Dave Smith and Robbie the Fire Bernstein critique modern consumerism and Donald Trump's threats to bomb the Middle East by January 2025, labeling his "peace through strength" strategy as flawed aggression. They expose corporate media as a CIA propaganda arm, predicting MSNBC's sale and analyzing Andrew Cuomo's hiring despite his malpractice. While dismissing Vivek Ramaswamy's pro-Israel stance, Smith argues that Netanyahu's war push mirrors historical aggressors like John McCain, suggesting current geopolitical narratives serve intelligence operations rather than genuine peace. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Cyber Monday TV Prices00:04:50
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All right, let's get back into the show.
Hello, hello.
What's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
I am Dave Smith.
He is Robbie the Fire Bernstein, and we are live in studio on, I was going to say Cyber Monday.
Cyber Monday's over.
Thank God.
It is.
They keep hitting me with the ads.
I feel like if I'm not buying the things, I'm losing money.
I can never pull it off.
So I went, there's like a couple TVs I got to get.
It's like I want to get a TV for this room over here.
You know, we got the couch and I have like a little setup where we can, you know, before the show kind of have like a little area there.
So I was going to get a big screen TV for there.
And then there's one other, the one upstairs in the kitchen needs to be replaced.
It's an old one.
An old one meaning five years old, which by the way, what the, I don't know what's going on, but like for whatever reason, things just don't last anymore.
You know what I mean?
Like, don't you do, don't you feel like when you were a kid, you had the same TV for like 15 years?
Yeah, everything goes Amazon to landfill.
Yeah.
It's the downside to the cheaper prices.
It is, I mean, it's nice.
It's nice to have the cooler things, and it's a cooler TV than I ever had as a kid by 10,000 times.
But anyway, whatever.
So I'm going to buy it.
And I was just going on Best Buy just to order them.
And so I'm ordering them on Sunday.
And my wife was like, she was like, what are you doing?
I was like, I'm just ordering the TVs while I have a minute.
And she goes, no, don't order the TVs today.
Tomorrow is Cyber Monday.
Like literally, if you come back and just buy these tomorrow, you're going to get like 500 bucks off.
Right.
And I was like, okay, that's a good point.
They were offering like a little discount, but then she was like, tomorrow is Cyber Monday.
They're going to have like a higher price.
It feels like you're buying stocks.
Just give me a price I can move on.
Well, here's what ended up happening.
Yesterday was Monday.
Completely forgot to order the TVs.
And now it's Tuesday.
Now it's screwed.
It's Tuesday.
That's nothing Tuesday.
I'm just going to wait till next year.
You got to go another year without TVs.
Yeah, I mean, I'm waiting till Labor Day or Memorial Day.
Got to wait for someone to have died.
Can't you just factor it in and just charge me the same price always?
Just factor in your President's Day sale, your Cyber Monday sale, your everything.
Instead of giving 30% off on that day, just give like 2% off for the whole year.
Just do the run the numbers, whatever it comes out to be.
Just do that.
Be much better for me.
Anyway, it does seem that cyber now, and I do not really have my finger on the pulse of this stuff at all, but it does seem that they put like the Walmart stampedes out of business by going to Cyber Monday, which for me as somebody who never went out shopping on Black Friday, that was the best part of it was that you would see videos of some mom getting trampled because they wanted a flat screen at a cheap price.
And then you would, you know, feel better about yourself because whatever problems you got, at least you're not that bad.
There's no more footage of shopping cart jousting over a single markdown item.
It's not like what it used to be.
It's a, it is.
The footage of people who, instead of spending time with their family, would spend the whole day online and then fight over the one discounted television.
Can we just, why don't we just bring that back as a reality show?
That was fun.
That's excellent.
We got to watch that footage.
I remember for a little bit, this is like when me and Lauren first got married, or maybe when we first were engaged, I think it was before we had kids.
But we used to watch occasionally this show called Divorce Court, which is like, it's like one of the TV judge shows, you know, like people's court type deal, but it's a divorce court, but it's not like a real, it just turns into like a therapy session.
I don't even exactly understand it.
But I remember telling Lauren, like, being like, I think this is good for our marriage to watch this and just go like, hey, whatever issues we got, we don't have what these two have.
And then there would just be like a sassy black judge who would just give them, you know, like give these maniacs the most, like the most obvious like things, you know, ever.
Threatening to Bomb the Middle East00:09:51
Of course, he ain't.
You ain't been blowing him.
And now you're not going to give him what he needs.
And you're going to think he ain't going to find it on the side?
You know, it's like a lot of that.
Just always coming at you.
And you're like, she told them.
She told them.
But it'd be like the most like, she's going to, you come on to the bench.
I'll sort it out right now.
Look how calm he is.
It's just all like ghetto people who don't even know how to pretend for television.
Like they don't even know they're not supposed to say the thing that they say.
It was great.
Great garbage TV watching.
Okay.
Anyway, here, let me just get the stream pulled up here so we could maybe take some questions if the mood should strike us.
I did, there's a few things that I wanted to talk about today that we didn't get to on the last episode.
And this always happens with the way I work in everything in life is I'm always very unscripted.
And I just kind of go.
Shoot from the hip.
Well, I do.
I like that.
I don't like to be like I like to be prepared in a sense.
Like I know what I'm talking about, but I don't prepare for a show like the way a lot of people do, where it'll be like, okay, here's the A block, the B block, the C block.
You know, like I have an idea of like, I want to talk about these things.
And then we get into the conversation and it goes how it goes.
