Dave Smith and Robbie the Fire Bernstein dissect the 2024 Republican primary, mocking Nikki Haley's "Cheneyism" strategy against Trump's dominance while condemning Joy Ann Reed's Hitler analogy as offensive weaponization. They attack corporate media for lying about Ukraine's war progress and Afghanistan, accusing outlets like MSNBC and the New York Times of prioritizing "woke" narratives over banker bailouts or a shoeless child in Camden. Citing correct predictions on Hunter Biden's laptop and COVID lies, they argue that losing credibility through dishonesty naturally drives audiences toward their own platform. Ultimately, the hosts suggest traditional journalism has failed by demonizing citizens while ignoring institutional corruption. [Automatically generated summary]
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Diminished Political Capital00:14:31
Fill her up.
You are listening to the gas human.
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.
And of course, I am joined as always by Robbie the Fire Bernstein.
What's up, brother?
How you feeling?
Bridgeport weekend.
That's right.
We're literally, as soon as we're done recording this episode, I'm heading up to Bridgeport, Connecticut.
Me and Robbie, and of course, Chris Vega is also going to be with us this weekend.
Fun weekend full of shows.
Hope to see some of you guys out there.
ComicdaveSmith.com for the tickets.
And of course, RobbyTheFire.com for all of Rob's headlining stuff.
All right.
So we have, me and you haven't really talked since the results of New Hampshire.
Of course, as you guys well know by now, Donald Trump won New Hampshire, won it handily.
Good for the people of New Hampshire coming out and making sure Nikki Haley didn't win that thing.
South Carolina is next.
This is, of course, Nikki Haley's home state where she was governor.
She is down by 30 points in the polls.
And I don't think, I mean, going forward, Donald Trump, I'd have to check all of them again, but I think he has a double-digit lead, a large double-digit lead in every single primary.
So traditionally speaking, what would happen after New Hampshire is that, and I, you know, when I say traditionally speaking, it's been, it's pretty rare that there's ever been a primary where it's so one-sided.
I certainly can't remember any in my life.
But this would be the moment where Nikki Haley would drop out after New Hampshire, because what the hell is the point of sticking around just to get blown out and humiliated in your home state, right?
Like that just makes no sense.
But she's not.
And she vowed that she's staying in for a while.
And what's kind of interesting about that is it makes it makes it more plain and naked what the Nikki Haley play here is, which is simply just to stick around so that if Trump is removed, you can take the nomination somehow.
It's really, it really exposes what, you know, how like unscrupulous and cynical Nikki Haley is, that she's, it's very clear the Republican voting bloc has made very clear who they want as their nominee.
And she's like, well, I'm going to stick around just in case they allow me to steal it from him.
I think that's basically where we are.
She's got like 48 more victory speeches to go or 50.
I don't know.
How many more states do they have to go through?
It is pretty, I'll tell you, I kind of love it because just, look, I do think there's something important for all of the flaws of the new Republican populist movement in America, for all the flaws of MAGA and for all the flaws of Donald Trump, which there are many, which we've covered extensively on this show.
There is something where what Nikki Haley versus Donald Trump represents this kind of like a kind of fork in the road, almost the past versus the present.
It's, hey, do, do you want to reject Trumpism and return to Cheneyism?
Then here's Nikki Haley.
And if you're like, no, we still want to go down an America first path, then you would go with Donald Trump.
And I will say, it's nice to see that the Republican voters are at least rejecting a return to Dick Cheneyism, if nothing else, that they're pretty overwhelmingly like, no, we're not going back to that.
And God bless them for that.
And, you know, you got to take small victories where you can get them.
But there is something to me that's very positive about that.
And so with Nikki Haley staying in, I'd be lying if I said it isn't kind of great that she's just going to continuously be handed humiliating defeat after humiliating defeat.
That part I kind of like.
So let's keep, you know, make like whoever the next, you know, candidate who wants to run on the neocon platform, just let them know that it's going to be a process of national humiliation to do so.
So I think that's, that's something positive.
Well, I guess it'll be interesting if there's always major funding for that candidate, or if even the people who are trying to get those style candidates in realize that they have to maybe do a better job of lying, pretending like they don't want wars and they're not representing these policies and then 180 once they get people into office.
But I guess putting up traditional Republicans of the Bush and Cheney liking who will, you know, openly advocate for every single war, maybe that's just not all either Nikki Haley's really just doesn't have the cool factor or those policies are just never going to be likable again.
Yeah, well, it's certainly true that there will be no end of money for people who are running them.
But that's why I like personally, just for the candidate to know you're going to be humiliated.
Like, I think there's something, you know what I mean?
There's something.
I guess it's just a question of how good is that payday on the back end.
Yeah, right.
How much are you willing to humiliate yourself for that back end payday, which, you know, I suppose some people will do.
Yeah, you're, you're right, though, Rob.
I mean, it's, it's, uh, it seems that the Republican establishment, the kind of the remaining neocons in the Republican, you know, world, big donors, people like that, it does seem like they're a step behind where they haven't realized yet that you cannot run and win on this in today's Republican party.
It's just not going to happen.
And it doesn't matter how many of them you put up there who are all exactly the same, that's just not going to happen.
They do not want that vision.
They want this new kind of, you know, again, for all of its flaws, objectively superior to Cheneyism.
And that's what, that's what the Republican base wants overwhelmingly.
And so anyway, that's kind of where we are.
It was, it was interesting that, you know, after Iowa, DeSantis did drop out and did endorse Donald Trump.
It was kind of up in the air where he would go, whether he would make an endorsement at all if he dropped out, or even whether he would endorse Nikki Haley.
I mean, things got pretty tense between Donald Trump and the Sanctimonious on the campaign trail.
