Part Of The Problem - Dave Smith - Hunter Biden Sues Fox News
Aired: 2024-05-02
Duration: 01:05:29


=== Hanging Out at Libertarian Party (05:39) ===

[00:00:00]  Fill her up.
[00:00:02]  You are listening to the gas human.
[00:00:08]  We need to roll back the state.
[00:00:10]  We spy on all of our own citizens.
[00:00:12]  Our prisons are flooded with nonviolent drug offenders.
[00:00:16]  If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
[00:00:21]  Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
[00:00:26]  You're listening to part of the problem on the Gas Digital Network.
[00:00:30]  Cheers, your host.
[00:00:32]  James Smith.
[00:00:33]  What's up, everybody?
[00:00:34]  Welcome to a brand new podcast.
[00:00:36]  Brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
[00:00:37]  I screwed that up.
[00:00:39]  I've been doing that for a long time.
[00:00:41]  Well, we're leaving it in.
[00:00:42]  I could edit this up, but no, that was a real moment we just had where I can't do the most basic thing that I always do.
[00:00:48]  Anyway, I am excited for today's show.
[00:00:50]  I am excited as always to be joined by my brother, Robbie the Fire Bernstein, who I will be out in Washington State with this weekend for my first time ever ever doing stand-up out in Washington State, I believe.
[00:01:06]  There's fewer and fewer places in this country that I've never been, but I'm very excited.
[00:01:11]  We got a full weekend in Tacoma and Thursday, Friday, Saturday there, a bunch of shows.
[00:01:18]  I believe two of the shows have already sold out.
[00:01:20]  So go grab tickets for those if you want to come out and see us.
[00:01:23]  There's still some seats available on the other shows.
[00:01:25]  And then on Sunday, one night only, we'll be in Spokane.
[00:01:30]  Spokane, Rob.
[00:01:31]  That's how it's pronounced.
[00:01:33]  I'm trying to pronounce it correctly now.
[00:01:34]  I've been trying to tell you to get it right.
[00:01:36]  People have harassed us online.
[00:01:37]  They have.
[00:01:38]  Consider themselves so self-important that we need to get their town's name right.
[00:01:43]  I will be starting the show with Nitz Power pronouncing.
[00:01:46]  You cut to the actual show and Rob's going to be like, great to be here.
[00:01:50]  Great place.
[00:01:51]  Love it.
[00:01:52]  Beautiful.
[00:01:54]  But anyway, I am looking forward to this weekend.
[00:01:57]  Of course, this was, we were supposed to be in Seattle a while ago.
[00:02:00]  There was a whole controversy over that.
[00:02:02]  But this is, there's something kind of beautiful about, you know, like the libertarian way that this all worked out.
[00:02:11]  It's just kind of like this club's like, oh, you're too controversial.
[00:02:13]  We don't want you.
[00:02:14]  And then these other clubs were like, we'll take you.
[00:02:15]  Can we please take you?
[00:02:16]  And you're like, yeah.
[00:02:17]  If anyone wants to dress up with Antifa with me and go protest whoever that club actually has this weekend.
[00:02:23]  Oh, dude, that'd be great.
[00:02:24]  That would be, dude, wouldn't that be the ultimate?
[00:02:27]  Like if they just had something that they were like, wait, this show drew protests?
[00:02:30]  Like, what?
[00:02:31]  Queers go to the front, got protested?
[00:02:34]  And you're like, should have had Dave and Robbie.
[00:02:36]  Would have had a nice calm weekend.
[00:02:38]  Probably sold a lot more tickets.
[00:02:40]  But anyway, here you go.
[00:02:42]  And then I got a crazy busy month coming up.
[00:02:46]  I got a lot of big shows, some big podcasts that I'm excited about doing.
[00:02:51]  And then we also, it's all leading up to, let me check this just to make sure I'm not missing something here.
[00:02:58]  But I know for a fact, it's all leading up to the end of the month, which is the Libertarian Party National Convention, the end of May I'm referring to.
[00:03:06]  I will be speaking on May 25th at the Libertarian Party National Convention.
[00:03:10]  I think I'm also doing some stuff for them on Sunday as well.
[00:03:15]  But I'll be there through the whole weekend hanging out.
[00:03:18]  If anyone's going to be at the Libertarian Party convention, just so you know, I really enjoy these libertarian events and get to meet so many.
[00:03:26]  So at this point, there's people I've known in the movement for years.
[00:03:29]  And, you know, I get to see them at these events.
[00:03:32]  I haven't been able to make as many of them over the last couple of years.
[00:03:39]  Like in 2021, 2022, like around those years, I was going to like all of them.
[00:03:45]  And then just over the last, over the last year and a half, we've just been doing so much more touring.
[00:03:50]  And I got two little kids.
[00:03:52]  And it's just the logistics of all of it are hard.
[00:03:55]  So like I haven't been to some of these.
[00:03:57]  So I'm excited to go back to the national convention.
[00:04:00]  I'm also going to be speaking at the Young Americans for Liberty event this summer.
[00:04:10]  It's August 1st through 3rd in Orlando.
[00:04:12]  So anyway, I really enjoy these.
[00:04:14]  I like to meet a lot of the people who listen to the show and a lot of people who are involved in the movement and stuff like that.
[00:04:18]  So if you're going to be there, I will be hanging out a bunch.
[00:04:21]  Please don't be shy.
[00:04:22]  Come over and say what's up.
[00:04:24]  And then, of course.
[00:04:25]  Anyway, back to the Libertarian Party convention.
[00:04:27]  The day before, May 23rd, it's a Thursday.
[00:04:30]  Me and Robbie the Fire Bernstein will be doing a live comedy show and a live part of the problem podcast at Penn Social in Washington, D.C.
[00:04:40]  So looking forward, looking forward to all of that.
[00:04:42]  Should be a lot of fun.
[00:04:43]  Comicdavesmith.com for all of those ticket links, plus some more.
[00:04:47]  We will be coming to an area near you in the near future.
[00:04:50]  So come see us live.
[00:04:51]  And of course, it's getting to be warm out.
[00:04:55]  And you know, that means it's porch tour season.
[00:04:57]  Tell them about that, Rob.
[00:04:58]  Where are you going this year?
[00:05:00]  Go to porchtour.com.
[00:05:01]  You got a first stage one porch tour, which takes us through August is up.
[00:05:05]  And then if you live in New York City, I got a great show in Brooklyn on Mother's Day at 6 p.m.
[00:05:11]  And other than that, you know, stacked calendar.
[00:05:13]  Just go to porchtour.com, pick a porch.
[00:05:16]  Mother's Day show with Robbie Bernstein.
[00:05:18]  It's his saddest show of the year.
[00:05:20]  You guys will have fun, but you'll have fun at the show, but clearly that's all you have in life is that show.
[00:05:26]  But anyway, I would pop by, but I don't think my wife would care for that.
[00:05:32]  Okay, so there's several things going on that I wanted to talk about on today's show.

=== Porch Tour Season Arrives (11:09) ===

[00:05:40]  And the one that I'm tempted to, dare I say, we're going to lead with is some developments with Hunter Biden.
[00:05:51]  Let's play a clip.
[00:05:52]  We got a clip from MSNBC's Morning Joe here, and then we can get into this because there's a lot of different angles on this that I just thought would be fun to talk about on the podcast.