But so what happens a lot of times, I'm like that with my stand-up as well.
But what happens a lot of times is in my mind, I'm kind of like, well, maybe we'll talk about the Hunter Biden thing for like 20 minutes and then we'll get into these other things.
But then we just did it for an hour.
I don't know.
It just felt like there were more things to say.
Looks and sounds good, Natty.
I appreciate that comment.
I have somehow.
I was going to say, it's becoming the running inside joke here is that everything that goes wrong is Natalie's fault.
And everything that goes right is to Natalie's credit.
So there you go.
Oh, someone asked, am I doing a podcast with Trump or Don Jr.?
Joe Rogan hinted about it.
Dude, fucking...
We'll see.
That would be cool.
I don't have any knowledge of this that I'm not sharing with you.
But at the same time, I think if Joe Rogan gives me the call and goes, hey, come with me to Mar-a-Lago, the answer is probably going to be yes.
So I'd be down to do it.
It'd be, it'll be a more.
If I ever do get on a podcast with Don Jr. or with Donald Trump, it's going to be probably.
I think they missed their window of the sweet spot to do it where I would have been the most positive, like before he appointed all these neocons.
Anyway, that's actually not a bad segue into what I wanted to talk about because this is something that has been, I don't know, it's something that's been shared a lot on social media.
And of course, all of the Hawks are thrilled with this.
But I don't know if you, if you saw Rob yesterday, Donald Trump posted on Truth Social, I think, or maybe it was on Twitter.
I'm not sure.
Either way, he posted, and here, let me read the president-elect's words.
Everybody is talking about the hostages who are being held so violently, inhumanely, and against the will of the entire world in the Middle East.
But it's all talk and no action.
Please let this truth, all capitals, serve to represent that if the hostages are not released prior to January 20th, 2025, the date that I proudly assume office as president of the United States, there will be, all caps, all hell to pay in the Middle East.
And for those in charge who perpetrated these atrocities against humanity, those responsible will be hit harder than anybody has been hit in the long and storied history of the United States of America.
Again, all caps, release the hostages now.
So there's Donald Trump.
He is threatening to bomb the Middle East.
I'm shocked no president has thought of that till now.
It was a very unique idea that Donald Trump came up with.
He is threatening, and imagine, of all places, Gaza.
He's threatening to bomb Gaza.
I assume perhaps he's threatening Iran or Hezbollah.
He wasn't exactly clear.
But this is, I mean, look, there's a few, a few, you know, kind of things to break down about this.
I mean, first of all, I don't think, honestly, you know, what I think this is, is that there's been this ceasefire agreement, which of course Israel is violated, but there's been a ceasefire agreement put into place for a few days now with Lebanon and Israel.
And there's been some talk of negotiation by the Israelis.
Hamas has been trying to negotiate basically the entire time.
And I think the thinking here is that if Biden's able to pull something off here, you know what I mean?
Trump wants to be able to take credit for it.
And so if anything happens before he gets into office, he can now kind of say it was his serious threat that resulted in these hostages coming back.
That would be my guess of what the politics of this are.
I don't know.
What are your thoughts?
I hadn't even considered it, but I guess it's a smart play of making empty threats while you're not in power so that if anything good comes about, you could say that was because of me.
And if nothing happens, you could say, well, that's because I wasn't in power yet.
What I'm seeing from the Donald Trump administration is people that seem to be good on domestic policy, maybe even good on Ukraine, and absolutely horrific on Israel.
And it seems almost like a funny threat of, oh, you guys really have it.
Like, what are you going to re-blow up our buildings?
I got to live deeper in a tunnel.
Like, what exactly are you threatening the actual Hamas terrorists with that haven't happened yet?
It's so stupid on every level.
Like the idea of, first of all, threatening the Middle East with bombs as if that's even necessary.
Like as if it's even a question in anyone's mind about whether the United States of America is willing to bomb the Middle East.
I also just hate the kind of, you know, the bullshit idea that, you know, this, it's almost like, well, Donald Trump is so tough.
And that's why they'll respect this one because they know he means it.
As if what?
What?
Obama and Biden and George W. Bush were what on the Middle East exactly?
What?
Unwilling to use force or something like that.
It's all so ridiculous.
It's also, you know, obviously the Hamas are the ones who have the hostages.
And if Hamas were going to be brought to the negotiation table by threats of violence, then this problem would have been solved a long time ago.
Obviously, that's not what's going on here.
And again, it's just, you know, look, like you said, I mean, there's not, I don't know how else to frame it.
Donald Trump himself and his entire war cabinet are just terrible on this issue.
They're all just terrible.
There's nothing surprising here.
Obviously, even people like me who ended up supporting Donald Trump, we knew this going in, either Harris or Trump.
They were both going to be terrible on Israel.
But it's just so, I mean, like, first of all, I don't even think, I think Benjamin Netanyahu stopped pretending this was about the hostages months ago.
I don't even think any of them are pretending that that's what this war was over because, of course, as we've said so many times, if the number one priority was getting hostages, like, you know, just think of any situation, which is pretty fairly worked out to a science, of how you get hostages.
Like, if somebody goes and takes a bank or a school or whatever, and they've got a bunch of hostages, what is standard procedure, not just in the United States of America, but across the civilized world, is you send in a negotiator.
They have people who are there to negotiate.
And you don't sit there and say, no, no, no, he's a bad man.
He killed two of the women and children already.
So we refuse to talk to him about releasing the rest of the women and children.
No, they sit there.
They say, what are your demands?
Can we reasonably try to give this to this guy?
