Trump, I think for the first time, really went hard at Vivek Ramaswamy.
Here is Donald Trump's post on Truth Social.
He says, and I quote, Vivek started his campaign as a great supporter, quote, the best president in generations, end quote, etc.
Unfortunately, now all he does is disguise his support in the form of deceitful campaign tricks.
Very sly.
But a vote for Vivek is a vote for the other side.
Don't get duped by this.
Vote for Trump in quotes.
I'm not sure why Trump is in quotes there.
Does he mean like vote for not really Donald Trump, but someone who's claiming to be Trump?
Like, is he like, vote for Trump?
I don't get it.
He's a weird guy.
Vote for Trump.
Don't waste your vote.
Vivek is not MAGA.
The Biden indictments against his political opponent will never be allowed in this country.
They are already beginning to fail.
MAGA.
So that was Donald Trump.
It's not clear exactly what kind of motivated Donald Trump to post this.
There was, I've seen some people on social media were saying there was a picture that Vivek took with a bunch of supporters who wore a shirt.
And I think the shirt said, save Donald Trump, vote Vivek.
Like they were basically saying, in order to save Trump, we have to support this guy.
Maybe this is what pissed him off.
I will say this.
And Vivek responded.
I'm going to read his response in a second.
This, I'm very, very interested to see how Vivek Ramaswamy does.
And a big part of this is, you know, look, coming from our perspective, how could you not be?
Just very interested to see how he does.
And I'm hoping he does well.
But for a few reasons.
Number one is that while I do not agree with Vivek Ramaswamy on a few issues, and they're very important issues, things like, you know, his, his whole platform about cutting trade with China, I think is, is ridiculous and would just be devastating for the economy.
I think his thing about like drone bombing cartels in Mexico is all, it just, I can't stand it.
It's like, Jesus, how about we just run on not bombing anything?
How about that?
How about this is always my thing.
Hey, could we go, how about we go a year without a war?
Could we do that?
Could we put six months together with just no wars?
Seeing as how we're the goddamn United States of America and we are threatened by no one.
There is no serious threat to the United States of America other than our own federal government.
Okay.
So how about we just trade with everyone, be friends with everyone and stop bombing people?
Maybe you drop bombs when there's an actual threat to your country and really no other time.
But anyway, whatever.
However, there's a whole lot of what Vivek is saying that's really great.
And unlike anybody else in the race on any side, you know, with the exception of the Libertarian Party, Vivek is the only candidate who is out there saying we need drastic cuts in the U.S. federal government.
It's the only one saying that.
And so that in itself is something you'd like that, you know, if you're me or you, we'd very much like that message to resonate.
And then on top of that, Vivek Ramaswamy is the only Republican candidate who's been really doing the podcast circuit.
Like everybody else pretty much has been ignoring it.
DeSantis wasn't going around.
He may have done a couple, but he wasn't going around doing all the podcasts.
Vivek is running a different type of campaign where he's talking about drastically reducing the size and scope of government, destroying the managerial state, you know, reducing the FBI and the CIA and all these things by 70%.
And he's got a whole argument, a whole legal argument about how the president has the authority to do that immediately.
And he's using the alternative media to try to spread that message.
So obviously, there's something, if that is successful, that would be very encouraging to us, you know?
So anyway, so here's Vivek Ramaswamy's response, which I thought was very, I thought was very well played.
He said, yes, I saw President Trump's Truth Social post.
It's an unfortunate move by his campaign advisors.
I don't think friendly fire is helpful.
Donald Trump was the greatest president of the 21st century, and I'm not going to criticize him in response to this late attack.
I've met tens of thousands of Oyoans across 390 plus events here, and they are deeply worried, and so am I, that this quote system won't allow Donald Trump anywhere near the White House again.
It seems that they will stop at nothing to keep him away from power.
I'm worried for Trump.
I'm worried for our country.
I've stood up against the persecutions against Trump, and I've defended him at every stop.
I showed up at the Miami courthouse in solidarity following his first federal indictment.
I filed a FOIA demand to the Biden Department of Justice.
I submitted an amicus brief this week with the U.S. Supreme Court calling on them to overturn Colorado's ruling.
I pledged to remove myself from Maine and Colorado's primary ballots if they remove Trump, calling on DeSantis and Haley to do the same.
But we have to open our eyes.
Last time it was a man-made pandemic and big tech election interference.
Now, the same billionaires funding the lawsuits against Trump are the ones trying to prop up Nikki Haley.
The same mainstream media blasting Trump is lavishing praise on Nikki.
They want to narrow this to a two-horse race between Trump and Haley, eliminate Trump one way or the other, and trot their puppet into the White House.
We can't fall for that trap.
One year from now, we won't look back and say we were shocked that it happened.
We'll kick ourselves for not stopping it.
Our movement must live on.
America first didn't start in 2016.
It started in 1776.
We owe it to our founding fathers to do the right thing for our country.
I want to save Trump and to save this country.
Let's do it together.
You won't hear any friendly fire from me.
I thought that was very well played on Vivek's part.
And number one, he didn't really attack Donald Trump back.
Subtly, a subtle jab there about the campaign advisors.
You know what I mean?
Which I, you know, to be fair, I don't think is accurate.
I do not get the impression that Donald Trump is sitting around listening to any advisor.
I think he's doing what he wants to do.
But a little dig there, but not much more.
