Dave Smith and Robbie the Fire Bernstein analyze shifting public opinion on Israel-Palestine, citing 972 Magazine data and FBI raids on John Bolton as evidence of political targeting. They debate flag burning as a property right versus free speech erosion, contrasting it with ineffective government crackdowns while advocating for Second Amendment solutions to crime. The discussion concludes by critiquing Donald Trump's Intel investment as an illogical step toward socialism that undermines domestic manufacturing potential and exposes the U.S. to catastrophic military risks against China. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Messed Up Schedules00:13:42
What's up, what's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
I am Dave Smith, and of course, it is so good to see the face of Robbie the Fire Bernstein.
How are you, sir?
Oh, man, I had the most amazing run of porches, me and BK Chris.
I think it was like 12 hours of driving, four cities, and we had a good time.
How was the mothership?
I was incredible.
Just, you know, just in as every time I've been there, it was just like a perfect weekend.
God damn, that club is so great.
If you're in the Austin area or if you're going to be in Austin at any time, try to get tickets to the comedy mothership.
You do got to plan it a little bit in advance because they fill up quick, but it is just the best comedy club, man.
It was a lot of fun.
I am exhausted, but it was, you know, it was about as doing in 2025, doing a weekend headlining the mothership and doing the Joe Rogan experience is like, I don't know.
It kind of feels like you're like, that's like the Super Bowl of comedy.
You know, it's just like, it's the best thing you could ask for to do as like a working comic.
And yeah, it was, it was all great.
I'm really excited.
They haven't, at least as last I checked, they haven't put the episode out yet, but I'm assuming today it's going to be out at noon or maybe noon Texas time, whenever they put it out.
But yeah, I'm excited for you guys to see it.
I think it was a real good one.
The shows were great.
The hanging was great.
My wife came out with me.
And so we had a great time.
I love Austin.
It's a great city.
Some great food.
Took her over to Three Forks.
Next time we're in Austin.
And Rob, we're going to go grab a steak at Three Forks.
Damn.
God damn, is it a good steak?
Highly recommend that too.
If you're looking for a nice steakhouse, Austin, Texas, Three Forks.
Mine.
Yeah.
She can't cut.
She can come, but she can't eat.
I can only afford two steaks, Rob.
You get Dave on the home rights.
But yeah, but so it's a lot of fun and it's good to be back and stuff, but and a bit of a lack of sleep there, but great, great time.
So yeah, and a lot's been going on.
So I'm excited to.
I can recommend that there's only one place better than Rogan's Club, and that's PubCaz, the private bar owned by the original porch.
This weekend, triple show.
Firstly, I got Philly Friday night.
There's only 10 tickets left because I booked a 20-seater yard.
So very limited capacity.
And then we're playing Pubka's stand-up live concert from the Shedcast Boys and then the bring back the smoke out bug out.
So come hang, everybody.
Beautiful, beautiful.
And Rob, after this podcast, you'll go rest up that voice of yours.
Sounds like you've been doing some work.
Clone, dudes.
It happens.
You know, too many shots at the back of your throat.
It fries it out.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I hear you.
I knew it.
We all knew it was going to catch up with you eventually.
You can't just live this lifestyle forever.
So, all right.
So there's a bunch of stuff I want to talk about.
I will say, you know, up front, look, man, my apologies about the podcast schedule being all types of nuts for, you know, I know I say this way too much, but it is, I am working here, man, and it's hard.
It's just hard to do when you got so many things going on.
But we will be, well, we will get back to it.
We got a bunch of shows for you this week.
And obviously there'll be a whole lot to talk about, including today.
However, if you are like, if you're a fan of the show, if you're a fan of kind of our, you know, broader world, got to say, this is about as literally Scott Horton's episode with Lex Friedman just came out, 10 and a half hours of Scott Horton just breaking down everything.
I'm about three hours into it, and it is so good, dude.
It's just like you actually sit there and realize, and I'm somebody who's like, you know, I don't know how many hours of podcasting I've done with Scott Horton over the years, but 50 or something, like hours or something.
But you realize when you see him in a 10 and a half hour spot that you're like, oh yeah, you know how everybody else thinks three hours is long form podcasting?
It's actually really just, it's been shackles around Scott Orton this whole time.
Like he really at 10 and a half hours, he can breathe a little bit.
And there's still stuff he didn't talk about, but it's just excellent.
And then, of course, me on Rogan should be coming out real soon too.
So, you know, sorry, our schedule has been a little messed up, but it's not a bad time to be like a fan of this type of podcasting.
There's a lot of good stuff going on.
All right.
So I guess this isn't exactly the lead story of the show.
I mean, I guess maybe it could be, but I did just think, you know, you had even, you had sent a bunch of stuff over topics and all of them were stuff.
I was like, yeah, we definitely want to talk about that.
And then at the end, you were just kind of like, and there's some more, you know, Israel's doing some more horrible shit as always.
And I don't have that much to say on it other than just it is, yeah, it's more of the same.
Like, I don't know.
I read antiwar.com every day.
And every day Israel killed 70 people or something like that.
Every day there's some new horrific story.
The last one is particularly horrible.
But I would, you know, I said when I was on Rogan's show, and, you know, maybe this was a little above my bridges to just make this declaration, but I felt comfortable being the one who did it.
But I just said, you know, as far as I'm concerned, this, this debate is over.
Like, I'm not, I'm not really, I just kind of felt like the last few times I've been on Rogan, I mean, the last one before this was a debate, obviously.
And then the few times before that, it was like, I kind of felt like I'm making this case.
Like I'm trying to persuade you, Joe Rogan, and you, the, the listener, that what Israel's doing is wrong and we should not be, you know, funding it or supporting it in any way.
And then this time, I almost just feel like the argument's already over.
We're not really debating anymore.
I know I don't have to convince Joe of this shit.
And I know I don't have to convince anyone listening to this right now.
Like it's just, we're way past the point that there's even a debate.
We've, whatever it means to have a national conversation or to have a debate, the truth is there's, there's just been no issue like this one.
It's just been debated.
I mean, how many, dude, Rob, how many Israel-Palestine debates have there been over the last two years?
Like on just in general.
