Dave Smith and Robbie Bernstein dissect the Middle East ceasefire, rejecting calls to celebrate Donald Trump's role despite his ties to Miriam Adelson and Benjamin Netanyahu. They condemn commentators like Mehdi Hassan for praising peace while ignoring 20,000 Palestinian deaths under Trump, comparing it to celebrating Hitler post-Holocaust. Citing a global support collapse from +48% for Israel to +1% for Palestine, they argue the conflict stems from brutal occupation and statelessness rather than isolated events. Ultimately, they assert that unless Netanyahu faces regime change and unconditional U.S. support ends, the nightmare persists regardless of temporary truces. [Automatically generated summary]
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Weekend Update: Things Are Better00:09:24
What is up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
I am Dave Smith.
He is Robbie the Fire Bernstein out on the road.
We thought he may not be able to make it onto this one, but we're very lucky to have you here, Rob.
It's good to see you after what we've been apart for 48 hours or something like that.
But Rob, of course, the hardest working man in comedy and politics is out there on the road the whole week.
And then we will be out in Tampa this weekend at Side Splitters, which is one of our just favorite clubs.
Me and Rob both both love that place.
Always a good time when we're down there.
So looking forward to being back.
I believe Tom Woods is coming out to one of the shows.
So we'll get to hang out with the master for a little bit.
Should be a fun time.
ComicdaveSmith.com for all those ticket links.
And do you have any shows in between now and then, Rob?
Well, shout out Childerberg this past Sunday.
It was a nightmare, Texas for it, but I had so much fun.
I wish I could have hung out more.
And then next weekend, I'm out in California, got shows in Los Angeles and outside of San Diego.
And then after that, I added a New York City run, added Charleston, got a Boston, New Hampshire, Jacksonville, Florida, Savannah.
And I think that's it for the year.
Go to porchstore.com and get some tickets.
Man, it is all that time I spend loving my wife and children.
Rob just spends doing more comedy.
It really is.
It's impressive, but good for you.
Go check out Rob.
Of course, absolutely hilarious.
All right, let's get into it.
Obviously, the big topic for today is this ceasefire in the Middle East.
And, you know, this is a conflict that we've spent a lot of time talking about over the last couple of years.
And I've, you know, obviously done many high-profile debates on the topic and many high-profile shows on the topic.
And it, you know, it's an interesting moment that we have here.
We talked briefly about this on our last episode, I guess.
We'd had, you know, Trump was, the ceasefire had not been signed yet at this time, but Trump was saying we have a ceasefire and it's done.
I guess the first thing I would say is I am, I mean, look, I just, if I'm just being honest with you guys, as is my job and to call it like I see it, I would have said this already before the news that just broke about an hour ago, which is not good.
We'll get into that in a second, but I'm really just not optimistic about this.
You know, there's just for it's it's being like, as often happens in these moments, Rob, there's like when you're paying attention to news, there are just these moments where there's like waves.
There's, there's, you know, there's like a tornado of it for people are celebrating, should Donald Trump get a Nobel Peace Prize?
You know, all this stuff about the greatest, grandest peace deal in modern history or something like that.
And it's like, guys, we've had ceasefires before over the last two years in this conflict that have broken down.
There's been ceasefires, many ceasefires over the decades between the Israelis and the Palestinians.
Many have been broken by Israel, but several have been broken by Hamas.
Like it's just, we're really just not there.
I hope more than anybody else, or not more than anybody else.
I'm sure there's some people in Gaza who hope a little bit more, but as much as anybody here in America, I hope this goddamn thing is over.
There's a lot, a lot that has to happen between this and an actual peace.
And we can kind of get into that because there's a major difference between a ceasefire and lasting peace.
And that all of that being said, it is very good.
Like this is a very positive development over this weekend.
There's no question it's a step in the right direction.
Things are in a much better place right now than they were just last week.
So that's great.
You know, there's from my understanding of this, there, well, I saw it reported there's, I think Israel killed like six or seven people in Gaza over the weekend.
So it's not as if they haven't killed anybody there, but that is way down.
way down from a typical uh weekend over the last couple years where you'd probably be looking at a couple hundred people dead.
So that's something that's really good.
There is supposed to be increased aid coming into Gaza.
We will see what actually ends up with that.
And there's been, you know, the remaining Israeli hostages in Gaza have been released in our home.
A whole bunch of Palestinians who Israel was holding have been released as well.
And so, look, in this imperfect world we live in, that is better than nothing.
And like less people dying is better than more people dying.
And hostages being returned are better than hostages being kept in captivity.
So we should, you know, be happy about that.
But in terms of the short term, let alone mid or long term prospects for peace, there's just still a lot of obstacles here that I don't see how they're going to be addressed.
So any thoughts you have.
You got to love Donald Trump's closing energy, though, that he's already done full celebrations, signing ceremonies and the work as he pushes everyone along into it.
Like, nope, this is totally done.
it's complete.
We're good to go.
And you got to admire it, you know?
I guess that's kind of how he pushes things forward.
So in this case, hopefully it sticks.
Otherwise, he's going to look like quite the asshole.
Yes, but there's a very interesting dynamic that you just touched on there, which is, which is one of the things that's kind of unique about this moment.
It does, look, typically speaking, and even still now, right?
Like, I don't, I'm, I'm turned off by that, by the, the, uh, you're hanging your mission accomplished banner up after a couple days of the rate of killing slowing down.
You know what I mean?
Like we don't like, but they're doing a good job of brushing any infractions by the Israelis throughout this war under the rug, which maybe that's necessary to move forward with peace.
But, you know, I think talk of pardons or otherwise, I think for the sake of universal justice, you'd like to see more accountability.
But yeah, yeah.
No, agreed.
But look, like, no, I agree with your point, but I think as you're saying there, it's like, look, whatever, like, maybe that's just not the thing that's actually going to move this to be in a better place.
