Part Of The Problem - Dave Smith - Tucker Talks To Putin
Aired: 2024-02-11
Duration: 59:32


=== Roll Back The State (01:51) ===

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[00:00:26]  You're listening to part of the problem on the Gas Digital Network.
[00:00:30]  Cheers your host, Dave Smith.
[00:00:33]  What's up, everybody?
[00:00:34]  Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
[00:00:36]  I am Dave Smith.
[00:00:37]  He is Robbie the Fire.
[00:00:38]  Bernstein, the king of the caulks, COVID Jesus.
[00:00:42]  What's up, brother?
[00:00:42]  How you feeling today?
[00:00:44]  I'm doing well, man.
[00:00:45]  Down Houston this weekend, back at the Seeker Group.
[00:00:47]  I love it.
[00:00:48]  That's right.
[00:00:48]  I haven't been there since Skank Fest, since 2021.
[00:00:54]  So yeah, very excited to go back.
[00:00:56]  Houston this Saturday, one night only.
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[00:01:04]  And then we got Zane's, Rosemont, Chicago, Key West, back in St. Louis, Nashville, a whole bunch of fun stuff coming up in the next few months.
[00:01:18]  And yeah, comicdave Smith.com for all the ticket links, RobbyTheFire.com for all of Rob's headlining shows.
[00:01:23]  I got Kansas City and Omaha coming up.
[00:01:26]  Ooh, look at that.
[00:01:27]  All right.
[00:01:28]  Well, what we all have coming up tonight, we're recording this earlier in the day.
[00:01:35]  And this evening, Tucker Carlson is interviewing Vladimir Putin.
[00:01:41]  The interview will probably be out by the time you're watching this episode, but I still think this episode is going to be relevant to kind of discuss a lot of the kind of what's going on here.

=== Tucker Carlson And Putin (07:39) ===

[00:01:51]  I'm thinking about how to think about this interview and how to frame it.
[00:01:55]  There's certainly a mass freak out from every inch of the establishment on trying to frame this thing before it starts quite desperately.
[00:02:07]  And it's beautiful to watch because it is so revealing.
[00:02:11]  Anyway, by the way, I am, this will probably all be out by the time you got, but I am doing Clint Russell's podcast later today after the speech.
[00:02:20]  So we'll do some reaction on that.
[00:02:22]  And then, of course, me and you, Rob, will I'm sure react to it on our next podcast.
[00:02:27]  Anyway, this is a huge deal.
[00:02:32]  And almost no matter what comes out of this interview, you know, going in, this is such a big deal.
[00:02:37]  And just to kind of put this in perspective, as I think, I try to hammer this home a lot because I think this is so big.
[00:02:45]  And I think it's easy in today's world to get so lost in the day-to-day that you lose sight of how important certain things are in the bigger picture.
[00:02:56]  And it's so because everything is so crazy.
[00:02:58]  Literally, earlier today, I was just looking up stuff to prepare for the show.
[00:03:03]  And I saw the big controversy of the day is that they're letting dudes box in Olympic women's boxing.
[00:03:11]  And you're just like, what?
[00:03:12]  Like, how is this so insane?
[00:03:14]  And everyone's freaking out about it.
[00:03:16]  And it's like, rightfully so.
[00:03:17]  Like, you know, but it's also like easy to lose sight of the big picture when every single day there's a new crazy thing.
[00:03:23]  So anyway, as I've said several times on the show before, Tucker Carlson.
[00:03:28]  By the way, that one's funny games until a lady actually dies.
[00:03:31]  Yeah.
[00:03:32]  Like, do you imagine if Mike Tyson tomorrow just declared himself, you know what?
[00:03:36]  I'm a lady, even at his current age, and then went back and boxed heavyweight women.
[00:03:41]  I mean, the knockout, cracked ribs.
[00:03:45]  Literally, people could die.
[00:03:47]  That sounds like the thing that breaks the entire storyline.
[00:03:51]  It's a whole different thing than dudes swimming with women.
[00:03:54]  You know what I mean?
[00:03:54]  It's just a, it's a whole different level.
[00:03:57]  Anyway.
[00:03:58]  Also, like, what's to prevent some guy who literally went to jail for beating his wife, leaving jail, throwing on a wig and go, finally, I get to hit women legally.
[00:04:06]  She goes, beating my wife, excuse me, we were competing.
[00:04:09]  We were just a couple of ladies competing in the privacy of our own home.
[00:04:13]  So anyway, though, back to Tucker Carlson.
[00:04:16]  As I've stressed before, I just don't think, I don't think you can overstate it or overappreciate what a big deal this is.
[00:04:24]  And this is not, again, this does not matter what your politics are.
[00:04:29]  This is just if you're trying to understand what's going on in our society today, that Tucker Carlson was the number one cable news host and got fired, went to the internet, and is now bigger than he's ever been.
[00:04:48]  However, you measure it.
[00:04:50]  You know, I know some people will, you know, ask about like the Twitter numbers and how legitimate they are, but no matter how you measure it, you're just measuring how many times bigger he is than he was at Fox News now.
[00:05:04]  There's no way.
[00:05:04]  And by the way, not even on his official thing, but every single episode is posted over on YouTube.
[00:05:13]  And I've seen episodes, they all are in the hundreds of thousands.
[00:05:17]  Some of them cross into the millions.
[00:05:19]  So just add that on top of what his numbers are doing on Twitter.
[00:05:23]  It's there's no way that it's not many times bigger than what he was on Fox News.
[00:05:28]  And that is a really big deal.
[00:05:32]  Again, you could be liberal or conservative or libertarian or like whatever.
[00:05:37]  That's just a huge change in the way people get information in the very recent past.
[00:05:46]  Again, the example I use, Bill O'Reilly, who was what Tucker Carlson was, he was the 8 p.m. hour and the ratings leader in cable news.
[00:05:54]  He got fired and essentially disappeared from the national conversation.
[00:06:00]  I know he still has a show somewhere, but he's not at all moving the needle the way he was.
[00:06:05]  Tucker Carlson is still the biggest needle mover in American politics, much more so than he was at Fox News.
[00:06:12]  And that's pretty good.
[00:06:13]  The guy still, he sunk the presidential campaign of the former vice president by grilling him on Ukraine.
[00:06:21]  And of course, anyway, now he's landed this interview with Vladimir Putin.
[00:06:26]  And this is the first Western journalist who's gotten an interview with Vladimir Putin since this war has been going on, which that in itself really just tells you what a failure the entire establishment press is, is that we've been in this war now for over two years.
[00:06:45]  Nobody's even spoken to the guy.
[00:06:48]  So it's really...
[00:06:48]  People like ratings over there.
[00:06:50]  Right.
[00:06:50]  That's another point that we hit home a lot is ratings are really not what drives them.
[00:06:56]  Anyway, the freak out of all of this has been something.
[00:07:01]  It's been such a great spectacle.
[00:07:02]  And particularly because it's all happening before the interviews even aired.
[00:07:08]  So none of them even know what they're reacting to.
[00:07:11]  They're just reacting to the idea that the interview is happening, which is already great.
[00:07:16]  So here, let's play a little just to get a little taste of the corporate press reaction to this interview.
[00:07:25]  Am I allowed to say his name?
[00:07:26]  Yes, yes.
[00:07:26]  I'm just his name is Tucker Carlson, and he is the only American journalist who has been able to interview Putin since the invasion in 2022.
[00:07:36]  Tucker Carlson is not a journalist, not even close.
[00:07:40]  He kind of just walks right into Moscow and presents himself on a silver platter to the Kremlin, doing the Kremlin's job of misinforming, disinforming the American population.
[00:07:53]  His explanation of why he's doing it, that he's a journalist and he needs to inform people.
[00:07:57]  He can call himself whatever he wants.
[00:07:59]  I think his work is demonstrable as not being just about giving people information.
[00:08:04]  He has a point of view, and often it's not aligned with the facts.
[00:08:08]  Putin talks to an American friend, the Russian president turning to right-wing conspiracy theorist Tucker Carlson.
[00:08:14]  And it comes as Kremlin propagandist Tucker Carlson, a leading voice of the right-wing disinformation campaign, is in Moscow.
[00:08:21]  Ironically, he is there in the name of keeping Americans informed.
[00:08:25]  Sitting down for an interview with Vladimir Putin.
[00:08:28]  Tucker Carlson is neither a journalist nor a reporter, but he has played one on TV.
[00:08:34]  Tucker Carlson still doesn't have a job.
[00:08:36]  He's in Moscow house hunting, I hope.
[00:08:39]  But no, actually, Tucker is there to interview Vladimir Putin, which is so overtly ridiculous.
[00:08:45]  Tucker Carlson interviewing Vladimir Putin may not mean much to you, but for Trump, this is like watching OnlyFans.
[00:08:54]  This is insane.
[00:08:56]  You've seen sharp relief a Republican Party that is now doing Vladimir Putin's bidding.
[00:09:02]  Donald Trump always did.
[00:09:04]  And somebody that we know, that we used to know, going over, doing Vladimir Putin's bidding.
[00:09:11]  It was striking again yesterday to see Republicans across the board.
[00:09:16]  And maybe some of them are doing Vladimir Putin's bidding, but really they're doing Donald Trump's bidding, which is Vladimir Putin's bidding.
[00:09:24]  There you go.
[00:09:25]  Poison that well.
[00:09:29]  Russian talking points have been incredibly accurate.