Can we do anything we can to get the women and children out?
Because if that's your priority, then that's the fucking priority.
And what you don't do is start blowing up the building that's full with hostages.
Like that's not, that's not what you do if your number one priority is to get the hostages out.
And of course, you know, now look, I'm not saying you can trust Hamas.
They're a nasty group.
But they did agree to a deal that would have seen the return of all of their hostages for a whole bunch of Israeli, the hostages that Israel's keeping.
And it was Netanyahu who pulled out of the deal.
So like, you know, anyway, all of this is just so, it's all just stupid, you know?
And it's like, it's one of the real flaws in Donald Trump in general is just that once, once he's convinced he knows something, that's it.
Criticizing Israel and Prisoners00:10:24
And he knows.
And of course, you know, his base, you know, I was listening to Breaking Points earlier today, which I listened to that show quite a bit.
I really am a fan of both Sager and Crystal.
And Crystal was saying, she goes, she was like, well, look, his base loves this stuff.
And she was like, yeah, there's like a few of you.
And she goes, she goes, you and Dave Smith aren't happy about it, but everyone else is.
And I was, it kind of hit.
Yeah, that one stung a little bit.
But Crystal makes a good point.
You know, like, this does play very well with his base.
And the truth is that like the only way to get Donald Trump's base good on this issue would be for Donald Trump to be really good on it.
And then he could actually move them because there is such a, you know, cult of personality with him.
And then you'd have to tell the evangelical Christians that everyone's been lying to them about their interpretation of the Bible and none of that shit's real.
That would be a tougher one.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
Does the Republican base overwhelmingly support what's been going on or do they just support the kind of Donald Trump bravado of making the like when because I guess I don't I see more hesitation of America first.
We shouldn't be supporting like wait if anything even on the right you kind of hear more of the chatter of what the hell is going on with Israel that they run our politics and our government.
There certainly are there certainly are a problem I'm in though.
I don't you know I think that the it probably breaks down by age a lot.
I think the boomer Cons are still right where Sean Hannity is, right where Donald Trump is.
But my guess yeah, I think, if you, if you were to talk to younger like right-wingers, I do think yeah, there's probably a better chance that they're listening to Tucker Carlson or Candace Owens or some of these people have been very good on the on this topic and yeah, I don't know.
You know it's an interesting question, but Miriam Adelson, the Palestinian, gave Donald, I just like, I don't know.
She was born in Israel before the creation of Israel, so I just like calling her a Palestinian.
All right, I think I'm technically right.
Right, if she was.
What year was Miriam Adelson born in?
Can you uh pull that up?
I'm pretty sure it's before 1948 45, 45.
Palestinian born in uh Mandate, Palestine.
Uh, native Palestinian.
Has she been displaced by uh, the Israeli government?
Well, I mean, she is here now.
So yeah, in true fashion.
But anyway, you know, Mary Maidelson gave Trump a hundred million dollars and uh he's, you know he's stacked his cabinet with these goddamn awful uh picks.
Um, you know it, there have been.
Obviously, there's like there were some great Picks.
You know, obviously, we've talked about Tulsi, great.
Bobby Kennedy, great.
Jay Bhattachario, phenomenal.
I like Kash Patel as well.
But not good.
By the way, that's what they all have in common.
Yeah.
They all have it in common.
Bobby, Tulsi, all of them, terrible on Israel.
There's not a single, there is not one dissenting voice in there.
It's so interesting watching Kash Patel sound like such a voice or reason of, hey, we've got a problem with a deep state, really having a handle on what happened with Operation with the Crossfire Hurricane, talking about, hey, we got to go after these individuals.
Why are they all working in the same law firm?
And really so on point with it could be coming from your mouth of the way he's referring to the government that works against the will of the people as the deep state and who's responsible and how do we bring, shed light on it so that we can actually uproot it and then go, we have to be more supportive of what Israel's doing.
It's, it's wild to say.
It's wild.
This is one of the things that is, you know, and obviously there's a lot of baggage that comes along with being a critic of Israel.
And a big part of it is that, look, like so many of the people who are really critical of Israel fall into one of two categories, which is either like left-wing, woke people or Jew haters, you know, like, and those are really, I mean, they're two categories that are not insignificant.
And like, if you, if I don't know exactly what the like percentage split would be, but if you took all of the critics of Israel, a huge portion of them fall into one of those two groups.
It's unfortunate.
Again, that doesn't mean it's wrong to be a critic of Israel.
Obviously, I think that's the correct position, but it is like a little bit of an uphill battle when so many of the critics of Israel just make the rest of us look awful because we get lumped in with them.
So that sucks and that makes it difficult.
But when you're in that, when you're a critic of Israel who doesn't fall into one of those two groups, you know, which are the best critics of Israel, it's just impossible not to see things like what you just said, where like people will, it's this very strange dynamic where it is so the third rail of politics.
You know, they say it's like Medicare.
Medicare ain't the third rail.
You could talk about Medicare all day long and not have any problems.
Talking about Israel, it's you're touching the third rail.
And but it's like so many people just instantly violate all of their professed principles when it comes to this one topic.
I remember there was a, and I'm not trying to be too harsh on him because, you know, I'm happy he got Health and Human Services, but I remember there was one, there was a bill that came out of Congress that funded, there was a round of funding for Ukraine in it and a round of funding for Israel in it.
And Bobby Kennedy tweets about the bill and goes, we don't have any money to fund Ukraine.
We're $35 trillion in debt.
This is a foreign war.
They've got to figure it out on their own, blah, blah, blah.
