Part Of The Problem - Dave Smith - Short Term Pain, Long Term Gain
Aired: 2026-03-11
Duration: 01:03:57


=== Balancing Comedy and Chaos (04:49) ===

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[00:00:23]  All right, let's start the show.
[00:00:31]  What's up, what's up, everybody?
[00:00:33]  Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
[00:00:35]  I'm Dave Smith.
[00:00:36]  He's Robbie the Fire Bernstein.
[00:00:38]  How are you feeling today, Rob?
[00:00:39]  I'm good, man.
[00:00:40]  I had a fun time at that last Legion of Skanks.
[00:00:42]  I ate some of your retirement cake.
[00:00:44]  It was delicious.
[00:00:45]  Oh, very good.
[00:00:46]  Yes.
[00:00:46]  And I got to watch Lewis cry.
[00:00:48]  So it was a fun evening all around.
[00:00:50]  It's always a good time when you get to watch Lewis cry.
[00:00:53]  Of course, not the last episode of Legion of Skanks, but my last episode.
[00:00:58]  Well, technically, we're doing another one.
[00:01:00]  It was the last live one at the stand.
[00:01:02]  But yeah, it's, you know, it's, look, I mean, it's, it's easy to make fun of Lewis for crying and stuff, but it was, you know, I definitely was feeling it too.
[00:01:11]  I mean, I'm not a fucking, I didn't cry, but I was, I mean, I'm not, I'm not a girl, but no, but you know, it's like, you know, leaving something that I've been doing for like 15 years and something you did with people you love is, you know, I don't know, Rob.
[00:01:26]  It's, you know, I know I've talked to you about this a lot.
[00:01:29]  It's like one of the only lessons.
[00:01:32]  I don't know.
[00:01:33]  One of the only lessons that I've really like learned from, you know, my career.
[00:01:39]  I should like, there's a lot of lessons you learn.
[00:01:41]  But so I remember, and I know I've told you this story too.
[00:01:44]  I tell almost every comedian who's like younger than me or started comedy after me, I end up telling them this at some point.
[00:01:52]  But it's not that it even is that big of a deal, but to comics, they kind of get it.
[00:01:56]  But there was, I used to, when I first started comedy, I was like maybe like a year into doing stand-up comedy and I got, I got in at Stand Up New York comedy club.
[00:02:09]  The, the, I, I had done like a showcase for MTV and it went really good.
[00:02:15]  And they took an interest in me.
[00:02:18]  And then that made this one booker at Stand Up New York really take an interest in me.
[00:02:22]  And he, he was managing like Patrice O'Neal and some other guys at the time who liked me.
[00:02:29]  And so like it, I just kind of got in there.
[00:02:32]  And this club was on fire at the time.
[00:02:35]  It was like sold out on the weekends, every weekend, like, you know, whatever.
[00:02:39]  It's like 150 people or something like that.
[00:02:41]  But when you're a young comic, to get like prime weekend stage time is like amazing.
[00:02:45]  And then anyway, it turned out that guy, the booker who took an interest in me, was stealing a lot of money from the club.
[00:02:52]  And he got caught and he got fired.
[00:02:55]  And then they put in his place this guy who hated me.
[00:02:58]  And it was like I was just out.
[00:03:01]  And at the time, it was like, oh my God, like this is the world is falling apart.
[00:03:06]  Like that's it.
[00:03:06]  This was my whole identity as I'm becoming a comedian.
[00:03:09]  This was my club, my home club.
[00:03:11]  And all of a sudden now I don't have that.
[00:03:13]  And anyway, you know, whatever.
[00:03:16]  I ended up getting into a new, a different club and then working some more clubs.
[00:03:19]  But it just, it was like very early in my 20s in my career that I just kind of like learned that, look, there's chapters to the story of your life, you know?
[00:03:31]  And like, there's going to be the only thing inevitable about existence is change.
[00:03:36]  And that's often very sad.
[00:03:40]  It's always sad to like close a chapter and move on to a next one.
[00:03:43]  But like there's another chapter coming after this.
[00:03:45]  And so I don't know.
[00:03:46]  It's always just been something that's, it's kind of guided me since then.
[00:03:49]  That it's like after things kind of worked out then, I was like, okay, whenever there's like a change, you don't have to feel like the world's falling apart.
[00:03:57]  I mean, don't get me wrong.
[00:03:58]  Sometimes maybe the world is falling apart, but it's not always.
[00:04:01]  And so, anyway, I just, you know, life is, life is full of chapters.
[00:04:06]  You know, this show has really blown up.
[00:04:08]  I really had a monster year last year, and I'm just too busy to do all of it.
[00:04:15]  And I got a family.
[00:04:16]  That's, you know, the most important thing to me is, so I gotta, you know, like my work-family balance was a little out of whack over the last year.
[00:04:24]  And the most important thing to me is like keeping that balance, right?
[00:04:28]  So, anyway, so yeah, thank you to all the fans of Legion of Skanks and to all the, you know, everybody who works on the show.
[00:04:35]  I love everybody involved.
[00:04:37]  And, you know, it was kind of sad.
[00:04:39]  But anyway, moving on.
[00:04:40]  We got a war.
[00:04:41]  We got a war to end.
[00:04:44]  Oh, by the way, before we get into the show today, I just, I have to say something.

