Dave Smith and Robbie the Fire Bernstein dissect the escalating Diddy investigation, linking it to broader themes of government overreach and the difficulty of protecting public figures from exposure. They analyze a suspicious Baltimore bridge collapse, speculate on election-time cover-ups, and critique MSNBC for hiring Ronna McDaniel and Robert Gibbs despite their histories of denying election integrity and lying about drone programs. Ultimately, the hosts argue that cynical media incentives undermine public trust by rewarding officials who betray principles to secure lucrative post-government roles. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Fill Her Up00:03:56
Fill her up.
You are listening to the cash 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.
You're listening to part of the problem on the Gash Digital Network.
Cheers, Dave Smith.
What's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
I am Dave Smith.
He is Robbie the Fire Bernstein.
We're back with another episode.
What's up, gang?
How are you, Rob?
I already hate being home.
Do you really?
You miss Key West?
Not even Key West.
Just 48 hours and like having to do laundry and all the home stuff.
And I'm like, I don't want to be here.
I mean, you realize you would have had to do laundry one way or the other.
Like no matter what, you can't run away from dirty clothes.
I don't know with the way I wear clothes.
I could just buy a fresh buy.
I keep having Bobby the Bank send me some fresh sheets out there on the road, buying some black t-shirts.
They're wearing the same jeans for a month and throwing them out.
I can make it work.
Yeah, you probably can.
You're right.
You could pull it off.
Well, you're home.
We're off this weekend.
It's Easter, Rob.
You could celebrate Jewish Easter.
Christ is king.
That's what we're saying.
Go into yards the night before and steal kids candy.
That is really true.
If you really want to celebrate your faith, that's the best way you do it.
Is there an Easter Grinch?
Maybe I'll become that guy.
Maybe that'll be my niche.
Dress up like whatever Shmooley was dressed up as on Horum.
And you can get that.
Jeez, how about that guy?
He's working hard.
He is working hard to create more Jew haters.
Anyway, don't worry.
We won't have you home for too long, Rob, because we got a bunch of stuff coming up.
Hold on, let me pull it up right now.
The next stop is Portland at the Aladdin Theater.
Really looking forward to this one.
The first time me and Rob have ever done a theater show together.
So this is going to be a cool one.
The Aladdin Theater in Portland on April 12th.
Please come on out to that show.
Grab tickets now at comicdave Smith.com.
And then we're back out at the St. Louis Funnybone.
One of the most fun weekends of the entire year last year.
So I can't wait to go back there.
And then Tacoma and Spokane, Washington, Atlantic City, Nashville.
Oh, we just added Las Vegas at the Wise Guys out there.
Bunch of cool stuff coming up.
Really looking forward to it.
And another, this is, I'm making this announcement early because I want to make sure that people get this information now.
Okay.
Because last year, more so than any other club I've ever done, I got a lot of people who were bummed out last year when I did the mothership because, you know, that club just sells so many tickets itself.
So all the shows sell out very quickly there because just it's the hottest club in the country.
And so there were actually a lot of like our fans who were like, oh, I really wanted to come out to the show, but the tickets were all gone.
So listen, I am back doing a full weekend at the Comedy Mothership in Austin, Texas, July 12th, 13th, and 14th.
The ticket link is up now.
You can get them on the mothership site and it's up.
It may not be up on my site yet, but it will be within the next couple of days.
Go, if you want to come see me in Austin, get tickets now because this club just always sells out.
So make sure you go get those tickets now because I want as many like our people to come as possible.
And it's just, if you haven't been there yet, it's like just an amazing comedy club and it's so much fun.
So anyway, go check out all that stuff.
ComicdaveSmith.com for all the ticket links.
RobbyTheFire.com for all Rob's headlining stuff.
And Run Your Mouth is Rob's other fantastic podcast.
All right.
Southern Border Attack Fears00:07:20
There's a bunch of stuff going on that I wanted to talk about.
I don't really have that much to say about this bridge in Baltimore, but that was pretty goddamn nuts.
Have you watched the video of it, Rob?
Don't look like an accident.
I don't understand how you steer yourself exactly into a poll and then go, hey, the power's out.
It's listen, I know.
I was literally just talking about this before you, Rob had to like restart his computer because he was having some glitches.
And I was talking about this with Brian and I was like, listen, I know this is totally speculation and it's totally amateur hour speculation.
So I'm not like, I don't understand any of these things.
Man, it does remind me of when people are just judging by the naked eye what the towers falling down looks like to them.
That's what you came in on me saying that.
It is like, they'll be like, wow, look at the way it's falling.
It looks like a controlled demolition.
And it's like, I'm not even saying it doesn't.
I'm just saying, what?
How do buildings look like controlled demolitions when they just fall down?
You know what I mean?
Like, I just don't know.
And there's a lot of people who don't know.
I'm not even saying that any one side is right or the other.
I'm just saying that there's so many people who don't know who will immediately have an opinion on that.
And I hate that.
That being said, let me do that now.
There is something about the visual of watching all of the lights go off and then it turned to precisely meet the column of the bridge.
It was not on the trajectory of hitting the column.
It turns to meet it and drive directly into it.