=== Republicans Doing Putin's Bidding (07:30) ===

[00:09:31]  So sometimes if you want to stay informed, you got to go direct to the source.
[00:09:35]  Yeah, really?
[00:09:36]  Well, look, I mean, here's what's going on here.
[00:09:39]  And I just think this is obvious to anyone who's paying attention, but what's going on here?
[00:09:45]  First of all, they're saying that Tucker Carlson is doing Russia's bidding.
[00:09:53]  Again, they haven't seen the interview yet.
[00:09:55]  It's all just, you know, they're freaking out and trying to, they're trying to preemptively get you to dismiss whatever you might hear in this interview.
[00:10:06]  So why is it always, and you know, look, when you play these like kind of montages, it becomes kind of obvious.
[00:10:12]  But why do they all use the exact same phrases?
[00:10:17]  Why do they all use the exact same?
[00:10:19]  Do you remember when Joe Rogan took ivermectin?
[00:10:23]  What was it?
[00:10:24]  It was horses.
[00:10:26]  Horse medicine.
[00:10:27]  Now, ivermectin is, I think it was Michael Malice who made this point.
[00:10:30]  It was an excellent point.
[00:10:31]  Ivermectin is used on tons of animals as well as human beings for lots of different things.
[00:10:37]  It's been administered to like a billion, a billion times to people.
[00:10:40]  It's, you know, it's one like, I think it won a prize for how safe a medicine it is.
[00:10:46]  Why did they all pick horse?
[00:10:49]  They saw Stormy Daniels using it?
[00:10:51]  Yeah.
[00:10:52]  Well, that's one explanation.
[00:10:54]  But it's clearly, this is a tactic that they have, is that they say the same thing over and over again.
[00:11:01]  And you cannot deviate from the exact verbiage.
[00:11:04]  You have to say it the exact same way.
[00:11:06]  And then it has this effect on people who very casually pay attention to the news, which let's keep in mind, far outnumber those of us who very intensely pay attention to what's going on.
[00:11:19]  And that's not a knock on them.
[00:11:20]  That's just people have other things in their lives that they have to do.
[00:11:22]  But anyone who casually sees it just hears that message over and over again.
[00:11:28]  And so they're in their mind, it's just kind of like, yeah, everybody's saying this.
[00:11:31]  But what are they repeating over and over again?
[00:11:33]  He's not a journalist.
[00:11:35]  You got that?
[00:11:37]  Not a journalist.
[00:11:38]  That's what you're hearing from, whatever he's breaking, that can't be news.
[00:11:42]  Whatever this story is, that can't be news.
[00:11:44]  And what does this mean to be a journalist?
[00:11:48]  It's like, by the way, it's very similar to our field of being a stand-up comic.
[00:11:53]  What does it mean if you say someone's not a stand-up comic?
[00:11:56]  It was like, I don't know, are they getting on stage and telling jokes?
[00:12:00]  Then they're a stand-up comic.
[00:12:02]  There's no other definition here except that.
[00:12:05]  And is Tucker Carlson a journalist as much as any of the people who just said he wasn't?
[00:12:10]  Sure.
[00:12:11]  What type of, it's not like they're offering any objective standard, but they're trying to poison the well to make sure you just dismiss whatever you might hear on this.
[00:12:21]  Do not take this as anything newsworthy.
[00:12:25]  And why is it that they must do that?
[00:12:28]  Well, let's run a few, you know, let's like run a few examples and see how much whether they pass the test or not.
[00:12:38]  So what they'll tell you is it's that he's spreading misinformation, right?
[00:12:45]  But is that really what motivates the corporate press?
[00:12:47]  Are they really so concerned that you might hear lies?
[00:12:51]  You might hear information that turns out not to be true.
[00:12:56]  That's a pretty tough sell.
[00:12:57]  I think for most people paying attention, it's a pretty tough sell.
[00:13:00]  Let's just say after the last three years, four years, it's a pretty tough sell that MSNBC and CNN are just so concerned that you might get bad information.
[00:13:11]  They've really had no problem giving out bad information over the last few years.
[00:13:16]  We could list them off.
[00:13:17]  I'm sure every single person listening or watching this episode can just rattled off five in their own head, blatant lies that have been told by the corporate press.
[00:13:25]  So obviously that's not it.
[00:13:27]  It's like you go, so what's really going on here?
[00:13:30]  And it's certainly not that what Vladimir Putin is going to tell, like obviously, by definition, whatever Vladimir Putin's going to say is going to be propaganda, right?
[00:13:45]  It's he's a head of state.
[00:13:48]  He's not there to just tell the truth.
[00:13:49]  He's there to get his side out.
[00:13:53]  But the real issue, the real reason why these people are all freaking out is because this entire war has been sold on lies.
[00:14:05]  That's it.
[00:14:07]  Everything, every inch of the war in Ukraine has been a lie.
[00:14:13]  And from the history of the conflict to what led to this current war, to what forces provoked Vladimir Putin into invading Ukraine to everything.
[00:14:23]  It's all to the ghost of Kiev, to the, you know what I mean?
[00:14:27]  Like every detail to Ukraine is winning, as we were assured all along that the money going there is working out, that Ukraine is a democracy, that Vladimir Putin, that I'm sorry, that Zelensky somehow is on the side of freedom as he conscripts an army and locks up journalists and suspends elections.
[00:14:47]  That's the savior of freedom and, you know, democracy.
[00:14:53]  Every inch of this has been a lie.
[00:14:55]  And they're still lying to get this latest weapons package in there.
[00:15:01]  And they desperately don't want you to hear from the other person.
[00:15:04]  You know, it does, it does remind me of what happened just a couple months ago when a bunch of lefty TikTokers or whatever stumbled upon Osama bin Laden's letter to America.
[00:15:20]  And why is it that there was such a freak out of that and that the Guardian took the letter down and then they were like, they banned the hashtag on TikTok and there was all this effort to censor it.
[00:15:32]  And why is that?
[00:15:34]  Well, it's not that Osama bin Laden isn't a propagandist also.
[00:15:40]  And it's not that Osama bin Laden's a good guy or even that he's right about everything.
[00:15:45]  But the reason why they don't want you to hear that and the reason why it's so important for Americans to read that is because within his jihadist Islamist rantings, he does have some very legitimate grievances.
[00:16:03]  And if you're maintaining, let's say a lie to the American people, like they hate us for our freedom.
[00:16:10]  And that's why they come over and attack us because we're so rich and so free.
[00:16:14]  And like our women are allowed to read books and stuff.
[00:16:18]  If you're trying to keep up that lie, well, then you don't want people to hear Osama bin Laden saying very blatantly, very clearly, which is in the letter, he goes, if you're wondering why we attack you, it's because you attack us.
[00:16:34]  And then going through the lists of ways that we attack them.
[00:16:38]  Because then you go, oh, now the conclusion of a reasonable person doesn't have to be, therefore I think Osama bin Laden's a good guy, but it might be, oh yeah, maybe we should stop bombing Muslim kids because that is one of the, you know, like maybe we shouldn't have our bases in Saudi Arabia.
[00:16:56]  Maybe we shouldn't be unconditionally supporting Israel.

