Dave Smith and RobbyTheFire analyze Donald Trump's Iowa dominance, Nikki Haley's New Hampshire challenge, and Vivek Ramaswamy's exit. They critique Blinken's Ukraine aid logic, interpreting the "Nyet means Nyet" document as proof Russia views NATO expansion existentially, arguing US support makes Ukraine a de facto Article 5 trigger. Predicting war fatigue and eventual US disengagement, they contrast the Afghan army's collapse with media narratives while exposing political evasion in Obama's interview, concluding that current strategies ignore inevitable strategic retreats. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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The Phone Buying Racket00:06:34
Fill her up.
You are listening to the gas.
We need to roll back the state.
We spy on all of our own citizens.
Our prisons are flooded with nonviolent drug offenders.
If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
What's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
I am Dave Smith.
He is Robert the Fire Bernstein.
Going formal today.
And we are on our way to Brea, California in just a few days.
Come join us over there.
And then the following weekend, we're out in Connecticut.
We're going to be all over the place.
And I'm excited to get back on the road.
I took a little break here in December.
I got a bunch of birthdays in my family in December.
And then we have the holidays.
And I'm Jewish and she's Catholic.
So we got all of them.
And it's just basically I have no money by the end of, I stopped, I stopped working and just spent all my money.
But anyway, I'm excited to get back out on the road.
It's been nice to have a break.
But come see us when we're in a town near you, comicdave Smith.com for all the gigs me and Rob do together.
And then RobbyTheFire.com for all Rob's headlining stuff.
And yeah, it should be a lot of fun.
How you doing, buddy?
Doing good.
Excited for California.
Get some sun.
That's right.
Get some sun.
Rob was partying it up last night, celebrating the primary victory of Donald J. Trump.
No, I was just home.
I was home, baby, in bed by eight o'clock.
Were you really?
Like a Nyquil?
Oh, yeah.
It was wonderful.
That's a whole, man, that, now that's old man partying.
Home with a Nyquil.
He's getting fucked up on NyQuill.
Yeah.
Well, anyway, wild day.
I did a little, a little bit of a, my, I gave my reaction to the Iowa caucuses.
We can, we can talk a little bit more about that.
Now the thing is, is, is to focus on New Hampshire, which is a week away.
And by the way, I'm sitting here.
I got a new cell phone, which I hate doing.
I hate getting new cell phones.
I just, as people who listen to the show know, I'm what they call technologically retarded.
I don't do well with technology, which is weird.
I know my job kind of isn't, relies on it, but it is such a fucking, the whole getting a new phone thing is such a racket.
First off, I hate doing it.
I just want my phone.
I know my phone.
I've figured it out.
It does all the things I want to do.
I hate switching to a new phone.
They like change things just to justify getting a new phone.
It's just so annoying.
Like it's still an iPhone, but then they'll just be like, hey, instead of the search bar being up here, let's put it down here.
So every time I go to look for it, I'm looking up and I'm wrong.
And anyway, but you know, they do this thing where they like, they won't let you use your apps anymore because they're like, you have to update.
This app needs an update.
This version no longer works.
And then I'd go to update it and they'd be like, you need the newest phone in order to get the update.
And so like one by one, they would just be taking my apps away from me.
And so they just forced me to go get a new phone.
And as I'm like, well, I just, just losing too many.
Like I lost my Chase app a while ago.
I'm like, I can't do banking anymore.
I guess that's just, I'll just have to ask my wife now.
You must be, are you an iPhone?
Yeah.
Yeah, that must be an iPhone thing because I've been forced to get new phones, but I've never had that the apps just won't work on the new one.
No, I'll tell you what got me was they took United away from me.
Right.
And I was like, oh, I can't do that.
I need the United app on my phone.
That's what got made me.
Because it's literally, that's, I fly United all the time and I can't, all the upgrades and everything like that.
And you can't United, for whatever reason, because it's just the most insane thing ever.
They just made permanent their COVID policy of you can only buy shit on your app.
So like they won't take cash.
They won't take a credit card.
You have to have a credit card in your app and then that you get show them your barcode because I don't know.
That's otherwise we'll die or something like that.
I guess if I just handed this lady the $20 bill, then I'll die.
So anyway, so they still did.
So it's like, if I don't have that app, then I just can't ever get food or drinks or whatever the fuck I want to get on a plane.
So I can't have that.
I can't track my flights and shit like that.
So anyway, I go get it.
And then it's just like every little thing, like they make it.
So this is about, this is the most commie I'm ever going to sound on this show, just complaining about how these dirty capitalists, but they make it so that the phone, even though I'm getting the same phone, just the newest version of it, it's just a slightly different size so that you got to buy a new case too.
Yeah.
You're just like, oh, dude, are you really, I'm giving you like 1500 bucks for this phone and you're really going to bend me over over the $50 case on top of it?
Like you can't just make it the same size.
Man, they should really regulate that industry.
Just kidding about that level.
I don't think that's going to be the thing that I buy.
That'll be a bigger nightmare.
I buy old phones online.
And my experience with the Verizon store is that if they will not help you with anything, they're there to sell you something.
And if they can't sell you something, well, you have to go call the customer service.
And you're like, yeah, but I'm here and I've been a customer for 23 years.
Can you possibly just help me?
No, we don't help people in this store.
We can either sell you something.
You want to buy something else?
I'll sell you something.
If not, you can.
My last- Are you pissing on my leg?
What the hell is that?
They're like, I'm sorry, we just sell phones and piss on your legs.
That's all we do.
I couldn't.
The last time I went in, cause, you know, they always tell you that you can transfer the things through the, well, you're, uh, you're an Apple person.
I guess I'm on the Google thing, but they say you just log into your Google account and everything automatically uploads.
And I go, it doesn't.
I don't know why, but a lot of my phone numbers are never stored in Google.
Can you just do the manual transfer?
He used to do this for me all the time.