He makes a pretty compelling point about how the system is completely, obviously, who could argue that?
Trump wouldn't argue that, but they are trying to remove him.
And I don't know.
I mean, I'm curious as to your thoughts, Rob, but I think that he almost left this in a position where if Trump keeps responding to him, Trump's just kind of amplifying his signal.
And also, I don't think, you know, I've seen a lot of the Trump surrogates or Trump supporters out there talking about how it's kind of insulting to say Donald Trump needs saving.
They're like, Donald Trump doesn't need any saving.
We're going to save himself.
But it's so ridiculous coming from them because their whole thing is that the election got stolen from Donald Trump while Donald Trump was the sitting president.
So you're telling me now that private citizen Donald Trump, what he can't possibly lose to the deep state, they can't possibly get these convictions based on what?
He just doesn't lose.
But you just told me they cheated him out of the election.
So what does that mean?
So anyway, I think Vivek played this very well.
I think it's interesting that Trump is attacking him.
And that kind of seems to suggest that they are concerned that Vivek is going to do pretty well in Iowa and take a decent amount of support that maybe would have been Donald Trump's.
What do you think?
I was not aware that Donald Trump was responding to a picture, but it sounds to me like this is classic uncalculated Donald Trump where he would watch Fox News and just think whatever he was seeing on Fox News was the golden intelligence that he has to react to.
So it sounds to me like it just sounds cartoonish Donald Trump.
He looked at this one picture and just said, nope, now I got to go attack this guy.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's interesting.
It does seem like that to me too.
Look, there is an argument that you could make, like say if you were on the Trump side, that Vivek should drop out because whatever support he's getting is going to be Donald Trump's support or something like that.
But I think Vivek has a strong counter argument here that if he drops out, then if they're able to remove Donald Trump, which clearly they're trying to do, then there's no other person representing that movement.
So I think that's a pretty fair.
Donald Trump might as well accept the hedging of the bets and having a player in the race that can pardon him if he actually ends up in prison.
You got to love the Trump confidence.
I don't need your help.
Go fuck yourself.
I'm Trump.
Well, look, and he's got an argument to say, hey, like, look at the polls.
I don't need someone else.
But I think Vivek's point is that it's like, yeah, no, you would win if there was a fair election here.
Why Support The 80% Guy00:09:50
The idea that I need this small little Indian community helping me out.
They stink.
They stink.
Food's not that good.
Believe me, I've had it.
Anyway, it is, it's going to be very interesting.
We're going to change our schedule a little bit because what is, wait, do I have this?
Yeah.
So tomorrow, right, tomorrow is Monday.
Tomorrow is the Iowa caucuses.
So we're going to do a late night podcast tomorrow, kind of reacting to the results of that.
So the typical, our stream time will be a little bit different this week, but we'll have a reaction to the Iowa caucuses show coming out shortly after.
But yeah, the Iowa caucus is only the first, you know, and then there's New Hampshire and South Carolina and the rest.
But I do think we're going to learn a lot from this.
And it's just going to be very interesting to see what, particularly for me, Vivek Ramaswamy's campaign is the most interesting to see how this strategy of kind of like,
I'm going to really just work my ass off, do more events than anybody else, and I'm going to utilize this new alternative media landscape that I'm going to go on every podcast and speak to as many people as I can to see how much that pays off.
It was very interesting to me.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
You know, I get a lot of people.
So I tweeted this out, by the way, I should say, because this got a big reaction.
I said the other day, someone tweeted at me and basically said, how are you not just supporting Vivek at this point?
Like, come on.
You know, the guy's been on my show four times and he's saying a lot of things I like.
Well, that's right.
But well, let me kind of explain it.
And this is why I'm supporting Michael Rechtenwald and not supporting Vivek Ramaswamy.
But I did tweet back.
Let me just read this and I'll kind of explain my thinking on this.
So I said, if I was a Republican caucusing in Iowa, I would 100% support Vivek Ramaswamy.
And it's not even close.
I said, DeSantis is a war hawk coward.
I'll never forgive Trump for his appointments and his COVID policy.
Nikki Haley is the worst human being in America.
There's really no debate.
I disagree with Vivek on Mexico and China, but he is head and shoulders the best Republican.
Plus, he does my show.
So people took this in a lot of different ways.
Some people were like, oh, now Dave's supporting Vivek is like, you know, reading comprehension issues.
I didn't say that.
I said, if I was a Republican in the Iowa caucuses, if I was caucusing there, that's who I'd support.
So I got a couple different responses.
I want to kind of explain my thinking on this.
So number one, what a bunch of people said to me was they were like, oh, well, you don't know if you can trust Vivek Ramaswamy.
You don't know what his background is.
It's shady.
He made all his money in a pharmaceutical company.
They go, look, he was bad on COVID at the beginning of COVID.
And whatever.
None of that is my point.
I wasn't saying I can trust this guy.
I never, I will never, believe me, in a million years, unless the guy running is Ron Paul, I'm never going to say you can trust this guy running for office.
That's not my point.
And yes, Vivek Ramaswamy had some really bad takes on COVID during the, like initially.
I don't exactly know how long he was bad on COVID before he got good on it.
But again, none of that is anything that can't be said for all the other Republicans as well.
What Republican was good on COVID right away?
Wasn't not even DeSantis, who's, you know, that's his biggest credential is that he was good on COVID.
And he wasn't good on COVID at the beginning.