I don't necessarily agree with that.
But the point I was making, because I think what you touched on there is like maybe the most interesting dynamic of all of this is that like you're absolutely right that essentially Donald Trump has gone all in on this.
He's really put all his chips in to like, I just made this historic peace deal.
And what's interesting about that, whereas like I don't, you're right there.
I'm just switching cameras.
I don't know what's going on with the other one.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No problem.
But like, so I don't, I don't like the bluster and the, you know, like this, like, it's what Donald Trump's truly great at, though, right?
Like no one throws an event like Donald Trump.
But I don't like that stuff.
It's like, stop trying to trick me into thinking something happened that it didn't happen.
But the thing in this dynamic is that that might almost be what's necessary to make the thing stick is that now Donald Trump has been pushed to a point where he it is even more clearly like again in his political interest for this thing to stick.
And it is a betrayal of him and his legacy if one side violates this thing.
And so that adds an interesting dynamic.
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Miriam's Remains and Foreign Loyalty00:15:19
I actually don't think he's tricking you here.
And I think he's tricking Netanyahu.
I think that's who he's trying to pin.
I think he's trying to push this thing forward that maybe is even a good deal for Netanyahu, but I don't think this is what he was looking for.
I think he was looking to finish his mission, which was eradicating Hamas and, you know, potentially mowing more of the lawn in Gaza.
Well, look, and ethnically cleansing the place and taking, yeah, well, that's, yes.
Well, I mean, look, I'm just saying it's not this, again, which one of the things that's interesting about like all of this, like, and this is true whenever I talk about like the clean break or the neocons or the Israeli government or like any of these topics, I'm almost never, say, almost never alleging a secret conspiracy.
Like maybe with the exception of like Epstein, where we look at that and raise some eyebrows about how, you know, the prime minister of Israel is like staying at his New York City apartment and that's, and your, your wife's dad was a mossad spot.
Like, okay, that's, you know, that's kind of interesting stuff there.
But aside from that, it's all out in the open.
Like, I'm not, I'm not alleging some secret plan to ethnically cleanse Gaza.
I'm saying like the prime minister and the finance minister and the defense minister and the president of the United States have all laid out public plans about kicking all the Gazans out of Gaza and rebuilding it.
And one of them, I think you're absolutely right that it seems very clear here that Donald Trump actually did pressure Netanyahu into this ceasefire.
And then the question becomes, did all those guys just give up on that ambition?
Because I'm not sure they did.
And I don't think that, you know, I hope that they did, but it's quite possible that they're going to get right back to this thing.
And we'll see.
Anyway, as I mentioned earlier, I should say, but it was just reported maybe like an hour before we started recording that Israel has said that because Gaza, and this is really just incredible to me.
I think in a lot of ways, Rob, this, well, you know, it kind of explains why so many of us are I'm not optimistic about the prospects for peace here.
But I really think this just, this goes to the heart of the entire conflict and why so many of us are so appalled by it.
Like this goes right to the heart of this.
So this is from the Associated Press just in.
Israel plans to have the number of aid trucks into Gaza and limit distribution of assistance due to Hamas, quote, violating ceasefire agreement with slow return of dead hostages.
Now, it was, and I was just talking to Dave DeCamp about this earlier today, but it was known at the very beginning of the ceasefire that it was going to be very difficult for Gaza to get some of the remains of these hostages and that, you know, it's whatever, it was going to take some time.
But I just, there is something like, like, Rob, is there a better example?
And don't get me wrong.
I mean, we've over the last two years, we've listed like 100,000 examples like this.
But is there a better example of like the horrific cruelty that Israel treats the Palestinian people with?
Like, like, this is simply, and I'm sorry, like, they can argue, all these fucking hacks can argue all they want to, most moral army in the world, all this nonsense.
This is simply not how people fight wars in the modern day.
This is not how civilized societies conduct wars.
You don't just openly go, like, look, even their claim here is Hamas is slow rolling, giving us back the remains of our hostages.
All the living ones are out, but the remains of hostages who died.
And therefore, we are going to punish the civilian population by slowing down the distribution of aid.
Like they're using aid as a weapon of war as revenge, as whatever, what else can you call it?
As a collective punishment to the whole group as revenge for this.
And I will say, you know, and I'm not trying to downplay at all.
I'm not trying to downplay the significance of remains.
This is something that like brings family members peace and closure, or at least something approaching that.
I know I'm remembering this from high school, which is very rare on this show that I ever remember anything I learned in high school.
But I remember learning about like how evolutionary biologists actually, that's one of one of the metrics that they use to track when like pre Homo sapien man became man is burying the dead.
And so like that, that's a very, it's a very fundamental to humanity thing that we have like rituals.
And it's all of every, every civilization ever has like their own way of like funerals and burials and services.
So I'm not saying that's not important, but like how sick and perverse do you have to be to like value remains of a dead person over living people?
You know what I'm saying?
Like there's something really twisted about that.
And this is, you know, one of the things that I think is like, you know, has really earned Israel such a bad reputation over the last couple of years.
But it's like, dude, like it already just smells like you're looking for an excuse to break this thing to get back to it.
Well, I'm wondering to what extent Trump pushed this deal because he just realized the optics of this aren't working and he's landing himself in an environment where he can't continue to support what's going on.
And so he's like, all right, all this killing has to be over.
And so I wonder, you know, this deal did come together pretty quickly.
Trump did get the hostages out.
And I think it's almost a bad look if after that good faith effort, Israel immediately goes back to taking such hostile actions against the people of Gaza.
And in this case, I know there was a case earlier where Hamas sent the wrong body and was able to correct that.
But considering how much rubble, debris, and otherwise there is, and the fact that they, I mean, listen, they took these people hostages and they put them into places.
They are responsible for their deaths.
But, you know, considering the fact that the area has been bombed to all hell, I think Israel could probably give them a little bit more leeway on trying to make good.