And then the lady goes, yeah, we can do that for you.
It's going to be like $117.
No, but she was real salesy about it because she goes, well, we're going to have to do this, this, this, but I'll do it right now for you for a reasonable $117.
And I was like, I like how you just said that that was reasonable because the last time I did this, it was just free.
Vivek's Backup Strategy00:16:07
And now it's 117.
So I don't know why you've declared that reasonable.
And she's inside.
I prefer free to reasonable.
Like, also, reasonable is a really subjective term.
Like, that's like, there's no, there's no guidelines on what reasonable means.
Like, what is she just like, I mean, it's not $100,000.
It's only $100.
And you're like, yeah, but it's looking at you, $100 just to do the thing.
That seems like part of the deal.
And then you would just do.
So do you want me to do it?
I said no.
And then I was never able to turn on that phone again.
So the joke's on me.
You really should have just paid $100.
All right.
There you go.
Okay.
So anyway, sorry, guys, this isn't what you listen to our show for.
But hey, you know, a little fun banter sometimes.
All right.
So we're one week away from the New Hampshire primaries.
I don't know, Rob.
I mean, I gave my reaction yesterday.
I know the listeners haven't heard from you about the Iowa caucuses.
I don't know how much like there is to add.
Like to me, I mean, I talked for a while about different nuances of what I thought was interesting about it, but I think you would probably agree.
It's pretty straightforward takeaway that it was just a great night for Donald Trump and a bad night for everybody else.
Yep.
I'm surprised that DeSantis managed to beat out Haley for the second place.
I'm surprised that Vivic trails so far behind the two of them for how unlikable they are.
I guess the other surprising thing is that DeSantis and Haley haven't just one of the two of them dropped out already, which would give them seemingly more of a fighting chance of maybe beating Trump.
And like the two of them staying in the race, it almost seems like the deep state's looking for Trump to win.
Well, I don't, you know, I think that what you're going to see is DeSantis drop out pretty soon.
I don't think he's got much more in him.
And I think that's the, look, he's Nikki Haley, her entire presidential campaign is about New Hampshire.
She needs New Hampshire.
She is, so as of now, let me actually just pull this up so I get it exactly right because it's worth doing.
So the according to the polls, which Trump outperformed in Iowa, there was also the case that, you know, Iowa, which I don't even think I talked about yesterday in my stream, but Iowa had crazy weather.
It was, I believe it was with the wind chill negative 30 degrees.
That's crazy.
I've seen that.
It's crazy.
Yeah.
I mean, so you go, you know, and there, there was, there were some different questions about how exactly that would affect the outcome.
You know, they're like some, some people were, were making the point, and I think this is fair enough that they were like, well, hey, you know, this is going to the more rural areas, their roads don't get treated as quickly because it wasn't just cold.
It was like a huge blizzard there also.
Like this may affect who's coming out and who's not.
I think probably the biggest effect that the that being negative 30 and after a really severe, like worst in a decade blizzard is that you're going to have lower turnout and it's going to be the hardcores.
You know what I mean?
Like the people who are going out there, you're going to eliminate a large percentage of kind of the casual voters and you're going to get the hardcores.
And I think that essentially is why Trump outperformed even his own very dominant poll numbers is that the hardcore support is for Donald Trump.
And I think that's fairly like intuitive, like to anyone who's following this race.
The people who support Donald Trump, their mind state is like, you stole the United States of America from us and now you're trying to lock our guy up on BS charges.
We are, you know, reinstalling him in the White House where he rightfully belongs.
And the Nikki Haley people are more.
There's a whole women going, oh, Nikki sounds like a nice name.
She was on the TV and then she came and saw me at a thing and shook my hand.
Well, golly gee, I think I will support her.
You know, I mean, like, that's the level of support she's getting.
So I do think those conditions turned out to benefit Donald Trump.
And I think even DeSantis has more, although it's not that much, but he has more authentic hardcore support because the people who are supporting him at least do have like a thing to be like, hey, he was the guy who kept his state free when the whole rest of the world, you know, went tyrannical.
So I think that did benefit them too.
All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Sheathunderwear.com, the underwear of legends.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
DeSantis is really just screwed here.
I mean, it just.
Getting second place in Iowa, if he had gotten second place in Iowa and he was seven points behind Donald Trump, that would have been a strong night for Ron DeSantis.
And he could have said, hey, look, this is competitive.
You know, it's me and Donald Trump.
I took second in this first one, but there's 50 states, you know, and we got a long way to go.
But getting second place by 30 points just doesn't have that.
There's just nothing there.
And now going into New Hampshire, you have, okay, so currently the real clear politics average, which they average kind of all the, you know, the top polls.
Again, like I always disclaim, this isn't, you know, they're polls.
This isn't, you know, gospel, but, you know, the polls were indicating that Donald Trump had an enormous lead in Iowa, and they were right about that.
He may have done a little bit better than the polling, but the polls still gave us some interesting information or some valid information.
As of right now, in New Hampshire, Trump is polling at 43.5%.
Nikki Haley is polling at 29.3%.
Chris Christie is still, oh, this is, is this really?
They still have him polling at 11%.
I guess these polls were from before he dropped out.
Did you talk about the nonsense of the way CNN and Fox were covering the polls that they left they left Vivik off?
And then even when I did a Google search.
Yes, I did see that.
When I did a Google search yesterday just to see who was up, they had like candidates I didn't even know about appearing before Vivik in the Google list.
Like it's just amazing the way information is just all disingenuous now.
Yes, yes.
And how they, you know, intend, yeah, how they, how they really can put their thumb on the scale there.
Anyway, so these are the latest polls, right?
Okay.
So these are from, you know, a couple weeks ago.
So this still has Christie and Ramaswamy in there, but listening to these polls.
Let me just read this one more time.
Trump at 43.5%, Nikki Haley at 29.3%, Chris Christie at 11.3%, DeSantis at 6.5%, and Ramaswamy at 5.
