Dave Smith and Robbie the Fire Bernstein dissect the "End of Democracy," arguing Democrats lose credibility by gaslighting voters on migration while ignoring border control demands. They critique left-wing protests for alienating support, highlight a rightward shift among immigrant voters favoring Trump, and analyze Elon Musk's deleted Epstein tweet claims alongside Kash Patel's opaque investigation stance. Ultimately, the hosts conclude that liberal theater and dishonesty have eroded public trust, leaving the party unable to address law and order or win back conservative voters. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Reno Hotel Deals00:04:14
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All right, let's start today's show.
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 coming to us from Parts Unknown.
How you doing, Rob?
You know, I'm somewhat enjoying being on the road and somewhat ready to go home, but we're porching, baby.
Very good, very good.
I've heard great things.
I've seen on social media great things about the shows and stuff.
So that's good.
The shows have been killer.
It's some of the sleeping on couches and cot beds and the this and the thats that we'll get to.
But I'm enjoying being out here and porching Las Vegas on Sunday.
That's at the Wise Guys Comedy Club, Salt Lake City all weekend.
I'll have my nice own hotel room to shit in.
So I'm looking forward to that.
And then Reno this Thursday, followed by Montreal, Catskills, New York, Rochester, and something else next weekend.
Very good.
Very good.
You know, I was thinking about doing yesterday.
I ended up having a, we missed the episode yesterday.
I will try my best to make that up.
But I, you know, I've been like a few things on my mind about libertarianism and the libertarian party.
And I was thinking about maybe just doing an episode on that.
But it's funny anyway.
I got into, I got into a little bit on Twitter arguing with Chase Oliver and then arguing with the guy Steven, who's the current LNC chairman.
And I've just been thinking a lot about like, you know, the viability of the Libertarian Party, libertarianism in general.
Just kind of some of my thoughts on this.
I thought maybe I would do an episode on.
It's just funny, as you mentioned right before we started that you're on your way to Reno next.
I was like, oh, yeah, I have not been to Reno since 2022 for the Libertarian Party National Convention.
I don't know why.
It just seems to be like a lot of things like reminding me of this, this topic lately.
But it is, yeah, it was a fun convention.
Reno, not a lot going on.
Not a lot going on in that town.
Although I still get emails from the hotel that I stayed at when I was out there constantly.
You know, when you give someone your email address and then you're like, you're going to be a part of my life for a while now, but they're trying hard to get me to come back to Reno.
They got some great deals on hotels.
I wish I could recreate that week in Reno because for $50 a night, I got like the hotel suite at one of those casinos that's just empty midweek.
There was a tub in the room.
There was a couch in the room.
There was this mountainous views.
And I thought at the time I'd be like, man, I'm going to go live in Reno, but I've never seen that deal again.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, it is always the, it's the casinos will really be generous with their deals sometimes.
I remember it used to, when I was like a kid, when I say kid, I mean like my early 20s, I remember we used to get like, you know, deals for AC and go out there and like gamble.
But you'd stay in like a suite that was like built for a king for like $14 a night or something.
And then, you know, it's because they know you're going to lose every other cent that you came in there with, which we did very consistently.
We had the same thing in college.
And then I'll quick kibbitzing around so we can break down the world events.
But my friend at the craps table started just pestering the guy, like the floor manager or whatever for comp breakfast, which was a great comp breakfast.
He was just being a real Jew and giving the guy a hard time for some freebies.
And somehow we just accidentally ended up on some premium list and we would get free rooms at the Bergata all the time when we were just broke in college.
So we would go down there and not even gamble and just stay in nice hotel rooms and feel like kings and not do anything.
Just drive down and sleep in a bed.
Trump's Winning Presidency00:04:49
It's pretty great.
Pretty great.
Can uh can't argue with freebies.
Yep, there you go.
Okay, guys.
So by the way, we are the new site is up and launched.
Partoftheproblem.com has been revamped and it should be like a better experience and everything like that.
So thank you very much to all of the people who have who have signed up already.
And I will try my best to get to some of the questions here.
I was able to get that up here.
Okay.
So where do we start with?
You know, I was thinking there was a clip on Bill Maher show that, or I guess this is his podcast, that I thought was very interesting.
And I, you know, it kind of goes, I've been thinking a lot about over the last few days, as I'm sure many people have, about the rioting in LA and kind of the political ramifications from all of this and where this is going to go.
I, you know, we got into a little bit on our last episode, what kind of we suspect might happen.
But anyway, it's just, it's been interesting to watch the kind of people like Bill Maher, who are, you know, liberal, progressive types, but center left in Bill Maher's case, who have certainly been aware of, let's call them the excesses of the left, from at least that would be their perspective over the last few years.
And it's been very interesting, like more broadly, to watch people try to figure out how are we going to deal with Donald Trump?
How are we going to like, you know, criticize him going forward?
How can we effectively oppose Donald Trump?
All of these are like kind of questions that are baked into the cake of what's been going on for the last, you know, few months in America.
And so anyway, I wanted to talk about this because I thought this was, there does seem to be, and I'm sure you've noticed this, Rob.
It seems like there was a playbook that was kind of developed around 2016 of how to deal with Donald Trump.
And every single play in that book has failed.
Just like objectively, like it failed to stop him from winning the presidency the first time.
It failed to impeach him.
It failed to put him in jail.
It failed to assassinate him.
And it failed to stop him from winning the presidency once again.
So now the question is like, what do we do going forward?
And it seems like it's almost like they keep looking back into this bag of tricks.
And they're like, well, maybe if we move things around a little bit, and then I pull out this same old trick and you're like, that one already didn't work.
I just see a lot of this going on.
Anyway, let's hear from Bill Maher.
And then I thought we could discuss this.