That does to my dumb naked eye look very suspicious.
That's all I'm saying.
And it also seems like someone got like the report on how to easily take down critical infrastructure where like you watch the engineers describe, yeah, if you hit that thing, that bridge is collapsing.
And you're like, is that, wow, who would have known that that was that easy to just take out?
Once again, I don't know anything about boats.
I don't know anything about bridges.
This is not my systems or whatever.
No, I know nothing about any of this.
And look, all of the authorities have said that there's no signs that this was a cyber attack or a terrorist attack or anything like that.
Their language is a little bit trickier.
It's more something of we have no evidence at this time or there's no reason to indicate there's something with the way that they're even framing it that's like, wait, you know something.
Yeah, it's look, I have no idea.
They're saying the signs point to like a malfunction of some sort.
Perhaps that's all true.
Thank God this wasn't during rush hour.
That is a very busy bridge.
I mean, I still, I think a couple dozen people did die in an end.
Horrible.
Do you see one of the crazy things about watching the video is you see like there's like a couple cars that get by right before it happens.
Oh, that's wild.
And you're just like, oh man.
My point is just that things are not always what they seem to be to the naked eye.
I don't exactly understand what's what's going on here, but it's a crazy thing.
And in some ways, it's very symbolic of where America's at.
That's how things are going.
Going about as well as that bridge down in Maryland.
It's always a weird guessing game within the first 24 hours of the news.
And you don't get much other than every local official talking out about how horrible it is and the community work they're going to have to do, people taking the opportunity.
I told you we needed infrastructure for our bridges.
Here's why I told you this.
You know, everyone hops on it for their agenda.
With all that being said, the administration would have a reason to try and cover up for a terrorist attack coming close to an election.
I mean, especially as we just pointed fingers at Russia and going, oh, look, look at how weak you guys are.
Look at what you have to contend with.
And as people have been pouring over, imagine if this actually was like someone who came over the border and just pulled this off.
It'd be the end of the administration.
I have no evidence to say that it is.
I'm just saying it's a guessing game within the first 24 hours.
And when you see something that looks like, it doesn't look, what are you telling me?
A guy really passed out at the wheel in minutes to steer it exactly into that thing at the exact time you'd make that turn.
It just, it looks a little odd.
You know, I remember Pat Buchanan talking about years ago.
He was always a big border hawk.
And I will confess.
I always really loved reading Pat Buchanan's books because the guy's just brilliant and he's an amazing writer.
I highly recommend like literally whatever the book is, pick it up and read it.
If it's a Pat Buchanan book, it's so good.
Highly, there's a bunch of them, but like Where the Right Went Wrong was amazing, Suicide of a Superpower, A Republic, Not an Empire, Churchill Hitler and the Unnecessary War.
So many just amazing books.
But anyway, so this is like years ago.
I remember reading his books.
I'm like, I don't know, it was during the George W. Bush administration and he'd always be such an immigration hawk.
And I thought he was, I always thought that issue he was just a little nutty on.
And I was just kind of, I really was at the time.
Like I was like, ah, he just really like, he really idealizes like the 1950s American values and as a conservative wants to stay there.
And he doesn't like that the racial demographics are changing and stuff like that.
In hindsight, looking back at it, I'm like, wow, he was really ahead of his time and onto something.
And I think the points he made were very actually pretty solid in hindsight.
But anyway, I remember him talking about during George W. Bush's administration.
He was complaining about how open the border was back then.
So you can imagine, you know, I'm sure he's quite furious right now.
But he said, and he goes, look, if a terrorist attack comes through this wide open southern border, that's it for George W. Bush.
Like he will never be forgiven.
For history, he will be known as the guy who after 9-11 didn't secure the border.
Like the most basic thing that you'd think should be done after 9-11.
And not just secure the border, but like secure the immigration system in general.
And in fact, it's one of the things that never gets talked about about the story of 9-11.
But in many ways, it was a failure of immigration policy that these guys were allowed in.
Anyway, it is very true.
Anyway, the point I remember just the thing you said that made me think of that was just that I remember at the time thinking, man, if there was a terrorist attack that came in from the southern border, the Bush administration would have to do everything within their power to lie and tell you that that's not how that guy got into the country.
You know what I mean?
Because he would just be toast.
And similarly, and I'm not saying it's suggesting at all that this ship was something, anything to do with the border, but it does just make you realize these weird incentives of politics.
We're like, yeah, if somebody comes through the border right now and committed something on a mass scale, the Biden administration would have to try to cover that up as best they could.
Look at the way they lied with Benghazi, trying to say it was over a cartoon or whatever their claim was.
Yeah, that's right.
They did try to say it was like, you know, there was a very insensitive cartoon.
We understand where these Muslims are coming from.
They all got upset about that.
They're like, oh, no.
Oh, actually, we were trying to overthrow all their governments.
And that's kind of, that was part of it too.
And by the way, we succeeded, a whole lot of them.
Wild Internet Speculation00:12:02
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All right, let's get back on the show.
Okay.
Anyway, there's one other story that I did just kind of want to touch on.
