Dave Smith and Robbie the Fire Bernstein dissect the American right's fracture over Israel, contrasting Ben Shapiro's interventionism with Tucker Carlson's skepticism while exposing Dave Rubin's alleged manipulative tactics to clear competitors. They analyze Senator Ron Johnson's warnings that Russia's industrial capacity ensures victory in Ukraine despite $60B in U.S. aid, arguing that sanctions threaten dollar supremacy and dismissing critics who label accurate assessments as propaganda. Ultimately, the episode suggests that ignoring moral implications in foreign policy and suppressing dissenting voices undermines genuine conservative values. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Welcome to Gas and Humor00:01:43
Fill her up.
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We need to roll back the state.
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Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
You're listening to part of the problem on the Gas Digital Network.
Here's your host, James Smith.
What's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
I'm Dave Smith.
He's Robbie the Fire Bernstein.
How you doing, sir?
I'm doing good.
That was fun down in Texas.
Get me back on the road.
I don't need to be home ever.
Yeah, Houston's a good comedy city, man.
It was a lot of fun.
Thank you to everybody who came out.
It's impacted shows out there at The Secret Group, which is a great little spot, by the way.
If you're in Houston, go check them out.
Great little comedy club, The Secret Group.
Yeah, love those guys.
We did SkangFest there a couple of years ago.
So it was cool.
It was very cool to be back.
Yeah.
And that's what's our, what do we got coming up next?
Next is Utah.
Yeah, I'm going to do some skiing.
Dudes, come out to the shows.
Come hang out with me afterwards.
I'll let you know.
I'm going to be hitting the slopes Saturday and Sunday.
You can come home at the woods.
And we got a pretty loaded up schedule at this point.
So go on over to comicdave Smith.com.
I know we're going to Chicago, Nashville, St. Louis.
We're going to be all over the place.
So come check us out, comicdave Smith.com.
And of course, RobbieTheFire.com for all Rob's headlining gigs.
And go check out Run Your Mouth, Rob's other podcast, which he does three days a week, which is excellent.
The Divide on the Right00:09:56
Okay, so the first thing I wanted to talk about today is I saw this video that Dave Rubin made.
If you're not familiar, Dave Rubin's like a very popular conservative political commentator.
He was originally on the Young Turks and was kind of a liberal and then left the left and moved into being more of a, I think he's a self-described like classical liberal, but kind of, you know what I mean, like more or less a Republican.
And he did this video, which I thought was kind of interesting because it was on a topic that I find really fascinating, which is something we've talked a fair bit about that is this kind of split, this divide on the right half of America.
And it's a divide over the current war going on in Israel, not just what side, say, of the conflict you're on, but I think more specifically about America funding the war.
And it's been kind of wild for me.
So just like a little perspective for I assume most people listening kind of know this about me, but just to remind you, because it's very interesting for me, because I'm 40 and I, my coming of age was, was 9-11 and post-9-11.
Like I was 18 when 9-11 happened and I lived in New York City.
And then it was, you know, I was a young adult in the George W. Bush administration.
And then I really got interested in politics when Ron Paul ran for president in 2008.
And so coming from kind of like the George W. Bush Republican years and what almost every right-wing radio talk show host and every right-wing pundit and every Republican politician, they were all in on the war on terrorism.
I mean, you know, with a few notable exceptions, but it's really not like, I mean, it'd be like the way, say, liberals say they oppose racism is the way Republicans said they supported the war on terrorism.
Like to a man, they almost all agree.
And it was interesting to see Ron Paul kind of have this campaign that got a little bit of excitement.
And then in 2016, to see Donald Trump take almost, at least rhetorically, a 180 degree different position.
And then to see kind of at least, again, rhetorically speaking, a lot of the Republicans kind of came around to sounding a lot more like Ron Paul than like George W. Bush when it came to foreign wars.
Even to this day, as much as this is not, you know, completely accurate, but you will still see to this day the talking point on Donald Trump.
And this is something I like.
I like that this is the talking point.
The talking point from pro-Trump people about foreign policy, as I'm sure you've heard a bunch of times, Rob, is no new wars.
He didn't get us into any new stupid wars like George W. Bush did and Barack Obama did, but hey, Donald Trump did not start another disastrous war.
And okay, whatever.
We could get into the merits of that claim.
He certainly continued a lot of them and he flirted with a couple of other wars that we almost got into, but, you know, like in Iran and Venezuela.
But regardless of that, it's really amazing for someone my age that that's the talking point.
I don't really hear, like, it's not like their talking point is like, he wasn't a softy like Obama and he really took the gloves off and killed ISIS, you know, which could just as easily be their talking point, but it's not.
Their talking point is like, hey, he didn't get us into another stupid war.
So I at least appreciate that.
At least that's the right mindset to have.
Anyway, obviously, since October 7th, there's been, it's almost like an earthquake that split the land and divided the right half of America into these two different camps.
And there's one camp that kind of got teleported back to 2003.
And then there's the other camp who's like, oh, no, we really meant it.
And there's probably no better representatives of those two camps than Ben Shapiro and Tucker Carlson, debatably the two most influential conservative commentators who have just completely split on this issue.
And that's just, to me, it's really fascinating to see.
It's, I understand where it's a little bit disheartening for people who are like non-interventionist types like us that so many of the Republicans, you know, like went back to supporting foreign wars.
But I will say I kind of look at it as an opportunity.
Like, oh, you know, it's like the, you know, when the grass is cut, the snakes are shown or something like that.
I forget how the saying goes, but it's something about that.
Like in these moments, it's revealing.
You see who's who.
And that's kind of good to know, you know?