But here is Bill Maher kind of explaining what keeps him not a Republican.
Let's play that clip.
Because I recognize the craziness on the other side, too.
And I call them out on their shit just as much.
It's just that if I had to balance the two, the left shit, yes, is still less fundamentally, existentially threatening.
And it actually affects ways.
The left just got too, like the woke shit got too far.
And it is bad.
And it has affected lots of people.
Just not as much as if we never really have an election again.
And a lot of the other stuff.
What do you mean by that?
Like I just said.
There'll be no more.
What do you mean there's no more elections?
When a Democrat loses, like Kamala, like Hillary, they go away.
They understand there's a winner and a loser in elections.
You think if Trump lost this last one, he would have just accepted it?
Probably not.
Yeah.
Right.
I don't think that's a right issue.
I think that's just a Trump issue.
Trump is.
Like if JD Vance loses, if he runs next year, he'll probably shake hands and move on like a gentleman.
But it's Trump.
That's possible.
That's what you get.
That's possible.
But Trump is the right now.
Yeah.
But I think that's just a Trump issue.
That's just what you get.
That's a very, that's a very sanguine way to look at it.
I mean, that's possible.
I'm not going to say that's not possible, but expecting a very rosy future based on that, that may not be.
All right.
Now, obviously, there's, you know, I just find that clip to be fascinating, Rob.
I can already see you get why I wanted to discuss this because, look, it's just, it's very little.
He didn't say that much there, but there's so much that's baked into this worldview.
Voting Myths and Harris00:07:28
And I'll tell you that that reminds me, you know, I can't even, this was so many years ago.
It might have even been before you were on the podcast, Rob, but there was this one time where, you know, I think it was around when Rand Paul was first in the Senate.
But, you know, so it was at the beginning of my podcasting, but maybe this was like 2012, 2013 or something like that.
And Rand Paul had been talking about he had been making an attempt to try to get some black voters in, you know, like he was trying to appeal to the African-American vote leading into his 2016 presidential campaign, which he had, you know, he had pretty much planned on running for president, I think, from after his father lost in 2012.
And, you know, he was talking about like, you know, economic free zones in, you know, hard hit inner cities.
And he was talking about, you know, getting rid of mandatory minimums for first offenders and drug crimes and stuff like this.
And Joy Reed did a segment at, she was at MSNBC.
She was new at MSNBC at the time.
And she did a segment where she was talking about how Rand Paul had, he had voted for or he had voiced support for voter ID laws.
And Joy Reed goes, well, you know, you could talk about all this stuff about how you care about the rights of black people.
But if you don't care about our most central fundamental right, which is the right to vote, then you're never going to win black people.
And I remember doing this like response to it at the time.
I had like no audience at a tiny little show, but I remember doing this response to it where I was just like, think about how crazy it is to think that voting is the most central, most important right.
Like, you know, don't get me wrong, voting is okay.
First off, it's not like a natural right.
It's a constructed right of some sense.
But it like really, like, think about that.
Like, voting is something that most people don't do.
Like, it's certainly true in non-presidential years.
The majority of the voting age public does not vote in like non-presidential elections.
I'm not, it might be close to like 50% who vote in presidential elections, but like a huge portion of people just don't even exercise this vote.
And to be completely honest, look, like feel however you feel about representative government.
If there's to be a government, perhaps there's an argument that people should get a say in that government or whatever.
But like really, if I were to take away like your freedom of speech or your ability to vote every few years, is there even a contest if I were to take away your freedom to trade or to work or to travel or like any of these things?
Are you telling me that?
Anyway, it's just there is something in the liberal mind that makes like elections and voting like the most important thing.
And so that's kind of goofy that that gets exposed here.
But then you'll also see that Bill Maher, it's like this fantasy land where, okay, he can recognize, he's got to be able to recognize, and he talks about it quite often, how batshit crazy the Democrats are.
But then he's got to find one thing that no pun intended trumps all of that, you know, to like justify still being on that side.
And so it's election denying.
We're never going to have elections again.
If Donald Trump hadn't won this last time, he wouldn't have conceded the election.
You're like, and then what?
Like, why, why is this important?
It's, it's, look, even if you want to say it's not healthy for our society, it's not conducive to like harmony for the candidate to not accept the results of the election or something like that.
Like, fine.
But Donald Trump refused to concede the election in 2020 when he was in power.
But yet we still had the election and he still got on a plane and went back to Mar-a-Lago and sat and bitched and moaned for four years as Joe Biden was president.
So what would have happened if Kamala Harris had won and Trump doesn't accept?
Okay.
Kamala Harris still would have been president.
And does anybody, including Bill Maher, does anybody genuinely believe that we are not going to have a presidential election in 2028?
And why would you believe that?
And why would you believe that somehow Donald Trump, what, he's just going to hang on to power?
Like there's just, the idea is so ridiculous.
Donald Trump doesn't, in order to pull off what they're describing here, you would have to, this would be a legit coup and Donald Trump would have to have like the military on his side to keep him in power.
That's simply just not going to happen.
There's no chance of it happening.
So it's just, again, it's just so ridiculous.
It's like you have to make up this, it's like, it feels almost religious for someone like Bill Maher, but you have to make up this kind of like this mythology that this completely not real threat is a very real threat and therefore it undoes any of the potential threats of the other side.
Any thoughts, Rob?
Yeah.
And on top of all of that, the Democrats are crybabies also.
There was the incident with Gore Lieberman.
They certainly contested an election.
And there was also Hillary Clinton after she lost to Donald Trump.
She was trying to say that it wasn't legitimate because Trump was a Russian asset or whatever.
I don't even remember what that was, but she was definitely.
Hillary Clinton actually tried to get the electoral colleges sent back to the states so that they could change their votes.
