Dave Smith and Robbie the Fire Bernstein dissect the Epstein files' mishandling, criticizing redacted documents and alleging lies by officials like Kash Patel while highlighting Congressman Thomas Massie's push for unredacted releases. They debate mandatory psychiatric exams for gun buyers as economically illiterate and refute Jillian Michaels' defense of inflation, arguing deflation naturally benefits society. The hosts speculate on JD Vance's 2028 political future, question his courage after a Signal leak, and critique Vivek Ramaswamy's tone-deaf comments on American identity amidst demographic shifts, ultimately framing these issues as symptoms of a corrupt status quo defended by bankers. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Christmas Eve Drinking Excuse00:05:13
What's up?
What's up, everybody?
Merry Christmas.
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
I'm Dave Smith.
He is Robbie the Fire Bernstein.
And dare I say, I think the two of us together might have more Christmas spirit than any other two Jews in America.
So there you go.
This is where you turn in on Christmas Eve.
Hope everybody's doing well.
Rob, you got any big Jewish plans for Christmas Eve?
Oh, being left alone.
It's a good time.
I like a nice quiet day.
Got to finish up my editing on Porching Episode 2.
All the fans out there, if you haven't checked out yet, which is all of you, there are 160,000 people that watched the last episode and only about 400 made the moor over.
So there's still a big opportunity for conversions here, Dave Smith.
And in the spirit of Christmas, when you're bored and sick, you're a family and you're sitting around, you ate all the cookies, you're still waiting on Santa to show up with your gifts.
You go to Robbie the Fire.
I mean, you type that word into YouTube and watch Porching Episode 1.
There you go.
If you got some time, that's what you do.
Go watch the video.
How long do you got to watch a log burn for?
You know, it's going to get boring at some point.
That is a good point.
That is a good point.
In fact, I am planning on building a fire right after the show.
Right after the show, I'm going to build a fire and I'm going to have a whiskey.
That's my favorite.
That's a nice time.
Any Christmas cookies planned?
Oh, there's a bunch.
There's a bunch up there already.
My mother-in-law came over with like three tins of Christmas cookies.
They're making a, what's it called? A prime rib upstairs right now, which I'm looking forward to.
But there is something about the, I was telling this to Natalie before we started.
There is something about the 1 p.m. cocktail on Christmas Eve that just like, you know, a lot of life, a lot of being an adult is just finding a way to be a degenerate without it seeming too icky.
You know, does that make sense?
Like you just do it in a way where it's like, no, no, no, that's totally respectable.
It's Christmas Eve.
Your family's over.
You're having a drink at one.
That's not like if I just did that on a regular day, you'd be like, that's crazy.
I feel too bad about myself.
I can't do it.
Like when I, I don't know.
So I grew up in Brooklyn, right?
So when I was a kid, I know a lot of people grew up in suburbs.
It was a little different than this, but the thing we used to do was sit, was hang out on stoops.
It was like the park or it's on stoops is where we'd just random someone's stoop and you'd get a 40 at the store and you'd sit down.
You know, you're 16 years old or whatever.
And you sit down there and you and your boys drink a 40 on the stoop and bullshit.
And now look, Rob, if you saw me just drinking a 40 on a stoop like today, you'd be like, dude, that's insane, Dave.
Like you're 42 and somewhat successful and people know who you are.
You can't just be drinking a goddamn 40.
Right.
But if I was in a button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up drinking a whiskey in my living room, you're like, ah, all right.
But it's the same thing.
You know what I'm saying?
Like it's the same, but you just have to find a way to do it where you look like a respectable member of society.
So anyway, I enjoy the excuse.
That's my Christmas spirit.
I enjoy the excuse to go to my father-in-law and go.
He should probably pour a couple of cocktails now.
I agree 100%.
And I don't have country club access, but there's one or two times I have been at a country club.
And it doesn't matter what hour of the day it is.
It feels like you've earned drinking.
I made it.
I'm in the 1%.
I can fucking drink at noon if I want to.
Yeah, it feels totally earned.
It feels totally justified.
Every once in a while, I get upgraded to a first class ticket.
It doesn't matter how poor you are and how little you did to earn the fact that you got a free upgrade.
Do you feel like you're in first class and now you get a right to drink?
So I know what you're talking about, 100%.
Well, the first class is the, that's an interesting one because the drinks are free in first class, whereas like they charge you if you're, if you're in coach.
And so there is a feeling of when you're in first class, you're like, I mean, I'd be like, I'm giving away money to not drink now.
At this point, you're like, oh, you didn't even get to make back all the time that they dicked me over because they've dicked me over so many times.
So I will eat all the free gummy bears cookies and whatever amount of beverages you will serve.
Yeah, we're, we might be flirting with a sunk cost fallacy or something there, but it does, it checks out to me that it's like, well, dude, if I spent over the years, if I've spent a thousand dollars on drinks back there, I'm going to not take the free ones when I'm up here.
It's an insult to Coach Dave for first class Dave to not drink in first class.
On the same note, though, I think anyone that actually eats the full meal on a plane is a psychopath.
I've, I mean, I've done it, but it's only been in a situation where I just like mistimed things out and I'm starving on this goddamn plane right now.
I'm always furious if I actually am hungry enough that I want that meal.
I don't think I've ever eaten the full meal because there's always something there that's just off.
You kind of pick it what you can, but it's just eating not that it's great and it's overpriced or whatever, but eating at an airport is always a thousand times better than eating whatever the microwavable meal that they're going to fucking serve you.
But Rob, I don't understand why they're still trying to do hot food on planes.
Just bail on that whole thing.
There's no such thing as a good microwaved meal.
None of it's good.
Covering Up The Fraudulent Story00:15:05
So just like, I don't know, just have like bags of chips and shit.
Anyway, okay.
Let's move on to some stuff.
Obviously, it is Christmas Eve.
We are nearing the end of the year.
I always, you know, we'll do a big New Year's show at some point soon.
But, you know, it's just one of those things.
2025 has been quite a year.
You know, obviously 24 was a wild one.
This was another really wild one.
So just thinking about a lot of these things, but I guess there's not, there's not that much news going on at the moment, which I'm kind of thankful for because most of it isn't good.
So that's okay.
By the way, anyone, if you want to put any questions into the chat, we'll answer as many as we can during the show.
I guess the big thing going on right now is this the mess that is the release of these Epstein files.
And, you know, as I've said many times over the last few months, and I really stand by this, I don't know that I've ever seen a political scandal mishandled this badly.
Like the whole thing, it's really just amazing.
