Dave Smith and Robbie the Fire Bernstein dismantle Ben Shapiro's accusations of disloyalty, exposing his ad hominem tactics regarding the Iran conflict and his refusal to debate critics despite shifting public opinion. They highlight how Shapiro enabled figures like Nick Fuentes while Congress avoids voting on war powers resolutions to sidestep accountability for civilian casualties. Ultimately, the hosts argue that avoiding difficult conversations and selective outrage undermines democratic integrity during this escalating geopolitical crisis. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Sponsor Spotlight: Yokratom00:01:30
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What's up?
What's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
I am Dave Smith.
He is Robbie the Fire Bernstein.
How are you feeling today, Rob?
I mean, the world's in chaos, but we're going to be doing comedy in Pittsburgh this weekend.
So I'm looking forward to that.
Also, tomorrow night, tomorrow night and Saturday night out in Pittsburgh, come see us.
There's still, I think, like two of the four shows have sold out.
They're going to all sell out.
So come grab tickets right now, comicdave Smith.com.
Come on out, Pittsburgh.
Also, check out, I did a 1950s newsreel parody of the Iran Ward intro, my show.
So check it out.
I loved it.
Loved it.
Oh, thank you.
I'm going to share it after this.
I loved it.
Well, it is a fun moment that we're at.
Oh, by the way, before we get into the show, one more reminder.
My amazing, beautiful, lovely wife, her children's book, Healthy Hibernation, is available now in paperback as well.
It's a bestseller, and we've really been blown away by how many people have loved it.
And so thank you to everybody who's purchased it already.
It's a really sweet thing.
War Parody and Pittsburgh Shows00:15:58
It's not the dark world that we live in.
It's just a nice mom making a book for little kids about eating healthy.
It's really sweet, really beautiful, really beautifully illustrated and very beautifully written.
Anyway, Healthy Hibernation by Lauren Smith is available on Amazon.
All right, Rob.
So look, as you were kind of getting into in your intro, things are a little bit confusing right now.
Okay.
Now, we're, okay.
So we are now a week into a war with Iran.
Well, it, okay, it's not a war, but they, well, it's been a war for 47 years, but it's not a war.
Well, it's a war from them.
On their side, it's a war.
Our side, it's not a war because it would be totally illegal if it was a war.
It's not a war where we're just bombing the crap out of the country and we killed their leader.
I could understand where a lot of you might confuse that with a war, but it's not.
It's not a war.
Okay, well, it is a war, according to Pete Hegseth.
According to the Secretary of War, it's a war, but not according to the Speaker of the House.
So it is a war, but it's also not a war.
I think the important thing to remember here, Rob, is that this is nothing like Iraq.
It's nothing like Iraq.
Now, we are going to arm the Kurds, but don't let that, hold on, don't let that fuck with you too much.
Which Kurds?
Well, the Iraqi Kurds.
Yes, the same Kurds are in the Iraq.
Okay, fine.
So it's got that one similarity to the war in Iraq.
Aside from that, but it's not even a war.
So how similar could it be to the war in Iraq?
And it's going to take weeks and not months.
Yes, that is the same thing Dick Cheney said about the war in Iraq, if you want to be technical about it, but that whatever.
Also, there was a political piece this morning saying that the plan is to go until September.
Okay, it's fine.
So it might take months, okay, but it'll be months, not years.
Soon as the Kurds get in there, as we know, Rob, we've learned this in multiple different theaters, whether it's Iraq, whether it's Syria, when you arm the Kurds, that's when the dying stops.
That's when things calm down.
Okay, fine.
Listen, in both of those particular examples, it led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and didn't slow down the bleeding, but it's going to be different in Iran.
I mean, after all, Rob, these are Persians.
Anyway, so that's about where we're at.
Is everybody clear?
Did that clear anything up for you, Rob?
Are the Kurds the world's biggest bunch of suckers?
Why do they keep getting involved in this stuff?
They're like the ugly stepsister who thinks they're going to also get dad's attention.
Well, because the Kurds are like, well, first of all, they're commies, by the way, which never seems to get brought up.
Like, no one ever mentions that.
They're a whole bunch of communists.
They're all the whole reason why we had to fight the whole Cold War and that whole anyway, yes.
Well, that's forget that.
But I think, you know, I don't know.
I mean, I think essentially they're mercenaries.
You know what I mean?
Like, it's like, hey, listen, they're a strong fighting force.
And so they're like, hey, we'll do that.
But also they have beef with all because the Kurds are kind of spread out, you know, like there's like a little bit in Iran and a bit in Syria, a bunch in Iraq.
They're a diaspora people.
Yes, that's right, Rob.
They are a people without a land.
And unfortunately, there's no land without people.
And by the way, it doesn't really matter if there were people there or not, Rob.
That's just a nice story we tell ourselves.
But so essentially, they never got a Kurdistan, right?
They never got their own regime.
And so there's always kind of this carrot to dangle out in front of them of like, you fight with the big empires and there'll be something in it for you.
And, well, every time so far, what's been in it for them is slaughter.
But anyway, this is, but this time is different, Rob.
We've already been very clear about that.
This is totally different.
Anyway, this whole thing, look, it's such a mess already.
The latest reporting that I'm seeing now is they're saying over a thousand civilians have been killed in Iran.
The U.S. and Israel has been lighting Tehran up.
You know, this war that, well, look, yes, I'm sorry, Rob.
It's just very, I said this war again.
It's not a war, not a war.
It is a war on their side, but it's not a war on our side.
But this event, you know, was because the Iranian, well, it was all because the Iran, the Iranian regime was killing the Iranian people.
And so we have to go over there and liberate them.
Not the thousand that we killed.
Like, obviously, they don't get to be liberated.
And I'm sure for like their family members, that's, you know, that sucks.
But the rest of them are going to be liberated.
That's the whole point of this was that they were killing their protesters.
We have to liberate them.
I mean, also, we don't care who comes next and we have no plan for who comes next, but it's all about liberating them.
Well, really, the war, again, I'm sorry, not a war, but really this thing, it's about their nuclear program, which we obliterated six months ago.