She tried all types of stuff after the 2016 election.
So first, as you pointed out, Donald Trump did leave office when he left the last time.
There's zero indicators right now that he's going to go full dictator and stick around at the end of this term.
When he lost to, if he had lost to Kamala, there's no indication that he would have somehow taken over the government and still have been president.
And the Democrats are crybabies when they lose as well.
I call it the racist old lady syndrome, which is if there was a racist old lady and you opened up your door and there were a bunch of people beating her up, you would instantly take the old lady's side because you're like, why are these people beating her up?
But then if they stop beating her up and all of a sudden she starts screaming racist obscenities, you go, oh my God, that's a racist old lady.
And I think that's the media's problem with Donald Trump: just leave him alone.
And by the way, he might be, he might turn out to be right on some things, in which case we'll end up with a better country.
But if you guys just scream nonsense at him all the time, he's like the racist old lady getting beat up where you have to take his side because you guys are just screaming nonsense.
There's plenty of stuff to criticize Donald Trump about right now.
But if your only claim for why you're supporting Democrats over Republicans is because you think that there's a risk of Donald Trump being a dictator and not leaving office, then you don't have any criticism of Donald Trump.
Protests and Lives Matter00:12:50
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Yeah, well, that's right.
That's right.
Because you have to invent something.
And like, look, there are things to be alarmed about and concerned about.
Like, I really, and I do not know enough about this.
I get maybe this is the next thing I got to do a deep dive into, but like the Palantir stuff is very concerning to me.
Like, this is like very bizarre.
And I saw JD Vance's defense of it was like just totally unpersuasive to me.
His defense of it was basically like, ah, the government has all this information already.
So like, if we give it to Palantir or not, you know, they still have all of it.
It's like, okay, so get rid of it.
Stop having it.
Yes, I agree.
It was a problem that the government decided to collect all of our information and abolish privacy.
That's a problem.
The solution is not giving it to Peter Thiel.
That's not the solution to that problem.
The problem would be to get rid of it and abolish those government agencies that were holding it and criminally hold the people responsible who created these programs to begin with.
The answer isn't to like give and like, you know, even I've seen like people making calls for Palantir to be collecting data so that we can deport illegal immigrants or something like that.
It's like, listen, dude, this is a dangerous game to go down.
And like, I do not, you know, I'm, I'm certainly, especially after seeing just in the 21st century, seeing all the immediate post-9/11 justifications for why we need this war on terrorism and then watching them try to turn that domestically On the American people and go, oh, there are domestic.
The language of domestic terrorists was used to describe moms and dads at school board meetings who were against their kids being propagandized with like gender insanity.
It was used for people who not didn't even enter the Capitol building, but maybe just protested the 2020 election.
So like I certainly am very keenly aware of these kind of government programs being justified, their creation being justified by, oh, we're only going after this one group of people and then it being used to really broaden that net and go after many other people.
So it's like, no, it's not that there aren't any legitimate concerns or criticisms, but when you start, you know, like Gavin Newsom had some address the other day where he's like, oh, this is it.
This is the moment.
The war on democracy has been declared.
And you're like, wait, the war on democracy?
So now the right of people to riot in the streets, that's what you mean by democracy?
Is Trump a threat to that?
Because how the hell are you possibly going to like drum up public support over that?
But the idea that elections are over now is just, I mean, look, this was a group who settled on we're going to go with Donald Trump was recruited by Putin in the 80s or something like that.
So I guess maybe far-fetched doesn't really register with them, but that it is so far-fetched and so removed from reality that it's just, I don't even know what to say about it.
Like, this is what you're going with.
It would almost be like, it'd be like on the level of if the official, not just like what some people were saying, but like the official like opposition to Barack Obama was that he's going to institute Sharia law in America.
You know, and I'm not saying there weren't like some fringe voices who said that on the right, but like if that were really, if that, if that was what Mitt Romney or Donald Trump was standing up and running on, oh, this guy's about to institute Sharia law, I think as many liberals would just roll their eyes at that and go like, this is just not based in reality at all.
That's, it's literally, to me, has as much merit as your criticism of Donald Trump being that regular elections will no longer be held in the United States of America.
And do you really think Barack Obama is going to start wearing a burqa as he's the wife in that relationship?
I don't think so.
Yeah, it was always, it was always so opposite.
The guy is clearly not a fundamentalist Muslim.
He's clearly very socially progressive.
But yeah, you know, it was like, like it was, there was always that stuff where it was, and people used to make fun of it, but like he was supposed to be the first Muslim president who was like instituting gay marriage and stuff like that.
It was like, yeah, there's, you really got to pick which one of these you think is the real story here.
Anyway, obviously the chaos in Los Angeles is still going on.
Have you been watching?
Have you seen any of the images out of there, Rob?
I mean, I've seen some fun images of burning cars and whatnot.
I was in San Francisco the other day and thought it was surprisingly pleasant.
And so I am curious out in LA, clearly there was violence and rioting and I support Donald Trump's decision.
But thus far, I was hoping to see California as more of a war zone, but I'm here at the moment and at least the areas I am are more than relatively peaceful.
But yeah, there was certainly a violent riot in LA in particular areas and Trump, Trump was just fighting.
I've seen some cars on fire and some other lunatic images of people holding Mexican flags and whatnot.
You know, there's something about that, which is really, I'll tell you, and I've noticed this through just to show that I'm not like, you know, I'm not letting my own issue, you know, like, okay, obviously, like, I'm an immigration restrictionist and I've had debates about this subject and been talking about it for years now.
But there is something about the way the modern left protests.
And this was true during the BLM protests.
This was true during the Palestinian, the pro-Palestine protests.