At 5%.
So, I mean, it's looking bad for DeSantis in New Hampshire.
And so I don't know, you know.
What's the next state, though?
Now, look, I will say, I think Haley, South Carolina's next after that.
Nikki Haley is she's look, there's, there was one CNN poll that had her within seven points of Donald Trump, headed a single-digit contest.
Chris Christie was polling at 11% there.
And I got to think Chris Christie voters are between DeSantis and Nikki Haley.
You know, those voters are going to fall to one of those two.
Chris Christie is one of those campaigns where you really have to imagine that 0% of his support is going to go to Donald Trump.
You can't imagine that the guy whose whole campaign was Donald Trump is evil, those people aren't going to Donald Trump second.
So if Nikki Haley does get Christie's supporters, she's in a position where she can win New Hampshire.
And I would say Nikki Haley absolutely needs, she desperately needs second place.
If she doesn't get second place in New Hampshire, she's in huge trouble.
If she gets a win there, I think you see Chris Christie, I think you see Ron DeSantis drop out.
And I think this is what they want.
This is kind of what Vivek was saying, is that then they've got themselves.
I think then, like Nikki Haley said after Iowa, that now it's a two-person race and everyone's making fun of her because it's the dumbest thing in the world to say when you came in third place that you just, it's a two-person race now.
That doesn't make any sense.
And it was stupid for her to say that.
Got dumb campaign advisors or whoever decided that would be her opening line.
But if she comes, if she wins New Hampshire, then she's got a strong case to say, hey, this is a two-person race now.
And nobody else has a path to the nomination except me and Donald Trump.
So that's, I think that's what they want.
It's a dangerous, dangerous situation to be in where, you know, you have a two-person race with Donald Trump having all of these legal, you know, questions around him.
And the number two option is Nikki Haley.
That is a pretty, that is not where you want to be.
It also sounds like if you combine the DeSantis numbers with the Nikki Haley numbers, so then, you know, if she picks up most of that support, it sounds like you got a pretty tight race with Donald Trump.
Yeah.
I mean, look, this is what I, I, this is why I kind of thought that Vivek staying in the race was going to be a bit of a, um, like a backup for the MAGA movement, you know, to have like another America first guy there.
Um, I texted with Vivek Ramaswamy.
Maybe Trump convinced him he needed that 5% that once it consolidates.
I don't know.
And I have not had any conversations about that.
I texted very briefly back with him.
I just sent him a nice text last night and I said to him, I said, don't bother responding to me because, you know, I was like, I know you got a lot going on.
Just wanted to say, hey, you know, I, I, you know, I really appreciated these aspects of your campaign and blah, blah, blah.
And I just said some nice things to him.
And then he texted me back this morning just saying thank you.
But I didn't get into like any, I didn't ask him anything about like why he made the decision or that.
I will say, and I kind of, perhaps I kind of underestimated Trump in this regard.
There were a lot of people who were saying that Vivek Ramaswamy handled the criticism very well and that his response to Donald Trump was really good when he kind of took the high road and didn't go back at him.
I think I probably underestimated how like, because Trump is, no matter how you feel about him, man, he is very good at this.
There's a reason why the guy on his first shot at getting into politics became president of the United States of America at whatever.
I know he ran for like two weeks back in 2000, but his first real shot, the first time he really tried, he became president.
And remember, this is the guy who beat the Clintons and the Bushes.
He beat the two most powerful political families in modern America, in modern American history.
And he's got a real instinct for this stuff.
And I think I kind of underestimated the power move he pulled there, where Vivek Ramaswamy was kind of playing this game where he was like, I'm going to be here as the backup MAGA candidate.
And then he had his whole pitch about how like, you know, they're going to remove Donald Trump and then it's going to be Nikki Haley unless you got me here to like be the one who can inherit this support.
And I looked at that as he was making that argument.
And I'm going, well, look, the guy's got an insane amount of money.
Like he can do this if he wants to.
Can.
He can run for as long as he wants to.
I think what Donald Trump did when he went at at Vivek the night before the Iowa caucuses or two days before whenever it was, I can't remember, um was that he really let him know that if your plan is to just sit around here and take seven percent away from me for all of these contests, there's going to be a price to be paid for that.
And that price.
Now, again, I'm not inside Vivek's head.
I don't like, I don't know what his decision making was, but the price was pretty clearly like, we're look, number one, in terms of like, if, if there's a play for a position in Trump's cabinet, well, that's not going to be happening because Trump's going to be like on record is like, no, you're an enemy of mine now.
You're coming.
You're hurting me and you're going to be.
And then number two, it's just that, look, Trump, just when it comes to Republican Party politics, Donald Trump has the biggest dick in the room.
And he's going to be telling all of his supporters that this guy sucks.
You know what I mean?
And that is like, there was a, I think, like, this is just my guess.
I'm just speculating, but I think there was a choice to be made for Vivek that wasn't just about this election future, wasn't even just about a cabinet position or something like that, but it was like, who are you going to be in the right wing populist movement in the United States of America going forward?
And by making the decision that he did, he's now of like, I think one of the most important voices in that movement and will be for years to come.
He might end up getting a cabinet position in Trump's government if Trump is somehow allowed to get back in there.
But regardless of that, he's going to be a figure for like he has greatly increased his signal, you know?
And I don't know if that happened.
If he had, if he had stuck it out for another couple months, going to war with Donald Trump.
I mean, dude, look what Trump did to DeSantis.
Like one of these guys who you would have thought he's the most popular Republican governor in the country.
He was in many, you know, he would have, if DeSantis had stayed out of this presidential election, he would be the guy who people were thinking in 2028 is the likely nominee and one of the biggest figures.
And now he's just like, he's made himself a laughingstock.
So look, I don't know exactly why Vivek made his decision, but I would imagine all of these things were in his mind.