I, you know, I said when I was on Megan Kelly's show, I said something along that line, those lines.
And then I said, I think they've handled this worse than the Biden administration handled his senility.
And people are giving me a little bit of shit for that.
I got some pushback for that, which I understand what people are saying.
But like, I'm not saying like, and look, you could make an argument here because the Jeffrey Epstein thing is really, really bad.
Like, okay, you could make an argument.
It's a worse scandal that the president of the United States of America, the sitting president, is senile and everybody's covering that up.
And I understand you could make that argument.
Although it is debatable, Jeffrey Epstein is really, really bad.
But that being said, I wasn't, I think what people heard rather than what I said is, I wasn't saying the scandal is worse.
I'm saying the handling of the scandal is worse.
This is at least, look, saying there's nothing wrong with Joe Biden and he's sharp as attack behind closed doors, it's not great, but it's not the worst thing you could say about it from a propaganda point of view.
If you're just trying to get past this, like, all right.
But for Donald Trump to campaign on we're going to expose the Epstein thing, then have the ceremony where you give the influencers the Epstein files, then those files turn out to not be the Epstein files and were just things in the public domain already.
Then you turn around and say there's no such thing as the files.
Then you turn around and say there are the files, but they're a Democratic hoax.
Then you turn around and say it'll destroy our entire political system if we release them.
Then you turn around and vote, sign it into law.
And now we're just with all this demand from the public for accountability and information here.
Now what we finally get is just this weird, heavily redacted.
Seems to be in some cases, Rob, where you can undo the redaction, which is really, really wild.
And then just tons of documents, a whole bunch of them clearly fraudulent, made up things that are not explained.
There's just been zero effort.
I mean, like for the inability of this administration to kind of like at least have a press conference and explain what the hell is going on here, make it some type of like coherent narrative.
I don't know.
I've just never seen anything like this.
Rob, down to, how crazy is this, Rob?
I saw Trump the other day trashing Thomas Massey again for pushing for the Epstein files to be released.
It's like he hasn't even updated his software in his own web of lies.
Like, wait, you're still mad at Thomas Massey for co-sponsoring the bill that you signed into law?
You signed it into law?
You didn't veto it.
So what do you like?
Don't you have to drop that beef now?
It just makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
So I don't know.
I'm just, I guess my biggest takeaway by this whole thing still is that I'm just, I'm flabbergasted by the sheer incompetence of the whole thing.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
So you're almost commenting, if I'm understanding you correctly, that as an observer of Donald Trump and his administration, they're so incompetent.
They're not even putting forward a good lie of what the storyline is for us to debunk.
And so you're almost a little bit lost on how to approach it because.
Yeah, what am I supposed to do here?
This is too obvious.
You don't even need me because they haven't even, they're not even pushing a propaganda story.
They're just slowly leaking accurate information that keeps all eyeballs on the story and want it to actually be solved.
Yeah, it's like, I just don't even understand what like they, the thing is they're so caught with their pants down.
And so they just don't, they couldn't even come up with a lie.
I mean, it's, it's like, you can't believe the Trump confidence on this one that he's actually putting out real information and just smiling through it with the same talking point of Democratic hoax.
And this is Thomas Massey's fault that we're looking at it while the entire internet is yelling, what the hell is all this?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I, and, you know, look, it'll obviously be, you know, you got to like with all these things, you got it, especially when there's these huge dumps, you kind of got to wait for like people to go through all of it.
I mean, you could be one of those people yourself if you want to, but it's a lot of work.
But you got to kind of wait for a lot of people to go through this and figure out which documents are what and what smoking gun, if any, there is.
I mean, so far, uh, the stuff that I've seen was like one, there was the one accusation against Donald Trump, which did seem pretty damning.
And there, there certainly were a lot of pictures that involve Bill Clinton and stuff like that.
Um, but we're, we're still kind of like, I don't know.
I guess it's just, it's very clear at this point that the administration has no desire, you know, to get to the bottom of any of this, expose any of it.
They have a clearly have a strong desire to cover this up as much as possible.
And I just don't see, I don't see how that's it's possible to reconcile all of that without it just being obvious what they're doing.
Um, I agree with you that it's a total mess and we got to kind of wait to see where things land.
Uh, some of the very interesting takeaways to me is firstly, Thomas Massey really did win the day on this one of getting all this information out and then uh pushing back on all the information that was redacted because the law that they signed included that redactions could not be made just to protect people.
Um, and then the Justice Department pulled some absolutely batshit spin on that, which was that previous law is that they have the right to redact.
None of it made any sense.
Then the internet comes along and they figure out how to undo a lot of the redactions.
Now, here's what makes it so messy.
Firstly, you've got that letter going from Epstein to the guy who was raping all the gymnasts.
And then turns out that looks like it's fraudulent.
Yeah, well, that was, didn't it come from like it was like in 2018 or something?
No, it came, it came three days like after he had died, and they're not sure if it's his handwriting.
And there's some holes in that story.
But some of the things that, you know, really muddy the waters is for one, you got a lot of random pictures of individuals who are out with Epstein, but some of the people they're with, like they got one with Bill Gates, but the lady's face is redacted just based off body types, not to be a creep.
That doesn't look like a child.
That looks like a 30-year-old woman.
And so like, that's a little bit, I'm not saying Bill Gates didn't do anything wrong.
I'm just saying putting out a redacted photo implying that there was something worse going on with what's clearly an adult woman doesn't really help.
Then you've got crazy stories like Donald Trump raped and then killed a 14-year-old from the limbo, but it's like, these are not.
The girl ended up dead.
No one's saying Donald Trump killed her, but the girl ended up dead.
They ruled it a suicide.
It looks kind of shady, but evidently there was an accusation that him and Jeffrey Epstein like these are just like random stories by individuals.
I think the most interesting juice in what's come out thus far is that there's a pattern in the redacted information of hiding co-conspirators.
Top amongst them would probably be the lawyers and accountants that have been running Epstein's estate since he passed.
There's also that FBI document where they were at one point looking into 10 co-conspirators, apparently including Wexner, and that got dropped.
I've long said if you wanted to crack this case open, there's a lot of leads, the pilots, all the staff, all of these people, the other people that were given immunity in the first deal.
There's a lot of people to talk to.
And by the way, there was also the JP Morgan case, which they had to pay out to victims because they were like looking past all of their internal fraud regulations and processing Epstein money.
There's so much stuff that if you wanted to actually figure out what was going on here, you could investigate.
