Dave Smith and Robbie the Fire Bernstein analyze Trump's first day, highlighting the release of January 6th defendants and anticipated pardons for Biden's allies and Ross Ulbricht. They critique executive orders designating cartels as terrorists and potential birthright citizenship changes, contrasting corporate media hypocrisy with libertarian strategies that secured Ulbricht's freedom. Ultimately, the hosts argue these actions signal a decisive shift away from perceived authoritarianism, suggesting third-party influence can yield concrete victories while restoring hope through aggressive early-term governance. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Brutal Cold Weather Reality00:03:31
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Let's start today's show.
What's up?
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.
He did make it back in one piece from Bozeman.
It's been forever.
Oh, my God.
I got rerouted to Washington.
I had to sit there all day.
It was a full day's journey.
So you stayed a day longer than me.
I thought I was going to be screwed because there was a big snowstorm here on the East Coast when I was flying back.
I ended up making it with no problems.
Other than, I will say, it was got to be up there with the worst weather that I ever landed.
And when I drove to the airport, I had to fill up the car because I had a rental.
It was minus 15.
I woke up at 3.45 in the morning, filled up a car at minus 15 for the flight to be delayed anyways.
Those bastards.
But I could spend a whole episode yelling about airlines.
Dude, it was like negative six or seven degrees here at my house this morning.
And it is, I was talking, it's funny too, because we were just in Bozeman and now we come back to colder weather.
I had a few people tell me while we were out there that this was like the coldest weekend in Montana, like in eight months or something like that.
And then come back and it's colder.
But man, there is something.
So it is funny where it's like, you know, when it's like 32 degrees out or something like that, it's right around the freezing point.
And you're like, okay, that's a cold day.
That's a day when you're going to need like a jacket and you're going to need like, and then you get to like 20 degrees or in the teens and it's like, oh, you really feel it when it's there.
But there is something about, like, I was just bringing my trash out this morning.
There's something about when it's like negative seven degrees where it's just, it's like the cold is yelling at you.
Like it just feels like like you just, you walk outside and it's like the cold is mad at you.
You're like, all right, cold.
Jesus Christ.
It was that type of day here today.
I had this thought because I got into New York.
I left Montana.
It was negative 15 in the morning.
And then I got outside in New York and it was 22.
And 22 is cold, but I'm like, this is, this, this feels nice.
And then I realized, I know that this is retarded, but the difference between when it's 60 degrees outside and 30 degrees, and that's a huge difference.
60 is a beautiful day and 30 is like, oh, it's winter.
That's what I experienced from 22 to negative 15.
And that's wild to think about that you could be that variance of just cold.
Yeah, like that you could be in a day where it is literally freezing cold outside and then go, now let's now let's make that summer.
Let's, let's, let's turn that into summer relative to whatever.
Anyway, yeah.
I get used to it quick, though.
I could, I could do more time in Montana.
Yeah, I'll tell you, I'm kind of the same way.
I could get used to the cold.
I get used.
Massive Political Power Flip00:13:08
That's our Jew superpower.
We can blend in anywhere.
We can shape shift and fit our environment.
You leave us out there.
We'll just be a couple of ranchers within a few months.
Okay.
By the way, a couple just points of business before we get started.
Me and you, Rob, we're going to be on the road.
We got fun ones coming up.
Party towns.
Yes, I'm really looking forward to this.
Okay, January 30th.
That's the next one.
One night only, Louisville, Kentucky.
And then the following two days will be out in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
And then a week later, and this is just for you, Rob, because of all this negative degree talk, Key West, Key West, Florida, where I am told by reliable sources that I can be very confident it will not be negative 14 degrees in Key West.
Or if it is, we got bigger problems if it is.
So anyway, comicdave Smith.com for all of those ticket links.
Come out and see me and Robbie the Fire Bernstein live.
The live shows are a lot of fun.
Bozeman was just great.
Really, really appreciate everybody who came out and filled up that theater for us.
It was a lot of fun.
And then the other one, which I did, I think I announced the details of on the last show, but this is official now.
I will be participating in an Oxford style debate against Josh Hammer, who was a senior editor at Newsweek.
I believe he still is.
I'm not sure.
But for a long time, he was senior editor over at Newsweek.
I will be debating him.
The resolution is about the U.S.-Israel alliance.
Be it resolved, the U.S.-Israel Alliance is a strategic asset for American foreign policy.
So it's going to be a debate about the role that the relationship with Israel plays on U.S. foreign policy.
So a little bit different than previous Israel-Palestine debates that I've done in the past.
But we will be doing that.
It will be at Princeton University on February 11th.
Tickets to that are available now.
So if you would like to come, there is, if you go search on Twitter, I tweeted the link out.
So yeah.
Anyway, looking forward to that.
I know people really enjoy the debates.
So I think people will enjoy this one.
And it's, oh, thank you to, I'm sorry, I should say, the Steamboat Institute is the ones who are putting on the debate.
So thanks to those guys.
Should be a fun time.
All right.
So Donald Trump is president.
Did you think it would happen?
Well, it has.
It is here.
We are in the first full day of Donald Trump being president of the United States once again.
It's been yesterday was quite a show, if nothing else.
I did an episode.
You were out for this one, Rob, or evidently you were somewhere between Montana and Washington, D.C. while we were recording it.
So I will ask what do you, any thoughts on the inauguration and the first night?
We could get into some of these executive orders, but more just like your broad thoughts.
How are you feeling about all this?
Well, now that there's only two genders again, I'm not sure what bathroom I'm supposed to use.
It is a whole different world.
We're back to two genders.
It's probably the biggest impact on my life.
And, you know, I'm still going to have to give some consideration to that.
No, I thought it was fun.
American Hoorah showing up saying we're going to be awesome again, sitting there just signing the executive orders like they were bottles of wine that he was checking out.