=== Unprovoked War Lies (15:06) ===

[00:17:02]  Maybe, you know what I mean?
[00:17:03]  Like it just, it brings up that you're like, oh, there are legitimate grievances.
[00:17:08]  And for the past couple of years, the entire media, in the same sense that I said, they always repeat the same thing.
[00:17:15]  What's the same thing they always repeat about the war in Ukraine?
[00:17:19]  Unprovoked.
[00:17:20]  It's the word every single one of them says over and over and over again.
[00:17:25]  Unprovoked, unprovoked, unprovoked.
[00:17:28]  As if that's it.
[00:17:29]  You know, like that's your, the only way you're allowed to think of this conflict is like Putin's a madman, which a lot of them were trying to blatantly imply at the beginning of the war, that he's lost his mind, that he wants to reconstitute the Soviet Union, that he wants to steal natural resources from Ukraine.
[00:17:47]  Like, oh, just that he's crazy and evil.
[00:17:50]  And so without being provoked at all, he launched this awful war.
[00:17:56]  And they don't want you to hear his grievances, which he stated over and over and over again in the run-up to the war.
[00:18:06]  And that's what they're concerned about, that you might hear this interview and go, he does have a point on that.
[00:18:14]  And I don't think this was completely unprovoked.
[00:18:16]  And actually, yeah, that's not that crazy that like, oh, he was telling us over and over and over again that he has real security concerns.
[00:18:26]  And actually, if you look at it, you could see where he does.
[00:18:29]  That's what they don't want you to hear.
[00:18:31]  All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is sheathunderwear.com, the underwear of legends, the only underwear that I own.
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[00:19:24]  All right, let's get back into the show.
[00:19:26]  The other thing they don't want you to hear is his assessment of the United States of America.
[00:19:34]  And look, this is something that's been going on for a very long time, but particularly with Russia and the United States of America.
[00:19:43]  But look, like Joseph Stalin used to love to use segregation and racial tensions in America as propaganda against Americans.
[00:19:57]  Like he would talk about how awful segregation is, how awful America is to black Americans, how bad they're getting treated in the deep south and all this stuff.
[00:20:05]  Now, obviously, this is Joseph Stalin.
[00:20:08]  So it's pretty easy to look at it and be like, yeah, what a hypocrite you are that you're complaining about people not being treated right, you know, like you're presiding over the gulags.
[00:20:18]  But doesn't mean he didn't have a point about that.
[00:20:22]  Doesn't mean that segregation wasn't pretty messed up, you know?
[00:20:25]  And what Vladimir Putin is able to do in the same way the West is able to point at all the terrible things that he does is what Vladimir Putin will be able to do is to point out what's really going on in the American system.
[00:20:38]  And likewise, you know, it's, is he a hypocrite for saying some of this stuff?
[00:20:43]  Probably.
[00:20:43]  Is he a good guy?
[00:20:45]  No, that's not the takeaway.
[00:20:47]  But the takeaway might be, oh, yeah, he's making some good points.
[00:20:50]  And for those of us who have, like, I've listened to or read many of Putin's speeches over the years, this is the type of thing that you can expect that he's going to do.
[00:21:01]  Like right away, one of the things I guarantee he talks about in the interview, and this is being recorded before it.
[00:21:08]  So if this comes out looking good, just know Rob and Brian, they can swear to God under oath that this was recorded before the interview.
[00:21:14]  But one of the things I guarantee he's going to point out is that when you're dealing with America, it doesn't really matter who the president is because they're not really the ones running the show and that the American regime has nothing to do with who the people vote for.
[00:21:28]  I've got to deal with the, you know, forever government of America, the real shadow government and their agenda, which is what always ends up happening.
[00:21:38]  So that's one of the things, but there's going to be several things like that.
[00:21:41]  And I guarantee the talk of NATO expansion, the talk of Ukrainian entry to NATO and NATO slash U.S. intervention in Ukraine prior to the war is going to be a topic that comes up.
[00:21:58]  And that's something that you're just absolutely not allowed to talk about in the American corporate press, because as soon as you do, then the unprovoked narrative falls apart.
[00:22:08]  So that's really what's going on here.
[00:22:12]  It's so interesting.
[00:22:12]  You're basically just listening to them trying trash the competition, which of course, yeah, they don't want you going to other places for information.
[00:22:19]  And essentially, what they do now is they go, they're just kind of keeping you within their brainwashed bubble.
[00:22:28]  That's the way I would say it.
[00:22:29]  So they go, hey, here's our spin on what's about to happen so that you don't have to pay attention to it or think critically.
[00:22:35]  Just keep listening to us.
[00:22:37]  All other information is worthless.
[00:22:38]  Don't even consider this other thing.
[00:22:40]  It's just propaganda.
[00:22:42]  This other guy who's extremely popular on Twitter, he only exists because he wants to express Russian talking points.
[00:22:49]  And all these America first people that love him just want to hear the Russian talking points.
[00:22:54]  But they don't want you to think critically.
[00:22:56]  They just go, hey, stay glued to us and we'll let you know why you don't have to actually think about any of this.
[00:23:01]  Yeah.
[00:23:01]  I mean, that's essentially it.
[00:23:03]  On that note, let's check in with Hillary Clinton, who weighed in recently on Tucker Carlson's trip to Russia.
[00:23:10]  Carlson is in Moscow right now interviewing Vladimir Putin, right?
[00:23:15]  The first American, I'll say, journalist to interview Putin since the war in Ukraine began.
[00:23:21]  What does that tell you about Tucker Carlson and right-wing media and also Vladimir Putin?
[00:23:27]  By the way, if you just pause it right here, here, bring it back a little bit.
[00:23:30]  I just want to expose this Alex Wagner lady for a little bit because I've watched her enough over the years.
[00:23:36]  And by the way, it's just the lowest, like, it's like high school girl level tactics, but this is what she does.
[00:23:46]  Literally, if you ever watch her in anything, this is what she does.
[00:23:50]  I hate the term gaslighting.
[00:23:52]  I just hate that term.
[00:23:53]  I don't like using terms that are for younger people than me.
[00:23:55]  That wasn't a term we used to use in my day.
[00:23:58]  But there's kind of no better term to describe it than this.
[00:24:01]  It's just she constantly like. smiles or laughs to herself about how ridiculous the other side is.
[00:24:11]  It's like a mean girls like technique.
[00:24:14]  Like it's not made for adults who are trying to have a rational conversation, but like if you're trying to bully a 14 year old girl and keep her out of the like cool girls table, I guess is what you do.
[00:24:24]  But just watch this.
[00:24:25]  Just bring it back to the beginning.
[00:24:26]  This is what she always does every single time.
[00:24:28]  Always like a fake smile as if something was funny, just to dismiss the other side.
[00:24:33]  Just notice that.
[00:24:34]  Carlson is in Moscow right now interviewing Vladimir Putin, right?
[00:24:39]  The first American, I'll say, journalist to interview Putin since the war in Ukraine began.
[00:24:45]  What does that tell you about Tucker Carlson and right-wing media and also Vladimir Putin?
