Dave Smith and Robbie Bernstein dissect Donald Trump's political miscalculation in targeting Congressman Thomas Massie, arguing it fractures the MAGA coalition over fiscal policy and Israel. They condemn the administration's censorship of a legal permanent resident at Columbia University while ignoring anti-white rhetoric on campuses. The hosts also detail feuds with comedians Noam Kroll and Noam Chabot, exposing what they view as bad-faith "gotcha" tactics and double standards regarding free speech. Ultimately, the episode highlights how performative outrage and selective accountability undermine genuine discourse within the current political landscape. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Welcome to the Show00:01:40
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All right, let's start the 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.
How are you today, sir?
I'm doing all right.
How are you, Mr. Smith?
Doing good.
I've been enjoying this nice weather we've had yesterday and today.
It is the, for people who don't live like, you know, like if you don't live where there's seasons, you know, if you live in one of these areas where like it's warm year-round, you know, sure, you don't have to suffer through the three months of brutal misery that we do, but there is something about when it cracks and you get those first nice days that's just magical.
Like if this was, if it was 55 degrees in the middle of summer, you'd be like, oh, it's freezing today.
But man, when it's 55 degrees coming off, being cooped up inside and you're just outside in the sun, it's the best.
Reviewing Reckless Spending00:15:35
That's myself.
That's expression, especially after all this travel.
Yes, yes, agreed.
And we'll be traveling more soon.
Going to Boston next, everybody.
ComicdaveSmith.com for those ticket links.
Boston, Massachusetts, one of our favorite comedy towns.
We're coming back there.
And you got some dates on your own.
Is that right, Rob?
I've got Iowa for some state convention.
And then I've got Steamboat, Colorado.
You come out, you come ski with me.
There's always fun shows with Kyle Ruff.
And then other than that, trying to put Porch Story together.
You can email me your porches at robsnewsroom at gmail.com.
And then I've got some cool run-your-mouths going on this week, including guest Professor David Collum, which is always fun.
Oh, okay.
Yeah, that's a good one.
I love that guy.
Okay, so let's get into it.
A major, very interesting kind of dynamic and divide that is developing on within, I guess, broadly speaking, the MAGA coalition.
Donald, it does seem to me to really be evidence of an area where Donald Trump has not learned the lessons that he needs to learn, but whatever we can get into that in a second.
Of course, I am talking about the feud between Donald Trump and Thomas Massey.
Thomas Massey, of course, for a little bit of background on this, Thomas Massey and Donald Trump really had a pretty bad falling out in 2020 when Thomas Massey was the only member of Congress who was standing up to the fiscal insanity of the year 2020, which is, of course, by the way, he was totally vindicated on.
But he was insisting that it was crazy to spend these.
It was like these $2 trillion spending bills in the middle of COVID.
He was saying the whole thing is nuts.
The lockdowns are nuts.
These spending bills are nuts.
It's going to destroy the dollar, result in inflation.
Ended up looking pretty good in hindsight, pretty solid prediction.
And for this, for being the best member of Congress, Donald Trump, you know, smeared him, sent his supporters to attack him.
Essentially, the same thing is happening again.
The Congress is trying to jam through another insane spending bill that will increase the debt, increase the deficit.
And Thomas Massey was one of the few voices saying no.
And Donald Trump flipped out on him.
I think that this is on so like on the policy of it, Donald Trump is dead wrong.
And this is, he's just, it's terrible.
And then I think on the politics of it, I think it's also terrible.
So it just a really horrible move by Donald Trump.
And he's splitting his own base.
Maybe I'm not saying splitting right down the middle.
Obviously, Donald Trump is the most popular Republican figure in the country, but he is picking a fight with someone in Thomas Massey, who I think has a more loyal base of support than Donald Trump realizes.
I don't know.
What are your thoughts on the feud, Rob?
I think this is such a missed opportunity for the Republicans.
There's been more press about reckless government spending over the last two months than I've seen probably in the last 10 years.
And now's a great opportunity to run with the Doge ball and say we can't increase spending.
We need to limit what's going out to NGOs.
We got to limit USAID.
There's a lot of conversations that we had.
And to have one Republican standing up and saying, we're not just going to increase spending once again.
We at least have to review some of the reckless and fraudulent spending that's happening.
And then Donald Trump to turn around.
And of course, it's just very salesy.
Now's not the time.
We need full compliance.
We need all Republicans on board, which is bullshit.
It's so infuriating, dude, because that's what they said to Thomas Massey in 2020.
They said, hey, there's a pandemic, dude.
We can't deal.
I get your point, but there's a pandemic.
We can't deal with that now.
There's always an excuse for why now, this is like if Washington, D.C. had a tagline, it would be now is not the time.
Now is never the time.
You know, I remember right after 9-11, when heroes like Harry Brown and Ron Paul would point out why we have this fight with the terrorists to begin with and what the beef is, they'd say, now is not the time.
Now's not the time.
We were just hit.
You know what I mean?
And after the 2008 crisis, when people would point out how the government's in collusion with the big bank built up this housing bubble, well, now's not the time.
We're in this great financial recession.
Now's not the time.
It was never, okay, when Obama was being pressured to prosecute George W. Bush's administration for war crimes.
Now is not the time to look backward.
Now's the time to move forward.
Now's not the time.
Now's not the time.
It's never the time.
You know what I mean?
And it's never the time to do the right thing.
Somehow it's always the time to do the wrong thing.
And like, again, it's just, you know, I don't know what else to say.
I don't know in the world of politics when anything could ever be made more clear than it is made clear right now that the Republican Party is a big government socialist party.
Like, you know, there's, as you pointed out, Rob, you have that all the stuff with Doge.
Doge is popular.
The American people are looking at the swamp in a way they never have before.
The corporate media that would be known for always in these moments, fear mongering, you know, what a government shutdown will do, what will happen if these things are cut.
No one's watching the corporate media anymore.
They have no power to really fuck with Donald Trump or his agenda in any way.
And so now, when you have Donald Trump at his most popular, you have the idea of cutting government spending at its most popular, this is, and you have Republican control of the House and the Senate and Donald Trump in the White House.
Like, if now's not the time, just someone please explain to me when is going to be the time.
When is going to be the time to actually cut some spending if now is not the time?
And you just, it reveals itself.
It's like in this moment, who's actually serious about cutting spending?
Thomas Massey and Rand Paul.
And that's pretty much it.
And the rest of them all just pretend.
And I mean, like, if there is one lesson, and I've been saying this for so many goddamn years at this point, but if there is one lesson that the MAGA Republicans need to learn that somehow they cannot learn, even it's not rocket science.
But when you talk about draining the swamp, the swamp is the power that DC has.
And the power that DC has is how much money they spend.
Literally all of the money spent as Milton, Elon Musk loves to share this video of Milton Friedman breaking it down perfectly, right?
The real tax is government spending, no matter what they're spending the money on, no matter how they raise the money.
Government spending is the tax, right?
It is because the only ways they can get the money are either to tax you for it, to borrow the money, which is just a promise to tax you in the future, or to print the money, which is just a tax in a different form.
It's just taking your purchasing power and giving it to DC.
So what government spends every year is how much the criminals in Washington, D.C. take from the rest of the American people and then hand out to their cronies.