Anything, any thoughts on any of it, Rob?
The snakes in the grass.
I never heard of that expression before.
I may have just made it up.
I don't know.
It's something like that.
I think it works.
Yeah, the point is, you know, if you cut the grass, then you could see where the snakes are.
But if the grass is real high, there might be snakes down there and you don't even know about it.
I always have these suspicions, you know, like I remember talking about this with you over the years where I'm like, yeah, man, if there was like a big terrorist attack or something, most of these Republicans who are talking about being non-interventionists now would just support blindly whatever the next war is.
I didn't realize the terrorist attack didn't have to occur on Americans.
Like I thought it, I thought it would probably have to happen here, but it seems like it happening in Israel might have been even more troubling.
The likelihood of a terrorist attack happening inside of the United States and it not have been the result of us not having any border security has to be close to zero.
So I'm just saying if there is a terrorist attack, it's time.
I wouldn't, I wouldn't put it near zero.
I think there's a strong possibility that it could come from the fact that we have wide open borders.
But look, I mean, there are a lot of Muslims in America and many of them do get radicalized by our foreign policy.
A mix of the FBI and our foreign policy.
Yes, it's usually, it's almost always both of those, to be honest.
But look, it is, it is true that, I mean, this is something I think we should be concerned about.
You know, now there's, it's a little bit dangerous because, you know, if you remember, Rob, around the new year, we were talking about this, that everybody on the TV news was saying there's going to be a huge terrorist attack here in America.
And of course, they love to push that.
If you remember in the days after 9-11, they were so outrageously blatant with their bullshit propaganda.
Dick Cheney literally said to the country, it's not a matter of if, but when we have another 9-11.
Like he was just telling you, it's going to happen again.
Brace yourself.
Be scared all the time.
And why do they want you scared all the time?
Well, because obviously when you're scared all the time, well, you give them a blank check.
You know, I mean, you say, you go, hey, you do whatever the hell you got to do to keep us safe because I'm terrified because I know another 9-11 is coming.
So I'm not suggesting we like kind of fall into that, but it is true that this is pissing a lot of people off for understandable reasons.
And the fact that America is, you know, giving the bombs that are being dropped on Palestinians is it's inspiring a lot of hatred against us.
And look, we've already seen this with attacks on our guys in Jordan and attacks on our guys in Iraq and in Syria.
But look, I mean, this is the type of stuff that does inspire terrorism.
So it's something to be concerned about for sure.
And, you know, I think about it like, you know, people, let's say when after 9-11, right?
There were, we had young boys in Hawaii who enlisted in the military as a response to the attack on 9-11.
And think about that, you know, like how far Hawaii is.
And you know how like on a map, it's not even as far as Hawaii really is.
You know what I mean?
Because they always like show it a little bit closer than Hawaii really is.
But you think about how far Hawaii is from New York City where the attack happened.
It's totally, it's really far.
And there's a ton of cultural differences between New Yorkers and Hawaiians.
But like we all identify as Americans.
And as far as they were concerned, they were like, we were attacked.
And so, you know, if you think about that, like a lot of that is true for the Muslim world as well, that like they identify as like, you are attacking our people.
And it's, it's a dangerous game.
It's, it's, uh, an enormous price that we're risking for no clear reason why we should be involved.
All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is yokratom.com, longtime sponsor of this show, the entire network and SkankFest.
Defending Against a Holocaust00:15:33
Everything I do, Yo Kratom sponsors, and I'm so grateful for them.
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All right, let's get back on the show.
Okay.
Anyway, let's play a little bit of this clip of Dave Rubin discussing this phenomenon.
And I think there'll be some points that'll be interesting to respond to it.
So here is Dave Rubin.
So if you're playing recklessly fast and loose with their lives, then I have a right to despise you.
And I do.
Tucker Carlson has been going after Ben Shapiro pretty hard and claiming that Ben is not pro-America and a whole bunch more.
And I would connect this to what we're saying, which is that Tucker and Ben are not on the opposite side of things, I think.
I think they both love America.
I think they may have different policy issues, particularly when it comes to foreign policy, perhaps.
But we need to make sure that the Tucker Carlsons and the Ben Shapiros are not in warring factions.
Otherwise, all of those people who are on the way are going to be like, wow, look at these freaking people.
Look at these freaking people.
They can't even agree on anything.
So I want, I am going to try very hard for the next little while to settle this issue.
So I want to show you a video of Tucker Carlson.
He's made remarks like this a couple of times before, but I thought this was sort of the most direct and intense.
Tucker Carlson on before we go to Tucker on Russell Brand's podcast.
So look, you can kind of see where David Rubin is coming from on this.
Like he's, you know, kind of like, well, look, it's an election year and we can't have people coming and looking and saying, what is the Republican, you know, what do they believe?
And then you got your two most influential people at war with each other.
So I understand it.
The problem is that like, as Tucker's getting at and will continue to get at, war is a really big deal.
You know, like I had people who are saying to me, you know, after the RFK episode, I had some people who were saying like, they're like, dude, but you agree with them on so many things.
Why are you making this a deal breaker?
You know, it's like, I don't know, because it's a mass slaughter campaign of women and children.
I take that kind of seriously.
This is not the same thing as we disagree on the minimum wage.
You know what I mean?
Like this is a really, really important thing.
It's the worst goddamn thing in the world.
And if you're saying that I got to be forced to pay for that, then that's a deal breaker for me.
Sorry.
But anyway, you know, like that's just the thing is that this isn't, this isn't the type of issue that you can just like agree to disagree and still be on the same side.