=== Unedited Interviews with Ben (06:26) ===

[00:04:49]  And this is a, I don't know, because like, I don't know how to do this other than to just say it on the show, but I've just been getting like flooded with requests from corporate media outlets.
[00:05:05]  Like it's all types of like Washington Post and Vanity Fair and like all these different like kind of like corporate publications that are constantly now reaching out to me for comment.
[00:05:19]  And I, it's always, by the way, it's always the same thing, Rob.
[00:05:23]  It's always in service of their agenda.
[00:05:25]  Like, I'm not an idiot.
[00:05:27]  I know what you're doing.
[00:05:28]  Oh, we're writing a piece about the divide and MAGA and prominent, you know, people who supported Donald Trump, who are now critical of him and blah, blah.
[00:05:37]  It's like, yes, I understand.
[00:05:39]  You hate Donald Trump and now you'd like to use me.
[00:05:42]  You know, it's like, first of all, I don't really like being used in that way.
[00:05:47]  But just to all of you, listen, if any of you want to interview me and record it unedited and we put it online, I'll do that.
[00:06:00]  In other words, a podcast.
[00:06:02]  In other words, you know what I'm saying?
[00:06:04]  Like, it's just, if you want to come over to this superior medium, then fine.
[00:06:09]  But I'm getting like these requests and it's just like wasting my team's time.
[00:06:14]  Like, do you, you know, Ben Shapiro did this segment about me?
[00:06:17]  I forget which one of them, Vanity Fair or the Washington Post or whoever.
[00:06:20]  They reached out.
[00:06:21]  Would you, does Dave want to comment?
[00:06:24]  You're like, I'm about to do a show on it.
[00:06:27]  What do you mean, do I want to comment?
[00:06:29]  Essentially, what you're asking me is, before I go do my podcast, can you get the scoop of what I'm going to respond with?
[00:06:36]  Why would I want to do that to you?
[00:06:39]  I'm not doing, I don't do any, first of all, I, I, just to be clear on the record here, I despise all of you.
[00:06:45]  And not like individually, I don't know who the people are, but you know, as an entity, I despise all of you.
[00:06:50]  I think you're part of the evil machine.
[00:06:52]  And like, I'm never going to give a comment.
[00:06:55]  I'm not getting on the phone with a reporter.
[00:06:58]  So he can ask me, we can talk for 45 minutes.
[00:07:01]  He can take whatever goddamn quote he wants to from that and then not use any of the other shit that puts it into context or whatever.
[00:07:09]  It's like, I put the show out for everyone.
[00:07:12]  If you want to just take a quote, take a quote from the show.
[00:07:15]  No one's stopping you.
[00:07:16]  But like, if you want to interview, if you want to talk to me, we're doing it unedited and we're putting the whole thing out.
[00:07:22]  Because there's no way I'm not going to, there's like, because here's the thing, Rob, right?
[00:07:27]  If a Washington Post reporter wants to ask me about how terrible Donald Trump is, well, then you know, at least part of my answer is going to be like, look, it's so, it's so awful that you guys were so criminal that we wanted to go with whoever was against you because, you know, you ruined the country.
[00:07:44]  And so, but then this is the reason why I'm critical of him.
[00:07:46]  And I know they're going to leave that part out.
[00:07:48]  You know what I mean?
[00:07:49]  I know they're going to leave the part out where I just bash the publication.
[00:07:53]  And so, no, why do I want to do that?
[00:07:55]  I don't know.
[00:07:56]  It's a very weird like request.
[00:07:58]  Maybe you just got to start emailing one-line answers.
[00:08:00]  Ben Shapiro is a traitor to the American people.
[00:08:02]  Tune into part of the problem for more.
[00:08:04]  Like just give them one line and one line only.
[00:08:08]  And I feel like then they'll still cut out the tune into part of the problem.
[00:08:10]  Yeah, but even so, if you get that one line in the newspaper, that's kind of cool.
[00:08:15]  Ben Dave, Dave Smith responds, oh, Ben Shapiro is a traitor to the nation.
[00:08:19]  That's fun for people to see.
[00:08:20]  But I agree.
[00:08:21]  Don't sit down.
[00:08:22]  Don't sit down for interviews, man.
[00:08:23]  I only did one once over COVID late in COVID.
[00:08:26]  Someone from the AP reached out to me.
[00:08:28]  I recorded the call on my end just in case they did me dirty.
[00:08:31]  Hour and a half, nothing came of it.
[00:08:33]  I didn't give him any of what he was looking for.
[00:08:35]  I completely changed his mind on a bunch of stuff.
[00:08:37]  And I think he went back to his boss and was like, yeah, we can't cover this.
[00:08:41]  Yeah.
[00:08:42]  Well, this is the problem, though, is that like you go, this is, by the way, that Natalie posted the chat says I should send Robbie in my place.
[00:08:50]  I'll gladly get bad quotes attributed to the show.
[00:08:53]  If you'll task me with things that you'll open up Vanity Fair and go, what the hell did he say?
[00:08:59]  I will gladly take that role.
[00:09:01]  I want to send Robin like Ben Affleck and Goodwill Hunting and you just sit there and just ask them for money.
[00:09:10]  Yeah, well, it's, you know, so I remember there was this one, the one time the New York Times went to the Mises Institute.
[00:09:21]  It was like, it was like, I want to say like 2014, maybe.
[00:09:26]  And so it was like around the time when Ron Paul had just retired from Congress and it looked like Rand was going to run for president.
[00:09:34]  And in some of the polls, he was like right at the top and he was very popular.
[00:09:38]  And like they were like, oh, this might be like a real thing.
[00:09:40]  And so, of course, they were coming to do a hit piece on, you know, his associations.
[00:09:44]  And so they approached Walter Block, Tom Woods, and Lou Rockwell.
[00:09:54]  And so Tom Woods, he said, okay, he was like, I know exactly what you're going to do here, but I'm going to sit down.
[00:10:02]  And he goes, I'm going to give like the perfect answer to everything.
[00:10:06]  So there's no way you can try to smear me off this.
[00:10:10]  And then Lou Rockwell said, this is private property and you're part of the regime.
[00:10:16]  Please leave.
[00:10:17]  Or I'm calling the cops.
[00:10:20]  And then Walter Block was just like, absolutely, let's do an interview.
[00:10:23]  This is fun.
[00:10:24]  And he just started getting into libertarianism with them.
[00:10:27]  And he goes, he was trying to explain libertarianism to them.
[00:10:32]  And he goes, listen, man, like the libertarian view is that it's all about like voluntarism versus coercion.
[00:10:39]  Like, why was slavery so immoral?
[00:10:41]  Well, because they were forced to be there.
[00:10:43]  If they weren't forced, then I don't know.
[00:10:45]  It's picking cotton and singing songs.
[00:10:47]  Like libertarians have no problem with it if it's not, if they weren't forced to be there.
[00:10:51]  And literally, the New York Times didn't run anything of Tom Woods.
[00:10:56]  And they just said, like, it was like, Walter Block says that libertarianisms believe slavery is fine.
[00:11:04]  And so anyway, I don't know.
[00:11:06]  It's just like the, I don't know.
[00:11:09]  Yeah.
[00:11:09]  Stop asking me for this.
[00:11:10]  No, I don't want to do it.
[00:11:11]  I don't like, I'll come on the show if you want to come on the show or whatever.