Like, oh, this is a nice one.
I love that.
I like the two gender talk.
I like most, I love this was my favorite thing.
They got the January 6th people out of jail on day one.
I think that that was, and just to see the massive flip in power of like what just what happened over the last four years that the Democrats use the entire system to go after those people and try and make it seem like Donald Trump can't run for office again.
And we've got a problem with domestic terrorists and the whole, you know, ESG score racket and just advanced socialism.
And we just rebuke the entire thing all the way down to those people are coming out of jail.
So that was my favorite part.
Oh, yeah.
I think like that can't be overstated enough.
And, you know, it's not just, it's not even just that the thing was like rebuked.
It's, it's, as you said, it's a complete reversal to the point where it's just, I think to so many people, it's just kind of, look, the whole issue with January, the whole deal with January 6th and what they, what the corporate media called for four years, the big lie, that Trump denied that he had lost the election in 2020 and that this, you know, this is what was the impetus for the whole, you know, end of democracy if Donald Trump wins.
And meanwhile, the people who were screeching about democracy every day for the last four years, they tried to have the presidential candidate who won removed from the ballot.
They literally, they quite literally tried to remove the guy who ended up winning.
It's just, I mean, it speaks for itself, but I completely agree with you that, you know, there's, if you think about it, even like any, any of the January 6th people who were still in prison at this point, these people have done years already at this point.
And I'm sorry.
I just don't think, I don't think there's any crime that was committed, like the worst of the January 6thers, I don't see how any of them deserve more punishment than this.
You know, like what, what do you want to do to people here?
I mean, you can, you can commit heinous, violent crimes and be out in four years.
You know what I mean?
Like, it's just like, I'm sorry, breaking a window at the Capitol building or even tussling with police or something like that just shouldn't carry this long of a prison sentence.
It's, it's an outrage.
But there's something really remarkable to the extent that the Democrats will lie and then use power to try and enforce the reality upon you.
And so I'm sure you just spoke about on the episode it first came out this morning, so I haven't had a chance to listen to it yet.
But the pardons that Biden gave on the way out.
And let's start with the pardons that he gave to the January 6th committee.
We'll get to Fauci next, but the pardons he gave to the January 6th committee and to his family, saying that because Donald Trump's going to defy conventions and be the first one to go after him.
And we know that that's not reality.
We know that Joe Biden broke the conventions of going after political opponents to try and keep them out of office.
He was concerned about retribution.
Sorry, sorry.
On my end, you froze up for a second there, but you came right back.
So I'm sorry.
Go ahead.
It was only the most brilliant thing I ever said, Dave, and you missed it.
You were saying that Biden obviously is the one who broke those precedents.
And not just that, but if you look at the January 6th committees, they tried to make theater out of what happened to make it seem like Donald Trump can't run for office again.
And they tried to force that down the American people's throats.
And then because they covered it up by getting rid of the records and what Liz Chaney was already busted for talking directly to a witness.
And now they have to also, once again, by force, make it that they can't be prosecuted.
So I just think, and that's what they did with the January 6th narrative was they were trying to sell it.
So they took everyone who was involved and they rounded them up.
They didn't do that for any of the other riots that were going on through those years.
So it's just so incredible to me, I guess, the extent by which the Democrats are willing to wield force to try and make their narrative true.
It's what they did in censoring the internet.
And it just seems like we've so cleansed that out of the system where even they had to show up.
You had Clinton there.
You had Obama, someone lip red that he made the joke afterwards.
Hey, is there any way that we can stop this?
None of those guys want to be there.
They just know at this point they have to show up.
And it does seem like a great celebration of cleansing really the worst parts that we've seen from our government for the last 20 years.
Well, it's hard.
Like it's kind of hard to truly appreciate how remarkable that yesterday was.
And the two things that are really, you know, like we talk about this a lot on the show, but it's one of the more difficult challenges of doing this, of doing what we do, is that when you're in this period of time, and like particularly the last four years, although it's been true for the last eight years, but really like COVID and everything since then, it's like when so many crazy things are happening,
you end up getting sucked into talking about the news of the day.
And it becomes more of a challenge.
It's something we, I think, focus on on this show.
I think it's one of the things, by the way, that kind of separates us from a lot of the other shows that talk about the news of the day.
But you try when it makes sense to like, you know, zoom out and put things in the proper context and go like, hey, what's the bigger picture here?
And like, even when things are really crazy all the time, one thing could be so crazy that you're like, whoa, this is really quite a line that we've just crossed.
But applying that to yesterday.
So yesterday starts early in the morning, Joe Biden has all these pardons and then Donald Trump, the day ends with Donald Trump, you know, signing all of these executive orders and pardons.
And if you just try to zoom out for a second and think about this, okay?
Number one, Joe, while it's true that since the elections in November, the rhetoric against Donald Trump has kind of dried up.
And while you have some people who are still saying loony things and, you know, like some of this still continues, but for the most part, like he's not being called a Nazi every day.
Everyone's acting as if democracy isn't over.
They're assuming there's going to be more elections in the future.
That bluff has kind of been called on our last episode together, Rob, where we talked about Joe Biden's farewell address.
This was one of the points we made a lot, that there's this weird contradiction between like everything you just said and now sitting here saying the country's in a great place and I did such a great job.
There's this weird friction that kind of can't be ignored.
But for Joe Biden, while he's saying all that kind of nice stuff, for him to issue these pardons, there's, okay, obviously me and you could look at this and say, well, clearly these people all committed crimes and he's just trying to get ahead of, you know, if the Trump administration should want to look into them.
Now, that's still obviously the correct answer.
But even if we were to like steel man Joe Biden's position, the most you could steel man it, what he's saying from his perspective would be that none of these people committed crimes.
However, he can't trust that the new administration is not going to seize complete control of the Justice Department and evidently the court system and go after these people who are not criminal.