He locked down his state.
You know, he is a lockdown governor.
Now, I'm not saying don't give him credit for reversing that, but that if we're talking about who was good on COVID right away, libertarians, basically, that's it.
So I mean, maybe there's a few others, but none of the Republicans running.
But the way I look at things is that I don't believe that a president is going to get elected and they are going to, in any meaningful way, improve the situation.
I don't believe that.
I think that you would need much more than just a president getting elected to the United States of America.
It's even if they were perfect, if you just, if that itself just happened right now, there's just so many institutions and obstacles that you'd have to go through.
It's not just the CIA and the FBI.
It's the entire corporate press.
It's academia.
It's Hollywood.
There's just so many forces.
And look, we saw what they did to Donald Trump.
And Donald Trump was never really a threat to the establishment.
Donald Trump was never really a threat to the swamp, but he just said things that they didn't like.
And we saw what they did to him.
So what would they do if someone ever was really a threat?
I'd say there's no limit to what they would do.
So what would you actually need?
And so here's what my thing is that I think, and this is why I do what we do.
I think what you would need is like a mass awakening of the people.
And that doesn't mean it has to be 51%, but it would have to be a, you know, there would have to be a large consensus of a substantial portion of the American people that like, we are behind you on these key issues.
You kind of got to pick like two or three, maybe four, but like whatever it is, like we are really draining the swamp.
We are really cleaning up these three letter agencies.
We're ending the wars, whatever.
We're building the wall, whatever it is.
You know, you pick like the few big issues and you go, I have the American people behind me on this issue.
And then you would need serious, like you would need elites who were on your side, like powerful people, wealthy people who bought into that.
And they were kind of like Elon Musk buying Twitter.
You need somebody who's like a serious billionaire or you need somebody who's like a CIA director who's on your side.
You need all of these things to come together.
At the stage that we're at right now, I think what's most important about a presidential candidate is their messaging.
That's really what matters.
And so that's what I'm interested in in Vivek Ramaswamy is that he's actually saying a lot of these really important things.
However, if you agree with me, if I'm right about this and you can see that messaging is what really matters, then why would I not just support a presidential candidate who's right about everything?
Why support the guy who's right about 80% of things?
I think that's what is important is inserting our message, which I think is very important and correct into the national conversation.
So that's what I try to do in my career.
And that's the type of presidential candidates I'm going to support.
It's the old Scott Horton law of presidents.
You can always count on them to keep their bad promises and abandon their good promises.
So if a presidential candidate promises to cut the federal government by 50%, but they also promise to like bomb Mexico, they're not going to cut the government, but they are going to bomb Mexico.
That's kind of the rule of thumb.
So it's not a matter of me believing any of these guys are going to get in there and actually do it.
However, let's say Vivek Ramaswamy does very well.
Then we will at least have seen that somebody can run on a message of drastically cutting the government.
The guy is saying publicly that he wants to make Javier Malay look like a moderate.
That's what he's running on.
And he's doing the podcast circuit.
And if somebody could be successful doing that, that would be a very encouraging sign.
So that's where I'm coming from with this whole presidential race.
I like it.
I think instead of bombing Mexico, let's get some creepy robots.
So at least we can get some good movies out of it.
There's no good drone movies.
Saudi War And Genocide Claims00:15:54
You know what I mean?
It's just an explosion.
Some kids are dead.
You move on.
You need like Seal Team Cocaine that goes down there and just does all the cocaine for the next mission.
Well, the thing is, I'm not going to get emotionally attached to a drone in a movie.
But like a robot, he could maybe have like some funny punchlines.
You could make him look human.
You kind of start to like, you know, identify with him a little bit.
I don't like the idea of government war robots because, you know, it's only a matter of time before they're policing our streets.
But I'm just saying if I have to pick between drone bombs and some sort of like RoboCop Terminator type thing going down to Mexico, it sounds like a lot more fun.
Yeah.
Remember like by like the second or third RoboCop when like he'd say something and you're like, RoboCop, this guy's ridiculous, you know, something like that.
That's all I'm saying.
Okay.
So there's, there's a few other big stories that are going on that we should we should touch on.
Let's let's talk about Yemen a little bit.
So which is it's it's kind of interesting because of course, Yemen is one of these topics that I have been talking about for many years and there was not a ton of interest in it nationally.
But now all of a sudden they're they're getting some because Joe Biden just went on this bombing campaign there.
It was the U.S. and the UK was involved in it as well.
This was a response to the Houthis getting involved in the Israel-Gaza war.
And the Houthis really, I would say, are the, I think the loudest group actually talking, talking about and getting involved.
I mean, they're getting involved to the, you know, to their capabilities, which has been, you know, nothing that's going to stop Israel from slaughtering the people in Gaza.
But I think even more than Hezbollah, the Houthis have really inserted themselves into this.
And it's worth kind of knowing the background on this, which I, you know, I think most people who listen to this show probably do, but the Yemen for the last eight years minus the last year, things have calmed down a lot over the last year.
But for the eight years, the last eight years, Yemen has been the number one humanitarian crisis in the world.
Hundreds of thousands of people have died there.
Mass numbers of little kids starving to death, outbreaks of cholera, just awful, awful shit.
And it's because of the U.S.-Saudi-led war that we fought since Barack Obama, all through Donald Trump into the beginning of the Joe Biden presidency.