And so to me, this is kind of step one in terms of that, you know, I guess this information is becoming available and more of the public is acknowledging like, what the hell is this thing?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, I think the fact that the FBI, The FBI document where they were talking about the co-conspirators and the and just the files in general.
I mean, at the very least, I think you could go like, oh, look, man, I mean, dude, like, what we already knew, but isn't it kind of, oh, Kash Patel and Dan Bongino and Pam Buddy, they all came and lied right to our faces, dude, and said, oh, no, it's clear he wasn't sex trafficking to anybody.
That's not a thing.
Like, it's like, oh, this is the FBI seem to think it might be.
And I got to, you know, I don't know.
Did you see this, Rob?
Because this was interesting to me.
Did you see Dan Bongino?
Basically, they said he's Trump said he's going back to his television show or whatever exactly that means.
This is interesting to me because that, as we had speculated about a couple of weeks ago on the show, I was saying, I'm sure Dan Bongino will be handsomely rewarded for his loyalty to the regime, but in like, you know, you got to go work for the board of a weapons company or something like that.
He's going to come back to podcasting.
I just, this, I mean, I'd be very curious to see how it does or what his numbers are if he were going to come back.
How can anyone watch Dan Bongino's show again?
How could that like, I just don't possibly understand how anybody could ever go the whole, as I directly confronted Chris Cuomo about when we debated, like, look, the whole in this world, and I mean this world broadly speaking, whether you're talking podcasts or cable news or network news or, you know, newspapers or whatever, the whole currency you trade in is the truth, or at least the currency you trade in is honesty.
That like you have to be able to trust that the person isn't just lying to you, you know?
And like, how could you ever trust Dan Bongino again?
I just don't understand.
I don't like, I don't know how you could ever like sit and have a conversation with Kash Patel or Dan Bongino or any of these people.
I would speculate, I would speculate one of two things.
Option one is he gets the premier basically Fox News or Fox radio contract that pays him to basically be a mouthpiece for the regime.
And he's being paid handsomely and he's still working out a role.
Option two is he tells all and goes, Hey, I was there and it was against my conscience.
And that's why I finally left.
And here's the worst things that I saw.
And this is why I left.
It's just really, it's really tough for him to pull off option two because he lied.
You know, it's like, if you want to say, you know, this was against my conscience and so I left, the only way to do that and to, you know, keep your support from the base is if you were actually a conscientious objector.
You know what I mean?
Which is like, no, they asked me to go lie to the American people about this.
And I said, sorry, sir, I resign, you know, which is in the United States of America.
You do have a right to do that.
You can resign.
That is your option.
And he didn't do that.
He went and lied to all of us.
And then months later, after the issue was forced, then you leave.
And then you come.
It's, I just think it's going to be very tough for him to pull that off.
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I didn't know now what I knew then.
And we were still in the administration and I was trying to trust the plan.
And so when I was told this information about Epstein, I decided to go with it.
Gun Rights And Psych Evaluations00:03:45
But now that I know what I know now, I absolutely cannot endorse or stand by them.
Yeah, yeah, maybe.
We'll see.
I think that's going to be a tough one.
That's going to be a tough one to pull off.
Oh, here, let's read.
We got a couple of questions here.
I'll read one here.
Also, curious, Dave's thoughts on instituting mandatory psych exams before you buy a gun.
But if the government fails more than, say, 0.5% of people, the law is void.
Seems the best I can come up with to protect the Second Amendment, but also prevent antisocial psychos who shoot up schools from getting guns.
Yeah, I don't like it.
Sorry.
Now, look, the whole problem, well, there's several problems, right?
But the problem with, you know, saying you have to have a psych eval in order to buy a gun is like, okay, well, number one, people, you know, oftentimes with a lot of these cases, like I remember in the in the Sandy Hook shooting for sure.
And then there's been, I'm sure, several others where like in the Sandy Hook shooting, it was like the mother's guns that the kid, like everyone knew he was a troubled kid who had been messed up for a while, but he took his mother's gun.
So how the hell are you going to stop that?
Doesn't still get access to somebody else's guns or something like that.
Number two, you know, a psych eval is not a goddamn, it's not like a fair trial.
It's not like you get to go there and prevent, present your defense and then a jury of your peer.
You're talking about the opinion of one person, one person who, you know, you could say they're a professional.
But by the way, you know why so many goddamn kids transitioned over the last, you know, 10 years?
It's because of a psych eval.
Or they got a psychologist to say, yes, I think that's a girl trapped in a boy's body because they got swept up in the goddamn pseudoscience of the day in the same way that doctors were telling healthy kids to get the COVID vaccine.
Like, you know, and so you're just kind of like creating like, what does it mean?
What does a psych eval mean?
You know, like the people, I think that convincing a six-year-old to socially transition is horrific child abuse.
But the whole goddamn, all of the institutions, I mean, now they've changed, but all of the institutions for most of the last 15 years said I was an abusive, you know, person for believing that.
Number two, it becomes a very easy way for the state to take away guns from people by calling that group.
You know, it just becomes instead of calling them terrorists or narco-terrorists or whatever, you call them crazy.
And now you can disarm a whole group of people.
The other thing about this dynamic is that, first of all, a lot of people own guns.
There's like 400 million guns in this country or something like that.
And a lot of people have guns for protection, to protect themselves, protect their house.
And a lot of those people might have some psychological issues unrelated to the gun, nothing like they're going to go kill anyone.
And maybe they want to go get help.
But now you've put a huge disincentive for everybody, anyone who values being a gun owner to go see a shrink.
Because if you are diagnosed with something, you might lose your Second Amendment rights.
So, no, I don't, I just don't really think, you know, I don't think there's any way that you can, you can put these barriers for gun ownership that are going to be anything less than a nightmare.
Trumps Epstein Paper Trail00:05:36
But that's my guess.
Rob, should crazy people get be encouraged to have guns?
I liked your analysis.
I do wonder, though, if maybe if they put you on psychiatric meds.
I like their kicker, though.
I thought that was an intelligent kicker of if they fail more than 0.5%, because I do wonder what the total number of sociopaths are on a population basis.
And so I guess if he went that number and then his math of if you're failing more than that number, then you're failing too many people.
So I did think it was an interesting kicker on the question.
I'll grab that.
I will agree.
Okay, a question here on the Epstein one.
I'm sorry, someone asked if I watched Tucker's dive into Thomas Crooks.
I have not seen that yet.
It'd be interested to watch that, though.
To what extent do you think the Epstein file scandal was particularly badly handled versus the change in media landscape just making the establishment's normal evasion strategy no longer effective?
That's a good question.