And so it's interesting.
And I think it kind of comes down to the fact that, look, there was just, it was DeSantis' only play to have any relevance going forward.
I mean, to have any relevance going forward, you can't have the overwhelming majority of the Republican voting base hate you.
And so the only way to do it is to get out and endorse Donald Trump and then let all of the other stuff, like his embarrassing campaign, kind of fade into, you know, the back of your memory rather than the front of it and hope that in another year, another two years, another three years from now, what's left in your memory is that he was the guy who fought COVID tyranny and not so much about that whole, you know, embarrassing thing where he wears weird boots that curve up with lifts in them, you know?
So he made his play.
I think Nikki Haley also, one of the other benefits of this is that if she's vowing to fight Donald Trump the whole time, well, then she's vowing to really make a permanent enemy out of Donald Trump because all that's going to happen now is that Donald Trump's just going to be like dominating her and she's refusing to leave.
And so he's going to have to keep trashing her for how she obviously should leave, right?
Like it's just so obvious you should drop out.
You have no path other than me being removed.
And so now I think the likelihood of Nikki Haley having any future position in Donald Trump's administration, if that ever is to be a thing, I think is diminished.
I could be wrong about that, but I think it's pretty likely diminished and will likely be more and more diminished as inevitably the shit talking just picks up more and more because that's what Donald Trump does.
He can't help himself.
If he's in a competition with somebody else, he's going to be trashing them.
That's in his DNA.
So anyway, I think all of that is more or less positive, better than it otherwise could be.
I'm mostly curious what ends up being the, I think you're betting on a more exciting election than I am.
And I can't say this is an absolute, but I think Donald Trump cuts whatever deal is necessary and they let him back in.
And I think that this whole thing was a charade of testing the waters on whether or not they could sell the American people on that Donald Trump was a criminal and can't be back in office.
And based on everything I've seen, I don't think that there's enough public support that they're actually going to initiate that plan.
And I think based off of the little bit of rhetoric I've seen of Trump basically sounding like he's not going to go after all the people that went after him, it sounds to me, I don't know if Nikki Haley can get a role in his government at this point, but I think it's going to be Trump 2.0 where they give him the list of people that they want to be in there.
He basically signs off on all of them, doesn't do anything, doesn't go back after people.
And it's just Trump 2.0.
Yeah, my gut tells me it's something different, but look, that is possible.
And it is something, you know, it's one of the major problems with Trumpism, the whole phenomenon of it is that, cause I, I argue with these guys all the time, but that they really are like to a man, every one of them, the Trump supporters, just bend over backwards to make excuses for just inexcusable things.
You know, like you just point out the list of people who, you know, someone, oh, who was it?
I think it was Ian from Tim Poole, who I like very much.
I believe it was him.
He, man, was it Ian?
No, maybe it was Luke.
I can't remember.
Anyway, but one of them tweeted out and they were like, here's my dream Trump cabinet.
And it was like a lot of fun.
You know, it was like Ron Paul is the Fed, you know, the head of the Federal Reserve.
And I can't remember the other ones, you know, but they were like Alex Jones as the press secretary.
Like you know, it was just like, but it was just like all these like you know cabinet positions, many of which were like, oh yeah, how great would that be if like, this guy was running that or whatever.
Um but, and I said to him, I was like I go yeah dude, this would be a lot of fun, but doesn't this just leave you furious at Donald Trump because you're like he could have done something like this?
I mean, forget that Alex Jones is like press secretary or whatever.
That's kind of just like a joke.
But like yeah, like a Ron Paul running the Federal Reserve or something you know, like he could have done things like that, why not you?
You, you won the presidency as an outsider, the first person in American history who's president of the United States Of America who didn't have any political or military experience.
You're an outsider businessman coming in saying this whole thing is a disaster, blasting both Bush and Obama.
So he was blasting the whole previous uh, 16 years before him saying this is, you know what I mean?
Both these administrations have been terrible.
So he could have come in and had all of this like political capital to be like yeah look, the American people rejected your whole thing.
That's why outsiders are coming in.
And instead, what did we get?
We got you know from the beginning, his vp was Mike Pence.
That's who he picked, Mike Pence.
You know, um Pompeo and um Mattis huh Bannon yeah, Bannon.
I guess what you could say is the one outsider kind of guy who he did bring in with him, but then he got rid of him right away and replaced him with the dude with the mustache.
Right well right, to have John Bolton in there listen, to have uh um, to have Ray, the guy who's leading the FBI prosecuting Donald Trump, or the right he's.
He's the guy who Donald Trump the, the FBI that's weaponized against Donald Trump.
He picked that guy.
And the list, the list goes on and on.
Now look, Nikki Haley was one of his appointments.
The just all over the place terrible, terrible picks um, and so you know you, when you look at this like oh look, how cool, this is what he could do, and i'll tell.
And so I said that.
And to a man you know, it's like every response from Trump supporters is like oh, i'm sorry, I guess you would have known everything.
Hindsight is 2020.
He got duped, they lied to him.
All this is all just like ridiculous.
I mean, first of all yeah, I would have known better at the time.
Yes sorry, because I like pay attention to what's going on.
This isn't anything to like.
The credit of me this is, anyone who knows anything should know that John Bolton shouldn't be your national security advisor.
Um, I mean whatever, unless you're running to be George W Bush, but otherwise then no um, but anyway.
And then a whole bunch of them too, you know they'll say they'll be like, now he knows, get ready for the second time around.
Weaponizing Nazi Suffering00:14:43
Now he knows not to pick those people and it's kind of like to the.
This is what you know.
Sparked me on this rant is like your point that, like I don't know, why is it?
Why am I supposed to just blindly believe that?