Again, it's not a story that I have that much unique to say on, but did you, I have not closely been following Diddy Gate, the scandal with Puff Daddy, as we used to call him in my day.
He later became P. Diddy.
But the whole time he was diddying kids, evidently.
Now, I don't know if that's true or not.
But anyway, there has it Puff Daddy.
There's been like all of this kind of like wild internet speculation.
I think the Cat Williams appearance on Shannon Sharp's podcast that blew up the internet, that kind of gave a lot of wind to it.
There are these accusations that Puffy has been doing all types of really weird sexual stuff.
The allegations range from that he was doing weird stuff with kids to this kind of broader allegation that he was essentially serving some type of Epstein-like role within the music industry, getting people to do either illegal or embarrassing sexual things and then blackmailing them with that information.
There are lots of weird, there's lots of weird things.
Like there's videos of him with a lot of stars when they're very young boys.
I think Usher was a little boy around him and Justin Bieber and there's little kids around Puffy who he like takes in or pretends to adopt.
And it's strange for sure.
And, you know, Puffy was always, like, I grew up a real hip hop guy, Rob.
I know you didn't, but Puffy was always the guy from day one who was like, there'd be like a bunch of gangster rappers and then Puffy would be like, hey, maybe while you're gangster rapping, I come in in a shiny suit and start booty dancing all over the place.
You know, like it was always just like a very weird vibe with him.
Anyway, this all just seemed like wild internet speculation until yesterday the FBI raided two of his homes.
And so now the speculation only increases to like, what the hell is going on here?
I don't have anything to say specifically about this case other than that.
Who the hell knows?
We'll see what happens.
But it is hard to like, you know, when there's all this internet speculation about like, oh, this guy's doing all this creepy stuff.
And then the FBI raids his house, you're like, oh, maybe I guess there must have been something to that, or I suspect it indicates there could have been something to all of that.
Also, unclear whether or not he's fled the country.
And then also unclear when the FBI is raiding your homes, if they're looking for evidence or disposing of it.
Yeah, no, that's a that's a very fair point.
It's never clear what side the FBI is on, but we certainly know they're not just blindly on the side of justice.
So who knows what they're there to do?
I do on the Epstein side, it was, we, we got to go, we have a safe we got to lose.
It was the safe, it was the safe disposal team.
It's, it's really something.
I will say that there's something, it's kind of like a bigger theme that does seem to be part of whatever it is that we're living through.
Whatever this moment in time is, whatever this, you know, this chapter in the cycle of humanity is.
And I've been thinking about this with, you know, even with the thing, as I mentioned with Cat Williams going on Shannon Sharp's podcast.
With Tucker Carlson getting fired and going to Twitter, as we've talked about many times on this show, there's this interesting new dynamic.
Like things are so crazy this year.
The country seems more chaotic and out of control and on the precipice of disaster than it's ever seemed in my life.
But at the same time, there's this whole new dynamic now where like almost people cannot be disposed of the way they used to be.
It's not the old game where, hey, if you fire the guy off his TV show, then that's it.
He's done.
Nope, actually, he's bigger than ever.
Oh, Cat Williams, the guy the industry decided isn't going to be the guy because what for whatever reasons.
Well, he goes on and he got like 50 something million views on that podcast.
It's like nobody does ratings like that.
You know what I mean?
And like he's, and there is something interesting where the people who had the power, who were able to keep, put their thumb on the scale, seem to be losing a lot of that.
Like in a previous time, the Jeffrey Epstein story simply never would have come out.
Or if it had come out, you'd have heard one little thing about it and then you'd never hear anyone talk about it again.
And that's that.
And maybe there'd be someone who wanted to write about it in a physical newsletter that they would distribute that maybe reach 300 people, but it wasn't like they could just reach millions of people like this.
And I'll tell you, there was another thing I was thinking of just this morning.
That guy, Jared, who was Stephen Crowder's co-host for years, they called him Not Gay Jared on the show, but he just put out a video about how fucked up the way Crowder treated him was and how he's got him under all these NDAs and he's basically just bankrupted him through legal fees and he's not allowed.
Did you see that, Rob?
I saw it when you retweeted it.
I wasn't familiar with him, but it seemed seemed harsh.
Yeah.
I mean, like, it's imagine, dude, like if I had you under some type of contract.
Spoiler alert, I don't have anyone under contracts.
I've never signed a contract with Gas Digital or with anybody else.
We all just, I don't even think we ever officially shook hands.
It's all just like, hey, you want to do my podcast?
But imagine like how like vindictive and evil it would be if like you wanted to leave the show and I had you in a thing where you can't work anymore.
Like if you leave me, you can't do stand-up comedy or do podcasts anymore.
And you're just like, Jesus Christ, dude, this whole career I built is gone now just because, and I'm not saying like six months off.
Like you just can't ever do it again.
It's just anyway, but the point is that now that's all coming out and it's going super viral.
And it does seem like there's something about the time that we live in where it's just very hard to keep secrets, or at least it's getting a lot harder to keep secrets.
And even if you're in the position of power, it's much more difficult to keep a lot of this stuff, stuff under wraps.
And so, you know, there's good and bad with that, I'm sure.
