Dave Smith and Rob Bernstein critique the 2024 election, arguing that while Joe Biden fails on foreign policy and the border, Donald Trump's trajectory toward collapse remains equally dangerous due to his Yemen war record and pandemic mishandling. They condemn CNN's strategy of labeling Trump a "rapist" based on civil lawsuits rather than criminal convictions, highlighting the erosion of presumption of innocence. The hosts also expose the hypocrisy of the TikTok ban bill, noting how government surveillance mirrors corporate data practices while claiming foreign threats. Ultimately, they assert that the internet threatens the establishment's information monopoly, urging parents to take individual responsibility over relying on state censorship. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
|
Time
Text
Why We Need Less Government00:15:10
Fill her up!
You are listening to the gas human.
We need to roll back the state.
We spy on all of our own citizens.
Our prisons are flooded with nonviolent drug offenders.
If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
What's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
I am Dave Smith.
He is Rob Bernstein.
We are returning to Rosemont and Chicago Zane's this weekend.
Very excited.
Two of, I should say, my favorite comedy clubs in the country.
We had a great time there last year.
We always have a great time in the Chicago area.
So come on out to see us there.
And then we're out to Key West, then the big one, the Aladdin Theater in Portland.
And then St. Louis, Nashville.
We got a bunch of stuff coming up.
ComicDaveSmith.com for all of those tickets.
And of course, RobbieTheFire.com for all of Rob's headlining gigs.
And check out his other podcast, Run Your Mouth.
All right.
So, Rob, it is the year is 2024.
And I'm not sure if you've been made aware yet, but there is a presidential election happening toward the end of this year.
It's supposed to be a pretty big deal.
The most important election of our lifetimes, just like everyone.
And so I've kind of been thinking about this a bit recently.
And this story came out we'll get into in a second that just kind of captured what I've been thinking.
And so I was, I just recorded an episode of the Tom Wood show yesterday.
And he asked me this question.
It's a very standard question, but a fair question.
And I also, I got into a little thing with Liddy at Timcast, who kind of took me to task at one point for not just supporting Donald Trump.
And Tom kind of asked the same question.
He was like, well, look, you know, you're still with the Libertarian Party here.
What do you say to people who are just like, look, this is a nice idea in good times, but right now the country's on the brink of collapse.
Joe Biden and the progressive establishment is such a threat, you know, to us.
Why not just in this year go, hey, we got to, you know, there'd be years to kind of try to spread our message, but in this year, we just got to suck it up and vote for Donald Trump.
He wasn't like saying that's his position, but he was, you know, kind of playing devil's advocate to the idea of being in the Libertarian Party or whatever.
And it's something I have been thinking about.
You know, like, okay, I know I don't believe that.
I don't believe that like I should support Donald Trump and I should tell my audience to support Donald Trump.
But I'm kind of trying to reexamine that and go over it because there is somewhat of a point that they're making.
But the thing is this.
Look, obviously, I think it goes without saying why guys like me and you can't support Joe Biden.
I don't know how, I mean, because he's just awful on everything.
I mean, you know, I guess he doesn't want to turn us into a, you know, like full-blown communism tomorrow or something.
Like he's still, he's okay with allowing some heavily regulated markets to exist.
So he's, he's too owned by big corporations to go full Stalin or something like that.
But look, it's just, there's, there's almost nothing he's good on.
I mean, he ended the war in Afghanistan is the only like good thing you could say about him.
And he even did a horrible job at that.
You know, was to free up resources for the next war.
They got us right into another war.
I mean I, there's just nothing.
He's just terrible on on uh, foreign policy.
He's terrible on uh, the border.
He's terrible on everything.
There's just nothing there.
So, of course um, there's no conceivable way that we could support him.
And then you have uh, Donald Trump, who's his opponent.
So the question becomes, is Biden so bad that you could support Donald Trump and the?
The problem with it is that Trump is just so Donald Trump, and there's just I.
I I see no indication that Donald Trump, getting back in there will.
I'm not saying, let's say, we're in a car driving 110 miles, headed toward a cliff, so that kind of feels like the state of America today.
And it's not that i'm saying like oh, Donald Trump isn't perfect.
Therefore I won't vote for it.
Donald Trump is not going to turn this car around and start driving the other way.
I'm saying I see no evidence that Donald Trump, being president, will even slow down the car, let alone stop it from flying off this cliff.
And of course, I have my uh.
There are things about Donald Trump, who already had four years in there, that I just can't forgive him for and they're not minor things.
I mean he killed like half a million uh people in Yemen, backing the Saudi war of genocide there uh, explicitly because it was good for business.
Now that Donald Trump never even pretended to have some beef with the Houthis or the civilian population of Yemen.
He just thought it was good for business to do something for the Saudis.
And so he continued Obama's war for all four years of his presidency.
His policy on Israel and it's just terrible.
He also poured all the weapons into Ukraine.
It's like Donald Trump is, look, between the moving the embassy to Jerusalem and the Abraham Accords, Donald Trump, I'm not saying he's solely responsible for the current war, obviously, but there's a large amount of responsibility on him for that.
And between NATO expansion and flooding the weapons into Ukraine, he's got some responsibility for that war too.
I mean, the worst two humanitarian crises, like the worst humanitarian crisis through all of Donald Trump's administration was the war in Yemen, and he was funding the Saudi war there the whole time.
And the worst two humanitarian crisis in the world right now are in Gaza and Ukraine.
And he has a lot of responsibility for both of those.
So these are just the facts.
And then, of course, like we haven't even gotten to COVID yet, you know?
And Donald Trump was so bad on COVID.
He was so bad.
I mean, like, talk about not slowing down the car that's driving off the cliff.
Donald Trump, you know, got in there after Obama got out.
And in his last year, he said, let me jam on that gas pedal.
Let me see if I can get this thing up from 110 to, you know, 170.