And I don't know if they were aware of the fact that being able to return dead bodies was going to be was going to be contingent on being able to move forward.
Yeah.
Well, yeah, it really, it really is something.
But the idea of just like punishing the civilian population, like there was just never, I just, look, and I'm, I'm somebody who is like a fierce critic of U.S. foreign policy and the warfare state.
But in all of our terror wars, there's just never an example of something like that.
You just never heard a story where you went like, like the insurgents took out some of our guys with some roadside bombs.
And so we are going to deny food to women and children.
There's just never an example of something like that.
It's just like, I'm sorry.
Like this is, again, it's not a left or right issue.
It's like a basic human issue.
Like, no, no, you cannot do that to people.
Now, I did, to your point, though, I mean, because this really is like the million dollar question.
What did they used to say?
The $64,000 question?
That used to be more money.
Yeah, congratulations.
You're like, that's not even that big of a question anymore.
Can't even barely rent yourself an apartment.
Yeah, right.
So the question is, like, if Israel does violate this, what does Trump do?
And the question that is looming in a lot of our minds is like, how pissed off is Trump at these at Netanyahu and these guys?
And I will say, and I don't want, as you guys who listen to the show know, you know, I'm never a 4D chess guy.
I'll never like saying, oh, Trump's doing such.
But there was, Rob, and I want to play this clip.
I want to break this down.
At the very least of this clip, I would say I was not sure whether Donald Trump was intentionally needling Miriam Adelson or not.
But I want to play you this clip.
Donald Trump went over.
He's in the Middle East, I believe, still now.
He signed the deal in Egypt and then he went to Israel.
And I believe there had been rumors that he might even go visit Gaza, but I'm not sure if that's actually happening or not.
But anyway, here was Donald Trump speaking yesterday in Israel.
I found this to be a fascinating moment.
Crooked promises from many other American presidents.
You know that they kept promising.
I never understood it until I got there.
There was a lot of pressure put on these presidents.
It was put on me too, but I didn't yield to the pressure.
But every president for decades said, we're going to do it.
The difference is I kept my promise and officially recognized the capital of Israel and moved the American embassy to Jerusalem.
Isn't that right, Miriam?
Look at Miriam.
She's back there.
Stand up, Miriam.
Miriam and Sheldon would come into the office.
They'd call me.
He'd call me.
I think they had more trips to the White House than anybody else, I can't think of.
Look at her sitting there so innocently.
She's got 60 billion in the bank, 60 billion.
And she loves, and she, I think she's saying no more.
And she loves Israel, but she loves it.
And they would come in.
And her husband was a very aggressive man, but I loved him.
He was a very aggressive, very supportive of me.
And he'd call up, can I come over and see you?
I'd say, Sheldon, I'm the president of the United States.
It doesn't work that way.
He'd come in.
But they were very responsible for so much, including getting me thinking about Golan Heights, which is probably one of the greatest things to ever happen to Israel.
Miriam, stand up, please.
She really is.
I mean, she loves this country.
She loves this country.
Her and her husband are so incredible.
We miss him so dearly.
But I actually asked her, I'm going to get her in trouble with this, but I actually asked her once, I said, so Miriam, I know you love Israel.
What do you love more?
The United States or Israel?
She refused to answer.
That means, that might mean Israel, I must say.
We love you.
Thank you, darling, for being here.
That's a great honor.
Great honor.
She's a wonderful woman.
All right.
I'm sorry, but that is just so wild that he said that out loud.
And maybe I'm wrong, or I don't even know if wrong would be the word, because I'm not even saying I believe that, but it almost seemed like he was intentionally needling her.
But even if not, it might just be that Donald Trump is Donald Trump.
He just says the quiet part out loud because he's incapable of not saying the quiet part out loud.
But either way, this is, and this is the thing.
This is the dynamic that's really come to light amongst the American public in a way like never before, that is not going anywhere.
As long as this dynamic still exists, once people have seen it, they can't unsee it.
But you are saying, I mean, just openly saying that this Jewish couple of billionaires, one of whom was born in, I guess, pre-Israel, I think.
She was born in Palestine.
The other of whom, Sheldon Adelson, has, I don't know if you've ever seen this before, Rob, but he's on record saying that his greatest regret in life is that when he served, he wore the U.S. military uniform rather than an IDF uniform and bragging about how his kids were fired.
Like this dude, this is a multi-billionaire who was an American citizen who had his kids go fight for the IDF.
You got to be, that is a level of zealotry.
Like that's a level of like, these are true believers in the cause of a foreign country, even joking about how they are loyal to that country over this country.
This woman has given Donald Trump hundreds of millions of dollars in his political campaigns.
I think she gave him 100 million in 2024.
And he is literally saying, these people, the Jewish billionaires who gave me all this money are the reason why I recognized the Golan Heights, are the reason why I moved the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
These people who operate as American citizens yet are loyal to a foreign country.
This is fucking indefensible.
Like, what can you say about this, Rob?
Well, I think what Trump is doing here, it's a classic Trump.
It's the same as when the liberals were going after Trump with all of those horrendous lawsuits.
And they just had this feeling of, well, we got to get him.
Doesn't matter if we're being principled.
We got to get him.
I don't care.
Do what you got to do.
Play dirty.
You got to get him.
And Donald Trump has a similar thing, which is if he's winning, the American people are winning.
And so something like this doesn't actually seem bad to him because to you and I, we're like, wait a second, are you admitting that a Jewish billionaire gave you funds and you enacted a foreign policy because of the campaign donations that they made to you?
And so to us, that's the worst thing anyone could admit to.
Any foreign donation should not be influencing policy.
Accusations of Celebrating Genocide00:15:53
We all understand it works that way.
And your bigger donors shouldn't be able to just walk into the White House and discuss their agenda with you.
We all understand that it does work that way, but those are things that you should never say out loud.