And there's, there's excesses of it, like in the Me Too movement where people make accusations that there's no way of verifying.
But it does seem to be a theme with the time that we're living in that more and more dirt is getting exposed.
And I do think there's at least part of that is a very positive thing.
I guess that's all I'll say.
I think we also seem kind of live in a landscape now where people don't just want to consume your art.
They kind of want to consume you.
And so if offstage, you're a total dickhead and on stage, you got some sort of a likable brand or, you know, it's almost like everything's almost like being a church pastor now.
If you've had 14 affairs or three families that you've left, you kind of can't get up and preach.
Not that what we do is preach, but I'm just saying, and like, you know, no, no, but there's a comparison there that it's like if we were doing something that is totally contrary to how we portray ourselves on the podcast, then like, yeah, that should be damaging.
Yeah.
And so some of these Hollywood characters, it's your likability is what sells.
And so if you're a, if your brand is that and you're a total dickhead off air, people start finding out about that, you know, I guess it will hamper your career.
Yeah.
No, and I do think there's, it's got to be, it's got to be a scary time for people who aren't really living it.
You know what I mean?
Like for people who aren't really living the persona that they project.
And I'd imagine it's got to be like people are like, oh man, anyone could find out about this.
But look, like, you know, this is what's nice.
I guess what's kind of freeing about the fact that, and I'm not saying like me and you aren't flawed people, we certainly are.
I'm just saying that we are, we really are what you see.
There's nothing, there's no like big secret afterward where we're like going, oh man, we got him again today.
And there's not, but it would be, man, what a scary time it would be to be someone like that.
Or even just like if you were like, if you were like cheating on your wife or something like that and you're a person in the public eye, it's not like before.
It's like that you could just get ruined at any moment for that.
Like there are screenshots, there's proof, there's all this stuff that can just be posted and then that's it.
You're done.
And there is, I think there's something positive about that.
Like there's just the penalty for being dishonest is more present and more, you know, available.
And there should be some type of penalty for being a fraud.
And like, yeah, if your whole thing is that you believe in free speech and then meanwhile, you're locking down everybody who works at your company to not be able to say anything if you, if you mistreat them, then like, that's, that's fairly contradictory in spirit.
And so I think that's a good thing if that gets exposed.
And like, you know, and certainly if someone like P. Diddy or someone like that is doing really awful things to people, then like, yeah, that's great if that gets exposed.
So anyway, we will, we will see what happens.
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Joe Biden Election Fairness00:15:21
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All right, let's get back into the show.
All right.
Moving more into the stuff we usually talk about in the realm of news, Donald Trump recently made some very Trumpian comments on the Israel-Gaza war.
I want to play that and then let's respond.
You can't have this going on.
And I will say, Israel has to be very careful because you're losing a lot of the world.
You're losing a lot of support.
But you have to finish up.
You have to get the job done.
And you have to get onto peace.
You have to get onto a normal life for Israel and for everybody else.
Now we got to get to peace.
All right.
So that was Donald Trump.
Now, how I will say, how pathetic is it that of the two major party candidates and of course the major third party candidate, RFK Jr., that's the best we've got so far.
However, there was another clip, or at least I read the quote that we're not seeing here where he said, there's certain things that you just can't do that.
Like I guess.
Yeah, I don't know if there was a video clip of that.
I looked for it.
I saw it in writing, but yeah, go ahead.
I'm sorry.
He basically said, yes, you just can't do this.
I would have told him not to do this.
Right.
So with that being said, even though he might be talking just from a strategic PR standpoint, he's letting, I mean, he's taking a red line like you and I of saying you guys can't be killing aliens and civilians.
And even if it's a more Trumpian one where it's like, I understand that you have to take care of business.
And I'm not telling you that you even have to be moral in taking care of your business.
If you're on the news killing civilians, you've lost the game.
And I can't support you and I can't work with you and you're going to lose more support.
But the thing is, you know, he didn't exactly go and then I can't support you.
He just said something about how he's seeing it all the time on social media and how, look, it's better than what we've heard before.
But he also did say, hurry up and finish up, you know, which is like, okay, and also not quite as good as saying, just stop.
It's not as if he came out and said, you have to stop immediately.
You can't do this anymore, which would be much better.
So Donald Trump kind of in his Trumpian way, you know, is like, we're not going to fight these wars anymore, but we're going to kill all the terrorists, but we're not going to do it, but we'll do it.
I'll drop so many bottom.
We'll take the oil, but we're going to get out of it.
You know, and it's like, wait, it's still better than what the Democrat or Republican establishment are saying.
But it's like, I wish he would just say the right thing.
But it is at least something.
And you do see where, look, like what he's talking about is that global opinion is totally turning on Israel here.
And that's going to start to have an effect on the rhetoric that candidates are going to have to use.
And so, you know, anyway, it is, it's at least somewhat of a departure from what he said.
And this is also, of course, the problem with Donald Trump also is that he was on, God, who was it on with?
I can't remember, somebody over at Fox News.
I can't remember who was interviewing him, but it was just about a month ago when it was, or maybe it was in response to the State of the Union or something like that.