I'm not saying the latter had nothing to do with it.
Like, obviously, I mean, it's almost impossible for any political issue to not have something to do with the new media landscape, like, you know, but no, dude, I mean, this was the handling of it.
Like, it's, it's, they ran on this.
All of them ran on Epstein transparency and getting to the bottom of it.
Trump himself talked about it, but Kash Patel and Dan Bongino and Pam Bondi talked all day long about it.
And then they just immediately pivoted with terrified looks on their face to, oh, I don't know what you're talking about.
Nope, there was no thing.
Nope.
No guy named Jeffrey Epstein ever existed.
Like it's just, it was out of a cartoon.
They could not have done a worse job handling this.
I don't know.
That's how I feel.
It's like Trump looked at some of the information was like, shit, I didn't realize I was all over this.
I mean, it really was.
It was out of like an episode of Martin or something like that.
Like you, I don't know if anyone ever watched Martin Lawrence's show back in the 90s, but it was like over-the-top cartoonish kind of comedy.
Like it was almost like it was literally like, I'm going to show everyone what's on this paper.
What's on this paper is going to kick your dick in the dirt, man.
You are going to lose your mind.
And only I would be honest enough to share with you what's on this paper.
Okay.
Guys, guys, we didn't really need to see what's on this paper.
Like it was like that, you know, like, Jesus Christ.
Like, and also just, it really was.
There was even on Trump, but he's a better liar than most, but like Dan Bongino and Kash Patel, like you could see it on their faces.
Like it was just, it was the worst, the worst handling of a scandal I've ever seen.
And I do think it, obviously, there were a lot of other things involved with this too, but it absolutely was devastating to Donald Trump.
It was, it was not just something you can measure in approval ratings.
It was, it was devastating to Trump's aura.
It was devastating to Trump's like energy.
It's just he, there's almost like a before Epstein cover up Donald Trump and an after Epstein cover up Donald Trump.
And the after just lost all drain the swamp credibility.
No, you're, you're not even, you can't even pretend to be that guy anymore.
When it really came down to it, you wanted to protect the swamp.
That's all.
So I don't know.
That's my feeling.
I don't really see how they come back from that.
You know, it's one of the things about Donald Trump, and I suppose this is like one of the tragic things, is that, you know, we're only through year one here, Rob.
So it's three more years to ride this out.
Also, I'm going to say that the biggest variable here really is Thomas Massey.
I've never seen an administration looking to cover something up where a congressman goes to war over it and then manages to drum up enough support and enough public interest to get a law passed for transparency about what's going on while it's still relevant.
Like, I don't think that happened to Bush.
Even on the Venezuela war, Congress did, you know, didn't back that Trump should have to actually follow the Constitution and get approval from Congress.
Usually government's pretty in lockstep when it comes to the most egregious things of they're not going to investigate themselves, even if it hurts the other team.
But somehow, Massey just really dug in on this one.
I mean, we haven't seen it for COVID.
You know, whoever transpired that scam against us, Congress is investigating it.
You're 100% right.
It really kind of can't be overstated how incredible what Massey pulled off there.
And Marjorie Taylor Greene, too, you know, and Ro Kahana, he deserves credit for it too.
But the fact that he was, and it really did seem to me like Massey's tactic of really, which again, when I say tactic, I don't, there's nothing like underhanded or dishonest about this, but he just straight up shamed and threatened all the other members of Congress.
Do you remember his pitch?
Was he goes, hey, guys, Donald Trump ain't going to be here forever.
And like, you're going to forever be known for protecting pedophiles.
Like that will be your legacy in this world.
And not that I think politicians are moved by the moral claim of that, but I think they are moved by their legacy.
And you know what I mean?
Protecting Pedophiles Legacy00:03:02
And like, I think that was actually very effective.
But the way, the way that he was actually able to corner the regime and then get them to cave and get Trump to sign the bill into law really was amazing.
Yeah.
As you said, Rob, typically speaking, what one of the good members of Congress, you know, whoever they might be, whether it was Ron Paul back in the day, or if it was, you know, Thomas Massey or Rand Paul or, you know, Justin Amash or whoever it might be, you know, typically what they could do is like be the lone no vote, give a good speech on the House floor.
Maybe they'd get to grill someone in some type of hearing, you know, a la Rand Paul versus Fauci.
But in terms of actually getting legislation passed, they've just never been in a position to be able to do that.
And it's pretty incredible that this one actually was successful.
I've really never seen anything like it.
It'd be like Ron Paul passing his audit the Fed bill, you know, he made some noise with it and it was amazing, but it's not, it never got passed.
Hold on here.
Let me see.
Some got a few other questions in the chat here.
Someone asked me if I feel if I feel bad for blanking out.
Dave, do you feel bad for blacking out?
And then it's just blank.
No.
No, I don't.
It's interesting.
Oh, I have fun.
Okay.
All right.
Maybe that guy blacked out in the middle of his question.
It's possible.
It could be.
He was sitting there.
And then he forgot to finish it.
Maybe that's a joke.
I don't know.
It could be referring to our last episode, but I don't know.
Did we miss anything from that?
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Okay, let's here.
Deflation And Delayed Gratification00:15:30
I did want to play this clip, which I had, I saw was going, going around the Twitters.
And this was from a Jillian Michaels podcast.
And I don't, you know, there wasn't, I don't know why this clip was just something where I was like, I think maybe we should talk about this on the show.
I guess part of this is just because, as I've mentioned, I've been, this is something I've been thinking about a lot lately, but maybe like my New Year's resolution is in the next year to try to like, I try to focus more on economics.
I think like economics is just something I'm really interested in.
I know it's something you're really interested in, Rob, too.
And I think it's really important.
And, you know, like, like I kind of made this point after Mamdani got elected, but I do think, you know, to whatever, you know, degree I've been, you know, kind of on a tear over the last few years.
And I think I've done a really good job of like branding libertarianism as like libertarians are the anti-war guys and like the best anti-war guys who really know what they're talking about and oppose this shit for reasons.
But like, I don't think I've made kind of like end the Fed is not as synonymous with me as it is with like Ron Paul.
And like, I, you know, I almost think this stuff is important.
But anyway, so here is the clip.
It's Jillian Michaels, who I absolutely adore, being fed nonsense by a Fox News lady who claimed in the interview that she is defending capitalism, which is particularly what drove me crazy about this.
But I want to play this clip and then me and Rob will respond.
What happens in a deflationary environment is nobody buys anything.
They just hoard.
Because why would you?
Like if I, if I know I can buy that car next month for 30% less, why would I buy it this month?