That's the swamp.
That's the corruption.
If you're serious about draining the swamp, the only way to do it is to have meaningful cuts in government spending.
And of course, as the Doge guys have been, you know, kind of pointing out, there's all this stuff we spend money on that's just like insane and can't even be justified.
No one even attempts to justify it.
And yet in this moment, you have one congressman standing up and that's who Donald Trump is going to suggest primarying.
Not the congressmen who are always pushing toward the next war, lying through their teeth to the American people.
Not the congressmen like Dan Crenshaw, that retard out there bragging about dead Russians, saber-rattling the next conflict as Donald Trump's trying to negotiate it away.
Not them.
Really, really.
Someone explain to me from an America first perspective.
Someone explain to me how out of all of the congressmen that need to be primaried, the best one is the one that Trump has to go after.
I mean, listen, it's, it was all, all of this was entirely predictable and there's nothing to be surprised about.
And I know that people who disagreed with my decision to support Donald Trump in this election will jump on this as, well, what did you expect?
This is what you voted for.
The truth is that getting Donald Trump in there was still much better than getting Kamala Harris in there.
I don't regret my decision to support him, but God damn, if this just isn't pathetic and predictable and awful.
And look, by the way, I will just say, I'm sorry, Rob, I'll throw it back to you.
But there's to those people there, it's kind of like I can't win with this crowd because they'll go, first they'll go, oh, now that Dave supports Donald Trump, he won't criticize Donald Trump on all this shit.
Then when I'm exactly the same and I criticize Donald Trump on all the same shit, they go, well, what did you expect?
This is what you voted for.
It's two separate things, man.
We had a binary choice, unfortunately, and this was just so much better.
There are many huge positives that came out of Donald Trump being the president.
There were nothing but negatives out of Kamala Harris.
But I'm not going to pretend.
I'm not going to argue with you guys on this.
I'm not going to pretend there aren't some glaring negatives.
And this is just terrible.
There's two topics that Donald Trump's really bad on.
One of them is government spending.
And I don't mean in trying to reduce fraud.
I more mean in, hey, let's have the lowest possible interest rates and spend as much as we possibly can.
And the other topic, and there might be some others.
I've also put the trade and tariff things in with the government spending, just kind of bad economic policy.
And then there's Israel and Thomas Massey kind of highlights both of those divides from if you were really into America first and freedom and Donald Trump's brand of better on some things, but real bad on some others.
And so the fact that I'm just surprised that because I'm surprised that Donald Trump wants to pick this fight this early on, but that's because he's riding high and he's looking for full compliance.
And he might actually learn that this one is a not worthwhile fight because it showcases Donald Trump's weaknesses.
Yeah, well, I could tell you, and again, this is obviously, this isn't scientific or anything like that, but I'm just saying from gauging social media today, it does seem like of the like bigger accounts and kind of the MAGA world, there is just like a huge like, no, not Thomas Massey, dude.
Like, you're just not sorry.
You know, like there's people who will go along with Donald Trump for a lot, but there is something.
Thomas Massey does have a really loyal base.
And I just don't think, I don't think it's wise politics.
Here, I'm just going to read the post that Donald Trump put up.
He said, thank you to the House Freedom Caucus for just delivering a big blow to the radical left Democrats and their desire to raise taxes and shut our country down.
They hate America and all it stands for.
That's why they allow millions of criminals to invade our nation.
Sometimes it takes great courage to do the right thing.
Congressman Thomas Massey of beautiful Kentucky is an automatic no vote on just about everything, despite the fact that he has always voted for continuing resolutions in the past.
He should be primaried, and I will lead the charge against him.
He's just another grandstander who's too much trouble and not worth the fight.
He reminds me of Liz Cheney before her historic record-breaking loss.
The people of Kentucky won't stand for it.
Just watch.
Do I have any takers?
Anyway, thank you again to the House Freedom Caucus for your very important vote.
We need to buy some time in order to make America great again, greater than ever before.
Unite and win.
That is Donald Trump's post.
Yeah, nothing sticks it to the socialists, quite like raising government spending.
That's really, that's really what they oppose.
You've got him, Donald Trump, by signing another bloated spending bill.
You've really bucked things in Washington, D.C.
I mean, who could we get this from if we didn't get it from Donald Trump?
I mean, besides Bill Clinton and Barack Obama and George Bush and Joe Biden, George H.W. Bush, are missing every president of my lifetime?
Every single one of them?
Like, who?
I don't know.
And even to say, like, I know Thomas Massey did vote for one other CR, and I believe it was like, cause he was like, oh, this one actually cut a tiny bit of spending, even though it was like basically a continuation.
And he's like, I don't know.
It's the first bill I've seen since I've been here that cut any spending.
So I'll at least go with that.
And maybe he shouldn't have.
But if there's a criticism there, it's from the other direction that he shouldn't have supported it because it didn't cut enough.
Not because it was.
But again, it's just the thing, the same old line of like, we need to buy time right now.
So like we can't feel whatever pain government spending might cause right now.
We got to kick the can a little bit further.
This is sounding a lot more like a typical politician than we'd like to hear from Donald Trump.
I was reading a piece by Stockman, which I got to always reread those just because of how dense they are.
He's a dense writer.
He's the best, though.
From what I understand, this continuing resolution would refund everything that Doge just cut, including USAID.
So that just doesn't even, that is flagrantly offensive if you even want to claim that you're just trying to get rid of the fraudulent spending.
If you want to just pretend like you're reducing spending and that there's some spending that just works against the will of the American people because it's going to NGOs and just crazy shenanigans.
And so you just made a big stink about reducing that.
Why wouldn't at a minimum there be a conversation about, hey, in this new bill, we're not going to refund those things.
I mean, that doesn't even make sense.
It's amazing the contrast between Doge and Congress.
And this is something we've been talking a bit more about.
That's the missed opportunity here is that let them all get voted out of office then that they're just that the people that are supposed to keep an eye on the purse are just spending recklessly spending even when it's become unpopular and the American people stand against it.
Yep.
Yeah.
Well, and, you know, it matters a lot who's sitting in the chair.
And at this point, Trump is.
And so his move is not to say, let's primary all these other guys, which by the way, I mean, Trump could move mountains right now if he was really serious about this getting into the primarying Republicans business.
But it's not, it's to primary the one guy who's being good on that.
That's, that's his idea of what should be done because he wants to kick the can and not feel the pain on his watch.
He wants to be able to brag about how great the economy is doing or whatever.
And I'm not even sure, by the way, I don't even think that calculation is correct.
I mean, I actually think it would unleash the American economy to have serious cuts in government spending.
Protests and Illegal Removals00:17:25
But yeah, anyway, like you pretty much nailed it.
I mean, when it comes to government spending and when it comes to Israel, we're just, we just got to accept that Trump's awful on that and we're going to oppose him on those issues.
And it does seem like, you know, I'll just say that it does certainly seem, you know, look, maybe it's just, maybe it's not true at all, but you could understand why it has the appearance to people, especially when coupled with the other things that Trump's doing, that it's like, oh, you went after him because he's the guy who opposes this war in Gaza.
It does seem like that's one of the things that gets him on the outs with Trump's crew.