I know most cars don't go that fast, but, you know, I'm thinking, I mean, COVID was, you know, and I mean, up until the summer of 2020, he was scolding Sweden for not locking down and talking about what a disaster it was going to be in Sweden because they didn't do lockdowns.
By the way, Rob, do you know what European country had the lowest excess mortality rate?
I'm going to get Sweden.
Yeah, no one who didn't do lockdowns, you know?
And he kept Fauci on the job the whole time.
And look, if you were coming to me and saying, hey, Dave, Donald Trump, I know he didn't do, I know he didn't train the swamp in his first four years.
And you're right about Yemen and you're right about Ukraine and you're right about Israel and you're right about Fauci and you're right about lockdowns.
But Donald Trump is coming out now and saying, I get it now.
This is where I messed up.
I shouldn't have done all these things.
And next time it's going to be nothing like that.
That would be one thing.
Still might be kind of hard to know whether we can trust a guy who, when it came to the calling of his life, the most important task he's ever undertaken, failed miserably.
But he's not even saying that.
You know what he's saying, Rob?
He's saying what a great job we did with Operation Warp Speed.
He's saying, let's build the FBI a brand new building.
The FBI is currently working to put him in jail.
He wants to build him a beautiful new building.
Why?
Because that's Donald Trump.
He likes to build big, beautiful buildings.
So that's what he'll do.
And he's still bragging about the hundreds of millions of lives that were saved by his COVID vaccines.
And even though he must know, because he's been booed at his own rallies for bringing it up, he must know that his people do not agree with him on that.
I don't know if he knows that they're right to disagree with him, but he must know they don't agree.
But why is he still going to support it, Rob?
Because it happened under his watch and therefore it's terrific.
If it had happened under Joe Biden's watch or Barack Obama's watch, it would be stupid.
But it happened under his watch, so it's terrific.
And that actually is the depth of Donald Trump.
Anyway, this story that just came out is what got me thinking about this.
So let's go to Rand Paul's tweet.
I don't believe today as I'm sitting here that Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee in 2024.
Don't believe it.
I don't think it's helpful for the president of the United States to attack the media.
It's petty and it's certainly below the stature of the office of the president of the United States.
It's beneath the office in and of itself.
Actions and activities unbecoming of the office of the president of the United States.
All right.
So this is, of course, Mike Rogers.
You saw some clips there from my old show, SEC, SE Cups, excuse me, unfiltered.
So why is Rand Paul playing this video of Mike Rogers?
Because Donald Trump just came out and endorsed him.
Now, you might be asking yourself, well, is Donald Trump just saying that a corrupt CIA stooge of a senator is better than a corrupt CIA stooge who's a Democrat?
So he's just picking the Republican because that's his team and maybe they're a little bit better on the margins than a Democrat.
No.
No, he's doing this in Mike Rogers' primary against Justin Amash, who's also seeking the Senate seat.
Now, Justin Amash is 500 trillion million times better than Mike Rogers.
And anyone who knows the first thing about anything cannot deny that.
But Justin Amash, and while I'll be the first one to admit, he was wrong for this, but he voted for impeachment, Donald Trump.
And or it was he came out after the Mueller investigation or something and said he was guilty of obstruction of justice.
Now, that was a bad take by Justin Amash.
I'm not defending him on that.
But aside from that, his voting record in the House was so good.
I mean, he's easily one of the greatest congressmen to ever live.
I would probably rank, I mean, I would certainly rank Ron Paul as number one.
I think Thomas Massey might take that number two slot, but Justin Amash is right there arguing for number three.
I mean, he's up there amongst the greatest congressmen to ever live.
But he hurt Donald Trump's ego.
He came out against Donald Trump.
And so Donald Trump, and you know, you know, Rob, this is not because he thinks Rodgers is better for the country than Justin Amash.
There's no chance that that's the case, but he'll come out against him.
So we could have one of the greatest congressmen in the history of this country in the Senate.
We could have another Round Paul in the Senate.
But the most influential right-winger in America by far is going to come out and try to make it so we don't have that because his ego is hurt.
And that's who Donald Trump is.
In a nutshell, you could not sum him up better than that.
So no thank you.
I'm not going to support that.
Look, look, I live in a little country town.
My town's red, but I live in a blue state and it's a foregone conclusion who's going to win my state anyway.
My vote is just a protest vote anyway.
So if I'm going to protest vote, let me at least protest vote for something I actually believe in.
Protest vote for this guy who's going to try.
Literally like, I mean, look, I'm not saying adding one more round Paul in the Senate saves our country tomorrow.
But yeah, it maybe pulls that car back from 110 miles an hour to 109 miles an hour.
Like, okay, that's at least something.
We at least get one more good senator in there.
But no, you're going to work against that just because it's not glorifying your ego, which is, by the way, all this whole thing is about anyway.
It's the whole thing, right?
I didn't lose last time.
I won last time.
And now I got to go show everybody that I won and we're going to win again.
And then he'll talk about how he won.
Nobody thought we were going to win, but we won.
It'll just be that.
So anyway, that in a nutshell is my response to that.
I just, I'm not making the perfect the enemy of the good.
I'm just saying show me the good.
I need something before I could be convinced to do this.
Well, I guess that Rodgers guy trashed him too.
So he's picking, he's picking between who is trashing him.
Right.
Yeah.
To speak to your point, I mean, he put deep state kooks in once he got in there.
He ousted his team and he replaced him with all your war-hungry Boltons and other individuals.
With that said, and I agree with you, if you're in a state that's going in one direction anyway, anyways, voting for the Libertarian Party to get counted as, hey, these are the ideals that I care more about is probably better for representation because it puts some numbers to how many people care about these ideas.
And as they start trying to plan for other elections and research what ideas they need to actually platform, higher numbers for that is important.
With that said, I really hope that Biden loses and he loses big.