Why would I buy anything?
I'm just going to, I'm going to sit on my cash and I'm not going to move.
And so I'm not going to actually engage in the economy.
So that is why it is the scariest situation.
A lot of people have said to me like over the years, why does the Fed shoot for 2% inflation?
Why do we even need 2% inflation?
Why does anything have to go up?
And the answer to that, sort of the textbook answer, and you can understand it when you think about it, if things aren't ever increasing in price, you're never incentivized to do anything today because we're all procrastinators.
We can do it tomorrow when it's cheaper.
What happens in.
All right.
This is just, I just hope you understand by this is just, first of all, I love Jillian Michaels and it makes me angry when people fill her sweet minds with this nonsense.
And then I saw like she tweeted out and was kind of like, this like made sense to her, I guess.
And she was like, Yeah, like for this, oh, God, it makes me so angry when people are so economically illiterate.
I don't know.
It just fucking drives me crazy.
When you think about this, you can really understand it.
Hey, while you're thinking about this, like if you're going to make a claim, like, hey, in a deflationary environment, no one ever buys anything.
Um, you do realize you're not just speaking in abstractions, like there's been deflationary environments before.
Like, are you telling me?
And can you point to one where no one bought anything?
People just stopped buying stuff.
And like, she almost answers her question in her own way.
Like, and whatever.
Look, what's annoying about this is because it's a pathetic excuse to defend the Federal Reserve, to defend the inflationary economy that is a complete creation of government policy that we live under.
But let's just for a second take on the economic argument here because, like, you know, all I'm saying is like economics has been around for a while.
There's been lots of brilliant economists.
And believe it or not, they've kind of handled this stuff already.
But to answer your question, why, why would I buy something?
Why would anyone ever buy anything if we lived in a deflationary economy, if things were getting cheaper?
Well, the very clear answer to that is time preference.
This, like, think this through for a second here, but like, even if you go, why would I buy a car if a car is going to be cheaper in a month from now?
It goes, okay, well, what might the answer to that be?
You need one this month.
Like, I mean, I'm not saying you wouldn't ever, nobody is claiming here that like no purchasing patterns would be altered by things going down in price.
But just saying we could all think of lots of examples of things.
If you look at, say, electronics, which is one of the best examples of this, because it's a technology-based sector, but also because it's really completely left to the free market and isn't regulated.
But like, okay, so like when I was Natalie's age, to get a cool big screen TV, it was like a fucking bus that you had to move into your house and it was going to cost like $5,000.
And today, you could get a flat big screen TV that you could hold in one hand for like 300 bucks.
It's the quality is way up.
The price is way down.
And so, Rob, as we both know, nobody bought TVs over the last 15 years because they were going down.
No one bought one.
Why would you buy a TV, Rob, when they're just going to be cheaper and better in a few years?
Well, because I want to watch something between now and then, man.
Isn't this the most obvious thing?
Hey, Rob, if groceries were going to be down 30% next year and you knew that for a fact, why would you buy groceries this year?
But can you think, can you think really hard for a second?
Go, ooh, because eating this year means something to me too.
I care about the time when I receive the goods that I want to buy.
Like that is also a major factor in all of this.
Now, is it true that like, hey, if you were going to get a brand new car, you have a car that's functioning already, you were going to get a brand new car, but then you found out that they're slashing prices next year.
Yeah, it might encourage you to wait a little bit longer on that purchase.
But the same is true in reverse, that if the cars, the price is going up and up and up, you might buy it earlier than you otherwise would have bought it, which may not be the best thing.
So anyway, I just find all of this to be like such goofy, such a goofy argument against deflation, which is objectively a good thing.
Now, I'm not saying that a massive amount of deflation in a very short period of time.
Obviously, that's a, you might have a steep recession there.
But, and obviously there are people who are hurt by deflation.
If you own a house and the value goes down, you just lost some of your net worth.
But in terms of like, should we be targeting 2% inflation versus should we be targeting 2% deflation?
I'm sorry, in one scenario, things get more and more affordable.
In the other scenario, they get more and more expensive.
What do you think is better for poor people?
If things are more expensive or if things get cheaper.
Anyway, any thoughts on any of this, Rob?
Yeah, I mean, you're 100% right on everything you said.
What just strikes me is that deflation, what you're describing is people delaying gratification and instead engaging in savings, which typically means that they can make the bigger and more important purchases because they've actually saved their money.
And at a more spiritual level, if everyone's delaying gratification because their money is going to be worth more in the future, I actually think you have a better society because people don't constantly feel like, oh, my wealth is being stolen from me.
Where can I spend it right away before it's worth less?
Or you actually have an environment where someone's like, oh, I might be able to purchase a house in the future.
Let me save money.
Let me not go out and drink this weekend.
Oh, you know what?
It's really not worth spending the couple extra bucks that I have out at the bar because I will be able to purchase a car at the end of this year because cars will be cheaper.
And then all of a sudden you got people who, as you mentioned, time preference are now starting to think on longer time horizons and actually being forward looking and thinking about, you know, their lives, savings, future investments.
And you're talking about a much better, on like a spiritual level, a better society where people are being forward-looking and not just making compulsive decisions.
Now, we currently have economy.
I remember going back to George Bush.
We need people to get out there and spend.
It's the most short-sighted look ever of we need everyone to spend everything that they have right now.
We need people to borrow from their future earnings and spend right now.
We need everybody in debt.
And you know what that is?
That's the sickness of everything's at overinflated prices.
So we got to figure out how we can pull more money in to keep all these bubbles afloat and pretend like we're richer than we actually are.
That's right.
That's right.
But who could look at the American economy?
Like if you looked at the American economy, and I mean every level, like the federal government, state governments, local governments, private businesses, individuals, and you would say, look, I'm looking at America right now.
And Rob, the problem we have here is that there's just way too much savings.
You know, just everybody's just saving way too much.
There's not enough spending.
There's not enough consumption.
There's not enough debt.
Everybody's just at a surplus here.
Say, like, what world are you living in?
What are you talking about?
That's the issue.
And like, yeah, and it's not just George W. Bush.
I mean, he might be the only one who ever explicitly said, go shopping.
And that is the answer to this recession.
But that's been the economic agenda of the entire quantitative easing regime through Obama, the entire monetary policy through Donald Trump's first few years, the entire response to COVID.
And now Donald Trump's angry that it's not just forever the response or something like that.
But yeah, like why also, why is it, you know, to your point, which I think is so spot on, but why is it like, look, obviously, and anticipating a price being lowered or a price being raised could change your consumption, you know, behavior in one way or the other.
