Dave Smith and Robbie the Fire Bernstein critique Iran war narratives, dismiss Mark Levin's ground troop claims as propaganda, and challenge Vivek Ramaswamy on US foreign entanglements. They heavily attack Hassan Piker for his "America deserved 9/11" stance and views on stealing, labeling his support for vaccine passports as apartheid-like tyranny. Ultimately, the hosts argue that leftist rhetoric advocating state-mandated labor and redistribution amounts to dangerous pro-slavery logic that would enable wealthy violence against the poor, leading to higher prices and restricted access for everyone. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, Qwen/Qwen3-ForcedAligner-0.6B, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
|
Time
Text
Iran War Quasi Ceasefire00:06:16
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.
What's going on with you, good friend?
Nothing much.
Just put out some new sketches.
Go check it out.
Robbie the Fire, all of them are on YouTube.
If you got a porch for me, thefireticks.com.
You live out in New York City.
I just added my first headlining gig, a porch tour in Astoria.
Nice.
And all sorts of stuff coming up.
Got dates confirmed.
Just got to do the homework.
Got to set it up.
Not fun.
That's not the fun part, but the fun part is coming out to the show.
And then, of course, coming up pretty soon here, Rob, we are getting only a little more than a week out from Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Oklahoma City.
May 1st, we're in Tulsa.
May 2nd and 3rd, we're in Oklahoma City.
Both are Bricktown comedy clubs, which we've done.
Have we done that run twice before or once before?
We loved it.
I remember loving it.
All those guys are, all their clubs are fantastic.
And then, of course, we'll be out at the improv in Phoenix, Arizona.
Toronto, we got one night two shows June 5th, and then the Denver run is up after that.
Then a bunch of which is maybe the best week of comedy weekend of comedy we've ever done last year.
So, really looking forward to being back there.
And yeah, and then a whole bunch of stuff coming up this summer and into the fall.
Comicdavesmith.com for all of those dates.
And yeah, let's.
I feel like there was something else I wanted to say, but I can't remember.
Oh, I was on the Tom Woods show.
Uh, we recorded yesterday and it just came out today.
If you haven't, go check that out.
Tom Woods, and by the way, check out Tom Woods' show in general.
His library is like the best.
He is the OG goat libertarian podcaster.
Like, if there's, if you, I mean, he's done thousands at this point, but he's covered every topic and been right about every topic.
And man, I'm sure if I searched long and hard enough, I could find something Tom Woods has been wrong about.
But it's, he is pretty damn good on everything.
Anyway.
There's a few things I wanted to talk about on today's show, but I guess we do have to open with just like the latest in the Iran war, which is still, you know, in this quasi ceasefire limbo state.
What I don't know, Rob, what's the latest?
What is the latest dumb thing that President Trump posted on Truth Social that you sent to me?
Well, the latest is they're trying to concoct a narrative that I guess Donald Trump has worked out a deal, but the Iranians can't agree on the deal because there's multiple.
multiple factions.
And so now the Iranians have to get their shit together because the Donald Trump team totally put together, worked out a fair deal.
The Iranians have even agreed to it.
But now you've got too many factions in Iran.
The point that this overlooks is that if you hadn't killed the Ayatollah, you wouldn't be dealing with multiple factions and unable to negotiate.
So this once again sounds like a problem of Donald Trump's own creation.
But the latest is we've not only won the war, And we can continue to win the war, but we've even, I guess, brokered a deal.
And they're not quite putting in this terms, but this is the picture they're trying to paint is that we've done our part, we've brokered our deal, and now Iran's got to get its shit together so that they can just agree to it.
Yeah, that's right.
And, you know, it's hard because, you know, with this thing, I mean, this war is just, well, whatever, Rob, like I said before, I think I might have been a little ahead when I said it last time, but we're in the month, you know, we've, it's not weeks, not months anymore.
Now it's months, not years.
And so we're, you know, it's the timeline has been so crazy.
Like, I feel like I'd need to have like a Charlie Day in the mailroom, you know, board set up to keep.
But what was it three weeks ago when Donald Trump was talking about how we're negotiating with people over there?
They're being very reasonable.
And we're very, and then he was asked, Are you negotiating with the leader?
Are you negotiating with the new Ayatollah?
And he goes, No, the new Ayatollah, he may not even be alive.
He's very injured, whatever.
But we're negotiating with people who we believe to be.
In charge.
And so even Donald Trump himself kind of admitted that it wasn't exactly clear from his perspective, according to his bullshit, that who he's negotiating with is even at the top of the Iranian government.
Now, from all that I've read, which is what I've been reading every day about what Iranian officials have said, there seems to be like, no, what Donald Trump's claiming is complete bullshit.
They're one regime.
They're, you know what I'm saying?
In the same way, any regime is one regime.
But of course, in the same way, That any regime, like in the same way that you might have someone like Joe Kent in our administration who was so against this war that he resigned and discussed.
And then you might have someone like Marco Rubio who's completely on board with this.