Of course, a bunch of, you know, the like pathetic right-wing idiots like, you know, fucking John Podhoritz or Laura Loomer have been talking about how Congress, you know, Congressman Massey is an anti-Semite.
They've been saying this for months now.
He's an anti-Semite because he doesn't want to fund Israel's war.
That's depending on the moving definition of anti-Semite, we might get into this a little bit in a little bit, but that's, you know, that's the thing.
If you don't want to fund Israel, you're an anti-Semite.
If you don't think it's okay to slaughter the women and children in Gaza, you're an anti-Semite.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
Also, it's the same tactic that he's using to smear the protests as he just cracked down on this guy.
I'm blanking on his name.
But this, uh, the guy who was, it looks like arrested and there's plans of deporting him for being in the anti-Semitic pro-Hamas protests at Columbia University.
What do you think about this one, Rob?
Because it kind of brings up an interesting, um, an interesting concept about when, you know, like when people can be deported and can they be deported like on speech grounds.
I got to say, I'm very much opposed to this, but I'm curious to hear your, your thoughts.
Yeah, this seems like this is free speech censorship to me.
I mean, you got a couple actions that the Trump administration has taken.
First is last week they said they were going to cut federal funding to colleges that allow for illegal protests.
So the first problem you have in there is what quantifies an illegal protest.
Does that mean they're breaking the law?
Does that mean that they're trespassing?
Now, cutting federal funds, I've spoken about this before, but there was this odd case at Yeshiva University that they were going to lose federal funds for not having a gay club and the ridiculousness of going to the one Orthodox school, but also having a gay club just go to any other university.
No one's even mad at you for it, but like you can either keep the religion or not.
It's like having the bacon club there.
So that kind of gets wrapped into cutting federal funding to for your agenda.
Most of the agenda is kind of, you know, it was the COVID regime or it was the woke insanity.
So there's always kind of been, there's a problem with federal funding in general.
So we can, we can put that to the side.
It's a tool for government to be able to essentially enact whatever their propaganda is on universities if they want to continue to get federal funds.
That's like, that's just a bigger problem.
And this is just a symptom of that problem.
In terms of this particular individual, firstly, not only does he have a green card, he also is married with a child.
So I think there's something a little bit different.
I think his wife's like eight months pregnant or something like that.
Yeah, but there's something different to if you just have a green card and revoking a green card to someone who has become that much of an ingrained citizen that someone here, that's almost like having a sponsor if someone from the United States has picked you as their spouse and is going to have a child with you.
And so now in this case, this is where all just like the gray areas come in of did this guy break the law?
And then if you have, and then if you have the ability to remove anyone under the, it's a very loose, I forgot the exact terminology, but it's basically a loose terminology of if they think that you're going to undermine the foreign policy.
And then there might even be more extreme turns in there of like abiding the whatever, but it's just they're very loose terms.
If you give the ability of government to censor you because they think your speech is dangerous or it can lead to danger, then you just don't have free speech.
So in this case, I understand if you're in the country illegally, then or with just a green card status, maybe the same free speech protections don't have to be extended to you.
But in this case, I mean, if you're married to someone who lives in the country, I don't understand why you shouldn't have free speech.
And this is certainly just, I mean, this is egregious censorship, in my opinion.
Yeah, I completely agree.
You know, there's, it's interesting because it's, you know, I see there is something about this case that is, it's kind of like catnip to like boomer cons.
Like there's something about being like, hey, here's this guy who's not a citizen who's out, you know, preaching anti-American things at a protest and we're going to deport him for that.
That just kind of is somewhat appealing to like some subset of right-wingers, you know?
I do think like what's there's a few things that are important to keep in mind here.
Number one, it is even if it was a cause that I really agree with, I will say, and I'm not like taking an opinion one way or another on this.
I it, but it's an interesting enough conversation that I'd be open to arguments.
But if someone was in the country illegally and they're protesting against the government, I do understand where there could be an argument that it's like, yeah, dude, you're here illegally.
So to start speaking up and speaking loud might be a privilege that you do not have because you broke our laws to get here and you're not allowed to be here right now.
And I will certainly say that like when it's causes I don't agree with, I've been kind of appalled to see illegal immigrants protesting.
I remember seeing protests in Washington, D.C. In fact, Tucker Carlson interviewed a woman who was an illegal alien, an illegal alien who was like protesting about amnesty.
And there is something about that that's a little bit like, yeah, I'm not so sure you actually do have the right to do that.
If you're not supposed to, you know what I mean?
Like if you're here illegally, then you can be removed at any time.
And so if you start like speaking up and putting a spotlight on yourself, maybe that increases the likelihood that you get removed.
I'm not completely against, I'm not sure I'm for it either.
I'm just like saying I'm open to ideas here.
I do think there's the obvious reason for why they might be removed.
But then there's also the counter argument of like, you're getting government in the business of making these decisions based off of speech.
And that may not be a good idea.
But in this case, we're talking about somebody who wasn't here illegally.
We're talking about someone who was legally here, not a citizen, but was legally in the country.
And now we're going to revoke that based off of their speech.
To me, those are like fundamentally different things.
There's a very big difference between someone who's here illegally and someone who's here legally.
Now, you know, you might want to take in less people legally or something like that, but then, okay, then you'd have to change what the rules are.
On top of that, I just think it's like, like, I don't know.
I posted something about how awful I thought all of this was.
I had a tweet earlier today and I said something like, so let me get this straight.
Donald Trump is cracking down on the only mass left-wing protest movement of the last decade that wasn't explicitly anti-Trump.
Right.
Like he's cracking down on the protests over the war in Gaza, which was, if anything, an anti-Biden protest movement that started up.
You would just, I'm just saying, just purely on the optics of politics of all of it, or not just the optics, but like just on the politics of all of it, you would think that maybe like Donald Trump would want to crack down on the left-wing anti-Trump protests.
But, you know, just politically speaking, you wouldn't really be incentivized to crack down on the retroactively on the left-wing protests that helped get you the election, you know, just saying, I mean, you know, Mary Madelson also gave him $100 million.
So there's other factors in there as well.
But just saying, like, that in itself, I go, so he, so Donald Trump is cracking down on the one left-wing protest that was actually anti-Biden, and he's cracking down on the one America first congressman.
And it's hard for people to not look and go like, hey, and there seems to be like a common thread between all of this.
Well, the common thread seems to be like, who supports Israel and who doesn't?
And, you know, I will say, I post, so I posted this and Will Chamberlain responded to me.
And he said something about like, you know, he was like, like, Cry Me a River about these pro-Hamas protests or something like that.
And look, again, combat free speech, wherever it is, even on the topics you might not agree with, if you're going to empower government to censor speech and deport people because they're saying things that they don't like.
And, you know, that's just, that's the pathway to hell.
That just gets.
Yeah, man.
And we just went through it over COVID.
I mean, how much COVID speech was removed over dangers?
You just, free speech absolute.
That's it.
Yes, that's right.
That's right.
And especially from all of these people who, while the left was in the driver's seat, have been free speech absolutists, at least that's what they say over the last, you know, decade or so.
And it's interesting to see so many of them turn around.
I will say, though, so I completely agree with you on that point, but I will also, in addition to that, say, and look, I don't know.