Oh, he knows, even though he's never exactly said that he knows, never made the point that this time i'm gonna a stack with all outsiders and I won't be putting any more of these swamp creatures in.
I'm just supposed to like believe that this time will be nothing like last time.
Now he knows.
It's like, why?
When did he figure it out exactly?
When did he learn?
Because his last year in the White House is when he kept Fauci as the face of the pandemic response.
It was his worst year by far.
It's not like he was getting better as time went on.
So what is it?
During the time he was out of office, he's figured it out.
He's learned his lesson.
It seems much more likely to me that if Donald Trump did get back in there, we're not going to see him elevate like great people into these positions that'll really like hold these institutions accountable.
It's much more likely to me that your scenario, that he just plays ball again like he did last time.
But I don't necessarily agree with you.
My gut still tells me that they are not taking any deal with Donald Trump and they're going to do whatever they can to remove him.
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You can always count on during this moment where Donald Trump is winning in the polls.
And obviously there's been some hysteria on all sides.
But now that it's been a while, more calm, rational voices are coming forward.
One of them is Joy Ann Reed over at MSNBC, who's just really handling this great.
Here is her response to Donald Trump's success in Iowa and New Hampshire.
Wielding actual political power will take him.
It's usually what we often, it will actually tame him, I should say.
It's actually what we often get wrong about fascism.
In describing the connections between interwar Europe and the present day U.S., scholar John Gantz writes, quote, we have this image in our heads of the fascist rise to power that comes from fascist propaganda, but it is much more political than that.
In a review of Gans' new book, In the American Prospect, Rick Perlstein also notes the crucial role of the, quote, responsible conservatives who made their peace with the strong man, believing he could be controlled.
Perlstein recalls Germany's vice chancellor, Franz von Papen, the architect of the 1933 coalition that made Adolf Hitler the chancellor.
When the people around Papen voiced their concerns about putting Hitler in power, Papen said, in two months, we'll have pushed Hitler so far into the corner that he'll squeal.
There's also the phenomenon of elites who become supplicants of the fascist leader, forgetting they ever had any concerns at all.
Remember what Lindsey Graham tweeted back in 2016 when Trump was still an outlier in the party?
I do.
Quote, if we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed and we will deserve it.
When Trump won the White House anyway, Graham got busy reducing himself to a MAGA footstool in the U.S. Senate.
Proximity to power will do that.
Like Trump, Hitler was also viewed as a clown, a goon who could be kept in line.
And then there are the accommodations that the media makes with autocracy.
In November 1922, the New York Times gave its readers their first glimpse of Hitler.
It was a profile of the fascist leader's early rise in Bavaria in Germany that got a key point very wrong, asserting that, quote, Hitler's anti-Semitism was not so violent or genuine as it sounded.
Before he rose to power, Hitler staged a coup known as the Beer Hall Putsch.
It was a coup that failed.
Sound familiar?
Hitler went to prison for it, but the failed coup set the stage for Nazi Germany.
And when he was freed from prison just over a year after the failed putsch, the Times offered this unfortunate and incorrect assessment that Hitler had been tamed by prison.
The next year, Mein Kampf was published.
So much of this sounds familiar.
And believe me, I wish it didn't.
The same thing happened with a lot of other autocrats.
The establishment thinks they can be controlled and poof, they're stuck with them.
The thought that these men could be tamed is what we're seeing right now in the presidential election year, where politicians, journalists, and voters speak of a dangerous person getting reigned in once back in power.
And those who are legitimately afraid of this outcome are being quiet about it.
Last week, the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland brought together.
All right.
So you really just, you can't believe that people like this are actually on television.
I mean, it's it's it's unlike it's just a whole segment of calling Trump Hitler with the loosest possible connections.
Like people said they could reign in Hitler.
People say they can reign in Trump.
Huh?
Sound familiar?
There you go.
He wrote a book.
He also wrote a book.
I mean, the warning signs are everywhere.
It's really, look, the thing that's the craziest about this is that like the thing that totally fails in her analogy is that Adolf Hitler, we know what he did once he got power, right?
Like he pretty immediately consolidated and then ruled until he died.
Trump was already president for four years.
It's like, how can they even play this?
Like, oh, this time he's really going genocidal, though, once he gets back in.
He won't be reined in.
I mean, look, obviously me and you have a lot of things that we would criticize Donald Trump for.
Probably we would criticize him that he was reigned in, essentially, when he was president.
And of course, you know, whatever, the list, we mentioned his appointments, the spending, the wars continuing.
And then, of course, 2020, he was just such a disaster through the whole goddamn thing.
Anyway, but none of that is what Joy Ann Reed has a problem with Donald Trump for.
She doesn't have a problem with high government spending.
She doesn't have a problem with the COVID protocols.
If anything, she probably thinks he didn't go far enough, right?
Like, so what, what is it really?
It's just like, what was it that was so disastrous that he deserves to be compared to Hitler from his last from his last four years as president?
Was the tax cuts?
Like, what is it that you hate?
Like, I'm not saying there aren't policies that she'd disagree with him about, but how can you elevate it to this level of seriously going like, yeah, I really do think we should be comparing Adolf Hitler and Donald Trump?
They're basically the same.
You remember how Hitler wanted to build a wall and not allow immigrants in?
That was his worst crime, right?
Like, what is this?
Now, I'll tell you, I find this, and maybe this is a weird thing that isn't exactly justifiable, but I kind of think it is.
But I find this shit to be way more offensive than any of like the Jew hating things that you might see on Twitter or something like that.
Like I.
I just find that I find this more offensive than being a holocaust denier.
I find this more offensive than like just saying you hate Jews or something like that, because this is actually like weaponizing, like the, the suffering of people under Nazi Germany in order to score cheap political points.