[00:24:50]  Do you see the pretend laugh?
[00:24:52]  And the little eye roll.
[00:24:54]  Yeah, the little eye roll, the smile, the pretend laugh.
[00:24:56]  Like, you didn't say anything funny.
[00:24:58]  You're just like, what does that tell you about the...
[00:25:00]  Okay, anyway.
[00:25:01]  You think you could sit at our table at party?
[00:25:05]  You aren't that bell with those pants.
[00:25:08]  Okay, it's that.
[00:25:10]  Anyway, let's keep playing.
[00:25:11]  But I think we've all known he's what's called a useful idiot.
[00:25:14]  I mean, if you actually read translations of what's being said on Russian media, they make fun of him.
[00:25:21]  I mean, he's like a puppy dog.
[00:25:22]  You know, he somehow is, after having been fired from so many outlets in the United States, he I would not be surprised if he emerges with a contract with a Russian outlet because he is a useful idiot.
[00:25:36]  He says things that are not true.
[00:25:38]  He parrots Vladimir Putin's pack of lies about Ukraine.
[00:25:43]  So just pause it right here already.
[00:25:45]  So if you just notice, right?
[00:25:46]  Like, this is all you got to do to see through this shit, is that it's all, it's all of it.
[00:25:53]  What is it?
[00:25:54]  He's a useful idiot.
[00:25:57]  I wouldn't be surprised if he ended up with a deal on Russian TV.
[00:26:01]  He's been fired from all of these different American outlets.
[00:26:04]  You know, this doesn't mention other things in there.
[00:26:06]  Like he was the number one show who got fired and is now bigger.
[00:26:11]  You know, that's a whole, that's a different way to look at it.
[00:26:14]  But again, then she says he traffics in Russian propaganda even when it's lies.
[00:26:21]  He regurgitates Putin's lies.
[00:26:24]  Here's how you'd have an adult conversation.
[00:26:26]  Name one.
[00:26:29]  Give me an example, but she's not going to give you an example.
[00:26:31]  She's having it.
[00:26:32]  There's nothing she can point to and say, oh, this was a lie.
[00:26:36]  So it's just always this kind of, which believe me, this is what I get all the time since the war in Ukraine broke out.
[00:26:41]  So you're a Putin apologist.
[00:26:44]  You're spewing Russian propaganda.
[00:26:46]  Like, okay, well, what did I say that was wrong?
[00:26:49]  Give me that.
[00:26:52]  You know, I don't get that so much.
[00:26:54]  So anyway, that's all this stuff.
[00:26:56]  Just poisoning the well, training you.
[00:26:59]  Don't listen to this.
[00:27:01]  Dismiss it before you hear it.
[00:27:03]  All right, let's keep playing.
[00:27:06]  I don't see why Putin wouldn't give him an interview because through him, he can continue to lie about what his objectives are in Ukraine and what he expects to see happen.
[00:27:21]  It's really quite sad that not just somebody like Tucker Carlson, who has, as I said, been fired so many times because he seems unable to correlate his reporting with the truth.
[00:27:36]  But also because it's a sign that there are because we all, by the way, just pause it there.
[00:27:42]  That's why Tucker Carlson's been fired.
[00:27:44]  That's why he's been fired so many times, because he's unable to correlate his reporting with the truth.
[00:27:50]  And we all know, Rob, that's how it works in cable news.
[00:27:53]  You know, you say something that's not, that doesn't correlate with the truth, you get fired, dude.
[00:27:57]  That's how it works.
[00:27:58]  That's why every single, every single person who repeated that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, they all got fired.
[00:28:06]  Because sorry, that reporting didn't correlate with the truth.
[00:28:08]  And there's one thing cable news won't stand for.
[00:28:11]  It's reporting that doesn't correlate with the truth.
[00:28:14]  Everybody who said you get the vaccine and you won't be able to get COVID and you won't be able to transmit COVID, they all got fired.
[00:28:21]  Every one of them.
[00:28:21]  They're gone.
[00:28:22]  You haven't heard from Rachel Maddow in years, you know?
[00:28:25]  Because if your reporting doesn't correlate with the truth, you'll get fired.
[00:28:29]  Oh, wait.
[00:28:30]  All of those people still have jobs and have been given promotions because that's totally not it at all.
[00:28:36]  Anyone paying attention knows that's not what gets you fired.
[00:28:39]  No, Tucker Carlson's reporting didn't correlate with what the establishment wants.
[00:28:46]  Tucker Carlson was right about so many things that the entire corporate press got wrong.
[00:28:52]  And by the way, those things were the biggest stories of the last five, six years.
[00:28:57]  The biggest stories.
[00:28:58]  He was blowing up the bullshit about Assad gas attacks, the bullshit about Trump being involved in a conspiracy with the Russians, the bullshit about lockdowns, the bullshit about the vaccine, all of that stuff.
[00:29:11]  And he got fired for being right, not for being wrong.
[00:29:15]  Anyway, let's keep playing.
[00:29:19]  It's a sign that there are people in this country right now who are like a fifth column for Vladimir Putin.
[00:29:26]  And why?
[00:29:27]  I don't know.
[00:29:28]  I mean, why are certain Republicans throwing their lot in?
[00:29:32]  Why are, you know, other Americans basically believing Putin?
[00:29:37]  Why did Trump believe Putin more than our 11 intelligence agencies?
[00:29:42]  I don't know.
[00:29:42]  Do you have a working theory?
[00:29:45]  Okay, and then you see it right there.
[00:29:46]  So you see what Alex Wagner does, right?
[00:29:50]  She's alluding to Trump Russiagate.
[00:29:53]  She's alluding.
[00:29:54]  Yeah, why would he be?
[00:29:54]  Ooh, do you have a working theory why he would agree with Vladimir Putin?
[00:29:58]  No, spell it out for me, Alex.
[00:30:00]  Are you still hanging on to that debunked nonsense that Vladimir Putin stole the election from Hillary Clinton and installed Donald Trump because they were involved in a conspiracy?
[00:30:10]  Because after spending tens of millions of dollars on a special prosecutor, he came up with nothing, nothing indicating that.
[00:30:18]  And since then, all of the origins of Trump-Russia collusion hoax have come out.
[00:30:24]  And where did they start?
[00:30:25]  They started with the woman you were interviewing.
[00:30:28]  And then it went to the intelligence agencies.
[00:30:31]  But see how they just kind of allude to that?
[00:30:33]  Well, hey, I got a working theory on why Donald Trump trusted Vladimir Putin over the intelligence agencies because the intelligence agencies were lying and they were in the middle of trying to unseat him, according to themselves.
[00:30:49]  Again, Andrew McCabe on 60 Minutes said that they all considered invoking the 25th Amendment to remove Donald Trump.
[00:30:57]  And Vladimir Putin told him he didn't interfere in the 2016 election.
[00:31:01]  By the way, just to be clear, there has still been no evidence presented that Vladimir Putin interfered in the 2016 election.
[00:31:09]  Maybe that's what, you know, when Hillary Clinton asks, you know, why are there so many people in America who believe Vladimir Putin?
[00:31:18]  Well, it's not that we believe Vladimir Putin.
[00:31:21]  I don't trust anything Vladimir Putin says.
[00:31:24]  I'm telling you, I don't believe you because you are a liar and you lie about everything.
[00:31:32]  And why did Donald Trump not believe his own intelligence agencies?
[00:31:36]  Because they were lying to him as they lie to all of us.
[00:31:40]  There is no more reasonable position that you can have in American politics today.
[00:31:49]  The most reasonable position is that you don't believe any of these people.
[00:31:54]  Is there any more reasonable position to have in American politics than I don't trust the CIA?
[00:32:03]  I don't take them at face value and assume everything they say is the truth.