It's been, the country has been totally devastated.
And this was all because of the beef between the Saudis and the Houthis.
And what Obama said in his own words, and you can go Google this and find it.
Obama said we had to fight that war.
And I quote, to placate the Saudis.
We need that oil.
Yeah.
I mean, just think about the biblical level of evil that that is, that you would fight this war of genocide.
I mean, I think the term genocide gets thrown around too loosely, but this one, I mean, if you look at the way the Saudis were conducting this war, you know, bombing sewage facilities and farms to take out the food.
I mean, like intentionally fighting to starve the civilian population.
Just absolutely brutal.
Now, this war did not get a lot of attention publicly.
And there were a few of us who were really talking about it a lot.
But anyway, ultimately, the Saudis basically gave up and they just don't want the war anymore.
The Houthis were able to do enough damage with droning their oil sites that eventually the Saudis were like, this is just costing us too much.
And interestingly, right now, it's actually the Saudis who are coming out and kind of they're kind of cautioning America to pull back on this because they don't want to get back into a whole nother thing.
They just ended this war over the last year or so.
But so what happened here basically is that the US and the Saudis and the UAE, they just utterly devastated this country.
Yemen was already the poorest country in the Middle East before Obama launched this war with the Saudis.
And he launched it to placate the Saudis because basically the Saudis were pissed off.
They never wanted us to fight the war in Iraq.
They were pissed off about that because they didn't really, you know, they're a Sunni Gulf state and Iraq was, you know, run by Saddam Hussein's Sunni minority.
They weren't, they were like, what are you doing?
You're going to give this country the Shiites.
Those are our enemies.
And so they were against it, but Israel wanted it and America wanted it.
So we fought it.
When I say this, I mean the governments, not the people necessarily.
And then they were very upset with Obama when he made the deal with Iran because that's Saudis other, that's really their great Shiite enemy, Iran.
So they were pissed off.
So Obama, in order to placate them, was like, hey, I'll help you launch a war of genocide against the poorest country in the Middle East.
You know, fuck those people, I guess.
So anyway, they tried to take out the Houthis, but they didn't.
At the end of it, they devastated the country, but that group was still in control.
And so now, you know, you would hope, I guess, that after all this devastating war, they'd be like, my God, we don't want to get involved in another war.
But that's not the attitude these people have.
They're like, fuck you, and we're getting right back involved in it.
And so in response to that, Joe Biden just went on a bombing campaign over there in Yemen.
But I guess the, I mean, there's a few like big takeaways from this.
I guess number one would just be like, you're like, my God, the poor, the poor people in Yemen who just aren't the ones calling the shots and didn't choose to get involved in this war.
They just, man, do these people just get fucked over.
Like now again, they're threatened to be involved in yet another war after everything they've been through over the last eight years.
But the bigger takeaway probably for Americans is like, look, dude, they just after this bombing campaign, I don't know if you saw, they just had these massive protests in the streets.
I mean, it was, I think maybe in the hundreds of thousands of people out in the streets being like, fuck America and fuck Israel.
And explain this to me.
When you see that Osama bin Laden in his letter to America and his declaration of war against America, there's all this stuff about how you prop up Israel and what they do to the Palestinians.
And now you see in Yemen hundreds, you know, 100,000 people marching like, fuck America.
Why is this in our interest?
How does this help America to just engender this type of hatred against us in this part of the world that's kind of known for having some radical terrorists?
And you just see that America's posture of backing Israel in this war just does nothing but pull us in to the threat of a wider war and and what like.
In what world do you think this is good for America, as we are falling apart as a country, we're now being pulled into yet another war.
After 20 years of these terror wars that were such a disaster, not just for the Middle East but for our country, like this has not been a good 20 years for America.
And then we got to go get involved in the war in Ukraine and now, as perhaps that's winding down, we got to find some other conflict to get involved in.
This is just, it's such madness and I don't know.
I'll tell you from my perspective.
It's just like what, exactly what?
In what way does America actually benefit from this?
I'm sure there's some weapons companies outside of Dc that benefit from it.
How does how?
Is it anything but disaster for the rest of us?
Any thoughts?
Rob, you want to go to war in Yemen?
Uh, I do not want to go to war in Yemen, but I I guess and, by the way, i'm not endorsing uh bombing in Yemen, but I guess this is a response to what's going on in the uh Red Sea.
So I guess it's a gamble of uh, whether or not uh the Houthis are going to stop attacking ships.
Uh, it would seem to me like we got a big ass navy and, you know, you could probably just be escorting boats through there.
It I don't understand why we got such a gigantic military and such a gigantic budget and every time there's actually uh what seems like a need for it, it's just, you know the, the worst response, or things that, at least to me, don't make sense.
Well, I just, I also think that you know, like you say, it's kind of a gamble to like oh, we'll do this and then they'll stop, like you know like, messing with ships that are passing through the Red Sea or whatever.
I just, when I look at this march, when I look at the immediate reaction to it, it goes well, it seems like they're just gonna pick it up.
It doesn't, you know like?
When did the any of the, any of these people in the national, you know like uh, security Apparatus, or within the military, or in the Pentagon uh, you know uh, the State Department, any of them?
They, they always have this like, well, we're gonna do this so that this move strategically happens.
I remember pretty well when they were pouring uh weapons into Ukraine.
This is under Donald Trump.