=== Short Term Pain Long Term Gain (15:27) ===

[00:11:16]  Like, I'll do that.
[00:11:17]  I'd go on your show.
[00:11:18]  But like, we have a new industry standard here that is way better than yours, which is that we just have unedited conversations and put it out.
[00:11:29]  That's just the way to do it.
[00:11:31]  You're not going to leave it for the mainstream media to do selective edits on what you're saying.
[00:11:36]  Yeah.
[00:11:36]  Yeah.
[00:11:37]  And everybody's policy.
[00:11:39]  Yeah.
[00:11:39]  I mean, well, like, and I've seen how dirty these people are.
[00:11:42]  And the thing about it is, is that, and me and you are the same in this way, Rob.
[00:11:46]  We're the type of guys who like you, I'm just, I'm a naturally pleasant person, actually.
[00:11:54]  I you know, like I'll get into fights if people are, I can be pretty vicious if people are like vicious with me, but that's really not my default mode.
[00:12:03]  And I'll just, I'll let my guard down and just start having a conversation and forget that like, oh, yeah, you're a fucking liar who's here to like twist everything I say.
[00:12:11]  So it's like, let's just have this all on the public record if you want to do it.
[00:12:14]  Otherwise, like I'm just not interested.
[00:12:16]  I don't, I don't know.
[00:12:17]  It's like everyone's coming to our model.
[00:12:19]  Sean Hannity is starting a podcast.
[00:12:22]  Bill Maher started a podcast because it's just a better version of that.
[00:12:26]  Like, why would you have to have these artificial constraints and commercial, you know, like breaks and, you know, a certain amount of time allotted for each segment.
[00:12:35]  Like, why?
[00:12:35]  I don't know.
[00:12:36]  We do our show, Rob.
[00:12:37]  It's about an hour.
[00:12:39]  Sometimes it's 53 minutes.
[00:12:40]  Sometimes it's an hour and nine minutes.
[00:12:42]  Just like, I don't know when we're done.
[00:12:44]  We're done.
[00:12:45]  It's just a superior model.
[00:12:46]  So anyway, I just wanted to get that on the record.
[00:12:49]  Stop asking.
[00:12:50]  Stop wasting my people's time.
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[00:14:18]  All right, let's get back into the show.
[00:14:21]  All right.
[00:14:23]  Well, there's a war.
[00:14:25]  Not a war.
[00:14:29]  It's not a war.
[00:14:30]  It's not regime change.
[00:14:32]  We are demanding unconditional surrender.
[00:14:35]  But anyway, there's a bunch of stuff that's come out over the last day, and then we could just talk more about where we are in general.
[00:14:44]  But here is, this was a great compilation that someone made.
[00:14:46]  And I really do think it has to be played on the show.
[00:14:48]  Here is, it's unbelievable, man.
[00:14:50]  If people could try to sell this war, they could sell goddamn any war.
[00:14:54]  There's none.
[00:14:54]  They wouldn't try.
[00:14:56]  But here's the latest mantra, Rob, that you have to get through your head.
[00:15:01]  Okay.
[00:15:02]  Listen, say it with me now.
[00:15:04]  There's going to be some short-term pain.
[00:15:08]  Okay.
[00:15:08]  Let's roll the clip.
[00:15:11]  This is a short-term disruption for the long-term gain.
[00:15:14]  Short-term pain for the long-term gain.
[00:15:18]  Short-term pain be for long-term gain.
[00:15:19]  We're going to have some short-term pain with long-term gain.
[00:15:23]  Short-term pay for a long-term gain.
[00:15:26]  Short-term pain, yes.
[00:15:28]  We've got some long-term gain.
[00:15:29]  Short-term spike for a long-term gain.
[00:15:32]  Some short-term pain for American consumers.
[00:15:34]  We may have to deal with that in the short term.
[00:15:36]  Short-term and temporary.
[00:15:38]  Temporary, short-term pain.
[00:15:40]  It's going to suck in the short-term.
[00:15:41]  Some short-term pain.
[00:15:42]  Short-term pain.
[00:15:44]  We have to focus on the short-term.
[00:15:48]  and long-term.
[00:15:50]  Hopefully this is a short-term pain.
[00:15:52]  Short-term is highly outweighed of the long-term benefits.
[00:15:56]  I'm short-term pain for the long-term gain.
[00:15:59]  Short-term sacrifice for a long-term gain.
[00:16:03]  This is a short-term disruption.
[00:16:05]  Right.
[00:16:06]  Well, listen, I know there's got to be a process, like a trial, some type of court of law, but can we just launch all of these people to the moon?
[00:16:18]  Like, can they just not be allowed to live on the planet Earth anymore?
[00:16:22]  As what is, I mean, look at them, Rob.
[00:16:24]  They're fucking Covidians, basically, right?
[00:16:27]  They have received their marching orders and now we are repeat after me.
[00:16:33]  Do you remember like during COVID, Rob, when you would find it was like invasion of the body snatchers, when you'd like, you'd talk to a regular person and they would start repeating the fucking mantra to you as if you hadn't heard it.
[00:16:46]  Like someone would literally be going like, like in the middle of COVID, and this is like months into it, and they'd be going like, no, Dave, you have to understand we have to flatten the curve.
[00:16:54]  You see, if the curve spikes too much, I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:16:57]  No, I've heard, I've heard them all say that.
[00:17:00]  Are you just repeating back to me the thing that you've heard repeated to you?
[00:17:03]  And you think I haven't heard it repeated yet when I talk about this for a living?
[00:17:08]  Everybody repeat after me.
[00:17:10]  Short-term pain.
[00:17:11]  By the way, translation of that, Rob, is what?
[00:17:15]  Oh, yeah, I can't defend what's going on right now.
[00:17:18]  Oh, yeah.
[00:17:19]  But there's this long-term gain.
[00:17:22]  You see, this, this, like, what a ridiculous talk about.
[00:17:24]  The short-term pain is offset by this, this long-term gain.
[00:17:27]  By the way, every last person involved in this conflict, Rob, fully admitted already on the record.
[00:17:34]  They have no plan for the long term.
[00:17:37]  They've all said, I don't know.
[00:17:38]  Witkoff just said again, I don't know.
[00:17:40]  I don't know how this ends.
[00:17:41]  I don't know who's next.
[00:17:43]  Hopefully, someone better.
[00:17:44]  What long-term gain are they even talking about?
[00:17:46]  The one they would just wish would come?
[00:17:49]  Got to break a few omelets to make an egg.
[00:17:52]  Let me tell you something.
[00:17:53]  There's one thing I know about politics.
[00:17:57]  Everyone who's ever said you'd need to break some eggs to get an omelet, basically just a different way of saying short-term pain for long-term gain, was wrong about the long-term.
[00:18:08]  The omelette never comes.
[00:18:11]  It's just, it's always just, oh, yeah, yeah, this is, I mean, again, we're told this with every single war, but I do.
[00:18:17]  What do you think here, Rob?
[00:18:20]  Well, yeah, it strikes me like COVID.
[00:18:23]  It also strikes me like the transitory inflation storyline.
[00:18:26]  And here's the thing: I'm all for short-term pain for long-term gain.
[00:18:30]  I like the concept.
[00:18:31]  I'm a big fan of investing in the future.
[00:18:33]  And if you want to do austerity measures and get rid of our entitlement programs and handle our debt problem, I do think that there would be growth down the line from that.
[00:18:41]  It's always when they're flirting with the risks of a disaster that has no upside that they try and pretend like it's an investment in an upside.
[00:18:49]  So in this case, I don't even know what the long-term game is going to be.
[00:18:53]  I guess Israel is going to be safer out in its region.
[00:18:55]  I don't really know how this leads to better oil prices for us, which I think is what they're referring to here in terms of the short-term pain.
[00:19:04]  But it's always, or inflation.
[00:19:07]  Oh, it's just going to be transitory, except you're going to still have more of it.
