Dave Smith and Robbie the Fire Bernstein critique government overreach, Chris Cuomo's rehabilitation tour, and the Gaza conflict. They challenge casualty statistics, noting the UN estimates an 80-year rebuild for Gaza while criticizing reliance on unverified strike counts versus excess mortality. The hosts argue Israel failed to secure borders by propping up Hamas, creating a stateless population that fuels further terrorism. Ultimately, they contend U.S. funding based on flawed threat predictions only perpetuates global hatred and state expansion. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Rolling Back The State00:02:00
Fill her up!
You are listening to the cast.
We need to roll back the state.
We spy on all of our own citizens.
Our prisons are flooded with nonviolent drug offenders.
If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
What's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Heart of the Problem.
I'm Dave Smith.
He is Robbie the Fire Bernstein.
What's up, brother?
How you feeling today?
I'm doing good, Davey Smith.
Got shows all weekend.
Feeling sharp.
I like it.
Oh, man.
I am so glad that you are doing those shows alone this weekend.
I'm just, dude, I've been on, I think, five flights in the last five days, and every one of them's been delayed.
Oh, that's everyone, like everything.
It's just been, it's just been a problem.
A lot of traveling around.
They've been, it's been amazing.
But there, but it's the like shows were great.
And I just went and did a very big podcast that's going to come out next week.
I'm very excited for you guys to see that.
I'm going to, I'm going to tease a little bit and not tell you what it is, but you're going to be real excited for it if you're a fan of mine.
And so it was great.
It all went really great, but oh my God, I was just gone.
I mean, I literally got back Monday.
My flight got crazy delayed.
I got back Monday night after my kids were asleep.
I saw them for like a few minutes Monday morning and then flew out and then just got to spend some time with them today.
But it's too much.
It was a little bit too long of a of traveling for me, even though I really did enjoy all of the work.
Anyway, I'm off this weekend.
So you go carry the torch for me, Rob.
Where are you again this weekend?
Libertarians Rising Again00:04:56
The big one is Sunday, 6 p.m. in Brooklyn.
I got a killer lineup of people at Old Man Hustle.
I'm back in Poughkeepsie Friday night.
Saturday, I'm doing that show in East Rutherford.
But if you guys, I'm picking one.
Come support the 6 p.m. in Brooklyn.
All right.
All right.
Sounds good.
And then, of course, the next May 23rd, guys, in Washington, D.C. at Penn Social, a live stand-up comedy show and a live part of the problem podcast.
That's as we gear up for the Libertarian Party National Convention, which is the next few days after that.
Of course, Trump and now RFK in the mix.
That's a, we could open up talking about that a little bit.
I guess so.
RFK challenged Donald Trump to debate him at the Libertarian Party National Convention.
Now, I got to say, I should probably preface this with, I don't think it's going to happen.
I'm not saying that with any type of inside knowledge.
I'm saying that just as the political commentator that I am, like, I judging what we all know publicly on the record, I don't see why Trump's going to debate RFK.
I don't know that Trump's going to debate Joe Biden, but if Trump wasn't willing to debate any of the other Republicans, I just think strategically, it would probably be just it happening would be so much more beneficial to RFK than Trump.
Like it would be, it's the frontrunner debating the third party candidate, and that seems to be more legitimizing to him than potentially beneficial to Trump.
Is RFK polling that at a level yet that if they do a presidential campaign, they have to include him?
That's a good question.
I don't know.
I haven't looked at the latest polls with RFK in it.
The latest polls I looked at were just with Biden and Trump.
And that is a good question.
I don't know.
And they always change what the requirements are.
Like I remember there were some requirements and then Gary Johnson met them and then they just raised them.
And you know what I mean?
I don't know exactly what the requirements are this year, whether it's 10% or 15%.
He is certainly, I think, polling better than just about any third party candidate since Ross Perot.
although not nearly as good as Ross Perot was at one point, who was the frontrunner at one point.
That's an interesting question.
The other dynamic here is that in order for that to happen, there'd have to be a libertarian in the debate.
I mean, we're not going to have a debate at the Libertarian Party convention without a libertarian in the debate.
I did offer my services.
You know, it's the, if the debate happens, it would probably happen before the nominee for the LP has been decided.
And, you know, that's, that's up to the people at the party to decide.
But like, I would happily jump in there and be the third guy in that debate.
I also said I would moderate it if they're want if they wanted to put one of the candidates in the debate.
Again, I think it's a long shot that that is going to happen.
If it did happen, it would be like the greatest thing libertarians have ever pulled off.
It really would be amazing.
There's forever libertarians have complained that we're not allowed in the debates.
And if the debates actually came to us this time and we were in it, that would be pretty.
I would legitimize the presidential process.
It would be libertarians rising.
Don't worry.
There's always a libertarian who will complain about it.
But no, it would be awesome.
And look, I got criticized by a few people who said that, you know, oh, you're trying to get the spotlight now.
You know, you didn't, you backed out of running and now you're trying to jump into this debate.
Now, listen, if you feel that way, it's not ultimately my decision to make and fine.
If there was a nominee who was already chosen, I would, I would understand the argument that it should be the nominee.
And if it, if Michael Rechtenwald was jumping in that debate, believe me, I'd be thrilled about it.
I would be, I think that's fine.
I'm just saying, look, if you think my angle here is that I'm just trying to steal the spotlight, I get plenty of spotlight already.
That's really not the thing is that, look, this is what I do.
And I think it would be good for the libertarians to have somebody there who really is good at this.
And seeing as how we haven't picked the nominee yet, I'm happy to offer my services.
Spike Cohen also offered his services, and I'd also be fine with that.
I think that would be really great if Spike got to go up against those guys.
And again, it's still a long shot that any of this is going to happen, but it does, it is to me just like kind of one more piece of evidence of how like how great Angela is doing and how much you should support her for another term.
Vindication For Joe Rogan00:15:20
It's like, when were things like this even within the realm of possibilities?