And like, I will say, I think I underestimated how savvy of a political maneuver that was by Donald Trump to go like, no, I'm going to, I know this guy's playing nice with me, but I don't care.
I'm imposing a cost on him if he's going to stay in this.
Iowa Caucus Reality Check00:04:46
Anyway, New New Hampshire is a week away.
That'll be an interesting one.
They're already, I think Donald Trump was doing an event in New Hampshire today.
There's something, dude, there's something so funny to me about like how all the candidates have to go.
They go and do all these events in Iowa right before Iowa.
And then the people in Iowa caucus.
And then literally like, it's like a half hour after that.
They're on a plane out of town.
And they're like, okay, I don't actually care about any of you guys.
I'm doing events in New Hampshire.
Oh, New Hampshire, my favorite place for the next week.
You're going to be my favorite place.
Vote for me.
I'll be your best friend.
All right.
I'm out of here.
Yeah, like just bail right away.
It's just like, no, like, it's like, I don't know.
It's like a guy hooking up with a chick and then like leaving the second it's over.
You know what I mean?
Like, you're not even going to pretend.
You don't even want to do one more thing in Iowa after the caucus.
Nope.
It's like, nope, pretty clearly.
That's what it was about.
Let me just see real quick.
I wanted to check what the South Carolina poll numbers are.
Because yeah, okay.
So this is pretty crazy here.
But so Donald Trump, the Real Clear Politics average has Donald Trump at 52% in South Carolina and Nikki Haley at 21%.
Again, this is that's going to be an interesting one too, because that's her home state.
So I think that's going to be that's going to be a tough one to deal with with Donald Trump just destroying her in her home state.
Look, I will say that she's got a shot in New Hampshire.
By the way, this is all it shouldn't be overstated that like this is this is all pretty depressing and somewhat sobering to keep in mind, like however you feel, like where the direction of the Republicans is going.
And I got to say, and particularly in New Hampshire, where, you know, it's the home of the Free State Project, which is a project that me and Rob both support very much and is, you know, and I'm not downplaying them.
They've gotten some good things done up there in New Hampshire.
And it's by some metrics, the freest state in the union.
But, you know, the just saying that even in New Hampshire, in the Republican Party, that Nikki Haley might take their primary really says something about how, like, how there's there, there's still some major issues with Republican voters, man.
Because think about that from like a libertarian standpoint.
It's, it's, like, it's not Vivek Ramaswamy who's polling number one or has a shot at winning there.
It's not even Donald Trump.
It's not even Ron DeSantis.
It's Nikki Haley is the one who's been surging in the polls.
Just, I find it, I find it unbelievable.
Anyway, that being said, I still think we're basically where we always have been in this race since.
And like I said on the stream last night, it wasn't exactly since the beginning of the race.
It was really since the raid on Mar-a-Lago.
The raid on Mar-a-Lago and then the subsequent charges and then the removals from the ballot.
I think this just locked it in that short of him being removed from this primary, there does not seem to be any way that anyone's taken this from Donald Trump.
It just doesn't seem to be a way.
And look, I mean, the just the logistics of it are too much for anyone to overcome.
And none of these guys, Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis, who are his only two opponents now, they just, look, on paper, it's so much to overcome and they just don't have the talent to do it.
I mean, they just don't have the political talent.
There's on paper, though, just look at it.
You got a Republican base, a vast majority of whom believe the guy was cheated out of the presidency.
He should be the current sitting president.
That alone.
How do you overcome that?
And then on top of that, they're trying to throw him in jail over bullshit to not allow him to go win the election that he's going to go win.
So, I mean, just like the fundamentals of the situation make it almost impossible for anybody else to compete.
As you're saying that Nikki Haley is doing well in New Hampshire, I almost think maybe we got to stop letting old people vote.
Is the Economy Great00:08:08
Cause you imagine if we let old people decide what TV shows we watch, it'd still just be like Turner Classic movies and bullshit in black and white.
I'd be listening to Elvis like old people speaking making decisions.
Bewitched again.
Yeah.
All right.
Like we don't like old people's shit for anything else in all life.
We would never let these people make decisions for us.
And for the president, we got to placate to their tastes.
Yeah, no more voting for old people and women.
I'm okay with that too.
But maybe the compromise could be like, we won't touch your social security, but you guys don't get to vote.
And then we touch their social security.
Oh, yeah, of course.
I mean, that's exciting.
Yeah, what are you going to do?
You can't vote.
We won't touch your social security, but the trade-off is you can't vote.
And then you go, I propose we touch their social security.
What are you going to do?
You can't vote.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
All right.
So let's switch gears here a little bit because we'll have plenty more time to talk about talk about New Hampshire and South Carolina and the rest of the primary season.
There was a great little interview that Blinkett did.
I think this was yesterday.
So let's play this clip and then we'll react to it.
Just this morning.
What are you talking about?
Oh, skiing.
No.
We, of course, are focused on the ongoing Russian aggression against Ukraine.
And even as we speak, the Russians continue to launch missiles at Ukrainian infrastructure, at civilians, at apartment buildings.
So we talked about two things.
We're focused on making sure that Ukraine has what it needs to get strongly through this next year.
2024.
Does it happen?
So we need to do two things.
We need to make sure that with Congress, we get the supplemental funding that President Biden's asked for.
We're working very hard on that.
I believe strongly that there is bipartisan support in both houses.
We just need to look at it.
What happens if it doesn't happen?
Look, there's no magic pot of money.
If we don't get that money, it's a real problem.
It's a real problem for Ukraine.
I think it's a problem for us and our leadership around the world.
But here's the thing.
Of that money that we're asking for, $50 billion gets spent right back in the United States on that money to procure items for Ukraine's defense.
It's made in America.
These are American jobs.
Right now, we have our allies and partners around the world.
Just pause for a second.
Now, obviously, this one, we've heard a few people.
It's unbelievable that these people will actually make this argument when they know a camera's pointed at them, right?