[00:19:10]  And it's not like your money is ever going to become more valuable.
[00:19:13]  It never becomes good, but they just try and pretend like, so it's not even like the point I'm trying to make is it's not even like an investment in a short-term pain for a long-term gain.
[00:19:22]  It's them just trying to be like, oh, the pain that you're suffering now, it's a mitigated risk and it's not going to grow.
[00:19:28]  And more often than not, it actually does grow.
[00:19:31]  Yes, yes.
[00:19:31]  No, there is such a thing as like short-term pain, long-term gain.
[00:19:37]  Like that is, it's like exercising is a really good example of that, right?
[00:19:41]  Like you go do something that's going to be hard right now, but you are going to feel better and you're going to get more acclimated to it.
[00:19:48]  And then you're going to enjoy it.
[00:19:50]  And you know, but then there's also just hitting yourself in the hand with a hammer and going, like, okay, short-term pain, but that we need long-term gain.
[00:19:59]  But long-term, you're just breaking your hand.
[00:20:01]  You're not actually doing anything.
[00:20:03]  It's purely destructive.
[00:20:06]  Well, look, I mean, I think, yes, they are.
[00:20:07]  Rob, to your point, they are talking about the rise in oil prices.
[00:20:13]  And there's, you know, Donald Trump was an interesting day yesterday.
[00:20:20]  So, you know, the way I see things right now is essentially, like I said before, I think Donald Trump has already ruined his presidency.
[00:20:30]  And when I say ruined his presidency, I mean, I don't think anything good can come of it anymore.
[00:20:37]  And I think he's made his bed.
[00:20:38]  He's going to get destroyed in the midterms.
[00:20:40]  He'll be bogged down with impeachments and investigations and all types of political theater for the last two years of his presidency.
[00:20:51]  He's the idea of getting anything good done is out the window at that point.
[00:20:59]  But the real question here is like, is Donald Trump George H.W. Bush or is he George W. Bush?
[00:21:09]  Is really the question that's still up in the air.
[00:21:12]  Like, is Donald Trump gonna, I get through the air, not through the ground, but do essentially what George H.W. Bush did, which is like whack the hell out of the regime, kind of, you know, kill a lot of people, degrade their military capability, but leave that regime standing.
[00:21:33]  Or does he want to go fold George W. Bush and do what?
[00:21:37]  Now, again, it's like Donald Trump is all over the place.
[00:21:40]  So it's very hard to read his signals.
[00:21:44]  But he, you know, again, it's just totally convoluted and incoherent, everything they've been selling us about this war.
[00:21:52]  But yesterday, Donald Trump said, I can't remember who it was to, but he said to, you know, he's taken like a crazy amount of phone calls with journalists, just always talking to the press.
[00:22:03]  Donald Trump loves being on TV more than anything else.
[00:22:06]  And he said, he said something along the lines of like, we think it's pretty much done.
[00:22:12]  Like we're pretty much done with the war.
[00:22:16]  And then he addressed the nation later that day and didn't sound like that at all.
[00:22:21]  And it does seem like it was kind of like, oh, are you, is he just trying to calm down the markets?
[00:22:26]  Just kind of, you know what I mean?
[00:22:27]  Because so much of it, Rob, as you know, is all based on speculating.
[00:22:30]  So like the president says this thing's wrapping up soon.
[00:22:33]  That'll have a real effect on the markets.
[00:22:35]  But then when he came out, it's like, that's not exactly what he's saying.
[00:22:39]  And then, of course, Hegzeth is saying we're going to light them up more than ever before.
[00:22:44]  So that doesn't sound like it's wrapped up.
[00:22:47]  That sounds like it's continuing, escalating is what that sounds like.
[00:22:53]  But I don't know, Rob, what do you, what's your takeaway from?
[00:22:56]  I mean, we'll get into some of the clips here, but what's your takeaway on what was said yesterday?
[00:23:02]  Well, I saw Donald Trump was trying to say we're mostly finished.
[00:23:08]  I know that he said that.
[00:23:10]  And I guess Donald Trump does have the slight off-ramp of going, we were trying to demilitarize them and we have demilitarized them, but I don't think we're walking away from this anytime soon.
[00:23:21]  Yeah, it does.
[00:23:22]  That seems to be my read on it as well.
[00:23:25]  Unfortunately, here, let's get into here.
[00:23:31]  Let's here, let's go with the Donald Trump speaking.
[00:23:38]  Let's do the second one that I sent first, Natalie.
[00:23:41]  It's the one that says it's like Glenn Deason tweet.
[00:23:46]  Again, it's just a very, it's a very, there's kind of like nothing else where even in Trump's first term, Trump in this second term here, because he's more unhinged and doing more of this crazy shit.
[00:24:00]  It is more and more hard to even read the signals.
[00:24:03]  Because again, like you said, he's all over the place on every issue.
[00:24:08]  You know, that's why like it's, it's funny because there's like an argument over whether Donald Trump like betrayed his base or broke campaign promises.
[00:24:18]  And it is, you know, I got to admit, like even watching the argument play out on social media, it's kind of funny because both sides will claim that's not like that, you know, like one side will claim it's absolutely a violation of his central promise.
[00:24:34]  The other side will claim, no, no, no, this is what he always said.
[00:24:36]  And they both got clips to back it up.
[00:24:38]  You know what I mean?
[00:24:39]  Like they both have the side that's like, no, he always said this.
[00:24:42]  I'll have a million clips of him talking about how bad the Obama, you know, the JCPOA was and how Iran can never be allowed to have a nuclear weapon.
[00:24:50]  But then the other side's got all types of clips about how he promised to keep us out of war with Iran, like specifically with Iran.
[00:24:56]  We will not do this.
[00:24:57]  We don't do regime change.
[00:24:58]  So it's like, yeah, you could, yes, it is true that he was all over the place on every issue, but like it's just kind of undeniable that it was a core thing he kept saying was no new wars.
[00:25:10]  And I didn't, I kept you out of war and we won't go to war with Iran.
[00:25:13]  So I, again, it's like, whatever.
[00:25:16]  Here, let's, let's, let's check out the clip.
[00:25:19]  Just a short while ago, they told Mr. Witkoff, who is standing right over here, they said, they actually said we want to keep building.
[00:25:30]  Essentially, in a real nutshell, we want to continue to build nuclear weapons.
[00:25:36]  If we didn't knock out Midnight Hammer, if we didn't knock out their Iranian potential, if we didn't do that with Midnight Hammer, they would have had a nuclear weapon.
[00:25:45]  They would have used it long before now.
[00:25:47]  And at a minimum, Israel would have been annihilated.
[00:25:51]  Just a short.
[00:25:53]  All right.
[00:25:55]  Well, I did think, I mean, again, Donald Trump's just known for saying crazy shit, never really knowing what he's talking about.
[00:26:05]  But I did think of the whole press conference he gave there.
[00:26:10]  I was like, well, that really was your George W. Bush moment.
[00:26:14]  You know, I mean, this is just like flat out lying.
[00:26:20]  And just like at the end, you're almost like, well, why not?
[00:26:23]  You know, why not just go for it?
[00:26:24]  Like, I don't know.
[00:26:26]  They would have conquered the United States of America and all of Europe, and we'd all be speaking Persian and we'd all be like, well, if you're going to lie this boldly, like just fucking go for it.
[00:26:36]  If it wasn't for the 12-day war, they would not only have nuclear weapons.