Even just the, even just the challenge is good for us because it like gets people going like, wait, what?
Oh, there's this big convention that's going on.
And now it does, it kind of puts Trump in a position, like the optics of it are like everybody else has agreed.
You know what I mean?
Like all of us are down to do it.
You're the only one who's like afraid to.
And it's also just great that it just makes Joe Biden look so irrelevant.
Like it's just like no one even cares about him coming.
I mean, like he did, Angela did invite Biden to the convention, but it's just like, well, we all know you're not going to come and speak to people to try to persuade them.
That's not how Joe Biden persuades people by speaking.
That's not going to happen.
Anyway, I am, I'm very excited for all of this, including I'm just excited for our show at Penn Social on May 23rd.
It's just, it's going to be a lot of fun.
And then I also got the week before that, got another big, big, big podcast coming up that I'm looking forward to doing.
All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is yokratom.com, home of the $60 kilo, longtime sponsor of our podcast.
And, you know, we always got to show loyalty to the sponsors that show loyalty to us.
If you enjoy Kratom and you're over the age of 21, you got to get it at yokratom.com.
It's lab tested, quality stuff.
It's shipped right to your door and it's the best price you're going to find anywhere, $60 for a kilo.
YoKratom.com.
All right, let's get back into the show.
So, okay, let's get into some things that I wanted to talk about.
Number one, I know this was on just about everybody's radar, is Chris Cuomo, who has been on a bit of a rehabilitation tour, trying to repair his tarnished image.
And this included working out a deal with Patrick Bett David, where he's doing some shows for value attainment.
And it also included a sit-down with Tucker Carlson.
I will say for the record, and I say this as somebody who I'm friends with both Tucker and Pat, and I have enormous respect for both of them.
And so I say this with nothing but love for those two men, that I hate that they're doing it.
I told Tucker as much.
I haven't told Pat that yet, but I'll tell him now.
I hate that they're allowing this.
I hate that they're being kind to him.
I just, it drives me crazy.
I just, you know, there, if there's one in this world, right?
Like all the podcasters or all the internet shows, if there's one thing we all have in common, right?
Like Pat and Tucker and Joe Rogan and like almost all of the other ones that you could name, like all the big internet shows, one of the things we all have in common is we all fucking hate the COVID regime.
All of us.
There might be other issues where we kind of differ.
Not everybody was great.
Well, of the group I meant, probably they all were great on Ukraine.
Maybe not everyone's great on Israel.
Maybe everyone's not, you know, good on every single issue.
But if there's one thing that unified all of us, we were against the COVID restrictions.
We were against the inset because it was so insane.
You know, it was, we're going to lock down the country and censor anybody who thinks we shouldn't lock down the country.
You know, we're all against that.
And Chris Cuomo isn't just like some guy who kind of went along with it.
He was like the guy, like the guy in the corporate press who championed the whole thing.
He was the absolute worst on it the whole time.
It's as if if all of like the internet shows, if our unifying thing was against being against the war in Iraq, and then like Dick Cheney is coming to do the circuit.
Like, by the way, I mean, maybe Dick Cheney is not the example, but like Bill O'Reilly, whoever the number one guy in news who was championing it was.
And like, I wouldn't even be against it if he was coming around and just like profusely apologizing.
Like if he was coming around and just being like, I'm so sorry, I got this so wrong.
I demonized all of you when I was the one who deserved to be demonized or something like that.
Like, okay, if I, if I believed it was heartfelt enough, you know, like maybe I could get, but he's not even doing that.
He's just like moving over here and almost like pretending like, hey, yeah, you know, some things were said, some stuff was done.
And then we're supposed to forget that you had nightly interviews with your brother, giving him puff pieces as he was locking down his country and sending COVID positive patients into nursing homes.
I'm supposed to like forget about that.
I'm supposed to forget that you faked a re-emergence from your basement.
after you had COVID and filmed it and pretended it was the first time you had been out of your basement when we had video of you outside getting in almost getting in fights with people.
You know what I mean?
Like, I, what?
No, I'm not just letting that go.
Anyway, the latest in this just kind of half infuriating, half hilarious, half like vindicating, weird, like little tour.
I mean, vindicating for us, you know, is that he came out and announced that he has suffered a vaccine injury, which, you know, I'm not saying I wished that on him, but it is goddamn hilarious.
And also that he's on Ivermectin now.
So anyway, let's, I mean, I don't know.
If there's anything you want to jump in there or respond to what I said, go ahead, Rob, and then we could play the clip and talk about it.
Let's roll a clip because I think it's even worse than you describe.
Okay.
I'll tell you something else that's going to get you a lot of hits.
I am taking a, what do they call it?
Like a regular dose, you know, whatever.
They're trying to build up of ivermectin.
Ivermectin was a boogeyman early on in COVID.
You couldn't talk about him.
That was wrong.
We were given bad information about Ivermectin.
The real question is why?
Everyone's going to say Joe Rogan was right.
No, Joe Rogan was saying, yeah, he was right.
But pause it right there.
Dude, that was my favorite part of the whole thing, by the way.
It's that, and then this is also what's so infuriating about it.
He literally goes, oh, everyone's going to say Joe Rogan is right.
Pauses for a second, realizes he cannot come up with any rationalization for why.
Like you really watch this moment where he just goes, oh, yeah.
Okay, Joe Rogan was right.
Because he's not even coming at this like with an you get my point that it's not like he's apologizing.
He's not going like, look, I participated in making Ivermectin a boogeyman and now I'm on it.
And like, I shouldn't have done that.
And I was wrong to go after Joe Rogan this way.
My whole network really viciously smeared the guy over saying what I'm saying right now to you.
But instead, he's trying to go.
Now, a lot of people are going to say Joe Rogan is right, but poof.
Yeah, you know, shit.
What would I say back to those people?
It's like in a moment, you realize that he has nothing, nothing.