[00:06:01]  So let's play the clip.
[00:06:03]  And I think Wright in demanding that the record be set straight, the focus on him and his troubles, and he has had a troubled life with addiction and his tangled financial dealings.
[00:06:25]  But that has nothing to do with anything except as a vulnerability that the far right has tried to exploit, a vulnerability that they saw that President Biden has and the Democrats have, and they have sought to exploit it in the most cynical and in some ways effective way.
[00:06:48]  I mean, because they've created this sort of atmosphere about him, and I get email from people on the right who write to me about the Biden crime family and Hunter Biden, Hunter Biden, Hunter Biden.
[00:07:01]  They've created this atmosphere.
[00:07:03]  You know, when we talk about media credibility and how different it is now and how much we've lost, and I just sit here wondering if, number one, that's not a horse that left the barn a while ago.
[00:07:19]  And I wonder if what we need to do is sort of chase that horse at a time when so many people are not getting their news from established and respectable news outlets who are getting their news from TikTok and from YouTube and from other sources.
[00:07:42]  And, you know, we have to, I think, first just reestablish ourselves as part of that conversation, as as as um, as as sources that people even go to regularly, let alone trust, and I think that's the first challenge for us all right, so I just wanted to play that clip because I I,
[00:08:11]  there was just so much there and it kind of it hits on all of these different topics that are so okay.
[00:08:17]  First off, let me start with the, let's start with the end, and then we'll go back to the.
[00:08:21]  Hunter Biden, uh yes, yes.
[00:08:24]  So the the end here is, uh, of course again, it's always fascinating to see these kind of um establishment, legacy media types, uh totally, with such a lack of self-reflection and that they kind of say the quiet part out loud without realizing that they're giving the game away, but they're basically saying oh, the problem is like we just don't have this monopoly on information anymore and people are listening to all these other sources.
[00:08:54]  Never a thought for why that might be.
[00:08:58]  He says we have to reestablish ourself.
[00:09:01]  Uh, never a thought as to how that might be accomplished.
[00:09:05]  Like there's no, there's no deeper thought there than just like people aren't trusting us and listening to us and they're getting their news from youtube.
[00:09:13]  I mean Youtube, why?
[00:09:15]  Why would that be just so?
[00:09:17]  You know, Eugene Robinson, the guy who's talking there um, is like the most perfect example of the.
[00:09:25]  The guy uh has won a Pulse, uh Pulzer uh, a Pulzer Prize uh, award winning uh journalist.
[00:09:34]  He has never said anything interesting ever.
[00:09:41]  There's, there's never been.
[00:09:42]  Like he literally just comes on, he writes boring pieces that you could rob.
[00:09:48]  I mean, if I just gave you a topic like okay uh, climate change, what's Eugene Robinson's position on climate change?
[00:09:55]  We're all gonna die in three weeks.
[00:09:57]  It's, but seriously, it's an existential threat.
[00:10:00]  We need government action to tackle that.
[00:10:02]  Like I could give you any.
[00:10:04]  You know what gun control it's?
[00:10:06]  Um, i'm not against uh guns, but just like there are limits on free speech, just like we have regulation of the economy, we need to have common sense regulation, and that starts with banning semi-automatic weapons.
[00:10:17]  You could just go down the list.
[00:10:18]  He has the most boring, exact same as every other person in the mainstream.
[00:10:24]  Has exactly not one area where he he differs with them and yet he's like has this cushy job.
[00:10:33]  You know what I mean?
[00:10:33]  Like, has had this cushy life, makes good, great money.
[00:10:37]  Uh, gets to run around in these circles where they all kiss each other's ass and they're like, oh, there's Eugene Robinson, noted intellectual, like it's, and then just sits there and and you go like okay, so he's been like a mainstay in the media world for many, many years now.
[00:10:56]  He's an older gentleman, I don't know if he's in his 60s or 70s, but decades and decades he's been in journalism and at right.
[00:11:06]  Trust in his institution has evaporated, as he will be the first to acknowledge, and little you know, guys like us on Youtube are like, either nipping at them or have surpassed them, depending on what show you're you're talking about.
[00:11:23]  During MSNB say um, and you don't have one deep thought about that, You don't have one thought about how like, you know, it's like, I think Tucker Carlson used an example similar to this or something, but it'd be like if, let's say your wife leaves you for another man and this other man is shorter than you.
[00:11:48]  He makes less money than you.
[00:11:50]  He's not as good looking as you.
[00:11:51]  He's not, you know, as intelligent as you.
[00:11:54]  He's not, you know what I mean?
[00:11:55]  Just like all the, like just worse in every way.
[00:11:57]  There's not at some point.
[00:11:59]  And I understand at first, it'd be like, it's because she's terrible and blah, blah, but at some point, wouldn't you have something like, what did I do?
[00:12:07]  I mean, like, just think about like, just take us, for example, and there's lots of shows bigger than us.
[00:12:12]  There's many shows as big as us.
[00:12:14]  I'm not like, but just us, because we are us.
[00:12:17]  Think about the advantages that Eugene Robinson had over us.
[00:12:23]  And yet we have then a bigger audience than most of the daytime MSNBC shows and certainly undeniably a more like passionate, engaged, supportive audience that like with a stronger level of trust than anything he has.
[00:12:42]  And he had, you know, huge billion dollar, multi-billion dollar multinational corporations behind him, television studios, you know, organizations that employ hundreds and hundreds of people, like so much of a machine behind him.
[00:13:01]  And yet we've caught him.
[00:13:03]  That's the equivalent of your wife leaving you for someone who's like broker and uglier and shorter than you.
[00:13:09]  Like what is like, at some point, you need to go, what did we do?
[00:13:12]  How did we blow this lead?
[00:13:14]  How did we like have all of these advantages and lose it?
[00:13:17]  No thought, no thought on that whatsoever.
[00:13:19]  There's nothing even to say.
[00:13:22]  Given that that is the situation, which it is, wouldn't your first thing be like, look, guys, here's where we messed up and here's what we got to do.
[00:13:31]  And here's none.
[00:13:33]  It doesn't even enter the conversation.
[00:13:35]  It's just about how cynical the Republicans were to use this and how big of a problem it is that people are listening to people who might be talking about this.
[00:13:45]  Because like, if you were even just to start asking, like, again, just sticking to the comparison with us, because that's what I know best.
[00:13:52]  I know me and you and the show that we do.
[00:13:54]  Okay, if you were going to ask, the topic is Hunter Biden, right?
[00:13:59]  And you're going, why has trust evaporated in the MSNBC?
[00:14:05]  And yet we over here at part of the problem have no issue with that.
[00:14:09]  Not only has our trust not evaporated, it's, I would say, substantially strengthened over the last few years.
[00:14:16]  Well, what might that have to be with?
[00:14:18]  Again, the topic is Hunter Biden.
[00:14:20]  Okay.
[00:14:20]  Well, let's just say the day after the laptop story came out in October of 2020, me and you came on the show and said it was overwhelmingly clear already that this was his laptop.
[00:14:34]  And the following week, when they did like email verifications, it became abundantly clear that this was real.
[00:14:41]  It took them two years to admit that.
[00:14:44]  They all went out and said it was Russian disinformation because that's what the intelligence agencies told them to say.
[00:14:51]  And so they repeated it mindlessly without questioning whether the intelligence agencies were lying or not, because that never even factors into the equation with them.