=== Don't Trust The CIA (07:38) ===

[00:32:09]  Is it it's hard for you to understand?
[00:32:12]  And the idea that like a whole bunch of people in America just believe whatever Vladimir Putin says, that's not true.
[00:32:21]  None of us do.
[00:32:23]  We all recognize that he is what he is.
[00:32:26]  He is the head of state of Russia.
[00:32:29]  Of course he'll lie if it's in his interest too, but so will you.
[00:32:34]  And you guys have lied about this entire war.
[00:32:37]  And it's done nothing except cost America hundreds of billions of dollars and get a whole bunch of Ukrainians killed and make the risk for a wider war that much more possible.
[00:32:48]  This show is sponsored by BetterHelp.
[00:32:51]  If you are considering starting therapy, let me just say you should do it.
[00:32:56]  If you're thinking about it, then that means you should do it.
[00:32:59]  I personally have benefited from therapy in the past.
[00:33:02]  I know lots of people who have too.
[00:33:04]  So if you're facing some tough choices in life and the path forward isn't exactly obvious, go think about starting therapy.
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[00:33:56]  All right, let's get back into the show.
[00:33:58]  All right, let's keep playing.
[00:34:00]  But it's more than just the political partisan advantage.
[00:34:04]  There is a yearning for leaders who can kill and imprison their opponents, destroy the press, lead a life that is one of impunity, unbound by any laws.
[00:34:21]  There's a yearning among certain people in our country for that kind of leadership.
[00:34:27]  And I find that absolutely gobsmacking, terrifying.
[00:34:32]  There you go.
[00:34:33]  Hillary Clinton is very concerned that other people have a yearning for power.
[00:34:38]  That's the real problem that Hillary Clinton sees amongst Americans, is that they have this yearning for power without consequences.
[00:34:49]  And how many people have we seen running for president in this country that have been threatened with jail?
[00:34:55]  Because in my lifetime, there's one, and it's Donald Trump.
[00:34:58]  Yeah, right, really.
[00:35:00]  The only one who actually has consequences is Donald Trump.
[00:35:03]  But part of what's so despicable here about Hillary Clinton is that, and this becomes clear the more you listen to any of these guys, that this is why Donald Trump's message resonates so much with such a large percentage of the American electorate.
[00:35:19]  This is why he's winning in all of the polls right now, is that he always says, right?
[00:35:24]  He always says, they don't hate me.
[00:35:26]  They hate me because I stand up for you.
[00:35:29]  And look, who's Hillary Clinton talking about here?
[00:35:32]  Who's her problem with?
[00:35:34]  It's not Donald Trump.
[00:35:35]  She just said it's the American people.
[00:35:38]  That's her problem.
[00:35:40]  They are at war with you.
[00:35:42]  And by you, I mean the people who don't believe MSNBC is bullshit, the people who don't believe the CIA is bullshit.
[00:35:48]  You are the enemy.
[00:35:50]  Now, I don't think Donald Trump is, you know, is the answer to any of this.
[00:35:55]  And we've already tried that once.
[00:35:56]  It clearly didn't solve the problem.
[00:35:59]  But man, you just look at someone like Hillary Clinton.
[00:36:02]  It's like, yeah, that's the problem.
[00:36:04]  Imagine someone like Hillary Clinton saying the problem is that the American people are just lusting after consequenceless power.
[00:36:14]  That's literally the story of her entire life.
[00:36:18]  It's interesting, I guess, that this is big enough that even Hillary Clinton's got to get on the airwaves and try and sell it.
[00:36:24]  And it does seem like with the border deal falling apart, they're now scrambling to figure out, well, what can we do to make sure that Israel and Ukraine gets its funding?
[00:36:34]  At first, it was trying to attach it to the border bill, which made zero sense.
[00:36:38]  Now they're trying to scream that the Republicans refused to negotiate and that we were going to tie these two things together where the border deal was basically just legalizing what Biden was doing.
[00:36:48]  But the point is, this is good timing by Tucker Carlson in terms of getting this information out as they're really trying to sell the Ukraine thing.
[00:36:56]  And my guess is that's in part why even Hillary Clinton goes, I have to hit the airwaves.
[00:37:01]  Yeah.
[00:37:02]  Yeah.
[00:37:02]  Well, look, they're in.
[00:37:05]  It's obviously we've seen right over the last few years as the kind of monopoly on the control of information has been shattered.
[00:37:16]  And there's been more and more, you know, say big shows on the internet.
[00:37:20]  And what's the response to this been?
[00:37:22]  I mean, look at how they tried to go after Joe Rogan for COVID misinformation, right?
[00:37:27]  For they went after him for telling the truth about COVID when everyone else was lying about it.
[00:37:32]  And they've all the attempts at big tech censorship and all of this stuff.
[00:37:37]  And now you've got this guy in Tucker Carlson who does, I mean, look, they can try to spin it as he was fired from all of these places.
[00:37:45]  But the truth is that Tucker Carlson brings this kind of establishment credibility with him because yes, he was fired by a lot of these companies.
[00:37:55]  That is true.
[00:37:56]  He was also hired by them and employed by them for many years.
[00:37:59]  Tucker had what Tucker was on CNN for many years.
[00:38:03]  He wasn't an intern there.
[00:38:05]  He was the co-host of Crossfire, their biggest show.
[00:38:09]  He had a long-running show on MSNBC.
[00:38:12]  Then he had a long-running show on Fox News where he was the number one show in cable news.
[00:38:17]  They can say, oh, he was fired, but he's a guy who brings all of those credentials with him now over to the internet and now lands an interview like this.
[00:38:25]  And what are they worried about?
[00:38:26]  What's the through line that they're worried about through all of this, whether it was Rogan or it's tech censorship or it's Tucker Carlson?
[00:38:33]  The thing is that they are all lying.
[00:38:37]  And if they don't have a monopoly on the control of information, you might figure that out.
[00:38:41]  I mean, Rob, like I said before, I mean, it's not an exaggeration.
[00:38:45]  They've lied about everything throughout this whole war, from the origins to what the beef was to begin with, to what was going on on the ground, to what's been happening ever since.
[00:38:58]  All of it.
[00:38:59]  It's all a big lie.
[00:39:01]  And, you know, that's that.
[00:39:04]  Now, the other thing, by the way, that's pretty funny in all of this is that what's being predicted here, and I will say maybe not even unfairly, but what they're all saying is that they're like, well, Tucker's not going to go and give him like a tough, hard-hitting interview.
[00:39:22]  He's going to ask him easy questions.
[00:39:25]  And I'll tell you, that might be right.
[00:39:28]  But there's also probably a reason for that, which is that I don't think what's valuable about a Vladimir Putin interview, and I don't think, I don't know, I haven't talked to him about this, but I don't think what Tucker Carlson finds valuable about that is like, oh, I could go there and be like, hey, you know, what about this journalist you imprisoned?