Well, but it could come back in five years.
And anyway, I'm sorry.
This is a lot.
It's very difficult to keep up with.
One thing I do know for sure, Rob, is that I was, I was attacked, attacked recently by little Ben Shapiro.
Little Ben came at me.
This was quite fun.
Ben Shapiro did an entire show yesterday on how what awful people all of us who oppose this war are.
How terrible, what awful people.
And he went through the list of a bunch of us and it had, it was Trash and Megan Kelly and Tucker Carlson.
He took some shots at Piers Morgan and then had a nice little segment on me.
And man, you mean what Ted Cruz would call the fringe of the right wing?
Yes, the fringe, the fringe of the right wing, meaning all of the most influential figures.
It really is just the tactics are, again, Stunningly, like they, it's unbelievable how much they resemble all the worst, just lefty fucking tactics, right?
It's it's Brian Stelter telling you that Joe Rogan is this fringe figure who's, you know, must want people to die.
And that's why he doesn't support lockdowns or something like that.
It's the exact same thing.
I actually thought that was quite funny the other day with the Piers Morgan episode in question here.
But at one point, Ben Ferguson said that Tucker Carlson was fringe.
And like, I think the entire panel just laughed at him.
It was just, we all just literally, I mean, it was like a genuine like gut laugh reaction.
Yes, yes, Tucker Carlson represents a real fringe, no public support amongst the right wing, but Ben Ferguson is probably 600 listeners an episode of his show.
He really has his finger on the pulse.
Well, anyway, here is angry little Ben Shapiro coming after me.
Let's play it and let's give our thoughts.
He had on Dave Smith.
Apparently, his job is never to tell jokes, but to instead give poorly informed foreign policy takes and also to hate America.
Here we go.
The IDF is the worst terrorist organization in the region.
Let's get real.
The United States of America is arguably the worst terrorist organization in the world.
If you want to look over the last 25 years, how many innocent civilians we have slaughtered?
You're getting us, you're getting us into what the neocon.
Yeah, that's right.
You're getting us into the neocon seventh war.
Ben Ferguson rightly notes at that point that he might want to take down the American flag behind him.
That is right.
It doesn't matter, it turns out, how many times you appear on Joe Rogan's show or how many times you hide behind your title of comedian who holds the Guinness Book of World Records for fewest jokes told, or how many times you spew puerile analogies that demonstrate nothing but unbelievable, willful ignorance of the nature.
Oh, an unbelievable willful ignorance.
All right.
So this is, so it's, it's really funny that, you know, this is just the way Ben Shapiro is.
He jumps, he jumps on whenever he thinks there's a weakness.
Like he, he, you know, this guy must be watching my shit because anytime he thinks that there's something like, ooh, I got him on this one.
And so this is his game.
Literally, Ben Ferguson, that was his response, as Ben Shapiro pointed out and said, good job.
His response was, you might want to take that American flag down behind you if you're going to say America is the biggest terrorist organization in the world.
And it was, I mean, I responded by saying, yeah, that's the dumbest response I've ever heard.
The entire comment section of Piers Morgan is just talking about how dumb Ben Ferguson is.
And Ben Shapiro thought this was the thing to jump on.
Like, you hate America.
Really, Rob?
This is the fight he wants to have?
Is that what if you oppose the wars there for you hate your grandma?
What can you even say to this, Rob?
Hasn't this just already been taken apart a million times?
I don't think we dedicated our lives to this show and following these topics out of a hatred for America.
I think it's a desperate call to try and make it a little bit better and more of what we think the founding fathers actually had in mind for a free country.
Yeah, I'd say so.
And it almost like makes you wonder in some way, like, well, let's just say, okay, so Ben Shapiro doesn't, you know, agree with my, you know, assessment here.
Well, what if they were?
What if the U.S. federal government, let's say they just became your definition of terrorists?
Let's say they started blowing up Israeli kids and school buses and doing suicide bombs or something like that.
Would it still make you hate your country to point that out?
To be against it?
Yeah, I'm saying like if the logic of what he's saying is true, then it should be true no matter what the government does, right?
So you could disagree with the claim, but to imply that it means you hate your country is, and I mean this, it's the Like an ADIQ argument.
I mean, Ben Shapiro is not, doesn't have an ADIQ, but his argument, he's presuming you do in order to believe this line of shit.
Like, look, I mean, this is, again, like a pretty basic conservative view that conservatives should be under able to understand.
I'm not saying Ben Shapiro is a conservative, but he claims to be one.
I think of him more as a foreign spy.
But I mean, it really is something, Rob, of all the things for Ben Shapiro, you don't love your country.
Everybody who loves America supports Jonathan Pollard.
Ben Shapiro telling me about patriotism.
The guy who's on record saying the greatest guarantor of his support for America is the existence of Israel.
Talk to other people about their patriotism.
But of course, anyway, the basic conservative idea, you know, as Frederick Bastiat pointed out many years ago, there is a difference between society and the state.
There is a difference between our political class, the warfare machine, the military-industrial complex, and the mountain that I live on and the land and the people and the culture.
And so the idea that you, if you hate a war, or if you just recognize the fundamental reality, which is that if you want, if you, look, if you're going to give me like a coherent definition for terrorism, let's say something like intentionally targeting civilians to cause a political change or something like that.
Explain to me how.
Explain to me how.
The U.S. over the last 25 years has invaded, bombed, toppled the governments of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, and now Iran.
The total death count from all of that is in the millions, well north of 4 million.
Tell me where you're getting those numbers from fucking the Ayatollah.
Tell me where you're getting those numbers from Hamas.
So, you know, you can make the argument.
Again, he's going to get into this a little bit more here, but the idea that calling that out means you hate your country is, again, it's just, it's George W. retarded.
This is the dumbest argument ever.
Like, I mean, again, I'm not even saying like, look, dude, again, I'm not the smartest guy in the world, but I could tell you when something's just too stupid for any of us to treat it seriously.
And that's what this is.
Again, just the lowest hanging fruit of political argumentation.
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I also, I don't love the version of this country that will tell me I got to stay in my home because of some virus.
