Dave Smith and Robbie the Fire Bernstein dissect the Jeffrey Epstein files, noting a lack of "smoking guns" despite Gates' evasive STD denial. They condemn Kash Patel for asserting 100% certainty in Epstein's suicide without evidence, accusing the administration of using "trust me" rhetoric to hide connections between the Butler shooter and intelligence agencies. The hosts further critique phony Iran negotiations as "poison pill" tactics designed to justify regime change following a drone attack on the USS Abraham Lincoln, suggesting diplomatic failure is inevitable. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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New Epstein Files and Iran00:04:06
What's up, what's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
I am Dave Smith.
He, of course, is Robbie the Fire Bernstein, and we are on our way to Key West, Manana.
Looking forward to a weekend of shows out there and get out of this Northeast criminally cold conditions that we've been living in for the last few weeks here.
How you feeling today, Rob?
I'm excited for Key West.
This is the free vacation of the year, escaping brutal winter because I'm not getting on a plane to go anywhere unless it's for a gig.
So this is the best excuse to be out in Key West just boozing it up.
No, literally, we did this last year in February.
And then I was like, I think we might have to just do this every February.
Like every February, me and you, and I bring the wife down with me too.
Just go down, fucking relax in the sun, have some fun, low stakes shows.
And yeah, just a good time.
And we got a bunch of stuff coming up.
We're really kicking into high gear here.
We got a weekend in New Jersey.
We got a one-nighter in Perryville, Maryland.
We got all types of different markets coming up.
I know we got Pittsburgh and Boston and Rosemont and Chicago, a bunch of stuff coming up.
ComicdaveSmith.com for all of those ticket links.
Anything you want to plug before we get into it?
Yeah, catch me at the Shell in New Hampshire on Valentine's Day.
And then also check out the Run Your Mouth podcast.
We're cooking out content.
Hell yeah.
Sue, all right.
There's a good amount of stuff going on.
More stuff coming out from the Epstein files, a bunch of new developments in the situation with Iran, which spoiler alert, it all seems to kind of bring us back to the same point where we were.
But there's a bunch to go through there.
And yeah, there's some other stuff going on.
If you have any questions in the live chat, go ahead and ask some questions.
Natalie, you can copy some into our chat and we'll get to a few of those if we have time.
There's, yeah, it's, I don't know, it's been, it's been an interesting fallout, let's just say, of the Epstein files being released and all of the layers and layers of weird shit that's in them.
I think we're still, broadly speaking, kind of at the place where we were, where there's not exactly smoking guns.
But then again, Rob, as you pointed out on the last episode, they've kind of already admitted we held back the smoking gun stuff.
But there is just an enormous amount of incredibly creepy material.
And it does, at least from my perspective of this, I think this is so far very vindicating for the people who took the conspiratorial view of Jeffrey Epstein.
Now, that's not to say, as is usually the case with conspiracies, that's not to say that every claim that's ever been made has been vindicated.
But in terms of the level of creepiness, this guy's connection to power, and the fact that there's at least several emails where it's pretty clear that people are doing sexual shit with him and that that's what the partying with him is all about.
I think it's, this is getting this has always been the case, I guess, throughout the whole Jeffrey Epstein saga.
But I think right now we're at the most difficult place for someone to try to say nothing to see here.
Does that make sense?
Yeah, I think if anything, that's to me the highlight at the moment is the lack of will of the Trump administration to actually investigate any of this.
Like the files are just a piece of the puzzle.
And like you said, there isn't really a complete smoking gun, but there certainly seems like enough to open an investigation if you were interested.
Yeah, you know, I saw Mike Ben's, I saw part of his episode with Rogan, and then I've just, you know, I follow him, so I see other stuff that he did.
Lack of Will to Investigate00:02:59
But one thing he said, that was a very good point, is that he was like, you know, essentially he was arguing.
So the way that the whole legislation was written in Congress was that the fucking Justice Department needs to turn over everything they have.
But he was like, at this point, we need that legislation, but for the CIA.
Like we need basically to say like, okay, now what does the Central Intelligence Agency have about all of this?
And that would be an interesting next step.
But even just that, like that was just him, you know, he's a guy who knows about this stuff.
I was like, oh, yeah, that's a really good idea.
Like when he said it.
But then, you know, the next thing you think is you're like, oh, and of course, no one from the Trump administration is like leading that call.
None of them are going, oh, shit, we really got to get to the bottom of this.
It's, it's, um, from beginning to end, this, the, the cover up of the Epstein scandal has been just spectacular in its insanity and stupidity and just and it's horrible political optics, I guess.
But yes, you notice that you do notice that like there is not, well, I'd say this.
It's one of those, the Jeffrey Epstein scandal is one of those where you could tell like who the real ones are and who's not.
The real ones want the information to come out and the ones who don't and want to do everything they can to downplay this, that is awfully goddamn suspicious at this point, I would say.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
Well, we basically got Massey and Rokahana, and that's about it at the moment.
Bill Gates Email Accusations00:12:59
Yeah.
And then a bunch of, you know, people on the internet who want to see this stuff.
So one of the things, and I think I had mentioned this on the last episode, but it is one of the things that really actually did stick out to me the most.
There were a few emails that, you know, there's a lot of interesting stuff there.
But to me, there was the, so there was the doctor guy from CBS.
You know, I'm talking about Rob.
I'm blanking on his name.
But he ended up getting fired and getting in a big scandal.
But he was like, he was like a health guru type guy, but he's saying all types of shit in the emails about the sex parties and pussy is low in carbs was like his line in one of them, which was kind of funny.
But so one of the things that I've got, but I get where he's coming from.