Does that make sense?
But it's like you're like using this like it's trying to evoke images of the holocaust to to get someone and you know it's complete bullshit.
Like you know, Donald Trump is not going genocidal when he gets into power, which is the obvious underlying like notion here.
Right, and so it's like you're just totally, in the most cynical way, using the suffering of real people to score a little, to play some little game.
And, by the way, if you really believed any of this, you remember I was remember that time when we got uh, protested in, uh, where is it?
In Rochester Rochester yeah, yeah.
And like I was joking around on stage.
There's like a little protest, like 15 people outside, you know, holding up signs saying we're Nazis or whatever.
And I was like saying, when I was on stage joking around about it, I was like well like, if you really believe i'm a Nazi here to spread hate speech or whatever.
Then like, rush the stage come, get me.
What are you doing outside, just holding up your little signs right like, if you, if are we, because if you really believe that, then you'd be justified in doing anything right.
And so like again, if Joyanne Reed really believes this, shouldn't she be advocating something a lot more than just like vote against him or something it's like the?
So you already, just by your actions, are admitting that you don't really believe any of this.
This is just a fun game for you.
This is just a fun.
This is something that you get to score some points with by say, that's like what Nazi, what Adolf Hitler means to you?
It's not like any like.
There's nothing like like profound and thoughtful about you really thinking about how evil this figure was and how many people suffered under him and how horrible the things that happened were.
It's none of that.
It's like a glib, cheap shot that you use against your opponents.
I find that to be like horrifically offensive for all the wokeys out there who love to get offended about everything.
It's like, well, what is this?
Trump is Hitler.
That's her opening, that's her takeaway.
After all these years, that's what we we've, after all the self-reflection, that's what she's come away with really is something.
Uh, this is kind of what I was talking about though, is that I think that this is the extent of the value of the court cases.
Is the ability of the mainstream media the same as the whole Russian asset storyline?
It was just their ability to go claim that he was a Russian asset.
They like these court cases because they can try and portray him as a criminal and it's.
It's one of the uh, it's.
It's a pretty nefarious trick that they pull, which is they kind of create their own evidence like, for example, I said that when we had gotten thrown off of uh, Facebook is that you know?
You could write an article about you and I now, hey, we were on such a offensive show we had to be removed from Facebook.
We were protested in Rochester right to my content.
Content strikes on youtube, and then you create your own evidence to ignore me reading the NEW YORK Times, you go, oh my god, these are dangerous individuals.
All those things were unjustified and false, but they create their own news about how dangerous you can be by their own ridiculous standards.
Yeah, like one of the things they do and uh, I forget the term they use for this, but Nancy Pelosi's talked about it before, but it's one of the things they'll do is that they're.
So if you're, let's say you're in intelligence or you could be in you know politics or whatever, but like.
Let's just say, for example like, if you're in intelligence right, so if you're in the CIA, You can call the NEW YORK Times and say, listen, I'm willing to give you some information under anonymity, right?
So you can't name me, but you see this every day in the New York Times.
There's some sources, say, sources within the intelligence community say, and that's just all they give you.
They don't have to give you their name.
So they'll give a hint to the New York Times, blah, blah, whatever.
Here's the story.
Sources are saying that Donald Trump is working with Vladimir Putin.
And then the New York Times runs a story and goes, intelligence agent experts say they believe Donald Trump is working with Vladimir Putin.
And then you can get up on TV and go, even the New York Times is saying there was just a story in the New York Times the other day that Donald Trump is working with that, but it was you who gave them the story.
And then you take the story as evidence that your assertion is actually true.
And then like, and then what'll happen is like, because the New York Times runs it, like seven other newspapers run this story.
And now you can sit there and go, there have been reports across the LA Times and the Washington Post and the New York Times and all this, but it all came from just you making something up and passing it to them.
So they're like kind of experts in this, but yeah, that's where they go like, you know, Adolf Hitler led a failed coup.
Sound familiar?
And it's like, no, actually it doesn't.
It's just that you keep claiming there was an insurrection.
This is just you guys made this a story.
No one else like no one organically decided, oh, yeah, we really think that was a coup attempt there.
It's so ridiculous.
Donald Trump was the commander in chief.
If he wanted to like try to do a coup, he would try to get the military on his side.
That's how you, that's how you overthrow a government.
You get the military to back you.
And you go, look, I'm your commander in chief and I'm telling you right now, here are my orders to you.
You go stop this, this vote.
Whatever.
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Journalism Is Not Dying00:15:35
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All right, let's get back on the show.
Anyway, there is that Joyann Reed segment was a great little, one more little, you know, that's what we've been doing on the show for so many years, but one more little drop of why the corporate press is failing so badly and why it is a dying animal.
But there was a just wonderful video that's going viral from Taylor Lorenz, who has really, look, I will say she punches above her weight in terms of how much hatred she gets because there are, you know, more relevant, awful people in the corporate media.
But she just embodies so much of what is hatable about the legacy, you know, corporate media.
The entitlement, the lack of self-reflection, the contempt for people who disagree with her, who she believes she's better than.
It's all just on such display.
And she's dumb enough to not be able to like guard that at all.
You know, like some of them are better at kind of, you know, like not making it so obvious, but she's just not bright.
So it's very obvious.
But anyway, she had this video.
It's going viral and it's really wonderful.
Let's play it.
The entire journalism industry is basically in a free fall.
Today, the Los Angeles Times laid off 115 employees.
They wiped out their entire DC bureau in an election year.
They laid off pretty much all of their sports teams.
They killed their entire tech and business section.
They laid off breaking news writers, social media editors.
The list goes on.
But what's really dark is this is just the latest in months and months and months of layoffs in the media industry.