And then some guy can run and campaign on no wars and then get shot at and then suddenly become the world's biggest supporter of Israel and have all the wars.
And then I can criticize it out of a love for this country and a desire to see it improve and not just have everyone clap and applaud this unnecessary risk and this disastrous war.
Yeah, no, that's right.
And again, just to attack the logic of what Ben Shapiro is saying here, let's just say that AOC or Tucker Carlson or whoever became president.
You know what I mean?
Like, let's just say that happened.
And then their policy was to switch sides here.
We're not, we're not going to attack Iran.
We're going to back Iran in their attack against Israel.
We're going to start bombing military targets in Tel Aviv, which, by the way, as the IDF has admitted, Rob, are embedded amongst civilian areas.
So, I mean, there'll be collateral damage there.
But Shapiro calls people know.
Oh, yes, it's a noble war.
Let everyone know.
No, no, we are going to put a full blockade around the country.
So they won't be able to leave the country.
And then also we're going to start bombing the sites where we tell civilians to go after the pamphlets tell them to leave.
But would Ben Shapiro have a problem with that?
Would it be, would that mean you hate your America if you were to criticize that?
Yeah, that's right.
Collateral Damage Debate00:14:38
You don't actually believe any of this.
The only one true belief that Ben Shapiro has is that he supports Israel.
It's the only real belief.
All of this is just fake.
He's lying.
He knows he's lying.
We know he knows he's lying.
All right.
Let's go.
I know that.
I'm sorry, Tyrred.
So not on topic.
But I laugh because he was trying to make his joke that you don't tell jokes.
And then he put up a Guinness that's on, that doesn't correlate to his joke.
And I was just laughing at how bad a comedy is because he was like, Guinness book of records for world's biggest dumbass and it's or whatever it was, but it should have said Guinness World Records for comedian who told least amount of jokes.
That would have been least aligned with what you were saying.
It's a, it's amazing how many people when, because this is the thing they try to attack me for is like, say, you're not even funny.
You don't even tell jokes or something like that.
And then they show you what they think is funny.
And you're like, all right, I'm okay with your assessment.
Again, I don't even know.
Again, this is all just too dumb to respond to, but it's like, yeah, guys, I am a stand-up comedian.
I also do political commentary.
All that any of you guys are saying is you're going, your political commentary isn't very funny.
Like, okay, sure, like whatever you want to say.
Like, fine.
Okay.
Like, I don't know what to tell you.
I just, I don't know.
I don't know.
I've been doing comedy for 20 years.
I don't care what random people who hate my politics opinion of my comedy is.
I know where I'm at as a stand-up and people who come out to the shows and come see us, they know what's up.
So like, I don't, whatever.
This is just also dumb.
But yeah, it is pretty funny that he did the graphic that didn't even work with the joke.
He's not.
The thing about Ben Shapiro is he's not actually that bright.
He's not as dumb as the points he's making here, but he's not a very bright guy.
All right, here, let's keep playing.
Drug war.
I'm sorry, but you hate the country if you say America is the worst terrorist organization in the world.
You just do.
To make that argument, you have to deliberately obscure the difference between actual terrorists who actually are seeking deliberately to kill innocent people in the name of politics, not collateral damage, deliberately seeking to kill innocent people.
Sorry, just pause nation states.
I mean, look, dude, this is again, you could just say this.
He has to just, he can't actually, if you notice, Rob, he can't actually engage in the argument.
He has to just say, there's no argument.
You just do.
You just hate America.
If you're going to say we're terrorists and you can't distinguish between the real terrorists, okay, the real terrorists intentionally kill civilians.
So this is the argument we're getting ready.
Actually, you know what?
Just back up a couple seconds here and let's play this.
Let's let him finish his point because we'll respond to this for the millionth time.
But here, let's play it.
Terrorists who actually are seeking deliberately to kill innocent people in the name of politics, not collateral damage, deliberately seeking to kill innocent people, and nation states who are seeking to avoid civilian casualties, often while fighting those actual terrorists, Which, of course, is the point for people who hate America.
Okay, so pause it here, and then bring it back a few seconds for the next point.
So he said, oh my God, if you're conflating the terrorists who intentionally kill civilians with the nation states that have collateral damage, but go do everything they can to not kill innocent civilians.
Okay.
Well, let's examine that a little bit.
They don't do everything they can, right?
Because like one thing would be to not drop bombs on people.
So that's one thing at least they don't do to avoid it, right?
The thing that kills the civilians.
They don't do that.
So you can't really say they do everything to avoid killing civilians.
So let's go to this word deliberate.
What exactly does that mean?
I mean, look, as I know they always want to come up with a euphemism or a social construct.
So it's not intentionally killing civilians.
It's collateral damage.
Okay.
It's just a term you made up.
It's just a euphemism.
They'll come up with some construction, some social construct about, you know, the rules of war or international law.
Not that they follow any of that shit, but they'll invoke it when it's convenient.
This in Iran right now, this was a war of choice.
That is not debatable.
That is objectively what this war was.
The Pentagon has already confirmed there was no imminent attack coming.
We chose to go to war with them.
Even many different figures, the Warhawks in the Congress in the administration have acknowledged that like, oh, we did obliterate their nuclear program, but we were worried that they would rebuild it at some point off in the future.
This was a war of choice.
There's about a thousand civilians dead right now is what's being reported.
Obviously, the number will be higher than that, much higher, depending on how long this war goes.
All those people would still be alive if you hadn't decided to do that to engage in a war of choice.
That's deliberate, dude.
That's intentional.
You can come up with whatever excuse you want to, but you took in action knowing it would result in innocent people dying that you didn't need to take.
And now those people are dead.
And if you, as we've said like a million times on the show, but if there was a bad guy, even a murderer, a killer in a civilian area somewhere, and you, you know, outside of war, like in a domestic dispute, you dropped a hellfire missile on their house, you would be charged with murder in the first degree for all of the innocent people who died there.
There's this idea of it's collateral damage.
It wasn't intentional.
This is just a complete fiction that psychopaths like you make up when you want to promote another war.
Call it whatever you want to.
It's the exact same thing.
It is murder in the first degree.