Like in other words, it's it's either an admission that they're guilty of crimes or it's an admission that you really do fear that some form of fascism has taken over this country, right?
Like that's the only other answer.
I'm saying if we're going to be as charitable as we could possibly be to that argument, then that's what you're saying.
Okay.
And so for the outgoing president to send that message, which again is the best case scenario for him.
Now we could get into this argument a little bit because it's obviously the prior, not the latter.
But like that would be the best that the establishment, you know, Democrats could argue that the corporate media pundits, that's the best they could argue is that, no, no, no, none of these people are actually guilty of crimes, but Donald Trump is such a madman that he might try to imprison them anyway.
And then you had Donald Trump in his inauguration speech saying that America has been liberated today.
And all I'm saying here, forget what your politics or your views are.
Those are just like unprecedented things in the United States of America.
That is truly a moment in American history.
That doesn't happen.
Like lots of things happen in America.
We got a lot of problems and we got a lot of things.
Our government's done a lot of evil things.
Unlocking Youthful Skin Potential00:02:25
You know what I mean?
But this is new.
This is not something that ever happened in the United States of America.
No presidents ever use the language like you're liberated.
This is what we would talk about when like the communists fell or like if a dictator was deposed in a third world country, that the people have been liberated.
And so you have on both sides, you have, you have Joe Biden implicitly saying that like, no, this guy is a fascist and will go after people, even if they're not criminals.
And then you have Biden essentially saying that you've been liberated from this oligarchy that's been running the country.
Huh?
Trump saying you've been liberated.
Yes.
Excuse me.
My mistake.
Yes.
Trump saying that you've been liberated from this oligarchy.
That is in itself just, you know, whatever the quality is of me trying to have like an alarm that goes off when something is like, oh, zoom out and actually appreciate that this is a pretty big deal.
That gets my spidey senses going.
That's like, wow, this is something different that we've entered into here.
And that in itself is very interesting.
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Overstating Policy Maneuvers00:07:20
Anyway, I don't know if you have any thoughts on that, Rob, but or we could get into the like, obviously the pardons were because they're criminals.
I think the Democrats really went further than what I've seen in my lifetime of running an authoritarian regime.
The amount of money that they put into green energy reforms and money that they put into censoring the internet, pushing of what the COVID was, bringing people across the border, these foreign wars that people don't want.
But really, I would say the biggest ones are kind of the full-scale socialism of trying to push a green energy initiative and also the, you know, diversity, blah, blah, blah.
But it's just money from the Fed, you know, creating incentives for things that wouldn't exist in the market and to kind of police and control their narrative and then policing the internet and then trying to get the other political candidate assassinated, in my opinion, or just trying to keep him off the ballots through the court system.
So not saying that, you know, Trump's going to be great.
I think he's going to spend as much as anyone's ever spent.
And, you know, we'll see what we'll see what actually comes of the wars and some of the other things.
But I don't think it's, I think it's a wild amount of authoritarianism that we've been living under with the Biden regime.
And so I don't think Trump is lying when he's like, we're going back to freedom and we're going back to pursuing greatness.
I'm not going to stand around and shame all you all the time.
Yeah.
And, you know, there's, okay, let me just, because I, there's a few things that I wanted to say on this, but number one, I should just make the point, because I was, you know, granting just for the sake of argument, like if you steal man Biden's position, but the truth is that it is, I think that it's seen, look, like imagine, if you will, that I am in a, you know, I'm in a position where for whatever reason,
I get like some no bid government contract or something like that, and I get to pick who receives a billion dollars.
And I pick my wife.
And I go, that's, that's it.
And I, I argue that I go, she was, you know, I did all my research and she was the one who most deserved this billion dollars.
Now, I mean, I could have an argument for why that's the case.
That could even theoretically be the case, but nobody's going to believe that.
You have to think that the second I do that, just everybody's view of that is going to be, and rightfully so, is going to be like, no, dude, you found a way to give the billion dollars to yourself.
You know, like you clearly, this is corrupt.
Number one, number one, with the pardons of Fauci and Liz Cheney and all these people, that's the number one thing is that this is just totally going to be viewed as what it obviously is, which is that like, oh, yeah, all these people were criminals and you just gave them blanket pardons on your way out.
But to think for a second, right?
If you think of the enormous amount of control that what we refer to as the Biden administration had over the managerial state and over the deep state.
And again, it's not, I say we think of as the Biden administration, because we all know Joe Biden's not actually running the government and hasn't been.
But even with the level of control that say the deep state had, they were unable to get Donald Trump on any of these bullshit charges, right?
I mean, I guess they got some convictions, but they were unable to really do anything because it was just so obvious that this, none of this was real.
And it was just too, you know, it was like just too thin.
And for all the problems we have in America, we still do have like the rotting bones, the old collapsing structure of a republic.
Like there is still a court process and there's still juries and you get lawyers and you can appeal.
And like there is somewhat of a process here.
And they, so anyway, my point is like what who could buy that the real fear here is that Donald Trump is going to have such complete control of this that even though there are no crimes that Fauci and Liz Cheney or any of them have committed, he's still going to be able to get them charged, bring these charges to a court and get convictions and then win on in appeals courts or whatever.
You know what I mean?
Like what it is so far-fetched to argue that these people are innocent.
They have committed no crimes and yet they still need these pardons.
Just think about what you're actually arguing there versus the obvious, much more easy answer, which is that, oh, yeah, they did commit all types of crimes, and that's why you're pardoning them.
Now, given that that's the case, I think there's actually, you know, there's something about that that is kind of leads you to be optimistic because it's like, oh, Joe Biden or whoever Joe Biden's handlers are, they were concerned enough that Donald Trump might actually try to bring charges against some of these people.
And I kind of like that.
That's that doesn't seem bad to me.
And, you know, I'll say, this was another thought I had.