In fact, tens of thousands of journalists have been laid off in the past year.
Major media companies like BuzzFeed News have completely shuttered their news operations.
Time magazine also just laid off a ton of people.
And oh, Sports Illustrated basically shut down last week.
Pretty much the entire digital media ecosystem that myself and a lot of other millennial journalists came up in has been completely hollowed out.
And it's not just digital media sites.
Pause it for a second.
I don't know.
When did we become so unserious of a country that she like, why is she using this like Valley girl voice that like it sounds like a like a 13 year old talking about shopping?
You know what I mean?
Like it's just this kind of like, if that weren't bad enough, also Sports Illustrated like totally doesn't even exist anymore.
And it's like, what is this?
What is what are you're a grown-up talking about grown-up things, right?
Anyways, she's just going over how bad it is that all these people are being laid off.
Let's keep, let's keep playing.
Been obliterated.
The newspaper industry is cratering.
Radio is essentially dead aside from NPR, which has been gutted.
Meanwhile, hundreds of workers at Condé NAS, the parent company of pretty much every major magazine from GQ to Vogue to The New Yorker to Vanity Fair are on strike because they're also facing impending layoffs.
Even mainstream national media outlets owned by billionaires like The Washington Post where I work and The Atlantic where I used to work have done layoffs.
If you're a young journalist today, there's almost no on-ramp to traditional journalism.
Even if you do get a job, journalists' salaries have been stagnant and even declined.
And by the way, we don't make that much to begin with.
I don't think people understand how bad the world would be without journalists.
And let me just preface this by saying for people that don't know my background, I did not go to journalism school.
I built my own audience on the internet.
I came from outside journalism and started as a blogger and then entered into legacy journalism, a system that I have been incredibly, incredibly critical of pretty much my entire career.
So I'm definitely not some mainstream media defender.
And I think the rise of citizen journalism on apps like TikTok, Instagram, and elsewhere has overwhelmingly been a positive thing.
The journalism industry is overrun with elite, underqualified, rich, entitled Nepo babies, okay?
And that part of it is terrible.
But that's not most journalists.
And the majority of journalists losing their jobs in situations like this are the working journalists that are doing these investigations of police brutality or investigating corporations or holding power to account or doing really thoughtful, brilliant cultural commentary.
I don't want to live in a world where all of the news is delivered through 60-second TikTok videos with retention editing.
And I think there's a ton of really talented journalists that are also just not great like social media people.
I think of some of my friends who are journalists who do really deep investigations or local reporting or sit through hour-long city council meetings to, you know, hold some local politician to account.
That's really important work and it's work that somebody should pay for.
And it's work that's not rewarded by these social media algorithms.
I would love if everyone could become independent journalists, but the economics are just not there.
It's really, really hard to amass a subscriber base and then retain that subscriber base over time when you're doing investigative work.
And that's if you don't get sued out of existence, by the way, after you publish the first critical story of a billionaire.
And I will admit, a lot of these traditional media companies have accelerated their own demise.
They ignored the internet for years.
They're condescending to content creators and people outside their mainstream ecosystem.
They constantly kowtow to corporate and political power.
They have these false and deluded notions of objectivity, which by the way doesn't exist.
And they push a lot of really racist, sexist, regressive crap.
But that's not even why a lot of them are going out of business.
A lot of them are going out of business fundamentally because the economics of the media ecosystem are broken.
Most news companies used to monetize by advertising, and those ad dollars have been completely subsumed by Facebook and Google and tech giants.
I don't really know where that leads us other than a pretty dire place where there's really no check on corporate and political power in this country.
I did write a lot about this in my book called Extremely Online, but I do think that journalism is something a lot of people won't realize they miss until it's gone.
All right.
So I just thought this was like delicious.
I don't know what.
So like she has some criticism for the corporate media.
It's that, you know, they're racist and sexist sometimes, even though, I mean, whatever, whatever the hell that means.
And she, of course, kind of contradicted herself there where she was like, too often they're not critical of power, but we can't lose them because then who would be critical of power?
The truth is that we're not losing journalism.
We're finally gaining it.
We're finally getting some of it.
And for her to sit here and say that, you know, what her thing was like, well, you know, you don't want everyone to get their news from TikTok or something like that.
And I understand, like, I'm not on TikTok.
I don't, I don't use it.
I understand a lot of young people do.
But it's kind of ignoring the other half of what's emerged, the other part of what's emerged, which is like long form shows on the internet that for whatever reason we still call podcasts.
I don't, I don't even know why the term, it's ridiculous that the term podcast still exists.
Like it, I think, started from the iPod and that's, but whatever.
But there's these shows on the internet that are hours long that go much more in depth on any of this stuff than you would get from anything in the corporate media, whether it's newspapers or cable news shows or network news shows that have little three minute segments on Israel, Gaza.
Let me give you the bullet points on this.
And now people can go listen to real in-depth conversations about all of this stuff.
But anyway, I think the bigger takeaway from all of this is that you would think it would be unavoidable that if you were, as Taylor Lorenz here is complaining about, that if you were in an industry that is catering, that is cratering, like just absolutely imploding, and you're seeing mass layoffs all over the place.
And like she even said, in an election year, in an election year, these news companies, a presidential election year, and these news companies have to lay off all these workers because there's just no money because people just aren't reading their stuff anymore.
It would be impossible to not ask yourself, like, okay, why is this?
You know, like, I mean, me and you are stand-up comedians.
And this is something that you come very in close contact with when you're a stand-up comedian from the time you first start.
And there's, we happen to do a job where there's, you kind of get immediate feedback on every step of the way.
Like you're kind of up there and you're like, I think this is funny.
And then the crowd goes, we agree, or we kind of agree.