=== Netanyahu's Bold Message (13:05) ===

[00:26:44]  Okay.
[00:26:44]  Now, again, this is backed up by no one, including our own government.
[00:26:51]  Like absolutely nobody is back.
[00:26:53]  I mean, this is just insane.
[00:26:55]  Everyone who knows anything about this knows that's not true.
[00:26:58]  It is absolutely not true.
[00:27:00]  That first of all, if you say, if we hadn't done the 12-day war, right?
[00:27:06]  At the time, they were still in the JCPOA.
[00:27:08]  There was still IAEA inspections, right?
[00:27:13]  So they would have had to kick all of the inspectors out and then started racing toward a nuke.
[00:27:20]  Nobody thinks they would have had a weapon by now, let alone a deliverable weapon by now.
[00:27:25]  It would have been years if they had made that decision, which they never did.
[00:27:31]  That being said, Donald Trump is going to tell you, not only did they have a nuclear weapon by now, if we hadn't done that, not only did they have a deliverable nuclear weapon by now, but they would have used it in a first strike.
[00:27:44]  They would have used nuclear weapons preemptively, aggressively, just nuked Israel because they have the nukes.
[00:27:53]  This is just to be clear, Benjamin Netanyahu, who's been lying through his teeth.
[00:27:59]  I'm sure everybody's seen the montages of Benjamin Netanyahu lying about Iran for 35 years.
[00:28:04]  He's never even said this.
[00:28:06]  He doesn't think you're as stupid as Trump thinks you are.
[00:28:10]  Yeah, and then just the other added stupidity to this is that you're telling me that they managed to keep a lot of that enriched uranium and that they had the mechanism to deliver a bomb.
[00:28:20]  And so you blew up the one site.
[00:28:22]  But since then, they then lost interest in nuking Israel.
[00:28:27]  So they had an interest in nuking Israel.
[00:28:29]  They had the ability to do so.
[00:28:31]  You wiped it out, but they kept their enriched uranium.
[00:28:33]  And then in the months since they weren't able to go ahead and do that.
[00:28:37]  Please explain that story to me.
[00:28:40]  Yeah.
[00:28:40]  And again, as I've mentioned before on the show, but it was Netanyahu and Ehud Barak both told Goldberg at the Atlantic that they weren't concerned that Iran was going to nuke them.
[00:28:53]  And that wasn't the reason why Iran can't be allowed to have a nuclear weapon.
[00:28:57]  And they said that essentially it would like the thing that they went with that Netanyahu said was that they were scared of a brain drain.
[00:29:05]  They were scared that people would perceive it as too dangerous to live in Israel and that a lot of smart Jews over there would be like, I'm just going to Miami, dude.
[00:29:13]  I'm going to go live in Los Angeles or New York.
[00:29:15]  I don't need to be here, like, which has always been a major concern.
[00:29:19]  Maybe Trump's new thing is if he says things more aggressive than the Israeli intelligence, he gives cover to the Israel lobby so that people like Coleman Hughes can go, look, they're not even working with the Israeli intelligence.
[00:29:32]  They're going to do this because of Israeli intelligence.
[00:29:34]  Israeli intelligence never said that they were going to get a bomb.
[00:29:37]  It was Trump and his team that said that they were going to nuke Israel.
[00:29:40]  Dude, I don't know if it's, I don't know.
[00:29:45]  I mean, I guess it's a mix of several factors, but it's amazing how much more in the spotlight Israel is with this war than they were with any of the previous ones.
[00:30:00]  You know, like there's with all the previous wars, there was always at least kind of like, it sounded like a conspiracy theory.
[00:30:09]  And I don't mean that in a derogatory sense, but it is a conspiracy theory that, you know, like, oh, these were wars for Israel or something like that.
[00:30:17]  But it's amazing how much this one.
[00:30:19]  And I guess part of that is like, look, we just live in a new information model.
[00:30:24]  And, you know, like things like Benjamin Netanyahu having to come out and say that Israel had nothing to do with Charlie Kirk's assassination.
[00:30:33]  Just the fact that he had to say that is crazy.
[00:30:35]  Like in the past, that never would have even been like, you wouldn't even have dignified that with a response.
[00:30:41]  But now he's like, no, I got to, by the way, you know, they got the head of the Mossad saying, Jeffrey Epstein didn't work for us.
[00:30:47]  Just so you know, like that's new.
[00:30:49]  It didn't used to be like this.
[00:30:52]  And in the same sense, like even here, Donald Trump essentially, he didn't say they were going to nuke us, Rob.
[00:30:59]  Somebody were going to nuke Israel.
[00:31:01]  And even that, even though this is a bold-faced lie, it's just not true.
[00:31:08]  Nobody who pays attention to this shit thinks that's true.
[00:31:11]  Donald Trump doesn't think that's true.
[00:31:14]  But it's like, that is a weird thing for us to have to get in a war over, right?
[00:31:21]  Like another country was threatened.
[00:31:24]  So now, essentially, Donald Trump is embracing a preemptive war doctrine where you can fight preemptive wars for other countries.
[00:31:35]  Not even for, not even like we expect an attack, so we're going to attack first.
[00:31:40]  We expect anyone's going to be attacked.
[00:31:42]  We can go to war.
[00:31:43]  That's not good.
[00:31:44]  I think we all know that it really only applies to one country.
[00:31:47]  That's true.
[00:31:47]  And probably not our own.
[00:31:49]  Probably not even us.
[00:31:50]  Just one country, just Israel.
[00:31:52]  Yeah, no, that is true.
[00:31:54]  But again, that's kind of my point.
[00:31:55]  It's like, you guys are really saying the quiet part out loud a lot.
[00:32:00]  A lot.
[00:32:02]  All right, let's go.
[00:32:03]  Let's go to the other clip of Donald Trump that we have because there was some more that was said.
[00:32:11]  Missile likely destroyed that Iranian girls' school.
[00:32:16]  So will the American accept any responsibility?
[00:32:19]  Well, I haven't seen it.
[00:32:20]  And I will say that the tomahawk, which is one of the most powerful weapons around, is used by, you know, is sold and used by other countries.
[00:32:28]  You know that.
[00:32:30]  And whether it's Iran, who also has some tomahawks, I wish they had more.
[00:32:35]  But whether it's Iran or somebody else, the fact that a tomahawk, a tomahawk is very generic.
[00:32:40]  It's sold to other countries.
[00:32:42]  But that's being investigated right now.
[00:32:47]  Yeah, please.
[00:32:49]  Thank you.
[00:32:50]  Mr. President, you've said the war is, quote, very complete, but your defense secretary says this is just the beginning.
[00:32:56]  So which is it?
[00:32:57]  And how long should Americans be?
[00:32:58]  Well, I think you could say both.
[00:33:00]  The beginning is the beginning of building a new country, but they certainly, they have no navy, they have no air force.
[00:33:06]  Oh my God.
[00:33:07]  Just here, pause it.
[00:33:08]  Pause it.
[00:33:14]  Have you ever seen a war sold worse than this?
[00:33:17]  Well, have you ever seen more?
[00:33:19]  It's almost over and it's just the beginning.
[00:33:22]  Yeah, they're both true, Rob.
[00:33:24]  Those can both totally be true.
[00:33:26]  The war is almost over, but it's also just beginning.
[00:33:30]  Also, it's not a war, but it's just the beginning of building a new country.
[00:33:34]  But we're not nation building.
[00:33:35]  It's not like nation building, but we're at the beginning of building a country and we need complete surrender.
[00:33:41]  What does complete surrender mean?
[00:33:42]  What does unconditional surrender mean?
[00:33:44]  This is World War II shit.
[00:33:46]  This is the shit.
[00:33:47]  You know what we had to do to Japan to fucking, we firebombed Tokyo, killed tens of thousands of fucking people in like one afternoon, killed just like enormous numbers of guys, straight up civilians, like just attacking cities.
[00:34:00]  They still wouldn't do it.
[00:34:01]  So we dropped a nuke.
[00:34:03]  They still wouldn't do it.
[00:34:04]  So we dropped another nuke.
[00:34:06]  Then we got unconditional surrender.
[00:34:08]  That's what unconditional surrender looks like.
[00:34:10]  What the fuck are they talking about here?
[00:34:14]  It's almost over and it's just the beginning.
[00:34:16]  He's basically just up there going, I'm just making things up.
[00:34:19]  And so they go, hey, how is it that you could say that this war is, what does he say, almost finished or basically finished or basically won?
[00:34:29]  And they go, well, why does Hegseth say it's going to be a long war?
[00:34:31]  Well, it's both those things.
[00:34:32]  It's that we've already won it, but we're putting some polish on our win.
[00:34:35]  We can have a more excellent win here.
[00:34:37]  The war is one.
[00:34:38]  We could end it tomorrow, declare victory, but we want a more excellent win.
[00:34:43]  I don't, you know what I mean?
[00:34:44]  It's like running up the, and he's trying to sell it like we're running up points in a game.
[00:34:47]  We already won the game, but let's play a couple more quarters and run up the scorecard.
[00:34:52]  Yeah, unfortunately, in this game, points are dead children.
[00:34:57]  But yeah, it's, you know, dude, I got to say, man, it's like, you know, with the George W. Bush administration, and there were many books written about the, you know, you know, the behind the scenes stuff.
[00:35:10]  And like, it turns out that there were people who were really against going to the war, going to war in Iraq, but not in front of the cameras, in front of the cameras, dude.
[00:35:23]  They all sold the thing.
[00:35:24]  They all stayed on message and they were all, they all had the same message.
[00:35:29]  If you go listen to interviews, and there were lots of public interviews with Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, they were all saying the exact same thing.
[00:35:41]  It was coherent.
[00:35:42]  It was like, there was never a situation.
[00:35:45]  Again, like, I'm sure you all understand, I'm not defending the Bush administration or the war in Iraq.
[00:35:50]  They all are war criminals.
[00:35:51]  They should all, all of them, the ones who are still alive, should be rotting in prison in The Hague somewhere or something like that, or just a good U.S. prison.
[00:35:59]  I don't much like international law.
[00:36:02]  But like, I don't know, they, they had a, they sold a war.
[00:36:07]  They had a coherent like message.
[00:36:10]  They don't, you didn't have things like no one was ever going like, hey, um, President Bush, you said that Saddam has weapons of mass destruction, but the Secretary of Defense said they don't.
[00:36:23]  You know what I mean?
[00:36:24]  Like, it's, it's like, this is Donald Trump's just getting caught.
[00:36:27]  You and your fucking Secretary of War are saying 180 degree opposite things about this war.
[00:36:34]  And he goes, they're both true.
[00:36:37]  Okay.
[00:36:38]  I mean, like, how, you know, how do you even say this shit out loud?
[00:36:42]  At first, I thought it must have been AI.
[00:36:44]  I sent in an email.
[00:36:45]  I think it might have also been in your text thread, but I realized it was true when Glenn Greenwald retweeted it.
[00:36:51]  But it's one of the few examples of where someone actually had an opportunity to do honest journalism and questions Donald Trump about the tomahawk missiles.
[00:37:00]  I don't know if we can roll that clip, but yeah, part of that was at the beginning of this.
[00:37:05]  But yeah, we could go to that one too.
[00:37:07]  But you can go ahead and make the point about it even.
[00:37:10]  Oh, it's just it's amazing the way that even amongst the press that hates Donald Trump that they can't ask him questions this clearly.
[00:37:18]  And this is one of the first times where you see in Trump's eyes like, yeah, you got me for lying.
[00:37:23]  And so he has to walk it back with, I forget his exact response, but it's something we're looking into it.
[00:37:28]  We're going to find out.
[00:37:28]  If it turns out it's us, then I'll address it.
[00:37:30]  But he just so clearly, I mean, there's literally a picture, unless that turns out to be AI of what's clearly looks to be a tomahawk missile.
[00:37:39]  As of yet, nobody's using, no one else is using tomahawk missiles.
[00:37:43]  I think Israel doesn't have them.
[00:37:44]  It's only our Navy that's firing them.
[00:37:46]  The claim would then have to be that Iran somehow bought it from one of the partner countries that are not involved in this fight.
[00:37:52]  And both the New York Times and I think Wall Street Journal, like mainstream U.S. reporting, has recognized that that's believed to be a Tomahawk missile.
[00:38:01]  But of course, Trump's the only one going, no, Iran fired it on themselves.
[00:38:05]  And then when the picture comes out that it was a Tomahawk, I guess he's so unknowledgeable about what kind of military equipment is being used and what Iran has that he goes, well, Iran fired that Tomahawk missile.
[00:38:18]  Dude, I mean, it's, by the way, he said when he came out and said that, he said it was an Iranian tomahawk that killed those 200 girls or whatever the number exactly is.
[00:38:30]  So, Mr. President, are you saying that Iran has access to our military gear?
[00:38:34]  Has somebody sold it to them?
[00:38:35]  Have they stolen it from us?
[00:38:36]  How at risk are we at Tomahawk missiles from Iran?
[00:38:40]  And have they been able to duplicate our technology?
[00:38:43]  And should we maybe not be in this war, Mr. President?
[00:38:46]  Yeah, well, it's also, it's pretty noteworthy that the central command did not back him up.
[00:38:52]  They just said, they just said they go, we're investigating it.
[00:38:55]  It would be inappropriate to comment on that because they're like, I mean, look, as I've said before, it doesn't, it doesn't really matter that much.
[00:39:08]  You know, it's like, as I said before, it's still on all the people who die here.
[00:39:12]  It's on Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu.
[00:39:16]  Like you, you launch a war of aggression, a war of choice.
[00:39:19]  You're responsible for what happens as a result of that.
[00:39:23]  That being said, yeah, it seems like the much more likely scenario here is that we hit that school.
[00:39:32]  And then that raises some other questions, you know, about whether it was intentional or not.
[00:39:39]  And you know, I've given you my feelings on the intentionality of all this shit a million times, but like much more specifically, like, did you actually intend to hit that target or were you trying to hit something else?