[00:15:00]  That maybe when my source at the CIA tells me something, he's lying.
[00:15:04]  That is, if they're not working with the organization themselves, which I wouldn't be surprised if Eugene Robinson was.
[00:15:12]  All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Backscape 2.0, the fastest growing male grooming company on the planet.
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[00:16:31]  All right, let's get back into the show.
[00:16:33]  So, okay, so we got this story completely right.
[00:16:37]  You got this story completely wrong.
[00:16:40]  That adds up after a while, dude.
[00:16:43]  You can't get every story completely wrong and maintain trust with your audience.

=== Corrupted Institutions Lose Trust (07:40) ===

[00:16:49]  I mean, I guess you can with some percentage of the people, but not with too many of them.
[00:16:54]  And so anyway, isn't the answer just so obvious?
[00:16:58]  I'm no like genius here to figure this out.
[00:17:00]  This is why we have trust and you don't because you lie and we tell the truth.
[00:17:05]  So that would be your answer.
[00:17:07]  Stop lying so much.
[00:17:09]  Cut it back.
[00:17:10]  When they say we don't, uh, we don't have trust.
[00:17:12]  I, I, I hear two things.
[00:17:14]  I hear one, a call for censorship so that people don't have a choice but to get their information from these outlets.
[00:17:22]  And then I also kind of in my head hear like the old kung fu dojo guy and his guys keep getting the shit kicked out of him and people are leaving the gym for the MMA gyms.
[00:17:31]  And he's going, can you believe all these people left?
[00:17:33]  And it's his still his core group that buy into his shit.
[00:17:37]  And so he's got to say the things that reinforce, hey, it's a good thing that we're all here getting my information and my knowledge.
[00:17:44]  And that's what they're doing to their core fan base is going, isn't this outrageous that all these people are going to these non-accredited sites, the ones that don't have the people from Yale and Harvard that are in the preferred group that are at the, you know, the long historied institutions such as the Washington Post.
[00:18:02]  You know what I mean?
[00:18:03]  It's one of two things.
[00:18:03]  They're calling for censorship or they're just trying to reindoctrinate and keep their core audience and go, this is horrible that we have to contend with all these misinformed people out there that don't watch the shows like this, which keeps coming their core 65 year old, you know, people still watching the show.
[00:18:20]  Yeah.
[00:18:20]  No, 100%.
[00:18:22]  And like you see this at all of these guys, like they go to these like, you know, fancy, like, you know, like, you know, black tie events and they're all hanging out in the same scenes and they love, it's become this like feedback loop of all of them just praising each other for how great they are.
[00:18:43]  And they decide who the bad people are and who the good people are.
[00:18:47]  And of course, the good people are all of them are all included in that.
[00:18:50]  And then as everybody's like abandoning them, they're still just sitting there, you know, and there is this kind of like to your point,
[00:19:03]  there's this kind of like inertia that takes over institutions where it becomes the people in the institutions get further and further removed from what the supposed stated goal of the institution was and become more and more interested in protecting that institution and growing its power.
[00:19:26]  Like you're, you know, even if you supposedly the point of this institution is like to shine a light on powerful, but there's a real incentive problem where if you do that, you're hated by the powerful.
[00:19:40]  And that might hurt how much influence and power you have.
[00:19:45]  Whereas if you suck up to the powerful, that might give your institution much more power.
[00:19:50]  And so, oh, that actually is a little bit more tempting.
[00:19:53]  And then it just gets worse and worse over time.
[00:19:55]  But there is this kind of the narrative that grips all of them is like how inherently wonderful these institutions are.
[00:20:05]  And so it's obviously an inherently bad thing if people don't have trust in these institutions because we need these institutions.
[00:20:12]  And look, theoretically, we've talked about this many times.
[00:20:15]  I remember talking about this with Rogan one of the last times I was on.
[00:20:20]  And it's like, I'll grant you that in theory, having some trustworthy institutions might be very good.
[00:20:28]  You know, like during COVID, if we had had like some organization that was like, look, we took, we have all of the absolute best scientists and doctors in the world and they're all putting their minds together and we're going to get you like the absolute best information on COVID.
[00:20:45]  And if that were the case and it was functioning, that would sure be a lot better than getting your information from our podcast, you know, no question about that.
[00:20:55]  But the fact is that those institutions are so corrupt and so dishonest that the objective reality is that you were better off listening to our podcast than you were listening to what was coming out of the CDC during COVID.
[00:21:14]  There's literally no argument about that.
[00:21:16]  To anyone who's being honest, we were better than the CDC.
[00:21:20]  And I'm saying this, just to be clear here, this is not a comment on how great we are.
[00:21:25]  This is a comment on how corroded these institutions have become.
[00:21:29]  That should not be the case.
[00:21:31]  I would clarify that, that we were better than who consistently got to remain at the CDC.
[00:21:37]  Yes.
[00:21:37]  That's true.
[00:21:38]  That's a good point.
[00:21:39]  As that every single person that took our point of view continuously got removed from the CDC.
[00:21:46]  And then they would go, as everyone at the CDC says, except for the people we just fired last week.
[00:21:51]  Right.
[00:21:52]  Except for the guy who used to run this who said it most likely was a lab leak.
[00:21:55]  But that also, that's a major element in why these institutions have become so corrupted, because even when you mentioned before, where you were like, oh, they have these people at Yale and Harvard who are until one of those people at Yale and Harvard start telling the truth and then everybody excommunicates them.
[00:22:12]  And that, right?
[00:22:13]  So that's a huge part of the dynamic of why these institutions are such trash.
[00:22:20]  But again, then what a lot of these people will go to, because they can't recognize that, either because they're dishonest or either because they're lying or because it's just they're wrapped up in their worldview, which is reliant on that not being the case.
[00:22:37]  But then they'll all often just kind of invoke the idea that institutions are good for institutions' sake.
[00:22:44]  So like I'll concede, yes, it would be great if we had an institution that was giving us great information during a global pandemic, right?
[00:22:51]  But if we have corrupt institutions, then that's, it's not great just because it's an institution.
[00:22:58]  You know what I mean?
[00:22:59]  And the example I always used was like, I think it was when we were doing one of our episodes, Tearing Apart Sam Harris, and he was saying how like he recognizes that we need institutions we can trust.
[00:23:12]  And I said, it would be like if you were like cheating on your wife and you've been lying to her for many years and then she caught you.
[00:23:20]  And then your response was to be like, listen, like this is really bad that you don't have trust in the institution of marriage.
[00:23:27]  because marriage is an institution that relies on trust.
[00:23:31]  And it's really important for a healthy marriage to have trust.
[00:23:34]  And you're like, okay, like while that statement might be true, the issue here isn't that she doesn't trust you.
[00:23:43]  The issue is that you've been lying to her.
[00:23:47]  And her not trusting you is an appropriate response to your behavior.
[00:23:53]  And so like, this is the big element that's missing here that it's like, look, like, you know, option 1A, we have institutions with very smart people that we can trust.
[00:24:04]  You know, or that's, that's the most preferable one.
[00:24:09]  More preferable than or less preferable than that is that we have dishonest institutions we can't trust and we don't trust them.
[00:24:18]  And then the worst case scenario is we have dishonest institutions and we trust them.