And in fact, I understand where Dave Rubin's coming from, but there's something there's something wrong with attempting to treat this issue as something that you could just be like, hey, look, I mean, we don't, we have a policy disagreement, you know, but like, no problem.
We're still on the same side.
It's like, no, this is, I'm sorry.
Like when you look at what's going on in Gaza right now, and anybody who's on Twitter has seen way more than they wish to have seen of literally babies dying under rubble, slowly suffocating to death and shit, then that doing that has got to be either, it's either like, look, we must do this.
And it's so horrible that this is happening, but it just must happen, or this is the most horrific thing on earth.
Like there's kind of no in between.
There's no way you could just be like, hey, look, you're for these babies suffocating to death under rubble.
I'm opposed to it, but we agree on tax policy.
So let's just all blindly support Donald Trump and like me and you are on the same team.
That's just, that seems like an impossible request.
But let's see if maybe Dave Rubin does it.
Ben Shapiro, take a look.
I would say two things.
First, we have a right to be mad.
At least, and let me just, again, speak for Americans, middle-aged Americans, which is what I am.
I've got four draft age children.
So if you're playing recklessly fast and loose with their lives, then I have a right to despise you.
And I do.
So if you're Nikki Haley who's running for president or Ben Shapiro or half the people I see on television casually mentioning the possibility of nuclear war or sending Americans to fight in the Middle East or in any way involving us in a war that has nothing to do with prosperity and peace at home, nothing in other words to do with us, Americans, then I have a right to call you out and be really offended because it's my family.
They live here.
It's not a joke to me.
There's nothing abstract about it.
And that is the difference between what's happening in the Middle East from what's happening in Ukraine, about which I had very strong feelings, but I didn't think there was a realistic possibility that my kids could be enmeshed in it.
Now there is.
So I think, you know, get some self-respect.
I would say to my fellow Americans, get a clear picture of what's important.
Your children are important.
Okay, that's number one, your children.
And if they're threatening your children, I don't care what their justification is.
They're your enemy.
That's how I feel about it.
Okay, first I want to address the part that I agree with.
I actually agree with Tucker on the meta part of this, that we should have sane foreign policy.
And we have to.
Okay, hold on.
Let's just pause it right here.
I just love that right away that Tucker's position is like, anyone threatening my children is my enemy.
And Dave Rubin's response is like, well, hey, I agree with that part.
Like, I'll grant you that much.
It's like, how, yeah, there's no way not to agree with that.
That is by definition true.
Anybody who's putting my kids in danger is my enemy.
And, you know, so for Dave Rubin now is going to kind of do this thing where he goes, oh, look, I agree with that part.
And I think we should have a sane foreign policy.
The problem with people on the right or whatever.
By the way, when I use the term right wing, because I can already hear right wingers in the chat being like, hey, Dave Rubin's no real right winger or whatever.
I'm using it very broadly, just like say the right half of America or the left half of America.
But when, so in that sense, when people on the right who try to have this kind of like, hey, look, I'm with you.
We should have a sane foreign policy, but then don't clearly lay out what that sane foreign policy is, it's not good enough.
That's not good enough.
Because the whole point is that the war in Ukraine is insane.
And the war in Gaza is insane.
And America funding those wars and arming those wars is insane.
This foreign policy is not a sane foreign policy for the specific reasons that we're funding proxy wars of choice.
That's why.
One of them on Russia's border.
It's like you can't say it enough times.
It just sounds so insane when you say it.
So anyway, that's the major issue here.
Let's uh let's keep lying.
Our borders first.
And I can tell you, as a new father, the important thing is that my kids will live in a safe, prosperous country and everything else.
So, he's right about that.
Now, the part where he's connecting it, and I'm going to remove Nikki from this because he's referencing a politician.
Politicians have policies.
I have never once heard Ben call for troops in the Middle East.
I have never heard once for Ben calling for nuclear war.
So, when he says, I have a, I have a, I think he says, I have a right to despise you or something like that.
Uh, there is a fundamental difference between saying, Oh, we would like to help an ally, because that's what this is really about.
He's talking about Israel, we'd like to help an ally with the arms that it needs to stop a genocidal terrorist organization from causing a second Holocaust, versus we're sending troops.
All right, let's pause it.
Let's pause it right there.
I mean, I'm sorry, it's just like the rhetoric that the people who support the war in Gaza have to, it's, it's just, it's embarrassing.
It's embarrassing to sit here and say we're just helping our ally to prevent another Holocaust.
I mean, come on, dude.
Come on.
I mean, look, this is the point like I was making with Bobby Kennedy.
Look, the Nazis controlled from France to Poland and then attacked both England and invaded Russia.
Okay.
Picture that in your head.
Control from bombing England, occupying France all the way to Poland, and then invading Russia.
They were attempting to conquer all of Europe.
That's the relative strength that the Nazis had.
Understand that it was when the Second World War broke out, it was very unclear that the Nazis wouldn't win.
The Nazis were essentially taking on the world, and many people thought they might win.
Hamas does not even have control of Gaza.
The power imbalance there is just nuts.
And so, the idea that we're intervening to stop a Holocaust, Gaza pulled off a big terrorist attack, but that to jump to Holocaust is just goofy.
There is no threat of Gaza exterminating millions of Jews.
That just does not exist.
There's a real threat of Israel killing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.
Like, that's a possibility here.
I mean, like, you know, I don't know how much you've been following this, Rob, but it's something like they're saying now that 50% of the homes in Gaza have been destroyed.
Gaza City is destroyed.
So, it's not just the number of deaths right now.
Even if the war stopped right now, people are going to be dying in huge numbers in the coming years, no matter what happens after this.
It's a goddamn humanitarian catastrophe.