I was thinking this.
So last night, after we, you know, I did the last episode yesterday during the afternoon.
Last night I was watching, which I very, very rarely actually watch real television, but I was watching real television last night.
This is watching Donald Trump signing his pardons.
And okay, one of the first things after the full day, like as I was reflecting on it last night, one of the first things that was just really apparent to me, and I think a lot of people, this is not like a unique insight to me, but it was amazing just after the last four years to see Donald Trump off the cup going back and forth with journalists, doing his like little Trumpian thing.
You know what I mean?
Where he's kind of arguing with them.
He's doing this big showmanship thing.
People are asking him questions.
He's giving his thoughts in real time in just such a like unguarded manner.
You know, just like the stuff you remember, you're like, oh, yeah, there's Donald Trump and he's back in that chair now.
It was the juxtaposition of like earlier that day, Joe Biden had been president and now Donald Trump's president.
It was just hard to overstate that.
It's like, look, say whatever you want to.
We have a president again.
Like there is actually somebody who sits in that chair who believes I'm the president of the United States of America.
And guess what?
I have some thoughts.
Like I have some feelings about some matters of policy.
And the fact that that even needs to be said, the fact that that's even a thing, that it ever wasn't like that, is so insane.
It's hard to overstate.
And then also the maneuvers, almost all of them are things that I massively agree with.
Getting us out of the who, getting us out of the Paris Accord, saying we're not funding the Green New Deal anymore.
We're getting rid of EV man, like just all of it.
Like just the juxtaposition between him and the type of things that Biden were putting in and him going, no, we're going to be a free and prosperous country.
Rejecting Green New Deal00:03:28
We're going to build that wall and we're going to start drilling for our own oil.
And we're not going to have other countries tell us how that we're supposed to treat pandemics.
We're not going to participate in some phony UN thing for reducing carbon, which makes no sense if China's not involved.
So, you know, the first day maneuvers talk about, hey, I'm going to take the yoke off the Americans and we're going to be great and go for freedom.
Like it's not actually not lies.
Like we're so used to being told.
Yes.
Look, even the stupid stuff, right?
Like even the stuff that doesn't really do it for me, you know, renaming the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America, something like that, which I don't really care for that.
It's like Freedom Fries.
It's just what it's been called.
Leave it alone.
Yes.
It's Freedom Fries.
It's exactly what it is.
It's doing, I don't know, for people who don't remember, this was a really dumb thing that started in the George W. Bush Republican Party.
I think it was actually Walter, what's his name, who came up with it.
Anyway, but regardless, who ended up being wrong on the war and then being a really great guy about it afterward.
But this was like right post 9-11.
It was a big thing.
We're not going to call them French fries anymore.
We're going to call them Freedom Fries.
You know okay, it's like this.
Just, I don't know, I just it's not my deal.
I find it to be kind of dumb tokens, symbol stuff.
But I will say there is something about it that kind of it jibes with the broader point that you're making, that the symbol is like hey, we're gonna try to be great and we're not gonna sit here feeling guilty about everything and we're not you know what I mean like we're not just gonna accept that we're a collapsing empire and oh my god, we did all these things wrong in the past and we should really feel bad about like it's.
There is something about it that's kind of like reversing this cultural phenomenon that I kind of you know.
I think there's something positive in it and I will.
You know, I actually wanted to read this because there was um uh, Daryl Cooper uh who's, of course, you guys i'm sure all know he's been on the show and uh is just a brilliant uh historian um, and who kicked up a whole lot.
He had uh uh, quite a little controversy uh, this last year.
I also just love how now Daryl's doing his full series on World War Ii.
It's just so funny to me, like there's like there's this controversy over it and he's like okay, all right.
Well, here comes 30 hours on it anyway.
That, by the way, the uh prologue was so good I listened to it a few days ago, just so good.
Um, I think the rest of the series is coming out in the next couple months.
But he said, this is what, uh Daryl Cooper wrote uh this morning, and I really liked this.
And he said, there is nothing more toxic in politics than someone who reflexively counter signals their own side.
Whenever people become optimistic, they're divisive agitators making a statement less about practical politics than about their own personality.
Just really liked that.
And I think there is, you see, a lot of that uh around, certainly an issue within the libertarian world, and you know, that was another thought that I had all day yesterday and I think it's something that you've kind of touched on here that there's just kind of this feeling of like we're back and this is great and there are possibilities, and maybe like things will be much better for this country going forward.
Rough Year for Democrats00:10:43
Now we don't know for sure that that is going to come to fruition, but there is something important about allowing people to have that like hope is a very important thing.
So I remember um, I remember I talked about taking my speech and telling me that it's for the soul of America.
Yeah really, you know well.
So I remember um me, and you definitely talked about this.
Um, but I I said this on Joe Rogan's podcast, and when you say things on Joe Rogan's podcast, it's now part of the historical record.
That's the way the new media works.
So i'm on record having said this back in 2020, and so I don't know if you remember this, but I did tell you this, this story.
But so the day that Joe Biden uh like, officially became president which, if you remember, back in 2020, the election was contested, it was this dragged on for a while, so I don't remember exactly when it was that it was like officially announced that Joe Biden had won the race.
This isn't, I'm not talking about the, um, it wasn't January 6th.
I'm not talking about the votes being certified.
I'm just saying when like the media called it, like, because they didn't call it that night.
There were several days until they did.
So I was in New York City.
Now, I had moved out of New York City earlier that year.
So I left New York City like immediately when the lockdown started, or even actually a little before the lockdowns.
But so I hadn't lived in the city for now, you know, this city I've lived in my entire life.
This is four years ago.
So I'm 37.
I've lived in the city my entire life.
And then I had just moved that year that we happened to be in the city.
We were doing an episode of Legion of Skanks in the daytime, which I can't even remember why we were, but it 100% was in the day in broad daylight.