Well, the thing about it is, is that he's fair point, fair addendum.
But he's going on and on about how he has withdrawals from the parties and how much fun they are.
There's all this type of like sex talk.
And it's clear that like, oh, that's the appeal of Jeffrey Epstein.
That like you go to him.
He's got the parties with like these sex parties.
It's like it seems very obviously like that's what he's saying.
In fact, you can't believe how direct they're being over email.
And then there's the one with Bill Gates.
And the reason why the Bill Gates one was so interesting is because that was one of the, even though the email wasn't sent, that's one of the pieces where you connect not only that there's sexual activity going on with Jeffrey Epstein, but then he's also using that activity as leverage over you.
And so one of the things that's been very interesting in the last couple of days is that both Melinda and Bill Gates have responded to this.
And I don't know if you read any of the Melinda Gates response, Rob, but let's just say it was really fucking cryptic.
And there's, now look, again, this is all, we're in the realm of speculation.
You're talking about a divorced couple.
I mean, it's, you know, as we all know, oftentimes after a divorce, the two parties are not fond of each other and are not going to look to rescue the other person from anything.
But the accusation here is incredibly embarrassing for her.
The accusation here is that like your husband was out, got an STD, brought it back, and then at least attempted to like treat you without your knowledge.
So she's asked about this and she just says like, it's so terrible, all of the things.
This reminds me of a terrible point in my marriage.
And I really don't wish to relive that part.
There's a lot of questions for all the people involved to answer, but those aren't my questions to answer.
A bit strange.
Like if this, if this was, again, this is speculating, people are divorced.
Who knows what the dynamics are there?
But you remember Robin Seinfeld when George Costanza asked the doctor if he thinks it's cancer.
And he goes, I don't know.
And then George's whole thing is he goes, you didn't give me a get out of here.
And he goes, every doctor should have a get out of here.
Like that should just be your response.
And if it's not that, that makes me worry.
Anyway, it's a funny bit on the show.
But like, this is the type of accusation that you almost go into it thinking, you go, but this is crazy, right?
Like this couldn't, this couldn't possibly be true, right?
And she's not giving you a get out of here.
She's not going, what?
No, I mean, that didn't happen.
You know what I'm saying?
Like, and so that in its sense in itself was like, all right, she's anyone in that situation knows what they're doing.
If they're not giving you a get out of here, none of this happened.
Even if it did happen, you kind of expect that that would be the reaction of someone just like in an embarrassing situation like that.
So she is intentionally not doing that and, you know, letting it fester.
And then there was Bill Gates' response, which is on camera.
And so we have that here.
So let's go, let's play the clip here of Bill Gates responding to the accusation that he was or responding to the, what was in the files, an email written by Jeffrey Epstein that wasn't sent to him, claiming that he got an STD and then gave it to his wife.
Let's let's play.
No, the apparently Jeffrey wrote an email to himself.
That email was never sent.
The email is false.
So I don't know what his thinking was there.
It just reminds me, you know, every minute I spent with him, I regret and I apologize that I did that.
You know, it's factually true that I was only at dinners.
You know, I never went to the island.
I never met any women.
And so, you know, the more that comes out, the more clear it'll be that although the time was a mistake, it had nothing to do with that kind of behavior.
No, the apparent.
All right.
Now, Rob, look, man, this is a, we're in a little bit of a space of stuff that we don't normally do, but it's like impossible with this being the number one story to not kind of speculate on this a little bit.
I got to say, I don't know.
I'm curious your thoughts.
I found this to be a weird answer.
I found this to be a weird answer and also not really addressing the thing.
But anyway, go ahead.
First is he's really aging into a reptile.
I mean, I don't know how much you want to delve into reptilian conspiracies, but this guy could not look more like a human lizard and could not be aging more into the presence of, if you were to do like the green reptile face of what you think the reptiles look like, it's like he Michael Jackson to skin color, but is exactly that reptile.
I've seen Bill Gates in a number of interviews and he just kind of always comes off guilty.
He is clearly rich and is clearly, and I think he might just be guilty in all these things, but if you go back to the COVID stuff, he always sounds very guilty.
And so this would follow that track that kind of maybe that's his goofball presence.
But my rate on this is, dude, this is some goofy evasiveness that makes you look very guilty.
You should, you do not have Bill Clint Linton Suave.
You should just not be in front of a television camera for a while.
Well, it's just, dude, Chappelle had this old joke that I always, at the time, I just thought was so goddamn funny.
Maybe it doesn't hold up as much as I loved it at the time, but it was a joke about Bill Clinton and how he knew he was lying because no one's ever that cool when they get accused of getting pussy that they didn't get.
And like, if you get, when you get accused of cheating when you didn't, every man goes, please believe me.
I didn't do it.
It's insane.
And he's just like, I did not have.
And it was anyway, the way he did it was so funny.
But there is something about like when the actual, let's like say this is not true.
Okay.
The accusation is that you fuck it not only cheated on your wife, but like in the filthiest manner, like caught an STD and then gave it back to your wife and then had to secretly drug her.
You would just think if that's not true, the starting point would be that is absolutely ridiculous.
That is not true.
I've never cheated on my wife.
I've never had an STD.
I've never given my wife an STD because I've never had one to give her.
This is insane.
And if Jeffrey Epstein wrote this to himself, I don't know what that insane person was thinking, but this is absolutely not true.
And I'll give, I'll give $10 million to anyone who could provide a shred of evidence that it's true because none of you are getting it.
It's not true.
This is like, I got the Russian hooker right here.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, right.
But I'm just saying, like, that just seems to me like a normal response to when you didn't do it and you're in the clear if you're going to sit down in front of a camera and talk about it.