You are intentionally killing civilians.
That's what you're doing.
And for those people on the ground, for those 4 million plus people who died in the global war on terrorism, those were real people every bit as much as Ben Shapiro is a real person.
And the father who pulled his kid out of the rubble is every bit as much.
It's the exact same thing on a human level as if Ben Shapiro was pulling his kids out of there or I was pulling my kids out of there.
And so you could try to pretend there's this huge moral distinction because when Israel and America does it with their military, therefore it's okay.
But like, there's just not.
And, you know, when Iran is launching missiles back at Israel and killing a bunch of people, that's, I'm sure Ben Shapiro does not go, eh, they were just collateral damage.
That doesn't count.
This is pure bullshit.
Speaking of the semantics of this stuff, in Afghanistan, we aligned ourselves with opium dealers and child rapists.
Yep.
That's a very moral army.
And making a calculation for how to be victorious over there, we decided to align ourselves with child rapists.
Also, like, you know, even within Ben Shapiro's own worldview here, he's really got to ignore a whole bunch of shit.
Like, you could sit here and say, oh, you know, like Israel is the most moral army in the world, or, oh, it's just collateral damage or something.
Like, what about all the doctors' reports of toddlers being shot in the head, shot in the groin?
I mean, I'm sorry, again, as I'm repeating myself, but you know, we've made this point a million times on the show.
But look, there are examples of things like we covered on this show when they claimed that Hamas, by the way, they ended up retrieving all of this, but when they claimed Hamas was slow rolling the remains of the dead hostages, and so they just have the food coming into Gaza.
They just punish the civilian population on behalf of what a gang in that case was doing.
And the same thing here in Iran.
You are intentionally punishing the civilian population for the crimes of their government.
In Iran, by the way, a not democratic government.
So it's not even like you could go with the Osama bin Laden bullshit rationalization that therefore you're guilty because you voted this government in or something like that.
So again, this is dumb, low IQ like posturing that he's doing here, but he can't really take on the argument.
He's got nothing.
Anyway, let's keep playing.
Kill innocent people and nation states who are seeking to avoid civilian casualties, often while fighting those actual terrorists, which of course is the point for people who hate America, to reduce America to the level of its enemies in order to uphold those enemies.
That is the goal.
Now, I know the data.
Pause it here.
Just pause it here, rewind a little bit to get to his next point.
That's what he's got, dude.
Yeah, guys, what a devastating argument.
Turns out, guys, I know a lot of you may have thought like I was convinced by Ron Paul and then read a lot of libertarian books and I felt like they made better arguments.
And some of you may have thought that like, well, I mean, the global war on terrorism cost the country $8 trillion and killed millions of people and left tens of thousands of our bravest young boys blowing their brains out and the country more weakened and divided than ever before.
Maybe you thought that's why I oppose these wars for all the death and destruction and debt and what it does to our country.
Turns out, guys, I'm sorry, Ben Shapiro called me out, so I got to admit it.
Turns out, I just hate your grandma and everything good about this country.
And I just love Hamas and the Ayatollah.
And my whole goal here has just been to weaken this country until finally the Ayatollah can take over the world or something like that.
That's this is what these guys are left with.
And don't get me wrong because like I will at times impugn the motives of my you know enemies.
And I think sometimes it is appropriate.
Like Ben Shapiro is a foreign spy who only cares about supporting a foreign government.
But like I got arguments with my shit too.
Like I'll take when we play a video like this, I will also take on his point and tear it to shreds.
You notice he has nothing but this.
You hate America.
It's literally, if you remember, there used to, I think it was Family Guy who did an impression of Sean Hannity, like back during the war on terrorism early days.
And that was the impression.
Was it just someone who would go, you know, I really don't think this war is wise.
And he'd go, you hate America.
Like it's, that's, that's what Ben Shapiro's got.
It's a caricature of an idiot war hawk.
All right, here.
Let's, and by the way, but hold on.
Even before I go back to this, like if you're going to start talking about motives here, even if you believed, like, look, even if you believed this was a wise war or a war that fucking we ought to fight, and you'd be sitting there and you'd be like, look, there's all these critics of the global war on terrorism.
And I do have to admit that they've gotten it right six times in a row.
You know, all of these wars have been unmitigated disasters.
Ben Shapiro is somebody who cheerled the war in Iraq, right?
Like he cheerled a thing that turned into a catastrophe where over a million people died and $2 trillion were blown and all this stuff, you know?
You'd think at least if he was even pretending to be honest, he'd have to go, okay, look, now I understand why some people might be skeptical about this.
I got it really, really wrong in the past, but I think I'm right this time, you know?
But the fact is that he cheerleads this war on two.
You know, did you see Rob the other day, Lindsey Graham?
Because now Israel has started bombing Lebanon as well.
Lindsey Graham pleaded with the president to get in on that war, to start bombing Lebanon as well.
It's a two-for-one sale.
If you're already having one war, why not have two wars?
Do you think, listen, do you think the Israeli government officials are talking about how Turkey is the new Iran?
They already got their eyes on what the next conflict is going to be.
And where's Ben Shapiro going to be on those?
He'll support every one of them.
Support every one of them.
You know, I swear, we don't really talk this way.
I know Tucker Carlson does.
I said this the other day, but after a while, because Tucker's like a Christian, we're a bit different, you know, culturally.
We're both two Jewish guys.
And so there's just a little bit of a different, I don't know, like cultural dynamic there.
But when you see these guys champion the war in Iraq, champion the war in Afghanistan, champion the war in Libya, champion the war in Syria, all of them turn into goddamn disasters.
Now they champion the war in Iran.
It's already turning into a disaster.
Now they're ready for the next one and the next one and the next one.
At a certain point, I think the only accurate way to describe it is how Tucker, what Tucker Carlson said, which is that you people worship death.
Like, I mean, like, if you want to, you're going to attack my motive.
My motives are, I just hate America.
Like, okay, fine.
But I'm actually basing this on your track record.
I just think you're satanic.
You're like a demonic level of evil.
You just will always promote and worship and advocate for mass murder campaigns when they don't have to happen.