Like, and there's, it's like, but no, but think of the poor military industrial complex.
There's these guys.
These are Americans.
These people, think about the people who, you know, run Boeing and Lockheed Martin.
I mean, come on, Rob, they got to eat too.
But then, so it's, it's what war wars can do for our economy.
Well, right.
I mean, look, dude, because that's literally exactly what I was going to, where I was going to go with this is that it's like, first of all, it's the first thing that jumps out to you is you're like, yeah, okay, it's being made in America or whatever that you're saying, but you're taxing the population to give to weapons companies.
And then you're going to spin that around like that's, that's helping America.
Well, it's not helping the people who have to pay for it.
It's helping the people you're giving the money to.
But then as you already just kind of cut right through, like a hot knife through butter, it's just these like the understanding of economics here is ridiculous because if you're saying, oh, this is so great for the economy, then I guess it would be really great for the economy if we just funded proxy wars all over the place.
And how about this?
If you got a little bit of a moral hang up about funding proxy wars, you know, because they like prolong wars and get a lot of innocent people killed and stuff like that.
How about this?
We look, think the logic of this through, okay?
If this helps the economy, I've got a great idea for us.
Let's just make fake bombs.
Bombs that don't really explode.
Let's make fake guns that don't really shoot and kill people.
Let's make fake missiles and all the shit, right?
Just make a fake version of what we're sending to Ukraine and then just send it all around the world.
Give it away.
Give it all around to different people.
Here, there's some toy weapons.
You can play with them if you want to.
Give them to your kids.
They can go play war.
Okay.
Now, now, think about this.
If you're saying that's good for the economy, then what I'm proposing must, logically speaking, must be better for the economy, right?
Because it's just more of this good thing that you're talking about, that we're creating jobs in America and we're giving these money.
They're being built in America.
And now these are American jobs and this money flows into the economy and this, all this.
But just stop for a second and think what you've been reduced to now.
Like how backward your understanding of economics is.
If you believe that making a bunch of useless shit and then giving it away to other people is going to make us richer.
Like think this through.
Think this through, you know, just like so much of economics can be understood by just like desert island it.
Okay.
We're on a desert island and there's a bunch of us, you know, we're all stranded there.
Now, what would make us wealthier?
Well, working and producing things, right?
If someone was like, hey, I just made a spear.
I'm going to go fish.
After I do that, we will have some fish to eat.
And then someone went, okay, I'm going to start building a shelter.
Then we'll have a place to stay to sleep through the night.
I'm going to build a fire.
Now we'll have warmth through the night, whatever, right?
Getting to work and producing things.
That's what makes you richer.
And now, what if I sat there and said, I'm going to spend all day making something useless and then give it away to other people?
And you'd be like, and I'd be like, no, you don't understand, Rob.
Rob, you don't understand advanced modern economics, you see.
You see, this is a jobs program.
I just created a job, Rob.
Our unemployment numbers are down.
In fact, this is the best unemployment numbers we've ever had because I just put everyone to work on the island building fake, useless shit and then giving it away.
Rob, we have zero unemployment.
Can you not follow the chart?
Do you not understand that we're all getting richer here on this desert island?
And you might point out that like, yes, but we're going to starve to death if we follow your plan.
And then I would just say, you know, here's the thing, Rob.
I can either bake the cake or I can sell the cake.
Okay.
See, I have a really great economy here.
I just haven't been able to convince you yet that this is a really great economy.
And then you might say something like, Dave, it's been three days.
I've lost 20 pounds and I'm feeling very nauseous.
I believe I'm in the process of starving to death.
And I would be like, that's impossible.
We have full employment.
There's plenty of money, right?
It's just, it's all so nutty.
So further, he's completely wrong on the economic argument.
It is making us poorer, not richer.
Putin's Pandora's Box00:11:41
And on top of that, it's also like, you know, there's the whole thing that you guys, you know, provoked this fucking war and then have now continued, prolonged it for years now.
And just like, I don't even know exactly what the numbers are.
And we probably won't know for a couple of years until we really get like the excess death numbers and the excess fatality numbers and stuff like that.
But it's some, it's, I think in the hundreds of thousands of people have died.
And that's all because of this policy.
All right.
Let's keep playing.
Providing the majority of the support to Ukraine.
We have more burden sharing when it comes to Ukraine than in any other instance I can remember in the 30 years that I've been doing this.
So this is a common endeavor.
And right now, Russia continues to suffer a strategic failure in Ukraine.
We have a strong interest in making sure that persists.
And if we let Putin get away with this, if we drop our guard and everything we're doing for Ukraine, then you open a Pandora's box and he will not stop with Ukraine and others, other would-be aggressors in other parts of the world.
They'll take the lesson.
Look, I think he would go full tilt on Ukraine and then NATO countries.
And of course, if he attacked a NATO country, we have an Article 5 obligation under NATO to work to assist him.
That would bring us indirectly.
I just wanted that.
That was actually the moment where I was like, well, this will be on our show today because I hope people actually catch something.
And I know I've talked a lot about the Ukraine war and the history of the Ukraine war, but I just, there's something very important about what he just admitted there.
So before I get to the thing that's the most important that he just admitted in a weird way, let me first just point out that the Warhawks arguments, if you can call it an argument, they always rely on the unfalsifiable counterfactual, right?
So it always relies on, because it's not, the reason I said, if you can call it an argument, because technically it's not, it's, it's just an assertion.
There's no actual argument there, but it's untestable.
It's unprovable, unfalsifiable.
This counterfactual that, well, if we don't do this, then this thing happens.
And they're never called on to actually demonstrate why there's any reason to think that.
Like, why, you know, like it's like everyone will, they'll always say like, you know, if you're like, well, I don't think America should be the empire of the world.
They're like, so you'd rather live in a world where China's the empire of the world, right?
But you're like, but what you're just asserting that if we weren't the empire, they would be the world empire.