But the idea that Hamas is in any position to exterminate the Jews, this is just fantasyland stuff.
This is total bullshit rationale for the indefensible shit that Israel's doing.
So, you have to frame it as like they're defending themselves from a Holocaust.
Look, Israel, back when Israel was first created, okay, that the, so if you before, um, before 1948, there was no such thing as the state of Israel.
There were Zionist settlers who were in Israel.
And if people are wondering, because you know, you always hear the story about like how Israel was attacked in 1948 by all the surrounding Arab countries and they won.
And then they were attacked in 1967 by all these surrounding countries and they won.
And if you wonder to yourself, like, well, how is it that, you know, Israel was like a day old when the 1948 war broke out?
How do they beat all these countries?
And it's because what they were essentially, they had a bunch of badass militias that basically very quickly got converted into the IDF.
But like Haganah and the Stern gang, and they had a bunch of these like really ruthless, badass militias who were, by the way, in the previous years, terrorists, which is a part of Israeli history that Israelis don't really love to talk about.
But that literally, and I'm not saying this is like a pejorative.
I'm saying that like they called themselves terrorists.
Like they were like, like Menachem Begin was like, yes, terror is one of the tools.
This is the tool we're going to use to drive the British out.
They're occupiers.
So we have a right to be terrorists.
That was the logic of the Israelis.
Okay, not technically I'm wrong, not the Israelis, the Zionist settlers five minutes before they were the Israelis.
They believed, in their own words, that terrorism was justified when dealing with an occupying force and killing innocent people.
Well, that's just something that's going to happen.
Okay.
So they were a very well, well-prepared militias who had serious financing and serious training.
And this is why they won those wars.
Okay.
But I'm just trying to make the point that Israel then defeated multiple Arab countries several times, at least four times, there were wars with other Arab countries.
Am I right?
Four.
Yeah.
There's four wars with other surrounding Arab countries, the last one being the Yom Kippur War.
Israel won all of them, but that was back then.
That was before, that was just when they were like badass militias.
Today, Israel is in, so Israel could take on, you know what I mean?
Like they could, let's just say they could take on a lot.
All right.
I'm not, they're not quite as invincible as they think they are, but they could take on a lot.
Hamas poses no existential threat to Israel.
Hamas, Hamas poses a threat in the way that like, you know, like, okay, al-Qaeda, let's even say, who hit us on September 11th and killed substantially more people than on October 7th.
But if you had said, like, even in America, I feel like even at the height of the war propaganda after 9-11, I think if you had ever said that we have to fight Osama bin Laden so that he doesn't kill every man, woman, and child in America, even Americans would have just rolled their eyes at that and been like, dude, there's no, I mean, he may want to do that, but there's just no chance that he can.
So anyway, for David Rubin to say this, I just, it's just, it's goofy.
We're not helping our friends to prevent a genocide.
The only debate about genocide going on right now is whether what Israel's doing can legally be considered one.
But this is just, and it's an inverse of reality to, you know what I mean, to describe it any other way.
Any thoughts, Rob?
Yeah.
Well, I mean, we're taking a clip from Tucker Carlson.
I can't imagine that his fear that his kids could get drawn into a war are his only problems with foreign policy.
So from Gwen Rubin, it's kind of an unfair starting point where he's opposing Tucker Carlson and going, well, there's an important agenda.
No one's telling you that your kids have to go fight.
Blaming Black Men for Racism00:15:22
I'm sure that's not Tucker's only reason for opposing what's going on.
But yeah, also everything that you're saying, which is, yeah, you're still escalating what could lead there and you want to support them.
You would push for it if it got there.
I'm sure if we're starting to have a conversation about actually going to war with Iran, Ben Shapiro would be supporting that.
He wouldn't go, oh, no, we can't use our troops.
I've also never listened to Glenn Rubin and Dave Rubin.
Dave Rubin, well, whatever.
Vanilla pudding.
Listen, I know Dave not worried about it.
I know that's the problem.
You have to actually interact with these people.
They're just been a nice guy to me.
So I'm not going to say that.
I get where you're coming from.
But it's, you know, look, whatever.
No, to your point, though, it's like, no, look, fighting these wars and almost everyone who supports the war in Ukraine has at one point said something like, you know, we have to fund them.
Otherwise, it's our war.
You know what I mean?
And look, there's already been U.S. military members who have been killed as a direct result of this war in Gaza and several others who have been attacked.
No, it's a very real threat that we get drawn into this war.
Look, in a very real sense, we are already at war with Russia and we are already at war with Gaza.
I mean, look, what is it?
What was the talk right away after October 7th from our foreign policy establishment?
It was, is Iran connected to this?
Right?
Does Iran have anything to do with this?
Now, the reason we do that is because we just happen to know that Iran does have a relationship with Hamas and Hezbollah, right?
I mean, sure, Hezbollah had nothing to do with the attack either, but that doesn't really matter to us.
But so think about if we found conclusive proof that Iran had coordinated the attack with Hamas, they had given them the arms to pull off the attack, and they had given them logistical and intelligence information in order to pull off the attack.
What would the attitude from Israel be?
Oh, we're at war with Iran.
Now, America, you got to fight it because that's how they would feel about it.
But that would be their attitude.
So just saying from the Russian perspective or the Palestinian perspective, they don't need it.
They don't need to find any evidence that we're doing all that with these wars.
We're openly talking about how we're doing it.
We're doing it right in broad daylight.
If anyone else did that to us, we would consider them having committed an act of war against us.
So the idea that Tucker is drawing some like crazy conclusion that you're now putting our kids' lives in danger is not at all unreasonable.