But instead, he goes, apparently he wrote an email to himself.
And it's just, as we said, I was never on the island.
I was never this.
It's like, yeah, but forget the island for a second.
Like that, look, the reason why this is, it's a particularly weird one is you're, you just go, look, aside from the possibility of like thinking that my emails were going to come out one day and could maybe damage you.
And if you look at the way Jeffrey Epstein is emailing, it doesn't seem like he's emailing thinking that these might come out one day.
But what possible reason would there be to even draft this email out to Bill Gates?
Like, I mean, I'm just, I'm trying to think honestly.
I mean, I suppose you could argue he was going to try to blackmail him with bullshit information.
Like, none of this is true, but I'm still going to claim it's true.
But that seems kind of unlikely.
How would that be effective?
What would even be the point of doing it unless this was dirt that you had on him?
And so it looks prove anything at all.
But what we're left with, I mean, again, it's kind of like almost the entire, a microcosm for the entire Epstein story.
But like when you're left with the email that Epstein wrote, Melinda Gates' reaction to it, and then Bill Gates' reaction to it, it's like, all right, I guess you don't have anything you could prove there, but you sure do have a like, what the fuck is going on moment?
Because it looks really, really bad.
It looks like the only coherent explanation is that it's true.
Like it just looks like I'm like struggling to see what the other because there's one piece, right?
Like when you're speculating about this stuff, there's one piece.
If this is true, then everything fits together nicely.
Like if that actually happened, and this was actually an email that Epstein was debating to send Gates because he wanted some leverage over him for whatever reason.
So if it's true that he cheated on his wife, got an STD and gave it back to her, it makes sense that he would have written out this email.
It makes sense that Bill Gates would look guilty and fucking not exactly directly defend it.
And it makes sense that Melinda Gates would be like, this is such a dark period of my life.
I just don't want to relive this again.
That ties everything together really nicely.
If it's not that, what the hell explains all of this?
Like, I'm really saying I'm open to theories here, but like, what else?
Because I really can't think of one other theory where any of this makes sense at all.
I don't know.
I remember when Bill Gates and Melinda were getting divorced, the timing even seemed Epstein related.
Like, I remember there was skepticism of the time that, oh, she found out about this little relationship and was either so disgusted, she's like, I can't stay with this guy or didn't want to stick around for if the heat was going to start coming down.
Dude, there was the one who was the CNBC guy.
He might, in fact, he had a government job of some sort at one point, but he was, I'm blanking on his name, but he's pretty funny because he was out in an interview talking about his relationship with Epstein like years ago.
And so he said that he said one time in 2005, I guess Epstein lived like right near him.
Like he was like a couple doors away or something.
And he said, he went over there and there was like a massage table.
And he was like, what?
Geez, how often are you getting massages, Jeffrey?
Like you got a massage table in your living room.
And he goes, oh, every day.
And he said, then Jeffrey Epstein leaned into him and goes, and I'm getting the good kind of massages.
And he, when he was talking about it in his interview, he goes, That day I told my wife, you know, you go where he said, like, that day, me and my wife agreed, we're never seeing Jeffrey Epstein again.
But then in the emails that came out, that he tried to get a hold of him like seven more times after that.
And like, so I look like the picture that's coming together is kind of the picture that the conspiracy theorists were painting.
That like, yeah, that was a big part of it.
He wasn't just a guy who happened to be a pedophile in his spare time.
Like, it didn't just happen to be that he's into fucking 14-year-old girls.
And so he does that and also is doing shadow diplomacy and also is powerfully connected.
It's like, no, he did the partying thing with the other people.
And at least in the Bill Gates case, sure does seem to be like he's then going to use information he's got against you.
You know, that, and he was a money launderer for fucking for foreign governments.
Body Brain Coffee Benefits00:02:40
That seems, I'm just saying, if you're, if you're saying, what are we closer to?
The, there's the, the Kash Patel, Dan Bongino, there's nothing to see here, or to the fucking, there's a big conspiracy going on.
We're obviously much closer to that.
With all these guys' money, they can't run some STD checks on their hookers.
You'd think Bill Galtz would have some sort of a supercomputer to just run a lady through before he's going to stick his dick in it.
Even Jordan had some bad games, man.
You know, no one hits every shot they take.
Could have been, one could have slipped through the cracks.
You never know, Rob.
You know, it's like, it's easy to sit on the sidelines and tell people how they should run their pedophile blackmail parties, Rob, but it's another thing to get your hands dirty and get out there.
And there's, I'm sure there were some protocols in place, but they did not seem to keep together.
Now, by the way.
Who's the Benjamin Franklin of the crew who was giving all the STDs to the women that were getting passed around?
That's his, look, we're all thinking Bill Clinton, but none of us know for sure.
None of us really know.
But yeah, there's got to be one.
There was definitely one.
Or at least one.
I'm going to guess Stephen Hawking because he couldn't tell anyone if there was a problem.
Geez.
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Biden Transparency Claims Critique00:14:45
So the other thing that I, this did catch my eye, and I, I mean, it's just, it's, it's actually just funny at this point, but going right down with Dan Bongino and all the rest of them was Kash Patel came out and gave an interview.
And man, dude, I just, I mean, I guess Bongino's up there with him, but I just cannot imagine, you know, talk about people whose stock has just fallen in the last year to a like kind of dramatic level.
But I'll tell you, Rob, for whatever good qualities Kash Patel may have, I've never seen anyone worse at damage control.
Like, I mean, Jean-Paire, Kierre, whatever Joe Biden's fucking lady was, is no worse at it than him.
It's just, and at least she was kind of pleasant looking.