And then you'll come around demonizing anybody who's against them.
But the thing about it is, Ben Shapiro is like, you're a tiny Jew.
No one's scared of you, dude.
So keep talking shit.
That's fine.
But if you want to talk about my motives, fine.
Let's talk about yours.
You're a foreign spy who worships death.
All right.
Let's keep playing.
To uphold those enemies.
That is the goal.
Now, I know that Dave Smith is super duper excited that his name was mentioned here.
And he's sitting there shouting at his TV screen in his basement, debate me, bro.
To which I answer, nah.
I don't debate with trolls who claim that America is the biggest terrorist state in the world because that is idiotic.
I didn't debate the Lynn LaRouche followers who sat in Harvard Square carrying anti-war cardboard signs.
I know you only debate 19-year-olds confused about their gender.
I'm a bridge too far.
Demonsizing Opponents00:03:00
That's what it is.
Like, dude, you're better off just not mentioning me, dude.
Like, what type of pussy ass segment is this?
I know Dave's in his basement right now, screaming at his TV.
I was okay.
Like, I own a nice house, but okay, Ben, like, I don't know.
I was screaming.
No, I was laughing.
I had a big smile on my face.
I was excited to respond to this.
Sure.
No, you won't debate me, Ben.
And we all know why you won't debate me because I will fucking kick your shit in.
And here's the thing, Rob.
And I posted about this on Twitter yesterday.
It was trending today.
But the thing is, Ben, like no one really cares.
Don't really care if you want to do the debate or not.
I'm not seething.
Oh, debate me, bro.
It's like, I mean, I would debate you.
I'll debate you this afternoon if you want to, because sure, it'll be a huge show.
It's easy work and I'll fucking embarrass you.
Like, okay.
Not even because I'm smarter, because I'm a better debater or anything.
It's just that you're a complete liar and you have no argument on your side.
So of course I would do that.
But no one really, like, it doesn't really matter.
It doesn't really have to happen.
And this is what I said on Pierce the other day, too, that you guys have already lost the debate.
Ben Shapiro lost it by default by being too much of a coward to debate.
And not me.
I'm saying he won't.
He didn't, he wouldn't debate any competent critic of Israel or the warfare state.
He won't do it.
He branded himself as the free speech debate guy.
I'll go in there.
Ooh, you give me the meanest 20-year-old chick who thinks she's a dude.
Ben Shapiro will debate.
But oh, no, a guy who's a Ron Paul guy, that's too far.
That's way too out there.
He'll debate a Maoist, an abortionist, any type of, you know, as long as they're a kid, they'll debate any of them.
But yeah, no, he won't debate a non-interventionist right-winger.
Of course not, because he's got his shit kicked in.
And to sit here and make any other, you know, excuse for it, it's like, no, dude, like you're, you went years intentionally not saying my name because you didn't want to give me any attention, right?
And then after a certain point, I just got big enough and relevant enough that you were like, fuck, well, that doesn't really work anymore.
So now you'll say my name.
You'll do these segments on me.
And then you'll announce at the end that, no, I won't debate you.
Like, yeah, of course you won't.
Like, I don't know.
You're a Freddy cat.
That's okay.
But what are you going to do?
Of course, you can't debate.
What are you going to debate that I hate America?
Is this what you're going to bring to the debate stage?
His real motives are to destroy America and hand it over to the Ayatollah.
I mean, like, maybe if the audience was Fox News watching 90-year-olds, they'd be moved by that shit.
But no one, no one who's not a boomer is even slightly moved by this.
Candace Owens Legitimacy Claim00:16:01
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All right, let's get back in the show.
I don't know.
Anything to say, Rob?
You want to do a mock debate?
You could play Ben Shapiro.
I would love to.
I could definitely fill that role because you are a hater of America and we all know that you just want to see this country fall.
That's what you mean.
There you go.
All right, here, let's keep playing.
Back in the day, and I feel no necessity to debate, debate a completely intellectually dishonest interlocutor who spends his days cribbing Noam Chomsky and then immediately retreats to his pose of ignorant comedian every time he is confronted with a fact.
Dave Smith is the friend as the Donald Trump.
Do we take quite a lot of Noam Chomsky here?
No, he picks up on that theme in the show.
I mean, I've read, I've read a bunch of Noam Chomsky books.
There's some really good ones that I think are worth reading, but what does crib mean?
I don't even know what he means in that.
But anyway, yeah, I mean, no, he's just gotta, again, for his really dumb old audience, he's gotta almost make it like, oh, he's a leftist.
Yeah, that's we're a bunch of Chomskyites here on the podcast because he doesn't want to say like he's a Ron Paul Pat Buchanan guy.
He doesn't want to say, oh, he has the foreign policy of George Washington or something like that.
You know what I mean?
Because then that would be like, oh, that sounds kind of reasonable.
There's Noam Chomsky.
Okay.
And by the way, politically speaking, in many ways, Ben Shapiro is much closer to Noam Chomsky than we are, certainly domestically.
On foreign policy, I guess we agree with him more than Shapiro does.
But yeah, again, just like really, really low-level non-arguments.
You see, here's Dave denying facts.
You're watching it live as he denies the facts that he reflects Noam Chomsky.
It's just, oh, look, I mean, even saying, like, oh, I'm so intellectually dishonest or I'm a troll or something like this.
Like, well, all right.
I mean, just none of that actually applies to me.
None of this actually applies.
And the only, I really, and look, there's obviously there's a lot of people who could disagree with me.
There's a lot of people who could not like me for lots of reasons.
I've got a lot of flaws.
And so that's one thing.
But I just can't imagine anyone who actually knows who I am being moved by this because just none of this is a description of me.
Like, I'm, I might be wrong, but I'm not being intellectually dishonest.
I believe the shit that I believe.
And pretty much anybody who consumes my stuff, I think, would know that.
I think that's something you can kind of read on people.
Like, I might be wrong, but I'm not lying to you.
I believe this.
And the, you know, he uses being a comedian as a shield.
Like, no, I fucking don't.
No, I don't.
Like, I don't know.
Which, when have I ever, like, in a debate, been like, I'm just a comedian.