All right, let's keep playing.
Kind of sloppy with that, but I'm agreeing with the meta version of what he's saying.
And the reason I'm bringing this up is because I think that explanation that I just laid out there, that can be healed.
And if we can heal that, then a whole bunch of people, all those people who I just mentioned who are kind of on their way, they're not going to be like, oh, these people are all crazy.
And look at them always trying to take themselves out.
So anyway, I had Ben on the show last week and I asked him about that.
It's important.
Sure.
That's exactly the nonsense that I was pointing to.
You could have a full conversation with Tucker about why he doesn't like what's going on between Israel and Gaza or doesn't like what's going on between America and Iran.
And if he had to list his reasons of threats to the American prosperity and future, last on the list would be, you're also threatening that my kids might have to go fight at war.
And that is a real, I mean, that's no different than the argument of I think Americans should all own guns because it keeps the government in check.
I do believe that it keeps the government in check.
I do believe that when we escalate, you know, these things abroad, there's the reality of whether or not we're going to have to actually send American troops and whether or not they'll escalate to having to actually draft people.
These are all, that's why Ukraine was kind of an easy war for us.
Even heard, I think, Lindsey Graham and others saying it of, look, look at what we're costing Russia.
Look at how many lives are being lost in Russia.
It's like we can fight them without having to actually fight them.
That's part of the calculation.
But I'm just saying this is such a cheap conversation to be had to pull a single clip and go, oh, Tucker won't support this operation because his kids might have to fight in a war.
His kids aren't going to have to fight in a war.
So if we can just skirt that to the side, look, we're actually on the same team here.
No, you're not.
And when you're talking about these new people who are just coming along and they look at this and go, oh, this is crazy or whatever.
I mean, my interest is that those new people coming along know this is crazy.
Like they know that this policy is crazy and that it's like horrifically evil what the American foreign policy establishment is doing in propping up Israel's horrific war against the Palestinians and also in, you know,
creating and then or creating the circumstances under which, you know, the war in Ukraine started and then killing peace talks and extending the war for years and literally leading to hundreds of thousands of dead Ukrainians.
Like, no, I'm sorry.
I don't want to skirt whatever issues we have on that aside so that it doesn't look like we're fighting for new, when new people like come hear us.
No, I want those new people to know what's up.
In fact, that's all that matters.
That's all that matters to me when there's new people, especially new conservatives.
All that matters is that they realize that the warfare state is not in America's national interest.
It's like, let's go with not even a friend, your brother.
You're out with your brother and he keeps getting drunk and picking fights at bars.
You go, buddy, you have to quit picking fights at bars because you're going to get me into a fight.
And this is really stupid.
We're stuck with the United States government.
We're going, quit provoking people.
Why are we picking these fights?
You might get us into a war.
That is a very real risk.
And it's a very logical thing to look at this situation and go, why are you trying to get us into these fights?
You're just going to lead to death for no reason.
There's no upside here.
Look at the last couple of wars.
Was there an upside?
Did we win them?
Did we walk away with any tangible victories or just a lot of death and a lot of money spent?
And a far better armed Taliban.
We're looking for what we actually accomplished.
Yeah.
No, I mean, it's right.
That's a great analogy.
And it's as insane as being against that.
And as insane as being like, as your brother is getting drunk and picking fights and you're like, dude, what are you doing?
First off, it's wrong that you just assaulted that guy.
Second of all, you're risking that you're going to get beat up and you're risking that I'm going to have to get involved, man, because you're my brother.
Now I'm going to have to fight with you in the bar fight.
And then Dave Rubin comes along and goes, guys, guys, guys, we got to stop arguing about this because to new people who are just discovering this family, now it seems like we're all divided.
You don't want to be grouped in with your warmongers.
Yeah, like, well, yeah, we're divided, but we're divided over this thing.
And this thing is wrong.
And my brother needs to stop picking bar fights.
And then if he goes like, well, listen, what if I could just assure you that you're not going to be drawn into the bar fight?
Then can we brush this aside and we can all go back to just watching your brother pick bar fights for no reason?
Because he's stealing a jerk off.
Yeah.
Like, no, that's not no.
That in fact, like I was saying earlier, and this is kind of why I let in like this, like, I don't know.
Like, look, obviously, I'm a libertarian.
So I'm never in anybody's team, really.
You know, I'm always out here and I'm always just on the team that doesn't win.
That's our role in life.
But like I said, like whatever, how about like, and this is what I was saying about RFK at the beginning.
It's like, how about, no, you're not on my team if we disagree on this issue.
Then that's it.
It's like I don't know what other.
There's just nothing from any perspective.
That's reasonable, whether you could be a left-winger, a right-winger, a libertarian, whatever.
War is the most serious thing, it's the most important policy, it's the most evil thing that governments do.
It's the most you know it's like.
If you're against government programs, well let me tell you about the worst government program there is.
It's war.
That's for libertarians.
If you're a left uh, a leftist, and you're against like, power imbalances or um, you know um uh vulnerable, vulnerable people being exploited, well let me tell you the worst version of that, the worst case of that, it's called war.
If you're a fiscal conservative, you know what I mean.
Like, any angle you come at it from, it goes.
Well, this is the worst thing.
This is the worst thing in the world and i'm sorry.
If we're divided on the most important issue, then we're not on the same team.
I don't even you could be good on a lot of other issues, but like no, we're still not on the same team.
If you're bad on the mass murder issue, it's literally I.
I look at it and I don't think this is like me being hyperbolic or I think this is a totally reasonable position.
But it's as if you know like oh, we pretty much agree on politics, except like you're pro-slavery and i'm an abolitionist, but everything else we're pretty much we agree on.