You know what I mean?
Like, he's just, it's just bad.
But here's this, there's a couple clips here of Kash Patel here on Fox News.
Let's, let's just any order.
Let's just cue him up here.
Let's play some of the clips.
Oh, there he is.
Doesn't everything seem fine now, Rob?
Looks like a hammerhead shark.
Quantico.
Okay, hold on.
Start it.
Start it over because I do want to hear the question here, too.
Yeah, that's a kind of guilty face right off the bat.
That doesn't look good.
No.
You're looking at me, you're looking at Brett.
Sorry.
You told me when we last talked, this is eight months ago when we did an interview with the FBI and Quantico that you were convinced that Epstein killed himself in jail.
Today, eight months after that, are you still convinced?
Yes.
100%.
Yes, sir.
You told me.
Great follow-up questions about the evidence.
I mean, that's hard-hitting journalism right there.
Yeah, no, of course.
Well, look, Rob, as we've, we've broken this down for years specifically and specifically with Brett Bayer.
Brett Bayer is his role is to pose as a guy doing actual journalism, but never ask you the correct follow-up questions and essentially let you skate.
But look, I mean, it's just one more time, Kash Patel going on record, but this time he go, he throws 100% in, which really is a thing that like, at least, and look, he's the FBI director, but at least in the intelligence world, you know, Rob, you've read enough about this that I'm sure you've heard this before, that they are famously allergic to that sentence, that you never say 100%.
You never say 100% because you don't know anything 100%, you know?
And then for Kash Patel to be saying he is 100% sure that Jeffrey Epstein killed himself, all right.
It just, again, at the risk of beating a dead horse here, which I don't know how else to describe Kash Patel and Dan Bongino other than dead horses.
And at the risk of beating them, where is that evidence that we haven't seen evidence to make us even 5% sure?
And you're claiming here that you've released everything.
Yet, like, there's just, it doesn't, it's not as if they're giving us a reason.
They're going, look, I've seen such conclusive evidence that Jeffrey Epstein killed himself that I would put it at 100%.
It is a 100% certainty that he killed himself.
And I've seen the evidence, but here's why we can't release that evidence, right?
Like they don't have a thing that it's like national security or victims would be re-traumatized or other, right?
Like they're not offering us any reason why they would keep this information from us, but they're just going to continue asserting that it's 100% and then end up insulting anybody who keeps asking this question.
This seems to be the play right now.
This is the plan.
And it is shockingly pathetic.
What can you say?
Well, yeah, I mean, how can he make this claim again?
Just he absolutely killed himself without anything to back that up, especially when Bongino said, I've seen it.
I've seen it.
What do you see?
What'd you see, dude?
Yeah, it's just wild.
It just wild.
And they're not even going, look, I've seen it and we're doing everything we can to get it to you as soon as possible.
I've seen it and you're going to see it soon.
I've seen it, but here's why you can't see it.
Nothing like that.
Just as they said the whole time, it's always been since Dan Bongino and Kash Patel and Pam Bondi and Donald Trump flipped on a dime and tried to cover up the whole thing.
It's all been trust me, bro.
That's the entire thing since then has been trust me.
If I had files, you'd think I wouldn't have shared the, this is me we're talking about.
That's all they have, or just the assertion, which implicitly is like a trust me, you know, like, so they are offering nothing.
Here, let's go, let's go to the to the next clip.
The Epstein files, the last tranche, we're told, put out.
Looking back since the beginning, and you've been a part of talking about this, and DOJ has obviously produced these elements.
Do you have regrets about how it's been handled?
Look, like any other hot topic issue, the American public and the world had a great interest in this.
And what we did under President Trump's leadership is produce the most transparent DOJ in FBI history.
Three other administrations had the opportunity to do this, and we produced everything we legally and lawfully could.
We work with our partners in Congress.
We follow the statutes and the court orders and we produce, what, 3 million some pages?
So I think we got to the result in the right way.
Could we have gotten there faster?
I'm not really sure because of numerous court cases, multiple protective orders, multiple court ceilings.
And so now we've produced everything we can while protecting victims' rights and volumes.
All right.
So, Rob, I mean, like, man, I don't know.
I mean, how, how many, how much can you say the same thing?
It's just so obvious here, but like he's got, so he's going the Dan Bongino route, this pathetic route of saying, no, we're so transparent that we got this to you, as if we're all supposed to just forget that they tried not to get any of this to us.
Like, we're supposed to pretend that didn't happen.
By the way, Donald Trump is still out trying to ruin Thomas Massey's congressional career.
He's still out there doing that.
There was some type of, I think it was Miriam Adelson said she was putting $20 million into his primary race.
They're still trying to ruin the guy who made them release this stuff for making them release this stuff while they brag about how transparent they are because they released this stuff.
And then, Rob, of course, the other major thing here, you're saying he's straight up saying here, we released everything that we possibly could short of re-victimizing women.
Well, sorry, Kash Patel, I'm not as smart as all you guys.
I'm not, I don't have the brainpower of a Dan Bongino, but how would releasing the 100% definitive proof that he killed himself re-victimize women?
Explain that to me.
Why can't we see that?
By the way, I mean, it's not like the funny thing is that the killing himself part became such a linchpin of this whole thing because that was the meme.
Epstein didn't kill himself.
But really, the conspiracy doesn't even rest on any of that.
It's like there's still be a lot of other questions that it wouldn't like if he had committed suicide in prison.
We could still wonder, was he pressured into committing suicide?
Was he threatened into committing suicide?
Why did the cameras go off?
What was the protocol?
What was all this?
But even if that were the case, it wouldn't really change any of our other questions.