And you're like, like every argument, every argument also applied to Israel, but he would never dare say that about them.
And you see it all over the place where like these, it's just, it's so bizarre, dude.
Like these, these America First Republicans have to support Netanyahu.
What does America First mean?
What does America First mean?
It means you support the guy who wants to lie America into every single war in the Middle East.
All right.
And it also just requires like Just like this kind of absurd lack of interest in history and reality and logical consistency.
Like, just none of it makes any sense.
I mean, what's it?
I was watching the other day.
Who was it?
I can't remember.
It was someone on, it might have been either Norman Finkelstein or that Basar Yusuf guy.
But one of them was arguing with Piers Morgan.
And Piers Morgan was like, you know, he's like, well, doesn't Hamas, Hamas has to be removed from power after October 7th.
And he was like, okay.
Okay, fine.
But if that's true, then the Israeli government has to be removed from power too, right?
Like by your own standard, right?
Then for the same reason, Israel, you know, Netanyahu has to be removed from government.
And it's just like, as simple as that.
Okay, what's the response to that?
You know what the response is?
Let's move on to the next topic.
Because it's like, if you just hold this same standard to this side, hold this side to it too, you have to come to the conclusion that it's ob, you know, and it's like people just turn their brains off about this stuff.
I, you know, even in the Donald Trump tweet, it's like, you know, give back the hostages, right?
Give back the hostages.
Well, okay, there's two million hostages in Gaza.
You know what I mean?
Like, what?
They're in the biggest prison in the world.
So they're, what do you mean, give back the hostages?
How about tear down the prison walls?
Like, what are you talking about, dude?
And I don't mean literally tear down the wall.
Israel can keep the fucking wall up.
Just stop controlling what goes in and out of Gaza.
Let them trade with the world.
And stop slaughtering them.
Anyway, also, they, you know, as we've talked about before, Israel has more hostages, you know, and they can call them prisoners, but it's much like, much like terrorism versus counterterrorism.
You know, hostages versus prisoners.
The definition or what distinguishes them is it's counterterrorism when we do it and it's terrorism when you do it.
That's always been the, you know, like, what is, what is the difference between CIA counterterrorism and Islamic, you know, radical Islamic terrorism?
Peace Through Strength Debate00:13:50
Well, it's that they did it.
And when the CIA does it, it's called counterterrorism.
That's the only difference.
And same with Israel and Palestine.
You could call them prisoners, okay?
You know, by the way, you know what Hamas calls their hostages?
Prisoners.
That's what they call them.
I literally just heard one of the Hamas leaders gave a response to Trump's thing.
And that's what he said.
We will return the prisoners.
We had agreed to return the prisoners.
Yeah, they can call them prisoners too.
Doesn't make it any more justified.
And like those, you know, you could call them prisoners in Israel, but I mean, how about the ones who haven't had trials?
It seems like a distinction without a difference, if you ask me.
Anyway, look, I mean, I think it's pretty clear at this point.
And I'm not trying to like, you know, I'm not trying to get out ahead of this.
I know there's, there's Trump supporters who will always say, just wait till he gets in there.
Wait till he gets in there.
It's all going to be great.
And I understand he hasn't gotten back in yet.
And so it's a little preemptive to criticize him.
Maybe not, not really.
But he hasn't been in there yet.
So we'll see.
And I'll certainly give him credit when he does things that are good.
But I mean, with his picks and the tone that he's setting already, it's just going to, it's not going to be a good foreign policy, man.
It's going to be a bad, the administration's going to have a lot of problems.
And again, as always, you know, it's like, I think a lot of people, at least it seems to me, that a lot of people kind of, After I came out and supported Trump, it was like, I think a lot of people kind of projected onto me some expectation that this would change everything now or my entire worldview on Donald Trump would be different than it was.
And it's just not true.
I thought in this election, it was certainly preferable that Trump won to Kamala Harris.
I think we've certainly been vindicated in that view.
Like there's real, there's no real argument about it.
Like there's some great appointments and there's some hope of influencing Donald Trump to some degree.
And there's hopefully, I think Ross Ulbrook is going to get pardoned.
I mean, we'll see, not counting on it till it happens.
But anyway, there's just, there's some benefits that came.
But look, Donald Trump, the problem with Donald Trump has always been the problem with Donald Trump.
And it's just that he's a narcissist and he thinks he knows everything.
But he doesn't.
In fact, he really doesn't have a deep understanding of anything.
You know, the problem with Donald Trump has always been, it's never what the left wing projects onto him.
It's never what the right wing projects onto him.
It's what's so obviously there right in front of you.
It's just a guy who really, you know, the thing is like one of the issues with Donald Trump, and I think this is a very, very strange dynamic because he's such a strange person.
But so he's hilarious.
He's very, very funny.
I mean, incredibly.
Did you hear about this thing with Trudeau?
Oh, that he said, I'm going to make Canada, if you guys can't come up with $100, if $100 billion is that important to you guys, that you need our $100 billion, then we'll make Canada the 51st state.
And he said you could be governor of the state.
Yeah, we have that video.
Can we throw to that, Natalie?
And tonight we're getting some new details about that Trump-Trudeau dinner from two people who were at the table.
We are told that when Trudeau told President-elect Trump that new tariffs would kill the Canadian economy, Trump joked to him that if Canada can't survive without ripping off the U.S. to the tune of $100 billion a year, then maybe Canada should become the 51st state and Trudeau could become its governor.
How funny is that?
And by the way, I'm not for any tariffs.
I'm totally against the policy.