But to Donald Trump, look, I managed to get these people to give me enough money that I could win a campaign.
And all I had to do was give this to them in return.
To him, that's him winning.
And his base is so stupid that when he's winning, they feel like they're winning.
So he's saying the quiet part out loud in terms of when he pokes at her with she loves Israel even more.
That's just classic ADD Donald Trump.
And it's neither here nor there where he does like to kind of jab at people to show you, hey, I'm the boss here.
But I don't think, I don't actually think he was trying to slight her or take aim at her.
I think that's just maybe the classic Donald Trump like ADD side.
No, you might be right about that, but it was also, he also did have that weird, we don't have to play the video of that.
You did send that earlier, Rob, but also just the moment where he starts saying you should pardon Netanyahu and all this.
It's like, he doesn't have any pardoning power.
He's just bringing up that Netanyahu has these charges, you know, like looming in the background.
Like it's just, it's like, it's so funny.
It's like on the day that you're celebrating signing the ceasefire agreement and you're like, look, and you really shouldn't put this guy in jail.
A lot of people are saying he should go to jail, but I don't know.
I say he shouldn't go to jail.
They're saying he did terrible things.
But it is just like, you know, especially like, you know, Donald Trump, of course, as you said, you know, he's doing the Donald Trump thing.
So he's bragging about his achievements and he's still got his script down about how it was, you know, moving the embassy, recognizing the Golan Heights, things like that.
But like to the rest of the world, the big policy is the destruction of Gaza that America has been financing for the last two years.
And so again, in that environment, to just be bragging about this, like again, just openly bragging.
I mean, this is the type of stuff that like if Nick Fuentes said this, people would go, oh yeah, that's like fucking what neo-Nazis said.
You know, this is like Jew hating conspiracy theory shit.
But just to openly be like, hey, these Jewish billionaires finance my campaign, influence my policies decisions.
By the way, did I mention that they're loyal to Israel above the United States of America?
It's just like wild to see the president of the United States of America just casually admit that as if it's no big deal.
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It is something.
It also, it doesn't really help the cause just because, listen, I'm pretty ignorant on history.
I'm very good on what happened in the United States in the last 48 hours.
But, you know, you want to go back 10 years and it's a big blur.
But I do remember vaguely in school when we were learning about the establishment of the state of Israel and it being formally recognized and the Balfour Declaration, all this stuff as if it's formal documents from these big government agencies and that's why it has a right to exist.
But now when you have here, when you're like, you know, 100 years from now, you could be learning in a history book, well, Donald Trump formally recognized this area, the United States government recognized it, they recognized the embassy, and you're like, oh, wow, I guess the United States recognized that that's formally theirs.
It's kind of puts a big asterisk on it when he's up there going, and I did it because I took money to win an election from this Jewish billionaire.
And also, what makes you wonder about the Rothschilds or whoever else was involved in?
Well, I mean, the Balfour Declaration was written to the Rothschilds, you know.
But that, yeah, that's it just kind of furthers the asterisk a little bit of what does it mean when you know outside government agencies that are not in that area are making formal decisions on behalf of the Jewish people who live in that area because of large sums and donations from private individuals.
It's it doesn't really help the cause when you make these statements.
Yeah, it is.
It's always been funny to me because there's like there's several different layers that the Zionists will go through to defend Israel's right to exist, as they put it.
And like there's and different people view believe different ones, you know, but it'll always be like, wow, the Balfour Declaration.
And you're like, so like Lord Balfour on behalf of the king wrote a letter to a banking family and that's where you get your property rights from.
It'll be like, well, no, like the UN partition plan.
And you're like, all right, well, first of all, like the General Assembly has no authority to just carve up nations.
Like it was a recommendation.
It wasn't.
And they're, you know, but it usually ends in, well, God gave it to us.
That's that's well, ultimately, we have a supernatural property right claim here.
But anyway, yeah, it is all pretty wild.
It has been one of the things that I think has been really fascinating to me at least, watching on social media over the last couple of days has been the reaction of Israel supporters who are,
you know, you know, look, like I've said, for the whole last two years, it has been really eye-opening for me and shocking to see how it's a combination of two things.
It's like how bad the Israeli PR game is in the new media landscape.
Like how much it does not work in this new, like, like, it's like the tactics, the things that worked in the old world do not work here.
And so, number one, how bad they are.
And number two, like their inability to adjust on the fly and go just to go, like, hey, this is not working.
Like, this is a disaster, so we got to try something else.
Kind of, you know, I guess in some sense, like in the spirit of the letter that Charlie Kirk wrote to Benjamin Netanyahu, where he's just like, Hey, dude, we are getting killed out here.
Like, we need a whole new plan of how to attack this.
Um, but it's been interesting.
Now, it seems like it in this very uh desperate attempt, they're they're trying to be like, We won, you know, like again, I'm not like alleging that there's any type of like coordination in this.
I mean, maybe there is, but I have no idea.
But it does seem like it's, I mean, my Twitter has just been blowing up with all the usual suspects, all of them saying the exact same thing.
And it's some version of like, oh, you're all the people who said it was a genocide aren't celebrating now that the genocide's over.
I guess you didn't really care about that, or like, oh, you don't even want this to end because you're it's it's a grift or something like that, which is always number one to me, just the most bizarre thing.
I've had this accusation a lot over the last few days of, oh, you actually want the thing to keep going because this is what you talk about.
And it's like, by that logic, you can never oppose anything, right?
Like, you could never be against anything.
Bring back COVID.
I'd rather talk about that if you want to give me my choice of topics.
Well, I mean, like, honestly, like, yeah, like, well, look, you just said it.
What a great example.
You've been doing this show 10 years.
I've been here eight.
Believe me, government's going to be doing something stupid that we're looking to talk about.
And if they don't, we'll fall back to doing some internet clips of stuff that I'd rather just make fun of.