No, no, no, I just mean in general, not forget me.
Like just in general, how many Israel-Palestine debates on huge platforms with millions of people, which or hundreds of thousands of people watch like countless, right?
No, I've been in 25 of them or something like that, but that's just me.
There's been a whole lot that don't involve me at all at all.
And it's like after this entire, like the debate's just been had as much as it could possibly be have been had and on as big shows as there are on the biggest shows that there are.
And the overwhelming reaction, I mean, right now, I don't know by any metric, look at the polling on it.
Look at the comments and the comment section on every one of the debates.
Literally every one of them.
I don't think you can find anywhere, any nook of the internet where the pro-Israel forces aren't just getting dragged.
And, you know, what can you say?
Just put two and two together.
You've had the debate.
The debate has been had more than any other topic on bigger platforms than any other topic.
And look at where the American people are.
Dude, everybody, there is like almost no demographic other than boomer Republicans who still support Israel.
There's in fact now the point, I just saw some polling this morning where support for Palestine is higher than support for Israel.
And then when you get into like the younger demographics, it's like starkly higher than support for Israel is.
So the, you know, the war is unpopular.
The government itself is unpopular.
Our supporting them is enormously unpopular.
And at this point, it is like, I don't know what to say, Rob.
It does, you know, like I've said this for a lot of years now, but there was always like, you know, people get real hysterical about like Holocaust denying, you know, or if anybody says anything about that, you know, like even someone like Darryl Cooper, who never said nothing about the actual Holocaust, but just said that maybe it was Churchill's fault, you know, that this thing wasn't just a war in Poland and instead turned into the giant catastrophe it was.
And that you see the reaction to that.
And I've always kind of had the attitude that like, I don't know, I just don't get that.
Someone denying the Holocaust doesn't get me like, oh my God, I'm so angry.
I think it's silly.
I think it did happen.
And, you know, it was horrible.
If you're telling me like, I don't believe something that happened in the early 40s actually happened, like, I don't know why I'm supposed to be so exercised by that.
But watching this in real, it does feel like the people who are still defending Israel at this point are, you're actually watching it in real time.
Like they're sitting here writing.
Did you see this, Rob?
I swear to God, I kept, you think I'm making this up.
Did you see that in the free press, Barry Weiss's publication are wonderful, totally neutral on this issue.
They wrote a piece debunking the starvation in Gaza.
And I'm not making this up.
One of the cases, they go, see, they tried to tell you that this two-year-old was starving to death, but actually she had prior injuries when an Israeli shell cracked her skull open.
And so like, yeah, she wasn't eating after that and ultimately starved, but like it was from this.
And you're just like reading this, and you're like, that's it.
That's the defense.
That's what you're going with.
Well, in that case, we ought to support.
It's like, it's, it does feel like it's getting to a level.
Literally, what's going on right now is that there's starvation.
There's reports of starvation all throughout Gaza.
And then the pro-Israel people debunking it are going, yeah, it's only the people who are already sick.
It's, it's the special needs kids that are starving, Rob.
So like, don't get, don't get all emotional about this, which is, by the way, what always happens when there's starvation.
The most vulnerable are the ones who die first.
But anyway, once you just get into this realm, like you're like, what is that?
This does feel like you're, it's, uh, I, Norman Finkelstein said it to Benny Morris, and which I think this does hold particular weight when like two incredibly Jewy people are talking.
But when he just said at one point to him, he goes, you're nothing but a Holocaust denier.
And I do get what he meant by that.
Like it does seem like, yo, you're living, you're making the excuse, you're doing the exact same thing where you go, oh, no, you know, I know you see pictures of, you know, starving corpses or whatever, but that's not actually evidence of anything.
Like, okay.
All right.
Anyway, that's just how it feels to me.
Like it feels, and, and obviously, I'm not even trying to like lay out my case right now.
I've been laying out my case for two years and I've done it in long forms and many public debates.
I'm just saying like, it's almost like, in a sense, I'm just talking about the PR of the whole thing.
Like it's over and Israel lost the PR war.
Rob, you were, and I mean this, dude, I think you were the first person I know who called it, like immediately after, it might have been October 9th when you were just like, there's no way Israel can do that.
Like as soon as their move was to turn off the electricity and the water for the whole strip, you were like, oh, dude, they're screwed.
You can't do this in 4K.
You can't do this like with this type of technology.
People are going to watch what you're doing.
And that just turned out to be completely the thing.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
So anyway, if you want, Natalie, you could put that tweet up on the screen if you have it.
If not, it doesn't matter.
I'll just, I'll just read it.
But it wasn't this, this is what I sent to you because you had mentioned the this latest hospital attack, Rob.
So this was Benjamin Netanyahu's actual, after Israel bombed another hospital.
I thought they had gotten all of them, but evidently there was one medical center that was left in the south of Gaza there.
And Israel just bombed and killed a bunch of some journalists and civilians and just, you know, what they do every day, this time at a medical center.
And Benjamin Netanyahu tweeted, Israel deeply regrets this tragic mishap.
War Against Civilians00:06:29
Like, I just don't even know what to say about this.
It's like, that's all I wanted to read of it.
I don't even care about the rest of this nonsense that he said, but he just called it a whoopsie-doo.
Don't you find mishap to be such an insulting, like also this point in the war, Rob, with all the other context that you just go, oh, that was whoopsie.
Sorry.
Like, okay, look, who the hell knows?
In this one particular strike, I don't even know.
Maybe it was a whoopsie, you know, like maybe they didn't mean to hit this exact area.
This shit does happen all the time in wars.
But in the context of this intentional war against the civilian population, this destruction of a people for two years, you think, just in terms of PR, you look at something like that and you go, oh my God, I mean, these guys are just.
So this is anyway what I meant when I was just like, the debate's over.
And I said on there, like, I'll do more debates if it makes sense or it's an interesting one.
I'm not like saying I won't do it.
I'm just saying in the broader sense, this debate is over and the American people have decided we reject this shit.
Just like open borders, just like trans and kids, just like any other topic that you could think about throughout like American history, where there was just a point where this debate was just over.
There was just a point where like segregation versus integration was a debate.
And then at a certain point, it just wasn't anymore.