Speaking A New Language With Babel00:02:34
And I do think that Trump does hope, like I agree with you.
Trump's probably going to put bad war people into his cabinet.
I think on some of these huge issues, such as Israel, he's going to be no better.
But I do think when it comes in rolling back bad investments in green energy, when it comes to pushing when it comes to internet free speech and Talking to the networks directly to try and de-platform people like us.
And when it comes to trying to push things like a central-backed digital currency, I think on some of these other, which are more just national issues, Trump is definitely better than Biden.
And I think I will agree that he's less worse than Biden on several issues.
I don't know that his own deep state may not be trying to do a lot of this stuff, even when Donald Trump's in there.
I think we've clearly established they don't work for him, even when he's president.
But you are right.
There's areas in terms of energy regulation.
He was much, much better than Joe Biden.
He did get some tax cuts in there that were good.
Would have liked to see them more.
It's a lot steeper on this particular line.
He certainly didn't spend any less.
Yeah.
No, government spending, he was atrocious.
It was an absolute disaster.
All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Babel.
Guys, you can start speaking a new language with Babel.
Babel works.
Instead of paying hundreds of dollars for a private tutor or fooling yourself with language apps that are little more than games, Babel's quick 10-minute lessons are designed by over 150 language experts to help you start speaking a new language in as little as three weeks.
Babel is designed by real people for real conversations.
All of Babel's tips and tools for learning a new language are approachable, accessible, and rooted in real life situations and with conversation-based teaching.
Studies from Yale, Michigan State University, and others continue to prove Babel is better.
For instance, one study found that using Babel for 15 hours is the equivalent to a full semester at college.
With over 10 million subscriptions sold, Babel is real language learning for real conversations.
And here's a special limited time deal for our listeners.
You can get started right now and get 55% off your Babel subscription, but only for our listeners at babble.com/slash problem.
Get 55% off at babble.com/slash problem.
That's B-A-B-B-E-L dot com slash problem.
Rules and restrictions may apply.
Compromising For The Wrong Candidate00:15:22
All right, let's get back into the show.
I'll tell you this, okay, a little like kind of behind the scenes, which I don't think I've talked about publicly anywhere.
But I mean, well, I've talked to you about it, but I haven't talked about it aside from like, well, a very, me and Robert gay.
We've been doing gay stuff.
It has nothing to do with the topic.
Just thought I'd tell you guys.
So this, I mean, I think I've talked to you and like Michael Heiss and like a few other people, but there was, so this was before October 7th.
This was right around the time that RFK was just, it was right before he left the Democrat Party.
He called me and we spoke on the phone for a while.
And I spoke to some other people who were big supporters of him at the time.
I don't know that they are anymore.
Things have changed quite a bit.
But when it became obvious to Robert Kennedy Jr. that the Democrats were going to rig the thing against him, which I'm not quite sure why it took him that long to realize that was the case.
I mean, you could just look at the history of the DNC.
They are, it's a pretty open secret that they rig the thing.
You can look back at what they did to Bernie Sanders and in 2016s.
Yeah.
A bunch of dirty riggers.
Anyway, so he had basically decided he was going to leave.
And let's just say the idea of him running as the libertarian candidate began to emerge.
And I had, this was not that long after I had announced I wasn't going to be running.
And so Now, look, my vision for the Libertarian Party has always been, as I've talked about many times, and this was always the vision of the Mises caucus, that like we should be, we should be pure radical libertarians.
God damn it.
And if we're ever to see a libertarian future, well, then somebody's got to be putting these ideas out into the into the zeitgeist.
And if nobody is, then we have zero chance of ever seeing a libertarian future.
So no, sorry.
And then look, I'm a Ron Paul guy.
This is Ron Paul's old thing that Rand Paul used to brag about, by the way.
He doesn't, he, he's not a Ron Paulian in this sense.
But I remember, in fact, one of the first times I ever heard Rand Paul talk, it was well before he was in the Senate.
It was during Ron Paul's 2008 presidential campaign.
And he gave a speech and introduced his father.
He gave a great, fantastic speech.
And he was bragging about his dad.
And he said, he talked about how Ron Paul in 1979, I believe it was either 79 or 80, he was one of the first three congressmen who supported Ronald Reagan in the primary season.
Like Ronald Reagan was running on this like government's, you know, not the solution.
Government is the problem campaign.
And that Ron Paul was like, I sure do like that, you know?
And he was like, we're going to cut taxes and cut spending and all of this stuff and shrink the size of government.
And Ron Paul was like, okay, I'll support that guy for president.
So he was like one of the first guys who supported him.
And then Rand Paul goes in the speech and he goes, do you know how long it took for my father to rescind his support of Ronald Reagan?
And he goes, his first budget, his first budget that he proposed, Ron Paul went, that's it.
Excuse me, we're increasing spending around here.
Nope, I don't support that.
And like, that was his thing.
Like, I don't compromise on my principles.
And I'm, I just feel like somebody's got to fill that slot.
There has to be some group of people who are like, no, I don't compromise on my principles group.
Anyway, so I say that to go, my vision for the Libertarian Party always was, no, we should have a radical, pure libertarian running for the, you know, president so that we can be the North Star and other people can see like, okay, yeah, there is this alternative vision for the world.
But I will say that when this first was brought to my attention, that RFK was interested in the Libertarian Party nomination, my first reaction was, and I called Michael Heiss and I said this, and I think I talked to you about this too, right?
I believe we spoke about this around that time.
And I said, I was like, hey, we got to consider this.
I'm not saying we should do this.
I'm saying it would be crazy for us to not sit and have a really serious conversation about this.
Because, you know, look, this was my vision for the party, but you got to adjust to the reality that's in front of you.
And times have changed.
You know, I joined the Libertarian Party in 2018.
We were in a much different world in 2024 than we were in 2018.