And he said, they were like, look at, look at, you know, the Fox News guy was like, look at Joe Biden being weak, talking about humanitarian aid.
Israel's our strongest ally, blah, blah, blah.
And Trump went, I was always the best ally to Israel.
I'll be so much better for them than Joe Biden and all of this.
So you kind of never know.
It's like Donald Trump.
He's always on every side of every issue.
And then you just got to figure out, I don't know, whoever the last guy in the room with him, I guess, will be the one who influences him.
But I will say it's at least something.
It's at least a little bit better.
At least, at least injecting an ounce of sanity into the debate, which is like, oh, yeah, the goal is to move toward peace, right?
Right?
The goal isn't just to murder people.
Okay.
Can we all agree with that as a starting point?
Of course, recently, Benjamin Netanyahu, who just seems to have canceled a planned trip to America, although he's sending one of his top officials over here to request more weapons.
And, you know, look, the bottom line is that as long as we are arming this conflict, it doesn't matter what you say about how.
We think Israel should pull back a little bit.
We think they shouldn't be quite as reckless when they kill all these innocent people.
If you're giving them the weapons to go do it, you're on the hook for it.
It doesn't matter what you said after that.
You know, you got if a guy comes over to you and he goes, I'm so mad at this guy.
I'm ready to go murder him.
And you go, okay, well, here, you can borrow my handgun.
But I really would appreciate it if you didn't murder him.
That doesn't matter anymore.
He told you what he wanted to do and you gave him the weapons to do it.
You're implicated in this.
And so anyway, Benjamin Netanyahu, who I guess is pissed off because Blinket and Biden have been saying like, you know, you really shouldn't be killing so many people so recklessly.
It's really just, I don't know.
It's something.
So out of protest, he's not going to come here.
Just to let us know he's pissed off.
He made a statement saying something.
He goes, we'll do this with or without America.
And it's unbelievable that like, if you make some requests off someone like that, that his response is, we'll do this with or without America.
And that the American response isn't just like, okay, cool.
We choose without.
Go ahead.
You know, if it's so, if you don't need this help, then great.
Better for all of us.
You don't need to get it.
And of course, that's for many reasons not politically possible to pull off.
All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is mypatriotsupply.com.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
So, all right.
There was another story that was another media story that I thought was pretty interesting.
I don't know how much of this you've seen, Rob, but everybody at MSNBC is freaking out over them hiring.
What's her name?
Rana.
Oh, why am I blanking on her name now?
That's not good.
But the former head of the RNC who just recently left, of course, she was she was the one who Vivek Ramaswamy was calling out Rana McDaniels.
Sorry about that.
So anyway, there's been a few clips.
Chuck Todd went on Meet the Press and apologized to the new host of Meet the Press for putting her in this situation.
And they're all kind of blasting management for hiring this woman.
And anyway, let's play.
We've got a couple of clips here.
Let's go to the first one.
In this instance, NBC News, either wittingly or unwittingly, is teaching election deniers that what they can do stretches well beyond appearing on our air in interviews to peddle lies about the sanctity and integrity of our elections, which Ronna McDaniels did yesterday.
I meet the press.
Can you say as you sit here today, did Joe Biden win the election fair and square?
He won.
He's the legitimate president.
Fair and square, he won.
It's certified.
It's done.
But I think that's why you want me to say something to say that.
Why has it taken you until now to be able to say that?
I'm going to push back a little because I do think it's fair to say there were problems in 2020.
And to say that does not mean he's not the legalist.
There were no problems.
But what we've also said to election deniers is not just they can do that on our airwaves, but that they can do that as one of us, as badge-carrying employees of NBC News, as paid contributors to our sacred airwaves.
Joining us now, Yale University.
All right.
That's all we needed to hear of this one.
This is, it's unbelievable.
Glenn Greenwald tweeted something about this too, but he said something like, if 20 years ago I had told you that the Bush Cheney spokeswoman would have been the hero of the liberals without changing any of her beliefs, that she just would have been the hero of the liberals, calling out the scourge that is misinformation.
You know what I mean?
Like the woman who represented the Bush Cheney administration is so outraged about her.
They're sacred airwaves.
First of all, what this woman, this Rhonda McDaniels, she's just an establishment hack.
It's not like she's some far-right, you know, Trumpian or anything like that.
And the statement she made was, there were problems, which is just objectively true.
There were lots of problems in 2020.
And anyway, the fact that this is so like outrageous because she's here on our sacred airwaves, what it really comes down to is that they are they're offended that the she was mean to them.
Basically is what it all comes down to.
And I'm sure management will sit down and go, listen, she deserves a payday too.
Here's what she played ball on.
That's why you all have jobs here.
And so we've got to hold to our agreements because if not, the future people, they won't do our bidding while they're serving in government.
Yeah.
Like, how does this work if they don't know that there's a cushy salary waiting for them on the other side?
Hey, listen, we're just taking our orders from the CIA when people get retransferred.
And so she's now on the media team, but believe me, she'll play ball.
And if we're saying that the election was 100%, then she's over here and playing on that side.
She'll do it too.
And look, it's so obvious the game she's playing too, right?