Like it just wasn't.
Like it's like, I'm not saying there's no one left who still believed that blacks should be segregated into a different part of town, but the debate is over.
The broader conversation, it's the American people have rejected that shit.
And I think this is on that level at this point.
Yeah.
And on the topic of starvation, so, you know, just last week or maybe it was two weeks ago, but Nets and Yahoo was basically trying to categorize that as anti-Jewish propaganda on the level of blood libels.
And then you had a big, big report that came out that basically said, no, there is a famine or starvation.
I think they said famine conditions in the region.
And then I went to fact check that.
And apparently it's from a pretty credible source that also uses analytic tools to come to those conclusions that would not be fabricated.
And then, you know, Netanyahu was saying, well, the pictures you're seeing from the journalists are these kids with diseases.
And, you know, there could have been some bad journalism of like a child with leukemia.
And I think there might have even been an example of that in the New York Times.
But some of the kids have diseases because of the conditions that are there.
So that doesn't give you a kids got like rickets or something because of malnutrition.
And now it's a- No, that's what they said.
Yeah.
They used brickets as an example in the Barry Weiss.
I don't know if Barry Weiss wrote it, but it was for her publication for the free press there.
They're like, oh, they said he was starving, but he had brickets.
Like, yeah, but rickets.
I'm sorry.
But you're like, rickets, but you get that from malnutrition.
So what the hell is your point about?
This is too.
And by the way, even that one that you're referring to, I know I read because you're talking about the one, it was one of the pictures of the New York Times where they showed like a starving kid, but then they found that the kid's brother wasn't starving.
And so they asked, and then they found out that like, yes, the kid had preexisting medical conditions, but the mother said that the doctors told her is because she was malnourished during her pregnancy.
So like, again, it's just all these things.
They're like, this is not, this is your argument.
This is what you got left.
I mean, come on.
Oh, by the way, there was one, one other piece of news since last we've done a podcast was that 972 magazine had a big piece and they've done some really great reporting throughout this war and they're a real like legit fucking, you know, publication.
And they had this piece, which I thought was kind of interesting because you know how I don't know if you've seen like through several of the debates that I've had.
I guess it was maybe it was just the Josh Hammer debates.
I don't remember, but he would bring up that at one point saying that like Israel has a one-to-one civilian to militant ratio in this war, which is really a great ratio.
And I've always, I mean, through these debates, I don't know if I ever really got, but I always just laughed in the person's face when they say that and go, this is all ridiculous.
It just made that guy Spears or whatever, who I debated on Piers Morgan, who literally failed.
How would you feel if you didn't eat breakfast this morning?
Like it was unbelievable to watch, just like was literally incapable of dealing with what I was saying to him.
That guy, he's the one who came up with some study that said it was one to one using all these bullshit numbers.
You know, it's like the worst type of like activist data.
I know Christina Hoffsummers used to call the feminists that when they would come out with all their numbers, you know, one in four women on a college campus is raped or sexually assaulted.
And you'd be like, this is like activist data.
You wanted to get this number.
You conducted a study intentionally in a way to get this number.
Like if you, not to go into too much of an aside, but like the study that got you to like one in four college women are raped, like the way they did it was so horribly unscientific.
Like they put out a thing like they didn't do a random sample.
They put out like a bulletin like, do you want to take a survey on sexual assault?
And so you already totally poisoned the well of who responded to that.
And then it turned out that they defined like someone leaning in for an unwanted kiss as sexual assault.
And you're like, oh, well, okay, if that's what you're talking about, then yes.
Anyway, but it's shit like that.
But so anyway, so 972 magazine just obtained some, you know, I'm sorry, I was reading this the other day, but they obtained some document from like the Israeli defense from the government that had was basically saying that their number of 20,000 combatants that they were bragging about, they had reassessed it to 8,000.
So that take all those numbers and now totally change all those numbers around and it starts looking like a lot more what the thing obviously is, which is that like, yeah, actually it's it's a just a destruction of the civilian population.
So anyway, I was, I'll, maybe we'll see if I can find that article and I'll put it in the show notes for today.
But I got to do a better job of just committing things 100% to memory, but I think I saw last weekend that like 70% of the civilian infrastructure has been destroyed.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It was something like that.
Yeah.
It's the yeah, the entire place has been has been destroyed.
It's really quite horrific.
Classified Information Scandals00:15:14
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All right, let's get back on the show.
Okay, so let's switch gears a little bit from that because I really do want to spend some time talking about what I find to be a very, very interesting story that also has happened since the last time that we've done an episode together.
And this, of course, is John Bolton getting raided by the FBI, having his house raided, which evidently is in connection to some type of classified documents case.
Although it was also reported that there was like an NDA violation involved in it, too, which of course would not be as serious as leaking classified documents.
But this is, you know, this is a pretty big deal.
And it is one of those things where it feels like perhaps, you know, there's like an interesting broader story.
Obviously, there are, there's the trend of, in some ways, the Joe Biden administration really, even though the Obama administration had begun the process of framing Donald Trump, and even though the intelligence agencies kept this frame job going, you know, RussiaGate for three and a half years, there was something about Russia Gate as much of a line step as it was.
Nobody seemed to ever be floating out the idea that like Donald Trump was going to go to jail over it.
It was the question was whether he was going to be impeached and removed.
I shouldn't say that.
Let me walk back.
Let me make a correction to that immediately.
It is true.
John Brennan, the head of the CIA, was on TV saying he's going to be let out handcuffs.
So maybe there were some people who had hopes of that, but they didn't actually do that.
They didn't actually take it to that level.
And ultimately, the investigation found like, yeah, we don't have any evidence to charge him with anything.
Joe Biden's administration really did take it to a next step when they raided his house and when they really started putting him on trial for nonsense.
I suppose you could say the Mueller investigation did.
Look, they did things.
They did raid Roger Stone's house and they did go after Paul Manafort or people like that.
So I guess you could say that that's where it kind of started.
But anyway, now I guess this isn't that crazy because it's not the first time, but there still is something pretty damn huge.
I mean, this is not, it's not as if he's raiding Barack Obama's house or even like John Podesta's house or something like that.