=== Why We Must Stop Funding War (10:16) ===

[00:39:47]  Or what about these people you've killed?
[00:39:49]  Or what about this?
[00:39:50]  You know, like it was wrong for you to invade.
[00:39:52]  Because the Americans have already gotten a healthy dose of that message.
[00:39:56]  What's valuable in interviewing Vladimir Putin is to hear like, oh, like the same thing with Osama bin Laden.
[00:40:02]  What would be valuable is not for someone to be like, you're a bad guy.
[00:40:07]  You did 9-11 and that wasn't cool.
[00:40:09]  Everyone already knows that.
[00:40:10]  What's valuable is to hear like, oh, these were his grievances.
[00:40:14]  This is why he did what he did.
[00:40:15]  And that's not to justify it, but that is to understand it.
[00:40:18]  And so this is the other thing that they're all saying, that he's going to give him like a fluffy interview and he's not going to be a real journalist and hold his feet to the fire.
[00:40:27]  So, you know, that's kind of, that's kind of their thing, right?
[00:40:29]  Like that's why he's not a journalist.
[00:40:32]  He's not like us.
[00:40:33]  He's going to just give him a softball interview.
[00:40:35]  They want him to give a hardball interview like this one.
[00:40:39]  As a human being, so many people look up to you.
[00:40:43]  They rely on you.
[00:40:45]  No one can imagine how hard that is.
[00:40:48]  Do you do anything for yourself?
[00:40:50]  Are you ever able to take a minute to read or to listen to music or something to sort of give yourself that moment?
[00:40:59]  I have such moments.
[00:41:00]  Important to be in silence, to be alone.
[00:41:03]  And early, early in the morning when there are no sounds.
[00:41:08]  No people, nobody.
[00:41:10]  I mean, the people, people, our staff.
[00:41:12]  I mean, nobody is in my cabinet.
[00:41:15]  Nobody.
[00:41:15]  I can just read, think, think.
[00:41:18]  And the music helps, really.
[00:41:20]  What music do you like?
[00:41:22]  Oh, I like ACDC.
[00:41:24]  ACDC, I don't understand all the words because of...
[00:41:29]  I like the music.
[00:41:30]  Yeah, I like energy.
[00:41:31]  Maybe sing and dance on the Isle of American money every morning.
[00:41:37]  I love it.
[00:41:38]  No, no, it's important to have sometimes at six, seven in the morning, some trainings.
[00:41:45]  Work out.
[00:41:46]  Yes, workouts or to do something with music or such music, which gives you energy for all the day.
[00:42:02]  I send soldiers to die.
[00:42:04]  I like to listen to pump up ACDC.
[00:42:09]  By the way, shout out to Kim.com on Twitter who posted that.
[00:42:14]  But yeah, I mean, look, so that's it right there, right?
[00:42:17]  So don't let them tell you for a second, like, oh, it's a problem if Tucker isn't grilling him, because that's what real journalists would do.
[00:42:23]  And in fact, they have far more of an obligation to grill Zelensky because we're funding his side of the war.
[00:42:31]  We're not funding Putin.
[00:42:33]  You guys are supporting Zelensky's war.
[00:42:36]  But Tucker Carlson isn't supporting Vladimir Putin's war.
[00:42:40]  He's going over and interviewing the guy on the other side for the first time since any of this has happened.
[00:42:46]  And it's not as if even anyone on look, Vladimir Putin gave two huge speeches at the very beginning of the war in Ukraine.
[00:42:54]  And he laid out, he made it very clear what his beef was, why he was doing it, all of this.
[00:43:00]  They never covered that on MSNBC or CNN.
[00:43:03]  They'd never read that and go, hey, this is why he's doing this.
[00:43:06]  Let's try to understand this.
[00:43:08]  There's no effort to do that.
[00:43:09]  To understand it, here's how you need to understand it, Rob.
[00:43:12]  It was unprovoked.
[00:43:14]  He is a monster.
[00:43:15]  Ukraine is a democracy.
[00:43:17]  Zelensky is an angel.
[00:43:20]  Send them all your money.
[00:43:22]  That's their level of insisting that you understand what's going on here.
[00:43:28]  Anyway, I am very, very interested to see the Tucker Carlson interview.
[00:43:35]  You had mentioned, Rob, earlier, which is the other thing we should talk about before we wrap this up, is that, yes, there was this bill that attempted to tie immigration to Ukraine funding, to Israel funding, and it failed.
[00:43:51]  And of course, this is the typical strategy in Congress, that you basically tie everything together, and then you hold it all hostage.
[00:44:05]  So you have at least one thing that almost every constituency wants to vote for, and then you tie it to all of the most unpopular things that none of the American people want at all, like amnesty or whatever.
[00:44:19]  And then you go, well, hey, look, we have, and this is the language they like to use, we have a comprehensive bill here, Rob.
[00:44:27]  See, this takes on so much, but these guys just won't solve it.
[00:44:31]  And then till the election, they can say, we had a comprehensive immigration reform bill there.
[00:44:36]  You just had to go along with amnesty and funding to forever wars.
[00:44:41]  But come on.
[00:44:44]  You didn't sign it.
[00:44:45]  And so this is the tactic.
[00:44:47]  Here was Chuck Schumer trying somehow to tie all of this together.
[00:44:55]  Very closely with Leader McConnell on this.
[00:44:57]  This bill, now that we see what's in it, seems to be as bipartisan as it gets.
[00:45:05]  Why wouldn't this, why wouldn't both sides really want this to go through?
[00:45:09]  Well, it's a great question, Mika.
[00:45:10]  Look, it took a long time, four months of arduous negotiations.
[00:45:14]  They fell off the tracks a whole bunch of times.
[00:45:16]  I had to be on the phone even at midnight saying, we've got to keep going.
[00:45:20]  Why?
[00:45:21]  We're at a turning point in America.
[00:45:23]  This bill is crucial, and history will look back on it and say, did America fail itself?
[00:45:29]  Why is it crucial?
[00:45:30]  Well, if we don't aid Ukraine, Putin will walk all over Ukraine.
[00:45:35]  We will lose the war and we could be fighting in Eastern Europe and a NATO ally in a few years.
[00:45:40]  Americans won't like that.
[00:45:42]  If we don't help Israel defend itself against Hamas, that perpetual war will go on and on and on.
[00:45:49]  If we don't help humanitarian aid to the starving Palestinians in Gaza, hundreds of thousands could starve.
[00:45:56]  And the border, everyone has said it's chaos.
[00:45:59]  Speaker, you just saw Speaker Johnson.
[00:46:01]  He said it's chaos.
[00:46:02]  We have to do something legislative a few months ago.
[00:46:05]  But what has happened, in answer to your question, so this is crucial for America.
[00:46:09]  It's a turning point.
[00:46:10]  History is going to look over our shoulders and say, did we rise to the occasion?
[00:46:15]  To his credit, Mitch McConnell did.
[00:46:17]  But too many Republicans, including Speaker Johnson, are just scared to death of Donald Trump.
[00:46:23]  Donald Trump has said he wants chaos.
[00:46:25]  Donald Trump has said, well, wait till I become president.
[00:46:28]  That'll take at least a year.
[00:46:30]  Ukraine could be gone.
[00:46:31]  The border will get much worse.
[00:46:33]  War in the Middle East will get worse, maybe bringing us into it.
[00:46:38]  He's doing it all for political reasons.
[00:46:40]  And let me just say, will senators, the crucial question, the $64,000 question, the majority of Republican senators know this bill is the right thing to do.
[00:46:49]  It's a compromise.
[00:46:50]  I don't like everything in it.
[00:46:52]  Neither does McConnell.
[00:46:53]  But it's a compromise.
[00:46:54]  That's the only way you get things important done in the Senate.
[00:46:57]  We proved that two years ago in our bipartisan legislation.
[00:47:01]  And will the senators drown out the political noise from Trump and his minions and do the right thing for America?
[00:47:10]  It's a crucial question.
[00:47:12]  History is looking down on every one of us right now.
[00:47:16]  Well, there he is.
[00:47:17]  Senator Schumer.
[00:47:20]  Not being like Donald Trump doing things for political reasons.
[00:47:23]  He's just doing them because he believes in them so much.
[00:47:25]  He was, Rob, he was on the phone at midnight once.
[00:47:28]  Okay.
[00:47:29]  That's how hard he's working.
[00:47:31]  Yeah.
[00:47:32]  He says it's not just nine to five with extended vacations that no one in the private sector ever gets and a salary that's probably five times as big as the median household income and benefits that are better than any American in the private sector gets.
[00:47:47]  But he had to make a phone call at midnight one time.
[00:47:50]  So, you know, pretty tough stuff there.
[00:47:52]  My favorite of part of all of that is that somehow when he's trying to catastrophize everything.
[00:47:59]  Well, if we don't have this, then we've failed.
[00:48:02]  If, you know, if we don't fund Israel's war, then, oh my God, they won't defeat Hamas.
[00:48:07]  And also, if we don't send in aid to Gaza, hundreds of thousands of them will die from that war that we have to fund, which is just, I don't know, just beautiful to hear.
[00:48:17]  Any like any human being with an IQ above 70 who can actually try to make that argument with a straight face, like we have to fund this war, but then we also have to send in money to the other side or people will die.
[00:48:31]  Like, well, I don't, wouldn't one problem take care of the other in that situation?
[00:48:35]  Like, hey, maybe just don't fund the war and then you won't have to send aid over to the people who the war is killing.
[00:48:40]  Anyway, what is he saying here?
[00:48:42]  Look, I don't get everything I want in this bill.
[00:48:45]  Mitch McConnell doesn't get everything, but we just have to do it because this is the way things get done.
[00:48:51]  And when he says things get done, what would get done here?
[00:48:55]  Well, the border would remain open and we'd get two wars.
[00:48:59]  Those are the type of things we want to get done.
[00:49:02]  That is what Washington, D.C. is very good at getting done, it seems.
[00:49:05]  Keeping the border open and funding new wars constantly, forever, with no break ever.
[00:49:14]  I shouldn't say that.
[00:49:14]  I think we had a break between Afghanistan and Ukraine.
[00:49:18]  We had a couple of weeks there.
[00:49:20]  But, you know, I still had some wars going on in other areas, but whatever.
[00:49:23]  Don't let that fuck with you.
[00:49:25]  All right, guys.
[00:49:26]  Let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Survival Gear BSO, premium bug out bags that offer an easy grab and go option for families.
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=== Democrats Fail Border Solution (07:31) ===