It's like, are we on the same side?
Like no, you support slavery, you support like the worst institution that's.
It's just that war is even worse than that.
I'm not even exaggerating.
It's like a it's it's.
I mean, whatever you, we could get into debating what's worse, but they're on the same level.
Let's say that.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
All right.
That we can that we can defray some of this nonsense before it really lights on fire.
And I thought Ben's answer was quite good.
I want to ask you one other thing related to this since I brought up Tucker a couple of times.
He's been somewhat critical of you.
I actually think kind of unfairly, and I defended you on my show a couple of weeks ago, basically saying that you were too overly emotive about Israel and what was going on there.
And I think there's some subtle overtones that come with that.
What do you make of his criticism of you related to this?
Also, and I know it's not the most fun thing to talk about because we all live in the same world in a sense.
Also the fact that he's trying to build a network.
You have a network.
He might view you as competition.
Now there could be some other motives going on here.
I mean, listen, best of Tucker in all of his endeavors with regard to his network.
I think that some of the, he put out a little documentary on the board recently that I thought was quite good.
Yeah, again, I like many things that Tucker says, what Tucker said about me is that I don't love the country, which I found absolutely peculiar.
It's something that I would never say about him.
He and I disagree about a wide variety of issues, ranging from economics to foreign policy.
That's a bizarre notion.
And again, I've actually invited Tucker to come on my show.
Like we've been touching.
I think it's good for the right to have these discussions.
I'd be perfectly willing to discuss with him.
Hopefully we can work out a time to make that happen.
Because, yeah, I mean, I too would be interested in some clarification of whether, you know, in fact, he does think that I don't love the country in the way that he suggested.
Because again, I think that I doubt he feels that way.
I really doubt he feels that way.
Perhaps it was poorly articulated, but I'd like to certainly ask him the question.
All right, so let's pause it.
Right there.
So this is like, first of all, it's just totally inaccurate framing that and really I thought kind of underhanded of Dave Rubin to say it like that, where you're kind of going like, he, I mean, it seemed to me like he was hinting at like there's an anti-Semitic angle to Tucker.
He goes, this leans towards certain overtures or whatever he was saying, like, oh, the idea that you don't really love your country, you're really loyal to Israel is kind of like a wink and a nod, like, oh, you know, you can't trust the Jews on this or something.
Like, I'm not sure exactly what he was implying, but he was implying something there.
And just to be clear, there's a couple things that I think should be known here.
Number one, Ben Shapiro has stated publicly that the reason he loves America is because it protects Israel.
Okay.
There's not like a question with Ben Shapiro.
And it's not, you know, it becomes like one of these things.
And this is true that this happens a lot in the wider conversation about racism or bigotry, where people almost get trained to have a response to certain terms.
And this like, again, this isn't to say that there aren't bigots out there or there aren't racists, there aren't Jew haters out there, because there are, of course.
But when you say something like the, if you, when you say dual loyalty, that is treated as if it's an anti-Semitic trope.
You know, like the best example of this is when I have lots of black friends.
They say like, oh, that's the oldest thing in the book that every racist says, you know, but you're like, when you think about it, you're like, no, that's actually a very reasonable defense against racism.
And that was just like a thing that like white people would say when they were accused of being racist as like, no, I'm not racist.
Look at me.
I have lots of black friends.
And that's a totally reasonable response to being called racist.
But we just trained everybody to immediately dismiss that and go, ah, that's the oldest trope in the book.
That's what every racist says.
But if you think about it, it's an excellent point.
It'd be like if you were like, you were like, Dave, you hate scrambled eggs.
And I was like, I don't hate scrambled eggs.
I had scrambled eggs for breakfast.
And you went, oh, that's what everyone who ate scrambled eggs says.
Eggs, the old eggs for breakfast line.
You're like, no, I just, I think it's like devastating evidence against your claim.
Like, you know, I mean, like, there was actually a really good exchange between Sam Harris and Chelsea Handler, I believe it was on this, where she was saying that Bill Burr can still be racist, even though his wife is black.
And Sam Harris, who I'm no fan of, but he was totally right on that.
Where he's like, no, that is pretty strong evidence, though, you know?
Like, I'm saying, like, it's like, I guess it is theoretically possible to be married to a black woman and also hate black people, but it's pretty damn strong evidence that you don't, in fact, hate black people when you marry one and have kids with them.
Like, that just is reason.
Funding Families While Ours Fall Apart00:04:26
And, and similarly.
It's got to be uncomfortable conversations with your kids of, listen, the two of you are cool, but the rest of your kind.
Yeah, I'd say you're half cool.
I'll call you that much.
But yeah, right.
So this stuff is all kind of goofy, but in a similar sense that like, yeah, look, if you were saying that all Jewish people, even those Jews who have demonstrated no loyalty toward another country, all have dual loyalty to Israel and the United States of America because they're all shifty Jews that we can't trust.
If you were saying something like that, like, sure, that's bigoted.
But if you're talking about Ben Shapiro, who has himself stated, like, he's said the reason he supports America is because it's in Israel's interest.
He's said that you can't be pro-American without also being pro-Israel.
I mean, like, he's, there is just no, he does have dual loyalty.
Like this guy does.
And so I think the heart of the issue here, really, is that it's like, look, dude, our country is crumbling, crumbling.
We are $34 trillion in debt.
Almost every major city in our country is falling apart.
We are being flooded with illegal immigrants to the point that Democratic mayors in blue sanctuary cities are saying it's going to destroy the city.
The currency is being drastically devalued.
We have a senile president.
We have probably the worst cultural and racial divides in my lifetime.