It's just that these guys insist on asserting with 100% certainty that he killed himself.
So back that up with some goddamn evidence because we haven't seen a shred of it yet.
Also, if I learned anything from Steve Bannon, it's that Epstein doesn't really even mind being in prison and enjoys the Almond Joy bars and he can really see the beauty in any situation.
So what evidence do you have that the guy was even suicidal in prison?
He's not a very remorseful individual and he seems content to go, hey, it was a good time and it was a good time and now's the prison time.
No big deal.
Yeah.
And he was, according to his brother, at least, he wasn't at all suicidal.
His brother seems like a little bit of a kook, so who knows?
But according to him, he wasn't at all suicidal.
And he had been attacked in prison just shortly before he ended up dying.
So anyway, there's just a lot of questions here.
And these guys are just saying, no, we've been very transparent.
Now, trust us.
Now, it's also, I mean, the levels of lies to this is first, they're trying to, this is the classic government lie.
No one's more concerned than we are.
The second something goes wrong, no one's more concerned than we are.
And so here you have the public is interested in this case and they were forced to release this information, but they're not actually interested in investigating it.
They're not interested in new information.
The only thing they did was put out the information that they were forced to do.
They didn't want to put out this information.
And not even that.
And at least according to Thomas Massey, not even that.
They haven't, that they haven't complied with what they were forced to put out.
They're still doing the best that they can to brush this under the rug.
And so to claim no one's been more transparent, no, you were forced to release the files that have come out.
And he's been going with this lie for a long time of we're going to do everything that we legally can.
What exactly is holding you guys back?
If anything, the law right now is you're supposed to release all of these files.
And so now you've come up with ongoing investigations, images of murder.
But he's been going with that line for a long time of every time he's asked, well, whatever.
I don't know.
The second you start going, whatever we legally can do, it sounds like you're not actually interested.
Donald Trump's breaking the law all the time.
If he's interested in getting something done, he's getting something done.
This is the only time I've ever heard this administration go, well, we're looking into if we, we're looking into if we can legally blow up boats.
We're looking to if we can legally start a war with Iran because Congress doesn't seem to be all that into it.
You don't, you don't hear a lot of, oh, we're just trying to do whatever the law will allow us to.
We would love to do more of this.
And in this case, he has yet to explain once what law is preventing him from doing more investigations into the Epstein file.
Is there a law against investigating co-conspirators?
No, I mean, at this point, at this point, I think you'd need a law defending your right to keep all the documents you're keeping.
It seems like that's wildly illegal.
So the claim is crazy.
And then, of course, it's mixed in with this other, like, really just pathetic, this really, the pathetic kind of like revert back to partisanship.
And well, Biden didn't do it either.
It's just so weak, man.
You know, it's like there, and you see this all the time.
It ends up happening when people just can't defend their position at all.
So they try to almost just like get you back into tribal monkey brain.
Like, that's their team.
This is our team.
But the fact is that if I come into, you know, if we're like, if we were just on a desert island or something like that, and there's a leader on that island or there's three or four leaders in a row.
And I come out here and I go, dude, these leaders are corrupt and they're stupid and they're mismanaging everything and they're committing crimes and all of this.
And I'm going to do a much better job leading and I'm going to get to the bottom of all these crimes that these guys have been covering up.
And then everyone in the island rallies around me and makes me their new leader.
And then I don't get to the bottom of anything.
I can't go, well, those last guys didn't go to the bottom of anything.
Yeah, we know.
That's why we don't like them.
That's also why we don't like you now too.
It's just like so stupid.
And I don't, you know, and it's, it's, I don't know, it's an incredibly pathetic political tactic that people use when they can't defend their own actions.
And so they just turn back to like, well, remember Joe Biden?
You didn't like him, right?
And we're the guys who beat him.
Like, right.
But you promised you weren't going to do the same thing he did.
And you did.
Nobody, nobody, nobody who ever voted for Joe Biden or ever even, you know, considered it or even anyone who voted against him.
Nobody ever thought, well, Joe Biden's getting in there to drain the swamp, Rob.
That's what Joe Biden.
That's what the guy who's been in the Senate for half a century.
That's what I put him in there for.
I thought maybe the credit card company's man in Delaware was going to get in there and really get to the bottom of government corruption.
Like, you know, like people, even the people who voted for Joe Biden voted for him for different reasons.
In 2020, it was like voting against the chaos of 2020, voting for a return to normalcy, voting against Donald Trump, but no one voted for him with this expectation.
But you, Donald Trump, explicitly ran on this.
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Shooter Investigation Robustness00:15:21
And also, by the way, you know, they sit there and they go like, you know, nobody told you the truth about Jeffrey Epstein.
Not Biden, not Obama, not anywhere.
You're like, you know, there was a president in between those two, which was also Trump.
So like, if you want to go back to it, then like Trump, but again, you guys explicitly ran on this.
This wasn't something that we made up for you.
This was a campaign promise.
And then specifically by guys like Kash Patel.
So I don't know.
This whole thing is just a goddamn disaster.
There is one more clip here that I also thought was just phenomenal because again, it's right on the same theme, the same broader kind of theme that we've been talking a lot about on this show.
So let's play this next clip of Kash Patel.
Provide support.
All right.
Well, let me take you to a different shooter.
And that is the Butler shooter.
I asked you about this at Guanaco.
Tickless.
Will we know a lot more about him?
Is there more to know?
I don't know that there's more to know, but you're going to know everything we know.
And we don't feel that the American people have been given the information they need on that.
And we're digging through the files and we're getting them a more robust picture of what happened.
So that was May 2025.
I mean, I don't think we, the public, have a more robust picture of that shooter.