[00:24:24]  That's actually much worse than not trusting dishonest institutions.

=== Fume: The Real Deal (02:35) ===

[00:24:29]  That's the problem all of these guys have.
[00:24:32]  And it's not just like, it's not just that they lie and that they get stories wrong.
[00:24:42]  It's this is why the red pill is almost like just the perfect analogy for this stuff.
[00:24:48]  But it's that once you're aware at all of what's going on, if you turn on cable news, like Rob, I don't think you watch too much cable news, but maybe occasionally you turn it on for five minutes and see something.
[00:25:02]  And just where you're at, you'll look at it for five minutes and be like, you're all just lying through your teeth.
[00:25:07]  Like it's so obvious.
[00:25:09]  It's like, this isn't even real.
[00:25:10]  This is a show.
[00:25:11]  This is all just, this is all an act.
[00:25:14]  None of you, and no one here is thoughtful or interested, interesting, and nobody is telling the truth.
[00:25:20]  So anyway, that's just the response.
[00:25:22]  And we haven't even gotten into Hunter Biden yet.
[00:25:24]  That's just my response to Eugene Robinson's unbelievable attempt to grapple with his industry collapsing.
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=== Evidence Connecting Fox News (14:34) ===

[00:27:05]  Let's get into his point about Hunter Biden and Hunter Biden's, I guess, perhaps suing Fox News.
[00:27:16]  I don't know if he officially has, but that's at least what the talk is.
[00:27:19]  What's the latest on this from what you've been following?
[00:27:23]  Exactly.
[00:27:23]  No, I think he's filed a lawsuit.
[00:27:25]  Otherwise, I don't think this would have made the papers.
[00:27:28]  I hope that Fox News doesn't just fold like they did in the Dominion suit.
[00:27:32]  The fact that they didn't go to court over that seem wild and as to how Dominion was able to claim that level of damages for the financial, like the whole Dominion thing seemed nutty, especially in the case of the Hunter Biden.
[00:27:46]  I don't know what defamation case he has.
[00:27:49]  I don't know, like, I haven't seen any specifics yet of what they think he was lying about.
[00:27:54]  Even if Fox News decided every day to publish articles about some random drug addict in Oklahoma, it might be odd of them to do, but if it's true, I don't think it qualifies as a defamation.
[00:28:07]  So I don't even know what potential lawsuit he has.
[00:28:10]  Okay, so by the way, just as according to NBC News today, they say it is, it hasn't been filed yet, but lawyers for Hunter Biden plan to sue Fox News, quote, imminently.
[00:28:25]  A letter obtained by NBC News says action is pending because of Fox's alleged conspiracy and subsequent actions to defame Mr. Biden and paint him in a false light.
[00:28:38]  So good luck in court with that.
[00:28:40]  Good luck challenging the idea that your salary from Burisma made sense.
[00:28:44]  Good luck challenging the idea that you didn't leave a laptop at a place because you have a drug problem.
[00:28:50]  I mean, good luck challenging the idea of why did Secret Service cover up for you when you had a gun that you weren't supposed to have and lied on your forms about your drug usage.
[00:29:00]  Good luck challenging the idea that you weren't with prostitutes.
[00:29:04]  Like, I mean, what false story did he run with?
[00:29:08]  The only thing, which you were the one who messaged me, but I saw it.
[00:29:12]  I read it in an article about this.
[00:29:15]  I can't remember where, but I guess evidently they plan on using these.
[00:29:21]  Okay, I'm not allowed to say the word on YouTube, I've been informed.
[00:29:27]  Whack off to online?
[00:29:28]  I think you can say that, I think you can say that.
[00:29:31]  If not, clean this up for us, Brian.
[00:29:32]  Try to bleep out all the words that'll make YouTube's algorithm angry at us.
[00:29:37]  But I think I can say revenge corn is what that's one of these new categories of laws over the last few years that say that, you know, like whatever, if you have, you know, sexually explicit stuff on somebody, you can't make it public.
[00:29:56]  I'll get into that in a second, which this might be a somewhat controversial take I have on those laws, but I think I'm right.
[00:30:04]  But just to the broader story, the idea that Eugene Robinson was saying, which of course is so, it's just so, there's such like hacks and there's such boring hacks.
[00:30:17]  Like, I don't know, man.
[00:30:18]  There used to be people in the political world who, even if I thought they were wrong or maybe even evil, they weren't just so boring, just so dull and boring.
[00:30:28]  Like, you know, William F. Buckley wasn't boring.
[00:30:32]  Say whatever you want about him.
[00:30:33]  He was like an interesting guy who was intelligent and crafty and kind of charming.
[00:30:38]  He was evil, but he wasn't such a, but so Eugene Robinson, it's like they pivot from this is Russian disinformation.
[00:30:47]  It's not real, seamlessly with zero apology to the Republicans were so cynical in the way they went at Hunter Biden to embarrass Joe Biden.
[00:30:58]  It's like never even and no, no even pause in between.
[00:31:01]  It's just one day we're admitting it's real and now we're pivoting to isn't it wrong how they tried to exploit him or whatever.
[00:31:08]  It's also in part they're saying it's wrong because it worked.
[00:31:12]  And so they're trying to figure out how do we pivot away from this because it's working.
[00:31:16]  Yeah.
[00:31:16]  No, that's exactly right.
[00:31:18]  And, but look, the you can make whatever arguments you want to.
[00:31:26]  I would certainly say that I don't, I think you can make an argument that say like, and I don't exactly know, you know, because I know Rudy Giuliani had the hard drive at one point.
[00:31:38]  There were copies of it made.
[00:31:40]  Several people had the hard drive.
[00:31:42]  I don't know.
[00:31:43]  And then I think, am I wrong about this, Rob?
[00:31:45]  But I think it was just put up online at one point that you could like access it.
[00:31:49]  So my point is that I don't know who is responsible for leaking like the images of Hunter Biden where he was doing all types of drugs and, you know, having prostitutes or whatever.
[00:32:06]  I get if you could make an argument that you're like, that's kind of unethical to like publicly post these pictures of somebody.
[00:32:13]  I get that.
[00:32:15]  But I, you know, the idea that focusing on the money, that's a real story.
[00:32:24]  And well, well, first I would say, and this is again, probably just my libertarian angle on this stuff.
[00:32:30]  But look, if you want to say something along the lines of like, look, no one's saying he was living the right way.
[00:32:38]  Clearly he had his demons, but doing drugs, hiring prostitutes, having guns, all of these things are his right to do.
[00:32:49]  And you may not like the way he's living his life, but he's got a right to live it that way.
[00:32:53]  And these are victimless, nonviolent crimes.
[00:32:58]  I'll tell you, I can, that is right to me.
[00:33:03]  You know, like I, I, I believe in that.
[00:33:06]  However, you know, when your father is Joe Biden, who's been in government for four decades and has not only like passed laws,
[00:33:19]  but like co-authored laws that are going to ruin people's lives, rob their freedom from them, rob their lives from them, throw them in a cage to be tortured and raped and abused and live the rest of their life like an animal for the crime of having drugs, for the crime of having guns.
[00:33:41]  And certainly, I don't know if he's co-authored any, but certainly, you know, the prostitution has been illegal for all this time.
[00:33:46]  Then first of all, there is a story there.
[00:33:49]  And I'm not saying you should leak the images of it, but there is certainly a story there that's like, look at the unbelievable hypocrisy.