But like, why is it, you know, like if you were like, oh my God, I could, I'm not going to get a new car this year because I can get a new car next year for even cheaper or I could get an even nicer car next year.
So I'm going to wait.
Why is that worse than I don't really need a new car, but I'm going to buy one now because this is the last time I'll ever be able to afford one?
Like, why is it obvious that the latter isn't a bigger problem?
And so, again, what this all like becomes is just an excuse to continue the inflationary economy.
And now, I'm sure someone like this wouldn't want Biden's inflation.
She wants the Fed to hit their target.
She just wants 2% of your wealth to be stolen by the government every year.
Not like 9%, Rob, because that's just too crazy, right?
But like, the thing is, it's a fatal conceit.
Once you concede it all that deflation is bad and inflation is good, you're 70% of the way to being a socialist.
You've conceded the whole goddamn thing because deflation really is the market and inflation really is the government.
That's, that's just like, and I don't, there's not really much of an opinion to that.
And all I mean by that is that if you like naturally, organically, in an advancing economy, deflation is the status quo.
Like if you, um, if you like, I guess technological advances are the easiest one to think of, but like if you, whatever, if you're like picking apples and in order to pick apples, you have to hire a guy to pick the apples and you got to pay him 10 bucks an hour and he goes at a certain speed.
But then you come up with a machine that picks the apples for you and can do it a thousand times faster and you don't have to pay someone to do it anymore.
Well, then what happens to the price of apples?
They fall.
It gets cheaper because we can produce them with much less manpower, with much less hours and right.
It's just so naturally speaking, if you are progressing and advancing, things become cheaper.
And naturally speaking, if you're devaluing your currency, prices go up.
And so it's all just what's infuriating about it is it's just, it's a defense of the status quo.
And all the status quo is a bunch of bankers robbing from the rest of the people.
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That's what you're defending, whether you mean to or not.
You're filling my sweet Jillian Michaels heads with this poison, with this nonsense.
But anyway, yeah, that did.
There's also, It's also, you know, you can argue for deflation, but this is the dumbest way to make an argument for deflation, which is people won't spend money and they'll actually think on longer time horizons and they won't be incentivized just to blow everything right now.
That's the wrong argument.
The right argument would be: listen, if you were starting an economy from scratch and you had a free market, deflation would be great.
But sadly, since we have a Fed and there's so much debt in our economy and so many companies are running off of debt, we actually can't live in a deflationary environment now.
And every single business decision is essentially made off of borrowing money as in their benefit because being in assets is cheaper.
The flip side of that, though, is that just firstly, I think it over a long enough time horizon, you're going to have a deflationary event and it's going to end up working out well for the wealthy that actually have cash and savings ready to go.
I think they're more diversified and that, yes, they ride all the waves of assets.
But believe me, if there was an inflationary event event tomorrow, Warren Buffett's probably the best suited for getting out there and picking up everything for cheap.
Yeah.
Compound Interest Debt Bubble00:02:42
So she's not even making the right argument.
The argument for why we need inflation and not deflation is because we've gone so far in the wrong way.
It'll be devastating for so many individuals who have bought into it, hey, I need to have as much debt as possible.
Yeah, an argument I would still disagree with, but it would be at least a more sophisticated, kind of plausible one.
Yeah, no, that's right.
The idea, again, the idea that just nobody's going to buy anything.
It's like, again, as I said before, like there were, there have been in the United States of America, we've been through deflationary periods before.
And it's not true that nobody bought anything.
But again, like what you're really getting at is you're like, yes, it is true that you wouldn't that inflation incentivizes present consumption, whereas deflation incentivizes more long-term thinking.
You want to argue against that?
Go ahead, but that seems nutty to make.
But I agree with you.
That would be the like debt bubble stuff would be a more sophisticated argument.
Well, I still think would be flawed.
Okay, let's see here what we got.
Why would I buy groceries today when I could just wait until tomorrow to eat?
Okay.
Yeah.
Right.
You'll lose some weight, buddy.
You'll start intermittent fasting and just always waiting tomorrow so you can save a quarter on beef prices.
Really?
Everyone's going to starve because they're going to sit around.
Fat Americans are going to starve because every day they're going to go, oh, that steak's going to be 10 cents cheaper tomorrow.
I'm going to wait to eat lunch.
Dude, I mean, there are people who buy stuff the day before a blowout sale.
You know what I mean?
Like people like, like, this is just, this is silly.
Now, that being said, it might stop some people from buying some things and waiting until tomorrow, but that also might be the right move.
Yeah.
The one argument against that or the one sector might be people delaying healthcare purchases and not screening things early enough.
But I mean, in a free market for healthcare, those prices would come down.
And, you know, to some extent, people need to adjust.
And, you know, that's a personal risk decision.
Well, also, but then the counter to that, right, is that, okay, but play this movie out a little bit further.
And if prices are going up and right?
Because you have the compound interest effect, right?
So like if inflation, if the target is 2% this year and then the target is 2% next year, you've grown actually more than 4%, right?
Because it was 2% of the larger number was the second year.
So you have the compound interest effect.
So all these years later and later, prices are getting more and more and more expensive.
Things are going up and up and up.
And then maybe somebody doesn't consume presently because they just can't fucking afford to do it.
Jd Vance Tone Deaf Perspective00:11:56
Like, how about that?
You know what I mean?
Like, how about somebody just doesn't go grocery shopping today because they can't fucking afford groceries anymore.
So now, whatever, they're eating off a dollar menu or some shit like that.
Like, so there's also a, you know what I mean?
Like, that inflation catches up to present consumption eventually, also, which is a whole other factor.
How about this?
I'd like to work hard, make money, and then be able to keep the money and then have it not be worth less in the future.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's fair.
That seems reasonable to me.
All right.
Dave and Rob, do you think Vance will blame Trump for how all the Epstein files were handled in 28?
And we'll have a repeat of Trump attacking his own VP.
Look, man, I think that is the question right now.
And I just, I got to be honest.
I look, there are things that I like about JD Vance.
There are certainly issues where I think he seems to be, at least from what he says, a little bit closer, like a step closer toward us than a lot of the other MAGA people.
I also think JD Vance is smart and I think he's good on microphone.
He's better than I thought he was initially.
He's good at doing like a hostile CNN interview.
He's good at explaining things.
He does a good job on podcasts.
I have more than a tad of concern over what his ties to, you know, to Peter Thiel and kind of like the Palantir world and all that stuff that certainly I think is fair to be concerned with.