Oh, you got me.
Well, I'm just a comedian.
Like, I don't do that.
And so it's all just made up.
I don't know.
Just you just, you have no real argument.
So you just start making shit up.
That's your go-to.
All right.
Let's keep playing.
In jail for life as a war criminal.
Legitimizes every single scrollless figure on the internet from Nick Fuentes to Candace Owens, and then demands that everyone treat him as though he is some sort of honest, worthy intellectual opponent.
He's not.
All right.
You would like to hear a complete dispute.
Pause it.
All right.
So, okay.
Let's just go through this a little bit.
I, I, again, just making shit up.
I demand that everybody treat me as I, what does this mean?
I don't demand Ben Shapiro treat me anyway.
I don't demand Ben Shapiro debate me.
Like, I don't care.
You've already lost.
I win by default.
It doesn't matter if you debate or not or debate anybody.
It does nothing but help my argument that you're such a goddamn coward that you refuse to debate anybody.
That's fine.
I'll take that.
So I'm not demanding anyone treat me anyway.
But this, okay, so this claim now is that I, and this is what's, okay, so I legitimized Nick Fuentes and Candace Owens.
Well, what?
Like, what, who, first of all, who am I to legitimize either of those two?
You know, when Nick Fuentes came, came on the show a few months back, that was our, the biggest episode of Part of the Problem ever.
It was the most downloaded, most viewed episode we've ever done.
I had Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens on in that same month.
That was the biggest one by far.
I think like over 3 million views total or something like that.
I think it was over 3 million just between YouTube and Spotify.
Anyway, doesn't really seem like I'm legitimizing him.
You know what I'm saying?
Like it's a kind of, it's a kind of weird claim to go, you legitimized a guy.
Like, you know, like, I don't know.
And the funny thing is that actually Ben Shapiro created Nick Fuentes.
I legitimized him like in the same way.
So Ben Shapiro would always, this, right?
Even in the days when there were some people out there who respected him, this was always who he is.
He called Ron Paul a vicious anti-Semite, said he wishes he could strangle the neck of the Jews.
So that about Ron Ball, a guy who's never said the Jews in his entire life.
You've never once heard him say the Jews.
He just doesn't talk like that.
Just the sweetest guy.
He called him a vicious anti-Semite.
So Nick Fuentes was like a kid with like a thousand followers.
He's like 19 or something like that.
And he started asking questions.
He's like, hey, why do we support Israel?
Why do we give them all this money?
Ben Shapiro quote tweets him and goes, you're an anti-Semite, blah, blah, blah.
That he happened to fuck with the absolute wrong person.
Like he happened to, he happened to just fuck.
It's like, it's an amazing like origin story or something like that.
Like you just happened to fuck with the kid who was just like the most talented fucking kid in his, you know, of his class.
And yeah, now you have to deal with that forever.
And, you know, despite my disagreements with Fuentes on several issues, he's just, you know, he's not a fucking liar like Ben Shapiro is.
And he's much smarter and he's just more interesting to have a conversation with.
I didn't legitimize him.
He was, he was always like when we did shows back in the day, he was already had a big following on his own.
And by the time we did the show this last year, he was fucking huge.
I'm not legitimize him.
In other words, what Ben Shapiro means is I had a conversation with him.
Translation.
Remember conversations?
Remember Ben Shapiro's whole brand?
It's so important that we have these conversations, open conversations.
The left wants to censor, but we want open conversations.
Until you have a conversation with someone who's critical of Jews, then all of a sudden you're legitimizing them.
Same shit people used to say about him.
Candace Owens.
Wait, hold on.
I, I legitimized Candace Owens.
You know, Rob, the first time Candace Owens had me on her show, it was on this network.
I cannot remember the name of it.
It was a wire.
I think it came out weekly, the weekly wire, perhaps.
Oh, no, that's right.
It was on your network.
Your network.
You built billboards of Candace Owens.
You paid her millions and millions of dollars.
Helped launch her as a huge phenomenon superstar.
What are the fuck?
Wait, she was the number one thing on your network.
You guys all ate off her for years, but I legitimized her.
That's how she got her.
That's how she got her legitimacy was what?
From me?
Because I did her podcast and I had her on my podcast.
Right.
Okay.
That's very convenient.
I'm responsible for legitimizing Candace Owens, says the man who paid for billboards of her to be put up in Nashville.
Uncancelable.
Maybe on this.
He's really playing tribute to your aurora.
So let's just go with yes.
Let's just go with it.
We're the ones that can bless people in the media landscape.
That's why Run Your Mouth is as big as it is, everybody.
Yes, there you go.
Well, you have to be legitimized.
I've been legitimized by David Smith.
I've really tried my best to legitimize you.
Again, just, wow, how pathetic, dude.
Like, I don't know, as somebody who also just does shows like this, it is, there's something about watching like Ben Shapiro go to work.
And you're like, man, if I ever, like, please, Rob, just go upstairs and grab my gun and shoot me in the face if I ever come to a show.
And this is what I have.
This is the level of argument that I'm presenting.
All right, let's keep playing.
Dismantling of Dave Smith.
I highly recommend Coleman Hughes' interview with Smith over at the Free Press.
Just go check that out.
Save yourself some time.
And by the way, you also hate America if you claim that the president of the United States is merely a tool of foreign interests without any evidence whatsoever, like none.
You're promoting lies directly mirroring those of the Iranian terrorist government in direct contravention of truth and of the Trump administration's own words.
All right.
So yes, no, anybody who thinks that Israel is pushing us into this war is just imagining that.
I mean, sure, you know, all of the fucking leaders have admitted it on record, but yes, that's just, it's just totally made up that Benjamin Netanyahu has spent 30 years lying to us about the Iranian nuclear threat.
And then, of course, at the end, it's pretty funny that he goes, he goes, go check out the, when Coleman Hughes interviewed him.
That'll show you.
It goes like, oh, interesting, Ben.
Yeah, you won't come do it, but you'll promote somebody else interviewing me.
And you're not going to tell him to go watch any of those other debates now, are you?
Just the Coleman Hughes one.