We'll give you a six out of 10 on that.
You know, and then you say, I think this is funny.
And it's like, 10 out of 10, that was perfect.
I think this is funny.
I'm like, nothing.
We don't agree with you.
And when you're a young stand-up comic, you see this a lot.
Cause me and Rob, that's where, how we met.
And you're just doing sets every night.
Every night you're going to comedy clubs and you're doing multiple shows.
And you can.
You'll see people who like who bomb and blame the crowd.
You know, they'll come out and be like, ah, this crap fucking sucks or whatever, blah, blah.
And sometimes that's true.
Sometimes the case is that the crowd just sucked.
But let's say if you have a new joke that you think is really funny and it consistently does not get laughs, there is a certain point where you go, I got to retool this thing or I got to cut this thing or I got, you know what I mean?
Like it can't be that they are always wrong.
That can't be the answer.
Otherwise, you'll never get good at this.
And any comedian who ever got good at stand-up comedy always to some degree went through that process where they're kind of like, okay, I can't just like, you can't just be constantly blaming crowds.
If this isn't working, it's something I'm doing wrong.
And this is what's amazing about people like Taylor Lorentz, that in the face of your collapsing industry, which is guaranteed to be dead in the future, that you don't at all have any self-reflection.
Like, why is it we are getting like in the same way a comedian who bombs every single time they go on stage is getting a message from the audience, which is very clearly, you are not funny.
We don't find what you're doing funny.
The message that all of these mass layoffs should deliver is, we do not trust you.
We do not believe you're doing real journalism.
We think you are liars.
That's the message.
And it is literally like it's on the same level as a comedian who's never gotten a laugh going around being like, dude, I'm hilarious, but there's just, I've caught 100,000 really terrible crowds in a row who just all, they all think I'm not funny, but it's really funny what I'm doing.
It's on that level.
It's like you're just avoiding any self-reflection about what it is that you may have gotten wrong.
And what is it?
I mean, dude, Rob, give me just right now, say, and you don't have to think that deep or hard about it, but what were, if you had to say, from Trump's administration to today, what were the biggest stories, the biggest stories, if you rattle off some of them?
Well, COVID would be probably the big.
COVID.
There's the biggest.
What did the corporate press get wrong throughout COVID?
Everything.
Everything.
The whole thing.
They got the whole thing wrong.
The biggest story that's ever happened.
And they got it all wrong from.
And you can still, by the way, you want to talk about interesting and unearthing corruption.
There should be a deadly headline to prosecute Fauci.
Where's all the active journalism of how did we get this so wrong?
Why were government agencies giving us such wrong information?
By the way, when I say they got it all wrong, not even things that they'll deny now that they got wrong.
They'll admit, yeah, no, that was wrong.
Yeah.
Saying that the lab leak was a racist conspiracy theory, as the New York Times called it.
Yeah, none of them are saying that.
You could work backwards on every piece of information that was given to us now and be writing a daily story of, well, why?
Why were we told that this was going to prevent infection?
Where did that come from?
What department decided to make that determination?
Why was it repeated?
Why were we told that it wasn't out of a lab if so many, why were people forced out of their jobs?
Why did the head of the CDC have to leave his post because he thought that the lab leak theory had made sense?
Right.
And it's not just that they repeat the lies of powerful institutions or the or politicians.
It's that they repeat the lies and then demonize any of us who actually want to question them or actually want to point out that they're lies.
Like, do you remember?
And I can't remember.
It was like either MSNBC or CNN, I think, but where there was that one moment.
It was a great moment that came out of during, it was like the height of COVID craziness is 2020, I think in the summer.
And the journalist points at some random guy walking down the street and goes, look, this guy here isn't wearing a mask.
And the guy goes, your cameraman's not wearing a mask.
And then they actually got like cell phone video footage from behind it where it's like, it's true, her own cameraman was not wearing a mask.
But then she's sitting here in front of the camera and just, but like think about, just points at a random person whose crime was not wearing a mask outside.
Okay.
So there's no scientific argument ever that has ever even suggested that wearing masks, a cloth mask outside does anything other than just make you feel uncomfortable.
There's, do you know how many cases of COVID worldwide have been determined to be transferred from people outdoors not wearing a mask?
Zero.
Zero.
There's not one.
There's not a single one.
This is just not how the virus is transmitted, you know, which is basic common sense.
Anyway, but so that, but the point of that is that they just picked on the basis of complete pseudoscience, they just picked some random person, put them on national television.
You know, and I'm not saying it's, it's legal to film people outside or whatever, but I'm just saying like didn't get consent.
This person didn't ask to be on national television, but not only put them on national television, but put them on national television as look what an evil, irresponsible person, while their cameraman behind the camera is doing the same thing.
Corporate Media Narratives00:04:10
But they, to them, their viewer can't see that.
They could in this case because they got the cell phone video, but they can't see that.
So they're just like you're lying through your teeth on behalf of powerful people and demonizing regular people for the crime of just trying to live his life, just go about his day without this ridiculous fucking face diaper on and a beautiful summer day at that.
And so it's this type of stuff.
This is why you're so hated.
This is why there's so much contempt for people like you to the point that your institutions are failing.
They are collapsing.
And of course, you just happened to pick COVID, but pick any of the biggest stories.
I mean, look, like the story that Donald Trump, the sitting president, was in a conspiracy with a hostile foreign power and that Vladimir Putin had stolen the election.
I mean, this is a major story that you guys got completely wrong.
Of course, obviously the war in Iraq and stuff like this.
But I mean, if you just name, you name any of the biggest stories, I'll tell you where they got it all wrong.
How about Ukraine?
It's been telling us for the entire period of war that, number one, it was a completely unprovoked attack, which is obviously bullshit.