And I went, hey, look, let's just think about this for a second.
Here's a guy who his biggest issues are opposing the war in Ukraine, opposing the vaccine mandate, shining a spotlight on the whole COVID regime, making this election a repudiation of the COVID regime.
He's also got a humongous national following.
And perhaps I'm saying like the conversation should be had over whether or not there could be some type of play here where he comes in and goes, hey, I'm not a libertarian, but I'm running on the Libertarian Party because I agree with the libertarians about these huge issues.
And we're going to insert those into the national conversation.
We're going to get 15% of the vote.
We're going to be a major party status now.
We're going to break the duopoly's grip on, you know what I'm saying?
It's just like there was enough there that this, I was saying, and not that I'm in the position to decide, but I was just saying, hey, I think this should be considered because there's just, you know, it's not like making a deal with the devil to get nothing.
It's like making a deal to get maybe something really important.
And you could easily have seen back then how, okay, you go, here are the five issues that we're running on.
We're ending the war in Ukraine and negotiating a peaceful settlement.
We are, you know, ending the liability protections for vaccine companies.
We're solemnly swearing to never do lockdowns again and maybe even looking into criminal prosecutions for all the people who were involved in the worst of the crimes of the COVID administration.
We're auditing the Federal Reserve.
We're abolishing the CIA.
We're like all these things that Kennedy was right there with us on.
And that's what it's about.
And then Kennedy would have to like swear, you know, an oath like, oh, and by the way, I promise no gun control whatsoever, even though I've said some bad things on that in the past and no environmental regulations.
Just, I don't know.
I don't know if it was ever possible for it to actually happen, but it was worth going like, hey, okay, let me consider this.
And I did consider it for a little while.
So I'm just saying, like, I'm not, even though I'm saying like, I'm not going to support Trump, I'm not like, I, I'm not such a like, when it comes to strategy, such a blind like ideologue or partisan that I go, no, under no situations would I ever compromise and support somebody who's not perfect for president.
But then October 7th happened.
And then, you know, sorry, that whole idea just got thrown out the window.
This is just impossible.
I could maybe hold my nose on some other, a few other issues, but dude, I see dead babies suffocating to death every day under rubble on Twitter.
And like, no, anyone who's telling me you have to be forced to fund that, no, I'm simply, I'm sorry.
Like, I could play ball a little bit, but I can't, I can't compromise on that.
And so anyway, that was just more or less what this story with Mike Johnson just made me think about.
It's just kind of like this whole broader topic of like, look, it's not a matter of like, oh, the libertarians are just so ideologically pure that they'll never do, be able to do anything in the real world because they're so married to their philosophical views or something like that.
It's just like, yeah, but look at the alternative.
You're offering me nothing.
And that's that.
Robert, you think about it?
What was that?
You're going to support RFK.
I think it's a fair position that you've taken the hard line on the Israel war.
Look, there's got to be some issues that are just deal breakers for you.
You know what I mean?
Like if you like, imagine like, I don't know, you were like, you were an American citizen in like 1812 or something like that.
And I was like, hey, I got this candidate who's running and like, he's really good on taxes and he's really good on sound money and he's really good on deregulation.
He's for slavery, but he's really good on these other, you know, gun rights is perfect, you know?
And I think at a certain point, you'd be like, yeah, but that's like, that's just too, like, that's too important of an issue.
It's just so morally inexcusable that I can't support anyone who's that.
And, you know, I'm not saying, I'm not equating things.
It's just a logical analogy, but it's like, yeah, this, this current war in Gaza for me, if you're, if your position is that we must fund it, then I'm, I'm out.
All right.
I guess I'll say something terrible.
If you told me if you were told me that we were stuck with slavery no matter what, but one guy is going to get rid of the Federal Reserve, I might go, well, all right.
I guess I'd really like to get rid of the Federal Reserve and maybe we'll be able to deal with that slavery thing down the line.
No, I understand your point.
There was no Fed back then.
Right.
No, I understand.
I'm just frankly if there was.
Yeah, I get your point.
Now, it's interesting with RFK if he'll be.
Listen, I'd like to see Biden out and I'd like to just see all these ideas thrown out of the way, in my opinion, he's advanced socialism with the green energy movement and other blunders of what happened in Ukraine.
And it'd be nice to just see like, I mean, if there's one person that they thought they can never lose to again, it's Donald Trump.
And what says more of a fuck you to them than Donald Trump coming back again after they threw every dirty trick they could and losing and then them having to kind of go and realizing, wow, we have to rebrand a little bit because putting up old senile people and doing all these policies that led to inflation, which is a big issue right now, is not favorable.
Now, if you throw RFK into the mix, you might just be, it's hard to say who does he take more votes from.
I would assume it's going to be more votes from Donald Trump because he's more of an outsider vote.
Yeah, I don't, you know, I saw one poll.
So don't put too much stock because I saw one poll that was saying he was taking more from Biden than Trump.
But my instinct was to assume what you assumed.
Also, even though he's a Democrat, the kind of right-left Republican-Democrat distinctions, I think, don't really capture, at least in full, America today.
He's an outsider who is against the COVID regime, who's against the war in Ukraine.
It did seem to me like that would probably be the case, that there's more fertile ground for him amongst Trump supporters than Biden supporters.
Or pulling people that might just not actually show up and vote for a Democrat this time.
So it doesn't necessarily...
So anyways, if he becomes a spoiler that helps Biden get in, to me, that's worse.
But if the Libertarian Party could actually front him and he could win, I do think that's interesting, but only under the basis of really, really big concessions of things like getting rid of the Fed or like really big, like on paper written, this will absolutely happen.
And then even at that point, once people are in office, I mean, Trump didn't build his wall.
You know what I mean?
People, we're just a pawn.
We're a pawn of, hey, I'm looking for access that I can actually run as to whether or not he's going to actually platform anything that he doesn't really believe in or want to accomplish or suit whatever his, like at the end of the day, he stepped into the political arena.