And I certainly don't want Canada as a 51st state.
Yeah, I don't want any of it.
It's just so hilarious that Donald Trump is.
So there's this thing with Trump.
And we could get into a little bit of that anyway.
I mean, it's all, you know, trade deficits are to, it's just such economic illiteracy to equate trade deficits with getting ripped off.
Like, it's just not, that's not what a trade deficit is.
It's like, like, I have a trade deficit with Whole Foods this year.
Right.
But like, that doesn't mean Whole Foods is ripping me off.
I'm purchasing things from them.
Like, there was just, it's ridiculous.
It's just not, whatever.
Anyway, um, but so Donald Trump is so entertaining.
I think you got a point on that.
I'm not going back to Whole Foods till they start purchasing some of my comedy.
That's right.
I'm going to, that's right.
Yeah, it has to be an even trade.
Nobody can ever buy something from the other one.
Whatever this I'm going to boycott all supermarkets until they come to the table and start supporting what I do a little bit more.
I'll go hungry.
Give it three days.
Yeah, really.
Well, okay, so, but so Trump is, sometimes I think he's so hilarious that it's almost like people miss the part where he's not trying to be funny.
And like he's actually like there's, you know, when he was on Rogan's podcast, for example, like the word, you know, the worst part of it was when he would do these things where he'd wander off on a tangent just to brag.
You know, just to brag about.
Mike's so tall, but I was even bigger in that bed.
Yeah, it's like my toes against the bedding.
And in a way, and it's also funny that you're kind of laughing at it and you forget for a little bit that like he's not trying to be funny.
He literally is just that much of a narcissist.
Now, listen, Donald Trump, he was uniquely positioned in a way that, you know, it was like the stars aligning in a perfect way.
And Donald Trump was just so famous and so rich and so brash and so vicious, you know, and so like just had the combination of things that he was, he is the only person in the United States of America who actually had a shot of winning, who could maybe get some good things done, you know?
But the problem, the thing that holds him back on all of it is that he's always just motivated by his own, his own ability to brag about how great he was.
And that's a severely limiting character flaw to have.
And it's, listen, I'm not surprised that Donald Trump is talking like this.
And really, I'm not surprised with, you know, look, people say, like, because, and I happen to know a little bit about this from some sources, but Donald Trump was going to pick Marco Rubio as his VP.
And he got talked out of it and ended up picking JD Vance.
And people are like surprised that he gave him the State Department.
You're like, oh, dude, like, listen, he still hadn't learned enough as of six months ago to know that you shouldn't be considering Marco Rubio as your VP.
How have you not learned that?
You know, and the truth is that Donald Trump, as somebody who was away for four years and is now back, you know, there's all this talk about from his supporters about how what he's learned.
He knows this time.
This time's going to be the real deal.
I have not seen any evidence to suggest that, that he's actually figured out who's who.
And if he had, Rubio wouldn't be at the State Department.
Waltz wouldn't be the national security advisor.
And he wouldn't be talking like this about Israel if he had learned anything about what's really going on here.
And, you know, so it is what it is.
It's, we'll, you know, continue to like give him credit when he does good things and criticize him when he does bad things.
But it's hard to not at least look at it and go like, oh man, like what an opportunity there would have been here if he had actually like, if he had actually learned what he needed to learn and come back.
Because after this victory, it is, it was this unique moment.
And maybe there'll be more in the future.
I don't know.
But I've never seen one in the past, ever anything like this, where Donald Trump, the person who is so unanimously opposed by the entire machine, ends up winning.
And this machine who's been stirring everyone into a frenzy about him for eight years now doesn't even have the ability to do that.
You know, like even it feels like it, it feels to me like the left half of America is essentially yawning at Donald Trump outrage at this point.
You know, like Joe Scarborough is like, he's a Nazi.
There's a Nazi coming back to town.
And left wingers are just like, dude, I'm tired.
It's been eight years of me believing I'm living under Nazi rule.
And say whatever you will, but I haven't been.
I've just been living in the United States of America with all of its problems, but it's not living in Nazi Germany.
There's just not, so he was in this unique position where he didn't have to do this.
He could have picked good people on the foreign policy team.
And we could have just been living in a different country now where it's like, oh shit, we actually have the prospects of like ending these wars.
And instead, you just, you know, this, you know, instead, we just have what we have now and are going to continue.
You know what I say?
No tariffs except on France and Canada because let's bitch out Macron and Trudeau.
Let's just bitch them out.
Just make them look bad.
Yeah.
Push the great American bitch out.
I could be persuaded to possibly support that.
That is the best argument I've heard for tariffs ever.
It's like, let's just make these leftists pissed off.
Yeah.
But, you know, it's like all this stuff.
We're done with the Middle East, but we're back to fuck France.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's right.
Well, it's also, I see people like defending this stuff, like this post from Trump on Twitter.
And it's all just like, the defenses are all so ridiculous.
It's always the like peace through strength, dumb shit, as if we haven't like been trying this for 50 years.
And the idea, again, like the idea that America even needs to talk tough about the Middle East so that they better know we're willing to bomb them.
Let me say, on behalf of the Middle East, and I'm no spokesman for the Middle East, but on behalf of them, I think message received.
They're aware.
They know that America will go to war with them.
You don't even need to play that up.
It's just such a funny thing.
Like this concept of like peace through strength is like, this is America.
We're fucking America.
We are the world empire, the most powerful government that's ever existed with no second place.
You know, like, who's the second most powerful government that's ever existed?
Soviet Union?
Genghis Kong?
Yeah.
Okay.