=== Loving Trees and Plants (02:10) ===

[00:39:49]  Because evidently, this is like it was a school that was right next to like a government building.
[00:39:56]  And so, this was like a school where the government employees put their kids.
[00:40:01]  And so, like, that it does just open up a really dark and twisted possibility that that was intentional.
[00:40:08]  Um, God, you hope that's not the case.
[00:40:12]  Um, because that is a whole different level of like sick and evil, even within the realm of sick and evil shit that we're talking about here.
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=== Code Problems and Promo Codes (14:40) ===

[00:42:00]  All right, let's get back into the show.
[00:42:03]  But yeah, it's just again when Donald, Donald Trump has always had a convenient relationship with the truth.
[00:42:15]  Let's say, Donald Trump is not, and everyone knows this about Donald Trump, even his most ardent supporters.
[00:42:22]  This is kind of baked into the price of who Donald Trump is.
[00:42:26]  He's a liar.
[00:42:27]  You know, he's like a compulsive liar.
[00:42:30]  He's a showman.
[00:42:31]  He's the most braggadocious human being who's ever existed.
[00:42:35]  And he doesn't care about it being true.
[00:42:37]  And very silly things.
[00:42:39]  Like he'll just, he'll just say, my inauguration had the biggest crowd size in American history.
[00:42:46]  And then someone will point out that Obama's had like three times as many as him.
[00:42:49]  And I'll go, nope, mine.
[00:42:52]  And you're like, sir, there are.
[00:42:54]  Or he'll say, I won an election.
[00:42:56]  Yeah.
[00:42:57]  Yeah.
[00:42:57]  Like whatever it is, it doesn't matter.
[00:42:59]  And, but, but I'm saying like things like the Obama crowd size, where they're like, sir, there's an aerial shot of your crowd size and his.
[00:43:07]  And you can clearly see that his is much bigger.
[00:43:09]  Doesn't matter.
[00:43:10]  He'll just say it.
[00:43:11]  And like, okay, the thing about it is, is like, well, you got that, but then he's telling Hillary Clinton she'll be in jail to her face.
[00:43:18]  And he's telling Jeb Bush, your brother's a war pig to his face.
[00:43:22]  And so like, nah, you know, you kind of make your peace with the fact that he's a liar.
[00:43:25]  But now that he's in and he's the swamp and he's a total sellout, it's like, man, that really is a problem because he'll just, it doesn't matter to Donald Trump.
[00:43:35]  You go there.
[00:43:35]  Donald Trump just murders.
[00:43:38]  And what else can you say about just murders a bunch of eight-year-old girls?
[00:43:42]  Then he'll just lie about it and say, no, I didn't do it.
[00:43:45]  Pierre, why don't we go to the clip Rob has?
[00:43:48]  And then if we could come back to the rest of this one, let's do the one Rob just put in the chat.
[00:43:54]  You just suggested that Iran somehow got its hands on a tomahawk and bombed its own elementary school on the first day of the war.
[00:44:01]  But you're the only person in your government saying this.
[00:44:03]  Even your defense secretary wouldn't say that when he was asked, standing over your shoulder on your plane on Saturday.
[00:44:08]  Why are you the only person saying this?
[00:44:10]  Because I just don't know enough about it.
[00:44:12]  I think it's something that I was told is under investigation.
[00:44:16]  But tomahawks are used by others, as you know.
[00:44:20]  Numerous other nations have tomahawks.
[00:44:22]  They buy them from us.
[00:44:24]  But I will certainly, whatever the report shows, I'm willing to live with that report.
[00:44:30]  Yeah, please.
[00:44:30]  Because I just don't know enough about it.
[00:44:33]  In other words, you're just making shit up.
[00:44:35]  Yeah.
[00:44:36]  Yeah.
[00:44:36]  You're just making shit up.
[00:44:38]  What a response.
[00:44:38]  How come you're the only one saying this?
[00:44:40]  Because I don't know.
[00:44:42]  Right.
[00:44:42]  Right.
[00:44:43]  So because you don't know you're saying something that you have no idea whether it's true or not.
[00:44:47]  And we'll have a report or we'll have an investigation.
[00:44:49]  And whatever the investigation finds, Donald Trump says he can live with it.
[00:44:53]  Well, that's good to know.
[00:44:56]  It's good to know that you can live with murdering a bunch of little girls.
[00:44:59]  Some of us can't.
[00:45:02]  Those little girls can't.
[00:45:03]  Their families probably can't.
[00:45:06]  But that's, but that is like, I mean, literally, this is, I mean, I don't know what to say, man.
[00:45:11]  If anyone still supports this guy, like, I don't know what to say.
[00:45:15]  What can you say?
[00:45:17]  Just listen to that clip.
[00:45:18]  And by the way, just think, keep in mind what we're talking about here because we're talking about like, I don't know exactly what the numbers were, Rob.
[00:45:25]  What are they?
[00:45:26]  I've seen estimates between 150 to 200 of them or something like that.
[00:45:30]  But you're talking about a whole bunch of little girls, like seven, eight, nine-year-old little girls.
[00:45:36]  Donald Trump just lies through his fucking teeth that he didn't do it, gets one follow-up question on it.
[00:45:40]  The answer is, oh, well, I don't know.
[00:45:42]  I don't know.
[00:45:42]  Because someone might have told that to me.
[00:45:45]  Is that the way that you're making military decisions here?
[00:45:47]  Is that you walk into a meeting and you think someone might have told you something?
[00:45:51]  And so you go ahead and you make a decision based off of what someone might have told you.
[00:45:56]  I'm just saying, if you want to take these two comments as now being true of, well, I think I thought that because somebody told me that, or whatever his language was, I mean, if that's really your decision-making process for the Iranian war, then we're doomed.
[00:46:12]  Yeah.
[00:46:12]  I mean, like, I don't know, dude.
[00:46:15]  You know, Donald Trump had that, um, like he fairly recently had that comment about, I mean, he said a few times, made comments about getting into heaven.
[00:46:25]  That he's not getting in anyways.
[00:46:27]  Well, no, at first, like last year, he had made a couple comments about wanting to get into heaven.
[00:46:32]  And then like a month ago, he had like a comment about how he's not going to get in, how he's not going to make it.
[00:46:38]  It's like, oh, geez, I've, yeah, dude, you're not getting in.
[00:46:43]  That's for sure.
[00:46:44]  Like, yeah, killed a lot of little girls and then lied through your teeth about it.
[00:46:48]  I have a feeling, like, if there is a heaven and a hell, I think there might be a tally of that.
[00:46:54]  That's probably not good.
[00:46:56]  Let's go back to the other clip that we were watching.
[00:47:01]  Because I think, yeah, I think there was some more in this.
[00:47:04]  Equipment, it's all been blown up.
[00:47:06]  They have no radar.
[00:47:08]  They have no telecommunications.
[00:47:09]  This is the Israeli.
[00:47:10]  And they have no leadership.
[00:47:12]  It's all gone.
[00:47:13]  So, you know, you could look at that statement.
[00:47:17]  We could call it a tremendous success right now as we leave here.
[00:47:20]  I could call it, or we could go further and we're going to go further.
[00:47:25]  But the big risk on that war has been over for three days.
[00:47:32]  We wiped them out in the first two days.
[00:47:36]  When you think about it, it's incredible.
[00:47:38]  We wiped out a big navy, very powerful navy.
[00:47:42]  You know, these were ships.
[00:47:43]  These were serious ships.
[00:47:44]  These were ships that you buy when you want to win battles.
[00:47:47]  They're all on the bottom floor.
[00:47:50]  The sailors are all running off their ships.
[00:47:52]  They refuse to get on the ships.
[00:47:55]  The Air Force is gone.
[00:47:56]  Everything's gone.
[00:47:57]  The missiles are down to a trickle.
[00:47:59]  The drones are down to probably 25%.
[00:48:03]  And they'll soon be down to nothing.
[00:48:05]  We'll have the way they manufacture the drones are under fire as we speak.
[00:48:10]  They're being hit.
[00:48:12]  So the rest is going to be a determination as to my attitude, along with the people in the Trump administration, what we want to do.