He's a politician now.
He's got some sort of an agenda.
And so is working with the Libertarian Party.
We're actually going to take his word that he's going to, you know, carry our flag and do some of the things that are important to us.
If the guy won, I wouldn't expect we're ending the Fed or I wouldn't expect any of the other big concessions would happen.
Yeah.
No, I think that's right.
And so, you know, it just, yeah.
Look, I mean, don't get me wrong.
When it's election night, let's just assume it's Trump versus Biden because that's still a pretty big question mark in my book.
But let's say it was.
And yeah, I'll be sitting there and I'll be rooting for the Libertarian candidate to get as high a vote total as, you know, we can.
I think this is not going to be a high vote total year for a Libertarian candidate, just simply because you have another third party candidate in there now.
And that's for the past couple of election cycles, the libertarians have benefited from essentially just being the third party candidate, whereas now they're not.
Where we got another celebrity who's running third party as well.
But I'll hope they get as many votes.
You know, I'd always like them to get more votes.
But yeah, I will be rooting for Donald Trump to beat Joe Biden simply because that's more hilarious.
And that's more of, as, as you were kind of getting at, more of like a repudiation against the political establishment and the corporate media.
So like, yeah, I like a middle finger to them.
But is it, but if I don't actually think it's going to turn the car around, and I don't actually think it's going to slow down the car, and in fact, it might just, as he did last time, speed it up.
That's not enough for me to go like, yeah, I want to, I want to not only support this guy, but rally other people to support him as well.
And God damn, I mean, just the other day, and it's just, he always has these moments, like no matter how much Donald Trump says something, some good things, and then he just says one thing that just reminds you that, oh, yeah, I can't count on you for any of it.
But he came out the other day.
It was, wasn't he toting the vaccines again?
Yes, he did that.
He came out and was, that was a truth social post where he was bragging about how they saved hundreds of millions of lives.
But he was, I think it was Kilmead over at Fox was interviewing him.
And you know what?
His position, of course, on Israel was, was not that, you know, look, I mean, it's just so crazy too, because again, like we were talking about with RFK, I think we were talking about this where you could just run the counterfactual and go, what if RFK had been good on Israel?
And what if this guy who was against the Ukraine war, who was against the COVID vaccine, who's talking about how corrupt the deep state is.
I mean, literally out there saying the deep state killed my dad and then they came back and killed my uncle, like that guy.
The Danger Of Presumed Guilt00:13:48
And then this war starts and he goes, absolutely not.
America should have no role in this and blah, blah, blah.
And just taking the complete non-interventionist point of view.
And I oppose this and blah, blah, blah.
And as president, I will put all of the pressure on Israel that you absolutely have to stop doing this or you will never get another penny in aid from us again.
And I'm not saying like you have to be so crazy on like, you know, Israel could have some type of response and even a violent response after October 7th, but it can't be this.
You know, we will not stand for this.
And think about this, that 50% of the Democratic voters consider it to be a genocide.
50% of Biden's.
And just think about the campaign that RFK could be running now as the true anti-war candidate in the race.
There's a major third party candidate for the first time since Ross Perot, and he represents the anti-war, anti-deep state, anti-COVID regime point of view.
It's like could have been something so amazing.
But of course, he's terrible on it.
So he races to the right of Joe Biden instead of like, even if you were like both morally and politically, the correct thing to do would be right to race to the anti-war position and take all of that support.
The guy would be the next president.
And I really think there's a huge chance he would win the presidency if he had done that.
So then here you have Donald Trump, who what, again, just think politically speaking, morally speaking, obviously, but politically speaking.
So, okay, you got 50%.
You see in these primaries where they're voting like no support or whatever, they won't support Joe Biden.
There are all these people on the left who are threatening to not vote for Joe Biden and over this war in Gaza.
And so here's what's the political opportunity for Donald Trump here when he's on with Brian Kilmead.
He's like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Joe Biden's talking about sending in humanitarian aid, but he's just saying that because his whole base thinks he's funding a genocide.
And Joe Biden has done whatever Israel wanted for his entire career.
But around here, we're America first.
We have problems in this country.
And I'm sorry, I'm not sitting here and pledging to do whatever B.B. Netanyahu wants to do to the Palestinians.
That's not, no, we don't write you a blank check for that.
We are non-interventionists, and that means we're not sending billions of dollars to other countries.
We're keeping that money right here in the United States of America.
We're going to be energy independent.
Our nation's going to make a comeback and blah, blah, blah.
It's like it's right there for Donald Trump to say.
It's right there for him.
But what does he say instead?
He goes, look at, look at Joe Biden up there criticizing Israel.
I'll never criticize Israel as your president.
I'll support them all the way.
I was the best president for Israel and I'm going to be even better for them the next time.
It's just so all of it, they all just race to be like, I'll, you know, I'll drop more bombs on these Palestinians.
And it's crazy because not only is it so blatantly evil, but it's also like they're all just shooting themselves in the foot politically.
Like they could just, I mean, if Donald Trump took that position, he runs away, runs away with it.
You know, unless the deep state removes him, but, you know, anyway, so that is the sad state of political affairs in the United States of America.
All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is X-Bar.
We all know we need to exercise, but going to the gym can take hours a day and home gyms are very expensive.
So what if you could get better results than the gym in just 10 minutes a day?
Everyone can find 10 minutes.
Our sponsor, X-Bar, is an exercise bar that uses heavy resistance bands instead of weights.
They guarantee you better results in 10 minutes or they'll buy you a full year gym membership.
What's their secret?
The X-Bar uses variable resistance.
So you only need to do one set per exercise rather than three or four sets.
Your X-Bar comes with 5 to 480 pounds of muscle building resistance.
It's a full gym you can take anywhere.