All Joe Rogan was ever saying was exactly what you're saying, that my doctors put me on this.
And you guys all called it horse D-wormer and tried to like, it was so vicious the way they went after him.
And now you're admitting he was completely right.
But you don't even say that with an ounce of humility.
You're not even like apologizing.
Anyway, I don't know.
Any thoughts on this part, Rob, or you want to keep?
Well, I think we're coming to the infuriating part.
So all right, let's play.
What matters is the entire clinical community knew that Ivermectin couldn't hurt you.
They knew it, Patrick.
I know they knew it.
How do I know?
Because now I'm doing nothing but talking to these clinicians who at the time were overwhelmed by COVID and they weren't saying anything.
Not that they were hiding anything.
But it's cheap.
It's not owned by anybody.
And it's used as an antimicrobial, antiviral in all of these different ways and has been for a long time.
For malaria for over almost 20 years.
Yeah.
So, and my doctor, who is now my doctor, was using it during COVID on her family and on patients and it was working for them.
So they were wrong to play scared on that.
Didn't know that at the time.
Know it now, admit it now, reporting on it now.
Because I think that's the job.
The idea that, well, you were a vaccine proponent.
Why wouldn't I have been a vaccine proponent?
Now there are questions.
Oh, no, but I knew at the time.
No, you didn't.
What you knew was that there were people telling you to be resistant to what the government was telling you to do.
Yeah.
I mean, because it's not, what's so infuriating is that he actually finds a way to be patting himself on the back.
Didn't know it then.
Know it now, reporting it now.
Because that's the job.
That's the job.
No, no, no.
Your job was to actually investigate this at the time when it mattered.
Do you know what it's worth to admit that Ivermectin isn't horse dewormer now?
Nothing.
It's worth nothing.
This does no one anything of value, but you were the number one show at CNN through this entire crisis.
It would have been worth so much if you could have told the truth then.
And all of this stuff about like, this is what they all rely on doing.
It's like, oh, you didn't know it then.
No, you were just trying to be do whatever the government said, do the opposite type deal.
There was no way of knowing it then.
So it's just a pure coincidence that we got all of this right and you got all of this wrong when it mattered.
That's your takeaway from this, even though the scientific community knew that ivermectin was safe.
Like, yeah, that's right.
And by the way, there were so many of them who were willing to say that.
That's why we knew it.
That's why we were talking about it at the time.
It's just so infuriating.
Like, fuck that.
You don't get a rehabilitation tour.
You don't get to brag about how you're being a real journalist or something like that without acknowledging that you, look, you can say, I was listening to all the wrong people.
And it turns out that the group of quote experts that I was listening to were really doing the bidding of pharmaceutical companies.
And they were demonizing ivermectin because nobody owned it and there wasn't big pharma profits to be made in it.
And I listened to those guys.
I thought they were the experts.
And I was wrong to do that.
And by the way, going forward, don't ever listen to that group of people again.
You know what I mean?
That'd be fine.
But that's not what he's saying.
He's saying, oh, the experts were so overwhelmed they couldn't tell us at the time, but they'll tell us now.
So we know now what we didn't know then.
Except the problem is that we all knew it then.
This is what Rogan was saying then.
He was saying it and having experts who were explaining it back then.
Dude, run your mouth.
Your show, you were all on top of this stuff back then.
And unlike now, when Chris Cuomo can just collect all those checks from CNN and now come back and start trying to collect more checks and he can say this when it bears no cost to say it.
See, the thing is like, if he had ever told the truth at CNN, that would have borne a real cost for him.
He would have been putting his job at risk, probably would have lost his job, you know, but he still could have gotten off a few shows talking about it before he got fired, you know, and then he would have, but that would have required a sacrifice.
People like us who don't have the huge CNN checks rolling in have much smaller checks rolling in.
We were risking our checks in order to talk about this shit at the time.
I know run your mouth got flagged a bunch of times on YouTube.
We were constantly over here having to dance around like what saying it in the exact right way so that you don't get kicked off.
You know what I mean?
But like there, dude, I was doing shows on Rogan that were getting Fauci and Joe Biden responding to them, talking about how we're spreading misinformation.
I was attacked by every goddamn blue check journalist on Twitter over this whole course of time.
Back when blue checks used to mean you were in the corporate press.
And you did none of that.
And this is bullshit.
It's such a bullshit excuse because it's like, no, like all of these experts were out there.
All of this information was out there.
It's not that we had no way of knowing.
We absolutely knew.
And I'm sorry, here, you go ahead.
Take over for a little bit.
I'm too mad.
Well, on some of these also, if you're just being a little bit honest, like on the ivermectin storyline, if you're just, I can tell you how some of this came across my radar on Run Your Mouth.
And to me, anyone with more resources is just inexcusable.
So let's start with the Ivermectin one.
So I don't know, you're in the middle of COVID and some people are saying that this thing works.
That's it.
That's all you're working with.
You got some random people saying that ivermectin works.
And then all of a sudden you got the government coming out and calling it horse dewormer.
How do you not want to ask a question?
Well, is it horse dewormer?
Well, right off the bat, no.
It's actually something that we use all the time.
Okay.
Is this thing generally spafe?
Yeah, it's one of the most prescribed medicines ever.
Could it possibly work for this as well?
I don't know.
It's got antivirals.
I have no idea.
Cool.
What did doctors outside of the CDC say?
And then you could start talking to some people.
I know that I did.
And some of them wanted to prescribe it.
And then they were getting their licenses threatened or otherwise, which then opens up the next door of, oh, if there's this thing that's relatively safe and some doctors would like to be able to prescribe it, why is there such a clampdown on this medication?
And by the way, you can keep going because none of this is that not obvious.
I mean, Rob, just what you just said there, all as simple, this is how simple it was for me.
Okay.
And literally, it involves a lot of the elements you're mentioning.
But you go, okay, not only every single person in the corporate media is repeating that it's horse dewormer.