It's true during this immigration protest where, and this is something, at least it seems to me, like, this is something that's really changed over the last 20 years or so.
And was not, at least it seemed to me it was not the case previously to that.
I remember, I remember going to, there was an Iraq war protest or like a George W. Bush protest.
Forgive me if I've told this story before on the show, but I was maybe, so I was, I'm born in 1983 and we invaded Iraq in 2003.
So I was like 20 years old.
And I remember they had one in Union Square.
And I was just, you know, I wasn't super political at the time at all.
This might have been 2004, 2005.
I might have been like 21, 22 or something like that.
But so I went over to it and I remember like talking to one of the guys who was an organizer or a volunteer or something there.
And they were like very lefty, kind of hippie-ish people.
And, you know, I was just asking about it.
I was like, oh, so what are you guys protesting?
And he was like, he just started explaining it to me.
And he was like, look, like this war, and he didn't really know all his stuff, but he knew some stuff.
And he was like, well, look, the war was launched based off lies.
The George W. Bush wanted this war because he says they tried to kill his dad.
It had nothing to do with 9-11.
Like he used 9-11 to launch this illegal, aggressive war.
And they instituted the Patriot Act.
He goes, they don't need a judge's warrant now to spy on you.
And he goes, that's un-American.
That's the whole idea of America is that we're a free country.
And you know what I mean?
You have due process.
You have rights.
You have all these.
And I remember like being like, no, that seemed pretty reasonable to me in my whatever, not completely developed mind.
And now that my mind is completely developed, not up to a normal person's, but more so than it was at the time.
You're like, yeah, you know, that still was a somewhat reasonable point.
And the way he was approaching it was like, hey, dude, like, this isn't what America is supposed to be.
We're supposed to be this other thing.
And we're kind of, and I remember being, you know, just being like, okay, yeah, that kind of resonated with me.
Something has happened with these protest movements post kind of like the rise of wokeism, where these protesters will, it's, you almost wonder, you're like, what is the goal here?
Is your goal to turn everybody off?
Like, I would think the goal of a protest would be to gain support for the issue that you're protesting against, like gain support in opposition to whatever thing you're protesting against.
Because you'd see with these like Black Lives Matter protests, where they'd be like, they'd be like cornering some like white couple at a cafe and getting in their face and demanding that they chant Black Lives Matter.
And you're like, how do you think that's going to play to the viewer?
And then after a couple of months of these protests, you see support for Black Lives Matter just absolutely plummeting.
And you're like, wow, shocker.
You know, like, turns out, yeah, this is like burning down somebody's city doesn't really make them want to be on board with your cause.
This was something that, of course, I was critical of over the last couple of years of during the some of the pro-Palestine like where they be, you know, preaching for open communism, globalize the antifada, you know, celebrating the Hamas terrorists and stuff.
And you're like, what are you doing here?
Like, are you working for the Mossad?
What are you doing?
You're trying to like, it's just crazy.
And again, you know, you've got in this protest movement, and I've seen several images of this, you have what appear to be Mexican Americans holding up Mexican flags saying this is Mexico.
And you're just like, you're like, yo, dude, like, what this is, what you're taking an issue that you're already losing on.
Public support is not for you.
And you're not, you don't have any like thought of like, you know, it reminds me of, if you ever read Black Lives Matter, I don't know if it's still up there.
It's been years since I read it, but Black Lives Matter, the official organization, they had like a list of demands.
And I swear to God, Rob, if you read through it, like the first three are like kind of reasonable.
You know what I mean?
Like the first three, maybe you wouldn't completely agree with all of them, but like you'd be kind of like, these are pretty reasonable asks.
It's like, number one is like accountability for killer cops, you know, okay, all right, yeah, I see where you're going.
And number two would be like, abolish the cash bail system.
And you go, all right, I don't know exactly how I feel about that.
It is a little bit messed up that, you know what I mean?
Like if someone's got money, they're, they get the presumption of innocence, but if you don't have money, you essentially have the presumption of guilt.
All right, there's a fair, but you know, it's like, so it'd be like three things like that.
And then number four would be like, abolish the nuclear family.
And you're like, you know, you lost me on that one.
You know, like that's like, you really, that, that's a lot to try to sneak that into your movement, you know?
And you just see these things where it's like, you, so you're not going to come out and say, hey, we're for due process before deportations.
Something that maybe at least has a chance of resonating with a number of people, but you're going to go, abolish America.
Like that's your starting point.
It's like, all right.
I don't know.
Doesn't seem like the best way to sell your ideas to me.
It's just something.
It's, I don't know.
It's just, it's like they're so divorced from reality that they just can't even begin to approach something that maybe could catch on.
Yeah.
Immigrant Voters in 202400:15:16
Just a small sample of that is the couple of videos I saw of people that were busted vandalizing Teslas.
There's a left confidence that you think you're so justified and so many people are on board with your cause that when they suddenly get in trouble for it, they can't even believe that anyone was taking issue with what they were doing.
COVID would be another great example that there were some people who would have been more than comfortable with more rights being taken from those that weren't getting vaccinated because they were so convinced that you were killing grandma and that you were not contributing to society and that you were the reason why COVID was still going and that you were actually a risk to their lives.
And it was not government overreach that was destroying their lives.
It was the few individuals that weren't compliant and not doing their part for society.
I wish I had that liberal confidence because it's nice.
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Yeah, really?
Well, it's, I guess, one of the things that's kind of shocking to me is that I think a lot of that confidence that you're talking about is born out of, you know, like it's born out of an echo chamber.
It's born out of an environment where everybody agrees with you and everyone around you agrees with you.
And so there's really nothing to like indicate that this, you know, there's, there's going to be a lot of pushback or something like that.