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[00:50:22]  All right, let's get back into the show.
[00:50:23]  But anyway, it is, look, it's just, I think the political reality here, and this is partially why the timing of this Vladimir Putin interview is so interesting.
[00:50:38]  And as you alluded to, the timing is kind of perfect, is that they're simply the Democrats are not going to offer a real solution on the border.
[00:50:49]  Their goal here, which understandably, like if you remove what's right or wrong, you understand the politics of this here, right?
[00:50:56]  Is that they want, they have to be seen as trying something with the border here.
[00:51:04]  And they have to somehow pivot to it's the Republicans who are blocking it because they want to run on this issue.
[00:51:10]  If you have been watching any watching or reading any kind of mainstream establishment publications or TV channels or anything like that, you've seen that this is the talking point they're going with.
[00:51:25]  It's Trump's fault.
[00:51:26]  He wants the border issue to not be solved so he can run against it, which by the way, I don't necessarily think is untrue.
[00:51:33]  I'm sure.
[00:51:34]  Donald Trump, this is the way politics work, right?
[00:51:37]  It would not.
[00:51:38]  The last thing Donald Trump wants is for right now, Joe Biden's administration to solve the border crisis and turn the economy around.
[00:51:46]  Obviously, that's true for everyone a year out from an election.
[00:51:50]  You kind of, you're incentivized for the guy you're running against to fail, and then you can run against his failure.
[00:51:56]  So sure, I'm sure there's something to that.
[00:51:59]  However, when you're three years into your administration and something is a disaster and you're just now attempting to solve it in an election year, which they're not even attempting to solve it, but let's just say for the sake of argument, they are.
[00:52:14]  That's just not a strong argument.
[00:52:16]  Just as Bill Maher acknowledged the other day when we played that clip, that's just not a strong argument for why you, why it's the other guy's fault.
[00:52:23]  But so what the Democrats want to do here is offer, which they did, is offer an immigration bill that's awful, but they can claim would have solved the problem.
[00:52:32]  And then say, look, the Republicans turned it down.
[00:52:34]  That's kind of, but that's a desperate measure.
[00:52:36]  And look, even as they were putting up on the screen, they were saying, you know, if this would give the president the authority to shut down the border, if border crossings exceeded 5,000 a day or something like that, it's like, why would the bill not just be like, we give him the authority to shut the border down right now?
[00:52:54]  The problem has obviously gotten that bad.
[00:52:56]  So why would they not just give him the other?
[00:52:57]  Oh, yeah, because it's not a real offer.
[00:53:00]  And then the thing is that tying this politically speaking, I do think that they've got more than enough votes to get the Israel funding.
[00:53:11]  The Ukraine funding is where some people are waning because it's been going on for long enough and it's obviously a failed project.
[00:53:20]  And there's just, it's so unpopular that it's just going to be tough to get people to stick their neck out on that one now.
[00:53:29]  And right in that backdrop, you got Tucker Carlson going to interview Vladimir Putin.
[00:53:34]  So it is very interesting timing with all of that.
[00:53:36]  Any other thoughts on any of this stuff, Rob?
[00:53:38]  Yeah.
[00:53:38]  One is it's still shocking that he's still trying to play the card that Putin's going to go take over all of Russia and then we're going to be in an actual fight and you're going to have to go fight it.
[00:53:48]  I mean, the fact that you're even trying to spin this lie still is pretty shocking.
[00:53:53]  And the fact that there will be no accountability down the line for when that doesn't happen.
[00:53:59]  Additionally, and this drives me a little crazy, is that if you start a war without a plan to win it or finish it, you thought that China was going to get your back, they didn't.
[00:54:09]  You thought that India would go along with your sanctions and they didn't either.
[00:54:13]  You thought that you'd be able to, I guess, post some victories against Putin and you weren't able to.
[00:54:19]  And you didn't solidify enough funding.
[00:54:21]  You're just responsible for a lot of death.
[00:54:24]  That's what you did.
[00:54:25]  You didn't think things through.
[00:54:26]  You had a losing strategy.
[00:54:29]  You talked Zelensky into going to do a fight for you and you didn't actually have the resources to win it.
[00:54:35]  You're responsible for death.
[00:54:37]  And now you're just preaching for more death and you're trying to pin it on the other side of, well, we just need more money.
[00:54:42]  What are you going to win?
[00:54:43]  What is 86 billion more dollars going to do?
[00:54:46]  How many more people have to die here before we finally give up on it?
[00:54:50]  And it's just, it's entirely your fault.
[00:54:52]  If you did not make the plans at the beginning of this to make sure that you had enough funding or an actual strategy to win.
[00:54:58]  So for one, the Republicans not bringing in more money at the end is not, it's not their fault.
[00:55:04]  That's your fault.
[00:55:05]  You didn't have enough money to start your project.
[00:55:07]  And so now your project's the failure.
[00:55:08]  You know how many companies go under because they didn't do the math right on how much funding they were going to need and they didn't get enough funding at the end?
[00:55:15]  That's your fault.
[00:55:15]  You didn't plan properly.
[00:55:17]  And then in this case, what does the money even do for you?
[00:55:19]  It's really.
[00:55:20]  Well, and look, it reminds me of like so many of the failed terror wars over the last 20 plus years where the other, it's right.
[00:55:29]  It's like, it's everything you're saying mixed with what I was saying at the beginning.
[00:55:32]  It's also just the fact that like you've been lying this whole time.
[00:55:36]  And that's what happened with the war in Iraq.
[00:55:38]  And this is why George W. Bush had such low approval ratings by the end of his presidency, even before the economy fell apart.
[00:55:45]  But then, I mean, obviously that didn't help either.
[00:55:48]  But just over the war in Iraq, I mean, first, if you remember, if you're old enough and were paying attention at the time, you know, but the way the war in Iraq was sold was it started with Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction and he was in on 9-11 with Osama bin Laden.
[00:56:07]  And he's got these weapons and he could hand them off to a terrorist and they could detonate them here in America.
[00:56:13]  And we just can't deal with that threat.
[00:56:14]  In a post-9-11 world, we cannot deal with that threat.
[00:56:18]  And then we went over there and it became pretty obvious pretty quickly that he didn't have weapons of mass destruction.
[00:56:24]  And then they pivoted toward, well, we're doing it to spread democracy to Iraq, because if Iraq becomes democratic, then that will sweep through the Middle East.
[00:56:33]  And then if democracies are much safer, they don't go to war with us.
[00:56:37]  And in a post-9-11 world, we just can't have a dictator over there in Iraq, you know?
[00:56:41]  And then they got Saddam Hussein and George W. Bush had his mission accomplished, you know, little ceremony where he flew in and spoke in front of that banner.
[00:56:51]  And then they made them hold elections.
[00:56:53]  And then the elections did nothing but produce more like terrible shit.
[00:56:59]  Like they kicked all the Sunnis out of power.
[00:57:01]  The Shiites took over.
[00:57:02]  The insurgency started.
[00:57:03]  And they had George W. Bush and all the neocons had said it's going to be a cakewalk that we'll be greeted as liberators.
[00:57:10]  This is what they all said at the beginning of the war.
[00:57:12]  And then it was clear all of this was bullshit.
[00:57:14]  We weren't greeted as liberators.
[00:57:15]  It's not a cakewalk.
[00:57:16]  There's this massive insurgency.
[00:57:18]  There were no weapons of mass destruction.
[00:57:20]  Democracy is not sweeping the region and on and on and on.
[00:57:24]  And then when they would try to tell more lies, it was just like, dude, no one believes you anymore.
[00:57:31]  You know, then Dick Cheney would be like, well, the insurgency is in its final throws.
[00:57:34]  And like, don't worry.