And they're all saying exactly that over and over again.
And so this is always like one key.
Why did you all pick horse dewormer?
It's used for so many different things and on animals.
Like it, why horse dewormer?
Everyone repeats that over and over and over again.
And then I go, well, wait a minute.
This is doctors are prescribing this.
Like that's how Rogan got it.
His doctor gave it to him.
His doctor was like, try this.
And then you go, oh, okay.
Hyperbaric Oxygen Trials00:11:02
Right away, it's, it's won a Nobel Prize.
It's been administered billions of times to people and it has very low risk to it.
As soon as I knew that, it was like, oh, so why is there this concerted effort to discredit this as an alternative therapeutic?
You're like, oh, obviously, because they're trying to push the vaccine instead.
It makes no sense to present that.
Like, it's not as if they were presenting it as like, look, this is a pretty safe drug for people to take.
People have taken it for lots of different things, malaria and all these different types of things as an antiviral.
It's a pretty safe drug.
But, you know, most of the research I'm looking at indicates that it's not really going to be that helpful with COVID.
No one was saying that.
Instead, they were all being like, oh, you're a crazy person.
You're an insane person to want to take this.
You're taking horse paste, man.
You're doing all this crazy shit.
And then you're, and you're like, no, doctors are prescribing this to people.
Now, I was totally open to the possibility that maybe these doctors are getting it wrong.
From what I saw, and I'm no expert on this.
There were a few studies that seemed to indicate that it really helped.
There were a few other studies that seemed to indicate it didn't really help that much with COVID.
But as soon as you saw what was going on here, it was easy for anybody with a functioning brain to determine that like, oh, there is a campaign to discredit this drug.
And why is that?
And as Chris Cornwall just said, because nobody fucking owned it.
There were no big pharma profits to be made.
And then broad strokes just on the vaccine itself.
Like I remember, I got really excited.
We're all locked down and I'm like, wow, they got a vaccine.
They're giving it to Trump.
This thing's over.
And then one doctor listening to the show pointed out to me, hey, this is a new technology.
It's not quite a vaccine.
It's not fully studied.
Let's not get that excited about it.
I'm like, all right, that's interesting.
I hadn't considered that.
I had another doctor hit me up out of nowhere and goes, yeah, this vaccine is never going to work because they're lying to you.
It doesn't work for variants anyways.
And then all of a sudden I'm like, okay, this is interesting.
It seems, and then also, by the way, if you just wanted a little bit of a cue into, hey, I should be interested here.
When Donald Trump was not elected, all the Democrats were saying, you're insane.
You can't have a vaccine.
And then they all flipped their voice.
Kamala Harris said at the vice presidential debates that she wouldn't take the vaccine if it was Trump's rushed vaccine.
Right.
And they were all bashing Trump for all the logical questions that it turns out you should be asking about it.
So if you're in the media with more resources than I do, more people who are listening, who can give you this information, you were putting your blinders on just to sell this thing.
Yeah.
Okay.
So that's really interesting that you tell it because so this is basically my story that pretty much mirrors yours.
But I'll tell you that my first knee-jerk reaction.
So if you go back even a little bit before that, Donald Trump was saying we're very close to a vaccine.
This was right before the election.
This was kind of like his real, one of his reelection pitches is he goes, listen, we're very close to a vaccine and being done with this whole thing.
And the entire corporate press was saying, that's not true.
There's no vaccine right on the horizon.
Donald Trump's just saying this.
Then as it got closer to the election, it became clear that he wasn't just saying that.
And so at first, my gut reaction was like, oh, Trump was actually telling the truth.
There is a vaccine coming.
And the entire media now is trying to was trying to call him a liar because they're all against him and trying to get Joe Biden elected.
And so if anything, my impulse on this one, it wasn't like my impulse on lockdowns or some of these other things where like my starting point was like, oh, they're just trying to discredit it because it's Trump's vaccine.
And of course, it was like, oh, this would be like amazing if the vaccine is here and we could be done with all these insane COVID restrictions or whatever.
And then as time went on, it was like, because this is still before the vaccine was actually rolled out.
So as it, as the thing was starting to get rolled out, I just started hearing a lot of people, experts, kind of like you were saying, saying that these trials were not nearly sufficient.
That like this, you can't know enough about a vaccine with the amount of trials.
And then as I started reading about that, it was like, oh, yeah, this is clearly true.
This is clearly true that this has not, they have not had the time to make the claims that they're making.
And then like you, I talked to a couple doctors who were like, look, the only real question here is whether it'll work on variants because the thing's going to keep mutating.
Like that's obviously the case.
And then it was like very obvious.
Well, I guess number one, it was obvious that like, well, really, I had just been studying COVID for so long at this point.
You know, you're talking about the, you know, early 2021 already now.
And we've been doing a show on this since early 2020.
So it's been almost a year.
Then I was like, oh, there's really no need to like vaccinate everybody.
Like go vaccinate old sick people because those are the only people who are really at risk of COVID.
And then when they were like, no, it's about stopping the transmission.
I was like, yeah, but that wasn't demonstrated in any of the trials that I've been reading about.
So that doesn't make any sense.
And then it was like this whole thing of using either soft or hard force to force people to get these vaccines.
And that was like, yeah, that's, but I still was pretty open to the idea that like, oh, okay, if you're telling me that the vaccine stops you from getting real sick and dying, then probably old people should get the vaccine.
And then it was very clear once the new variants came out that it just didn't work against them.
And they kept insisting that it does.
And they kept insisting that this is a vaccine of the un this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated and demonizing all these people and trying to ruin their lives.
And that's when I really like completely woke up to the whole thing was when they were firing nurses, nurses who had been working at this point for a year through a pandemic who had all like 100% of them had either already had COVID or figured out how to protect themselves from COVID.
And it was just like, oh, you're ruining people's lives again.