They were pouring weapons into Ukraine and telling everybody, this is to deter the Russians from invading.
And then they're all congratulating themselves for how wise they are, that shipping all these weapons into into Russia's biggest neighbor, is going to make sure they never invade that country.
And looking back on it, you're like okay well, we got two possibilities here, either that didn't deter Vladimir Putin or in fact it provoked him, right like.
Those are basically the two options and there's never, it seems ever, a consideration of the provocation point.
There's never a consideration that actually killing a bunch of people might make those people angry.
Who, who would think that perhaps that could be the result of dropping bombs on human beings?
Perhaps they won't like that and that might even make them want to fight.
Like i'm not saying it's impossible For the concept of deterrence to ever work, like it's possible if you go punch someone in the face, that'll make them not want to fight you.
They'll be like, oh shit, I just got hit in the face.
I don't want to fight anymore.
But, but they never seem to consider the other possibility that, like, if you go and punch someone in the face, it might be like, oh, we're in a fist fight now.
And that's a pretty big gamble.
It's typically why people don't go around punching other people in the face, or at least part of it.
Part of the reason.
So anyway, that's going on.
And then at the same time, what's also happening, which is which is really fascinating, is that South Africa has accused Israel of genocide.
And they have just brought this to the highest court in the UN.
And they, as of right now, South Africa basically presented its argument.
And now Israel has a chance to counter, which will be interesting to see what they do.
Did you listen to any of that?
South Africa is in fact engaging in genocide by threatening the safety of the Jews by bringing up such a claim.
And how dare you, a country that understands the plight of, I mean, they'll just be Jews about it.
Yes, well, there's no question about that.
Did you, by the way, it was, it was really funny.
The Germany, the German government came out and said, it's outrageous to call this a genocide because it doesn't meet like the standards of genocide.
And it was just like, dude, you might want to set this one out, Germany.
Like, could you get someone else?
Could you get someone else to come in here and actually take the position of you call that genocide?
That doesn't even come close to genocide.
Let me tell you something about genocide.
Like, maybe any other country would be the best one to come in and make this claim.
Now, imagine that just touring Auschwitz.
We're the Germans are the experts on genocide.
And let me show you what this really looks like.
You want to talk genocide?
You call that genocide?
I call that child's play.
I'll show you genocide.
Look, I'll say this.
I am far from an expert in international law and I would never pretend to be one.
I have listened to several experts on international law.
There are people who don't think that this rises to the level of genocide.
There are a lot of people who do.
And there's a lot of people who are making, and this is all like technical legal arguments.
There's a lot of people who are like, oh, South Africa has a really good case here.
And they meet all of the criteria of what is defined as genocide by the UN.
The thing that was most devastating, I thought, was that in South Africa's presentation, they really hung Israel by a lot of their own words.
And it wasn't not just the words of the people in the highest level of government, the words of people in the military, and then talking about how they're conducting the war.
And it is, it is damning.
Now, I don't, I, you won't hear me use the term genocide.
Um, and I've, I've done a lot of you know, debates on this war and I've done a lot of shows on on the war.
I never use the term simply because I will say, number one, what the image that the term genocide conjures up in people's heads is something a little bit different than what's going on here.
Um, there's the term genocide can apply to you know, systematically murdering one particular group of people, um, with the intended goal of like exterminating them.
It can also apply to, say, preventing them from procreating.
It can also, you know, apply to starving them.
It's just, it's not a very precise term, but what's conjured up in people's heads is a very precise thing.
And so, and also, just aside from that, the debate, what ends up happening, and this just happened on a Patrick Bett David's show the other day, where someone will say this is a genocide, and then the entire debate becomes about whether it meets the definition of genocide.
And that's just not a debate I'm particularly interested in having.
It's like, I don't know.
Okay, fine.
So call it genocide or call it a war crime or call it just what it is, slaughtering innocent women and children.
You know what I mean?
Like, no matter what you call it, I'm just here to argue that it's wrong.
I don't want to get into some semantics argument.
Okay.
Israel Convicted Of Genocide00:10:07
But I will say that there's a lot of people who are saying South Africa might win this.
And that would just be wild.
Because if they win, it's not just that then Israel is now like is now convicted of committing a genocide, which my God, just, I mean, just think about how wild that is, that the Jewish state that is started as a response to the Holocaust is now like convicted of committing a genocide themselves.
But also just because then the U.S. is implicated, that the U.S. is now officially under international law, convicted of funding a genocide.
That's, you know, that just seems pretty wild to me.
Again, I'm not somebody who believes in global governance.
I don't like the U.N.
I don't like any of this, but to me, that just seems like a pretty wild thing.
And the other thing is that I do think that, you know, like I heard Judge Napolitano say the other day, the great Judge Napolitano, where he was like, look, I can just tell you as a judge that the most compelling type of arguments in a court is always when you can hang that person by their own words.
You know what I mean?
Like if you're in a murder case and you've got, you know, the defendant on tape saying, I'm going to kill this person, that's the most compelling form of evidence because it's like, look, here he is.
He's saying this.
This isn't what somebody else is saying about him.
This is what he's saying.
And it has been wild to watch, as we've talked about quite a bit on the show, how much Israel almost after the Hamas attack.
And, you know, quite like partially because it was such a brutal attack and they were so, you know, understandably furious about it, but also partly because I think they felt embarrassed and kind of outwitted by Hamas, who they consider themselves to be so much better and smarter than.