[00:48:20]  Thank you.
[00:48:21]  There, let's pause on that for a second because it is, again, just, it's like every inch of this thing is just totally contradictory.
[00:48:31]  Like, Rob, I mean, I don't know, dude, with a straight face, you're going to look at other adults and say this was a great Navy, a powerful Navy.
[00:48:41]  And look, I am no, I am not an expert in like military history.
[00:48:45]  I'm like a bit of an amateur buff or something.
[00:48:49]  Like, I like reading about World War II and watching documentaries about fucking different wars and shit.
[00:48:56]  I know enough to know this, Rob, that great, powerful navies don't collapse in three days.
[00:49:05]  I also seems like never once happened.
[00:49:08]  I don't think you can be a great and powerful navy without a significant submarine presence.
[00:49:14]  I'm just saying since probably World War I, even when the Germans kind of turned it on the great Royal Navy because of their submarines, I'm just saying if you have zero submarine presence, I think the title of great navy is probably not also, you can add that to the not truthful claims pile.
[00:49:35]  No, but I'm sure someone told them, you know?
[00:49:38]  So there you go.
[00:49:39]  That's enough.
[00:49:39]  That's enough for the president of the United States of America to take during wartime to the American people.
[00:49:45]  I don't know.
[00:49:45]  I don't know much about it.
[00:49:46]  Someone told me.
[00:49:47]  So that's the standard.
[00:49:49]  And they were also apparently, I think, invested in these drone mines, which from my understanding are still keeping the Strait of Hermuse closed, except for the Ghost Fleet, which is the actual Iranian regional partners trying to get oil to China.
[00:50:04]  Although I don't know if anyone's tested the Trump's bluff yet of just go through, you'll be protected.
[00:50:10]  You know, I mean, yeah, right.
[00:50:13]  Well, I mean, you can take everything else he says to the banks.
[00:50:16]  Why aren't you confident when this guy tells you, yeah, just drive your ship in there.
[00:50:21]  You'll be fine.
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[00:51:05]  All right, let's get back into the show.
[00:51:06]  Yeah, I mean, again, Donald Trump is one of the things here that really stuck out to me too was just the, it's such confirmation of the war of choice aspect where Donald Trump just straight up says, we could stop now, but we're going to go a little further.
[00:51:30]  You know, like we, in other words, like we don't have to do any of this.
[00:51:34]  We could stop now and call it a tremendous success.
[00:51:36]  Now, again, like that is, that would be the best case scenario if Donald Trump can find some type of off-ramp here.
[00:51:48]  But even in that best case scenario, I just don't, listen, man, there's just no way you're selling this as like some huge victory.
[00:52:00]  Like you did something great.
[00:52:01]  No, nobody's going to look at it like that, dude.
[00:52:03]  You got a meaner, younger Ayatollah in there who's now probably animated by a desire for vengeance.
[00:52:11]  You've got, again, I don't know.
[00:52:13]  You know, there was a congressional report that was just put together that said we've already spent $5 billion on just on munitions.
[00:52:22]  That's not accounting for the damage to our embassies and bases and stuff over there, which is probably billions more.
[00:52:29]  They just spent billions of dollars, killed a couple hundred little girls, killed the family members of the Ayatollah.
[00:52:37]  Like, is it, we're supposed to have no moral qualms with that?
[00:52:41]  I mean, say what you will about the Ayatollah, but like a baby, his granddaughter and kids and stuff like that.
[00:52:50]  I don't know, man.
[00:52:51]  How the hell are you going to sell this as a huge success and not just obviously what it is?
[00:52:56]  I don't see it.
[00:52:58]  If only 25% of their ballistic missiles are left, I guess he can call it by the end of the week and just say we'll continue to do targeted strikes if they try and rebuild any of what we feel could be a threat to Israel.
[00:53:10]  Because obviously we've just admitted to the fact that this is a war for support of Israel.
[00:53:15]  And then everyone's safe and they don't have to be worried about this horrible Iran.
[00:53:19]  The war's already won.
[00:53:20]  They only got 25% of their ballistic missiles left.
[00:53:22]  I guess there's also the problem that you label Hezbollah and other groups as being terrorist proxies and they still exist, but the war's won.
[00:53:30]  So I guess they're no longer terrorist proxies because the war's already won, Dave.
[00:53:34]  That's what I just heard.
[00:53:35]  It wasn't a war.
[00:53:37]  Well, it's not a war, but the war is one.
[00:53:39]  So it's a victorious military excursion.
[00:53:42]  Yeah, I just don't.
[00:53:43]  I mean, look, I just don't see any of that shit actually working.
[00:53:45]  I think it's already like it's look, like Trump probably damaged himself to the point where it was not recoverable last summer.
[00:54:01]  You know, the one-two punch of the 12-day war and Trump attempting to bury the Epstein scandal really, really hurt Donald Trump.
[00:54:10]  I just don't think there's any coming back from this one.
[00:54:12]  You know, I saw Kurt Mills was on with Steve Bannon, I think it was.
[00:54:20]  And he said something like, he goes, look, man, if Donald Trump takes an off-ramp right now and gets us out of this, like he can recover.
[00:54:27]  He can still compete in the midterms.
[00:54:28]  He can still that.
[00:54:29]  But if this goes any further than he's done, and I just, I really like Kurt Mills a lot.
[00:54:33]  I just think he's wrong.
[00:54:34]  I think he's wrong on that.
[00:54:35]  I don't think he can still recover.
[00:54:36]  I don't think there's too big a percentage of the fucking coalition is just done with Donald Trump.
[00:54:45]  Like I don't think he has it anymore.
[00:54:48]  And, you know, people will say things.
[00:54:51]  They'll be like, well, look, amongst diehard MAGA supporters, the war is actually now very popular, even though it wasn't according to the polling until Donald Trump did it, but now it's real.
[00:55:01]  But the problem with that is that you go like, yeah, how are you measuring hardcore Trump supporters?
[00:55:06]  Because if you shrink your base by 40%, but then 90% of your base loves the thing, it's like, yeah, okay.
[00:55:13]  But like, what percentage of the people who actually voted for you?
[00:55:16]  What percentage of people who were on board a year and a half ago are still on board?
[00:55:20]  And oh, yeah, it's way, way down.
[00:55:22]  Anybody who thinks Donald Trump is winning the popular vote in an election held today is out of their mind.
[00:55:28]  He's not.
[00:55:29]  Against Kamala Harris, he's not winning the popular vote today.
[00:55:32]  In fact, all the polling backs that up.
[00:55:34]  In fact, I saw one polling where she was up almost double digits.
[00:55:38]  I think it was nine points she was up.
[00:55:40]  If like, if you could redo the election today, who would you vote for?
[00:55:43]  And that's Kamala Harris, the worst candidate ever, you know?
[00:55:49]  But look, I think the major problem here, Rob, is also that, you know, it's like, it's the gift and curse of Donald Trump type thing, right?
[00:55:57]  So Donald Trump, he could never just.
[00:56:01]  Donald Trump will never just say, I'm pretty good on this issue.
[00:56:04]  He's always the most tremendous, amazing, you know, so he talks so much shit.
[00:56:09]  And I'm sorry, but like people are not going to forget how this war was launched.
[00:56:15]  This war was launched by Donald Trump in a, in a fucking baseball cap with no tie, by the way, which I don't think, I don't know.
[00:56:24]  I don't think I ever commented on that.
[00:56:26]  Well, we've been doing a week or two weeks of shows on this.
[00:56:31]  But that is, I'll tell you this.
[00:56:33]  And I know, listen, I'm me and people kind of know me at this point.
[00:56:36]  And, you know, I'm a, I'm a hoodie wearing comedian.
[00:56:39]  You know what I mean?