And the people who were just the heroes just the previous year were the ones everyone was clapping outside their window at five o'clock for.
And they were all making their dumb TikTok videos and we were all supposed to be celebrating them for doing their job.
And now you're fine to just ruin their lives because they won't take this next product.
And anybody, anybody being honest through that period of time.
So we're talking early 2021 now should have been able to just see this whole thing for obviously what it was.
And so, no, don't tell me it's like, oh, you didn't know anything then.
You just, you were essentially, I guess, Chris Cuomo is saying, we just made a lucky guess.
We happened to be right and he happened to be wrong.
Like, no, that's not what happened.
We were being honest and looking at the information around us.
You were lying through your fucking teeth to protect powerful people.
That's the difference.
I think, well said, you just had to be a little bit open to investigating.
Yeah, you look, and we're just comedians who read books.
That's all we are.
I don't even read that much.
Yeah, Rob doesn't even read.
You've read a lot of stuff.
You know, we're comedians who keep up with the news, who've read like some books and stuff.
And we could do, Chris Cuomo, you're saying you're a journalist, dude.
Well, that's the job.
That's the job to not just mindlessly repeat government propaganda, but to actually investigate it.
And all it took was a little bit of suspicion of the government propaganda to run.
And listen again, we're not even talking about lockdowns here, where Chris Cuomo was absolutely terrible and was pretending to lock himself down while actually going out without a mask.
You know, keep in mind, when Chris Cuomo got caught outside, this was when they were still telling you to wear a mask outside.
Okay.
But this is a full year later we're talking about now with the vaccine.
This is if you weren't by 2021 skeptical of the government propaganda on this, you're not a journalist.
You're a propagandist.
By the way, I did someone, someone wrote that Patrick Bett David should host a debate between me and Chris Cuomo.
Put him up, Chris Cuomo.
And I immediately jumped on that and said, let's make it happen and tagged both Patrick Bett David and Chris Cuomo.
So like, I'm just saying, you know, look, this is not beyond the realm of possibility.
Like I have a good relationship with Patrick Bett David and I've done his show multiple times.
And, you know, I've, I won't, I won't divulge what the context or what was said because I don't ever, I don't share text messages or DMs or anything like that.
But Chris Cuomo has reached out to me before.
We had a a feisty back and forth.
I'll just leave it at that.
But yo, hey, Chris Cuomo, if you really want to go on this like, you know, like reinventing yourself rehabilitation tour, why not come through me?
Let's sit down.
Come on, Pat.
Let's set it up.
Let's make it happen.
Chris Cuomo can give his take and let me respond to what he has to say.
Let's set up a nice debate over the COVID error policies.
I'll gladly put my track record at part of the problem up against Chris Cuomo's track record at CNN and we can discuss whether I actually like why I got everything right and he got everything wrong.
Let's have a conversation about that.
I think it would be illuminating for the American people to hear it.
I hope that happens.
That'd be a fun one.
Yeah, that'll be a fun one.
That sure would be a fun one.
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Hamas Civilian Casualties00:14:32
Coupon code problem.
All right, let's get back into the show.
Let's move on to another topic here because there's a lot going on with the war in Gaza or the assault on Gaza.
I don't even know what.
I think assault on Gaza is what I'm going to call it now because it's not saying a war just does make people assume both sides got a military and one side isn't just, you know, just leveling a captive stateless people, which is what's actually happening.
So one of the updates is that Joe Biden said in an interview recently that he, you know, that he's really against Israel invading Rafa.
For people who don't know, this is basically, I think there's the overwhelming majority of the population is there now.
I think that's 1.5 million people or something like that.
And they've kind of been forced there because everywhere else has been destroyed.
And now they're claiming, well, this is the last area where there's still Hamas.
So we still need to go after them.
But Joe Biden said in an interview the other day that if they invade, he won't sell any more weapons to the Israelis.
Just to be clear, I don't think he'll do that.
That's my guess.
I don't think he's cutting off military aid to Israel.
And I think he's saying what he needs to say to try to win over his base.
It's also, it's got a little nice taste of irony because they always like to say the red lines, the red lines.
If you're going to have a red line, you got to enforce your red line.
And now you got Biden put down the red line.
So is he actually going to stand by it?
Probably not.
But typically the people that are on the side of the red lines are the Warhawks.
Yeah.
Well, it's also just it's it's been unbelievable to watch in this horrific military campaign led by the Israelis that are conducted by the Israelis that is now, I mean, look, dude, it's, it's May, you know, this has been going on since October.
It has been quite a while at this point now.
And the whole time, and as I've done, you know, many debates on this, I've had a lot of people give me this argument.
The whole time, they're like, who are like, oh, Israel is the most moral army or Israel.
I mean, come on, they have these knock bombs and they drop leaflets and they tell the people to leave, you know, which again, you're talking about, you know, the economic conditions in Gaza since the blockade.
So since like 2005, I mean, have just been horrific.
Not that they were good before that, but there's, I think there was like 50% unemployment or something like that.
I mean, there's the amount of poverty there is like really pretty extreme.
And so it's like just telling people to leave is, you know, it's not as if that's a, you're telling them to leave to go to like a desert area where there's no water or supplies or shelter.
And so it's, it's not as easy to do that, but they're like, well, you want to get slaughtered or you want to go to a place with no support.
But anyway, the whole time, basically, through all this war, the pro-Israel side has been bragging how like moral it is that they tell them where to go, where it'll be safe.
Here, civilians, if you don't want to die, go over to this area.
It'll be safe as if it's that simple.
And then they bomb the shit out of that area that they said would be safe.
Like somehow it's like, well, doesn't that cancel out your last argument that you're such a good guy for sending them to a safe house if you light up the safe house?
Anyway, that's what's happening here.
So there was a pretty amazing moment on Piers Morgan's show just the other day where Pierce had an Israeli official on it.
Here, let's play the clip and we can discuss it.
So how many civilians do you believe you've killed?