It's like they bring these people in to be essentially controlled opposition so that they can go, look, even the head of the RNC is admitting that the election was legitimate.
And then she has to say a little something like, hey, look, there were problems.
So she's not completely losing her ability to pull anyone from that side would be on that side in.
That's how all of this works.
What was, I forgot.
Why was she removed from the RNC?
What was that big Ramaswamy complaint?
I can't remember.
Well, I mean, I think at the heart of Ramaswamy's complaint was just that she's been a disaster.
Right.
You know, I mean, she's been there.
They lost the presidential election in 2020.
They were supposed to have a red wave that never came in 2022.
And then they had a bad off year in 2023.
And it's like, how many of these you get?
Under Joe Biden, you can't put together winning elections.
So you're pretty bad at this, you know?
And I think, I can't remember exactly.
I think there was one or two other things that she had said or things that where she was just doing things in a corrupt way.
You know, Vivek was an outsider candidate.
And so it's, I'm not saying he was wrong.
He was right to do it, but it's a lot easier when you're the outsider candidate to be like, hey, this whole thing's unfair.
They favor all the insider candidates, which is always true with the DNC or the RNC.
Anyway, on this topic, let's go check in with our favorite morning show.
Hiring a former RNC chair, Rhonda McDaniel.
Well, she was on Sunday's Meet the Press.
It was her first appearance since the NBC and since NBC News hired her as a political analyst.
I know you won't be surprised to know that we've been inundated with calls this weekend, as have most people connected with this network about NBC's decision to hire her.
We learned about the hiring when we read about it in the press on Friday.
We weren't asked our opinion of the hiring, but if we were, we would have strongly objected to it for several reasons, including, but not limited to, as lawyers might say, Ms. McDaniel's role in Donald Trump's fake elector scheme and her pressuring election officials to not certify election results while Donald Trump was on the phone.
To be clear, we believe NBC News should seek out conservative Republican voices to provide balance in their election coverage, but it should be conservative Republicans, not a person who used her position of power to be an anti-democracy election denier.
And we hope NBC will reconsider its decision.
It goes without saying that she will not be a guest on Morning Joe in her capacity as a paid contributor.
Here's why.
But to the question, though, do you disagree with Trump saying he's going to free those who've been charged with the government?
I do not think people who committed violent acts on January 6th should be freed.
So you disagree with that?
He's been saying that for months.
Ronna, why not speak out earlier?
Why just speak out about that now?
When you're the RNC chair, you kind of take one for the whole team, right?
Now I get to be a little bit more myself, right?
Well, this is what you said a year ago to Chris Wallace.
I want to tell you what you said.
Are you saying as the chair of the Republican Party that you still have questions as to whether or not Joe Biden was the duly elected president?
Joe Biden's the president.
No, I didn't ask you whether he's the president.
I don't think that I think he won the election.
I think there were lots of problems with 2020.
Ultimately, he won the election.
Ultimately, he won the election, but there were lots of problems with the 2020 election.
100%.
And that's fair.
But I don't think he won it fair.
I don't.
I'm not going to say that.
So you didn't say he won it fair at that point.
Can you say as you sit here today, did Joe Biden win the election fair and square?
He won.
He's the legitimate president.
Fair and square he won.
It's certified.
It's done.
But I do want to president.
You want me to say something?
I'm not going to say that.
Why has it taken you until now to be able to say that?
I'm going to push back a little because I do think it's fair to say there were problems in 2020.
And to say that does not mean he's not the literal.
So John Meesham.
Disgusting.
Disgusting.
So, okay.
Obama Drone Program Secrets00:14:40
She also, she did say only the people who committed violence on that day, which is a slick answer because what about all the people that just walked in?
And I mean, the people that committed.
So even there, she's being slick.
And then also in regards to, I guess, the winning of the election, seems like she's still trying to stick by this story, which a lot of people did, which was basically, hey, we need to have a democracy.
So even if the election's fraudulent, once we've declared a winner, we all got to just kind of run with that because that's the game.
Right.
Right.
Or once or just the constitutional process of like, once the election is certified, it's certified and that's the winner.
And but yeah.
Look, part of this is that This woman is not very bright.
She's not very impressive.
There are, you know, like Rob, where you always have this, you have a good like knack for always, like, even when the propaganda is just frustratingly bad.
And you'll be like, no, dummy, don't say it like this.
Say it like this.
And that's at least a better way to sell your dumb propaganda.
And there's a million examples in her answers there where it's like, you could just say this in a better way.
And like, if she's just not that bright.
And it's, it's kind of amazing how unimpressive the people who rise to the top in this world are.
So that's certainly one of my takeaways from this.
To the broader, the broader kind of point that the MSNBC hosts are making here is that it's essentially something like, look, the bigger picture of what MSNBC's complaint here is, is that in your previous job, you're kind of saying, oh, you took one for the team.
You were a liar and you lied about something very important.
And that's simply something that MSNBC, this sacred network, just wouldn't stand for, Rob.
It wouldn't stand for that.
And so many, so much of what's like underlying their complaint is that something is different about this time.
You know, we may have had our problems in the United States of America.