And let me just say, you know, look, I kind of, I really do try to keep to this, this rule that with debates and just interactions in general.
I'm not saying I keep this 100%, but I try my best to, that like anytime I do a debate, it's like, it's what they say, it's like what professional fighters do when they spar.
Like if they just spar with someone, they're just going to like match your energy.
So if you just don't try to take their head off, they're not going to try to take your head off.
But if you start coming for them, they're going to.
So like I try in debates, like if you're here to have a good faith exchange, then like that's what I'm here to do.
Like that, that's what I want to do.
If you want to go vicious and start insulting people or whatever, then okay, fine.
I mean, I'll, I'll do that too.
But I will be cool if you're.
And the thing is, like, Coleman Hughes was respectful throughout the whole thing.
So I'm not saying anything negative about him.
I'm not trying to disrespect him at all.
I appreciate that.
He's one of the few who have had like what I would consider to be at least a reasonably good faith and, you know, conversation.
He stuck to the issues.
He didn't make it about me personally as Ben Shapiro and everybody else has to, you know, resort to.
Nobody, I'm just saying, this is an insult to Coleman.
Nobody really thinks that was Coleman dismantling me except for the people who already agreed with Ben Shapiro going into it.
Those guys all want to pretend.
They're like, yeah, go watch Coleman Hughes destroy him.
Everybody else is like, yeah, Coleman did better than most against Dave.
He tried to really get on him about some kind of pedantic technicalities.
It was kind of petty.
And like, overall, he still lost.
You know, like, I'm just saying that is, that is the thing that everybody who didn't already come into it as a diehard Israel supporters, a die-hard hater of mine, who just wanted that to be the outcome.
There's like three points in the debate where I probably could have had a better canned response.
And I typically do.
I wasn't at my best on that one.
But like, anyway, the fact that they want to pretend like, oh, go watch that.
He was totally dismantled.
He goes, well, doesn't seem to have convinced all of the people who don't agree with you.
You know, and by the way, the people who do agree with you are firmly in the minority at this point.
So I don't know.
Rob, what can you say?
That's what Ben Shapiro had to come at me with.
Also, weren't you trying to get Coleman to come on this podcast?
Yes, I've been all through.
I've invited him on several times.
He said he would do it, but then the last, he hadn't responded to the last couple of times I reached out, but more than happy to do a round two with Coleman.
And of course, I mean, you know, we argued a bunch of stuff.
If I remember correctly, pretty sure we argued a bunch of stuff about the 12-day war, which is really aged quite well for me.
Not in the way I'd like it to.
I would have rather it aged well for him, but it didn't.
And anyway, this is, you know, of course, you know, this is all the critics of the 12-day war have been totally vindicated with this war.
And now they all want to pretend that's not the case.
Look, the bottom line is this, right?
Ben Shapiro, he, you know, there was an before he started talking about me, there was part of the segment where he's trashing Piers Morgan.
And he's going, oh, this show is the Jerry Springer of politics.
It's, you know what I mean, blah, blah, blah.
It's like, oh, they have Dave Smith on.
It's so horrible.
It's just a food fight.
And it's like, look, there is like, yes, obviously Piers Morgan's show can be a bit of a circus at times.
It's also like where the action is happening.
It's like what Pierce does is he puts on the, where the actual debate in the country is, and he airs that.
And he lets it go with a really no holds bar kind of environment.
And sometimes that can be a bit of a circus, you know, but it's so elitist and superior for Ben Shapiro to go like, oh, this Jerry Springer show.
When you have sat on your high horse, you made millions of dollars branding yourself the free speech guy, the debate guy, the anti-censorship guy.
And you've sat there while this country has been transformed into a pro-Palestinian country.
Ben Shapiro Circus Critique00:04:36
Like your number one issue is Israel.
Israel is down about 50 points in the polls over the last two years and change, two and a half years or so.
And you did not step up to debate one critic of Israel.
Forget me.
Leave me out of it.
There's a whole bunch of them.
They're out there just moving the needle, convincing people not to support Israel anymore.
And you not only, you didn't even try.
You were too scared.
You didn't even try to take on any of them.
And you just lost and lost and lost.
And people saw that.
People noticed that.
And you could come out right now and say, oh, in the, you know, in the, in the 35 public debates that Dave has done in the last two and a half years, go watch this one.
I think this guy got him on this one.
You know, go watch that.
Not pointing to the other 34 that I just like swept.
Like, like on Dennis Prager's own fucking people were saying he got smoked in that debate.
Like there was literally, with maybe the exception of the Coleman Hughes one, there wasn't one Israel debate that I've done where at least like 80% of the audience had me winning it.
He's not going to tell you to go watch my Josh Hammer Oxford style debate at Princeton University.
Now, is he, Rob?
He's not going to promote that one.
So it's like, you're going to, you're going to pick the one debate you think I had the worst performance in.
And I said, go watch that.
Which one, which debate did you have the worst performance?
Oh, yeah, you didn't do one.
You didn't do a single one against anybody.
And so you can do this segment and go, oh, Dave's always challenging me to debate.
No, I won't debate.
You're beneath me.
That might work if you had debated anyone.
But when you haven't debated anyone, when you were, or at least you used to be one of the most influential like conservative pundits and the issue you care about the most saw support evaporate, you'd think maybe you would have stepped up and tried to win people back over.
But you were too scared.
And people saw that.
They notice it.
I don't know.
What else can I say, Rob?
Well, Decan talk really fast aggressively on the podcast.
Yeah.
You know, stick to what he's good at.
Yeah.
No, that's right.
I mean, it's like, okay, dude, like you're, yeah, you, this is fine.
I'm also like, in a way, I'm kind of surprised he did this segment.
I mean, if he, you know, again, I wasn't, I wasn't in my basement.
I was in, I was in my living room of the house that I own that my family lives in.
But yeah, no, I was, I was excited when I saw that he did this segment.
I was surprised.
And the only reason I was surprised is because it's like, I don't know, dude, it almost felt like, like, do you secretly like me?
Are you trying to help?
I just feel like this couldn't have just teed it up better for me.
Like, I'm going to do a segment on Dave.