And, you know, as Jonathan Haidt has demonstrated, where he's done some really interesting work on this, where he's demonstrated that this is an opinion, this is like just borne out that leftists are leftists have a much tougher time understanding right-wingers than right-wingers have understanding leftists.
So like if you ask a right-wing or a conservative to explain what leftists believe, they can do it with reasonable accuracy.
But if you ask a left-winger to explain what right-wingers believe, they often completely struggle.
Like they cannot steel man the other position.
They have to just say, they believe in being racist or whatever, you know?
But so if you come out, when if you come out of an environment, like let's say you went to a liberal, a liberal arts college and you've had like, let's say your parents are liberal.
Every one of your professors are liberal or leftists.
All of Hollywood is liberal or leftist.
You know, everyone in the media is liberal or leftist.
It's kind of like, that's all you see.
That's all you know.
If you were being woke on a college campus in 2017, it was like everyone was with you.
The agreement was unanimous.
And so in that environment, I do understand, you know, at the beginning of COVID, you've got the entire media apparatus, the entire government apparatus.
Everyone is saying, yes, follow the science.
You are correct.
They are killing grandma.
I guess it's more striking to see it now when Donald Trump has been re-elected, wins every swing state, wins the popular vote.
His central issue has always been this immigration fight.
And yet you still are not thinking to yourself that like holding up a foreign flag and claiming that this land, which is under the jurisdiction of the United States of America and has been for quite a while, is Mexico.
You don't see how this is going to not be effective messaging.
That to me is just more surprising in some ways.
But yes, you are right.
That confidence has been there throughout all of these protest movements.
And it's stunning to me to see it.
All right, let's go.
Let's play.
Here's Eric Swalwell, of course, Democrat establishment hack and one of the kind of chief anti-Trump members of Congress throughout his first term.
Here is his thoughts.
A lot of best resources for understanding the Chinese agenda.
That's for sure.
He's going deep cover to get that job done.
Yes, of course, also had an affair with a Chinese spy, which that is true.
Here is Eric Swalwell commenting on the Gavin Newsom versus Donald Trump showdown.
Make Donald Trump react to you.
And that's what Gavin Newsom is doing.
That's what he's doing with his rhetoric, his presence, and the lawsuits that he continues to bring.
And that's what I've done with this guy.
I was an impeachment manager.
I was one of the leaders with Adam Schiff in the Russian investigation.
I testified in the Colorado case to keep him off the ballot under the 14th Amendment.
And I have the only lawsuit that remains for what he did on January 6th.
So you have to be on offense.
I recognize as a former prosecutor, a son of a cop, a bully, and bullies only respond to one language, and it's the language of strength.
And that's what the governor is bringing to him.
And that's what we must continue to do to put him back on his heels.
You have to make Donald Trump.
All right.
Well, what do you think, Rob?
Surefire.
You see what I mean about how they can only just like go back into their bag of tricks and like just shuffle things around and pull one out.
I'm the guy who led the impeachment.
How'd that impeachment go there, Swalwell?
Oh, yeah, he was acquitted.
Here's my list of dishonest failures.
Here's all the ways that I tried to bog him down with bullshit and I wasn't actually successful.
And once again, this is exactly my racist old lady talking point.
When you're the dishonest one, when you come forward and you act aggressively towards Donald Trump in a dishonest way, where you try and get in the way of him actually representing the people that voted him in, nobody likes it.
That's why he's back in office.
It's because of the lawsuits you brought against him.
It's because you arrested him.
It's because you guys showed up at Mor-a-Lago.
It's because there was an assassination attempt.
That's why he's back in office.
And so for firstly, he's such a nobody and nothing, but to say with pride, hey, look at all the things I look at all these dirty little weasel tricks I tried to pull on Donald Trump.
And sure, none of them worked yet.
It's almost, you ever watch Wacky Racers?
There's that weasel character and the entire, I don't know if you ever watched this.
This is a dumb cartoon.
It predates us.
It's from the Hanna-Barbera era.
But there's the, I don't even remember the name.
He's got the big mustache and the whole thing, instead of engaging in the race, he's just trying to pull tricks on everyone else so that they lose and he never wins.
He's got the dastardly dog laughing.
That's who this guy is in the cartoon of U.S. politics of look at the little weasel tricks I've tried.
And sure, none of them have worked yet, but I'm going to represent the Democrats and continue to be dishonest because that's the only way it hasn't worked yet.
And that's exactly what I'm describing with the beating up a racist old lady.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, that's, yeah, no, that's exactly right.
And, you know, it's funny to watch these guys.
Now, again, I look, none of us have a crystal ball, and we don't know exactly how all of this is going to play out.
And I'll caveat with like, perhaps Donald Trump does overstep here and it ends up backfiring and hurting him politically.
But to frame what's going on in LA as if Gavin Newsom took the fight to Donald Trump, it's like, dude, Donald Trump is he has picked the fight on his terms that he wants, which is what politics really is about.
And Donald Trump, I think in this example, has demonstrated mastery of politics, whether you like it or not.
But, you know, a lot of them are saying, like, oh, this was just to distract from the thing that was going on with him and Elon Musk, or he's, he's doing something, you know, it's an overreaction or something.
It's like, yeah, all of that's probably true.
Doesn't matter.
It's beside the point.
Every politician wants the news cycle to not be on the story that looks bad for them, but be on the story that looks good for them.
That's what they're all doing.
That's what politics is.
And yes, he's effectively done that.
Like, that's now what the story is.
The story is now what's going on in LA.
And you could sit here and say that the riots didn't get as out of control as the 2020 riots did.
Obviously, that's true, but what is the implication there that we're to sit back and wait until they do?
And then and only then are you allowed to respond?
Which, like, let's get real.