[00:33:56]  And shouldn't Joe Biden almost be held to task to say like, hey, like, honestly, do you think your son should go live like an animal in a cage for the rest of his life?
[00:34:07]  And if no, then why is it okay that you've gotten to do this to so many other people's sons?
[00:34:13]  And you've like, you've had this cushy career where you make millions and millions of dollars despite being a public servant.
[00:34:22]  And you're, you know, like we're never even a borderline bright person.
[00:34:28]  And you've been able to turn yourself into a multi-millionaire by doing this to other people's kids.
[00:34:34]  And yet your kid, what, just gets total protection from it.
[00:34:38]  Like there is a powerful story there.
[00:34:40]  And it shows something about like the two-tiered nature of the politically connected verse everybody else.
[00:34:49]  And corruption.
[00:34:51]  Yes, right.
[00:34:51]  So there's something there.
[00:34:53]  But now getting into the story of the money, it's just so obviously newsworthy.
[00:35:06]  And even if you were going to say, like, even without it being connected to Joe Biden, like let's say we had no evidence that it was connected to Joe Biden.
[00:35:16]  We do have evidence.
[00:35:17]  It may not be.
[00:35:18]  You may dispute how strong the evidence is, but we do have Hunter Biden's business partner testifying before Congress, going on news shows and testifying to the FBI or telling the FBI, which is all testimony in effect, that, yeah, Joe Biden was well aware of it and he was in on it and he was getting kickbacks from the money.
[00:35:39]  Okay.
[00:35:40]  And we do have Joe Biden on the phone with Hunter's Chinese business associates.
[00:35:46]  And so it's not like there's no evidence connecting them.
[00:35:49]  There is strong evidence connecting them.
[00:35:51]  If you think that's enough to get a conviction or something like that in a court, that's maybe a different story, but there is certainly strong evidence connecting Joe Biden to this.
[00:36:00]  But yeah, if to say like almost make this separation where, cause, cause look, you think about it like this, like there's say three different levels of like, of a burden.
[00:36:14]  So in in a court of law, it's, you know, to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt, whatever that ends up meaning in a court of law.
[00:36:22]  That's kind of the burden of court.
[00:36:23]  For it to be for you to be convinced that there's a connection with Joe Biden is probably a different burden.
[00:36:34]  You don't necessarily need to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.
[00:36:38]  But if there's pretty strong evidence that they're connected, you might go, okay, well, the onus is on them now to demonstrate that they're not connected before I assume he is.
[00:36:48]  And then there's a much easier, like a much smaller onus, which would be like, is it newsworthy?
[00:36:55]  Is this worthy of reporting on?
[00:36:57]  You know what I mean?
[00:36:58]  Like somebody being like, if you were seen at the site of a crime, it's newsworthy to report that you were seen at the site of the crime and you've been accused of this.
[00:37:09]  That doesn't necessarily mean you're going to be convicted in a court of law, but there's much less of a burden in order to just report what we do know.
[00:37:18]  The fact is that they're trying to go like, well, look, this isn't Joe Biden.
[00:37:24]  This is his son.
[00:37:25]  These are two totally different people.
[00:37:27]  But even if you had none of, even if you didn't have the first one, we don't have enough evidence to get a conviction.
[00:37:32]  You don't have the second one.
[00:37:33]  We don't have evidence to point to Joe Biden being involved, hypothetically.
[00:37:36]  We do, but let's say we didn't.
[00:37:39]  The third one is still newsworthy.
[00:37:42]  Like if you find out that this is, they use all of these terms for it, like he was selling political access or he was selling his last names.
[00:37:51]  But I mean, we all know what this is.
[00:37:52]  These companies were attempting to bribery.
[00:37:55]  That's the attempt at least.
[00:37:57]  Let's just say they never got through to Joe Biden.
[00:37:59]  It's still a story.
[00:38:01]  You know, like if somebody found out that you, Rob, were taking enormous amounts of money from like police organizations, like police departments or something like that.
[00:38:18]  That's still a story about me.
[00:38:22]  Even if you couldn't like prove there's a connection from you to me there, you'd still go, hey, you know, like Dave's like co-host and like close friend who he's like, like does stand up with and does the podcast with.
[00:38:35]  He's on the take for this.
[00:38:37]  And then you might sit there and go like, hey, has Dave been critical of the cops at all lately?
[00:38:41]  You're like, really?
[00:38:42]  He hasn't said anything about the cops in the last three years.
[00:38:44]  Huh.
[00:38:45]  Okay.
[00:38:45]  Like, that's already newsworthy.
[00:38:47]  And I'm sorry, but like, there is no world where anyone with an ounce of integrity would say that the president's son being bribed by foreign governments and foreign companies isn't a story that's newsworthy or that somehow it's wrong for Republicans to jump on this when we all know anyone would jump on this if this was their political opponents.
[00:39:17]  Period.
[00:39:19]  I agree across the board and I'm very curious to see how this could possibly play out in court.
[00:39:25]  And on the revenge porn thing, firstly, you're going to have to bleep that one, Brian.
[00:39:30]  Oh, my bad.
[00:39:31]  The idea that Hunter Biden's upset that people saw how unbelievable his penis is is just ridiculous, for one.
[00:39:37]  It might be the best thing that happened to him.
[00:39:39]  For two, I can't imagine that Fox News actually broadcasted any of the pictures.
[00:39:46]  And if they did, they were probably censored.
[00:39:48]  And even if they did that, somebody else published those materials.
[00:39:53]  Imagine Taylor Greene even showed up in Congress with those pictures.
[00:39:58]  At some point, if you're a news agency, you're allowed to report on what exists in the world.
[00:40:02]  So who was it's also look, it's also these fake, like these phone, this faux outrage.
[00:40:10]  Like the, you know, when what's her name?
[00:40:12]  That Laura Bobert woman was caught in the movie theater, like rubbing on that dude's crotch or whatever and making out with him.
[00:40:20]  No one there was like, hey, you shouldn't like be sharing this image.
[00:40:23]  This is like humiliating to her.
[00:40:25]  So don't share.
[00:40:26]  It's like, they're fine with it.
[00:40:27]  That guy was playing with their tits wrong.
[00:40:28]  It was weird.
[00:40:29]  I knew it was in the beginning.
[00:40:31]  It looked uncomfortable.
[00:40:32]  It looked like over the top correct.
[00:40:34]  It didn't make sense.
[00:40:34]  Yeah, it looked like the first time you hooked up with a girl at like 14 or something like that, where you were just kind of like, I'm not sure how you do this yet, but I'm excited to experiment.
[00:40:46]  But I will say, look, these laws, which we won't say them again, but these are relatively new.
[00:40:55]  And they've kind of, I guess, in some ways been an attempt to grapple with the state of technology that we have today with, you know, cell phones and the internet and all this stuff.
[00:41:05]  So I remember there, I just happen to remember this.
[00:41:09]  I was a little kid when I saw this, maybe a teenager, maybe younger.
[00:41:15]  But it was interesting to me, I guess, at the time, but there was a case on the people's court.
[00:41:22]  If you remember that old show with when Ed Koch was the, I think it was Ed Koch.
[00:41:29]  No, you know what?
[00:41:30]  It might have been who was the, remember there was the boxing ref who was a judge also?
[00:41:37]  It might have been him.