Look, obviously, like we're, we come at this from like a Ron Paulian, right-wing libertarian perspective of foreign policy and the role of government and all of these things.
We are not, we do not have the same worldview as campus leftists.
Okay.
So like, and I have seen, and I've been critical of many different times on many different platforms, including very big ones.
I've been very critical of some of the kind of dumb and just wrong, you know, messaging and or messages that have come out of some of the protests.
And I've taken flack from like my own, my side or whatever on this issue.
I will say, and I'm not the expert in this, I don't know, and I don't know much about this guy in particular.
I know nothing about the guy.
But I'm not so sure that you can just like accurately just describe the protesters as pro-Hamas.
I'm not sure.
I mean, I don't know.
I remember seeing at last year, so almost a year ago, at Passover, at the Columbia protest, you remember this, Rob?
They were having a Seder with all of the, like they invited the Jewish students who were protesting the war too, and they all sat down, like Jewish and Muslim students together and all did like a Passover Seder together.
I'm just saying, I don't know if they're pro-Hamas.
Like that doesn't give me like Islamist vibes.
That seemed like maybe that's not actually, maybe actually that's not a representation of what this is.
And while there has been all of this like unbelievable kind of panic over these protests, which by the way, again, I think we're kind of speaking in the past here.
It doesn't seem like they're like at their height right now.
Maybe they'll come back.
I don't know.
But out of all of the people kind of making this bit, one of the things that I've found very interesting, and I've seen this quite a bit.
Now, I know that when I'm talking about the protest last year, that I'm going four years back to talk about the protests in 2020.
And so I know that's a very long time in modern America to look in the rear view mirror.
But there are many of these people that I remember them and I remember what they were saying at the time when I was like adamantly like very critical of the summer of love George Floyd riots.
A lot of these people were actually pretty soft on that.
But now they're very, very hard about people taking over parts of a college campus or how horribly anti-Semitic they are.
You know, look, like I talked to, I talked to a Jewish student who was going to Columbia last year.
It's just me talking to one person.
So I'm not saying this is like, you know, a totality of what the experience is.
But I was like, what's it like, what's it like with the protests and stuff?
And he was like, that's kind of annoying.
He was like, yeah, there's a few buildings where we have to like enter from a different door now.
And then there was a little period of time where they shut down classes and went virtual.
And he was like, I was pissed off about that.
It was real annoying to like I have to go virtual now because these guys want to protest, and I was like, That's that's fairly reasonable.
And I was like, Well, as a Jewish person, like, how is it?
Do you feel like threatened by them?
And he was like, No, no, no, no one's like doing anything.
You know, it's just annoying.
And I'm like, Okay, by the way, I'm actually somebody who's very sympathetic to the idea that, like, yeah, you don't get to protest in an area you're not allowed to be.
You can remove those people, okay?
If they're taking over some quad that isn't their quad, then they don't have a right to do that.
So, okay, they could be removed or whatever.
Certainly, if anybody broke any laws, they should be prosecuted.
But it just is interesting to me to see, like, the thing that I was appalled by in the George Floyd riots was like there was like a couple dozen murders, there were hundreds of people who were viciously assaulted, there were billions of dollars in property damage, and there were just regular people being terrorized in cities across the country.
They're storming into cafes and you know, surrounding some white couple and demanding that they chant Black Lives Matter with this very clear threat of like, you're going to get the shit beaten out of you by this mob if you don't comply with us.
And that to me was never.
And then some of these people were kind of like, Well, you know, police brutality is a problem also.
Yet, these protests are totally demonized.
Like, the same people, or many of the same people who would have said, if I just described those things as like violent riots, they'd be like, You're painting with a broad brush.
But those same people will turn around and say, Oh, it's all pro-Hamas.
You're like, Okay, I'm not saying, by the way, there's been zero violence or zero vandalism at any of these protests, but in comparison, it's like nothing, it's nothing compared to that.
And yet, the freak out from some quarters is substantially worse than it was over that.
You get my point on that, Rob.
Just seems like a weird, an obvious, like kind of hypocrisy on display.
Um, the other thing I would say, uh, and this maybe this will lead into uh, we could talk about my recent Twitter feud.
Um, but I will say I see this, um, and look, there's been a lot, a lot made over the last year or so, um, about the rise in anti-Semitism.
And me, and we did a podcast called The Rise of Anti-Semitism.
If anybody wants to kind of listen to some more of my thoughts and Rob's thoughts on that, you can check out that episode.
But I just can't help but notice this.
And I think part of the reason why I find myself in the position that I'm in in general on this conversation is that I just like I have trouble not trying to be as consistent as I can be.
And I have trouble if I see a hypocrisy.
I kind of have to iron that out.
I'm a little bit compulsive in that way.
The Double Standard Debate00:07:45
But I would say that to see many people, many, many of them Jewish, not all, obviously, certainly Donald Trump isn't.
But to see all of these people talking about the anti-Semitism on college campuses and how this needs to be cracked down.
Recently, Donald Trump announced that he's going to be pulling all federal funds from colleges that have anti-Semitic protests.
Now, to be clear, I very much support, and I know I speak for you too when I say this, Rob.
I support pulling all federal funds for every college, period.
So I'm not complaining about pulling federal funds from any college.
I look at, I think college is essentially a government program and one of the most destructive government programs at that.
So I'm all for pulling federal funds.
I would also say the federal government should get out of the bit of the game of issuing student loans.
It's just impossible for me to ignore that after, I mean, this has been going on a lot longer than a decade, but let's just say the last decade, let's say the last 15 years, even though it's much older than that, but just it's so obvious over the last 15 years.
But to see after the last 15 years and the blatant, explicit anti-white racism that has just permeated universities across this country, the fact that then due to anti-Semitism, they all get their federal funds pulled.
I just, you know, for people who talk about like the rise of people who are like hostile to Jews and talk about Jewish conspiracies and the Jewish question and all this stuff, what do you think that does for that movement?
Do you think it makes it stronger or weaker?
It's just like amazing to me how all of the people who claim to be so concerned with anti-Semitism can't see like a little bit of chess rather than checkers.
Like they can't just go like, oh, and this is true, by the way, in conflicts across the board.
Like people are like, Vladimir Putin's a real dangerous guy.
Okay, so you don't see any problem with just fucking poking him constantly for year after year after year.
Why do you have to, why wouldn't that side be the most concerned with that?
You know what I mean?
Like why?
And in the same way, if you are really concerned about like the rise of young white men who are hostile toward Jews, why wouldn't you see that like, oh shit, we shouldn't have a federal government that's totally more responsive to this 2% of the population than the majority of the population?
This just, it makes such common sense to me.
And by the way, I mean, if you want to, if you want to actually go down this road and say that there's anti-Semitism, again, which I find to be an ever-moving target, which we could get into a little bit, but go pull up some of the anti-white rhetoric and tell me there's anything that can compete with that coming from the highest levels at universities.
Like, even if you want to point to like those university presidents who like kind of squirmed when they were asked is calling for genocide of Jews, a breach of your, you know, school code of conduct.
They're straight up giving lectures on the evils of whiteness.
That's going on all over the place, all over the place on college campuses.
I mean, like books are written on the subject that get rave reviews and are on the New York Times bestseller.