He's Donald Trump's FBI raided his own National Security Advisor's house.
That is pretty wild.
So I don't know, Rob.
What are your thoughts on the John Bolton situation?
All right.
Well, you know, this is what drives me so nuts about Donald Trump is he does a very good job of walking the gray areas, which is Donald Trump did not kickstart the party of going after people for taking classified information.
If anything, the last administration decided, hey, here's a good tool for going after people.
So, you know, let's say Bolton's an enemy of Donald Trump.
He's an enemy of this administration.
He's still constantly on the news saying that Donald Trump's an idiot.
He's always advocating for more war.
So if there's an individual that you would like to see get taken down who probably should get taken down, it is Bolton.
And the last administration kind of made it fair game to go after people for removing classified information.
And if he did, in fact, have classified information in his house, he's probably not supposed to.
Blah, blah, blah.
Go after people for real crimes.
I'm sure that at some point in time, Bolton is in some capacity has been bribed by defense manufacturers.
I'm sure that there's a scam that I can't prove to you with these major book publishers of that people get paid for what they did in administrations.
Their payouts are on giant book deals for books that never get read.
I can just see that that's a very, because it's the playbook.
Everyone leaves and they get giant paychecks for books.
There's some sort of a scam going on there of figuring out how to hand bribe money to politicians off of these books.
Those would be fascinating and great crimes to go after.
When you're just going at like to celebrate this, it's no different than all the Democrats who did not care what they were going after Donald Trump for.
They were just like, I don't like the guy, go after him.
And to me, that just, I mean, listen, maybe it's a net win for us because it cleans up corruption of government because now you never know if you're going to fall on the bad side of the administration and you got to, you know, you got to be more careful.
But for the most part, it's just corruption when you're going after select individuals for things that everybody's doing and aren't like, you know what I mean?
If he sold government information to the Chinese, yeah, then that's treasonous.
If he's got folders in his house and it turns out that every government official mishandles classified information and everything has a class fight on it and they're all doing it and we probably either have to change what's considered classified materials or be more careful in the way we handle it, then it's just, I'm not saying Donald Trump's 100% wrong because he didn't start this playbook, but it's just more of like not going after people for real things.
Yeah.
Well, look, a few things I would say, I largely agree with you, but maybe I'd add a few things, like a few caveats to it.
Like, look, as far as I'm concerned, the way I look at it is that Joe Biden going after Donald Trump for mishandling of classified documents is, yes, you're absolutely right.
It became, look, this is the easy way to get someone in Washington, D.C., because it's like they're all guilty of this.
And that, of course, became a big talking point from Trump supporters after that because they found him on Biden, too.
Yeah, he did the exact same thing.
It's so stupid to be prosecuted.
Of course, Hillary Clinton had originally said that there was no classified material on her private email server.
Even James Comey, when he decided not to press any charges against her, said that's not true.
We found a bunch of instances of information that was classified there.
They just didn't charge her with it.
So it is one of those crimes where they could always charge everybody with it.
It's like, there's like something like, double check me on this.
I sort of got, I think I read this was that there's over a billion documents that are classified.
Like there's so much classified material and so many things that never even need to be classified just get classified because that's the U.S. government's MO.
You know, we keep things secret.
Why would we tell you about them?
We're always err on the side of doing things in secrecy.
And so, yes, you are right.
This becomes a thing that can be corruptly applied.
But the thing is that we're already way past.
Look, the good guys always get prosecuted for this, right?
I mean, this is if you think about like Bradley Manning or Edward Snowden, I mean, that's what they're getting in trouble for, right?
Is that they were leaking classified information.
And even if that classified information in both cases was of crimes, you know what I mean?
Like was it was information that the government was committing crimes.
That doesn't matter.
Those crimes don't get prosecuted, but the crime of leaking classified information does.
And Bradley Manning was tortured until he became Chelsea.
And sorry, I shouldn't, I don't mean to be disrespectful, but and Snowden still is basically forced to stay in Russia.
So, you know, again, I guess I'm just saying that, like, if this is now, so like the major change really here isn't that the good guys get credits.
It's just that, like, oh, now this can be used on, I thought it was for forever.
The rule was this is only used on people who are threats to DC's power, not to people who are there advocating the expansion of it.
So there is a part of me where I also go, like, listen, I've always said on the show before, Warhawks aren't people.
John Bolton doesn't have rights.
I don't respect that at all.
So it's not, I guess, my issue with this isn't even the slippery slope, although I do think you make a fair point.
Like it's not, it's not clear that this is an improvement that now, you know what I mean?
Like people can just go after their enemies whenever they want to on this nonsense.
And I certainly don't care about John Bolton or something bad happening to him.
Like that's just, he's the guy has inflicted so much evil on the world that whatever happens to him is too little.
But the thing to me is that it does just feel like what's going on here is part of this bigger trend of trying to do cleanup from the Epstein fallout and trying to, and you know, it's like this is almost always what it's like things in DC, they start with these great promises and then it always gets whittled down.
And by the time you get what you get, you're like, oh, that was it, you know?
And so I don't even think they're really going to go after John Bolton.
I don't think John Bolton's going to end up doing time or anything like this.
I think this was a move to, you know, kind of bully him, humiliate him, something like that.
And, but it's also like, you know, as soon as the Epstein thing, there's this like this uproar from Trump's base, who's furious about the Epstein thing and never getting all the stuff we were promised on that.
They immediately pivot to Russia Gate to be like, hey, look at all this stuff that Obama did.
Don't worry, we're draining the swamp.
We're getting to the bottom of it.
And then we get this totally unrelated, like a raid of John Bolton's house for what, what was his crime really, Rob?
I mean, is the crime, you know, like mishandling classified information or is the crime talking shit to Donald Trump on the news?
You know what I mean?
Like, is that really the crime that he ended up getting?
Essentially, it feels to me, and maybe they'll prove me wrong with the Russiagate stuff and actually start charging some people or exposing something.
But it feels to me, it's like, that's, you know, what's it?
Uh, that meme where they go, best I can do, you know, like at the pawn shop.
It's like, oh, you go, oh, you're going to expose the Epstein thing.