[00:41:38]  But anyway, that's not really important.

=== Property Rights vs Jail Time (12:26) ===

[00:41:40]  But so the case was there was this guy and this chick and they had broken up and he had like naked pictures of her.
[00:41:52]  And he had, I guess, to like get back at her or whatever, he put them on his Christmas card and sent them out to like a bunch of people that they both knew.
[00:42:04]  And I was like, yo, that's crazy that this guy would do that to her.
[00:42:09]  And at the end of the case, the judge goes, he goes, look, did he have your permission to take these pictures when he took them?
[00:42:19]  And she was like, yeah, he did.
[00:42:21]  And he goes, that's his property.
[00:42:24]  And that's that.
[00:42:25]  And just went because that's before these laws came in.
[00:42:29]  That was the standard.
[00:42:31]  And look, I can, I certainly understand, especially in a world where people, because what happened was there started being a bunch of like websites that were, you know, that were under this category, be like your ex, you know, we came into a world when almost everybody had pictures of their ex.
[00:42:54]  And then when you break up with them, a lot of times you break up on bad terms and guys would be like posting.
[00:43:00]  these pictures or videos or whatever.
[00:43:04]  And so this new class of laws kind of rose up to deal with this.
[00:43:09]  And I will just say that there's an issue that you have whenever law stops being about property rights.
[00:43:20]  And there are the, look, clearly that guy, right?
[00:43:25]  Clearly that guy that I was talking about in the case was a bad person.
[00:43:31]  a real like, just a horrible person.
[00:43:33]  It's a horrible thing to do to a girl you broke, broke up with it's, it's.
[00:43:36]  There is no question.
[00:43:37]  It's wrong to post some sexually explicit material that you have of an ex when they don't want you to do.
[00:43:45]  That it's I.
[00:43:46]  We could all probably agree that's a really bad thing to do.
[00:43:50]  However, there are also the negative consequences that come along with writing laws that allow the state to intervene beyond protecting property, and this is basically the, the libertarian framework, that.
[00:44:07]  That's what the role of law ought to be, to uh, to um, prohibit aggression and enforce property rights.
[00:44:16]  And so look, i'll just say this, right, one of the problems that happens with this is that government always gets in the way and the government always starts perverting incentives.
[00:44:26]  So, like the natural, if the law was the old law, that it was on the People's Court and we hadn't come up with these new laws.
[00:44:36]  Well then the incentive is to go like yeah, look you, we got to learn how to deal with this new world and this new world of technology and you can't just give people naked pictures of yourself, or naked videos of yourself, or sexual videos, pictures of yourself, because then this is one of the things that can happen.
[00:44:54]  And the incentive immediately becomes to like, try to instill in girls that there could be consequences to this right and not just send it all around and rely on these laws to come in after the fact.
[00:45:07]  So that's one thing.
[00:45:08]  But then you also just see how it can be abused in these type of ways where now, OK, the state gets to come out and lie about this this laptop.
[00:45:19]  Right.
[00:45:20]  They get to use the intelligence agencies to lie to the American people and tell them this was Russian disinformation.
[00:45:27]  And then when they eventually that lie collapses and they have to admit it, they can go after you, whoever the person is, for like leaking the information.
[00:45:38]  And look, in this case, while i'll say I don't think it's right to post compromising pictures of somebody on the internet.
[00:45:49]  I don't think it should be illegal.
[00:45:52]  And I just, I will say, there is a story there.
[00:45:58]  Like there's a story that the son of the president is doing all of these things that the president has supported for decades, people's lives being ruined for.
[00:46:09]  And on top of that, there's a story that the guy, it's not like the guy was just taking money from these foreign governments and foreign companies.
[00:46:19]  It's that he's this reckless and out of control of a human being and he's in the middle of all of this.
[00:46:26]  Yeah, there is a story there.
[00:46:28]  And so anyway, I'll just say I'm a strict libertarian.
[00:46:31]  I'm against these laws existing to begin with.
[00:46:33]  That doesn't mean you're not a really bad person if you if you share images of your ex or something like that, but I don't think it should be illegal.
[00:46:42]  I might not, this is my first time thinking about this.
[00:46:45]  I might not articulate it, but I would wonder why shouldn't we have laws, though, to prevent people from doing things that we can all agree are horrible.
[00:46:54]  And so, and I can make a differentiation between this and, for example, I would say like, if you, for example, go and start a fight with a, let's just say a gay person, a black person, a Jewish person, and you yell out a racial slur or a pejorative, all of a sudden it's considered a hate crime.
[00:47:12]  To me, that's stupid.
[00:47:13]  You don't need the extra thing.
[00:47:15]  The crime itself is a crime.
[00:47:17]  In this case, unless there's a law against actually, I guess, publishing the materials, it's not considered a crime.
[00:47:23]  And there is such a concept of usage rights.
[00:47:25]  Like even for, like, for example, I mean, that's kind of what they're talking about with AI is that if you come in once and I don't know, I pay you to read a script for something.
[00:47:33]  Can I just now use your voice and then go do ad reads with it or et cetera?
[00:47:38]  So I don't think when someone takes your picture, when you give them a nude photo, it was your intention to give them permission to then go publish that publicly.
[00:47:48]  So I, and, and if we all agree that that's something that you shouldn't be allowed to do, isn't that the exact purpose of the law to step and go, hey, we're all in agreement that we're better off without this.
[00:47:58]  So we're going to make it illegal?
[00:47:59]  I don't see why that's a problem, why that's problem for us to have an agreement over, hey, we don't like a particular activity, so we're going to ban it.
[00:48:07]  Well, okay, so first of all, I would say that the, so like even with the AI usage stuff, the way that I think is a, I think that like having strikes and having demands that like, hey, we think this is wrong, I think is an appropriate way to deal with that.
[00:48:22]  Locking up people or throwing them in jail for using AI in movies, I don't think is appropriate.
[00:48:29]  And I think that, you know, when you're talking about the law and you're talking about, you're talking about, like I said before, you're talking about sending human beings to live like animals in cages.
[00:48:39]  And I think the thing, the question there becomes, right?
[00:48:43]  Not do we agree that something is wrong.
[00:48:46]  I mean, but you're overlooking financial penalties.
[00:48:48]  If you break zoning laws, how often do people go to jail for that?
[00:48:51]  It's a function of the business.
[00:48:53]  But people do go to jail, but people do go to jail for these revenge corn laws and people have gone to jail for them.
[00:49:00]  So I'm just saying, look, even if you're saying financial penalties, you're still kind of really only one step away.
[00:49:06]  But now you're already saying you just think that maybe this shouldn't be something that someone should go to jail for, but you agree should be illegal.
[00:49:13]  Well, no, that's not exactly what I'm saying.
[00:49:14]  But I'm saying, look, if you, even if something has a financial penalty to it, let me just make the point here, right?
[00:49:22]  Because it's not the law, even with the financial penalty, right?
[00:49:26]  All I'm saying is that it's not like as simple as, hey, we all agree this is wrong, therefore it should be illegal.
[00:49:33]  Cause there's lots of things we'd probably all agree are wrong that we wouldn't think should be illegal, right?
[00:49:38]  So like if like I think like not hugging your kids is wrong.
[00:49:42]  I think cheating on your wife is wrong.
[00:49:44]  I think not saying God bless you is wrong.