White fragility, celebrated by the view and college campuses and all this shit.
I'm sorry, there are not college professors out there teaching that Jewishness is violence.
That is not happening.
And so I don't know.
Am I crazy to just be like, look, you gotta, you gotta be fair here.
You can't have this double standard.
This double standard is going to lead to people who resist that double standard.
And why wouldn't they?
I don't know.
I think all the efforts to try and say that criticizing Israel is anti-Semitic just shows off the power of the Jewish lobby and the complaining Jews and can only lead to more anti-Semitism because it's not.
You can criticize Israel.
You can criticize American support for Israel and you can be me and I'm Jewish.
And I don't think most of the people that take issue with what they're seeing in Gaza are actually anti-Semitic.
And I think even when people are challenging power structures in this country, that might become more of a gray area.
But I think for the most part, they don't dislike me.
I don't think they dislike Jewish people.
I think they look at the relationship between Israel and America.
And, you know, there's the blackmail conspiracy of the Epsteins and there's the power of the APAC lobby.
And some of these things are fairly obvious and flagrant and people don't like it.
And so to be able to criticize that, it's just not anti-Semitism.
Listen, dude, just recently, or was it a month or so ago, Scott Horton debated General Wesley Clark?
And he brought up in the debate, he brought up the famous seven countries in five years.
You know, for everybody, I assume people who know that watch this show know what I'm talking about.
Wesley Clark, four-star general.
He was the supreme commander of NATO.
This is about as high level a guy in the military as you can get.
He said on Democracy Now back in where I think in 2003, he said that in late 2001, he had seen plans in the Pentagon to topple seven countries in five years.
And by the way, those countries, you guessed it, are all the ones that we've been attempting to topple with Iran added in there, which I guess we haven't gotten to yet, but there's certainly saber rattling about that constantly.
So Scott brings this up in the debate.
And then General Wesley Clark is just, it seems like just kind of vamping, going off the cuff.
And I thought this was like, didn't say, but he goes, he goes, well, well, he goes, actually, the first time I saw it was in 1991 from Paul Wolfowitz, who has on record said in other areas that he want, that he wanted to fight the war for in Iraq, for Israel.
But he goes, no, no, no, this was a Paul Wolfowitz creation.
And he goes, basically, they brought it to Defense Secretary Scowcroft at the time.
And he basically said, let's get through this election and then we'll take a look at it.
So, of course, in 92, there's the election.
They lose to Bill Clinton.
So the plans got tabled.
And then this is when Wesley Clark comes in a couple of years later and he said he asked about it.
And they were like, yeah, yeah, we've tabled that.
And then he said that got revived in a study sponsored by Israel.
These were his words.
So the idea that there was this plan to top, it just happens to be in Israel's neighborhood that we have to have regime change.
And it just happens to be against all of the governments that are hostile to Israel.
And it just happens to be this group of neoconservatives who are Israeli firsters.
They were all the ones pushing it.
And so like, yeah, it's not that crazy of, it's not only is it not a crazy conspiracy, it's by far the most likely, you know, scenario.
You have a four-star general telling you this is what happened.
Yeah, this is going to create more of this problem.
And that doesn't mean that like you, you know, like you said, like me and you can still have all the positions we have and be like, hey, we're Jewish people and we love Jews and it's not a common on regular Jewish people.
Three Hours of Grievances00:15:17
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All right, let's get back into the show.
Let's talk a little bit about my Falling out here with Noam and Dan Natterman, who these guys, I don't know if you guys have seen, I had a bit of a Twitter feud with these two.
We didn't check in with them.
We're not allowed to do our own thing over here.
And even though we're the larger show, apparently we're supposed to go to the centralized office of the comedy seller and make sure that all of our condemnations are in line.
And even just doing an appearance on their podcast and occasionally mixing it up on Twitter is not enough.
We have to actually report in and I guess, you know, get our credentials because that's what podcasting is: is having an authority above you that has self-declared himself the apart the authority above you.
And you know what it feels like, Shannon?
You ever see Shannon Briggs when he was pissing off what's his name?
Klitschko for a fight.
Klitschko, I think he like went all the way out to Europe.
Klitschko is out paddling on the water and Shannon Briggs just gets this motorboat.
It feels like that's what Noam's pulling on you of he's, but you know, I don't know.
How many conversations do you owe the guy?
Well, this is the thing, right?
So the me and Noam have really before, so before I did his podcast, right?
Me and Noam really never knew each other like that.
We've met a few times.
I used to hang at the comedy seller when I was a young comic.
I mean, I know who he is, but we never knew each other well.
Noam on his podcast at one point, I guess this is last year, he was, he brought up the Legion of Skanks.
I guess he had stopped by Skank Fest and I didn't see him there, but at least I don't, I don't think I did.
But he had come by it and he was kind of saying a thing.
He was being complimentary.
Like he was like, oh, they built something really cool.
These guys are doing good.
And then he just out of nowhere on the podcast just started launching into this whole thing about how I hate him because he didn't pass me at the comedy seller like 15 years ago or something like that.
And someone sent me this clip.
And so I just posted about it.
And I was like, what the fuck are you talking about, dude?
Like, how narcissistic are you that you like?
There's a very bizarre thing.
I have never once in this time said a negative public word about, or maybe I've, maybe I've been critical of the club over something, but it had nothing to do with that.
I've never in any way said, like, oh, I'm, I'm upset that I didn't get passed at the comedy seller.
There's just never been a complaint of mine.
He just made that up and then said that.
And I called him out for it.
And then he was like, he invited me on the podcast.
And I was like, okay.
I was like, listen, if we do it on the Monday, I do Legion of Skanks in the City on Monday.
If we have, I'll come in early to do this podcast.
Now, I went in and did the podcast.
We went for about three hours, I want to say.
I mean, we did a long podcast.
And I did not realize that.
By the way, Noam at no point before the podcast said, Hey, when you come do my podcast, I want to throw every grievance I have at you.
And then you can defend yourself.
Like he never, which look, I'm not saying he needs to do that.
I'm saying I certainly, if I was planning on doing that, would have presented it that way, but he didn't.
Okay.
I go there.
Immediately, the first thing he does is he plays like maybe a six second clip of me when I was debating Nick Fuentes going like, look, there are a lot of people out there who are like actually racist or whatever.
I don't think that's you, Nick.
Just that clip of me saying that.
And then maybe to a bunch of like four second to 10 second long clips of Nick Fuentes saying outrageous things.
And I immediately kind of, so I immediately start kind of like, you're like, oh, so this is what we're doing here?
You're trying to do like a gotcha.
So it's like, okay, so he's going to try to do a gotcha thing.
So it's basically three hours of Noam trying to do like a gotcha thing and throw every beef that he has at me.
And look, it's not really, I guess, for me to say.
You can go look at the comments of his own podcast and what the response was.
It went, I think about how most people who view this show would suspect it would go.
I'll just say that.
So then since then, Noam has just constantly been making demands that I denounce certain people as anti-Semites, namely Candace Owens, Jake Shields, I guess Ian Carroll more recently, and people like this that I denounce anti-Semitism and this rise of anti-Semitism.
And I've gone back and forth with Noam like a ton, like a ton on Twitter.