I was at the stand.
And so I was like, I got there a little bit early and I walked around a little bit, like just walking around Union Square.
And it's kind of hard to fully capture this for people who weren't like there during the time.
But look, New York City had, this is November 2020.
New York City had had a rough year.
I mean, just a really rough year.
It was the lockdowns were devastating.
There was a sharp rise in crime and homelessness.
Businesses obviously had been destroyed.
Then there were the riots that ended up getting a lot of the businesses who had somehow made it through the first few months of the lockdown.
So it was just a bet.
And there was an energy in New York City that was really heartbreaking for me as somebody who was like, that's my hometown.
And I've lived there my whole life.
And 2020 was just a very rough year.
It was a rough year for the country, but particularly for big cities.
And New York City was really one of the hardest hit cities.
Also, by the way, just the germ itself had been devastating to New York.
A lot of people die from COVID or many more with COVID.
But anyway, and there was just a positive vibe in the air when it was announced that Joe Biden had won.
People were celebrating.
Obviously, the city was overwhelmingly Democrat and overwhelmingly didn't like Donald Trump even more so back then than now.
And people were just happy.
They were celebrating.
People had noisemakers.
There was just like a feeling of optimism.
There was a feeling of like, whatever this craziness of the last four years has been, it's over now.
And now something positive maybe comes next.
Now, I, unfortunately, have known, I just know a lot more about Joe Biden than the average person does.
I pay attention to politics a lot more than the average person does.
And I was 100% convinced that Biden was going to be a disaster.
You know, that, I mean, it was not no stradamas here.
I'm not giving myself credit for like the most insightful prediction ever.
It was a pretty easy one to make, but I knew this was going to be a disaster.
But I remember saying, and I said this to Rogan, I said this to you, that on in that moment, like you'd have to be some type of asshole to not kind of be like, all right, let them have their day.
You know, like let them have their moment of belief.
What am I going to do?
Go around and try to rob people of their joy.
That's never who you want to be in this world.
And like, I did just, I had this feeling back then that it was like, as much as it was not my side that had won, just being like, you know what, this is still my city and these people are still my people.
And like, they've had a really rough year.
I'm really glad they're having a day where they feel decent.
It's a shame they're going to figure out that none of this is going to actually, you know, work.
But it was just kind of like, it was nice.
I remember the feeling it was nice.
And you'd hope that like people could at least appreciate that.
That like, especially for Trump supporters.
I don't, I think there's a lot of people who maybe don't fully appreciate how rough things have been for these guys for quite a while.
How much they've just been down and kicked while they're down and then taunted and called names and told they're Nazis and bigots and all of these things, you know?
And like for them to have this moment now where they feel that way.
I just do think there's something beautiful about that.
And yes, it is true that Donald Trump probably is not quite as great as they think he is.
And there will be problems with this next administration.
And there's, there's all, there's a lot of bad people in the cabinet and there's a lot of bad policy ideas floating around.
But like, I just don't think, I think it's good when people have hope.
I think optimism is good.
Pessimism is bad.
Maybe that's a little simplistic, but I do think that's the case.
And it's, I don't know, it's nice to see your fellow Americans being hopeful for the country.
And then to your point, look, like at least with Donald Trump, it's a mixed bag.
I mean, with Joe Biden, it was just all bad.
And so at least with Donald Trump, there are some things you could point to to go like, oh, this is, he's taking a step here that might actually really improve things.
I mean, I got to say, I think, and maybe I shouldn't speak on this because I got to like actually go look at a comprehensive list and look through all of the executive orders and stuff.
But like, I think designating the cartels as terrorists was like the only thing that I saw that I was like, oh, that's really bad.
That like that's, or at least has the potential to be really bad.
I don't know if there was anything else that I would really object to so far.
It seemed like that was the one.
You're muted.
You called it a little while back.
The other one that was contentious was getting rid of birthright citizenship, where I, like I said, I don't really even disagree with it.
I think that should be the great amnesty is second class citizenship and people can stay, but they're not allowed to leach off the system.
I think that that's the most practical solution to not having to deport a lot of individuals or changing the voting demographic.
So I'm not saying I disagree with Donald Trump for that.
However, it seemingly is against, I think, the Constitution.
So that will probably go to the Supreme Court.
Yeah, the issue of that is going to be the legality of it.
And yeah, the president can't just amend the Constitution through executive order.
And so we'll have to see what the courts ultimately decide of that.
No, but I just, you know, to me, it was like, if you, the, the one that jumped out to me as like, oh, this is really bad was the designating the cartels as terrorists.
And it's a little bit tricky to make this argument because, of course, there's like the social psychology of it and the fact that people do just, we're all this way.
You know, we're, we're animals and we have our first base reaction to things.
So like, if you say this, it's like, people are like, well, what are you saying?
What are you saying?
That the drug cartels aren't the bad guys or that, you know, they're like, look at MS-13.
Look how scary and tatted up they are.
And they did all these bad things.
But the real point is that it's like, look, I mean, it strikes me as a legal distinction because look at what we're willing to do once people are labeled as terrorists.
And it kind of speaks to what I was talking about with the way the Democrats were wielding power.
It's like all of a sudden out in Syria, that's not a terrorist organization.
So the terrorist organization is almost like the FDA safe and effective.
Oh, well, the FDA labeled it safe and effective.
That means it's something that I have to take and I can't question.
There's a similar thing with terrorist designations that, oh, that now means you might be able to, what are we going to be running operations now in South America?
Are we expanding operations in South America?
Are we taking out the cartel so that someone else can pick up that drug business?
CIA getting back into it.
Yes.
By the way, also the Biden administration made a real effort to deem you Trump supporter as a terrorist.
So, you know, keep that in mind.
But look, I mean, I think I could make, and I'm not saying this is conclusive, but I could make a very strong, very compelling argument that the war on drugs.
and the war on terrorism have been the most disastrous policies in modern American history.