[00:49:47]  There's lots of things that we would say are like wrong, but shouldn't necessarily be illegal because you're not just saying, is it wrong?
[00:49:53]  It's a comparison between is it wrong verse is enforcing a punishment on it wrong.
[00:50:00]  So in other words, let's just say for a hypothetical, I'm just using this example to make it.
[00:50:04]  That's the exact reason why you would initiate a law is to go, hey, I think someone should hug their kid.
[00:50:09]  I'm not going to make a law against that because it's not that bad.
[00:50:13]  But something that's as bad as, oh, I never intended to be naked online and it's a severe violation of my privacy escalated to the point where I actually think I need a law to enforce this.
[00:50:23]  I'm not, I'm not disagreeing with you, but I'm just making the point that the question isn't just, do we think this is wrong?
[00:50:29]  Let's say there was a penalty of five years in prison for doing something wrong.
[00:50:35]  The question would be, is imprisoning somebody for this more wrong than the act itself?
[00:50:41]  Like, is this, is this, and if you're talking about prison, I don't think I can get there for anything other than like violent crimes, property crimes, things like that.
[00:50:55]  Now, I will say, I get your point.
[00:50:58]  It is really, really wrong to do that to someone.
[00:51:01]  And perhaps there is an argument that, look, these, you could argue that there's some type of implicit contract that's made when you take intimate, you know, images or videos with somebody and that you're violating that contract in a sense by putting it out publicly.
[00:51:19]  Perhaps there's an argument to that.
[00:51:21]  That would still leave me unconvinced that the punishment should be jail time.
[00:51:26]  With I suppose you could make an argument like with that with the AI stuff, but then yes, I would think that the punishment should be something else, something other than like you lose your freedom completely.
[00:51:41]  And I do still think that there's something when you start making these laws that go that aren't that aren't in line with property rights, you almost always start getting these type of problems.
[00:51:58]  The framework of this seems somewhat similar to me to intellectual property, which is conversation.
[00:52:04]  Somewhat similar to that.
[00:52:05]  We really only had once on the show, but I think the idea that people can come to an agreement that they prefer something and then creating a law around that agreement seems to me like that's a beneficial function of society.
[00:52:18]  So for example, if I think, hey, let's all be in agreement that intellectual property will actually benefit research and development.
[00:52:25]  And maybe you want to take the other side of that, then I'm okay with going, hey, we're all going to agree that we're going to have a law that we're going to protect intellectual property.
[00:52:32]  Same as here, if I think we're all in agreement, hey, I don't think people should be allowed to take photos that were supposed to be for private consumption and then distributed publicly, then we could decide, hey, we're going to make a law against that.
[00:52:45]  I don't understand why.
[00:52:45]  Well, I don't, we would take issue with essentially an agreement of what's beneficial and then a law to enforce what we all agree.
[00:52:52]  Well, I mean, but then you could, I mean, you could almost use that justification for any law.
[00:52:56]  I mean, just say, well, we came to an agreement.
[00:52:59]  You know what I mean?
[00:52:59]  And the people came to an agreement and therefore it's, it's okay to, I don't know, tax people to provide for health care or something like that.
[00:53:07]  I mean, like, I don't actually think that's right.
[00:53:08]  I don't think I don't think laws are just based off what percentage of the population agrees with them.
[00:53:15]  I think laws are just if they're just and they're not affected.
[00:53:20]  I mean, this is different than taxes in that it's preventative.
[00:53:23]  Whereas if I make a law to enforce, firstly, I don't know if people voluntarily wanted to live in an area with taxes.
[00:53:28]  Well, listen, no, essentially that would be okay.
[00:53:32]  Yes, that would be okay, but that's not what's happening when you're when you're going through the government, you know?
[00:53:37]  No, even with taxes, you're creating a law that then creates, I'm going to go take an action.
[00:53:42]  That's different than this is, which is what I'm going to enforce against you if you go ahead and do something.
[00:53:48]  So like in other words.
[00:53:49]  Yeah, okay.
[00:53:49]  That's fair.
[00:53:50]  That's a fair enough point.
[00:53:51]  There is a difference there.
[00:53:52]  All right, look, I do want to just before to switch gears here before we get, listen, I'll be honest with this.
[00:53:57]  I'm to some degree thinking out loud also.
[00:53:59]  I get the point that you're making, but I just, I do see some issues with going into these laws of like that violate property rights.

=== Sanders' Income Sharing Plan (11:22) ===

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[00:55:09]  All right, let's get back into the show.
[00:55:11]  Anyway, I do want to just talk about this before we get out of here, because this was something that I saw and you had also sent to me and I thought was really worth just responding to.
[00:55:22]  It's Bernie Sanders, who, if you recall, Rob, was actually quite supportive of Israel at the beginning of this war and was actually arguing against a ceasefire for a while.
[00:55:36]  He has changed his tune.
[00:55:39]  He put this video out the other day in response to Netanyahu claiming how, you know, talking about how horrible the protests are and how anti-Semitic the kids at Columbia are and stuff like that.
[00:55:51]  So this was Bernie Sanders' response.
[00:55:53]  Semitic or pro-Hamas to point out that in a little over six months, your extremist government has killed 34,000 Palestinians and wounded more than 78,000, 70% of whom are women and children.
[00:56:12]  It is not anti-Semitic to point out that your bombing has completely destroyed more than 221,000 housing units in Gaza, leaving more than a million people homeless, almost half the population.
[00:56:28]  It is not anti-Semitic to note that your government has obliterated Gaza's civilian infrastructure, electricity, water, and sewage.
[00:56:39]  It is not anti-Semitic to realize that your government has annihilated Gaza's healthcare system, knocking 26 hospitals out of service and killing more than 400 healthcare workers.
[00:56:55]  It is not anti-Semitic to condemn your government's destruction of all of Gaza's 12 universities and 56 of its schools with hundreds more damage, leaving 625,000 students with no educational opportunities.
[00:57:14]  It is not anti-Semitic to agree with virtually every humanitarian.
[00:57:20]  All right, you can turn it off there.
[00:57:22]  I think you pretty much get the point.
[00:57:24]  He's arguing that it is, yeah, like Benjamin Netanyahu is cheaply using this Anti-Semitic accusation to smear anybody who opposes his war and uh, anybody who opposes America funding it.
[00:57:40]  So okay, I think we could start by saying we probably I think I can comfortably speak for you when I say you agree with Bernie Sanders on this.
[00:57:48]  Uh, you know, happen too often, doesn't happen too often, but I will say um, so also I, I guess, full credit, Bernie Sanders did vote against this aid package.
[00:57:59]  Um, I believe, if i'm not wrong, he's voted for many aid packages to Israel in the past.
[00:58:04]  Um, but he did vote against this last one.
[00:58:07]  And I guess the the issue becomes, you know that Bernie Sanders who, it's hard, it's it's almost hard to exactly measure and i'm not on the left, you're not on the left I, I don't exactly know.
[00:58:22]  Sometimes, you know, maybe I got to talk to some left-wing lefties that I know and kind of ask them, but my impression is that Bernie Sanders was the most important leader in the leftist movement in the United States Of America from 2016 to 2020.
[00:58:44]  Uh, he had uh, two presidential campaigns that truly had unbelievable grassroots support.