I've probably responded and replied with Noam on Twitter more than anyone else over the last six months.
Someone could go through my Twitter, correct me if I'm wrong.
I bet I'm right.
I bet it's been more him than anyone else.
And so anyway, so the thing that really bugged me, and this is what kind of got me like actually really annoying, and it wasn't like one time he did this.
He did this over and over again.
But there was always every time he'd challenge me with something on Twitter now, this is, he would always say something along the lines of like, I bet Dave won't even respond to this one.
Or Dave will probably go dark.
Like he responds to me a couple of times and then stops responding as if I'm expected to just respond to Noam all day long every single day.
And then most recently he said, he said, hey, Dave, instead of hiding behind Twitter, why don't you come on the podcast?
And there was just something about that where it's like, dude, I mean, I don't know, Rob.
Am I crazy?
I found that to just be insane.
Like insane.
I mean, look, Noam, Noam's got like 10,000 followers on Twitter.
It's a crude estimate, but I'm just saying, it's like this would be the equivalent.
And I'm not exaggerating at all.
Like the gap between the audience I have and the audience he has would be kind of like, it'd be like if I got Barack Obama to come do a three hour podcast with me in which I got to just throw all of my grievances at him.
And I could throw everything I had in it.
I had video evidence ready.
He does this thing that nobody else has ever done to me in the history of podcasting, where he superimposed like text over my face while I'm talking on the show.
Okay.
And then I get three hours with Barack Obama.
I get to grill him constantly.
Then Barack Obama goes back and forth with me on Twitter like a ton of times.
Okay.
And then I call out Obama for ducking me.
Like you just refuse to engage.
I just could not imagine doing that.
I could not imagine.
Like this would just be insane to me.
I'd be like, listen, I could accuse the guy of a lot of things, but I can't accuse him of ducking me.
I wouldn't accuse Chris Cuomo of ducking me right now.
No, the dude sat and did a three hour debate with me.
And I could say a lot of things about him, but I sure as fuck cannot say he's ducking me.
I cannot say he's hiding behind Twitter because whatever you want to say about Chris Cuomo, he stepped up and faced me.
And same with Noam.
I'm sorry.
This is just ridiculous.
And there's just always this air with Noam that like, you know, say what you will, but you never question my integrity.
And it's like, well, what?
Like, what, you know, I said at one point, I said once to him that he was like acting in bad faith.
And he was very like, how dare you?
How dare you say that I'm acting in bad faith?
It's like, I don't know, Noam.
I mean, you're literally your whole thing is you want to grill me about what other people say that I don't agree with.
And I've publicly said, I don't like a lot of that stuff.
And then you're like, no, that's not enough.
You have to call them anti-Semites.
I'm like, no, I don't really denounce people on command like that.
So actually, I don't have to do that.
Anyway, I don't know, Robin.
Any thoughts on any of this?
I think I'm being entirely reasonable here.
It's like the chick he broke up with years ago and still has some expectations.
Like, why do you have these expectations?
They're not owed to you.
In this case, you've known you, you don't work the club, never worked the club.
He's not your boss.
We have no relationship with the comedy seller.
The comedy seller does not produce this podcast.
In the sphere of comedy club owners, he's probably the most successful in the country.
In the sphere of podcasters, he doesn't produce this.
He doesn't have a bigger show than us.
And he's not the leading authority on these disputes or the condemnation court of America and seems to keep tabs on who's been condemned by who and how come the proper condemnations aren't in line.
Like some sort of OCD librarian of that you have not read, you haven't met your condemnation quota of who Noam would like to see you of having condemned.
These are all odd expectations.
Maybe it's just good marketing and that he's into.
We're talking about him on the show.
Yeah.
So there you go.
Yeah.
Or it's just, and maybe the arrogance is what will carry him to you guys sitting down and having some conversation.
And who knows?
Maybe he'll win that one, which I don't see happening.
And then it was all, you know, like the Shannon Briggs thing, getting his title opportunity.
And he got the feisty off, pissing off Rocky.
But it all feels like he thinks he's owed some sort of an courtesy from you that feels unearned.
Yeah, I mean, I listen, I agree with that.
And I think, you know, there's, it's just, I guess, and maybe this is my weakness in a way, but I really do have a weakness for like somebody accusing me of not engaging on this topic.
How many debates have you had on this topic?
I think I've done 15.
I think I've done 15 debates.
I don't think the audience wants to hear about this topic from us anymore.
I mean, literally, I get that criticism too.
People are like, yo, you talk about this way too much.
And look, that's a more reasonable criticism.
Although I think it's appropriate.
It is that horrible what's going on.
And it affects America that much that I think it's worth talking this much about.
Otherwise, I wouldn't.
But the criticism that I won't engage when I've done just countless debates on this, by the way, I'm trying my best to set up another big one.
I've done countless debates on this, done, I'd say quite well in the debates that I've been in.
And I've specifically done your podcast for several hours and talked specifically about this.
So I find that to be just like outrageous.
And then, of course, you know, Dan Natterman really got, he got me angry just because he's somebody who I've known for a while.
And I just thought it was crazy that he basically publicly called me a liar.
Like he just went like, oh, Dave, he said, Dave is a slave to his golden cage.
He can't go against what his fans want him to say.
And I just find that to be really interesting.
It's like, look, man, like, don't get me wrong.
I had a very good year in 2024.
I was doing pretty good in 2023, too.
And before this war kicked off, I was on the trajectory that I'm on now.
I don't, you know, I got invited on Tucker Carlson's show twice in 2024.
I was the one who wanted to talk about Israel.
You know, like I would have gotten invited on that show and been there regardless of that.
In fact, it was Ukraine is what I think Tucker took an interest in me over.
I did Candace Owens' show twice, and I will say that those shows were largely about Israel and the fact that she had just opened her eyes about the situation and was had become critical of the war.
Okay, so there's that.
Maybe you could argue that talking about the thing that was the biggest thing right there helped me in some way.
But I just felt like for Dan Natterman to act like, it's like, okay, look, dude, first of all, you're just psychoanalyzing me.
So let's compare here.
You're saying I can't go against what?
Candace Owens or Jake Shields?
What would that tank my career if I were to distance myself from them or call them anti-Semites?
No, I don't really think it would.
I think I'd be in pretty much the exact same situation I'm in now.
What would Dan Natterman's career look like if he pissed off Noam?
Hmm.
Who's really in a cage here?
Only yours isn't a golden one.
You know what I mean?
Like, I don't know what to say.
So I just responded with the only response possible.
I was like, dude, you're like, you're like in your 50s and you still need spot pay.
You're telling me that I'm in a cage?
Like, fuck you.
So anyway, things got a little bit nastier than I would have liked them to get, but I do feel like I was responding in kind.
I will say, look, man, as far as this demand, look, I've said a million times.
And this is like Noam had this whole, I mean, in response to my latest thing, he wrote a 19-part thread.
And I just was like, No, I will talk about this on my podcast and then I'm going to leave it at that.
Maybe I'll do his podcast again someday.
Again, it will be if I feel like it.
And I'm sorry, but like, this is just the reality of life.
I'm very busy.
I have a very busy career.
I have two small children.
I have a wife.