It's safer on your joints and it comes with a lifetime warranty.
And right now, our listeners can save 15% plus receive X-Bar's $199 12-week fitness program for free with the coupon code problem15.
Just go to xbar.com or click the link in the episode description and you can save 15% plus get the $199 12-week fitness program for absolutely free.
Just use promo code problem15.
All right, let's get back into the show.
Okay, let's see here.
What do we want to go to?
Okay, yeah, let's go to this.
By the way, I'm talking about these scenarios where RFK could run away with it, where Donald Trump could run away with it.
But I should be fair.
Joe Biden does have some wise strategists around him too.
And we just on CNN got a glimpse of the latest proposed strategy for Joe Biden's reelection campaign.
Let's take a listen to that.
Greatest asset, the shamelessness of him.
Is then Biden has to get in there very hard and go rapist, racist, fascist over and over and over again.
And then the trials are happening at the same time.
He's just had to pay.
He's just $93 million or right now.
And just hammer it in with those three things.
Rapist, racist, fascist.
Here's the thing.
Thank you.
Do you believe that this is actually like, this is what they're still saying on CNN?
But this is Biden's really got to get in there and call him a racist, rapist, fascist.
That's what'll do it.
We just haven't heard that enough.
There hasn't been enough screeching about Donald Trump.
But if you get in there and really do it now, that'll win people over.
This is what they're left with.
But this is what I had been talking about.
I think this is what gets Biden out of debating is going, it's unbelievable that the country is so racist that they're willing to run this criminal.
And shame on you.
We can't have a democracy.
And so, no, I won't even set foot in the room with this guy.
And so I think what Biden's trying to rally with now is one, they're taking away your right to an abortion and woman's right to choose, which we saw from the last election cycle for the House and for Senate seats was that that was a big issue.
And then the next is he's putting forward a bill now to raise taxes and he's going to try and claim that Republicans are going to take away your entitlement programs.
Now, any conversation about, well, you rob people of their wealth.
You didn't save that social security money.
Hey, you guys changed healthcare a couple of years ago and the pharmaceutical companies and your insurance companies have even higher profits.
And I don't know that we've really expanded good access.
There's going to be no conversation about that, but it's going to be Republicans are trying to take away your entitlement reforms, which the Republicans won't touch because they don't want to be on the bad side of that talking point.
They're taking away your access to choose when you want to have a child, your ability to plan for your family.
And then lastly, this guy is a criminal who that's why New York City found him to be a sexual assaulter and had to take away his properties.
You know, listen, I think you're right.
I think you're writing out about the best script they can go with.
And I think as I laid out on the previous podcast, the major problem that they have is that in all of the polls, the two biggest issues voters care about are immigration and the economy.
It's just such a curveball to them that switched.
Yeah.
I mean, it's just like, and their sales pitch on those two issues is so monumentally terrible.
And I also love the Trump is old and dumb too.
Yeah, yeah.
That's that one's not worth it.
Yeah, the concern about his age, their counter is just, it's just not what.
And look, it's not, Trump is too old for the job, by the way.
It is ridiculous that anyone that age would be put in this position.
But the problem is Joe Biden can't make that claim because he's also too old.
And the obvious difference here is that Donald Trump does not appear drastically different than he did a decade ago.
You just don't see that out of Donald Trump.
He seems like the same old Donald Trump.
When he walks and speaks, he sounds just like Donald Trump sounded 10 years ago.
But Joe Biden, just the visual of looking at him walking, it looks like this guy is struggling to put one foot in front of the other.
He also does fail at walking frequently.
He falls down and he cannot put, you know, I mean, okay, look, they could get him ad rolled up and get him through half of a speech, but he just has a lot of difficulty speaking.
And so that's just like, it's just obvious everyone can see it.
Some people pretend they don't, but they see it as well.
But, you know, regardless of that, there's the one other point I wanted to make.
I agree basically with what you're saying about this, and I agree with you on abortion.
They're going to have to lean into that.
That's one of the few political winners that they have, however you feel about the issue.
But there's also something I find very disturbing that I've noticed has been kind of permeating the corporate media, and that is this claim that Donald Trump is a rapist.
And there's something very chilling about that.
Finger would be more accurate.
Yeah, right.
But even that, I mean, look, I'm sorry, but Donald Trump was not convicted of any crime.
And okay, he lost a civil suit.
seems on its face absurd.
I mean, all you'd literally have to do is listen to five minutes of that woman talk before you would be like, this is a batshit crazy person.
And how exactly, you know, it's in itself, like, it's just a crazy thing that you can make a claim about something that happened so many years ago that everybody involved knows you could never prove in a court of law happened.
And you can still take millions of dollars from that person.
But more importantly than that, I'm just saying it's like the idea of any semblance of a free society is the centerpiece of that is the presumption of innocence and that there it is incumbent on a criminal court to prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that you are guilty before you are treated as a rapist.
And that's never happened.
Donald Trump hasn't been convicted of any crime here.
He lost a civil case.
And it's just obviously they're just looking at whatever they can use to get Trump, but there is something there is something profoundly like dangerous about just you, oh, you lost a civil suit and now we will just speak of you as if you were guilty.
And obviously he hasn't been proved guilty and the presumption therefore is he's innocent of all of these charges.
And it's a weird thing about these type of civil cases is that it's like the attitude from everyone should be, well, your presumption is innocence because you haven't been convicted of anything.
And therefore, the attitude should be like, oh, a guy who's innocent of sexual assault was just forced to pay a whole bunch of money for this sexual assault.
I feel like we should be against that.
Anyway, the fascist part, they have a point about, but for all the things, not for the reasons they want, for the reasons they love about Donald Trump.
But yes, 2020 was a year of fascism for sure.
And you guys were all cheering it on.
They somewhat checkmated Donald Trump on the Gene Carroll one because they platformed the lady on the news to make a crazy claim.