But how much they were just saying things like this blatantly.
Like, we're going to level Gaza.
Gaza, you know, the world has to take them in.
They all have to go.
You know what I mean?
There's no difference between the civilians and Hamas.
I mean, all types of quotes like this that the South Africans are now reading out.
And man, I'm just saying, I don't know what's going to happen here or what the result's going to be, but I do know that sounds really bad in a court.
You know, like when you've got a court case and you're like, I accused them of genocide.
And then you're like reading statements that you're like, okay, the head of the military said this.
There's no difference between civilians and Hamas.
And then they're over and over again, like, we are going to eliminate Hamas.
And we see no difference between Hamas and the civilians.
You're like, well, that sure doesn't sound good when you read it back to me.
So anyway, it'll be interesting to see where this goes.
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By the way, Rob, you'll love this because this just, I don't know if you know this, but this is so our people.
So you, the way it works in the UN court is that like, so South Africa submits their documents, like basically their case that this is genocide.
And then Israel has an opportunity to submit their documents about why it's not a genocide.
And then they both get to read each other's cases and then they go and they make their presentations.
But so Israel opted to not submit a document.
So now South Africa is not surprised by that.
Huh?
Not surprised by that.
How dare you even bring this case against us?
But it's also just the strategic like lawyering of it is that so now you, South Africa doesn't get to know what Israel's defense is.
So they had to go argue.
And then it was like this strategy where now they have to anticipate what the defense might be and waste time kind of preemptively arguing against this defense.
Like, well, if they say this, then what we're saying is this.
And if they say this, then what we're saying is this.
And now Israel gets to come and kind of no one knows exactly what their defense is going to be.
So anyway, I'm very curious to see what they actually come up with as a defense against this term.
You know, again, like I said, I'm not the expert in international law.
There are a lot of experts who think Israel is guilty of genocide.
I've seen a few of them lay out their case of why this does meet the standard of genocide.
There are others who say that's not the right term for this.
Either way, it's going to be very interesting to see what Israel.
Does that, if they walk away not genocide, does that mean like free ticket?
Hey, it's not genocide or does the court give it like a lesser charge?
You know, that's a good question.
I'm not sure.
I think that there's, I'm not sure.
Can the court say, okay, it's not genocide, but it is a war crime.
So therefore you still, you know, kind of have to stop?
I don't know about that.
The truth is that the it the majority of the UN, I think, is on the side that it's war crimes.
I don't know.
I don't know about genocide and I don't know whether the court can like find some lesser charge or something like that.
So that's, that's a really good question.
I don't know the answer to it.
Anyway, any other thoughts, Rob, just on the whole thing and Israel being labeled as committing a genocide?
Well, it's got to shift things that it's actually in reality that, you know, the UN at least feels that it needs to address whether or not the actions are a genocide.
Now, I'm sure the way it plays out is you get your on either side.
If the UN condemns Israel, they'll go, oh, there's so many Arab nations in the UN.
The UN's anti-Semitic.
But I think over a long enough timeframe, when college kids are having arguments about Israel and they're able to say, you know, they were classified as engaging in a genocide in the last war.
I think that's going to, I just think there's a, the boomers support Israel.
Seems to me like the younger generations do not.
And while this probably won't have an immediate impact as, you know, the Jews just go, hey, that's a, they're anti-Semitic and we have to protect ourselves.
I do think in the long run, having a strike against you, such as the UN saying you engaged in genocide is probably going to erode support.
Yeah, that's kind of how I feel about it too, that it's just like there's kind of no putting that toothpaste back in the tube to some degree.
Like there's, and even just now, even whatever the court ends up, you know, deciding, even just the fact that this isn't the accusation of genocide isn't just something that like some, you know, lefty on college campus is saying, but that in fact, this is like, no, a nation, you know, like went and made a compelling case to the highest international court.
That's exactly what's happening here.
And they did, I mean, I'm just saying, if you listen to the South African presentation, it is compelling.
Now, again, I don't know whether exactly that's correct or not, what to say that this rises to the level of genocide, but they've got an argument.
And they're sitting here and saying, look, this is the definition of genocide.
And we've got things on every one of these points.
That's, you know, to me, that's pretty compelling.
Even though I think, you know, as I said before, the bigger picture is just that it's wrong and horrific and should stop.
But, you know, that is be interesting to see how this plays out, man, because it does seem, it does seem like something has really changed and that there's, you know,
and I think Israel fell right into it, but that there is a dynamic where at least to me, it feels like it feels like the inevitability of Israel to just be able to do whatever they want to do to the Palestinians seems to be challenged in a different way.
And, you know, this is this is a thing that, you know, even like right before the fall of the Soviet Union, even right before it, it would have seemed crazy.
It would have seemed crazy to people.
I mean, like, no, even in like the two plus four meetings in 1989 and 1990, none of those people were like, we think the Soviet Union's about to collapse.
There was some feeling that like perhaps they were going to like dissolve the Warsaw Pact and perhaps they were going to allow for the reunification of Germany.
Or in fact, there was lots of feelings of the reunification of Germany.
The wall had come down already.
But it was not like they were like, oh, the Soviet Union will cease to exist anymore.
And then it did.
It fell apart.
And I'm not saying Israel is going to cease to exist anytime soon, but I think there's a question about it.
Like, I think for the first time in my life, there does seem to be like, I don't know that you can keep doing this.