But honestly, I think almost the biggest problem with JD Vance right now is that he just, there's a weakness to him.
There's a weakness to him that I've never been able to unsee since the Signal chat leak.
You know, the one where he's the only one who objects to attacking Yemen, but does it in the, and this is behind closed doors.
They didn't think this was going to get leaked, you know, but he's like, hey, guys, I don't think this is a good idea.
And this is kind of everything that we ran against.
But like, if you guys want to do it, I'm a team player.
I'll go ahead.
And like, there was just something in that where you're like, so I guess to answer your question, I don't think he's got the balls.
That's kind of my honest feeling right now.
You got to have real big balls to pick a fight with Donald Trump.
And if he does come out when he's running for president and he says anything that Donald Trump did wrong, Donald Trump's going to smash him back.
And now, you know, that's a nightmare scenario for you if you're trying to be the Republican nominee and you're trying to win the presidency.
Donald Trump is against you.
And so, but then at the same time, right?
How the hell is he going to win without doing that?
How is he going to energize the Trump base without doing that?
And so he's caught in this real awful position.
Now, as I was getting at before, we're only done with year one here.
You know, it's not time for 28.
I think in some ways, Donald Trump has jumped the shark so much that so many of us are like, all right, what's next?
You know, but like, there's still three more years.
So a lot's going to happen between now and then.
But the one dynamic I don't see changing is that I don't think there's any way, you know, look, it was not that I think she would have won anyway, but it was such a disaster for Kamala Harris when she went on the view and couldn't name a thing that she would have done different than Joe Biden.
And, You know, if JD Vance is going to be in a similar type of situation, I think, after what a disaster this first year was, you're going to be looking at a real failure of the Trump administration.
And it's going to be the dynamic is going to be Donald Trump said he was going to drain the swamp.
He had eight years to do it and didn't drain anything.
How's JD Vance going to handle that?
I don't know.
I don't know.
What do you think, Rob?
I think it's really going to depend on where we're at in two years, where the economy's at, what kind of foreign wars we're entangled with, and how this Epstein storyline plays out.
If things are exactly where they were right now, let's just say Epstein storyline's still lurking where people are interested, but there's no, you know, real engagement from the government to uncover it.
And the economy is kind of just where it's been, feels stale, but they keep reporting good numbers.
And, you know, we're not in a full-fledged war, but we're just supporting wars.
Firstly, I think JD Vance is going to have some tough competitors within the party to win the inauguration from.
But with all that said, it's going to be a lot of Donald Trump is really great and wonderful.
And I'm going to be able to build off of some of his efforts.
And I do have some policy disagreements with him.
But we're going to be strong, but strategic with our strikes on other countries.
We're going to use tariffs a little bit differently because we couldn't implement his plan the way he wanted because of court laws.
It's going to be a lot of compliment him, but listen, I'm a different guy.
And I learned from my experience of watching him.
Yeah, look, I mean, I think that's probably, you're probably right.
Like, that's the most likely scenario.
I just, that is pretty weak for me.
Like, that's not, you know what I mean?
But yes, I think, I think you're probably right that that's the lane JD Vance will ultimately take because fuck, all calculations considered, probably the path of least resistance.
If things go to shit, like the economy, like there's either just a chance that he doesn't run because he's too affiliated with the administration, or he's got to go, hey, I didn't like any of these things at the time, and now I have the experience of being on the job.
And so this is, this is the way that I'm going to do it.
But that's a tough battle.
Yeah, I don't, I don't know how you do that.
I don't know how it's possible.
But again, we would.
Donald Trump's got to be down and out for that to happen.
You got to have the economy in the shitter.
Tariffs have blown up.
There's a new war going on.
And maybe he's more in trouble for Epstein stuff.
Yeah, things would have to be really, really bad at that point.
I will say, I think JD Vance really wants to be president and he is positioned to be the next Republican candidate.
So it'll be interesting, man.
It's going to be real, real interesting.
This next year, I think, is going to give us a lot more information.
As of right now, if I had, obviously it was still a lot of time left.
But I think that I think the midterms are going to be a bloodbath for the Republicans.
I think they're going to get absolutely creamed.
I think your top contenders against him, even though Massey said he's not running, I think he could put together something.
I think Josh Hawley is kind of the young stud.
And I think Vivek separated himself from the administration and he might be able to do something.
I think those are the people he's going to have to contend with.
You know, I think I don't know.
I don't know what position Vivek's really in.
You know, the again, just, you know, I never want to be too like kind of terminally online with these things or, you know, because there is like, there is something to that.
And there is something to the fact that there's like, you know, they're regular voters are not as like there's a sliver of Americans who are like super interested in politics, who watch shows like this and who, you know, like really think about these things all the time.
That is not the average voter.
That being said, between Vivek's H-1B debacle and the whole saved by the bell post thing and just how poorly received that was.
And then I saw, I don't know if you saw this, Rob, but if you saw he had, he gave a speech at the turning point event the other day where he was basically talking about the, how do you put this?
The idea of in like America being an inheritance or that somebody who's like, you know, family goes further back in American history isn't any more American than somebody who just got here and became citizenship and how being American is a binary, either you are an American citizen or you're not an American citizen.
No one's more American than anyone else.
And, you know, I don't, I don't fully agree or disagree exactly with his message.
Like, I get to some degree, I agree with that.
Man, does it sound bad coming out of his mouth?
Like, man, are you just not the messenger for this message?
You know, like there's, um, and we've all known, you know, examples like that in life where like you might even agree with someone on something, but you're like, yeah, maybe you shouldn't be the one saying this.
I'm afraid.
It's particularly weird for somebody whose parents weren't citizens, you know, who like has not been in the country that long for them to be the one to say, like, cause it's just like, oh, well, that's awfully convenient for you.
You know what I mean?
Like, and I just, I did think there was something there where, look, I'm not saying we certainly don't want to see like brutalism or nativism or any of these forces, like be the dominant force in the Republican Party.
I don't think any of that would be good.
But I do think that it just like, it really misses the mark in a way when, you know, it kind of reminds me almost like, you know, like when during like the height of COVID, where like, you know, the Cato Institute would be writing some, you know, piece about how it could be acceptable on libertarian theory to have a lockdown under some crazy conditions or something like this.
And you're like, dude, no one wants to hear that right now.
Like just no one, it's like the country is by forced government policy being radically racially and culturally changed in like an overnight fashion.
Like what is, it is crazy that the, there are so many more millions of people in this country than there were before.
You know, I was just reading about it before.