Like that the war on drugs is the most disastrous domestic policy and the war on terrorism has been the most disastrous foreign policy.
There's a strong argument to both of those and the amount of people who have been, you know, with the war on terrorism, obviously the amount of people who have been killed and the amount of countries that have been destroyed and the amount of money that it's cost us.
And with the war on drugs, I mean, you have, you know, what is it?
I mean, I think it started in the early 70s under Richard Nixon and we're now 50 something years later.
And in the war on drugs, drugs have done better than the Taliban did in the war in Afghanistan.
Drugs are still everywhere.
We have incredibly high OD numbers and just, you know, this policy does not work.
It's a failure for the same reason that prohibition of alcohol was a failure.
The prospect of combining those two policies, essentially, you know, with saying that we're going to have a war on terrorism on drugs is, look, it has the potential to just be an unmitigated disaster.
Life Sentences and Pardons00:15:23
And so that's something that I think is worth pointing out.
Now, again, the devil's going to be in the details, what actually is done after this, but that would be the one that jumps out to me as like particularly troubling.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
All right.
You want to talk a little bit about...
Can you talk a little bit about Fauci?
I can't believe that guy got a pardon.
There is a saving grace, though.
I was reading in Zero Hedge Take because this made me feel good because I was going to, and I still will.
I'm going to campaign, which basically means get a hat or t-shirt that says prosecute Fauci.
Cause I say, go after him anyways.
Get after him anyways.
Don't let the guy off the hook.
The American people need to be educated about what took place during the COVID regime.
And they need to be fearful of government power and not just giving it over to the government because they need the education that they were lied to and that it probably was criminal.
And so even if Fauci's not going to go to jail or be held accountable in other ways, prosecute him, let the story out there.
I think it's a cleansing and people need to know it.
Apparently, I guess, though, now they can bring him in front of Congress and the Senate again and give him a hard time.
And they can even ask him questions such as the last times you were here, were you lying to us?
And if he were to say things like no, now he could be guilty of a new crime that he can be prosecuted for.
So yeah, there's some, yeah, there's some crafty legal maneuvering that can be done because he could, by the way, what's interesting about that, right, is that if they were to get him to testify before Congress again and they asked him if he had lied last time he's there, he could say yes and face no prosecution for that.
So he can now admit that he lied to Congress, right?
But if he says no, then this is after the pardon and it's a new crime.
So he's not pardoned for future crimes.
And so it would lead you in this situation where either he would at least be open again to prosecution for the same crime of lying to Congress, or he would have to admit that he lied to Congress, which in some ways might be more valuable than getting a conviction.
You know what I mean?
Like in some, you know, I said yesterday on the show, I know you, you didn't have a chance to listen to it because the show just came out a few hours before we're recording this one.
But I did say I kind of think this is a good thing.
Like on net, I'm kind of glad that Biden pardoned all these people because the truth is that even me and you might have some feelings of optimism or cautious optimism about like maybe Trump can get some good things done.
The idea that he was actually going to prosecute Fauci was always a little bit pie in the sky.
You know, like, oh my God, if we get to that point, we've already done so many good things that, and, you know, and so the idea of this was always going to be true.
And so I'm not so sure that Biden doing something that number one brings this conversation of Fauci being a criminal right back to the forefront, gives people like me and you an excuse to talk about it more.
And then also like kind of reveals that he needed this legal protection or maybe he would be, you know, like that in itself is kind of a victory.
And so I, I'm looking at this whole thing like, yeah, I don't see why this should look.
The important thing is not that an old man, Anthony Fauci, who already got away with it, you know, like even if you get him now, this is like Harvey Weinstein or Bill Cosby or something like that.
They already got away with it.
Now, you may say you still want to see him thrown in jail now, but that's not really as Fauci already had a decades long run of being a corrupt criminal and the whole COVID thing, he did it and he got away with it.
I don't like, I do want to see Fauci prosecuted.
I do want to see him spend the rest of his life in jail for the crimes that he did commit.
But that is not the most important thing.
The most important thing is that these crimes get exposed and, you know, that it sends a shockwave through future would-be state criminals.
So anyway, that's, I, you know, I do tend to agree with what you're saying.
There's still a lot of interesting kind of, you know, then maybe they could go after other people who were criminals too, who didn't get pardons and have forced Fauci to testify at their trial.
You know, like there's, there's possibilities there.
We'll see.
Who knows?
Who knows if Trump's really going to go after that?
I do wonder if there will be a wider conversation about the pardoning system, because now that Biden's done this, I don't know why you wouldn't just always pardon yourself and your family members on the way out as a precautionary thing.
And once that becomes a norm, then you're really giving people a free pass to basically have four years to potentially commit crimes.
Not that I think these people aren't somehow being bribed or otherwise, but it definitely gives them a platform for being more aggressive about it.
And the presidential pardoning system, it's kind of, you know, in some instances, people get freed because the president goes, hey, I think that was a mistake.
And hopefully, like Ross will be freed because the president's basically acknowledging, hey, I think that that incident lacked justice.
But even that's kind of terrible that random people can get selected instead of the overall injustice is being like, well, why was that guy prosecuted?
Why did the FBI go after him?
Why do they go after him in this way?
Who else did they go after?
It's not a very fair system to just take the one-offs and go, oh, you curried enough public favor that people are aware of the injustice of your case.
So you're going to get out.
So the whole thing is a little, it's a little absurd.
Yeah, no, 100%.
Especially, by the way, for the people who have been freaking out about the president isn't above the law.
It's like, yeah, but now you've just established this president that I guess you can just always pardon preemptively whoever you want to.
I mean, yes, it does seem ridiculous.
And you'll almost be foolish not to.
If you're on a second term, last day out.
Hey, it just becomes the new norm.