Well, it would be like accusing an abolitionist of loving slavery because what are you going to talk about now that slavery's got it's like, I don't know, something else.
I'll be fine.
Believe me, I'll be fine.
I'll make that trade in a heartbeat.
Let this, let this goddamn genocide end.
And then I will figure out what else to talk about.
And by the way, it is just as you brought up COVID, like I didn't even think about that, but that really is a great example.
Like, I was, we were the COVID guys, you know, essentially in people's minds.
And I did high-profile debates on the topic and did huge podcasts on the show.
And we talked about it every goddamn day for years.
And then it went away.
And you know what?
Great.
Great.
I'll still like, dude, what are you talking about?
I'm still going to have awesome shit to say about the next thing that's going on.
And so whatever.
It's fine.
There'll always be, you know, unfortunately, there'll always be a crises.
There'll always be something the government's doing that's corrupt and wrong and hurting the country.
And I'll be talking about that stuff.
And look, if all that shit went away, then I would just go be a great stand-up comedian.
Like, I don't care.
It's such a like loser mentality that people have that like, listen, dude, if I lost my entire career and every dime I own, I'd go be successful at something else.
I would just go, you know what I mean?
Like, I just like, that's, because I'm still me.
I don't know.
Anyway, this whole narrative is so bizarre to me.
And of course, it's, you know, I guess you go to the head of the, you know, multi-headed monster.
And let's just hear it from Ben Shapiro himself, who, who had this take.
I get it.
Like, let's break this down for a second because it is like the most bizarre take imaginable.
It's just, it's, there's a, there's a certain desperation.
And I've seen this several times, like at the end of COVID, at the end of wokeism, at the end of like Russia Gate, where there's this desperation to pull a win out some, you know, like somewhere.
And so here is, here's Ben Shapiro on the ceasefire.
I do have a question.
Where are all the people who kept yelling about genocide?
Where did they go?
Like, seriously, where did they go?
Because all the people who are screaming about genocide now, a deal is on the table that stops all of this, that frees hostages, that stops the bombing campaign in Gaza, that rolls back the Israeli military presence to decide it uponline.
And they've all gone, they've all ghosted the internet.
They're gone.
They disappear.
They're just gone.
It's kind of amazing.
Now, it would be kind of amazing if anyone knew what the fuck you are talking about.
What, like, I genuinely, I don't know.
Usually, typically, when there's like bullshit propaganda, I at least know what you're saying.
And I just think it's wrong.
What are you talking?
Who has left?
Who's ghosted the internet?
Like, I actually, when I first saw this video, I thought I was like, okay, he must be talking about someone.
So I'm like, Candace Owens, I mean, she's just been on fire.
She's probably had her biggest, you know, stretch of shows with huge numbers that she's ever had in her career.
Tucker Carlson, multiple shows, post all types of content, some of some great shows over the last, you know, week, whatever.
John Mearsheimer's doing high-profile interviews.
Like everybody, Nick Fuentes is doing all types of high-profile interviews.
Ian Carroll's out doing shows.
I'm doing all my normal shows.
Like, who are you actually talking about?
Which person is this?
Name me the one person who's ghosted the internet since this deal came out.
It's just like the most bizarre like framing of a thing.
And by the way, it wouldn't even prove anything if they did.
It's not true, but let's just say that the people who are really against the war were like holding back to see what happens here.
Like what would that even demonstrate?
I'm reminding you of a line you said in the green room, but people don't typically celebrate the end of a genocide.
And so yeah.
And so it's like, what exactly is expectation here?
If there was an end, if you want to say that this was a genocide and people stood against a genocide and now the genocide's over, except the people that inflicted the genocide are going to remain in power and might go back to exactly what they were doing.
What is your expectation of the people that were against this?
No, we're supposed to be celebrating.
And like, again, like I, when I, even when I said that, like, look, there were, there were videos of people in Gaza celebrating.
There were videos of people in Israel celebrating.
I'm not like knocking anybody for celebrating if they're they're hopeful that the situation is going to improve, but as like an expectation or or something that that is indicative of you never really caring, it's just so ridiculous.
Like, and right, like, so imagine, I go, look here, let's play a little bit more of the Ben Shapiro clip and then we'll, I'll, I'll hold that thought.
You would imagine that if you spend two years fighting against an actual genocide, not a fake genocide like what's happening in Gaza, which is not by any stretch of the imagination or any definition ever a genocide.
But imagine that you're fighting like a real genocide, like there were wands in genocide and a deal happened to stop the genocide.
Okay, let's pause it for a second.
Hold on.
I want to get to came up with this.
No, no, this is this isn't a genocide by any definition of, again, this is just bullshit.
Like, look, if you want to be honest about it, the, look, the truth is that the definition of genocide under international law is very vague.
It's very vague.
So it's kind of up for debate what exactly you consider what just happened in Gaza, like even assuming this is the end of it, what just happened.
Now, it is true that like in kind of like, what would you call it, popular parlance or whatever, like when people use the term genocide, typically what they're thinking of is like extermination of a people, usually millions of people dying.
And like, that's not exactly what happened here.
So, like, call it whatever you want to, but like, yes, the destruction of a captive people, the slaughter of tens, if not hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians and starvation blockades on top of it.
I mean, look, I didn't start using the term.
If you remember, Rob, through this whole thing, I really avoided using the term genocide up until the starvation blockade.
And then it's just like, all right, whatever.
Yeah, just call it the worst word you can think of because what the hell is this?
Your finance minister bragging about how not an ounce of grain is getting into Gaza for months at a time after the entire place has been leveled.
But anyway, leaving that aside.
So in Ben Shapiro's example here, if you had, he said, let's say it was a real genocide.
Sorry.
Do you have to run?
No, not yet.
Okay.
Let's say it was a real genocide, as what Ben Shapiro is saying.
Imagine you were protesting against a real genocide for two years, and then the genocide is going to end and you're not celebrating.