He goes, best I can do is embarrass someone who was critical of Donald Trump.
And so to me, it's like that.
And, you know, it's like with all this stuff that we always say, I don't know.
Donald Trump, did you see just says the goofiest shit that you can't even take seriously in the slightest?
He said, he said he didn't know.
That was what he said the morning that they raided him.
He goes, I wasn't informed.
I'm sure they'll brief me later.
Like, I'm to sit here and believe and to believe that Pam Bondi or Kash Patel, I guess it would be Kash Patel in this case, made the decision to raid Donald Trump's National Security Advisor's house and didn't pick up the phone and run that by the boss before you did that.
Really, Rob?
Like, like anyone who works for Donald Trump wouldn't be like, I have to get his okay before I take this move.
I just, I, I, I find it impossible to believe that he didn't at least okay it with a wink and a nod before it happened.
You know what I mean?
That he, he didn't at least give him a, you do whatever you have to do with Bolton.
I don't know.
It just seems too Biden.
Biden pulled the same move on the Trump stuff.
He goes, that's not me.
That's my, that's the Justice Department.
You got to take that up with the Justice Department.
That's just, that's just kind of the move here.
And that's why I'm saying it's gray area.
Donald Trump did not, did not start this playbook.
And so the Democrats and these people, they do, they do deserve it.
I would just, you know, it would be a lot cleaner and it would be a lot better if you went after Bolton for actually like actual substantial crimes.
Like if you could prove that he was actually involved in Russia gate and he was still working in the administration.
But he didn't have anything to do with I'm just saying, but that would be a real, that would actually be a crime.
Or if you could show like, you know, direct correspondence with, you know, the military, the military industrial complex while he's pushing for more war, you know, that might be a juicy storyline.
And that could actually clean up the relationship between the military industrial complex and people working in government.
But like, or the book deal thing, that would be substantial.
Let's find out who people are getting bribed.
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Dude, if Donald Trump, forget even criminal charges, if Donald Trump just did an address to the nation where he had someone actually just do the deep dive and just laid it out, said like, this is an emergency address to the nation.
Let me just like start breaking down how much money John Bolton's received from these weapons companies for all these years of service, of always advocating that we send your sons to go fight and die in another goddamn war so that they can rake in money.
Like, just gave a presentation and went through the list, like deep dive of like all the goddamn Warhawks, all the neocons.
Free Speech Debates00:09:01
This is all who they're in bed with.
Here's the think tanks that cut them a check for $10 million that they were funded by, you know, Lockheed Martin or they were, you know, it would be more valuable than all of this nonsense.
All this bullshit.
It's just like, this is why it's just, you know, Donald Trump was elected on the promise to drain the swamp.
He was, you know, he really tapped in to the fur, like just to the white hot anger that the American people have because we're sitting here watching these criminals in DC just destroy our country and spit in our face while they do it.
And like, look, Rob, I mean, we've talked about it.
This is the center, the center point of our show that we've been doing for so many years together now, me and you.
It's just talking about all the crimes that these politicians and the whole political class has committed against the American people.
There's no shortage.
If you actually wanted to prosecute crimes, there's no shortage of like where to go, where to start with.
And as your own director of national intelligence has said, we have the proof.
Okay.
So what are we doing here?
I mean, like, you know, no, but instead, what are we getting?
Oh, flag burning is illegal now.
Wonderful.
That's great.
You know, Kash Patel actually, did you see this?
This is like a few weeks ago, Rob.
Did you see on Twitter, Kash Patel tweeted about there was some dude.
It was right around when they were like, you know, mobilizing the federal forces in DC, and there was some dude who like threw a sandwich at some cops.
I'm not making this up.
Kash Patel tweeted this out.
I know it sounds like a ridiculous thing that I'm just saying to be funny.
Maybe the guy was angry.
It looked like it was a hoagie.
He threw a nice hoagie at him, but he throws, he pegs a cop in the chest with a hoagie and then sprints off.
And then they sprint and catch him.
And then Kash Patel tweets, he was prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law because we will no longer tolerate crime on the streets.
Was that what Drain the Swamp was all about?
Was that, I don't know.
Maybe I missed it.
Is that what everyone was so excited at all those rallies about?
Was that there was just an epidemic of people throwing sandwiches at each other out there on the streets?
And we needed Donald Trump to really get to the bottom of this.
Can't even walk with my wife and kids down the street anymore without having a, you know, sandwiches whiz by.
But Kash Patel's getting that guy off this job because that's not what I remember Kash Patel talking about.
Like all those interviews that got us excited about Kash Patel being the FBI director.
It was never about the sandwich crime on the streets, but that's what he's bragging about now.
And it just seems to me like there's, we're way past the point where like Donald Trump, like just again, it's like people aren't as stupid as a lot of these guys think they are.
And Donald Trump needs to hand like he has to hand the American people some major wins on this front, like something big.
And this stuff, it just, I think, at least this is how it feels to me.
Raiding Bolton's house.
I'm just like, I'm at the point with Donald Trump.
And I think a lot of us are.
You're at the point where you're almost like, it's like, I'm not even outraged.
You know, I saw there were some people like outraged about him, you know, saying the flag, you know, which does, I understand why it's a topic that it brings out like philosophical debates in people.
The burning the flag thing.
It's almost like May, like it's burning the flag is like a question that you'd give to like your sixth grade, you know, class to like, yeah, let's talk about why it is or isn't okay to do this.
Um, because there's the obvious like contradictions like built into it.
It's like you're that flag stands for freedom.
It's like, okay, well, if it stands for freedom, then really, if you own the flag, it should be your decision whether you want to burn it or not or whatever.
But I personally, where I am, I think where a lot of people are, is it's like, I'm not even outraged.
I'm yawning.
I'm yawning as you deliver me the news that Bolton's house has been raided.
I'm yawning as you tell me that it's illegal to burn the flag now.
Like, what?
This is like nonsense window dressing.
You know what I mean?
This has nothing to do with anything serious at all.
Like, of course, I believe flag burning should be legal.
I think this is a ridiculous debate even.
But what?
Like, I'm just, I'm like, who the fuck cares, dude?
They're not going to stop burning the flag at any of these protests.