I don't think I'd ever seen these numbers before.
Did you know that like since 9-11, the Muslim population in America has like quintupled or something like that?
And nobody would have voted for that.
Nobody after 9-11 was going, you know what we need to do now is import Muslims by the millions into this country or whatever.
And during that whole period of time, while the country has from the top down, against the will of the domestic population, been radically transformed, white people have been openly demonized in the most vicious way, not just rhetorically, but through legally, through academia, through big corporate America.
And so for you to be coming out now and like, this is your message is, hey, the Indian guy is every bit as American as you.
Like, I'm not even saying you disagree necessarily with that statement, but there is something that is particularly tone deaf about it right now.
And like, I think Vivek would be much better off to just like kind of ignore all that shit.
People are going to judge you however they're going to judge you and like just focus on shit that you're really good on that really matters.
They're like, hey, man, what actually matters here is making this a better country.
And here are the policies that are going to do that.
I don't know what you think, Rob.
I don't agree with his perspective.
American Identity Anarcho Capitalism00:03:23
I'm a big fan of the concept of seniority.
I learned that in my freshman year at the high school dorm.
I was sitting down watching TV in the basement.
Some senior came down and said, I'm changing the channel.
I was like, fuck that.
You're going to fight me.
He's like, you're a freshman.
I'm a senior.
I get to pick the channel.
And I remember at first, I was like, no, I don't like this at all.
Like, I'm a person, you're a person.
We both learn in this live in this building and slept on it 24 hours.
I was like, you know what?
He's right.
He's been here.
Like, I will give seniority to people, and I also like receiving seniority.
And it's a little bit like if someone walks in and they sign up for like CrossFit tomorrow, and so they're the new member at the gym.
You could go with the vivaika argument of, well, we're both members of the gym.
But if there's someone who's actually been there 10 years, won championships, and he's there, are they really on the same page?
Because technically, I'm an autist and they're both members at the gym.
No, that guy's more CrossFit than this other guy is.
Well, look.
And so that's right.
That's right.
And look, there's look, obviously, America as a country, a big part of it is like the idea, the idea of America, the values, and the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights of the Constitution.
And I also, like, I don't think it's at all a coincidence that the Declaration of Independence is the founding document of this country, and this country is the most successful country in the history of the world.
That is not a coincidence, man.
And like, and look, I mean, it's funny because what radical like libertarianism has really never been the founding document of a country aside from the United States of America.
And if you read the Declaration of Independence, it really is just a radical libertarian document.
I mean, it's almost like an anarcho-capitalist document.
I mean, maybe not quite, but like they essentially say, right?
Was the first sentence of the deck or the first three sentences of the Declaration of Independence?
It basically just says, God believes that man should be free.
That is self-evident.
And governments are just something that man creates to protect our rights.
And if they're not protecting our rights and they're trampling on them, then we have every right and maybe even a duty to overthrow them and install a new government.
That being said, look, if you just took the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and you instituted it in Haiti tomorrow, you said this is now the law of the land in Haiti, is the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights of the Constitution.
Is Haiti now America?
No, because there's also more to it than just that, right?
Like it's just that simple.
America is also a geographic place.
It's a specific plot of land.
It's a specific people.
It has a tradition and a culture.
And like, there's, there's a lot to all of this.
And so, look, like, I understand the spirit of saying, like, hey, once you're an American citizen, you're one of us.
I think legally, that's how it should work.
I also get your point, Rob, of like, look, are you going to say if somebody's family came over here on the Mayflower and then someone showed up from India yesterday and is taking a citizen step?
Like, is one more American than the other?
Well, kind of.
Like, I'm not saying in like the legal sense they should be, but like, yes, in a very real sense, that person is kind of more American.
America Is A Specific Place00:02:04
I don't know.
And it's, it's just, it doesn't sound right coming from a new arrival to say, like, no, screw that.
That guy's no more American.
I don't know.
But if I went to Japan, and I also don't think it's a winning message.
I don't think there's an appetite for that right now.
If I went to Japan tomorrow and I became a citizen of Japan and I said I was just as Japanese as you are, I'm retarded.
Yeah, well, that's right.
That's right.
And so it does.
And to your point, there is something with that seniority thing there.
You know, I remember having this conversation.
We could wrap on this, but I remember talking about this with a young comedian at the time.
And I mean, she's been, she still does comedy.
She's doing good now, but like it was like when she was first starting up, but she was complaining to me about Rebecca Trent, who owns the Creek in the Cave, used to be in Long Island City.
It's now out in Austin, Texas.
And she's an owner of SkankFest, dear friend of mine.
And she was complaining about how she's just never, she's not in with her and she doesn't help her with anything.
And I was like trying to explain this to her where I was like, look, I understand how you feel.
And believe it or not, I used to feel the same way about Rebecca Trent because I wasn't in with her and she didn't help me with stuff when I really could use it.
And then I got in with her.
And then, I mean, literally at this point, Rebecca would walk into traffic for me.
She's like, and I would do the same for her.
I love her.
And I was just trying to explain to her: I was like, look, I understand it's hard when you're not in because then you're out.
But if you work to get in, by the time you get in, you'll realize that somebody has to be out.
Otherwise, there is no in.
You know, like, it's like if there is, look, Rebecca's got the Creek in the Cave.
She's got 300 open micromedians.
Like, she can't help everybody all the time.
There's got to be, like, you almost have to put up fences because otherwise none of us can have nice shit.
And I've noticed this the same just in my life.
Like, you know, like you send your kids to like a real nice private school and they get this great little education.
And then in some ways, you'll kind of feel guilty because you're like, well, every kid deserves this, man.
Fences Around Nice Shit00:01:00
There shouldn't be like a fence around this where only my kids get this.
And like the kids whose parents don't have as much can't afford to do it.
That sucks.
But the thing is, what can I do?
Tear down the fence?
Because the result of that is just now none of our kids get this.
It's not, it doesn't bring everybody in.
You have to have an in-group and an out-group, at least to some degree.
Anyway, that'll be my final thought for there.
Come see me and Robbie the Fire on the road in 2026, comicdabesmith.com.
We got Philly and Portland, Oregon coming up real soon.
Bunch more after that.
Oh, yes.
And we will not be doing the members only episode tomorrow.
We're taking off for Christmas Day.
We'll do it on Friday instead.
And we'll do a double episode to make up for the one that we missed last week when I was sick with the flu.
So check us out there.
Anything else you want to plug, Rob?
Check out Porching, Robbie the Fire.
All when we're plugging into YouTube and go give that a watch.