Well, I think that's an unfair supposition.
We, the FBI, have put out all the information that we possibly and legally can while protecting any ongoing matters that are unrelated.
But he's dead.
Well, yes, he's very much dead.
But at the same time, Brett, we at the FBI have to follow the parameters of our investigation and what the law allows us to release.
I get it, but what were the cell phones?
Why don't we know who he was talking to?
What exactly happened?
I feel like we haven't gotten the whole picture about Butler even now.
But here's the thing, Brett.
We can provide, and just an example here, we've provided 40,000 pages of documents to Congress.
That's a 400% increase from the prior two directors.
We will continue to provide this information with our partners on Capitol Hill when we are legally able.
It's never going to be enough for everyone.
It's never going to be enough.
But what we are saying is we're not saying trust us.
We're saying we did an exhaustive search of that.
We presented that information to the Department of Justice and a decision was made on what to release.
Yeah, but okay.
You said we put out everything we could.
Do you think that everything's been put out about Eric Crumps, the shooter, alleged shooter?
Everything.
Whether it's Epstein or Charlie Kirk or whether it's this, this shooter and Butler, we always put out what the law permits us to put out.
Wow.
I mean, wow, dude.
It's like, it almost feels like when Kash Patel is thrown into these spots, like it almost feels like if someone, like if someone just made me, like, I don't know, they had like, they had my family held hostage or something.
And they were just like, you're going to go out there to 3,000 people and give a lecture on quantum physics.
And I'd be like, but I don't, I don't know anything about that.
Like, what am I going to say?
And they're like, fucking better convince them that you know something.
And then you're just out there and you're just like, poof.
So, all right, guys.
Now, the way you've been thinking about physics is an apple, but like, he's just got nothing.
What the fuck?
Here you are on record last May saying we're going to, we have to do a much better job of flushing out what really happened here for the American people.
Here we are almost a year later.
You've given us nothing.
Like, like, what do we, what, what information do we even have about this, Rob?
We have absolutely nothing.
There is nothing has been explained.
And he's just going to say, he's saying, I'm not saying trust me.
We put out everything that we're legally allowed to put out.
Well, Kash Patel, can we verify that?
No.
So then you're asking us to trust you.
That's what it means to ask someone to trust you.
You're asserting something.
You're backing it up with no evidence and asking us to believe your assertion.
That would be called trust.
This is literally you saying, trust me, bro.
What do you got, Rob?
Man, I pick up on a lot of stuff here.
Firstly, he's repeating this phrase of we're releasing everything that we legally can.
It's also, I envision him walking into a room after they put out files and he's like, double space that I want to be able to say I put out 40,000 instead of 20,000.
So that's meaningless.
Also, Brett Baer had a moment there where he was actually giving some pushback and just realized, I better let him off the hook.
And you can see as he's asking the question, he just stops and pivots to another question.
But I don't think I've ever done this on the show.
There was one thing that I really picked up on, which is he said we couldn't release it because of unrelated information.
And can we actually replay the beginning of this?
Because I think he actually kind of admits that there's more to this storyline of who this person is and his relationship is with the FBI, but it's unrelated in his opinion to the shooter.
Yeah, no, that's a good catch.
Here, let's play that again.
All right.
Well, let me take you to a different shooter, and that is the Butler shooter.
I asked you about this at Guanaco.
Ticklers.
Will we know a lot more about him?
Is there more to know?
I don't know that there's more to know, but you're going to know everything we know.
And we don't feel that the American people have been given the information they need on that.
And we're digging through the files and we're getting them a more robust picture of what happened.
So that was May 2025.
I mean, I don't think we, the public, have a more robust picture of that shooter.
Well, I think that's an unfair supposition.
We, the FBI, have put out all the information that we possibly and legally can while protecting any ongoing matters that are unrelated.
But he's dead.
Pause.
Well, yes, he's very much dead.
What does that mean?
What are the unrelated matters that are tied into this that you're not legally allowed to put out?
Because what that sounds to me is like the FBI or some intelligence agency had some tie-in with this individual.
And so you're not legally allowed to tell us about that because it would undermine these institutions.
And America is going, wait, wait, what are you guys doing with people?
And you guys had a relationship with the guy who took a shot at Donald Trump?
I mean, I'm going conspiracy here, but I'm just saying, what does that mean?
It's a question.
It's a question.
What the hell does that mean?
I mean, you're saying with our now more robust understanding of the situation, it's not robust enough for me to understand why there would be ongoing or interrelated elements to this.
What are you talking about?
I'm assuming, wasn't the official story that this is a lone nut with no connection and no internet history and whoopsie, the Secret Service just happened to not check the obvious roof with a direct line of sight to the president from 130 yards away.
Like we've got no answers on any of this.
And then, yeah, he just hides behind some vague, it could be connected to other things that therefore we legally can't give you more information about.
Well, to your point, Rob, that right there is a very big story.
If that's true, then that's what's being kept from us.
But I'd love to know what he thinks is unrelated that needs a mention, but it's not related.
Sounds like a bit of an oxymoron almost that it's tied into this, but unrelated.
Yeah, I completely agreed.
And so, you know, look, he's going, you know, he's going to sit here and say, when it comes to Epstein, when it comes to Charlie Kirk, when it comes to the Donald Trump assassination attempt, we've put out everything that we're legally able to put out.
And it's like, yeah, okay.
Well, with the Epstein stuff, the most obvious, you know, first rejoinder to that is that you had all this stuff and you've been sitting on it.
While you all told us that there were no files, you only put it out when you were forced to.
You could have legally put a lot of this stuff out before then and you didn't.
Now, with what you have put out now, all any of us are going is like, whoa, this looks fucking crazy.