We have homeless encampments.
You know what I mean?
Like we have major, major problems.
And if in the face of 100,000 overdose deaths a year in this country, maybe a little more than that, we have real problems.
And if in the face of that, your concern is another country and what's good for them, and you will even sacrifice for our country to help that country, which is by definition what foreign aid is.
Why is it so unreasonable to question how much you care about this country?
Why is that like unfair?
Like, I don't know.
If like, if my family didn't have everything they need, let's say my family was really falling apart, you know, one of my kids is a drug addict.
My wife is having an affair.
You know, she's thinking about leaving me.
I'm getting, you know, like blackout drunk every night and cursing her out.
And we're falling behind in the bills.
I'm not paying for anything around the house anymore.
And my wife's like, what are we going to do here?
We're in so much debt.
I don't know how we're ever going to get out of it.
And then she finds out that I'm funding somebody else's wife and I'm paying all of her bills.
I don't think it would be that unreasonable for her to say like, so do you not love me?
Like, do you not care about me?
Because you married me.
I'm the person your responsibility is to.
I just don't understand like how not only is that not a crazy response, it's the only reasonable response.
It's literally the only reasonable response in that situation would be for my wife to say like, oh, okay, so you don't love me.
This is proof because our family is falling apart and you're funding somebody else's family.
Explain to me why that logic doesn't follow here.
Tucker, I'm happy to talk to you anytime.
I'm happy to facilitate a conversation.
You guys are obviously texting already.
But the point of all of this is, is as these people wake up, let's give them a home that they can walk into that is nice and clean and orderly and respect some differences and all of that stuff.
The way the United States wants to bomb brown kids.
I hate this so much.
It's such girly, manipulative bullshit.
We're trying to convert more people into the movement.
And so you arguing with, it's like, if you guys don't see eye to eye on a big issue, yeah, you should call you guys out on it.
Yeah.
I don't know.
It just seems like some real.
Come on.
We just want all these people who are waking up to come into our nice home.
Undermining Russia Through War00:12:37
But, you know, like, what's he really?
We just want, just let us support this war.
Stop making it such a big deal.
Right.
It's like, or you guys can change your opinion.
If you think that the agenda is more important that we all have one opinion so that people feel more invited as they find the fringe internet.
Like, I mean, not the fringe, but I'm just saying you guys still, as big as Tucker Carlson is, none of these people are the single voice of the conservative movement.
None of them are.
I mean, even Trump is the voice of a very divided conservative movement of people that hate the Trump situation.
Look, I mean, Trump, Trump is pretty goddamn clearly the voice of the conservative movement.
I understand that, but I'm just saying for random people with large internet shows to be going, oh, as people find conservative, the fact that the two of us are arguing, that can't be the way that we grow this.
So what we need to do is both share the same opinion, then fine.
If you think that your two internet shows sharing the same opinion is more important than you actually talking truth of what your opinion is, then fold on your opinion.
Yeah.
And what's with these fucking like implications?
Like, look, I will say, and, and, uh, you know, like, look, obviously I'm a little bit biased here because like I'm friends with Tucker and I really admire Tucker and I don't know Ben Shapiro at all.
And the closest contact we've ever had was him refusing to say my name on his show, which I didn't care for.
So I'm biased here, but I'll tell you as somebody who's, I, I've, I've spoken with Tucker Carlson quite a lot and I've watched his, you know, a tremendous amount of the content he's put out over the last few years.
I mean, I was when he was on Fox, I would always watch his opening monologue and I've I've watched not all, but almost all of his shows that he's been putting out on Twitter, on X.
And he just, to me, comes off as totally sincere.
Now, I, you never know.
And I, and I don't like, like, we're friends, but I don't know him well enough to like know for sure what, you know what I mean?
But like, he seems like a sincere guy and he's a thoughtful guy.
He's thought about his positions and he, I, I believe he sincerely holds them.
And I did think it was like, it is like girly and underhanded when Dave Rubin's kind of doing this like, hey, let's just all get along thing, but then also did the thing where he's like not willing to call out Tucker, but will when he was asking Ben Shapiro the question doing this like, oh, well, he's starting a network.
You have a network.
Maybe he sees you as competition type thing, like implying basically that like he's just trying to take you down to build his own thing and or clear you out.
It's like, dude, listen, Ben Shapiro's built up.
Look, just objectively speaking, Ben Shapiro has built up a real big media company.
Okay.
And it's got a lot of popular shows on it.
And it's, you know, he's got the Daily Wire is a big thing.
I mean, they are, they're big enough that they could offer a guy like Steven Crowder $100 million in a contract.
You know what I mean?
Like they're a big company in that sense.
I mean, you're right.
They don't speak for everyone, but they're a big, but like Tucker Carlson's doing just fine.
He's doing just fine.
It was the biggest show in cable news and is now substantially bigger than he was when he was at Fox News.
He's doing all right.
I don't think that he's like, I just got to clear these daily wire guys out of the way.
Otherwise, this tuckercarlson.com thing is just going to be a failure.
He just interviewed Vladimir Putin.
He's doing okay in the landscape.
And so like that to me just seems like totally nuts.
And yeah, again, like you said, all this kumbaya, like let's be on the same team shit.
It's like, it's their way of going.
Like, like, like, look, they're not doing what you said, Rob.
They're going to continue to support the war, right?
So it's their way of going like, hey, just let us support this war and don't make such a big thing out of it.
Except it is a really big thing.
It just is.
And so, you know, no, that's the answer to that.
No.
I mean, I guess that's easier, you know, from my perspective, because I'm not a conservative anyway.
So I don't care about being on the same team as no one.