It's like, like you said, Rob.
So just let's take, let's take the Holocaust, okay?
I'm pretty sure both me, you, and Ben Shapiro would acknowledge that that was a real genocide.
So let's say in 1942, Hitler's killed like maybe 3 million Jews at this point.
Protesting a Real Genocide Ends00:04:29
Let's say in 1942, there was an agreement reached to stop.
Hitler stays in power and Hitler still controls most of Europe and he still controls the government that is ruling over millions of Jewish people and he might go back to it.
You don't know.
Would you be celebrating that?
Like, I don't know.
It's just very, look, honestly, I don't think, I don't think there's any end to this personally that I would celebrate.
You know, like, again, I'm not knocking anybody who does, but even if this was like a perfect peace that was worked out today, like, I mean, literally a perfect piece, you know, a Palestinian state and, you know, all this, even if there was like, say, a perfect peace and Netanyahu was charged with war crimes and his entire war cabinet was indicted and tried and struck, like even like whatever the perfect ending to this could be.
I don't know.
I would still probably just find it to be a moment for like somber reflection.
It's just like, I don't know, it's the disgrace of the civilized world that this thing was allowed to happen.
Like, I just can't even tell you, like, I am like, I'm mortified to one day have to tell my children that this is how the world works.
That actually, like, the adults don't have it nearly as together as I've led you to believe in your young childhood, you know, that like it's not everything isn't the nice world that I've given you.
And the fact that we have, we have elected leaders and diplomats and governments and global governance bodies and international humanitarian organizations.
And we have like all of this infrastructure and all of it failed to prevent this from happening.
It's just like, it's a fucking disgrace to every adult human being that we exist in a world where this could be allowed to happen.
And I just don't know like what it just doesn't feel like to me, like celebrating is just kind of strange.
I don't know.
Again, what the fuck does any of this prove, Ben Shapiro?
What are you even talking about?
All right.
I've seen quite a bit of this on Twitter, maybe even coming at you, but I don't understand the metric of if you were opposing this and now it's ended on these terms, you are a grifter for not celebrating this end.
Yeah, like someone breaks into your house and starts murdering family members of you and you of yours and you say, oh my God, this is horrible.
And yet, as soon as he stopped and left, you didn't start celebrating.
Like, oh, what?
What does this mean?
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All right, let's keep playing.
And then all the people who were fighting to stop it just disappeared.
They didn't say anything.
They didn't celebrate.
They didn't say this is a good thing.
They didn't give credit.
They didn't try to like nothing.
They just go totally silent.
What might that tell you about those people?
I mean, the first thing would be that they don't actually care about the supposed genocide, right?
That would be the thing that would immediately pop to mind that you didn't care about that.
Mehdi Hassan Poll Shocking Results00:09:13
It was all it's just such a leap.
I just don't see it.
I don't even see the like the logic at all.
You usually want to go, oh, well, but just come to show you be like, yeah, that is the natural conclusion.
A guy looked at his oven, realized the oven was still on.
He didn't want to turn it off.
He must want his oven on.
That makes sense.
I don't follow the series of events here.
People complained about what was happening.
It stopped happening.
They're not celebrating the current arrangement.
They must not have cared.
You could have cared.
This is part of a you know, this has been a big, a big feature of the last few years in American life.
And I think it's been, it's so interesting the way it all happened because it is like, you know, like COVID and Biden and like a lot of these things really exposed the media.
And then the last two years in Israel has like exposed so many of like the Zionist, you know, pundits.
But, and one of the reasons why I really loved doing the Chris Cuomo debate or the Douglas Murray debate is part of it was like just showing because like in a weird way, you know how their knock on me is always like, oh, you're just a comedian, oh, Mr. Expert comedian or whatever.
But like I've said to you before, like the point was always, yeah, exactly.
That's right.
I'm not an expert.
I'm just a regular guy.
And I'll still go handle these guys because they're not that tough.
Like that was kind of always the point of it.
It's like, yeah, these guys, they're put in these incredibly protected environments and made to appear to be intelligent.
But like, again, like this, just listening to this, you're like, this is your point.
This is what you think constitutes like a solid argument if you're not celebrating the ceasefire that has kind of held for three days.
Again, by the way, we had a ceasefire in early 2025, early this year.
We had a ceasefire.
We have a ceasefire, and that held for what, a couple months, I think.
This one has held for a few days.
Like, what are we even talking about here?
This is just, and it is with a lot of these guys.
You just realize you're like, oh, these guys aren't that good at this.
Like, this is just ridiculous.
This makes no sense.
Here, let's finish up the clip because we got a little bit of a title.
Also, just it's tough to celebrate any of Donald Trump's actions because let's say you really hated China.
And on Friday, when you saw he was going to escalate the tariffs on China, I don't know.
Are you going to spend two days looking like an asshole going, finally, Donald Trump's starting to start a war with China?
And we're finally going to end trade with them because they're the biggest risk to our country.
And then a couple out.
Nah, that was a bad moment between me and my friend Z.
So I mean, we keep hearing this.
It was the Iran War too.
How are you not celebrating?
It's because the guy's a loose cannon and changes his mind every 10 minutes.
How do you celebrate anything?
Yep.
Yeah.
All right.
Let's keep playing.
A lie that you actually had another reason that you were doing this routine.
The Washington Free Beacon has an excellent rundown of many of these so-called anti-genocide activists who have gone completely missing, like completely MIA.
Mehdi Hassan over at MSNBC, right?
Former MSNBC personality, who now spends his days on the internet talking with wild lefties and people who like Marjorie Hitler Green, as we'll get to in a moment.
He put out a statement, I love that we live in a world where we're all supposed to now praise Trump for his peacemaking and ignore the fact that at least 20,000 Palestinians have been killed on his watch with bombs and bullets and rhetorical support that he supplied to Israel.