So we got a lot more questions, if anything, on that.
Now, with Charlie Kirk, okay, there is a trial coming up because the guy's still alive, but there's nothing they've put out that's really cleared up at all what happened to Charlie.
And as far as the stuff with this Trump shooting, the guy's dead.
There's never going to be a trial.
He's essentially telling us, you know what you're going to know, which is what, Rob?
Absolutely nothing.
I mean, we don't know.
I don't think this is an exaggeration to say.
We don't know any more than we knew the day Trump was shot, other than the name of the guy.
Like, what else did we really get other than that?
We got excuses for why it happened, but essentially, like, what you knew the day Donald Trump got shot was that somehow he got on this roof, he almost assassinated the president, caught him in the ear.
Like, that's essentially what we know.
I wouldn't call that a more robust understanding of the events.
So, yeah, I mean, look, dude, this is this is the deal.
It's this administration, and this has long been over, but this administration said they were coming in here to drain the swamp, said they were going to get to the bottom of all these deep state criminals, and they're covering every goddamn thing up.
That's it.
You know, they're covering everything.
Now, the question is, you, Trump supporter, or just you, American citizen, are you stupid enough to fucking fall for this shit?
Are you, are you like so degraded as a, as an adult human being that you're going to let someone lie to your face and treat you like you're a fucking retard?
Or are you going to be like, no, I can obviously see what you're doing here?
That seems to me to be the only real question left.
All right.
So, we got like 15 minutes left.
You want, let's, um, we can talk about the latest in Iran a little bit.
So, I don't know if you've, if you've been keeping up with this, Rob, but it's been an interesting few days.
Um, and it is in so many ways been vindicating to those of us who opposed the 12-day war last year.
But essentially, there's there's there's been a tremendous amount of military, U.S. military hardware has been moved into the region.
Uh, it was reported last month when BB Netanyahu was essentially saying we need more backup before we can bomb Iran.
Uh, and that seems to be the case, and it seems like they've moved a lot of that in.
Um, and uh, um, the USS Abraham Lincoln, which was one of the ships that was moved in, was um evidently yesterday, the Iranians flew a drone uh toward it.
The U.S. Central Command claims they shot down the drone.
Uh, the Iranian government claimed that it was a surveillance drone, that it was totally legal in international waters.
Um, there were reports that there will be negotiations.
Of course, there's a major problem with having negotiations right now with Iran, um, which is that the last time we entered negotiations with them, we were setting them up for Israel to bomb them and then us to come in and bomb them next time.
So, it makes it really hard to have a good faith negotiation after that.
Now, what's been reported essentially, if you remember, Rob, uh, in the negotiating period that led up to the 12-day war, uh, Donald Trump had signaled at one point that he wanted um Iran to bring down their level of enrichment of enriched uranium in their nuclear program.
And then the Hawks all uh insisted that he insist on 0% enriched uranium.
In other words, um, to abandon their legal civilian nuclear energy program.
And that was always known that that was going to be, it was a poison pill put into the deal to design to design to um to crush it.
Now, this round of negotiations, there's essentially four issues.
There's four major issues theoretically that there are to be negotiated about.
Just to give you my take on all of this, I think all of the negotiations are phony at this point.
I don't think that actually any of this matters.
I think that Israel and the Israel lobby in America wants regime change here.
As evidence for this, I have every single one of them in their own words for the last 30 years saying, I want regime change in Iran every day, literally, or figuratively, but pretty close to literally.
And so now the four issues that they're claiming that they're negotiating are number one, the nuclear program, number two, intercontinental ballistic missiles, number three, support for proxy groups in the region, and number four, killing their own protesters.
So these are like the four things now that they're claiming are major issues.
Now, it was reported out that, and I don't know if you've seen any of this, Rob, but Fox News all day long, all the Warhawks, you know, all the Israel lobby people, you know, Mark Levin and Ben Shapiro and all of them.
Every single day, they're just putting pressure on Donald Trump.
You know, you gave a red line about them killing protesters and now they've killed 30 trillion protesters.
So you got to go in there and do something about it.
Now, what they insisted the negotiations would be would be that Iran has to end their nuclear program.
We're back to 0% enriched uranium.
End their missile program.
So they can't develop intercontinental ballistic missiles anymore.
End their support for all proxies and treat the protesters all peacefully.
In other words, Rob, the most ridiculous non-starter.
They're asking something that you know you can't possibly get.
And part of the reason why you can't possibly get this is why no government would ever agree to this is because, you know, the whole reason, look, the reason why Israel would take that deal if they were willing to give it is because then Israel can just pick them apart.
Tough Talk on Nuclear Threats00:06:56
Then Israel can go through with the regime change.
If they don't have the missiles to threaten back Israel with, then Israel has no reason not to attack them whenever they want to.
And they've got an aggressor in their neighborhood.
So they're not going to do any of that.
They're not going to get rid of their defensive programs.
The latest I had heard reported was that Iran came back and countered with, why don't we enter third-party negotiations, but we'll only, well, let's keep it to the nuclear issue, which was the issue we were negotiating last time.
And I just saw it reported earlier this morning that Iran pulled out of the negotiations because the U.S. refused to make them just about the nuclear issue.
So seems to me what we're seeing here is another round of phony poison pill negotiations intentionally designed to let the administration say, look, we tried to negotiate.
They won't do it any other way.
And so we have no choice but to bomb them.
That seems to be my best read of it.
I don't know any thoughts you have on any of that.
Well, I'll just add one thing to the end of that statement or just walk away.
And that provoked everybody for no reason.
Had a little show of moving boats over here.
Maximum pressure.