They would still have the same reaction if he did wait that long and then responded.
The point is that Donald Trump has picked a fight against sanctuary cities and riots.
That's the ground that he's on right now.
That's the strongest political ground for Donald Trump to be on.
Guess what, America?
If you haven't received the message yet, open borders and riots are not popular.
They are not winning issues.
Donald Trump has positioned himself to be on the other end of that as the guy who's opposing that.
This is a winning issue for Donald Trump.
And if you don't believe me, then just take it from the most trusted name in news, CNN, of course.
But anyway, listen, this I did find interesting.
This is CNN from their own horse's mouth.
Here's CNN talking about what the polling looks like on this issue, specifically from immigrants.
And this is actually very, very interesting polling.
So let's play this clip.
Start off on the fact that immigrant citizens, immigrant voters, foreign-born voters have gone tremendously to the right on this issue in 2024 and 2025 versus where they were in 2020.
Closest to a trustworthin immigration.
You go back to 2020.
Democrats get this, held a 32-point lead on this issue.
Immigrant voters were in the Democratic camp.
Jump forward to 2024, 2025.
Look at that shift, a 40-point shift to the right among immigrant voters.
Republicans now lead on this issue by eight points over Democrats, more so than any other group that I could find.
The group of voters who became more hawkish on immigration were in fact immigrants themselves, immigrants who are registered to vote in this country.
So that's on that issue.
How about how they feel about kind of traditionally, historically, about Donald Trump?
Yeah, so, you know, you see this shift and you go, what is going on underneath the hood?
Well, take a look, Donald Trump.
You remember when he first ran back in 2016?
Immigrant voters are one of his weakest bots.
But look at this.
Trump's vote share in presidential election among, again, immigrant citizens, those who are registered to vote.
Look at this.
2016, he got 36% of the vote.
You go to 2020, 39% of the vote.
Look at this.
In 2024, all the way up to 47% of the vote.
Some polls I looked at had him barely losing that vote.
Some polls I looked at had him barely winning that vote.
Again, there is no block of voters that shifted more to the right from 2020 to 2024 than immigrant voters.
And Donald Trump, at least in some surveys, actually won that vote.
On average, it's about equal.
So there may be all this stuff, right, about undocumented immigrants and Trump being harsh on them, but immigrant voters themselves have increasingly liked Donald Trump and have increasingly moved to the right on immigration into the Republican camp.
Well, then on that, what you're getting at, how immigrant citizens, voters feel about people in the country illegally.
Yeah, and this is where it all kind of comes together, Kate Baldwin.
Look at this.
The net favorable rating, immigrants who are here illegally among immigrant citizens, again, those registered to vote.
In 2020, look at this.
Plus 23 points on the net favorable rating.
But look at where we were in 2024.
Minus six points underwater.
So immigrant citizens have become increasingly unfavorable in their views of those immigrants who are here illegally.
So, I think it's so important when we're talking about this debate from a political angle to separate those out who are undocumented immigrants versus those who are here legally and those who are citizens and those who are voters, because that group of voters has felt increasingly distant from those immigrants who are here legally.
And again, when we're talking about this, at least from a political angle, this is why Donald Trump feels so comfortable.
Because, in fact, amongst the group that you would think that would be most opposed to this, in fact, they become increasingly favorable, not toward just towards Donald Trump, but towards a Republican point of view on immigration and becoming distant from those immigrants who are here illegally.
All right.
So, look, I am not telling anybody to blindly trust polls.
There's obviously a lot of problems with kind of big polling.
When you see a 40-point swing, essentially in four years from any demographic group, that is something worth paying attention to.
That is just unheard of.
A 40-point swing in one demographic, in this case, it's immigrants.
And look, even at the numbers that he ran through there in the presidential election, what was it?
He got 27% to 29% or whatever.
There was essentially no difference between 2016 and 2020.
This difference all comes between 2020 and 2024.
And what happened in those four years, right?
It was Joe Biden.
It was Joe Biden having record high numbers of illegal border crossings in his that just, as we've said before on the show, you cannot overstate how much this pushed the country right on immigration to the point that even immigrants here, but you know, Rob, it kind of makes sense when you think about it.
I mean, why would somebody who immigrated from South America be happy to have people standing on their burning cars saying, this is Mexico?
Border Crisis and Nutrition00:05:30
Isn't that what you were escaping when you wanted to come here?
And so it is just something.
It's like, as you see this fight being led, look, like if you're picking a fight and the fight is about something that's deeply unpopular and you're on the wrong side of the popularity of that issue, you would think that would be something to think about.
But you might go, ah, geez, you know, this could end up not working out so good for us.
And again, I thought that this was something that, you know, I thought that Governor DeSantis in Florida did a great job when he made the fight about teaching gender insanity to under third graders and drew, you know, he kind of drew the Democrats onto his turf and then made them fight about that.
So much of politics is about making your winning issue the issue that you're going to fight about.
And it seems to me that that's what Donald Trump is able to do here in California.
And, you know, you look at it that when even CNN has to admit that like this is a losing issue for us, I just don't see how this doesn't end up working out as a political victory for Donald Trump.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
The better approach for the Democrats is, as you said, people do not like widespread illegal immigration.
They would like to see control over the border and they'd like to see a little bit of a correction from what happened under the Biden administration.
And they want to see law and order in the cities.
They don't want to see rioting.
So I think getting mad at Donald Trump for making sure that there's no riots and for enacting an agenda of deporting people that cross the border illegally, you're not going to win that fight with the American people.
The fight that you will win is the human stories of people that have been here for 10 to 20 years that have been working jobs and paying taxes.
If they start getting rounded up and they're being deported, that's a winning fight.