It doesn't, it doesn't seem like world opinion is so against you and you are so outnumbered that I don't, you know, I don't understand how just from like a self-preservation standpoint, there's not more people in Israel who are like, whoa, we really better chill out on this.
Six Feet Rule Origins00:02:20
Like we have pushed this too far and probably cannot get away with anymore.
Forget caring about Palestinian lives at all because obviously they don't.
But just from, you know, a self-interested point of view.
Okay.
So one more thing that we gotta, we gotta cover today before we wrap up is, and I know you'll be excited to talk about this one, Rob.
Your boy, Fauci, Dr. Dr. Truth Science.
I don't remember.
I never said that.
I said I never knew that.
So this is, I mean, it's just, it's unbelievable.
Sometimes, you know, the gall that these people have truly is impressive.
But so Fauci testified at a closed door congressional hearing.
There's, it was a closed door hearing, but some of what he said was released.
What were your, what did you find interesting?
Or what were your there were a lot of moments of the, I don't, I don't remember, which of course you could have expected.
I think the biggest bombshell that was reported was that the six feet rule, he said, probably didn't really have any scientific basis.
It just sort of appeared.
Yeah, that was his quote.
It just sort of appeared.
Oh, man, it's just, it's so infuriating.
It's like it just sort of appeared.
And you're like, yeah, but you were saying it on TV every single day.
That was a part of the appearing process, wasn't it?
You constantly telling everyone you need to be six feet away.
No, and of course, what he's, what he's referring to is that there was, and this is what's so crazy, particularly about the six feet rule.
The, what did they call it?
Social distancing.
And they said, you have to be six feet away.
In every, first, it was Fauci and the NIH and the CDC and all of them all kept saying every single day six feet of separation.
Every store you went into had markers for six feet, right?
When you're waiting online to be six feet away from everybody else and all this shit.
And it's not, they just made it up.
It's not that there was like a study.
That's the way science works, Dave.
I mean, he's the, he's the god of science.
So if he makes it up, that's science now.
Science Or Made Up Rules00:02:49
Right.
But so the whole time that they're telling us, trust the science and, you know, listen to the science.
If you have a problem with me, you have a problem with science.
Just to be clear here, it's not that there was a study that came out and showed that the virus really isn't being transmitted when people are six feet apart.
And then other studies came out later and showed that, ah, that's not really true.
That's not what we're talking about here.
There was no study.
There was nothing.
There was absolutely, there wasn't even a theoretical scientific argument.
There was nothing.
They just kind of picked six feet.
Why not five?
Why not seven?
I don't know.
Just kind of like the way we pick how old you got to be before you can drive a car.
Eh, just kind of this age.
They just picked it and then claimed it was science.
And the incredible thing is that Fauci admitted that.
I think this is exactly what you had said with COVID, that it's like that movie Trading Places, that it sounds like they just sat around and said, hey, maybe we could tell them they got to be six feet apart.
And they're like, you think they would buy that?
I go, I'll do you one better.
I can tell them that they have to totally socially distance on account of this.
Is there any science to that?
Nah, but let's just go with it.
Yeah.
Yeah, I love that it's just two billionaires just sitting around just being like, I bet I can make them swim with a mask.
Like, you know, just, and, and they did, at least for some people.
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Lab Leak Conspiracy Debate00:08:57
One of the other big things that came out from Fauci's hearing is that he said, and I thought this was very interesting, the way he put it, but he said that the lab leak theory is not a conspiracy theory, which of course he had and many people had claimed it was a conspiracy theory for years.
He now said it was not a conspiracy theory.
But he also said something about how he never leaned one way or the other on it, which is just, I mean, again, it's as bad as the time he said that he never recommended.
They need to have a trial for him and there needs to be public outrage.
The idea that you can just go from the impact that it had on all of our lives to two years later, just going, yeah, we made that up.
I don't remember.
Yeah, I'm not sure what the science was.
Like, I don't know.
We can't, we shouldn't allow for that lack of character.
This, this should be the most egregious crime.
Like 100%.
Yeah.
100%.
And not just Fauci, you know?
I mean, I'm, there really, there needs to be a reckoning with the head of the CDC at the time, all the lockdown governors, like all of them.
Like, I'm sorry, this was like the greatest crime perpetrated by the American government against the American people.
And that can't be allowed to just be like, oh, and then you just admit that you made it all up and then just deny saying the things that you said.
I never said the lab leak theory was a conspiracy theory.
I never said we should lock down school or we should school closures.
I never said we should have lockdowns.
Like, dude, you're on record.
You said it every day.
It's amazing how they all turn into Mueller.
The second, you know, at first, it's, hey, this is the absolute best person, the most respected individual, the sharpest, and we got to give him all the resources and he's going to get to the bottom of it.
And then when you actually see him in front of a camera, I don't know.
I'm just a big old homie.
And look, the thing that I found funny about him saying that the lab leak isn't a conspiracy or isn't a conspiracy theory is that it's also like, I love that.
It's funny when we were just the last episode, we were talking about the Jeffrey Epstein thing.
And it's amazing that people can still, they're talking about Jeffrey Epstein and can still go, and these conspiracy theorists, like what?
It's like the way they're able to turn this term into a pejorative.
No, listen, the lab leak is a conspiracy theory.
It is one.
It's just, there's nothing wrong with that term.