And all right, let's call it a day.
So, but yeah, I was I was joking that the provisions were essentially, hey, Iran, can you make it easier for us to attack you?
Can you make it so that there are no co- because the reason we're not attacking you now is because there's costs.
Can you just take away the costs and then trust us that we're going to be nice?
Well, it really is something that, you know, look, I don't know.
The reason why I tend to think they're going to bomb Iran again is just that I do think the military movements, I mean, these things, it's not as if this is easy or cheap to do.
Like there's already, it's like tens of millions of dollars have already been spent on just moving all these military assets in place.
And I don't know, you know, sure, I wouldn't put it past Trump to do that just for show, but it seems to me like we're following the same playbook as last time, you know?
Like it seems to be leading right up to the same thing.
And yes, to your point, I mean, there's the idea of asking a government after you've already tricked them last time in your negotiation to be saying like, that's our negotiation.
If you could just grab your ankles and spread your cheeks for us, then we totally won't do anything after that.
It's just, it's absurd.
And I got to say, it's very, this is why I said it's very vindicating for us.
It's so revealing for the people last time who were saying it's just about their nuclear program.
It's just about their nuclear program.
It's just about the threat of them developing a nuclear weapon.
And then to brag that we obliterated their nuclear capabilities.
And then to say that six months later, we're right back at the same spot where we still have to be concerned with their nuclear program, plus these four other things now.
It's just, again, it's about as transparent as fucking Kash Patel telling you he's turned over everything he can.
And this is obvious at this point.
And this is what it's always been about.
This was obvious to me last summer.
I think it's obvious to just about anyone paying attention.
I don't know how you could not see it when they all tell you in their own words, but that this is about regime change.
And this has been something that, you know, you can go back to what Richard Pearl and David Wormser were saying about degrading Iran back in the mid-1990s.
You can look at Benjamin Netanyahu testifying before Congress in 2002 that we ought to do a regime change war in Iran.
You could listen to John Kiriaku had, he's got a bunch of interesting little stories about them saying at the highest possible level that we'll be in Tehran by next year, back in 2003, I believe that was.
You can listen to all types of the propaganda that Netanyahu has been spewing about how close they were to a bomb for the last 30 years.
Every single Warhog from John McCain and Lindsey Graham and all of them constantly talking about regime change in Tehran.
It's so obviously about that.
And that's the goal here.
But sure, I guess Israel would take, you can't support Hezbollah anymore or have any more missiles because, you know, then they kind of get their way and then they can do whatever they want.
And they've demonstrated already that they will attack the Iranian government.
You know, look, dude, I'm just saying, just calling balls and strikes here, they are Iran is probably in a situation where they're justified.
Yeah, let me walk that back a little bit.
If there's ever a time to be justified to launch a preemptive war, Iran is about as close as you could be to that.
They're being surrounded.
They're being threatened.
They're being bullied.
They've already been attacked.
So like, I don't even know if you'd call it a preemptive war, depending on how you define that.
But it seems pretty clear that we're pushing them as much as we can push them.
The Iranian government is talking tough.
They're talking very tough about how they will not go down like last time.
There will not be advanced warning.
There will not like they really will respond.
The American military movements seem to indicate that we're concerned with that threat.
That being said, I don't know.
I really don't know.
I do, I do wonder, and in a lot of ways, this is the big question.
And I do think that some people, some people who I really admire, who I think have been largely correct about foreign policy for decades, definitely said some kind of like unqualified statements where they didn't kind of hedge their bets a little bit about the 12-day war, where they said, if you attack Iran's nuclear program, they will respond by killing a bunch of Americans in the area.
That many of us were, I don't know, thought that that was an unacceptable risk to take.
It turned out they showed restraint out of a desire for self-preservation.
The question is, what if their self-preservation is really threatened?
What if it becomes clear that this really is a regime change?
Now, I don't know.
Like, even in that, in that scenario, Rob, it's possible that they would just take it because what the fuck are they going to do?
I mean, they can kill a lot of Americans.
They could kill a lot of Israelis, but they know if they do that, their country is going to get lit up.
So you're leaving yourself in a position of wondering, what will the Ayatollah do in that situation?
Colostrum Routine and Escalation00:03:14
Will he just go, shit, you got me? And back down?
Or will he start lighting up American targets?
Why on earth we want to find that out?
You know, like, why on earth we want to roll the dice to maybe get a bunch of Americans killed and maybe get drawn into a wider war and then kill a whole bunch of Iranians in response when they're a country that poses absolutely no threat to us.
That's ridiculous.
But that seems to be where we're at right now.
And I'm not sure exactly what would happen.
You know, the mullahs talk a big game, but they always talk a big game.
And I've actually been surprised how much they've backed down over the years.
So I don't know.
We will see.
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I mean, you're certainly flirting with the problem that you guys just have boats out there and you're having interactions with their drones at the moment.
Yeah, it kind of feels like you're looking for an escalation.
Sure does.
Sure does.
And even it sure feels that way.
And even if you're not looking for an escalation, the thing about wars is you start putting your guys in harm's way and you might get that escalation whether you're looking for it or not.
So that's the situation as of right now.
Look, they're just, like I said, it was just reported earlier today that Iran's pulling out because the deals won't be just about the nuclear talks.
Over the last week, there's been a bunch of other Arab countries and European countries who have stepped up to offer to facilitate negotiations.
Maybe we can get back to a place like that.
You know, Iran also, this has also been reported in multiple outlets that Iran refused direct negotiations and said they'll only enter into third-party negotiations, which makes a lot of sense given the way they got burned last time, that they want as many other people to be there as possible to also be like, hey, you were here too.