But there's no actual argument ever to take you through that.
It's like, first of all, China is surrounded by hostile foreign powers.
China's got Japan there.
They've got South Korea there.
They've got all of these other forces.
It's not as if they just easily take over all of these countries, right?
And then you're like, and why are you even suggesting China would become the world?
Like, do you really think China's looking at America and going, oh, you saw how they just spent themselves $30 trillion into debt and totally collapsed their own country?
We got to get in on that action.
There's no reason to assume that they would somehow be the world empire, but it's just asserted.
And again, it's not as if he's making an argument.
He's not going, look, Vladimir Putin has said that after Ukraine, their goal is Poland and they're planning on advancing to Poland next.
There's no argument there.
You just assert that it would happen.
You know, and by the way, and also the thing that they've been saying from the beginning, Russia's taking real strategic losses here.
You know, Russia's getting beat up by Ukraine, but also they're going to take over half of Europe after taking this law.
Like none of it makes any sense at all.
And it's just asserted.
And then, of course, like the hosts, and this is why they'll do these interviews, is that what do you never hear?
The obvious follow-up question, right?
Well, if Putin, you know, if Putin wins in Ukraine, then he's going to march onto NATO countries.
He goes, well, what evidence do you have for that?
Well, why do you believe that?
Why should we believe that's true?
It's just like on to the next thing.
Okay.
But that's not really the big admission here.
The big admission is that, and what I really like about this is that he says, he gets it right when he says, so if Putin were to attack a NATO country, then we would have an Article 5 responsibility to help assist their defense.
Because a lot of times people will say you have an Article 5 responsibility to go to war, but that's not actually technically true.
You don't technically have to go to war, but you do have to assist in their defense.
But here's what I think is very interesting about that.
If you go back, as I've mentioned to you guys before, right, to the Nyet means Nyet document, which was secretly released by, or was, I should say, was dumped.
It was a secret cable that was released by Julian Assange.
And so this was the current head of the CIA, Bill Burns, was writing back to the then Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, the guy who used to have this Blinkets guy's job.
Okay.
It was Condoleezza Rice's in 2008.
And the whole thing was about the idea of Ukrainian entry into NATO, which had been floated out by a lot of world leaders.
And the memo was like, look, this is the brightest of red lines for the Russians.
They are like, I mean, these are my words, not theirs, but he was basically like, in the same way we wouldn't let Cuba have missiles in the 1960s, they are not going to let Ukraine be a part of your military alliance.
That's just too much.
You can't bring their largest neighbor into your military alliance and start putting like military equipment in Ukraine.
The Russians are not going to have this.
And he says in the memo, this is again, this was the Russian ambassador at the time who's currently the head of the CIA, and he's writing to the Secretary of State.
And he goes, the Russians are very concerned that the decision to enter the Ukrainian entry into NATO is going to lead to serious tensions in Ukraine, that there's a real possibility of a civil war with much of the ethnic Russians rejecting the idea of being a part of NATO, and that in this event, Russia might be forced to intervene.
And this is the quote, a decision Russia does not want to make.
Okay.
So that's what our Russian ambassador, the current head of the CIA, what he said, this is a decision Russia does not want to make.
And of course, as we all know, this is what happened.
There was a civil war there after the 2014 coup.
Then there was a civil war for years.
And then ultimately Russia intervened.
Now, after it was two months or three months after the Nyetmin's document came out was the Bucharest summit, where they announced that Ukraine and Georgia were coming into NATO.
So anyway, just keeping this history in mind, the point is that Russia laid out their brightest of red lines.
And I do like, I don't know how any of you guys listening feel or Rob, how you feel, but I'm not saying it's reasonable for Vladimir Putin to have invaded the country and started this war.
And I'm not saying that is justified at all.
I know the, you know, critics will always pretend that's what you're saying.
But what I am saying is that it is totally reasonable for that to be Putin's red line.
It is totally reasonable for Vladimir Putin to say, no, I'm sorry, you're military alliance, you're not forming a military alliance or excuse me, you're not bringing my largest neighbor into your military alliance in the same way that the U.S. would never put up with that.
Like there's no way we would ever allow Mexico or Canada to just join a military alliance with China and Russia.
It's goofy to even think about.
Like, how long do you think it would take the U.S. if like if Canada said, we're entering a military alliance with Vladimir Putin?
It would be like, how long do you think it would take for America to do a regime change in Canada?
There's just no, like, we're cool with Canada under the condition that they stay on our side of all issues that we care about.
So this was now, Vladimir Putin, essentially his argument was that, because people will say, well, yes, you know, they said at the Bucharest summit they were going to put Ukraine in NATO, but they didn't actually start the process of putting them in.
They just announced that it would be done.
By the way, the reason they didn't start the process of putting them in is because of the objections of the Germans for the reasons that it would provoke a Russian reaction.
And they were like, we don't want to pick a fight with Russia like this.
So anyway, Vladimir Putin basically concluded that they had made them a de facto member of NATO.
Like not in name, but after 2014, they were doing joint military training things with the Ukrainian military.
They were sending in all the weapons that they sent in under Donald Trump.
And Vladimir Putin was like, well, wait a minute, what is this?
You're doing joint military exercises.
You're sending in weapons.
That's a NATO country, essentially, right?
So this was kind of Vladimir Putin's point.
Like, you did it.
I gave you this red line and you just crossed it.
And this isn't a red line like the way, you know, Barack Obama said that Bashar al-Assad using chemical weapons against his own people was a red line, right?
This isn't a red line like, if someone does something bad halfway around the world, that's my red line.
This was a red line like Jack Kennedy saying, oh, no, you can't have missiles in Cuba pointed at America.
That's just unacceptable.
This was a real red line.
Like this is an existential threat to our existence to have American military hardware in Ukraine.
And so, you know, basically, anyway, so this is what I think is such an interesting admission by Blinkett here, is if you listen to what he just said, you know what?