They've been telling us that Ukraine is winning at every phase, every single phase, telling us that Ukraine is doing great.
Russia's getting humiliated.
That's not at all what's happening.
And there's the war in Afghanistan, they did the same thing, kept telling us for years and years that, oh, we're winning in Afghanistan.
We're doing so good building up this army.
It's all lies.
And so like, yes, you guys have been busted lying about everything, all of the most important issues.
And then on top of it, they've, the corporate media has adopted this dumb, like woke narrative that people like Taylor Lorenz, you know, are made of, where it's like, our job is not to hold the powerful people accountable, but our job is to lecture. regular working white people about how horrible you are, how racist and sexist you are.
And that really, those are the victims that matter.
You know, and like what, what was her example of racism and sexism?
I don't know.
I didn't see it, but I already know what it is.
It's something that offends her upper middle class white sensibilities.
That's what it always comes down to be.
The whole woke thing is always just concerned with how upper middle class white women feel.
That's basically what it is.
And even if it's a minority in question, it's a minority who's an upper middle class white woman.
Does that make sense?
Like even if there's a woke black dude, that dude is an upper middle class white woman.
It's just pretty white chicks trying to control us.
Yeah.
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Self-Reflection on Offense00:12:36
I've mentioned this before, I think, but for whatever reason, I always, this is always the example that comes to my mind.
But it's like, have this whole conversation about like racism in America.
And that conversation is had every single day, everywhere on every fucking news outlet, every corporate news outlet, every college campus.
It's like all they're talking about.
So I used to, I used to do stand-up gigs in Philly with Jay Okerson a lot when I was a young comic.
He's from Philly and I was opening for him at the time.
And so we would drive to Philly and we would drive back like late night, maybe like two, three in the morning, and we'd we'd drive back to New York City.
And we used to drive through Camden, New Jersey, almost for the thrill of it, because it is like, it's, it's like a drive where you're like, you know, like if the car broke down right now, like we're dead, like we're going to die.
And the cops won't even come for us.
Like the cop, because the cops know how bad it is.
Cop cars aren't even allowed to stop in Camden, like without backup.
You're not allowed to just stop your cop car and get out.
It's too dangerous.
And it's crazy, dude.
You drive through Camden, New Jersey.
It's like, it's emotional to drive because there are just, there are these pockets of America that are third world countries, essentially.
You're like still in America, but you're not.
You're not in the America that me and you live in every day, where you're just not.
I mean, you're talking about like, if you pass like five, you know, like houses, there'll be like three of them are boarded up.
You'll see bullet holes in some of them.
Uh, and it's just, you know, like, it's like crazy, the wildest the hood you can imagine.
And I just remember all the time, it's like out of Dave Chappelle's joke, but there was like a three-year-old.
It's like three in the morning.
And there's this kid, maybe three, four years old.
And I just look over at the side and he's just standing there with no shoes on, out on the sidewalk, no adult around.
Just like this kid is just on his own.
And there's places like this all over the country.
You know, if you, if you ever take the Amtrak to Washington, D.C., keep, look out the window as you pass over Baltimore.
Look how bad some of those parts are.
And so like, if you want to talk about like racism or something like that, these abstract terms, like, okay, look, that area is black.
And that kid that I saw was black.
And this is a kid like who is totally fucked, you know?
And like, I don't know.
We could have a long, deep conversation about what is, what is it that's fucking over that kid.
I'm sure there's a lot of things we could point to.
I'm sure clearly he doesn't come from a great family.
You know what I mean?
Clearly, there is not like a sober mother and father who love him in his house.
He's alone on the sidewalk at, you know, 3 a.m. with no shoes on.
And I'm sure we could argue that the public schools have failed these areas and politicians have failed these areas and lots of different things.
We have lots of conversations.
But if you were going to say, if you were going to start a conversation and just be like, look, that kid, there's a lot of kids like that kid.
And this kid is so fucked.
And it's not his fault.
Like this kid didn't do anything to deserve this.
He's four.
You know what I mean?
Like he doesn't deserve this.
We have to help him somehow.
Like, okay, if that's the conversation, well, hey, that's a pretty reasonable starting point.
You know, this, when have you ever heard any woke progressive even talk about that?
Even get into anything resembling that?
Never.
What do they talk about?
Oh, someone was offended on a college campus.
Someone said something that offended somebody.
What?
This is, again, this is upper middle class white women.
And I don't care if they're a black dude.
You're a white woman.
Okay.
This is like, these are the values.
I don't want my feelings hurt.
Cultural appropriation.
That's what these dummies talk about.
All these issues that just don't matter at all.
Things that just doesn't matter.
Like you're just like not allowed to say, because like you have to kind of, and this is one of the things that I always try to do.
This is, but I get it from my hero.
It's all from Ron Paul because it was always like the example that he set was that you always talk about the most important things.
You always put the most emphasis on the most important things, you know?
And this is where the woke people fail.
This is where the anti-woke people fail.
This is what we were talking about when we were calling out that guy who was criticizing me on Twitter, where, you know, we were talking about in that episode, we were like, yes, dude, like dudes shouldn't be able to compete with girls for in swimming contests.
Okay.
I agree with you.
But believe it or not, there are things out there that are a lot more important than the dude swimming with the chicks.
Like banker bailouts are more important than the dude swimming with the chicks.
Wars are more important than that.
And this is like where people get their priorities just all wrong.
And sometimes the answer is as simple as just being like, oh, that doesn't matter that much.
That doesn't matter.
And I'm, you know, there's just a hierarchy of priorities.
And if you're like, oh, you know, someone at a college campus, a college student was offended by something that was said.
It's like, oh, yeah, that doesn't matter.