[00:58:52]  Um, they broke fundraising records and attendance records and he gave two, you know, establishment candidates in Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden a real run for their money both times.
[00:59:05]  Um it, you know they, the DNC, had to cheat in 2016 and in 2020, or I should say this was in 2019 but for the 2020 uh primaries and and then it was at the very beginning of 2020 they had to um, pull out all the stops to to get Bernie Sanders out there.
[00:59:24]  They had to have uh, all of the people drop out and endorse Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren stay in, to siphon off votes from Bernie Sanders and and they barely got Biden over the hump on on super tuesday.
[00:59:35]  He was a real force and I think that has completely fallen apart since then as, and I think him just like endorsing Joe Biden in 2020, falling right back in line like kind of the same thing he did in 2016, and I think a lot of his supporters started realizing that this guy's kind of a fraud and that, I think, was very obvious to me and you for many years before then.
[01:00:01]  I, like I knew things about Bernie Sanders back in the day where he used to, like he'd say he, he wanted to help Ron Paul audit the Federal Reserve and then like, Ron Paul would have a bill to audit the Federal Reserve in the House and then Bernie Sanders would say i'm going to sponsor it in the Senate and then when the final version came up, it was totally like defanged and like there was.
[01:00:21]  It wasn't a real audit anymore.
[01:00:23]  And it was and you'd be like oh, I don't think this guy's for real.
[01:00:26]  Um, and and of course there's just the fact that the guy has made himself a millionaire off of railing against how immoral it is to be a millionaire and the fact that if he really believed what he claims he believes, wouldn't you like find a bunch of people who are making 30 grand a year and just change their lives?
[01:00:48]  And like you, you know what I mean?
[01:00:50]  Like if you really believe, I earned the money when I wrote those books.
[01:00:53]  And he'll, and then he'll literally say that.
[01:00:54]  Hey, you want the money?
[01:00:55]  You write a book.
[01:00:56]  I earn the money.
[01:00:57]  And you're like, oh, you, oh, is that right?
[01:01:00]  Oh, so now all of a sudden, very conveniently, but like, look, ridiculous.
[01:01:04]  If Bernie, if you're going to say that income inequality is immoral, as Bernie Sanders has said so many times in his life, that it's immoral that some people have so much more than someone else.
[01:01:17]  And let's just say hypothetically, Bernie Sanders is worth a few million dollars.
[01:01:21]  Or I don't know what it is.
[01:01:22]  I think in his highest years, he made a couple million dollars and then makes like a million dollars a year or something like that.
[01:01:28]  And let's say he went, he went, listen, you know, whatever.
[01:01:33]  He doesn't have to go all the way down to like the median household income, but let's say he goes, I'm going to keep like 200 grand a year for myself because I want to live kind of nice, but I'm going to just share the other money with people who make under the median income and pull them up.
[01:01:47]  So I'm going to do what I can in my life to reduce the inequality between people of different incomes.
[01:01:53]  Because like I said, I think it's a moral issue.
[01:01:55]  Like, okay, then they might at least be able to say like, all right, the guy really believes in it.
[01:01:59]  I still disagree with him.
[01:02:00]  He still wants to force everybody else to be a part of this, but at least he is good.
[01:02:06]  But he's not doing anything like that.
[01:02:08]  He's like, get the hell out of here.
[01:02:09]  I'm keeping my millions.
[01:02:10]  Screw you.
[01:02:11]  Go write a book.
[01:02:12]  And so to me, that just goes, oh, you're a fraud.
[01:02:14]  You don't really believe in all of the things that you claim to believe in.
[01:02:19]  Anyway, I will say that in the background, knowing what a fraud Bernie Sanders is and knowing that he was literally advocating against a ceasefire early in this war, when you would think like, hey, the guy who was the most influential left winger in the United States of America for a period of time there probably could have used your influence.
[01:02:41]  You're also a senator, probably could have used your influence pushing for this ceasefire, but you didn't.
[01:02:47]  You opposed it.
[01:02:48]  Now he's coming around.
[01:02:50]  And I got to say, it seems like the obvious answer here is because it's just become a situation where to exist on the left.
[01:03:00]  And Bernie Sanders isn't just like a Democrat.
[01:03:02]  Bernie Sanders support is from the left sliver of the Democrats.
[01:03:08]  And I think there's just no future for him not opposing this.
[01:03:12]  And so once it becomes obvious that he has to oppose this in order to keep selling his books and keep getting elected or whatever, now he comes out and opposes it.
[01:03:22]  Now, you know what I'm saying?
[01:03:23]  Like the college kids who are out protesting, whose people are those?
[01:03:28]  They're Bernie Sanders people.
[01:03:30]  They're not Ron Paul people.
[01:03:32]  They're not Donald Trump's people.
[01:03:34]  They're Bernie Sanders people.
[01:03:36]  So I think when 100% of your base takes a position and then you finally come around to go, all right, fine.
[01:03:43]  I'll take that position too.
[01:03:45]  You just don't get too much credit from me.
[01:03:47]  That being said, he is correct in what he's saying now.
[01:03:50]  And he did vote against the aid package.
[01:03:52]  So I'll give him a little bit of credit for that.
[01:03:54]  He's also a geocryptonite when he's going, it's not anti-Semitic.
[01:03:59]  It's not, it's like, how do you then turn around and go, it's anti-Semitic to say these things?
[01:04:03]  Yes, it's him and him and Norman Finkelstein really have that.
[01:04:07]  I mean, Bernie Sanders, like, he's an idiot and I don't agree with him on anything.
[01:04:11]  But I think if he takes a line of that saying something's not anti-Semitic, that's basically the definitive role.
[01:04:17]  It is, dude, I just find it so funny with all those guys where it's like, cause they just don't know what to do or they're like, that's anti-Semitic.
[01:04:25]  Norman Finkelstein.
[01:04:29]  Man, even getting that sentence out is just hard to, and both of them are just so Jewish.
[01:04:36]  Like me and you are Jewish, but like, I don't know.
[01:04:41]  No, no, no, no.
[01:04:42]  We're not even approaching those guys.
[01:04:43]  We're a four at best.
[01:04:46]  Those guys are tens.
[01:04:47]  Perfect Jew tens.
[01:04:49]  Still allowed to say that on YouTube.
[01:04:51]  All right.
[01:04:52]  That's our episode for today.
[01:04:53]  Thank you, everybody, for tuning in.
[01:04:55]  We'll catch you soon.
[01:04:56]  Don't forget, come out and see us in Tacoma and Spokane this weekend.
[01:05:01]  Very much looking forward to that.
[01:05:03]  Comicdavesmith.com, RobbieTheFire.com.
[01:05:06]  What's the site for the porch tour?
[01:05:07]  Oh, just porchtour.com's got all the dates.
[01:05:10]  RobbieTheFire has all of my, like, that's specific porch tour dates.
[01:05:13]  It's a little cleaner to look at.
[01:05:14]  Porchtour.com.
[01:05:15]  RobbieThefire.com needs a bit of a rebuild, but all of my dates are up there, including the ones opening for you, the date in Brooklyn, and some other ones.
[01:05:23]  All right.
[01:05:24]  Hell yeah.
[01:05:24]  Oh, and don't forget, run your mouth.
[01:05:26]  Go check that one out as well.
[01:05:27]  All right, guys.
[01:05:28]  Catch you next time.
[01:05:29]  Peace.