Actually, just go back and just play the last like 30 seconds of that.
Because I just, now that I just refreshed the history for people who may have forgotten some of this stuff, now just listen to what he said here.
Cause here's what's the really interesting admission.
If we drop our guard and everything we're doing for Ukraine, then you open a Pandora's box and he will not stop with Ukraine and others, other would-be aggressors in other parts of the world take the lesson.
Look, I think he would go full tilt on Ukraine and then NATO countries.
And of course, if he attacked a NATO country, we have an RFI obligation under NATO to work to assist them.
That would bring us indirectly.
If he attacked a NATO country, we would have to work to assist them.
So that's what separates NATO from the non-NATO countries.
We'd have to work to assist them.
Hmm.
Yet he attacked Ukraine, a non-NATO country, and we worked to assist them.
Crowdfunding Healthcare Costs00:03:11
And you're sitting here arguing that we must continue to work to assist them.
So I'm sorry, let's just be fair here.
If we do joint military exercises with their military, if we arm them up and we work to assist them when they're attacked, are they not a de facto NATO member?
You get my point, Rob?
Like he's saying, like, basically, he's saying we'd have to what?
We'd have to do the same thing we're doing right now for Ukraine.
If they attack Poland, we're obligated to do that.
We just happen to be doing it right now, even though we're not obligated to do it.
So there isn't really much of a distinction between Ukraine and a NATO country.
And our own head of the CIA told Condoleezza Rice that this is what it would lead to.
And he also told them that the Russians don't want to do this, that they would feel they were forced to do it.
So there you have it, right there, from our own Secretary of State.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
All right.
Here's a wild spec little call.
They don't get their funding, and then the Pentagon double fails an audit and manages to find some trillion dollars.
It's dashed somewhere.
It sends it to Ukraine.
And then they triple fail an audit to somehow write that off the books.
Whatever money they're looking to get Ukraine, the idea that Congress needs to approve it almost just sounds silly.
It just seems like they're going to get that money.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think you might be right about that.
And I think, you know, look, if you're talking about funding a war, it's a pretty safe bet they're going to get that money one way or the other.
Pentagon Audit Failures00:10:22
I do think that the, I do think we're ultimately, if I had to make a prediction, I think we are ultimately going to back off of Ukraine.
And also none of the stuff that they're saying with Putin is going to come true.
He's not going to invade any NATO countries.
I think that's certainly true, but isn't it just odd that some of these guys are still selling it?
Oh, yeah.
No, it is.
It certainly is.
But if you actually listen to any of the good reporting being done by people who know what's going on on the ground there, dude, they just started drafting 40-year-olds.
You know why you start drafting 40-year-olds?
Because there's no more 20-year-olds.
Like it's a goddamn nightmare what's happened to Ukraine.
The whole time that our court, listen, I remember, I remember this one time I was, it was like in the early days of when I was doing Fox News.
And I was talking to this one guy who was like a green beret and he had done a few tours in Afghanistan, two or three tours in Afghanistan.
And we went and we were like a bunch of us who did the show were grabbing a drink at the bar around the corner from Fox News.
And we just got to talking and he was telling me about Afghanistan.
And he was like, he talked about how he's like, dude, I was over there and, you know, this army that we're building up, that they're bragging about is like, he goes, dude, these are like illiterate goat fucking, like the most, you know what I mean?
Like this is like the most rural Afghanistan you could picture.
It's nothing.
He goes, it's just, dude, he goes, first off, you know, he was telling me things like these people, they don't even know what 9-11 is.
They don't know that we were attacked.
They don't know that they didn't know that what Al-Qaeda was.
Half of them don't even know that it's that their country is Afghanistan.
Like they're like, this is really, really backwards, illiterate fucking people.
And he goes, and we're going in there and trying to do these training exercises with them.
And you give one of them a fucking rifle and then you go do another mission and then you come back a week later and they just robbed everybody in the town.
They just literally, you gave him a rifle and then they went around and robbed everybody with it.
And that's it.
That's all that's.
And he goes, he would do that.
And then he came home and he would see President Bush at the time bragging about how great the military that we're building up in Afghanistan was.
And he was just like, dude, this is, and by the way, he was a total, like when he was on air, he was just defending all the wars.
This was like a couple drinks in at the bar.
He was telling me this shit.
And he was just like, dude, like the way the politicians and the corporate media are reporting on this war has like nothing at all to do with the facts on the ground.
Like it's just, it's, they're two different universes.
They're just nothing.
But again, with this war, while for the entire, you know, last year and a half or however long, two years almost for this war, that while the whole media has been like, Ukraine's winning, Russia's getting embarrassed, just remember what my old Green Beret friend there from Fox News told me.
And this is what you see.
Why are they drafting 40-year-olds now, man?
There's only one reason why you start drafting 40-year-olds in the middle of a war because there's no more 20-year-olds.
There's no more 30-year-olds.
Ukraine has been decimated, decimated by this war.
And the fact is that like there was that big piece that just came out in Time magazine where they said Zelensky is losing control of his own military.
They're not following his orders anymore.
He's telling them to advance and they're not.
Their counter offensive from late last year was a horrific failure.
And so I don't think we're going to pull back funding because of some course correction or anything like that.
I just think it's like this one's just about over.
And, you know, I think that's just the reality, like just the logistical reality of what's going on on the ground there.
You know, my grandfather's no expert in geopolitics, but he always said, don't trust a goat fucker.
Well, there you go.
Nothing good will ever come of it.
They come with all sorts of promises, but can't trust a dirty goat fucker.
Yeah.
All right.
We may have to bleep up some of this episode.
God damn it.
I don't want to get, I'm getting paranoid after the Skanks YouTube channel got taken down.
Anyway, okay, before we wrap up, I did.
Listen, this is a little bit, this may just seem a little bit silly, but sillier than the last one.