If they did, that wouldn't stop the protests.
That wouldn't solve any problems.
It is like purely symbolic.
It means absolutely nothing.
And this is the win that I don't know.
Any thoughts you have, go ahead, Rob, but I'm just disgusted with the whole thing.
All right.
So I mostly agree with you.
When I saw it, I was just annoyed because I was like, man, I don't want to deal with sixth grade debate questions.
And this feels like I got a joke in my act that, you know, Donald Trump just presses buttons to piss people off at the Oval Office because he likes having fights.
And this feels like one of those instances where he needs to be on top of the news cycle.
He wants it to be on storylines that he enjoys.
And so halab crazy shit like this out there just to go, hey, why don't we talk about this for the next couple of days?
And so I don't think Donald Trump really cares about flag burning.
I don't think it's a very important national issue.
I think he just solely decided, hey, I'm going to go make this the topic of conversation for a couple of days.
Now, firstly, they're also a little bit annoying about it because you got to do your homework.
I forgot what the term was, but like something usage neutral and then ways that don't, that aren't a violation of the First Amendment.
Like they're trying to throw kickers on there, but Donald Trump's clear words were, if you burn the flag, you're going to get a year in jail.
So I think instead of like researching, I'll just go with Donald Trump at his word and go, he thinks that it should be illegal for you to burn your flag.
And the problem with that is that if you want to say that it's because burning the flag is so offensive that you shouldn't be allowed to do it, or that taking the action of burning a flag then incites other people to violence.
And so that escalates protests.
It's a slippery slope of censorship because then what do you determine as being the next thing that's too offensive to have free speech about?
Because that's what you're saying.
You're saying that this is so important that if you do it, then, well, then you just don't have free speech.
That's a slippery slope of government being able to tell you that any action that you take is because of symbolism.
What you're saying criticizes us on too big of a level, that it's that it erodes the value of government.
It's too symbolic to be able to question our relationship with Israel or the way our currency works or the way the Federal Reserve works.
I'm just saying you're basically removing protections for free speech.
With all that said, yeah, it's a stupid nonsense topic that I think Trump is just throwing into the news cycle at the moment so that he could, you know, I don't even know what the game is because it's such a losing argument, but I guess it's just something along the lines of law and order and America first.
And we have to hold the country sacred and look at all these idiots on the news who think it's okay to burn a flag.
But it is, to me, it is a very dangerous perspective to say that a flag is so important.
And so therefore you're not allowed to burn it because that's too, I don't even, you know what I mean?
It's like, then you just don't have free speech.
That's it.
Yeah.
I mean, that's, that's absolutely right.
I mean, it's that's if you are in a free society, if the flag stands for a free society, which is what we've all been told is the thing that you're burning.
Well, if you, if you are a free society, then like objectively, this just comes down to a property rights issue.
That's all this is.
Whose flag is it?
Is it yours?
You know what I mean?
Like, if it's somebody else's, you don't have a right to burn their flag.
You have a right to do what you want to do with your property on your property.
Now, you could get into a debate about what you have the right to do on public property or something like that.
But yes, it's, of course, I completely agree with you.
I also think that, you know, and I say this as somebody who I'm not a big fan of protesting in general.
I just don't really like protests.
I think that it is something that perhaps is like necessary at times and should be used for those times.
Like I understand where like, if your government's launching a war that you were lied into and you're like out on the streets over it, I can't really argue with you for being out on the streets.
I really did like the trucker protests.
I kind of felt like there was something necessary about them, like when, you know, how crazy the COVID restrictions were, particularly up there in Canada.
But, you know, I just always think that like the lens that I look at this stuff through, and, you know, I think some people, obviously, like I'm a libertarian and I have some priors that I come into, you know, my, with my political, you know, outlook or worldview.
Police Tanks and Riots00:03:23
But I think that they're correct.
And I think that even, even with the kind of like lawlessness that you saw in, let's say, the riots in the summer of 2020, or just like the crime in a lot of big cities, even that, I don't really view as the government just failing to do something about the problem or that the government should have more power to do something about it.
I mean, first of all, the government has all the power in the world that it needs to crack down on crime.
And we have the most militarized police that any nation has ever had.
I mean, we, we, the United States of America makes Adolf Hitler's Germany or Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union pale in comparison to the sheer amount of like power that we have.
Like the amount of like militarism, like I don't know, you know, the Department of Education has a SWAT team, Rob.
It's like the EPA has a SWAT team.
Every goddamn local police department, just I used to joke about this when I lived before I moved to my current house in my own.
If you remember, you've been there a few times, Rob, my old place that I was renting.
Whereas this little town, you remember that little town?
Just nothing going on in that little town.
There's no crime at all in it.
It was like one of this little town where you knew everyone who lived there, basically.
And I remember this, the police department had a tank.
They just had a tank.
And they had nothing to do with it.
They had nothing.
They literally prop, I'm not exaggerating.
This was a thing in this little town that I used to live in.
This little, like, there was no crime.
It's just, they, they had, the police department had this tank.
And what they used to do with it, the only thing I ever saw them do with it was when there were birthdays, like there were so few people in the town.
And this was weird to me because I grew up in New York City.
This is my first place I moved from there.
But if you like, like if your eight-year-old had a birthday, they would do like a drive through the town and the tank would come, like drive the birthday boy around the town and like honk the horn.
And everyone would come out on their on their balcony and be like, happy birthday, you know, and like, because they had nothing to do with that.
You could call the police department and be like, hey, it's my son's birthday.
They'd be like, you guys want to whip out the tank?
Like, they'd all be excited.
I don't know.
What do we do with this thing?
What do we do with the fucking is, and you know what I'm saying?
Like, it wasn't exactly like a, it was like a big armored vehicle.
They definitely bought from the Defense Department on some type of like, you know, crony thing.
But so like that's, so we have all the, we have all little local police departments are ready for stuff like this, let alone the NYPD, which is, I forget what one of, it's one of the biggest armies in the world.
It's like, I think in the top 20 or 30 biggest militaries in the world, like the NYPD is bigger than, it's bigger than most countries' militaries.