Typically speaking, I don't think the news just puts people on when they're saying things that scandalous, but they love a Donald Trump scan.
It's almost like the same as Tucker Carlson putting on that guy who said he blew Obama.
He didn't do that when he was on Fox News.
And even you and I said, I don't know that that's Tucker's finest moment.
It's a little bit of a fun, scandalous story just to knock at the guy.
So the news was doing that to Donald Trump when they found the lady who's going, who's making claims that, you know, 20 or 25, whatever it was years ago, she was raped in Burg de Fistori or whatever the fancy store's name was.
And then he responds to go, it never happens.
And then she goes, well, that's defamation because now my book can't be sold because my publisher is taking it away from me.
Then they go to court and he loses the defamation suit, probably because it's in New York in front of a New York jury.
I can't tell you.
And then every single time he tries to go, that's not true, he's liable for defamation again because New York found it to be true.
Now, to me, what's lacking or what's odd about civil suits is that if the New York City court system is recognizing Donald Trump as being a sexual assaulter, there shouldn't be some sort of a separate system where there isn't criminal liability for that.
Or otherwise, it's kind of an indictment on our law system of why is New York allowing sexual assaulters just to walk freely?
Well, how many other sexual assaulters are out there that because they weren't the president and someone got on the news, we never looked into?
Are we at risk of sexual assaulters on the loose?
Protecting Kids From Data Risks00:12:31
It seems to me like you need to have some sort of a criminal process first to determine whether or not something happened that shouldn't be.
And I understand I'm not a lawyer and I'm sure lawyers are tearing out their hair right now going, well, that's not the way our system works.
But sometimes when you're outside of systems, you can kind of see the absurdity of it.
And it seems absurd to me to have things that we can all agree should be criminal behavior not being prosecuted for criminal.
Like it either happened or didn't happen.
And if it did happen, then prove it criminally because the guy should be held criminally accountable.
Yeah.
No, I 100% agree with you.
Yeah.
It's it's an it's it is such a weird, just such a strange system.
And I also agree with your point that it's like sometimes, and this is a dynamic that's true across many different issues.
But there is there is often this dynamic where, yes, like someone will say, no, I have expertise in this field.
And a lot of times that's, that's valuable.
Okay, you understand something that outsiders don't understand.
But there also are times where you're too close to something, you know?
Like you, you are not, if you're a psychologist, you're not allowed to see your kids in your practice.
You know what I mean?
And you could sit there and say, yeah, but I'm an expert in my kids.
I've raised these kids my entire life.
I know them way better than some random psychologist who could see them.
But then at the same time, we all recognize there's a good reason why you can't do that.
Because yeah, okay, you are an expert in them, but you're also way too close to this situation.
Your entire identity is mixed in with this kid.
And so, no, you're not going to be able to kind of like objectively assess what's really going on here the way an outsider is.
I think it's like kind of a similar dynamic like that.
And I don't just mean with this, you know, discussion, but just in general, there's just something to that where some I see this a lot where people who are real experts, kind of insiders, sometimes miss the very blatant, obvious things that people outside of it can see.
You know, you hear this a lot of times where people be like, even people will kind of admit that like the CIA has done some bad stuff.
And they're like, yeah, like someone who worked for the CIA for a little bit will admit that.
And they're like, yeah, look, but there's lots of good men and women who are just doing good work.
It's like, yeah, no, I get it because you're friends with them.
You like them.
You used to grab lunch with the guy, but I didn't.
So I'm not burdened by any of that.
And I can just say like, no, this is an evil organization.
You should all go to jail.
This is insane.
Yeah, it's an interesting dynamic.
Again, I'm not discounting the fact that also expertise is important.
And sometimes they understand things that us non-experts do not.
But, you know, it goes the other way too.
Think about the last four years of COVID.
And it is, it's pretty wild.
All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is My Patriot Supply.
Look, things may not be as dismal as they sometimes seem, but I think after the last few years, most of us have realized that we want to be in a situation where we know that our family and our futures are protected.
You all deserve a chance at being protected if things do spin out of control.
And now you can get it with My Patriot Supplies, the self-reliance that you need.
MyPatriotSupply.com has helped millions of American families prepare for the uncertain future.
Many of them start with four-week emergency food kits by ready hour.
With 16 food and drink varieties, there'll be no food boredom.
And with over 2,000 calories per day, there'll be no starvation.
And it's sealed inside ultra durable packaging.
So these meals last up to 25 years.
Stock up on all the food kits your family needs at my website, preparewithsmith.com.
Get each ready hour four-week food kit for $60 off and also get free shipping.
Protect yourself, protect your people.
You're not ready if it's not ready hour and start preparing right now at preparewithsmith.com.
All right, let's get back into the show.
Okay, so before we get out of here, why don't we briefly talk about this bill to ban TikTok?
I know you've seen this, Rob.
Any thoughts?
Yeah, it's always funny when government's commenting on other people having our data because it's somewhat an admission of guilt of that you're using our data against us or that the data is for some reason important.
And so other people can't have it because they can use us, use it to manipulate us.
But you're kind of showing your hands of that your business too.
I'm in the business of government and you don't want to have to compete with other.
Well, what are you doing with this information?
And so, yeah, we're supposed to assume, well, they have our interest in mind.
They're our parents or, you know, we're on, we're on the same team.
So them using it, it's not against our interest, but I don't buy it.
The second they start having these conversations, you realize, oh, you guys are all using big data.
Maybe it's better that there's Chinese influence also balancing this out.
Now, on the other side, there is something to be said for why does it, is it bad that China has access to all of our kids' phones?
Are they feeding them information to turn them all trans?
Are they like, what is China doing to influence the minds of people in our country?
And if we were to end up in some, not that I think we're going to war with China, but is it bad that they have access to so much of our digital infrastructure by being on everyone's phones?