There is a time commitment involved in me going into New York City and doing a podcast for three hours.
And yeah, the size of your audience is a factor in that.
Sorry.
It is.
Name the other podcast that I do for three plus hours that has as small an audience as Noam.
There isn't one.
So like you're kind of asking me to do something here.
And I don't know.
If I decide to, maybe I will.
I don't know.
The Golden Gage comment's infuriating because this podcast was built from nothing and it was by being honest.
And if we want media jobs by just parroting something that an audience would like to hear, there are much quicker pathways to success.
How This Podcast Works00:02:38
And we've pissed off the audience at times by taking positions that I actually think we lost all.
I mean, we might have attracted some audience.
Certainly lost some audience over the Israel Gaza takes.
I know when I was criticizing RFK Jr. on one episode, I've never once taken into consideration, oh, I don't think the, or I've even said, I don't know if the audience will agree with me on this one.
And I know you're exactly the same way.
There's zero consideration for the preference of the audience in terms of what we're talking about.
It's what we're seeing and at least our honest opinion as we're exploring something.
So just the idea that we're imprisoned by the audience that we built by being honest.
Yes.
That's just not true.
That's not the way this podcast works.
It's an infuriating thing to accuse somebody of.
It's incredibly insulting.
You're basically saying, oh, you don't really.
Yes.
Yes.
It's calling out.
It's calling out someone's integrity.
This is like, I don't know, dude.
Like, I'm also from, you know, people sometimes will be like, oh, you're so, this is what Noam said.
Oh, you're so mean to him.
I'm like, wait, what?
Like, I don't know, dude.
You call out a man's integrity.
You're supposed to fight after that.
Like, what do you mean?
I was mean to him?
Like, I just don't even know.
What are you talking about?
It's like, but also the thing that bugs me so much is that it is almost like, it's like there's some price to success or something like that.
Like, it's like, oh, because you've done well, that's proof that you're bad, that you don't really mean what you say.
And there is something to me.
It was like Chris Cuomo.
It's what drove me crazy, why I was so vicious to Chris Cuomo in that debate.
Because he started sitting there and going, like, yeah, yeah, this type of stuff is good for clicks on the internet.
Like, dude, either take on my argument or don't, but don't fucking insult me like that.
Like, this isn't really my argument, especially when I'm right.
And then you're going to sit here, Mr. Collecting CNN checks is going to tell me I took the easy path for money.
So it's like, no, Dan, and look, by the way, I don't hate Dan Matterman.
Dan's a funny comic.
That's the truth.
Dan's a very good joke writer.
I'm not going to deny that just because he pissed me off the other day.
He's very funny.
But Dan, you were fucking literally, he's a dinosaur.
He's been doing stand-up comedy for decades before I ever started.
He was in all the clubs before I started stand-up comedy and he's done nothing with it.
Nothing.
He's still running around for spot pay.
He needs that spot pay.
If Noam gives him three spots this weekend instead of two, he's psyched.
Okay.
So like, don't sit here and tell me I'm wrong because I got an audience going.
And sure, I developed my audience in the podcast scene.
Okay.
So what?
Like he said something the other day.
He goes, We're not even in the same business.
I'm a comic.
Condemning Anti-Semitic Rhetoric00:13:43
And I was like, no, we're in the same business.
I'm just successful at it.
Like, I don't know.
Yeah, right.
Like, what do you want me to say, dude?
It's like, okay, you want to say, oh, I built my audience by talking about politics on podcasts.
Like, okay, sure.
I did.
That's right.
You know what?
A lot of those people still come out to see me do stand-up, and I'm really good at stand-up.
So, okay.
So I'm selling tickets.
What do you want me to say?
I mean, it's like, it's like when people say to me, you're only huge because of Joe Rogan.
Like, yeah, exactly.
And Seinfeld was only huge because of Carson.
I go, okay.
What do you mean?
Yes, that's right.
The most important gatekeeper liked me.
That's how it works.
Okay.
Anyway, I do want to just mention this because I do, I'll say this, and then this could be the last thing we say on it.
I understand.
Look, I think Noam, and at the risk of psychoanalyzing my, you know, doing some of that myself, but I think this is fairly reasonable to say.
I think that Noam's interest in this is largely identitarian driven.
You know, like Noam is Jewish, and so he wants to support the Jewish state.
And he is very concerned about the rise of people being hostile toward him and his group.
And I get that.
I'm not like, that's understandable.
I am coming at this from the opposite point of view.
I'm giving my feelings despite my own in-group preferences or in-group, you know, like identitarianism.
I'm going like, yeah, I also don't like that it's the Jewish state that's in this position.
I also don't like that there's a rise in hostility toward Jews.
However, despite that, I got to call balls and strikes here.
That's kind of like where I'm coming at this from.
Is there a rise of people saying Jew-hating things on Twitter?
Sure seems like it to me.
Sure seems like it to me.
I see it all the time, much more openly than ever before.
And I will admit that I don't like that.
It's kind of a disturbing trend to see.
I also see other disturbing trends.
You know, if I'm being completely honest, does it disturb me that so many people, even in my own mentions, are like trashing Jews?
Yeah, it does.
I do not like that.
I do not think it's right.
I do not think it's good.
I do not think it's wise.
Like, I, there's all, I have lots of negative feelings about that.
If I'm being completely honest, I'm far more disturbed by how many Jewish people I see coming at me with the most vicious smears.
Like that to me is like far more concerning.
Like it's like, wow, just because I have a principled problem with women and children being slaughtered with a group of people who have been occupied and dominated for 60 plus years now being slaughtered while they are helpless, because I have an issue with that, you're going to call me a Nazi?
Like a fucking a rabbi is going to call me a Nazi because I oppose Nazi-like crimes.
That to me, I find actually substantially more disturbing than some jerk off 25-year-old saying, fuck the Jews or something like that.
But that's just my opinion, somewhat subjective.
I also find the dehumanization of the Palestinians to be completely, you know, it's like, look, this is what happens when there's war.
It's like there's these mass efforts to completely dehumanize the other side.
And I think all of those are wrong.
I take the Darrell Cooper approach on this.
I love the way he said it in the prologue to the World War II episode.
And he was just like, listen, whenever you start feeling that way, that this entire group of people is evil, he's like, that's not you.
That is some evil spirit acting on you.
And it's the same evil spirit that's responsible for the worst atrocities in human history.
But I am sorry.
It is wild to see the supporters of Israel demand that you label other people as anti-Semites, including people, say, like Candace and Ian, who bend over backward constantly to say, I'm not talking about all Jewish people here.
I love Jewish people.
Most Jews are regular people and have nothing to do with this.
I'm talking about this tiny cabal of people.
And then Noam or other people like this will turn around and say, oh, you hate Jews because you blame 9-11 on the Jews.
It's like, well, no, he didn't blame 9-11 on all Jews.
He said Israel was involved in 9-11.
By the way, hey, here's a wild thought.
All the times you've heard me on the biggest platforms ever talking about the terror wars and al-Qaeda and the war in Iraq and Syria and Libya and Somalia and the war in Gaza and 9-11 and all these things.
Have you ever heard me say that Israel did 9-11?
No.
Okay, that's because I don't believe that.
I've seen the evidence that people have.