We don't have exact figures.
As you know, it's the fog of war.
You've got exact numbers for Hamas terrorists you've killed.
Why wouldn't you know how many civilians you've killed?
Because obviously our focus is to go after the Hamas terrorists.
I mean, that does imply that you're putting a bigger premium on killing Hamas terrorists in terms of numbers and accountability than you are on innocent civilians.
That can't be right.
Surely.
If you know exactly how many Hamas terrorists you've killed, you must know how many civilians you've killed.
Otherwise, you're prioritizing the lives of terrorists over innocent people.
Piers, with respect, don't put words into my mouth, please.
I didn't say exactly 14,000.
I said around 14,000.
Whereas Hamas will come out with precise numbers that statistically...
Give me a ballpark number for civilians.
Well, you can use the ballpark as far as the Hamas figures, which I reject as being false.
Well, if they're false, why would you give me those?
I gave you the numbers that I had.
You've told me you know how many Hamas terrorists you've killed, but you don't have any idea how many civilians you've killed.
I'm just permused.
Why wouldn't you keep count of both?
I don't have that information to give you, Piers.
If I did, I wouldn't.
You literally no idea how many civilians you've been killing.
I can tell you definitively that our aim is to go after Hamas.
I'm sorry to push you on this.
That's quite extraordinary.
You're an official spokesman for the Israeli government and you have no idea how many civilians you've killed.
I thought you just told me that you were particularly careful about not killing civilians.
But if you don't know how many you've killed, how can you say that with any certainty?
Because even if you were to go by a ratio of the Hamas figures, we would still be far ahead of any.
It wasn't my question.
You know, it wasn't my question.
I don't have the information.
You literally have no idea how many civilians you've killed.
It's not that I don't know.
I'm not authorized to give the information.
I don't have the information.
That's complete nonsense.
Why are you authorized to give me the number of terrorists you've killed and not a number of civilians?
I don't understand.
Can you explain?
Piers, we will go after Hamas.
We will ensure that we can't.
But you want me to believe you're being incredibly careful about how many civilians you're killing and you have an amazing exemplary record, but you don't know how many civilians you're killing.
So how do I know you've been careful?
Piers, when the dust settles, we will come out with the proper numbers.
Hamas runs to the press daily.
But you say when the dust settles, a lot of people will have died.
And you know how many Hamas you've killed, but you don't know how many civilians you've killed.
And I'm just asking you why.
Why is it you've kept a record of one, but not the other?
I personally don't have that information to give to you.
You can ask me over and over.
I'm not going to come up with more information.
I don't know.
You don't know.
I don't have that information for you.
But you're an official government spokesman for the Israeli government and you have no idea.
Piers, I came on here to focus on what's going on with the war.
Well, actually, you came on here to answer my questions, I think.
Yeah.
And I don't have an answer for you to that.
And I didn't intend to press you on this point because I assumed that you would not respond the way you have.
But I've never had an Israeli spokesman who simply said, I have no idea.
Particularly after you boasted about the fact that you've been very smart in the way you've avoided killing civilians.
How do you know if you've got no idea how many you've killed?
Because I know the way in which the IDF operates.
I know the way in which we go after the terrorists in the best possible way.
It's not what I've said.
It's what General Petraeus has said.
It's what John Spencer from West Point has said.
It's what multiple British generals have said.
Israel goes out of its way to avoid civilian casualties.
That's what we'll do.
If you can point to me to another conflict by which they have evacuated, got out of harm's way civilians to the extent that Israel has done, then fine.
Sorry, with respect, Mr. Hyman, how can you possibly expect me to accept any comparisons to any other conflict or war, given that you do not know how many civilians you've killed?
Piers, you understand that I can't prosecute the war over the media.
I'm just asking you for basic information.
Honestly, I'm not trying to trap you and I'm not trying to unfairly harangue you.
I think people are watching this and they'll make their own conclusions.
I just find it astonishing that the moment I asked you how many Hamas you killed, you could tell me immediately.
And the moment I ask you about civilians, you haven't got a clue, literally, that you're not even prepared to issue a ballpark number.
And I think people will find that staggering, particularly given that you are insistent that you're doing everything you can to avoid killing civilians.
To which, again, I just simply ask, how do you know?
If you don't know how many you're killing, how can you possibly be sure that you are A, doing better than other people waging war elsewhere?
Or B, that you have any idea how many you're killing?
You don't, clearly.
All right.
Well, there's Piers Morgan doing journalism.
Good for him.
And there, folks, is that is what a liar sounds like.
And I don't know how any honest person can be on whatever side of this conflict you're on.
You're like, that's what a liar sounds like.
It was unbelievable.
One of the things that was unbelievable to me is that he actually switched his lie in the middle of the grilling from I don't know to I know, but I can't tell you, and then went back to I don't know.
But this is the thing they do, which is, it's really crazy.
So it starts with him bragging about the civilian to militant ratio of this war and how Israel's doing so much to avoid civilian casualties, but then says he has no idea the number of civilian casualties.
So how can you brag about the ratio if you don't want?
And then he goes, you can go by Hamas's numbers and those are all fake.
And you go, well, why would you go by fake numbers?
And then it's like just on and on like this.
They have no idea.
No idea.
But we've done more than anybody else because look, we've got civilians out of harm's way.
I mean, yes, the place we put them in after we got them out of harm's way, that then became harm's way.
But we did get them out of the original harm's way only to kill them in the new place out of harm's way.
How many of them?
I don't know.
I don't know.
Isn't that just that was really amazing, wasn't it?
That guy shouldn't be on TV again.
And he couldn't have done, by the way, his art.
He didn't even sell his argument, which is just actually too sophisticated for what's his name, which is why he keeps harping on it, which is to, it's, I'm using Talmudic terms here, but it's a classic what they called, uh, I'll translate even greater.
So he's like, what he's trying to say is that even if you go with the Hamas numbers of how many civilians we killed, by standards of warfare, our ratio of not killing civilians is pretty good.