=== Overthrowing Traditional Conservatism (05:10) ===

[00:56:40]  Like, I'm not, I'm not like a strict traditionalist in this sense.
[00:56:48]  But I did think that was like that.
[00:56:50]  That's my line of where, you know, like there's like the Pat Buchanan guys who always really cared about stuff like that.
[00:56:55]  Like there's like there's this strained of traditional strain of traditional conservatives who get very animated by things.
[00:57:02]  Like I remember there was like a thing when Obama, Obama had his suit jacket off once in the Oval office.
[00:57:10]  Like he was just in a shirt and tie.
[00:57:11]  He took his jacket off.
[00:57:12]  And like they were upset about that.
[00:57:14]  They were like, that's not the president should always be in a suit and jacket when he's in the Oval.
[00:57:19]  I was like, I don't really care about stuff like that.
[00:57:21]  There is something about announcing you're going to war in a baseball cap without a suit on.
[00:57:26]  I don't know.
[00:57:27]  I find that to be, it was like Zelensky coming to meet the president in a, like it's, it's weird.
[00:57:33]  But anyway, when Donald Trump casually announced that we were going to war, we all heard what he said.
[00:57:38]  He said this was a regime change war and he called on the people to rise up and overthrow their regime.
[00:57:43]  And like one of the things, and again, this is why I'm very inoculated against falling for neocon bullshit because I've just, I've read too much of them and lived through too much of the results.
[00:57:59]  And I will tell you, man, you know, like all the guys, all the Douglas Murrays and all of them, like they love more than anything else to get on their, oh, you're not an expert, please.
[00:58:09]  I'm in the expert class and you're just in this, you know, whatever regular person class.
[00:58:14]  Who are you to even be in this conversation?
[00:58:17]  And they are, they are wrong 100% of the time.
[00:58:22]  They are fucking retarded, dude.
[00:58:25]  They're like, they're on the level of like Fauci and them talking about what the virus is going to look like.
[00:58:32]  And don't get me wrong, right?
[00:58:32]  Like Fauci went to school for all this shit and he is the most accredited goddamn expert there is out there.
[00:58:39]  And what did he predict about the, he got everything wrong, everything wrong.
[00:58:43]  All these motherfuckers, Rob, they told, they all thought, they all think they know so well that the Iranian people are going to rise up as soon as we just start dropping bombs.
[00:58:53]  They're going to rise up and overthrow their government.
[00:58:55]  I don't know if you've seen it, Rob, but they have been rising up.
[00:58:59]  They've had demonstrations with hundreds of thousands of Iranians taking to the street in support of the regime, chanting death to America louder than ever before.
[00:59:13]  You say they did hate us.
[00:59:16]  That's why now more than ever, we got to target more civilians and liberate the few that were actually not wanting to kill us.
[00:59:24]  Yeah.
[00:59:24]  And look, dude, there's no, again, this is, this is such basic human psychology.
[00:59:30]  And it's only because, as I was saying in the last episode, it's only because there is this deep refusal amongst the boomer neocon class to ever take accountability, to ever look in the mirror, to go, hey, if we're going to judge these people by a standard, then let's judge ourselves by that same standard.
[00:59:51]  You know, what was the response after 9-11?
[00:59:54]  For those of us who are old enough to remember it very well, you know, I was 18 when 9-11 happened.
[00:59:59]  Like, I was young, but I was an adult.
[01:00:01]  Like, I was an adult who was aware of what was going on.
[01:00:03]  And George W. Bush, in response to 9-11, enjoyed record high approval ratings.
[01:00:10]  I think his approval rating broke 90% at one point.
[01:00:14]  And this is George W. Bush.
[01:00:16]  He was, first of all, he was a fucking idiot.
[01:00:21]  He lost the popular vote.
[01:00:23]  He was the first president who ever lost the popular vote.
[01:00:27]  He barely got elected.
[01:00:30]  Was the first year of his presidency, like the dot-com bubble burst and it was a mess.
[01:00:39]  It was just like not like, it wasn't like Jack Kennedy was in office.
[01:00:43]  It was George W. Bush, but you know what?
[01:00:45]  That didn't matter because fuck, we got attacked from an outside enemy.
[01:00:49]  And so we all rallied around the flag.
[01:00:51]  Everyone put American flags up everywhere.
[01:00:54]  And then we were like, we're going to go kill some people.
[01:00:56]  Just point to some people.
[01:00:57]  We're going to go kill them.
[01:00:58]  Someone's going to die.
[01:00:59]  I mean, that was the reaction.
[01:01:02]  Why do we expect it to be so much different?
[01:01:05]  Why do we expect that another country is going to thank us for murdering their children?
[01:01:13]  And to see these guys who have, you know, spent their entire lives studying this question, but then they've got their fancy predictions about how this is going to make the people love us.
[01:01:26]  And again, man, like, you know, as we've been saying this whole time, the, the, you know, Donald Trump says the big risk has been taken care of or something like that.
[01:01:35]  The big risk here is that this regime collapses.
[01:01:39]  That's the big risk.
[01:01:40]  That is the consistent lesson that we've learned from Iraq, from Libya, from Syria, that that is actually really dangerous.

=== The Danger of Regime Collapse (02:07) ===

[01:01:50]  What comes next?
[01:01:52]  Because it's often a civil war or it's, or it's a failed state and it's chaos.
[01:01:58]  That's the big risk.
[01:02:01]  And again, this is you're in a situation here where like success is the biggest failure.
[01:02:10]  Like if you succeed in taking this regime down.
[01:02:13]  And, you know, again, as I said before, you maybe you can kill the new Ayatollah.
[01:02:21]  Maybe they can kill some more people.
[01:02:22]  I don't know, Rob.
[01:02:23]  I mean, there's like the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, the IRGC, has, I think, like 200,000 members.
[01:02:32]  So like, gotta have to kill a lot of people, right?
[01:02:36]  To like take down the whole thing.
[01:02:39]  But let's say you kill enough and the rest disband and then there's chaos.
[01:02:44]  They take over.
[01:02:45]  Okay, but what about those hundreds of thousands of people who are out in the streets who probably represent millions of people in the entire country?
[01:02:53]  What about them?
[01:02:55]  You can't just vanquish all of them.
[01:02:58]  Or, you know, maybe that's the plan.
[01:03:01]  Anyway, here we are.
[01:03:03]  It really is goddamn surreal.
[01:03:06]  I don't know.
[01:03:06]  Last word to you, Rob.
[01:03:09]  I don't like it.
[01:03:12]  That pretty much sums it up.
[01:03:13]  You could have just saved us two weeks of podcasting with that.
[01:03:16]  All right, guys.
[01:03:17]  Listen.
[01:03:17]  Oh, by the way, I didn't mention Boston.
[01:03:20]  Get your tickets for that now.
[01:03:22]  We sold out the entire weekend last year.
[01:03:25]  Every show was sold out.
[01:03:27]  So make sure you get your tickets now.
[01:03:29]  I do anticipate it's going to sell out again.
[01:03:31]  And so if you want to come, make sure you get your tickets now.
[01:03:33]  And same for Chicago.
[01:03:34]  We always sell that out.
[01:03:36]  So make sure you guys grab your tickets now.
[01:03:38]  Those are going to be some fun, fun shows.
[01:03:41]  Stanford, take your time.
[01:03:43]  Buy them whenever's convenient for you.
[01:03:44]  Don't tell them, man.
[01:03:46]  I'm just kidding.
[01:03:46]  I'm kidding.
[01:03:47]  Buy them right now.
[01:03:48]  Please buy them right now.
[01:03:49]  But yeah, all those gigs.
[01:03:51]  Looking forward to that.
[01:03:54]  All right.
[01:03:55]  That's today's show.
[01:03:56]  Thank you guys for listening.
[01:03:57]  Catch you next time.