Hey, here's my list of people that I'm giving a free pass to so that the next party doesn't come after us.
And that, you know, it just becomes the new norm.
Yeah, it seems like that could be the case.
By the way, there's also, I should mention there's just because some people have been having fun with it online.
It's great.
It's just like everything else.
It really is unbelievable the way that the corporate media projects things onto Donald Trump that are confessions themselves.
You know, like it's just, you know, even all the fears that he's going to weaponize the justice system for political reasons, you know, stuff like this.
But there's been a lot of, because it's easy to forget these things when you live in these crazy years, but there's been a bunch of compilations of the media freaking out at the prospect of Donald Trump doing exactly what Joe Biden did toward the end of his first term, where they were like, oh, on the way out, he's going to pardon his whole family preemptively.
And then they're all of them have their hot takes on what that would mean and how terrible that would be.
And that would be an admission of guilt, says Rachel Maddow.
You know, and it's just really, there's just, it's just, you know, whatever.
We cover their hypocrisy enough, but it is pretty entertaining to watch some of that stuff.
I do want to spend at least a few minutes here.
Let's talk about Ross Ulbricht a little bit because it does, it seems that, okay, so as of now, and I'm, you know, checking my news updates because if this does change, I would like to get it live.
But as of now, it seems that the pardon has not come yet.
There are, let's just, I'll just say that I have many sources at this point, several sources, both off the record and on the record, who have essentially said that it's in the stack.
You know, it's in the stack of things that Trump's about to sign.
It's either going to happen.
You haven't started the talk button yet.
Give the man a break.
Well, that's true.
That's true.
He's got things to do.
And I certainly do, you know, I saw there were, again, in the spirit of Daryl's tweet, there were, of course, libertarians out there who were like, you know, why are the January 6th people pardoned first?
And Ross Ulbricht isn't pardoned yet.
You know, he spent more time in jail than them.
You know, it's like, guys, obviously the January 6th things had more political significance in terms of a signal for Donald Trump to come in and do.
This was a giant, you know, on top of being justice, it was also a giant middle finger to the entire corporate media and the political establishment.
So that, you know, I'll just say that it does seem right now, you know, Elon Musk tweeted that he's going to be freed.
Roger Stone confirmed that his name is in the stack that Donald Trump is just in the middle of getting to.
So, and also, by the way, on, I know on the betting markets, it's like it's like 95% that he's getting freed.
So I will say this just, you know, with the disclaimer that this obviously has not happened yet and nothing is official in Washington, D.C. until it's official.
So that disclaimer out there, it looks very likely like Ross Ulbric is going to be freed today or tomorrow.
Assuming that does happen, you know, I'll just say it's, I've never exactly had a situation like this before.
I don't know Ross Ulbricke.
I have never met him.
I've never had a conversation with him.
I do know his mother fairly well.
I've met her many times, as has almost everybody in the liberty world, because she's just at every event.
She's just like tirelessly been working for years and years to get her son freed.
If people don't know the story of Ross Ulbric, he was the founder of the Silk Road.
It was kind of like a dark web website type thing.
And he essentially was convicted of creating a website.
Now, there were accusations that had been made by the feds that he was trying to put like hits out on people or something like that.
Without even like going deep into the story, the bottom line is none of that shit matters because he didn't get convicted of any of that.
All he got convicted of was a nonviolent victimless crime of creating a website.
And he's been in jail for years.
He's serving, I think, multiple life sentences over it, or at least a life sentence.
And I mean, I just remember Lynn fighting for this cause when it seemed hopeless.
Like it seemed like nobody, what were the odds of like, this is one kid and he got on the wrong side of the federal government and it's over.
He's been convicted.
They gave him life without parole.
He's never coming home.
And she just never stopped fighting.
For anybody who's ever met her, she's like the sweetest lady.
And it was always just very apparent that she was like living through this nightmare, you know, like her son is gone and the rest of her life is doomed to just be constantly, you know what I mean, like trying for the next thing and then being devastated when it doesn't work out.
And man, like just personally, because I know her, like it would just be so great for her nightmare to be over and just have her son home with her.
And I'm really excited at the possibility that that's going to happen.
It seems very likely that it's going to happen.
And, you know, look, obviously, a lot of a lot of people played a role in this happening.
No one more than Lynn.
But a tremendous amount of credit has to go to Angela McCartle for really making this the central demand of the Libertarian Party out of Donald Trump.
And to get him, if he does get freed, which it looks like he's going to, the fact that Donald Trump came to the Libertarian Party convention and made this promise and then won and then came through on the promise.
And look, you know, people can argue over the details of what exactly the promise was.
You know, people will say like, well, Donald Trump said, if you support me, libertarians, then I'll do this.
And the libertarians didn't technically support him, but you could also kind of like look, look at the vote totals of Gary Johnson and Joe Jorgensen, and then look at the vote totals of Chase Oliver, and then look at how Donald Trump did in this election.
And you could see that, like, I'm not the only one, you know, a whole lot of libertarians ended up going and supporting Donald Trump.
And if this does happen, I do think, I don't think it's unreasonable to say that Angela McArdle accomplished more than the Libertarian Party has in its entire history in her two terms.
I mean, like this, you actually saved a human being's life, corrected a massive state injustice and gave this like, I don't know, gave like a desperate mother her, you know, like you made her prayer come true.
And I do, listen, I'm not trying to say that credit is only to Angela or anything like that.
There are obviously a lot of people who have fought for this and have worked tirelessly on it.
And they all deserve some degree of credit to it.
Everybody who ever wrote a piece about this or ever did any activism about this, everybody deserves like some credit if it comes to fruition.
But I will say that particularly, you know, to the people who were involved in the whole Mises caucus effort to take over the Libertarian Party.