And he, I think, what Piers Morgan can't understand it.
So he's just like, yeah, but what's your number for what they killed?
And I guess for whatever reason, he's instructed that he's not allowed to say it.
So he's trying to harp on the ratio argument.
But Piers Morgan just doesn't understand what he's saying.
So he actually just sits in the pocket and actually goes, yeah, but why can't you tell me your number?
And that guy did not have an answer for why he's not allowed to say their civilian numbers.
And then he, I mean, the pause, I think he broke RFK's record for longest pregnant pause.
You know, he's under his instructions that the media is supposed to be playing ball.
And so we've seen this happen to Democrats a couple of times.
They're like, wait, I'm not supposed to be getting follow-up questions.
Wait, why are you asking me this?
I said the bullshit and then you're just supposed to move on.
And so then they just go back to the bullshit.
And they were like, wait, but Hamas bad.
Remember?
Remember how we all agree?
Hamas is bad.
Look, I think that people do get, look, my position from the very beginning of this and in any one of the debates that I've done on this or in any one of the podcasts, you've never heard me sit here and go, well, look, 32,000 people have been killed or this many, you know, whatever the number is.
Israel keeps changing the number that they've claimed of how many Hamas guys they've killed.
But you never hear me go, 9,000 Hamas for 32,000.
Because the truth is that there's a few things here.
There's no one trustworthy involved in keeping these numbers.
It is between the health ministry, which is overseen by Hamas and the Israeli government.
None of them can be trusted with any of these numbers.
And the truth is that, number one, you get bogged down into who knows these numbers.
The other thing is that numbers are almost never accurate when they're reported during wars.
It's almost always afterward when they do like that, they calculate the excess mortality that you start to get an idea of like how many people have actually died in the war.
And the, you know, the wars, let's say in the Middle East, where hundreds of thousands of people died in these conflicts, they're not the numbers, if you just look at who, at least as far as we can tell, again, these numbers are always kind of shady, but the numbers of people that were killed like directly in strikes is much, much smaller than that.
But hundreds of thousands of people end up dying as a result of the war.
So it's not as if like the concern here is it's almost, and a lot of people who are critics of Israel who use these Hamas numbers, it's almost like they're downplaying what the actual severity is here.
There's, dude, I just listened to an interview with a doctor who was over in Gaza and he was talking about how they have a major shortage of anesthesia.
And so they had to, they, they had to perform.
Just put me down.
Just, I, I'm not interested.
Dude, they were performing amputations on children without anesthesia.
And it's not, and there's like so many different stories like this.
And, you know, the UN just had a report where they calculated that it will take 80 years to rebuild Gaza back to what it was, which was already pretty bad, you know?
And like, that's kind of the bigger story here, that there's hundreds of thousands of lives hanging in the balance.
That's the deal.
Important Questions About War00:04:02
And look, whenever people are talking about this, this stuff where they're like, well, they're arguing over these numbers, which none of us know whether they're true or not.
And then they're arguing, which is what I've seen over and over again.
Coleman Hughes was doing it when he was on Rogan.
And a lot of these people argue that when they're trying to defend this military campaign, they will say, okay, well, look, we've got these numbers here.
And if you look at that, the ratio of innocents killed to militants killed is somewhere on par with these other wars or something like that.
Again, this for two reasons.
This is just nonsense.
This means nothing.
It has nothing to do with anything.
Number one, because you're only counting the people that would be directly killed in the strikes and not the people who die as a result of this campaign, which is going to be far, far, far greater as it always is.
But also, you know, because we don't even know that these numbers are right.
And but more importantly than any of that, it's just that that's not the question.
That's not the important question.
There's a few important questions.
That is not one of them.
One of them is not, well, how many Hamas people died compared to how many babies?
You know, like all those videos you've seen on Twitter of like a baby in rubble suffocating to death or like a mother dying in front of her seven-year-old while the seven-year-old is screaming her guts out and like all this shit that is like, well, how many of them compare to how many of the Hamas?
None of that is the relevant question.
Okay.
There's a few relevant questions.
Okay.
And when you see like the absolute horror of what's happening to the innocent people in Gaza, okay, the question, like here's an important question to be asked.
It would be, does Israel absolutely have to do this?
Is there any alternative?
Is there anything else that they could do other than this?
That's an important question to ask.
And by the way, there's an obvious answer to it.
No, they don't have to do this.
They could just stop.
It's not a situation where like it'd be one thing if you were like, oh my God, like we have to kill all these babies, but if we don't kill all these babies, all our babies are going to die.
And this is a horrible choice, but we have to kill all these babies so all our babies don't die.
That's not the type of situation Israel's in.
It's not that at all.
Israel completely dropped the ball on October 7th after years of propping up Hamas.
They could stop this war and just not do that.
Just focus.
You know what I mean?
Like put secure, like don't rely on these, you know, robot machine gun technology and have actual soldiers at the border.
Israel is a fortress.
They could easily do this.
They're not going to have another October 7th tomorrow.
They could easily just stop doing this.
And another very important question to ask, and perhaps the most important, is, does America need to be funding and arming this?
And that also has a very easy answer to it.
No, we don't.
No.
Now, I'm sorry.
Rob, you remember how stupid it was when everyone kept saying, if Vladimir Putin takes Ukraine, he's going to take Poland next and then reconstitute the Soviet Union.
You remember how dumb that was?
Well, when Netanyahu says, if we don't defeat Hamas, Europe is next and then America is next.
That's like a thousand times dumber.
That's like so much dumber.
And the Putin claim was really, really dumb.
It is just not true that Hamas poses any threat to us or that it is necessary for us to support Israel in conducting this campaign.
It's just not true.
We just don't need any of it.
They don't need to do it and we don't need to fund it.
That should be the standard.
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Justifying Moral Atrocities00:06:38
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All right, let's get back into the show.