And this, by the way, is what this is essentially the blue-pilled mantra across the United States of America.
And when you, if you ever hear anyone speaking in this way, just know that this is a person who's not awake to what's really going on.
Is that they go, look, America had its problems.
Sure, we had our issues, but we never had anything like Donald Trump.
We never had anything like someone who would deny the election and threaten the peaceful transfer of power or something along these lines.
One thing you might want to notice right away is that that's what they all go to right now, right?
Is the 2020 election.
That's the go-to.
That's the thing that makes Donald Trump different than all the other presidents.
You might notice that they all were just as hysterical before the 2020 election about Donald Trump.
From 2016 through 2020, they were all equally hysterical about Donald Trump before anything like that had ever happened.
And they always had a different excuse for what it was.
It was Russia.
It was racism.
It was separation of families.
There was always like a reason why, you know, whatever happened before Trump, that's yada yada yada.
There might have been some problems there, but oh my God, this is so much bigger.
So I just want to, I want to play one of my favorite clips ever on MSNBC, which we have not played for years.
This is a time before Donald Trump.
Okay.
This is during the Obama administration.
This was a time when the country was losing its mind, but had not yet completely lost its mind.
This was a conversation that happened on a little cable news network known as, you guessed it, Rob, MSNBC.
Let's play this segment.
This question of transparency, I think, is the deeper and more important one.
And I think the point that we all kind of agree with at the table is that there's no great democratic stake in whether we know, whether we can see a picture of the president and Tiger Woods golfing.
I mean, I think that's, I, that's my own personal view.
Like, you know, I don't care about that.
What I do care about is like an American.
Yeah.
But I know, but what I do care about is, say, the administration's, the OLC's legal rationale for a decision that it can kill American citizens in certain circumstances if they're an al-Qaeda operative.
Whether they can do that here.
Without due process, whether they can do that here.
And on this, on this issue, particularly on national security issues, I feel like there really has been a transparency problem.
I want to just show a little bit of montage of the White House responding to questions about, say, the drone program over the years.
And the person in the Google Plus video chat, he acknowledged for the first time the classified drone program.
Why did he do that?
I'm sorry, can you be more specific?
A former director of national intelligence, retired admiral Dennis Blair, said, I believe yesterday that drone attacks, you know, one of our drone attacks in Pakistan actually did more harm to U.S. national security interests.
And then good.
Does the White House have any opinion about these remarks?
We believe our relationship with Pakistan is essential to fighting terrorism and terrorism.
The New York Times reports that Vice President Biden, in these sessions, talking about the way forward has pressed specifically for a strategy that elevates the use of unmanned aerial vehicles, drones, and de-emphasizes U.S. combat forces on the ground.
Can you tell us if that's true, Major?
I think you can understand why.
I'm not going to get into internal discussions.
You can't see one way or the other if that's true.
I'm not going to get into it.
Okay, so let's pause it right there.
So they're playing clips of at the, now, also keep in mind the time here is that Obama's, this is Obama's first term.
George W. Bush had like crazy low approval ratings on the way out.
Barack Obama won a landslide victory against John McCain.
There was no real threat at the time by the Republicans because Obama had just dominated them.
And so these kind of left-wingers on MSNBC, and they hadn't gone woke and insane yet.
That hadn't happened yet.
So they were a little bit more free to be like, yeah, you know, we love everything about Obama, first black president.
But, you know, there is something a little bit.
He's kind of saying he can assassinate American citizens.
That's a little iffy.
They were like free to talk like this.
So after showing this montage of his press secretaries just refusing to answer questions about his, there he was specifically being asked about the drone campaign in Pakistan, they turned to his press secretary, who had just been hired by MSNBC to be a contributor.
And here's the conversation they had.
Stand, Robert, why, why?
I mean, Henry put that last picture up to you.
Yeah, well, we got the guy.
I guess, you know, I should say in defense of White House press secretaries, they do not make the decision.
They're the person who has to get sent out to say what we can and can't talk about.
My sense is that they don't make the decision about whether you're not going to or not going to talk about the drone program.
But do you think the White House has been forthcoming, sufficiently forthcoming?
We have these seven memos right now.
We haven't seen any of those.
The white paper got released right before Brennan by the White House, but leaked, apparently.
Do you think that you've been sufficiently forthcoming and the White House been sufficiently forthcoming on this stuff?
Well, I think you've seen recently the president discuss the need and desire to be more forthcoming.
I certainly think there are aspects of that program that are and will remain highly sensitive and very secret.
But let me give you an example here, Chris.
When I went through the process of becoming press secretary, one of the things, one of the first things they told me was, you're not even to acknowledge the drone program.
You're not even to discuss that it exists.
And so I would get a question like that, and literally I couldn't tell you what made your ass because once I figured out it was about the drone program, I realized I'm not supposed to talk about it.
But here's what's inherently crazy about that proposition.
You're being asked a question based on reporting of a program that exists.
Right.
So you're the official government spokesperson acting as if the entire program pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
I think in many ways, and I think what the president has seen, and I have not talked to him about this, I want to be careful.
This is my opinion.