=== Ukraine Victory Is A Lie (01:56) ===

[00:57:35]  It's going to, you know, shut up.
[00:57:37]  No one believes you.
[00:57:38]  You're lying through your teeth about all of this.
[00:57:40]  And as I said at the beginning, I mean, you just can't overstate how much every inch of this war in Ukraine, they've just been lying.
[00:57:48]  I mean, like, I didn't even catch all of the fucking lies.
[00:57:52]  I don't even know how to go through all.
[00:57:53]  It's not just like the history of the conflict.
[00:57:55]  It's not just like what happened in the coup in 2014.
[00:57:59]  It's not like that they never mentioned that there was a civil war going on in Ukraine from 2014 to 2022.
[00:58:06]  They never talked about Donald Trump sending weapons in in the middle of a civil war to the anti-Russian side, the ghost of Kiev, all this stuff.
[00:58:15]  How about the, when they first sold us on, they could stop this with sanctions, that the sanctions were going to destroy the Russian economy.
[00:58:23]  Remember all of that?
[00:58:24]  How it was going to destroy the ruble and all this stuff?
[00:58:27]  This is all of it lies, lies, lies, lies.
[00:58:29]  Ukraine's winning throughout the whole thing lies.
[00:58:31]  And you just get to this point where it's like, yeah, it's maybe not as far as we were with Iraq, but it is to a point where it's just obvious that, and this is also after Iraq and after so and after COVID and after all these things where it's just like people are like, you know, it's what Hillary Clinton's wondering about.
[00:58:49]  Nobody believes you anymore because you're a fucking liar.
[00:58:53]  That's true for all of you.
[00:58:55]  All right.
[00:58:56]  We'll wrap up there.
[00:58:57]  Catch you guys on the next episode.
[00:58:59]  Don't forget to come see us out on the road, comicdave Smith.com, robbythefire.com.
[00:59:03]  And of course, check out Run Your Mouth, Rob's other fantastic podcast.
[00:59:07]  Yeah, I got the new studio.
[00:59:08]  I'm cranking out episodes three times a week.
[00:59:10]  Robbie the Fire, all one word on YouTube.
[00:59:11]  I think you guys will like it.
[00:59:13]  And if you don't have time for the full show, you can go over to Instagram, trying to get that up to 10,000.
[00:59:18]  Robbie the Fire, all one word.
[00:59:19]  I'm posting shorts every day, little clips.
[00:59:21]  I had one that did very well breaking down Powell's comments on inflation.
[00:59:26]  So, you know, go follow some of the content.
[00:59:28]  Robbie the Fire, all one word.
[00:59:29]  Hell yeah.
[00:59:30]  All right.
[00:59:30]  Catch you guys next time.
[00:59:31]  Peace.