Like there's, or it's just a conspiracy, I guess, at this point.
It's not a theory really anymore.
But no, like you had a long phone call with the two scientists who wrote up the paper saying that we don't think there's any way that this came from a lab.
And you instructed them to do that because you were implicated in the lab.
That's why you tried to make everyone think it was naturally occurring or is an animal transmission to humans because you were implicated if it was in the lab.
That is a conspiracy.
So like, yes, when people were thinking about that, they were theorizing that you were in on a conspiracy, which you were.
Like, it's so funny because look, obviously there are conspiracy theories that are nutty.
And a lot of people have nutty conspiracy theories and you can find plenty of them online.
Okay.
But the idea that elites conspire is not a theory.
That's a fact.
And so when we have a theory about what they're conspiring to do, the idea that that is now somehow on its face a negative or that is somehow like wrong or stupid is ridiculous.
And it was intentionally, by the way, it was the CIA who intentionally coined the term conspiracy theory.
and tried to make that a pejorative as a response to what?
It was in the wake of the Kennedy assassination because they were just trying to demonize anybody who may have a theory that this was some type of conspiracy, even though it clearly was.
So you're not, if you don't have any theory about how elites conspire, then you have no idea what the fuck is going on in the world.
That's not, so it's not that every conspiracy theory is right, but everyone who's right is a conspiracy theorist.
Does that make sense?
That's always what's going on.
All of these, look, the official story of 9-11 is a conspiracy theory.
The official story of the war in Iraq is a conspiracy theory.
All of these things involved people secretly conspiring to achieve an outcome that they desired.
No, if you say 9-11 was a bunch of people, a bunch of Muslims in Afghanistan and in Europe and in America, and they were all planning on how to conduct this attack to take down these buildings.
That is a conspiracy.
If you say that it was the U.S. government or the Saudi government that were involved in it, that's just a competing conspiracy.
You're both just arguing over which conspiracy was true.
But it's not like one of them is a conspiracy theory and the other one isn't.
And if that's the case, then the term means nothing.
So yes, this was a conspiracy.
There was a conspiracy to silence suspicion that the Wuhan lab was the origin of COVID.
And the other thing that was crazy about it, if you just remember that they called it, like the New York Times, their head COVID reporter, not only called it a conspiracy theory, but called it a racist conspiracy theory, which I always just loved that, that they called it racist, which like isn't Fauci's theory on it so much more racist?
Yeah, that the Asians eat the shitty fucking food.
But your theory is like, you're like, what do you mean they have a lab?
That's racist.
I'm saying they eat bats.
You're like, wait, what?
How is that not just so much worse?
Like having a lab kind of makes you sound at least like advanced.
These are dirty people eating wild animals.
Yes.
No, but the fact of the matter is that at Anthony Fauci's discretion, because he's the one who signed off on the emergency provision in Obama's executive order to allow gain of function research.
And a group that a subsidiary group that he was funding was funding the Wuhan lab.
And they were funding gain of function research at a lab in China, a notoriously secret and shady country, a notoriously secretive and shady country at a lab that notoriously had substandard protocols.
And the overwhelmingly likely scenario is that that's where COVID originated from.
Now, it's unclear whether it was the gain of function research that was being funded that led to COVID, but it's certainly a possibility.
And it certainly looks like it came from that lab.
There's all, and this was, by the way, this was also known pretty early.
It was pretty early that they were like being like, okay, this type of bat that you're saying was at this wet market is not at this wet market.
And people were going there and being like, this bat, this type of bat is not available there.
And it's actually hundreds of miles away from where this wet market is.
And it doesn't really seem like it's plausible that this is how it happened.
And then, oh yeah, by the way, we found out that what was it, like four of the people who worked at that lab were hospitalized with COVID-like symptoms in November of 2019.
Like there was just the aside from the scientific arguments that were being made, like, because, you know, there's all those scientific arguments about actually looking at the virus and looking at the pieces of it and kind of deducing from that whether it was naturally occurring or whether it was man-made or stuff like that.
Now, the scientists were making a bunch of arguments that said, no, it couldn't have come from the lab and they all got debunked.
But just looking at that, just like what the regular people like me and you can understand, like, yeah, it all, it was all pointing to the lab very early on.
And people were losing their livelihoods over it.
People were getting censored for saying this.
And now even Fauci will admit.
I'm like, oh, yeah, that totally, totally could have been that.
Reckoning For Censored Voices00:01:08
So yeah, I'm with you.
There really should be some type of reckoning on this.
And that's what, you know, that's what you want to hear presidential candidates talking about.
If there's something you want to talk about, there should be like all of these people should be put on trial and they should all have cameras in them.
The American people should get to watch the whole goddamn thing and let them squirm while they're asked these questions under oath with their freedom on the line.
All right.
That's going to be our show.
Oh, go ahead.
I just want to get a quick plug in.
Sunday, if you're in the mood for more comedy after Brie Improv.
I'm doing my old headlighting show in Pasadena, California, along with the live Run Your Mouth podcast with Brian McWilliams from Lions of Liberty.
And then last week, I had a wild amount of show content, including an episode with David Collum, got into, you know, global elites, pedophiles, all this stuff.
And then also did an episode with Gene Epstein correcting some econ fallacies we made on the show.
So go check out Run Your Mouth.
All right.
Absolutely.
And of course, Brea Improv, we will be there in just a few days.