When you're committing horrific atrocities on this level, the question should never be, well, how many babies to bad guys is okay.
The question when you're committing horrific atrocities like this should be, do you have any alternative to this?
Like, is it absolutely necessary that you do this?
Because if not, stop.
You're inflicting suffering on such a massive level.
And so like, just getting bogged down in these numbers, it's like it completely misses the point.
None of that's what actually matters.
I agree 100%.
And by the way, and that's the better conversation to be had if like people are having real conversations is he would, he would argue we've decided the most important thing to us is preserving this ratio and that that's our guide for us being humane.
And we're doing everything that we can to be the best, the gold standard and not killing civilians, blah, blah, blah.
And we take the following precautions.
And for this specifically, we actually go with their numbers because we see them as being inflated.
So we'll know specific numbers at the end of the war, but we can actually stay within our ratio.
That's at least a lie, right?
The problem is he doesn't even know how to like articulate that because he's just so lost in, I'm not allowed to tell you that we've been killing civilians.
And so, you know, Piers does a good job of being like, well, I don't understand.
If you're really being humane and tracking this, why can't you just give me this number?
Why wouldn't that be a focus of yours?
You're so focused on counting how many Hamas militants.
But look, but by the way, just to bring it, or the debate is about why, why did this ratio become the gold standard?
Who had that conversation?
Should the UN get together and make a decision that as long as you're preserving this ratio, you're opera, like who had that conversation?
You're dictating that as if the entire world is in agreement that previous inhumane wars have set a standard of what's morality for today.
Yeah.
And look, I mean, the other factor here is that the number of Hamas militants, he's just making up to, none of these are like precise numbers.
You know what I mean?
So like all of the ratio makes no sense.
Like you can't calculate it because you don't know.
You don't have the numbers.
But again, beyond that, I just think it's like that question isn't what matters.
You know, the onus has to be on you when you're inflicting this type of human suffering to justify why you have no other option.
We have no other option than to do this.
That's what matters.
And the truth is that both U.S. and Israeli intelligence have both admitted that they think the goal of completely destroying Hamas is not achievable.
They can't do it.
They can't do it short of like, you know, just killing everyone.
Even if they did, they don't have a replacement.
So they're probably going to end up with, you know, a new one that's just as bad, if not worse.
They're going to end up with the nicest type situation.
Right.
And then the other thing that like kind of has to get, you know, mentioned in here, which is why like people like myself focus on the history of this conflict so much.
And everybody, like in every one of the debates, every single one of the debates that I've done, the pro-Israeli side is like very happy to like, let's start at October 7th.
You know what I mean?
And the people on the critics of Israel's side are always like, no, let's start like at least at 1967, if not 1947, if not the 19 teens.
You know what I mean?
Like, and I'm sorry, but you don't have to know that much about the conflict to know that the history is very relevant because it's not just that there are two governments living next to each other and one of them viciously attacked the other ones and killed a whole bunch of civilians in the most brutal way.
That's, it's not that.
The story is that the refugees in Gaza were created by the state of Israel and they've been held in captivity and kept a stateless people since 1967.
And then Netanyahu embarked on a strategy of propping up Hamas so that he could keep them a stateless people.
And like, once you throw that into the mix, the justification becomes so much weaker that like, oh, so, but we can keep inflicting this level of human suffering on people because we want to achieve this goal of totally eradicating Hamas, who we propped up in order to deny these people their rights, even though Western and Israeli intelligence says that the goal of eradicating Hamas is not achievable.
Sorry, that changes things.
And like when you're just having a conversation about the civilian to militant death ratio with bullshit numbers, you're just missing the entire conversation here.
Like what actually matters?
So sorry, it's not any of this.
It's a whole different thing.
And that's, that's that.
I honestly don't even see how any, you know, I said at the zero hedge debate something along those lines of like, I don't know, like once you, because they all conceded it too.
Both Dennis Prager and Batya, they both conceded that, yeah, Netanyahu propped up Hamas to make sure there'd never be a Palestinian state.
And I was like, okay, but once you concede that, doesn't it change everything?
Because now you're using that group as a justification to slaughter the innocents who you used that, you propped that group up to deny these innocents their freedom.
And I just said, like, how can anyone justify that at that point?
Then neither of them had a response.
Dennis Prager, I think, said something like, we sided with Stalin during World War II.
Wrapping On A Depressing Note00:02:13
Okay.
So what?
It doesn't change the moral calculation here.
And this is like, you know, look, it's just some things are just on their face so goddamn evil that people could try to twist themselves into pretzels defending it, but whatever.
It's just that evil.
And more importantly for our nation is we have no need to be funding this.
We have no need to be involved in this at all.
And if you want to put your head in the sand and pretend that this type of shit does not put us at greater risk of terrorism, does not create more hatred for us around the Islamic world, you're just ignoring reality.
This is, you know, this is what motivated people to blow themselves up and to kill as many civilians as they can is growing up watching this type of treatment of innocent women and children.
There's just no need for us to pay the price that we have to pay for supporting this type of shit.
Just horrible.
Yeah.
Anyway, I don't know.
Any other thoughts on that, Rob?
Man, depressing.
Yep.
Yeah, it kind of is.
But that's where we're going to wrap this episode on a depressing note.
All right.
You don't have to be depressed.
You can come to my comedy show 6 p.m. This Sunday.
Killer lineup.
Use code FHIR, $10 tickets.
And then go to porchstore.com because I'm porching all summer.
Hell yeah.
It has been known to be the cure for depression.
Summer porch tour.
Go check it out.
All right.
If you want to come see us also, we're going to be all over the place.
Obviously, Penn Social in DC is the next date.
Then we will be out in Atlantic City.
We're going out to Las Vegas.
Wise guys, I will be headlining the comedy mothership.
We got a fun summer coming up, man.
Gonna be a lot of cool stuff.
So come see us.
And of course, we are just kicking into gear in this presidential election.