So I just, you know, I'm not on the same team as left wingers or right-wingers.
I'm not on the same team as other libertarians for the most part.
There's an argument.
Dave Rubin also looks like they shaved one of those Kia hamsters.
All right.
Yeah, you're the one.
Maybe it's nice to not have to do events with these people and look them in the face.
God damn it.
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All right.
Let's get back into the show.
Let's switch gears and we'll fit in one more topic here before the show, before we wrap up here, because I did think this was worth talking about.
There was, so you had sent to me Rob Ron Johnson's comments.
I guess he was on a Twitter spaces or an X spaces with Elon Musk, and he had some things to say about the war in Ukraine.
And then I did also find this new Republic article, which is, I'm not going to read the whole thing to you, but it's just the title is Ron Johnson Says Dumb Things Before Casting Pro-Putin Vote.
What a spin.
Isn't it just unbelievable?
But anyway, we're on point.
Yeah, let's play what the dumb things as the new republic stated that Ron Johnson said.
First of all, I think we all have to understand that Vladimir Putin will not lose this war.
I state it that way as opposed to Ukraine can't win.
Vladimir Putin will not lose.
Losing to Vladimir Putin is existential to Vladimir Putin.
Russia has four times the population.
They have a much larger industrial base.
Again, I said Russia can produce 4.5 million of those shells a year.
We're not even up to a million a year.
The average age of a Ukrainian soldier right now is 43 years old.
And David, I heard you quote the Time magazine article.
Other quotes from some of Zelensky's top aides say that even if the U.S. and its allies come through with all the weapons they have pledged, quote, we don't have the men to use them, unquote.
So the fact of the matter is, if you're worried about the people of Ukraine, you have to understand that probably about 100,000 of their soldiers have been killed because there have been about 100,000 Russian conscripts.
I take no joy in that.
40,000 civilians.
Hundreds of billions of dollars of Ukraine has been destroyed.
The only way this war ends is in a settlement.
And every day that the war goes on, more Ukrainians, more Russian conscripts die, more civilians die.
More of Ukraine gets destroyed, they'll have to be built.
So, again, sending $60 billion as added fuel to the flames of a bloody stalemate makes no sense whatsoever.
As evil a war criminal as Putin is, he's not going to lose this war.
And our colleagues here just aren't willing to accept that reality.
And they're living in a fantasy world, thinking that Ukraine can win this thing.
They can't.
David, that's exactly right.
I think that that is an excellent summary of the situation.
When I've raised this point, people have, of course, accused me of being some sort of Putin apologist.
When in fact, my companies have probably done more to make, I mean, undermine Russia than anything.
I mean, SpaceX has taken away two-thirds of the Russian launch business.
Starlink has overwhelmingly helped Ukraine.
I mean, it's such an absurd accusation.
My concern is exactly what you articulated.
If you have an extended war of attrition, every day that goes by, there are Ukrainian boys that are, and not even boys anymore because they're running out of boys.
You're losing, Ukraine is losing people every day.
And if you're going to spend lives, it must be for a purpose.
And not just, you know, a mile here, a mile there.
In fact, a mile back and forth.
The lines aren't moving.
So just every day, people die.
For what purpose?
And as you said, there is no.
So there you go.
So, I mean, it seems to me that what Ron Johnson and Elon Musk were saying there are, it's not just that they're right.
It's like that they're irrefutably right.
What else can you say?
The average age of the Ukrainian military is in their 40s.
Why is that?
That's only true for one reason, ever.
It's only one reason why you ever have an average age of your fighting men in their 40s because the boys are dead.
That's been the American contribution to this.
And like, I'm sorry, he's right.
Look, this is the shit I've been saying from the very beginning of this war.
And I've been saying this on the biggest platforms from the very beginning: is that Joe Biden was always posturing like this war was a must-win, but it's not in any meaningful sense for America.
It's just not.
You know, we lose this war, which we're in the process of doing.
Life will go on for us, you know?
But this was really a must-win for Vladimir Putin.
This is a war on his border, where they're claiming their terms where they want Crimea back.
They want his only year-long warm water port back from him on his border.
This is an existential threat as far as Vladimir Putin is concerned.
And you can much more reasonably see how he would get to that position than the United States of America would.
He is going to throw everything at this, and Ukraine can't win.
And so all we're doing is extending the war, and more people are dying.
It's madness.
But anyway, just to be clear here, from what you just heard, and this is what the new republic writes, okay?
Echoing Putin's talking points, Johnson also baselessly claimed U.S. economic sanctions against Russia threaten the supremacy of the U.S. dollar by forcing Russia to trade with foreign countries.
That's just factually true.
So when he says something that's just true, that Russia's trading with other people now because of the sanctions that America put on them, and that this is actually threatening dollar hegemony because now there's this kind of like alternatives rising up, they go, he's echoing Putin talking points.
So like, if you just read the New Republic, which is, you know, a publication that's been around forever, I'm sure there's still some a few people who trust it.
What they, what, what your takeaway from this is like, don't even hear any of the wisdom of what Ron Johnson is saying here.
Just know that we got a U.S. senator who's spreading Putin propaganda.
It's like the blatant, just like McCarthy shit that they'll get away with.
And don't historian nerds, don't get, give me shit about McCarthy.
I'm just saying what is typically known as McCarthyism.
But it's crazy.
It's just like so wild that you could make the most reasonable case.
There is no counter point offered to it, but you're just called a traitor to your country for mentioning it.
A Senator Spreading Putin Propaganda00:00:29
Man, man, people get stupid.
They get stupid during wars.
All right.
We're going to wrap up the show there.
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