Even sillier.
No, but this is, but I actually thought this was very interesting.
This is Barack Obama did an interview with, what's the comedian's name?
Hassan.
That guy?
The dude who got taken down for making up his whole special with the anthrax baby?
Yes.
No.
I'm pretty sure this is the same guy.
Oh, my God.
How much do the deep state people run in the same circle to promote themselves?
It is something too where you're like, yeah, of course he'll do an interview with that comedian.
You know what I mean?
Which is like, and you'll see in the interview why, of course, it's like, oh, yeah, this is who they'll allow Barack Obama to sit down and interview.
You know, they would never let, but let's just say me and you are never going to lamb that interview, Rob.
But I mean, like, Joe Rogan would never lamb that interview.
They wouldn't, they wouldn't give, you know, I don't think they'd give almost any real guy.
Like, they wouldn't let Burt Kreischer interview Obama.
You know what I mean?
It'd have to be somebody who's like, like in that progressive orbit, who they know won't push him.
And look, he pushes them on a thing here, but it's because it's such a silly, just like goofy thing.
You know what?
I don't even want to set this up anymore.
Just watch this.
And by the way, I did not sit through the whole interview.
I only know about this because Glenn Greenwald tweeted out this little clip of it.
I'm sure it's nothing but just like a fluffy puff piece interview.
But play this clip because there's something kind of interesting here.
Your team might be mad that I'm putting you on the spot like this, but I need you to look me in the eyes.
Yes.
And be honest with me.
Always.
Mr. President, when you do your end of the year lists, do you really read all those books, watch all those shows, and listen to all those songs?
I do.
No, no, you don't.
I am so glad that I had this opportunity.
Please.
People, they believe the books and the movies, but the playlists, they somehow think, and this is mostly coming from young people like you.
Yeah.
Somehow y'all think you invented rock and roll.
You invented hip-hop.
And so the fact that my lists are pretty incredible.
People seem to think, well, he must have had some 20-year-old intern who was figuring out this latest cut.
No, man.
It's on my iPad right now.
You have Life is Good by Sir featuring Scribs Riley on your iPad.
Come on, man.
Don't play with me.
Okay.
Okay.
All right, let's cap it.
Let's cap it.
Let's raise the rim a little bit.
Give me the plot line for Afterlives by Abdul Razak Gurna.
Dude, how much time do we have here?
Come on, man.
Look, here's the bottom line of my playlist and my book list and my movie list.
I am very scrupulous about making sure that this is stuff that I actually like.
Yeah.
I will confess that there are times on the playlists on the music list where I will get suggestions.
Yeah.
Because it's not like I got time to be listening to music all the time.
All right.
That's basically at the end of the day.
He didn't read the book.
He totally dodged the question.
He asked him one specific thing.
That was it.
Now, of course, he doesn't, because he's in the interview that he is.
And like the old Noam Chomsky quote, which was a great one, where he's saying, like, he was talking about how there's like this range of allowable opinion that mainstream corporate journalists can have and they can't veer outside of that.
And the journalist gets very offended.
And he's like, oh, so you're claiming to me that I don't really sincerely hold the views that I have, that I'm lying and I don't really hold the views.
And Noam Chomsky goes, no, I have no doubt that you sincerely hold the views that you have.
I'm saying if you didn't, you wouldn't be here.
And it's like a great, a great like way to cut right to it.
Like, no, that's the whole point is you do believe this bullshit.
And if you didn't, they would never allow you here.
The only reason why he gets this interview is because they know he'll allow Obama to just like start talking about other shit and just not answer the basic point.
He called him on it.
He called him.
He starts it.
And Obama does it in his old smooth, charismatic way where he's like, yeah, I read all those books.
I sure do.
That's why I put out the list.
He goes, okay, what's the basic plot of this one book?
Well, listen, how much time do we have here?
What are we going to do?
A whole thing?
Now, I will tell you about the songs that I do occasionally get recommendations from the side.
Hey, man, that's not what he asked you.
He asked you what the plot of this book that you said you read is.
There's no book.
There's no book that I've ever read that I couldn't give you like at least the basic like plot.
I mean, even if it was a book, these, by the way, are books that he was like are the list for this year.
Like it's a book he read this year.
There's no book you read this year that you couldn't tell someone the basic plot of it.
I can tell you the basic plot of a book I read 30 years ago.
Like what, this is just insane.
He's the point of it is just that that's Obama and that's politicians.
Now, Obama was kind of the smoothest version of that traditional politician, but they are so able and it's really fascinating in a way to just sit and like be charming and compelling while they lie right to your face.
Just lying.
A Six Month Old Lie00:01:51
They're so comfortable with that.
They're so comfortable with that that I think it's a little bit, it's a little bit strange to people who aren't.
And I'm not saying like, I've never told a lie or like any of us never have bullshitted anyone, but not like that.
You know what I mean?
Like maybe a white lie or maybe something to like not get in trouble, like when you're younger or something like that, but never just like I'm completely put like I'm just creating a complete phony version of who I am right now and selling it to you as if that's really me.
Anyway, just found that really interesting.
Well, I guess they have the balls to do it because the other, the other side's willing to play the game too.
It's a little bit like the WWF.
If you know that, you know, no one's ever going to check your resume or ask you the follow-up questions, then you can lie about these things.
With that said, either I'm having deja vu or that might be an interview from 2022.
Oh, really?
Was it?
I could be wrong.
I just seem to remember that music.
Honestly, it doesn't really matter when the interview was from, to be honest.
I don't know.
You know, this happens on social media all the time when someone posts a video of something.
I just assume it's new.
But here, hold on one second.
I'll check right now.
No, it's six months ago.
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
Or at least it was posted on YouTube six months ago.
So, anyway.
All right.
Well, look, we're going to wrap up there.
Thank you, everybody, for listening.
Come check us out in Brea, California, and then in Connecticut, and then all over the place.
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