And so it's not as if like you needed some new thing, but the issue with all of these areas, the issue with the riots, the issue with the crime is that it's not just like, oh, the government isn't doing what their job is or needs more power.
It's that the government in all of these cases is enforcing this.
You know, even I remember when I was talking to Charlie Kirk about this and I couldn't, and we were kind of having the like right winger talking to a libertarian, like, well, what do you think about this?
China Chip Business Stakes00:14:31
What do you think about that?
And I can't remember if it was him who said it or me who said it at first, but we both agreed.
But I just went like, I go, hey, what percentage of the problem with riots and crime and all of this, what percentage of it is solved by just instituting the Second Amendment?
You know, concealed carry, castle doctrine, stand your ground, and just legalizing self-defense.
Like what percentage of this problem is solved?
And me and him sat there and he went, between 80 and 90%.
I went, yeah, that's right.
Okay, so if we already know the policy that solves 80 to 90% of this, what the fuck are we talking about?
And now, this, of course, I didn't have the chance, but I'd asked Charlie Kirk, what percentage does a flag burning ban solve of any of these problems?
Oh, zero.
Oh, that's right.
Zero percent.
So like, what are we even talking about here?
And I would just think that after, particularly after like all the COVID stuff, it's like, who, what, what self-respecting right-winger or, you know, just person who was good on stuff over the last few years, what percentage of you are actually sitting here supporting giving the government more authority to crack down on what we're allowed to do when we're pissed off at them?
And not even what we're allowed to do, but essentially, Rob, as you pointed out here, what we're allowed to say, because this really is like, this is what you're allowed to say.
This is speech.
You know, burning a flag, however you feel about it, it is speech in the same way that writing a book is speech.
Like writing a book technically is an action and technically is a is an object.
You know what I mean?
But it is speech, obviously.
You write a book to say something and you burn a flag to say something.
Again, that's not a comment on how you feel about what's being said, but that's what you're doing when you burn a flag.
You're saying something.
And so that's what you want.
That's after the last five years, that's what we want.
More regulation on what it is we're allowed to say.
Have we not, you know, it's like, I'm sorry, dude.
And it's not even like, again, Donald Trump put between like, as we've said a million times, right?
Between the criminals in the war party and the criminals in the COVID regime, right?
Well, we got Tulsi Gabbard and Kash Patel and Bobby Kennedy and Jay Bhattacharya and all of these guys.
And who's being held criminally responsible for any of it?
So far, you know, but we're going to crack down on someone burning an American flag.
Why?
Because they're so goddamn disgusted that we're giving Israel billions of dollars to kill babies or something like that.
That's who we're going to crack down on.
The 20-year-old who's burning an American flag in protest of his of his government being hijacked by a foreign country to inflict a genocide.
Oh, good.
Let's get to the bottom of that one, Rob.
Like, what am I, what are we supposed to do here?
We're supposed to pretend this is anything other than just like, I don't know.
Like, it's like, I agree with what you said.
I think the policy is wrong on the face of it.
But the thing that's more disgusting is just like, what a slap in the face it is to even be going down this path.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
I don't know.
Any other thoughts?
Yeah, I mean, I just, I mostly agree with you that the second I saw, I was like, man, we got to talk about this for three days.
This is so stupid.
Well, yeah.
And you know what?
But that's Donald Trump's superpowers.
Yes, we do.
We do have to talk about it.
Did you want to play that video you sent over, Rob?
Do you think that that's worth playing or is it, did we kind of cover it?
That was on the flag burning.
Uh-huh.
I think you sent one on the flag burning.
Am I wrong about that?
No.
Yeah, I think you sent Trump signing executive order on flag burning to YouTube.
It's everything we just said.
All right.
So then we got a few minutes left.
I guess we could talk Intel here a little bit.
So what's the story?
I'm not well read on this, Rob, but so the U.S. took a 10% stake in Intel.
Is that right?
Yeah, this one really gets me mad about Trump.
So once again, it's another gray area story that we should not be giving money over to these companies.
That's not the way capitalism works.
I don't think that there's ever strategic assets in which we give money over to private companies.
Then they actually pull through on those commitments because then, you know, they're not actually beholden to profits and markets and actually creating goods and services.
And I think you just end up with Biden and Obama's green energy scam of companies getting a bunch of money to go out and do these things and then it never gets done.
So anyways, Biden promises, I think it was like $10 billion for chip development in this country that a lot of people think is really important because we're so reliant on Taiwan and China might take Taiwan.
And hey, it's really important for us to be making microchips within the United States of America.
So Donald Trump has a closed door meeting with the head of Intel and somehow walks away with instead of America just giving all this money over to the company, we're going to be taking 10%, which is essentially, I think, valued at $10 billion.
So it's even Stevens on Biden's investments.
So in other words, Donald Trump is spending no money, just the United States government is clawing 10% from this company because of what Biden did.
Now, here's why this is so problematic.
There's really two big reasons.
One, it speaks to what you've said a thousand times that Donald Trump has no coherent philosophy.
And so do we actually think that these private institutions need to be partially owned by the government?
If it's very important to us that we have more microchips, is government better at actually getting these things done?
And then, why are we going to partner with a private company?
Why is just a 10% ownership stake?
Why does that make the difference?
What exactly is it about the government owning 10% of this company that's better than just leaving things to the private market?
Now, I get it, gray area kicker that we were handing them free money anyway.
So maybe we should take a stake for it.
Now, here's just the next part of this that I think makes it a little bit even more dangerous: is that just last week, Donald Trump was criticizing that the CEO of Intel needs to step down because apparently they had made given over technology to China and made investments in China.
And essentially, he thinks he's not serving America first.
He needs to step down.
Comes to the Oval Office, then a week later, Donald Trump gets to go around to the American taxpayers: look, I got you guys 10% stake in this company.
So now, maybe you can make the argument that that's Donald Trump's brilliant negotiations.
He said something that wasn't true a week ago and then got a concession, or that they're no longer going to be at risk to the United States people because Donald Trump has a 10% interest in it.
But you've also created a platform where Donald Trump can threaten any company with regulation or a bad light until they come into the Oval Office and then start making concessions to the administration, which includes giving over a stake of the company.