Here's what I'm going to do.
I'm going to have no arguments whatsoever.
I'm going to smear his motives in the most idiotic way.
And then I'm going to refuse to debate him.
I bet that helps me.
Like, okay.
I mean, I don't know.
In some weird way, I almost feel like I should end this with like a thank you to Ben Shapiro.
Like, ah, it's been a stressful week.
This goddamn war is a disaster.
All these innocent people are dying.
At least we had a fun show for today.
Thanks for giving us that.
I don't know, Rob.
Like it's, it still never ceases to amaze me how much the Hawks just cannot get a narrative together, you know?
And there's there's a dynamic that they have, and it's really similar.
I mean, it's, it's like, it's a one-to-one comparison, but it's the same thing throughout kind of like the corporate media where, and I know this is a dynamic you've talked about a bunch over the years, Rob, but where there's almost like there's this tactic that used to work that doesn't work anymore.
And they're just kind of like, well, it's the only one we know.
So we're just going to keep doing it.
Like it may have worked to some degree at some point when that was George W. Bush's line after 9-11.
CrowdHealth Insurance Breakdown00:02:19
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Is anyone being moved by that?
I mean, like maybe, maybe that plays well with the tiny minority of people who are still fucking supporting BB Netanyahu or something like that.
But I have a really tough time imagining that it moves anybody else in that direction.
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Congress Vote Record Dilemma00:06:04
Well, I guess quite sadly in this very moment, we've learned that they do not care or have to win over public opinion because they can even get an outsider to come in, dismantle the entire system and figure out how to co-opt him or train him to lie through his teeth about issues that he thinks the American people will vote for, such as no new wars, and then go exactly the route of what none of us have an interest in.
So maybe they don't even care to lie to us or shape a narrative because they've just learned that they don't have to.
And they don't care.
They literally don't care if we're not behind it.
Yeah, I mean, it's unbelievable to watch for, you know, because there are, you know, there's, there's supposed to be so much partisanship in Washington, D.C., right?
And obviously, the one thing the Democrats are motivated by is hating Donald Trump and they think he's Hitler.
And there's like, we're supposed to believe that these two parties are enemies and they're really at each other's throats.
But every now and then they come together, like when they're killing a war powers resolution.
Or when they're blocking a vote on the war.
Sorry, go ahead.
Chuck Schumer was upset at Donald Trump that he might actually not engage in this war.
Uh-huh.
That's right.
When he was taunting him, that you might, oh, you're going soft, president.
What do you do?
Right.
Yeah, yeah.
Oh, they all come together.
Think about this, man.
Think about how disgusting this Congress is, with a few notable exceptions.
But Thomas Massey, Rokahana have been really solid.
But that they agreed to not have a vote on the war.
Now, think about this, because this is the situation they're in, right?
And think about how fucking like, because this isn't just evil.
I mean, launching a war of aggression is evil.
Killing innocent people when you don't have to is evil.
If that's not evil, then what is?
But think about this.
And because there's something that is so like the profound lack of honor that a leader would ever be, look, why do they kill the vote?
Why do they kill the vote for the war powers resolution?
Why do they not want to go on record of who's for this war and who's against this war?
Here's the thing, okay?
It's actually very simple and it's the only explanation for it.
They want the war, but they don't want to be on record supporting the war.
Right?
That's really it.
They, they, look, if a war powers resolution comes up and they vote yes, well, then, I mean, I guess the president would have 60 days to fight the war, right?
Before he has to like ask for an extension, I guess 90 days at the most, but it would 60 days is the, is the law if they pass the war powers resolution.
Well, fuck, dude, that's not a lot of time.
They might need more time than that for the war.
So you can't vote for the resolution because then that could shut down the war and you want the war.
But you can't vote against it because you know this thing is going to turn into a calamity and you don't want to be on record having supported a disaster.
The thing's already a disaster.
The odds of that, like the best case scenario right now is that Donald Trump just stops, which is never an impossibility.
Like that might happen because it's Donald Trump and he's totally incoherent.
And so maybe at one point he changed his mind.
But aside from that, it's like the thing's already a disaster.
The odds of this like turning into, you know, the Shaw's son or something like that taking over are incredibly slim.
They all know that.
They've seen the last six catastrophes.
And so they don't want to be on the record having supported the thing, but they want to, they want the thing to happen.
And that is just on a very basic level, such a profound betrayal of your obligations as a leader, you know?
Like, hey, if you're going to fuck, you know, say what you will about the Bush administration, right?
This is why they're actually in many ways more disgusting criminals than even the Bush administration was, is that they stuck their neck out there.
They said it.
You know, like Dick Cheney went on record.
You know, George W. Bush went on record.
Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice and all of them, Rumsfeld, all of them, they went on record.
Like, this is, we are for this policy, for this reason.
This is what the result of it will be.
Now, they were lying about all of it.
But in some sense, then they can be, I mean, publicly hung, you know, like in the court of public opinion, they could be convicted.
I mean, not that they should have been convicted in real courts, but they weren't.
But at least they went out there on the record.
These leaders are just cowards.
They want the war.
Like, isn't it, Rob, on some level, isn't the least that you could demand that you're going to support a war of choice, a war of aggression that risks catastrophe?
Well, then you fucking put your name down.
You put your name down that you were a supporter of that.
But these cowards chose to just block the bill.
Thomas Massey did force a debate.
He had some great moments in there, said some great stuff.
But man, man, the whole rest of that Congress really.
I don't want to say out loud what should happen to him.
Last word to you, Rob, and then let's wrap up.
Thomas Massey's words in front of Congress yesterday were heroic.
And I hope they have an impact and I hope he runs.
And amidst the various excellent points that he made of our record of tragic wars and unnecessary wars that we've had, who knows how many people we just radicalized in the actions we took.
Thomas Massey Heroic Stand00:00:34
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, absolutely.
Been saying it all week.
We murdered an Ayatollah, and we've never, in all of the war on terrorism, we've never had to deal with a real deal Shiite jihad.
That might be what we're looking at now.
Great job, guys.
Great job.
Also, that Iran can't arm Hezbollah because that's our problem.