You know what we do to Genghis Kong?
You know what DC does if Genghis Kong comes over and he's like, I've come up with a cannonball system of fire.
And they're like, okay, we have H-bombs.
So this is over pretty quick.
You know, it's like, and the idea that we need, it's like if you were the, like, you're fucking John Jones.
And like, you go to the bar and everyone recognizes you.
Like, everybody knows who John Jones is.
And John Jones, he doesn't need to talk tough.
He doesn't need to threaten anybody.
Everybody already knows that he could beat the shit out of anybody in this bar.
If he wants to avoid fights, he doesn't have to start fights in order to avoid fights.
And that's America.
That's where America is.
This peace through strength.
Like, what are you talking about?
What?
You think there's anybody who hasn't gotten the memo that we have the most powerful military in the history of the world and we're willing to use it?
Is there anybody who hasn't?
North Korea is well aware.
The most closed off society in the world is well aware of the United States military strength.
And so it's just funny to just be this like, it's like I said, peace through strength, when applied, actually comes down to, here's my strategy to avoid bar fights.
I'm going to start a fight with everyone.
And then every night you go out and keep getting into a bar fight.
And you're like, I don't know.
I don't know why.
I'm always in fights.
Maybe it's because this strategy doesn't actually work.
You know, I saw someone, someone posted on Twitter the other day.
They called me a Buchananite.
And they were like, you know, the problem is that Dave is just, Dave just believes in Pat Buchanan's foreign policy.
But really what delivers peace is strength.
We need peace through strength or something like that.
And it's just like, first of all, I'm a Ron Paul guy.
Love Pat Buchanan, but let's get real.
I'm a Ron Paulian, not a Buchananite.
But it's like, dude, you realize that, you know, basically Pat Buchanan after the Cold War became anti-war.
He was a Cold Warrior who then became anti-war.
Ron Paul was good the whole time.
He was against the Cold War too.
But since the end of the Cold War, let's say, Pat Buchanan's been right about every single war.
And the people who have been wrong about every single war have said peace through strength the whole time.
It's like, how do you even have the nerve to like criticize someone like that?
It's like, I don't know.
It's like if you were going like, I don't know, criticizing someone for not believing in Russia Gate or some shit like that.
It's like, oh, you mean I didn't fall for it?
Chuck Todd's Sharp Turn00:15:57
Okay.
So fuck you.
Yeah, that makes me right.
Pat Buchanan is right.
He was right about all of the wars.
Which one, you tell me, which war was Pat Buchanan wrong about?
Post-Cold War.
It's post-1991.
Before that, he was on the wrong side of a few.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
All right.
If you guys want to get some questions in in the chat, I will try to get to a few.
But while you're doing that, what was the other video that I wanted to throw to?
What was it?
I knew there was one I really wanted.
Actually, hold on.
Let's go.
Let's go with Chuck Todd is the Buck Sexton tweet.
I thought this was kind of interesting.
Little, it's in the realm of the post-mortems being done by the corporate media.
Of course, this is, I'm not exactly sure what this is.
It's a podcast.
You know, I think to some degree, even these guys have figured out that they got to adjust to like the new medium or something like that.
But Chuck Todd, of course, was the longtime director of news at NBC, and he was the host of meeting.
Looks like they captured a Mounting Goat Live on Air.
He had like a muskrat just popped its head up into the camera on the wildlife channel.
He just died into some type of creature that like my ADT camera will be like animal seeing in the driveway.
And it takes you like a second.
You're like, what is that?
Maybe if I zoom in on it.
All right, let's hear from Chuck Paul.
You know, I must have a good point when it starts with this post.
I follow the Hunter Biden trial very closely.
I read every transcript, all the testimony, because that's what you, all that was made public.
And there is, you want to, you want to read, you want to, you want to get angry just as somebody in just all these mixed emotions?
You read the Halle Biden transcript.
And that's Bo's widow.
Yes.
And essentially, he turned her into a crack addict.
And this was all happening in 2017, 2018.
And Joe and Joe Biden were so concerned about their family that they decided to run for president.
Yep.
I just, so when you talk about the word selfish, it's almost like the word doesn't, I mean, their decision to run for president put the entire Democratic Party and the United States of America in the position that it's in now.
All right.
So there is Chuck Todd.
One of the things that is truly remarkable, I mean, just it never, it never gets old to me, even as, you know, as much as I cover this stuff, is the way that media narratives will stop on a dime and then flip, you know, as if like, it's like, like, let's just say, for example,
me and you started supporting Israel, right?
We became big Israel supporters.
There'd have to be a conversation about that.
You know what I mean?
Like, we'd have to be like, hey, look, we have changed our minds.
We think we got this wrong for many years, but it turns out it's actually like this and whatever the answer is, you know?
But we couldn't just do it and never address it and never just almost pretend like we didn't have all of these years of being critical of that.
Like it's just bonkers.
And yet in the media, this happens fairly regularly.
Again, the craziest example I've ever seen in my life of it was the summer of love.
In 2020, if anybody remembers well, when the Black Lives Matter protest kicked off, the media literally yesterday was telling you you're not allowed to leave your home or you're an awful person.
And then the next day, they were supporting mass gatherings with tens of thousands of people.
That was wild.
The Joe Biden one obviously is a very good example.
He's sharp as a tack until that debate happens.
And as soon as the debate's over, we're having a conversation about him getting out of the race.
That's just okay to talk about now.
But this one, again, it's like after the election, you know, Chuck Todd sits here as if he wasn't on TV all this time.