I mean, Mehdi seems pretty, pretty salty about the fact that Trump actually got to the end of this thing.
He then went on to predict that Israel will violate the terms of video.
You know, look, dude, I'm sure there's lots of issues I disagree with Mehdi Hassan on.
And we've argued about several of those in the past, although we do, I think, largely agree on this topic.
But again, like, Ben, this, what you're saying makes no fucking sense whatsoever.
Like, why is it that, like, if you, like, let's just say whatever, there's a war you're against or a genocide or whatever.
There's something you're against.
When it's over, you're not allowed to point out that you think it was really horrible, what just happened?
What does that prove?
Like, why would you not, like, again, like, for these things, if Mehdi Hassan is right, which I think he is on this issue, but if Mehdi Hassan is right, then why would it make sense to celebrate the person who just financed the slaughter of tens of thousands of innocent people?
Why would that make sense?
Even if he stopped doing it, like, again, like, would you like if we're talking here for Ben Shapiro, let's speak your language, Adolf Hitler kills 6 million Jews.
Let's say he stopped at 5 million and he just decided to stop.
Nah, I shouldn't have done that.
I'm done.
And then I were to say, wow, Ben Shapiro is not celebrating Adolf Hitler.
And in fact, he's still blaming him for the 5 million Jews he killed.
What?
What world do we live in where that proves anything other than, yeah, this guy was against this?
He was against what was being done to these people.
And so he's still upset about that.
This is just, anyway, we don't even need to play the rest of this.
It's just too dumb.
I don't know.
It's just, but anyway, I just wanted one example just to show you, like, this is how dumb what the fucking Zionists are saying.
And it is, look, it's a large, it's just a large dose of cope.
You know, it's all like, dude, we were, I was mentioning the other day that poll that had who do you sympathize with?
Israel or Palestine?
And the pre-October 7th poll was plus 48% for Israel.
And the post or the most recent one is plus one for Palestine.
These guys, it is like almost impossible to overstate what a collapse of public support there has been.
for Israel across the world.
This isn't just in America, but it really matters in America because we are the world empire who props them up.
But these guys have had over the last two years.
I mean, you cannot, like, I don't know any issue.
You know, like the only thing I could think of was like the COVID vaccine where like, you know, like it was whatever it was, like 78% of the adult population got the first round.
And then like half of that got the second round.
And then half of that got the third.
By the time you came to the fourth round, it was like nobody was getting the thing anymore.
But that was also a little bit different.
It was a mutating virus that had also become much less deadly by that point.
And so even the issue of the vaccine aside, people just weren't afraid of the vaccine.
Once Omicron and then all the after Omicron variants, like COVID's still here.
You know what I mean?
People say, but just no one cares anymore.
It's not that serious.
This is different than that.
This is like a public policy issue.
And could you imagine anything like, you know, like, you know, when you see these polls or like whatever, like a poll on a board.
I got to cut out.
Otherwise, you know, no problem.
I'm thrown out.
They're going to watch me get pulled out of here.
Rob's going to take off a little bit early.
No problem.
Later, everybody.
Thank you.
No, we'll see you out in Tampa.
But so like, like what I was saying, I mean, imagine an issue like, you know, you see like a public poll on abortion.
And usually, I mean, I've seen different polls, but usually it's like there's a majority of the country are pro-choice, but it's not like a huge majority.
It's like, so just for the sake of argument, say it's like 55% of Americans are pro-choice and like 44% or 45% are pro-life.
And then two years later, 90% of the country is pro-life.
Like that, you'd be like, whoa, what the hell happened in those two years?
I mean, this is like a, like, you simply don't see shifts like that in public policy.
Like, it's just unheard of.
That's what has happened to Israel.
And, you know, there's obviously several factors.
As I've said many times, the two biggest factors, the two obvious ones are number one, it's just so horrible and indefensible what they're doing to the Palestinian people.
And then number two, that the relationship between the U.S. government and the Israeli government are just, it's just too crazy.
It's too weird.
And people notice that you can't stop them from noticing it.
But and I guess partially due to those two reasons, the, you know, another part of the reason why support for Israel is just completely collapsed is because like, this is what they got.
Like this is, this is the arguments that they're throwing out there.
Their propaganda is so bad.
And it's just, it's still kind of shocking to me.
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All right, let's, you know what, let's before we wrap up, let's play the Mark Levin clip because I also did think this was of some value and in some ways, perhaps even kind of an answer to Ben Shapiro.
So let's check in with Mark Levin.
Time is right with the Trump peace plan to use this historic achievement to go to the next level to protect us, to protect the West.
That is, challenge the root cause of the problem, Islamist terrorism.
And to be clear, I believe the only leader who can do this, who is bold, courageous, strategic, and have a real shot at making it work is President Trump.
Our State Department keeps a long list of terrorist organizations in the countries they are operating within.
Beyond that, we know where the major actors are based.
You can go online and see on the internet.
Many very good groups, research groups, think tanks.
They've laid it all out.
It's right there.
Of course, they're not only in the Middle East, these terrorist organizations, but many are.
And it's a good place to start, particularly since we have this outstanding foundation, this platform, the Trump Peace Deal.
The president is singularly qualified and capable of extending his diplomatic, economic, and yes, military reach into these countries, where he has built special relationships to begin the difficult and complex process of unraveling, starving, isolating, and eliminating these terror operations.
Some of these countries will welcome such an initiative as their monarchies or their military dictatorships fear for their own survival because these terrorists seek to overthrow several of them.
I'm thinking of countries like Jordan and Egypt, among others.
Some will resist because they're harboring terrorists or have been funding terrorists or somehow promoting terrorists and have relationships and understanding with terrorists, such as Qatar, such as Saudi Arabia.
Yes, name them.
So there, I mean, this shit is really unbelievable.
And it's hard.
It's hard to overstate how sick these people are and how much of a cancer they are on the rest of society.