And then you also got to wonder what happens when Donald Trump leaves office if like a Democratic government now owns 25% of the stock market.
Is that the country you want to live in?
We're now what there's going to be another department agency that's called the stock market.
And then they're making decisions with all their voting interest in these companies of how every single private, like the government's not doing a good job of managing government.
Do you want them owning large portions of corporations?
I think their stake is 10% and BlackRock owns 13%.
I'm not pro-BlackRock, but I'm saying, do you want them having the same voting rights as corporations as large as that?
I mean, you're just talking about socialism.
The guy is, Donald Trump is a socialist and he wants to be able to turn around to the American people and go, look, I'm winning for you.
I got a stake in this.
I don't think the American government is better off with stakes in private companies.
I don't think that helps our economy.
I don't think that this is a long-term win.
And like I said, just to recap, it's risky because Donald Trump said we're going to do this to more companies.
And so you're shaking down more companies to take an interest.
And then, two, what exactly is this government structure?
Give me the pitch.
How does this help the economy?
If it's necessary for us to have more microchips, do you think government should just make direct investment and start doing microchips?
Do you think private companies should be doing it?
Or can you explain to me why government having a 10% stake in it is what gets us more of the thing?
And I don't think you obviously can't make that pitch.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
I mean, look, it's always the thing.
I know this is the thing that like us Lolberts just get autistically focused on and it doesn't move the needle with a lot of other people.
But sorry, we just have an allergy to logically incoherent positions.
And again, if somebody wants to try to actually take this on and explain it to me, it's like, again, just like with everything else, Rob, if it's such a win, like I understand Donald Trump's mentality, I got you 10%.
It's all business shit, right?
But the problem is that business actually isn't the same as every part of life.
And government is different than business, just like a marriage is different than business and friendships are different than business.
And so in business, just going around being like, I got 10% of this and we cut costs by this and we raised like that might make sense.
It doesn't make sense to, you know, have a friendship like that.
And it doesn't make sense to run a government like that.
If it is a win for Donald Trump to get 10% of this company, okay.
Well, then 20% would be a bigger win, right?
30% would be huge.
Why doesn't he just nationalize it?
We get 100% of it.
Why should we stop at this one company?
Why shouldn't we nationalize every company?
You know, I could, you know, Rob, Donald Trump thinks he's good.
Joseph Stalin can get you 100% of every company.
So isn't that a much bigger win?
Like again, this is where when you have no coherent worldview, just having a gut reaction for good business doesn't cut it.
Because it's like, no, this just does not make sense.
Look, as far as the more meta question of like, oh, there are these chips in.
you know, which and I always liked Vivek Ramaswamy, but he, you know, I never thought had a compelling answer on this.
And I talked to him on camera and off camera about this topic.
But the meta narrative is like, hey, we can't let China take Taiwan because they make these chips and the world needs these chips.
And so we just simply can't allow China to take Taiwan.
And that's why, essentially, whatever it is, right, Rob, the answer is always, that's why more government in this particular case, whether that's why, that's why building up militarism or doing some type of war games and the, you know, in the ocean next to China or to do it, you know, some type of, or we need a 10% stake in Intel or we need some big government program to do.
It's always, that's why more government.
Except right away, if you just start to think that through, you know, you might come, you might just be like, okay, wait, why did we put the chips in Taiwan?
Like, why are we put, why are they in this area that's so vulnerable?
And by the way, they've run, dude, they run, it's unbelievable, but they run like all types of war games.
There's like a huge percentage of what our military does just run war games or what happens in this scenario in that scenario.
And what's really weird is they run, you almost would have thought, because I remember when I first started reading about this, it was, it was actually, it was the great Colonel Douglas McGregor.
He was the guy who had like drawn up the war plans for what a conventional war with Russia looks like.
And I remember the first time I heard that, I was like, why do they even do that?
Because like we have nuclear weapons now.
Like why, who's even thinking about a conventional war with Russia?
But they do it.
They drop all these plans for like, what if we fought a war with China and nukes weren't used?
Like just how would our fleet do up against theirs?
And every single time they've run this, we can't stop them from taking Taiwan.
It's, it's like they're, the damage is insane.
Like every time they run these games, you can go look this up.
Every time it's, it's always like we, we lose airmen and seamen by the thousands, you know, I don't mean the thousands of soldiers.
I mean the thousands of ships and planes.
Like we're taking crazy, crazy losses and China still keeps Taiwan at the end.
Because think about it.
Like run a war game where we try to take Mexico City and China tries to stop us by conventional military means.
Don't you immediately in your mind just go, yeah, that's not going to work for them.
They're going to lose that.
Like, yeah, it's the same thing over there.
And then that's, and that's not taking into account, you know, the like that they, they have a bunch of H-bombs.
So like that's, there's also a pretty big risk to just ending the world.
Like they may not have as many as Russia has, but they got more than enough to blow up the world.
And that's really all you need, Rob, is to be able to do that once.
But so there's, so first of all, with the military stuff, it's insane that we're even having this conversation.
There simply is no option.
And then with the stuff here, you're like, you're like, just take me through this.
Anti-Economics of Chips00:01:30
You're telling me why is it they can produce these chips in Taiwan, but they cannot produce these chips in the United States of America.
Is that because we don't have enough smart people who know how chips are made?
Or is that because there are government rules that make it impossible to do it here?
So you don't need any of this socialism bullshit.
Just get literally, you know, you know for a fact, Rob.
And I really, I'm speaking a little bit out of turn here because I'm not well read on this subject enough to really know the details of this, but I'm just, I know I'm right about this because this is the way it always works.
If you just made it a more hospitable environment to make these microchips here, we could make them here.
It is not that the people in Taiwan are magical beings that are capable of making shit that we can't make here in America.
And so this idea of that like.
Any of this, taking direct ownership, like the government taking direct ownership of private companies is in no way the answer to how to solve that problem.
I'm sorry.
It just doesn't make sense.
They did the same thing on Sand Microchip where 15% of the profits are supposed to be going to the United States government.
If you want more of the microchips, how does it help to divert 15% of this money to the U.S. government?
How does that get you more of it?
Yeah, it's just, it's anti-economics.
Like it's anti-economics to think that that's the answer.