Like, I'm sorry, if someone is wrong, point to me where Chuck Todd ever said that before the election, where he ever brought up this very obvious truth, which, of course, yes, it is, it is hard to overstate how insane it would be to have that dynamic going on with your family and choose to run for president while that's going on.
That's pretty wild, okay?
Especially given hunters-like business dealings and things like that.
But again, this is Joe Biden.
Joe Biden had like a press conference at the hospital where his wife and kid were dying.
Like he is not above milking family, or you know what I mean?
Like putting his own ambitions above just being a decent member of your family.
How about the fact that, think about how fucked up Jill Biden is.
That she isn't, she's just letting her husband be humiliated internationally, just humiliated.
Who would do that?
Who would do that to someone senile?
I mean, you know, you've talked on the show a bit about having gone through it with your grandfather.
I mean, wouldn't it like the last thing you ever want would be for like the world to see your grandfather like at his worst moment?
You'd be kind of like, oh, you know what I mean?
You're supposed to protect him a little bit from that, but that's who they are.
But the thing is, Joe Biden is senile on TV every goddamn day.
We've known about this for many years now.
And Chuck Todd never once said anything about it.
It's just amazing how they could go in.
I mean, we play the clips here on the show all the time.
It's amazing how they could go from the media environment that they just had to Chuck Todd now admitting that, oh, yeah, I've known the Bidens were like horrible people this whole time.
And, you know, Buck Sexton, by the way, his tweet on this was such a good tweet.
Buck Sexton's a smart guy.
But he hold on one second.
Let me pull it up.
He said, Biden committed the only unpardonable sin against the journalists.
He turned them all into a national laughing stock.
Now they are pissed.
Well, that's what I was saying.
You know, he did it in the worst way possible where he had them all hitting the news, getting his back, going, obviously, no one's above the law.
And look at how great this guy is.
And he could have just framed it a little bit differently so that they didn't all run with that for as long as they did.
Yeah, well, also just, I mean, look, the fact that he blew it so bad at that debate that he made it obviously about him being sharp as a tack and they're like pissed off at him for that.
But it's just hilarious because you're like, you're pissed off at a senile guy for being senile.
Like, what do you want him to do?
Give us a funny sketch of all the news anchors sitting down with Biden and go, can we just work out the story in advance?
You're really making us look bad here.
We're trying to get your back and we need a little bit of direction here.
There certainly is a lot of that.
Okay, let's see here.
Okay, I'll go to the chat here.
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How many of these people are going to get fired from MSNBC and then launch podcasts and all go the now I'm a truth-teller route?
It gets a little boring.
Chucky T tells the truth.
I think that there's a very good chance that MSNBC is going to get sold.
And then do you think I bet it's like 50-50.
50 of them go the Don Lemon route and they try and stay exactly in their lane and become irrelevant.
And then the other 50% go, oh, I was held back and now here's all the crazy shit I was thinking.
Honestly, I think it's, I don't see any of them being successful.
In the new media.
In the new media.
I just happen to somewhat know the numbers.
I saw a tweet today that MSNBC gets about 35,000 people in the prime demo.
Now, I haven't validated that number, but I can just tell you in the new media landscape, we command so much more of that.
And the idea of making $25 million a year.
I mean, just the salaries that these guys were seeing, which was clearly that's the propaganda money from Boeing and the pharmaceutical companies.
Unless you're Rogan, you're not seeing that again.
You're not going to be paid like a pro athlete.
You're not going to be walking to some glamorous studio with 40 people running around with your coffee and the piece of paper and putting the things together.
Well, just make the business model makes no sense.
Yeah.
It's just, you know, it just makes no sense whatsoever.
And you can, you know, there's a lot of companies like that, you know, with such, I mean, it's, it's unbelievable to think if you think of like the expenses that CNN has versus Joe Rogan.
And Joe Rogan's so much bigger than them.
And he's got a few people employed.
You know, like it's just the writing's on the wall there.
Okay.
BK writes that, Dave, based on comments you've made, it seems like your position is that the corporate press largely does the bidding of the state, but Michael Malice thinks it's the other way around.
Is that accurate?
And if so, any thoughts on the disagreement here?
You know, I think probably if, you know, I don't know exactly what Malice's position on this is, but my guess is like if we talked about it, there'd probably be large amounts of agreement.
I think that there are certainly examples where the press is weaponized against one political faction or another in order to get something done.
But no, the corporate media is an intelligence op.
That's what the whole thing is.
And you could just look at it.
You see how closely the, I mean, just not even like a secret conspiracy or anything like that.
You just see how closely the relationship between the intelligence community and the corporate media is.
You know, if you're on MSNBC or CNN or Fox News or any of them, it's like, you know, something's going on, blah, blah, blah, in foreign policy.
Here to help break it down is our expert analyst, James Clapper or John Brennan, or, you know, literally just have here is the former director of national intelligence.
Here is the former head of the CIA to come give you the talking points.
And not to mention how many of them are, you know, secretly work for the CIA or something like that.
So, no, I think it's a, I think the most accurate and useful way to think of it is that they are essentially the propaganda arm of the CIA.
That's what the corporate media is and has and has been for many, many decades.
Okay.
I follow two from the chat if you want.
Oh, great.
Dave, if Cuomo is a failed commentator and conducted journalistic malpractice, how do you justify Patrick Bett David hiring him?
That's fairly easy.
I mean, the debate with me doesn't happen unless Patrick Bett David hires him.
So come on, wasn't that fucking worth it?
I mean, I don't know, right?
Like, I mean, that is.