I mean, this is Mark Levin.
This is, hey, we should be celebrating this peace deal.
And now that we have a peace deal, it's the opportunity for war.
A whole new war on terrorism.
That's what Mark Levin calls for.
What will the theaters of these war be?
I don't know.
How about Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, you know, for starters?
Like, I'm sorry, like, these people should be deported to Siberia or something.
It's like, do you ever not want to fight a war?
Is there ever a time that you don't want to be at war?
Like, if these people had their way, we will just fight wars forever, always.
And that is, you know, unfortunately, these people kind of are having their way.
They kind of are.
I mean, I just don't even know what to say about that.
In this moment now, after 20 plus years of terror wars, well, we're still back in a proxy war against Russia.
We've been financing the destruction of Gaza.
That is maybe stopped.
We're a couple days into a ceasefire agreement.
It really is just something.
Anyway, I guess at the end, you know, it's like, I don't think this is over.
I hope I'm wrong about that.
I don't think this is over.
And I don't think that Benjamin Netanyahu or even the members of his government who are a couple clicks to the right of him, like Smotrich, I don't think that they're just going to abandon their plans to annex and ethnically cleanse Gaza.
We'll see.
Maybe they will make the judgment that they can't get away with it now.
I hope so.
But I'm not convinced of that.
But I think the, you know, the fundamental problem, even if we were able to say, like, end this war and have some type of like ceasefire that really sticks for a while.
And let's say that's the end of the destruction of Gaza.
And like, you know, I'm saying like best case scenario here, you know, more aid gets in, the killing stops.
This, this latest chapter that is these last two years is over.
But then you go right back to the October 6th realities, which were that there's still this brutal, there's still this brutal military occupation.
The Palestinians are still kept stateless in kind of a permanent refugee status.
And the Israel still gets unconditional support from the global empire, which is the USA.
And in that case, with no foreseeable path to a two-state solution or a one-state solution, you still have the same dynamics and the same problems.
And so it's just from my perspective, again, not as a Palestinian or an Israeli.
I have the radical idea that I ought to approach this from an American perspective.
I don't know.
I don't see that much to celebrate.
I'm hopeful.
I hope things get better.
And I think this is an improvement.
So that's good.
And, you know, there's something, I remember, I'm pretty sure it was Aaron Matei who said this.
And I hope I'm right about that.
I can't remember, but I would like to give him credit for it because I always thought this was just like a real, a good way to say it.
But he said, and I might be butchering this slightly, but he said that the Israeli justification of the destruction of Gaza requires you to believe that nothing could justify October 7th.
And October 7th justifies anything.
You get it?
Like, it's like 60 years of brutal military occupation cannot justify October 7th.
Like, okay, I'm with you on that, actually, right?
It can't justify that.
But October 7th could justify something a thousand times worse than October 7th.
And like, you kind of got to pick one or the other.
And I do think that, look, the obvious next thing here that has to happen in order for there to be a real chance for an improvement in this situation is, and I want to be clear what I mean when I say this here, but it's that Netanyahu has to go.
Now, Netanyahu sometimes becomes like a scapegoat for people to say, like, well, the real problem isn't the U.S.-Israel relationship or Israel's treatment of the Palestinians.
The real problem is just this Netanyahu guy.
He's got to go.
I'm not saying that.
I'm not saying that at all.
The problem is much deeper than Netanyahu.
The problem existed before Benjamin Netanyahu.
It also shouldn't be underplayed how much he really did make it substantially worse, substantially worse.
He is the worst prime minister in Israeli history.
And therefore, there has been elected more than any of the rest of them because that's how politics works.
But look, the whole justification for this war was the eradicating Hamas.
I mean, they'd invoke the hostages, but that was really only, you know, for PR reasons.
If their main goal was to retrieve the hostages, they would have done this a long time ago.
Hamas has been ready to deal these hostages.
And we just proved that they will do it.
They will give them up.
There's absolutely no reason.
Hamas has made many offers throughout this thing to return all of the hostages.
No, the goal was to drive them out of power or to eliminate them or whatever.
And the justification for this, and this is something that would get people in the middle to kind of agree with the Israelis.
And in fact, this is what they really, for like the first six months of the thing, when it wasn't completely clear that Israel had totally lost the PR war, like when they were still in the fight, this is what they would go to all the time.
Well, after October 7th, Hamas has to go.
And that's enough to get a regular person to go, all right.
Because, you know, look, it is somewhat reasonable on the face of it.
Now, the thing that makes that kind of a weak argument is that like, you can actually do that for almost every regime on the planet.
Like October 7th is a particularly gruesome example.
But like, are you telling me Kim Jong-un doesn't have to go?
He's got tens of millions of prisoners in his country.
They're literally like, North Koreans are genetically indistinguishable from South Koreans.
Like they are the same people.
And North Koreans on average are like three inches shorter.
That's how malnourished they are as a society.
Like they're people, real deal starvation, like just, you know, communism in its worst form.
I would say Kim Jong-un has to go, but that's a very different question than like, should we launch a war there and slaughter a whole bunch of innocent people to overthrow him?
And the answer to that is no.
But so they would skip that part.
But anyway, it's, you know, look, there's obviously this is what Piers Morgan used to always be moved by.
Like, yeah, Hamas has to go.
You know, it's very easy to look at October 7th and then go, hey, whoever did that has to be out of power, you know?
So that's, that's an easy enough argument.
Okay.
Now let's do Gaza.
All you got to do is look at a before and after picture of Gaza.
The guy who did that, he's got to go.
You know, the Israelis have said this whole time.
Well, we can't, we can't have peace with Hamas.
It's got to be someone else in charge.
Like, okay, well, you can't expect the Palestinians to have peace with Netanyahu either.
Like, he's got to go.
He should go to The Hague.
I'm not optimistic that he will, but he has got to get out of there.
So anyway, in conclusion, things are better than they were.