But the idea of banning them, firstly, I don't think for one second it stops the TikTok.
I think you're going to be creating rules by which government is able to further, it's like what they were doing with the net neutrality and we can see right through it.
Do you want the what's the old branch of government Howard Stern used to yell about?
Oh, the FTC.
FCC.
Yeah, the FCC.
You really want those people in charge of what you can and can't consume?
Do you want to go back to those days?
So when I see government talking about getting rid of TikTok, I just think you've got our deep state that has better control, not over Twitter anymore, but over Facebook and our algorithms going, hey, we don't want this one here.
I see big business interests going, hey, let's get rid of the competitor.
And I see just expanding government's control over the internet.
So while I can understand some of the concerns, this seems like classic, hey, that's the boogeyman.
Give us more control.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So a few things on that.
I mean, look, to your first point, it's just, it is the unbelievable levels of hypocrisy that the government demonstrates anytime they pull in any one of these companies and are like, you're doing all this stuff.
That's wrong.
It's just because look, by its very nature, the government is the most powerful criminal gang in the land.
And when I say criminal, obviously not legally a criminal, but in, you know, in the spirit of right and wrong kind of, but the government's just the most powerful gang.
And then they're, you know, they're pulling other people in front of them and going, hey, you're acting like a criminal gang.
And so it just always leads to these obvious like contradictions where government, government will literally pull companies in there and be like, I think you have too much power.
This is just too much power for you to have.
And you're like, yeah, but you have the power to like pull them in here and compel them to come and then regulate them.
And I mean, if power is a problem, why is it somehow okay that you have 100,000 times more of it?
And they'll even, you know, like be like to these companies, like, you're charging too much.
You're ripping people off.
And you're like, you steal half my income.
What are you talking about?
Like, it's just, you know, so there's a lot of that.
I will say that the, I am not so sure that at the highest levels, when you actually get up there, that China is actually so much of a uh adversary.
You know look, let like let's keep in mind that we learned um over the course of uh 2020, even before, I mean, we were talking about the lab leak on this show, I think in april or may.
It became very apparent very early on that like, those bats were not close enough to Wuhan to have been the thing that did it.
And there is this coronavirus lab and hmm, that sure seems like it might be that.
So let's just not forget that when we really found out what was going on, it was that the American government and the Chinese government were working together to do gain of function research on viruses which you would think would be very sensitive, dangerous.
You know activities and they're working with China on this, not against them.
They're working together on this.
And i'll just point out that uh, when the um, when the letter uh, Osama Bin Laden's letter to America, uh came out, tick tock also banned the hashtag, like they were lockstep with what the American establishment wanted to do.
Just something worth pointing out.
But the other thing is, is the point that you kind of got at there Rob, which really is the key to all of this.
Look, the.
The internet poses an enormous threat to governments and because the internet, as it advanced, ended up uh, destroying the, the establishment's monopoly on information, and this is why there's been a massive freak out uh, ever since that really started.
And there was the SOPA and uh PIPA or something like that I forget the name of the other one the proposals to flat out regulate the internet, which which failed.
Um, there was the net neutrality attempts to bring regulation into this.
Of course, there's been the mass censorship campaign.
Think about the stuff from the twitter files and all of that where governments trying to get into the business of being able to regulate social media.
And this here is just the latest version of that, and you can actually look into if you go.
Follow uh Thomas Massey uh, on his twitter page.
There he's been tweeting all about what the language of this bill actually is and how dangerous it would be and how, how how much.
The slippery slope is just right in front of you that once they do this, they can now go around to all this other stuff.
So I would just say that, like right wingers.
Please don't fall for this trap, because it's so easy to get right wingers.
As soon as you just go, it's China and they're like China, poisoning our kids.
China, and all this it's like, listen man.
The internet exists.
I I do not know whether or not um, the Chinese are manipulating the algorithm in tick tock.
I've seen, you know.
For example, Tucker Carlson did some of these uh uh pieces where he would show you what the algorithm pushes in China versus what the algorithm pushes in America.
And in China, you have 15 year olds are like watching a TikTok video of like the best 15 year old violinist in all of the land.
And then over here, it's like some chick twerking or something like that.
Now, maybe China's trying to make her kids dumber.
I'm not even saying it's not possible that that's the case.
It's quite possible that the algorithm is also just feeding back, holding up a mirror to our two different cultures in some sense.
However, even if it was the former, even if it was China interfering with it, the internet exists, man.
And as there's all types of filth on it, and I don't see any way short of also shutting down any dissent from the establishment, I don't see any way that you're going to create government controls to wipe all of this out of the internet.
And I think that it is our job as parents to make sure we really limit what our kids have access to and that we each, we all need to take that individual responsibility on.
I know that's something certainly me and my wife talk about a lot, that like our kids are not going to have phones or tablets for a very long time.
And if we ever get to the point where they are, they're going to be heavily monitored.
And that's just that.
Limiting Tablet Access For Children00:01:07
Sorry, that's the way it is.
I understand there's other challenges.
There are other kids whose parents aren't doing as good a job.
And then your kid can see it from those kids.
But that's why it's kind of on all parents to start to grapple with this new world that we were not raised in, that we are now raising kids in.
But this is not the way to do it.
This is that the government, as I said before, they are just the most powerful gang in the land.
And they desperately, they have made it very clear to you, they want control of this internet thing because they do not have a monopoly on the conversation right now because there's so many shows like this one and bigger shows and smaller shows.
But there's just so many out there now.
That's what they're coming for, the control of information.
And do not support giving it to them.
All right.
That's going to be our episode for today.
Thank you very much, everybody, for listening.
Catch you next time.
Come check us out this weekend in Chicago and then the following weekend in Key West.
Me and Robert are whipping out the Speedos.
We're going to be out there getting some sun on the beach.
And then, of course, the Aladdin Theater out in Portland.