If you want to start doing human interest stories of the guy at the pizza shop or the guy who was working next to people on a construction site, everyone liked him and that guy getting deported, you will change the immigration policy to force Donald Trump to not be focusing on those individuals and to trying to screen not deporting individuals that at least local communities seem to appreciate them having around.
The problem with the Democrats is they don't want to actually force Donald Trump to do anything that's good.
They just want to make him look bad no matter what.
So they don't actually care about good outcomes or they don't care about, hey, let's work with you on this policy and make sure that it gets implemented in the way that we like.
They would rather try and just have political theater of failures that they can scream about.
And so that's why, you know, they were trying to win with the, hey, this is authoritarian because they love that message of sending the military in here.
But they're not going to win these storylines because Americans don't want total disorder in the country and they don't want widespread illegal immigration.
And they're a little bit sick of the Democratic Party and the liberal media lying to them about these issues.
So I just, I agree with you that they're not that I want to give more tips to the Democrats, but they're picking the wrong fights here.
Well, I do, I agree with what you're saying.
I do think that there's one of the dynamics that makes the, that puts the Democrats in a very difficult position, even to make that sell of what you're arguing there, is that so many of them, like I'm sure Swalwell, I mean, I'd have to go double check, but I'm sure I'm right about this because he never does anything other than just repeat the official party line.
But that they through the height of the worst of the migrant crisis in Joe Biden's presidency, the standard talking point for almost all of it, I mean, it was for the first three years of his administration, at least.
In the fourth year, when it was an election year, they kind of pivoted and changed to like, oh, yeah, this is a real bad crisis, but it's Donald Trump's fault for killing this bill or whatever.
But for the first three years, it was there is no crisis.
That was their talking point.
Epstein Statement Analysis00:12:37
There is, I don't even know what you're talking about.
Everything's fine.
No, that's just like what the racist nativists say.
There's no crisis.
Everything's fine.
And so you really do lose a tremendous amount of credibility when the last time your party held power, they not only didn't do anything to solve this crisis, they just gaslit you and told you there is no crisis.
It's a tough game.
Even if you were just going to pick those like maybe unpopular examples of deportations, it's a very tough game to convince people that you're not just on that side.
You're not just like, okay, you're just trying, you know what I'm saying?
But here they're not even trying.
They're not even trying.
They're just sitting here saying, like, what?
I don't know.
The idea of executing deportations is terrible and horrible.
And whatever, you know, violence in the street is somehow justified or can be downplayed.
And, you know, again, I've seen like a bunch of the coverage over the last, you know, 48 hours or so.
And so much of it, like, you know, much like in 2020, I saw even Jimmy Kimmel.
Oh my God, just doing more.
You know, so I just never watch any of those guys, but I saw one of his clips going viral.
It's just so pathetic and cringy that they're just sitting there, just again, just downplaying.
He literally uses the term mostly peaceful, mostly peaceful, as if that's like, look, I don't know who still needs to hear this after all of these years, but mostly peaceful is not a defense of anything.
It just doesn't, everything is mostly peaceful.
OJ Simpson was mostly peaceful.
If you take away that one night where he double homicide, you know, where he did the double murder, aside from that, he was mostly peaceful.
Even this is crazy, Rob.
Even the day that he killed those people, he was mostly peaceful through that day.
There was really just that one half hour where he was cutting heads off.
The rest of the day, he was mostly peaceful.
But you can't, like, I don't know.
It's just not the way things work.
If you're having, like, you could maybe, if you had a protest movement nationwide, and in every single state, there were no incidents of violence.
And in one state, there were like, you know, like a handful of violent cases.
Like, maybe you could plausibly say, hey, look, this has, but you can't characterize this as a violent movement.
But when you have a protest and there's fires all over the place and there's stores being looted and there's people being assaulted, that's not a peaceful protest anymore.
Like, yes, that, that violence now characterizes the event.
Sorry, that's just the way things work.
Like, I don't know what to say.
You can't like, it just doesn't work that way.
And, you know, good luck.
Good, good luck with that propaganda that this is, oh, he's overreacting.
It's mostly peaceful.
It's like, dude, there's enough images of violence there.
There's enough images of property destruction that it is reasonable to characterize the thing as a riot.
Sorry.
I don't know.
Here, any, if anyone wants to put some questions in the chat, I will try to get to a couple of those before we wrap up.
I did see someone posted that, yes, I am.
I'm going on with Andrew Wilson at 5 p.m. Eastern.
That's exclusive to Rumble, I believe.
But yes, I'll be on there.
So that should be a fun time.
Let me see if there's anything else here.
If you have a question, go ahead and throw that in the chat now, and then I will try my best.
Headline tomorrow: Dave Smith calls OJ the most peaceful person ever.
Yeah, something like that.
Getting taken out of context is par for the course.
But yeah, I am it's uh who's better, blacks or Mexicans?
It's a good question.
Rob, you want to tackle that one?
I'll leave that to the chat.
Leslie Rex, they're all good people, all fine people.
Dave, thoughts on Trump not denying Elon's Epstein tweet?
Well, I mean, my assumption there would be that Donald Trump probably doesn't want to bring any more attention to that tweet than it already got.
I'll weigh in on that one.
Sure.
Elon Musk's statement was that Donald Trump was in the Epstein's file.
And we already saw footage of Donald Trump hanging out with Epstein.
So the idea that anyone partied or was with Epstein, maybe even met it down, that doesn't necessarily mean that they're all like, I could see myself, you get an invite to a party at a party, you're like, ah, shit, I'm at the wrong party here.
And you go back and you close your door or whatever.
So I'm just saying his statement was not, I know Donald Trump is a pedophile or I know that Donald Trump had a criminal relationship with Epstein.
His statement was just he's in the files.