I think it's actually that people really overplay it and it's really pretty weak.
And there's just no conclusive claim.
There's like, there's no conclusive case here that Israel was involved in 9-11.
Now, if it came out tomorrow that Israel was involved in 9-11, it wouldn't exactly blow my mind and destroy my worldview, but it's not something I believe.
I don't think that's right.
But I also don't think it makes you a Jew hater to say that, especially when you're going out of your way to be like, no, no, no, I don't have a problem with Jewish people.
I think there's this cabal within Israel, within the Mossad, who's working with elements in the CIA who did this thing.
That's not an anti-Semitic statement.
It's not.
And in the same way, talking about black crime in Chicago doesn't make you someone who hates black people.
Look, Noam, by the way, called Tucker Carlson an anti-Semite.
Tucker Carlson, the guy who said the Jews precisely zero times ever.
Tucker Carlson is actually an anti-anti-Semite.
He's not, he's, I've had multiple conversations with Tucker Carlson about this.
I'll say he's not just passively not anti-Semitic.
He's actively anti-anti-Semitic.
Okay.
But this is the craziness to me of the blind spots.
And I just have to play this clip.
I can't help myself.
But these are the blind spots of Noam Dwarfman as he is calling me out for not taking on what he calls my team.
He goes, you won't criticize your own people.
Okay.
This is something that happened while they were having a conversation about me, which, you know, truth be told, the only reason I was watching.
But here was my buddy Aaron Berg was on the Comedy Seller podcast.
And of course, the topic was about me and not even anything I said, but about how bad I am because of what Candace Owens said or something like that.
Here's the clip.
And I want to see if you guys can, I play this on one of the members only episodes, but I want the whole audience to see it here.
So here's the clip.
See if you notice anything in here that rings any alarm bells.
Now, just to be clear, the topic here is me and how I'm not condemning anti-Semitism, how I'm not condemning the excesses of the anti-Israel side.
Let's play the clip.
It horrifies me.
And they know very well that Dave's Jewish.
Yeah.
And don't fucking think for a minute that they don't realize that it's advantageous to them to have a Jew on to have a Jew on who gives them their kind of stamp of approval or acceptance.
Yeah, and he's not the only Jew that is on that side, I'm sure.
No, but he's the most prominent.
Right.
It's not about Israel.
It said it's not about Israel.
And there's a difference.
And I didn't want to interrupt you, but I do think that this distinction is very important.
There is a difference between being critical of the Israeli government and being anti-Israel.
But what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to segregate the whole Israel issue.
And the point is that they always tell us being anti, being critical of Israel is not anti-Semitism.
Being critical, and they're right.
But there's also a huge overlap.
Yes, there's a lot.
But I'm saying that's fine.
If you want to be the champion of the cause, being critical of Israel is not anti-Semitism.
Then at some point, you have to be ready to identify anti-Semitism.
Otherwise, you're the one connecting them.
So now what it is, is when you call somebody an anti-Semite, it's like what happened four years ago when you would do racial jokes or you would do satire and people be like, that's racist.
And it got to the point where so many people said, that's racist.
Racist just became a term where it's like, just stop with what you're doing.
That's nearly what's happening with anti-Semitism now.
And it's been prevalent for so long.
And now it's rearing its ugly head way more than it ever had.
I mean, the 40s, of course.
But it's a huge thing.
That being said, he's probably thinking, and I don't know how Dave thinks, but I bet he's thinking, look, freedom of speech is at the base of all of this.
These people are allowed to have their thoughts.
Candace can have her thoughts.
Jake can have his thoughts.
The same way as when I go online and I see IDF videos where they're fucking massacring people and I get excited about it because I'm like, oh, that's payback.
And when the Pager thing dropped, and I was like, I got excited about the Pager thing.
Yeah, but the whole theory of free speech, and I absolutely, I'm not asking any of these people to be censored.
I even wanted to have a Holocaust denial debate at the underground years ago.
And I remember people thought I was crazy.
How would you cater that?
Kosher.
It's that the principle of free speech is based on the presumption that you're going to have people battling things out in the marketplace of ideas.
I'm not asking Dave.
All right, just stop it right there.
Stop it.
Mike, I appreciate it.
We're done.
We're done here.
Okay.
So if you could just get past the point at the end that no one gets completely wrong, the whole principle of free speech is not predicated on the idea that you're going to have debate.
Free speech is a value in and of itself and that it's wrong to rob someone of their ability to speak.
But regardless of any of that, that is one of the benefits of free speech, but it's not predicated on that.
But can you believe this, Rob?
I mean, is this not like just the most insane thing ever?
And by the way, to just preface, I love Aaron Berg.
I've known Aaron Berg for like 20 years.
He's a friend of mine.
I'm not saying anything bad about him, but could you imagine being in the middle of a conversation where you're criticizing me for not calling out the bigotry on my side?
And you're sitting there and you're making the point that the whole thing about free speech is that you got to push back against bad ideas.
Aaron Berg in the middle of all of this says that he gets excited when people are being massacred.
And no one even thinks to give it some pushback.
No one even thinks like, wow, that's a fucked up thing that you just said, dude.
In the middle of a war where women and children are just being fucking massacred.
You're saying it gets you excited to see that and no one at the table bats an eye.
I mean, tell me how I'm supposed to take the calls for me to call out the excesses of the anti-Israel side seriously when this is what goes on there.
No one, it's such a blind spot that no one even sees that as like, what a fucked up thing.
I mean, I'm sorry.
There is nothing that Candace Owens or Jake Shields have said that is as fucked up as that.
I don't know.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think so.
This would be the equivalent of them saying, I watched October 7th and I just got so excited watching these people being massacred because I was like, yeah, payback.
Like that is like Hamas level attitude.
You know what I'm saying?
And literally nobody even bats an eye.
Noam himself just launches into a thing about how the point of free speech is to battle down bad ideas and doesn't even think to himself, oh, maybe since I'm calling out this guy, it's incumbent on me right now to say, hey, I'm going to distance myself from that a little bit.
Now, just for the record, and I just want to be clear about this, I am not condemning Aaron Berg.
I am not calling on Noam to condemn Aaron Berg.
If anybody ever came at me the way Noam comes at me about condemning Jake Shields and Candace Owens and said, you got to condemn Aaron Berg for what he just said, I'd say, fuck you, because I don't have to condemn anyone on demand.
That's not how this works.
Okay.
You don't own my time.
I don't have to do that.
It's just that the hypocrisy is so overwhelming.
Like, come on, while you're calling on me, while you've been on a months long crusade to the point that I'm a topic of discussion on your podcast and this is the topic, you just let that shit slide and don't even see the issue with it.
This is what happens when people get bogged down into their own identitarian worldviews, that they simply just have blind spots.
They just don't even see that like they're totally contradicting their own stated goals.
That's the last I'll say.
I'll give you the final word, Rob, and then we can wrap up.
I got nothing on that on the closing remarks, but I think we hit the fair criticisms all around.
And who knows?
Maybe we'll move on and scream at someone else to start condemning people.
All right.
Maybe that's the best that could come out of this.
All right.
Thank you guys so much for listening.
We'll catch you next time tomorrow.
Tomorrow, I got Keith Knight coming on from the Libertarian Institute.