That's okay because it doesn't matter at all.
And if, you know, if you're, if your thing is like, oh, my feelings were hurt, it's like, oh, okay, cool.
That doesn't matter.
It just doesn't even register.
It's not even low on the hierarchy.
It's just not on there.
Doesn't matter at all.
So basically, the corporate press has gotten every major story wrong.
They've lied through their teeth to the American public as the American public has been raped and just totally abused by the ruling elite and the government class.
And then on top of that, you focus on all the issues that don't matter and make the enemy the American people.
Like regular people who are just, for the most part, just trying to like go to work so they can support their family and have a decent life and, you know, maybe have a little bit of fun on the weekends and raise their kids and have decent health care and send them to decent schools.
That's what most of them are just trying to do.
Then you're demonizing them because they've hurt your privileged feelings.
So that's why everybody hates you now and why you your industry is collapsing.
Anything to add, Rob?
Listening to this, kind of cool.
I got a media job.
Like I listen to all these corporations that are going under.
Like, I never could have worked there.
I never would have got a job there.
I never would have fit in there.
Never would have liked my talents, but we're beating all these people, which that fucking rules.
Yeah, there is something, there is something cool about it.
And of course, like, you know, obviously when I was like, just name some big stories and you went to COVID first, and that makes sense because it's such a big one.
But like, that is, you know, I remember me and you talking a lot about the during COVID, where it was like, look, man, you see like the long-term reaction to say like the war in Iraq.
It's, it's very profound.
And it's kind of like in the same way as we talk about how like printing money leads to inflation, but that happens a little bit in the future.
So it's when it happens, it's a, you know, it's not as easy for people to tie this to like, oh, we have really bad inflation in 2021.
Why do we have such bad inflation in 2021 and 2022?
Oh, yeah, in the year 2000, they printed $6 trillion out of thin air and put it into the economy.
Like, oh, okay.
Yeah.
Well, that's why the next couple of years you see prices rising.
But there's this thing where what like, what was the cost?
And I mean, like the social cost of the weapons of mass destruction and Saddam Hussein was in partnership with Osama bin Laden to pull off 9-11.
Those lies, what was the cost of that?
Well, it's hard to exactly connect the dots to cause and effect.
But if you look at, say, 10 years later, you're looking at like the rise of Trumpism, the rise of wokeism, the rise of like all of these forces and the beginning of the collapse of the corporate media.
And like, okay, part of that is because your lie was so transparent and it had such catastrophic effects.
And, you know, that very seriously degrades the people's trust in you.
But I remember talking about it during COVID where I was like, this is just so much bigger because this has upended everybody's life.
Like almost everybody has been affected in some way by this COVID insanity.
And when it comes out, as it inevitably will, that, you know, that they're lying to you about all this stuff, this is like, what is this going to do for the credibility of the corporate media going forward?
It's going to be devastating for them.
And like, to your point, that it's kind of like, oh, well, these guys are all going under.
We're doing better than ever.
Is one of the things I'm very proud of in this show.
And one of the things that's really cool about being in this space is that you like the more you're right about shit, the more kind of there's this wind at your back.
Like it keeps picking you up.
Like it's, it's like, I feel it.
I hear the feedback from people all the time that it's like, oh yeah, like Dave and Robbie got it all right through COVID.
And now all these people are having to admit that they were wrong through all of it, but they fucking got it all right.
Or they got it right on the war in Ukraine.
They got it right on, you know what I mean?
And like, it just, it's, um, we were over the years, and I'm not just trying to pat ourselves on the back here, but it is something I'm proud of, is that over the years on all of these major stories, like when there was a time when every single corporate news outlet was saying Trump-Russia collusion all day long.
And me and you were sitting on this show saying, this is all bullshit.
Donald Trump is not involved in a conspiracy with Vladimir Putin.
This is clearly a fucking ploy to overthrow him.
This is clearly an attempted coup by the deep state.
And today, and maybe they won't admit that it was an attempted, you know, coup by the deep state or whatever, but every single one of them admits that Donald Trump is not involved in a conspiracy with Vladimir Putin.
And likewise, like with all the every single, in real time, that week, me and you were sitting here going, this laptop is authentic.
This is Hunter Biden's laptop.
And they were like, oh, it's all Russian propaganda or whatever.
It's like, and now they'll all admit we were right about it and all the COVID stuff.
And now they'll all admit we were right about it.
But there is a benefit to being right about this stuff is that it just like it builds your credibility.
People who watch our show have to, they have to trust, like they don't have to believe everything we believe, but they have to trust that we're not lying to them.
And they have to trust that we get a lot of this shit right.
Otherwise, they stop listening to us.
There's no way to keep them listening, especially with us.
It's not like we are just put on TV and we just happen to you.
People have to keep coming to us to listen to our content or watch our content.
And so it's like, we are so much more aware of this stuff.
And so it's interesting when someone like Taylor Lorenz is like, oh my God, why are they firing all the journalists?
And you're like, oh, yeah, because you keep lying and getting everything wrong.
Don't you know that?
Don't you know that if you keep lying and get everything wrong, you lose your audience?
Did you guys forget that?
Your issue here is that people aren't forced to read your bullshit.
So you have to keep them one over and you've lost them.
So, you know, have some self-reflection about that.
That'd be my advice.
All right.
I got to go meet you up in Bridgeport.
Man, there's never been a less sexy line said ever.
I'll see your ass in Bridgeport.
Shit gets wild.
All right.
I'll see you in a few hours, Rob.
Thanks, everybody, for listening.
Hope to see some of you guys out at the Stress Factory in Bridgeport, Connecticut this weekend.
And yeah, check out Rob's other podcast, Run Your Mouth.