But I think what the president has seen is our denial of the existence of the program when it's obviously happening undermines people's confidence overall in the decisions that their government makes.
And in order to bolster that confidence and bolster the belief that we're making those correct decisions on this policy, you do have to lift the veil some to both acknowledge that it exists, as he's done, but also to do it in a way that provides better understanding.
I will say, ironically, the time in which the president probably talked most about the drone program, interestingly enough, was in an interview on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
So going back to that earlier discussion, well, why do you give this person or that person an interview?
Jon Stewart asked a good question and then gave the president the space to give an answer.
And my sense is that even though you might say, boy, I watched Jon Stewart and Jon Stewart probably votes for Barack Obama, but other than Mitt Romney, John asks a very smart question and then gives the president the space to give him an answer and probably would have held him accountable if he would have not.
Oh, yeah.
All right.
So that's what I wanted to get out of that clip.
So is it this is pre-Trump, pre-election denial?
This is the standard of integrity that MSNBC had.
And by the way, of course, this is just one person who was hired there out of we could have picked a thousand.
You know what I mean?
You could have picked John Brennan or whoever, you know, they hired the head of the CIA to come be a, what do you call it, you know, a contributor at the network.
But here you have Robert Gibbs who is talking to them about how he had to lie in his previous job and how he, there was a program that did exist and it was a program of what?
A mass murder program.
A pretty serious thing to be asked about.
And he's talking about how his job was to mislead the press about it.
And they all giggle and laugh as they hired him.
And he just went on to be a contributor at MSNBC.
So I'm sorry, but all of this outrage about we had what this is not like the press secretary who was lying about a mass murder campaign.
This was the head of the RNC.
She's organizing support for candidates.
This is nothing compared to some of the monsters that they've hired over there at this network.
So all of this outrage about like, oh my God, she's admitting that she wasn't completely telling the truth in her previous position.
Oh my God, how horrible this is.
It's all complete bullshit.
Just all bullshit.
This is who they are.
This is who that sacred network employs.
Scum like this.
And by the way, the other thing about it, that's just really something is that as he's talking about this, he's kind of going through this thing and he's like, he's like, you know, it's weird because you're getting these guys.
The first, my instructions were you are not to acknowledge the existence of a drone program.
And then he's like, I'm getting asked about this drone program.
And I don't even think I heard the question because I'm like, oh, I can't answer this one.
And they're all laughing.
Like the panel, all of them are like giggling along like, what a funny predicament to be in where you got to lie about this mass murder campaign.
That's what was going on in the administration before Donald Trump's.
So I don't think there's anything so unique about MSNBC hiring an unimpressive liar.
Seems par for the course.
I don't know.
I think on the show once you played a clip on the view of Bush's press secretary, basically saying the exact same thing.
It was Bush's press secretary?
I think so.
Maybe.
Yeah, it's just, I'm saying this is kind of typical of people leaving these.
I mean, Jim Sackey has a job on MSNBC right now.
How many lies did she tell through the COVID era or about early Biden inflation?
So no one's really concerned about the fact that these people lied in previous positions.
Yeah, that's really not what it's about.
How many goddamn lies did everybody involved in those clips at MSNBC tell over the last few years?
I mean, it's kind of what I said at the beginning.
Management needs to have a chat with the underlings about what this lady did that she actually deserves her post-work payday.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's really, that's really what it should come down to.
Management has to go, guys, guys, she's on the same evil side that we're all on.
Okay.
Come on.
She's one of us.
Yeah.
No.
And I do think there's something to what you were getting at before that it's like, well, it's like, look, we got to have this, got to have lucrative paydays for these people after they're done.
Otherwise, what's to incentivize the next one from playing ball and making sure if things really, you know what I mean?
I'm thinking about like the incentives.
I mean, I know we talk about this all the time, but anyone, let's just say you were like a Trump loyalist and you were trying to be like, you believed in the mission, whatever it was, controlling the borders, ending the wars, trade, you know, protectionism, whatever, you know, the staples of Trump, Trumpism is.
And imagine you're like a hardcore loyalist and then the shit starts to hit the fan and people around you are getting smeared and they're getting strung up on charges and people are going to jail and they're having their lives ruined.
And just think of the incentives that you know at any point, I could just turn on him and I know there's a cushy job waiting on the other side.
You know what I mean?
Like I know all of this goes away.
Powerful Incentives Change Behavior00:00:57
And it doesn't matter who you are.
Be Michael Cohen.
Be his personal lawyer.
They'll have him on CNN or MSNBC or whatever because he testified against him.
You know, and that's like, okay, you have this get out of jail free card.
All you got to do is play ball with the establishment.
And that's a powerful incentive.
You know, it's, it's easy for us to just intellectualize it or like think about what it would be like, but imagine being in that situation where like, hey, you could just go live life as a millionaire or you could risk, you know, your life being ruined.
It's a powerful incentive that really changes human behavior.
All right.
Listen, we are going to wrap up there.
I got to get to another show.
I'm doing an immigration debate on the reason on the reason podcast.
So looking forward to doing that.
Thanks, everybody, for listening.
Make sure to come out and see us live, comicdave Smith.com, RobbyTheFire.com.