Tangible Libertarian Cabinet Wins00:06:52
Look, I'm not saying like everything didn't work out exactly the way that we thought it would or exactly the way we planned it out.
But I do think that that is more than enough to say that like your effort in that was worth it.
I mean, like this effort led to something and something tangible.
And it's not as if Russ Ulbric is the only tangible thing.
I mean, I think that this is, you know, we have, you know, people say they want to kind of, I've heard some of the libertarians who were more critical of this strategy of supporting Donald Trump and trying to get concessions out of him or assurances out of him.
And they'll say, they'll point to things that maybe he didn't come through on.
You know, he did say he was going to put a libertarian in his cabinet.
Now, Trump supporters could argue he said that if the libertarians nominate him and support him, he'll put a libertarian in his cabinet.
Okay, he didn't put a libertarian in his cabinet.
Now he'll claim, people will claim Bobby Kennedy is a lifetime member of the Libertarian Party, so he could be the libertarian, but other people will say, well, he's not really a libertarian.
He just joined the party recently.
Obviously, I'm not going to argue about that.
No, Bobby Kennedy is not a 100% or libertarian.
At the same time, it's like, I don't think any of us, I certainly never said it.
I don't think you could find Angela McArdle ever saying, we got to support Donald Trump because we know he will come through with 100% of the things he promised if we gave him the nomination, even though we didn't give him the nomination.
That was never really the argument.
The argument was like, at least we're getting something.
At least we're getting some assurances that there is the potential there for something positive to happen.
And also, I'm sure many of you guys know my attitude.
It's like, I don't even really, you know, like, okay, he doesn't have a libertarian in his cabinet.
Jay Bhattacharia has Fauci's old job.
Okay.
So like, I don't know what you want to say here.
Like, I don't really care.
That's so much more important to me than whether someone identifies themselves as a libertarian.
I'd rather Jay Bhattacharia be in charge of the NIH than Chase Oliver have any position in there.
Because I can't even trust that Chase Oliver will have the courage to actually stand up for his stated principles when there's a little bit of pressure.
Yeah, right.
There, there you go.
That might be more like what we'd get done.
Jay Bhattacharya wrote the forward for Tom Wood's magnificent book on COVID.
So, hey, libertarians, you know, our best libertarian who wrote the most important book on the most important issue, this is the guy who wrote the forward for that book, is now in charge of the National Institute of Health.
So, again, like, forget that stuff.
But if we do, we've already collected some wins.
And if we collect more wins, or even just say we get the ones we got now and we get Russ Ulbricht freed.
Not only do I think that that justifies the entire Mises caucus, the entire project, and all the effort that so many people put in to make this happen, because Angela McArdle simply does not become chair without us putting her in his chair.
And nobody else was going to do this other than Angela McArdle.
And so not only do I think it justifies the entire thing, but I think it also, look, it leads to a compelling case for what the Libertarian Party ought to be used for going forward.
And it leaves members of the Libertarian Party with a very clear choice in front of them.
You know, like this is something that it was a very unique thing that I think you could make a very strong argument that even as a Republican, you probably couldn't have gotten these guarantees out of Donald Trump because having the Libertarian Party represented like a whole separate voting block that he wanted to pull over to get behind him.
And going forward in the Libertarian Party, I think that it's like, hey, what do you guys want to do?
Do you want to kind of see this model that results in tangible wins for liberty?
Or do you want to go back to kind of like impotently virtue signaling, consistently losing and seeing no improvement in real life?
Now, don't get me wrong.
As I've always said, I really haven't changed my mind from where I was a few years ago.
If you've got some amazing presidential candidate or something like that, who you think it's more important that this person's going to wake up millions of people and spread a message and it's going to lead to local victories and all these things, there's an argument that that's the direction you should go when you have that person.
If you don't have that person, it's just a waste of resources and time and effort.
And I think that the blueprint that Angela McArdle has kind of laid out is the way to go going forward with the Libertarian Party.
But look, obviously, first and foremost, it's going to be, you know, just like my first thought is just like, oh, how great that would be for Lynn, you know, like, and it'd be amazing for her to have her son home.
But then I do think that like, you know, again, assuming that this happens, which I think is going to happen today, but assuming it happens today or tomorrow, that's something that kind of has to be examined.
For the first time in the Libertarian Party's history, they did something kind of incredible.
And they were like able to like get something they wanted done from the president of the United States of America.
That is something that libertarians simply, that type of effect, that type of victory is simply something that libertarians cannot afford to not examine and think very seriously about and go like, wow, we punched a bit above our weight here.
We were able to actually make something happen.
All right.
Now, I'm not saying you just run that back and do it exactly the same.
It's like, hey, maybe we should think about what's our next target going to be?
What's the best way to, you know, ensure that?
But this is something that can be recreated, can be tweaked, augmented, and could perhaps really deliver even bigger victories in the future.
So that's something that's an interesting conversation.
I'll be interested to be talking to like Michael Heist and Angela McArdle about this in the coming days, because I do just think that this really has the potential to shake up the way third parties are viewed and the way third parties are used in America, which is a pretty damn important thing.
All right.
I guess that's all.
Capitalizing on Future Victories00:01:08
Anything else you want to add there, Robbie?
Looking forward to some Trump Brown 2 action.
We're off to a good start here.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's going to be an exciting week.
And there's no question that Donald Trump seems to, he seems to really want to demonstrate that there's a difference between like the energy level of Joe Biden and Donald Trump, which I mean, okay, I guess that's not that hard to demonstrate, but you know what I'm saying.
And he seems to, I think he, Donald Trump, if nothing else, he really understands marketing and he really understands like that there's been a vibe shift in America.
And he, you could see he's capitalizing on that.
He wants to get a lot of stuff done right now.
And so I think this is going to be an interesting, an interesting start to this term.
All right.
We will be back tomorrow with a brand new episode.
Thank you guys for listening.
Catch you next time.
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