Look, I'll say this.
I'm not saying anything.
Why do I have to have a job justifying who Patrick Bick David hires?
Yeah.
Well, that's, I hate the question.
Go fuck yourself.
Well, look, I'm we don't have to talk to our paid subscribers that way.
I hate the accusatory fan questions of how do you just, I don't work for Patrick Bick David.
Neither do you.
Patrick Bitt David has a successful online operation.
He actually does a lot of things really, really well as to why he wanted to or didn't want to.
Why is that?
Am I supposed to write a research paper for you right now on what Patrick Bick David does and doesn't do or why that made sense?
Well, I think what he's trying to ask, and now I'm getting a little steam.
I think what he's trying to ask is why do you still endorse Patrick Bick David or still rely on him if he was willing to hire this other person?
Because he does incredible work on the internet.
And so do I think that that one hiring unwinds all the, and by the way, I don't watch all of his work.
I'm not a huge fan, but like we correlate with him enough and he props at what we do.
So I once again just want to reiterate, fuck you.
And I hate accusatory questions with very specific framing.
Well, look, it is the truth that, I mean, it is true.
And I don't say fuck you.
And thank you.
I'll say it again.
Fuck you.
Thank you for subscribing.
Please don't cancel based on Rob.
I'll get rid of Rob.
Don't worry.
His days here are numbered anyway.
I'm not in the business of justifying anyone who Pat hires because that's he has a right to hire whoever he wants to.
But if I was to say, I mean, I do think there's something that like I think that There is, it's, it's goddamn, it's such a tragedy.
And it's like, I don't even, I'm like struggling to find the words to just talk about what a guy, like straight out of like a Greek tragedy that nobody so far has been held accountable for what the, you know, the insane tyrannical COVID response.
And it's, it's such an outrage that this wasn't a major topic during the 2024.
I mean, just imagine like in the year 2020, in the year 2021, in the year 2022, they would be like, there's a presidential election coming up in a couple of years.
And you'd be like, obviously the first thing that should be discussed would be, let's have a review of all this.
You know, like, let's actually like, there's never a time that we can look back and go like, hey, we have all the data now.
We have all the data.
Vivek Ramaswamy Record Review00:04:33
There is no difference between the lockdown states and the not locked down states.
Like that, no one gets fired over that?
Forget like even being prosecuted.
No one's just like out of a job.
It's, it's a goddamn tragedy, right?
And then shortly after that, it's like the fact that we live in this new media landscape and it isn't just like, hey, Fauci's got to come sit for like hostile interviews.
Fauci's got to go debate somebody.
Fetch all these guys, Hotez, they got to go debate somebody.
They have to, that's it, dude.
Like you either have to do that or you're professionally ruined forever, you know?
And none of that, the only thing that ever happened was me and Cuomo debating.
And it's like, this is, I'm just saying, it's like, this was the only time, correct me if I'm wrong.
I don't think there's been another one.
And me and you pay attention to this stuff pretty closely.
There's the only time that someone who you could say was like a major player in the COVID regime, like in terms of the media apparatus portion of it, at least, he was debatably the biggest, you know, like he, the number one show at CNN.
Okay.
That guy had to sit and have a public three-hour debate with, you know, I would describe myself as a competent critic of the COVID regime.
I don't, I think that's valuable, you know?
And I, and I think part of the reason why I got, it got such a huge response that it was this kind of cathartic moment for a lot of us, myself included.
And that only happens because Patrick Bett David was working with the guy.
So again, I'm just saying, even if I go a step further and even go like, well, do I think it was a good hire or not?
For that moment, and obviously I'm, you know, have my own perverse incentives here.
It was good for me.
But that's.
How do you justify Piers Morgan having pro-Israel people on the show?
Because it makes for good television and he's making a television show.
And guess what?
When I go, when you go on there, you get to reach a wide audience and you get to slam these people down.
Yeah.
So I don't even know what Cuomo's role is on that show, how often he's on.
Like I've once again speaking to this fan of how do I justify why is it your job to justify Patrick Bett David does or doesn't hire?
It is not.
All right, let's read the other question and then we're going to have to wrap up.
All right.
Dave, does Vivek secretly get that Israel is terrible?
Between you and your audience, let us know.
Don't read this part out loud.
I don't know if this is a good question, but okay, there you go.
That was enough for me.
I thought it was a funny fan with the don't read this part out loud.
I thought it was a funny fan.
And so I was just going with, I was like, I'm just going to do it.
Listen, I obviously can't tell you anything in regards to secrecy.
So like if Vivek said to me, hey, listen, off the record, I secretly feel this way, then I wouldn't tell you because I, I don't know, that's just how I am as a person.
I'll say this.
I had dinner with Vivek and his wife recently, and I was trashing Israel quite a bit at that dinner.
I'll just say that.
But he wasn't.
But I certainly was.
So he certainly knows where I feel, how I feel about it.
And I do think that, look, there's, it's, when you get, when you get someone one-on-one and somebody who is not, who's, who's like friends with you, so not someone who's like fucking hostile toward you, but like a friend, if you're at all in the non-interventionist America first camp, then you immediately have to at least concede that I'm like, you know, Netanyahu's been pushing for us to be in all these wars, right?
So we don't really like that guy that much.
This is just, it's that obvious.
If Benjamin Netanyahu was in the Senate, like if he was an American, who was an American politician with his track record, every Trump supporter would be like, yeah, fuck that guy.
We'd look at him the way you look at John McCain because that's what he is.
You'd look at him like Dick Cheney because that's what he is.