Now, is him being in the files also the reason why they're being held up, which makes it a more juicy story that it's bad politically for Donald Trump to be bringing any more attention to unwinding the Epstein story?
That's possible.
I'm just saying that it was a, it was like, it was almost a Donald Trump style statement of making something that sounds really big, but there's actually, you're not really saying much.
So, you know, I understand why he did it.
He was pissed off with Donald Trump, and it might even be an accurate claim that Donald Trump is in the Epstein's file, but that doesn't mean it was an actual claim that Donald Trump was engaged in criminal activity with kids.
Yeah, I mean, it's also, look, it is the case, and I'm not trying to defend anybody, you know, particularly here, but there's been lots of people, both with Epstein and with Puffy, where there's been people I've seen, you know, like who are like associated with them, who have been asked in interviews, and they've been like, yeah, look, I went to parties, but I never was a part of like any of that stuff.
And that is possible.
Like, I'm sure that is the truth for a lot of people.
I'm not saying anything about anyone specifically because who the hell knows, but like, I do remember when the Louis C.K. Me Too story first broke out.
I remember a lot of people would like be like, all the comedians knew.
They all knew and they protected him for years.
And, you know, like, I was never friends with Louis C.K., but like, you know, I don't know.
Yeah.
The truth is that I think all of us had heard rumors, but I've heard rumors about things that turned out not to be true.
And in fact, the rumors were not exactly what ended up coming out.
I had heard rumors that were actually much worse than what actually happened or seems to have happened or worse than what anyone ever accused him of.
And so like, you are like, it is quite possible that there were people around Jeffrey Epstein, even who had heard rumors about what was going on, but like, you don't know for sure and you weren't necessarily part of it.
Again, this is why you'd want to have the tapes, you know, maybe not released, but whatever.
You'd want to have the people who were on the tapes released.
You'd want to have the files unredacted released so we actually know what's what.
Anyway, I agree with your point.
It should be noted as Natalie did point out in the chat there that Elon Musk did delete the tweet and he later apologized.
Kind of a vague apology, but he kind of apologized for like taking it too far when he was fighting with him.
So, you know, it is what it is.
I don't expect there to be a big public reconciliation anytime soon between Trump and Elon Musk, but take it for what it is.
I don't know.
You know, I summed up that argument on Twitter of Elon basically going, I'm richer than you.
And then Donald Trump going, not for long, motherfucker.
And, you know, Elon Musk has definitely helped him get into office.
And that's part of politics.
Sometimes you use people and send them packing.
And, you know, the storyline of Doge was quite an exciting storyline on the campaign trail.
And Elon Musk backing Donald Trump was an exciting storyline, but it doesn't seem like Donald Trump seriously wants to reduce government spending in any capacity.
And that at the time, at this time, you never know with Donald Trump.
It's hard to bet against him and see how he changes.
But at least on that one topic, it really doesn't seem like he's got any interest or concerns about the way that our government is spending money.
That's why he likes low interest rates and will push for big bills.
And I'm sure for Elon Musk, having taken the risk for his company, taking that job, having his company be hated by the Democrats now, and then to have Donald Trump not even go with the slight cuts that were recommended or found by Doge, you know, it reasonably pissed him off.
And he realized, oh, you can't have fights with Donald Trump in public because it's going to cost, it's going to cost you too much personally.
It's just not worth it.
Yep.
Yeah.
I think that's just about right.
All right.
Here, I'll ask this one.
And this will be the last one.
This is Kash Patel seemingly doesn't know basic facts about the Epstein situation.
Total embarrassment.
Well, more of a comment than a question.
I would say I think that is the most generous interpretation of it.
That he doesn't know the facts.
I don't think that that's the case at all.
I think he knows, but I would agree with your characterization.
That was such an interesting Rogan appearance because, you know, I don't know.
They're good at like just kind of keeping the volleyball up in the air and teasing the storylines.
So, you know, he starts teasing for Fauci that the American people have a right to know if he was involved in criminal activities.
And now there's new evidence.
We have a phone and we're going to look into the phone.
Can't tell you any specifics.
Can't tell you if anything good's going to come from it, but the American people have a right to know.
So what's interesting is that there's at least a change here of government not lying to you and saying, hey, that's the Lord of science and you all have to listen to him.
So there's something interesting about someone in government willing to go there.
There might have been criminal.
That's already such a shift to go from Lord of Science to there might be criminal activity here and the American people have a right to know.
That's already a paradigm shift, but then you still end up in the exact same place of, well, we're taking it seriously.
We're as concerned as you are.
We have new evidence, but I can't share any of it with you.
And then particularly on the Epstein storyline, where he's still, hey, I don't, I can't show you the tapes, but let me tell you, I've seen the tapes and that guy definitely killed himself on the Epstein storyline at this time.
Also, once again, it seems like the administration is not serious about having any transparency about what took place there.
Yeah, no, 100%.
And it's interesting to see, you know, like it's, it's, it's easy when you're the flamethrower on the outside who's talking about all the criminals in government.
But then as soon as you get in there and it's kind of like, oh, yeah, no, I know that this looks shady, but there's nothing.
I promise you, there's nothing there.
Now, look, I thought, look, I've already seen the FBI like reopened the investigation into the cocaine in the White House.
You know, it's just how much can you allow your intelligence to be insulted?
I'm like, oh, yeah, dude, that's the real scandal.
We better get to the bottom of that.
And like, what?
So what?
What if we found out it was Hunter Biden's cocaine?
Okay.
Like, what?
What?
Why does that even really matter?
You know, it's like when you got this other stuff here that you guys will never really investigate or will never really disclose the information to the American people.
It's just an insult.
And yeah, you know, kind of what's to be expected, but that doesn't mean it's not still disappointing.