They're just saying, like, yeah, there's an internal debate within Iran and some factions are more amenable to a deal and other factions are more resistant to it.
But that has nothing to do.
But Donald Trump's claim is at this point almost like, oh, they don't even know who the real government is there or something like that, which even like I tend to believe that this is all just made up because Donald Trump just has been lying through this whole thing.
But it is, I suppose, possible that Donald Trump or someone in his administration has had contacts with somebody there who is more amenable to a deal, but then doesn't actually control the levers of government.
But even if that's the case, the end result is still no one's going to Pakistan for this latest round of talks.
So, what is the hope here?
And of course, you know, this is one of the things about war that is to some degree a constant or to some degree a lesson of war in almost every conflict is that you're, at least in American, you know, asymmetrical wars, much like every war we've fought since World War II.
In these wars, it's almost always the American goal that the more moderate faction.
Dealing With The Moderates00:16:26
Rises to the top.
You know, we don't want to deal with the Islamists or the hardliners or the theocrats.
We want to deal with the moderates.
The pro it's like we used to always say about the moderate rebels in Syria.
The problem with that is that, look, number one, by definition, when you grab a machine gun and join an insurgency, you're not a moderate.
Like, there's no such thing as a moderate rebel because moderates don't become rebels.
Rebel is inherently radical, like, you know, and So there's that aspect.
But then it's also like, you know, you start dropping bombs and exploding things and killing people and disrupting supply chains and causing all types of fear and chaos and anger.
And you think that's the environment where the moderates flourish?
Just think about our own politics.
Think about the pop.
If we go through a steep recession in the next three months, is it more likely that moderate voices will rise to the top?
Or more likely that more radical voices will get a boost of wind in their sails or whatever.
Pretty obvious what the answer is there.
And so, I'm not saying it's impossible.
I'm not saying it violates the laws of physics for Gandhi to arise out of the civil war in Syria, but it sure is unlikely, Rob.
All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is the Wellness Company.
As you may know, Americans love sushi.
Over the last two decades, raw fish consumption has exploded.
Sushi bars are everywhere.
They're at grocery stores.
Gas stations sell it.
And millions of people now eat raw fish weekly.
But there's a hidden risk most people never think about parasites.
Salmon is one of the most popular fish worldwide, but it naturally contains more than 70 parasites.
Most are tiny and nearly impossible to see, and they're making their way into the human body.
Now, once inside, parasites can hide for years while frequently laying eggs before any symptoms appear.
This is why many physicians are raising awareness about parasite exposure.
Dr. Peter McCullough recommends doing a parasite cleanse at least once a year as a preventative measure.
The wellness company offers a hard to access prescription parasite cleanse with USA compounded ivermectin and mabendazole.
Ivermectin paralyzes the parasite's nervous system, and the mabendazole starves them.
Each capsule contains 25 milligrams of ivermectin and 250 milligrams of mabendazole, lab tested for quality.
To find out more, head over to twc.healthslash problem and use the promo code problem to save $35 off plus free shipping.
That's twc.healthslash problem, promo code problem for $35 off and free shipping.
All right, let's get back in on the show.
There's, and then I sent these clips.
I don't know that we need to play them, but I remember saying this, I think, at the beginning of when they were talking about doing strikes on the Iranian nuclear power plants or nuclear development sites.
This was, you know, a full eight months ago when we were having a full war.
And I kind of was calling the bluff and going, all right, if you think that's the end of it, then go ahead and do it.
If you think that you can do one strike and we never have to have this conversation again and it's over, which was the propaganda at that time, then just go do it.
And of course, that didn't work.
And I feel like I'm seeing the same thing now.
And I kind of want to call the bluff just to be right.
But at the same time, I know that it only escalates and makes things worse.
But you've got Mark Levin pitching, hey, we've got troops that are trained for these kind of operations.
We need to do troops on the ground.
It doesn't have to be a full scale war, but we can go get the nuclear material.
All right.
If you genuinely think that that can be done, can we hang you if you're wrong?
But if you genuinely think that there's no problem with troops on the ground and that you can just go get the nuclear materials with your specialty squads, go do it.
Or on the same note, I saw a clip on Fox News of a guy going, if it's as simple as that there's two different factions here, then why don't we just kill the bad faction?
And because it's probably not that simple.
And not just a guy, he's like a military expert.
I'm blanking on his name at the moment.
But yeah, he goes, well, if there's some people who want to make a deal and other people who don't want to make a deal, just go kill all the people who don't want to make a deal and then we'll have the others.
And it's like, dude, first of all, like you're the military expert here.
Listen, obviously, they don't all have, there's not like there's a big light bulb over all the bad guys, and it's that easy to just surgically take out the bad guys and leave all the good guys in there.
But then, of course, this just ignores things like, you know, insurgent math or whatever.
It goes like, yeah, but like you take out all those people, some of those guys who wanted to make a deal now feel a little bit differently.
You know, like even if there were, say, like, I don't know, if you could imagine like Democrats wanted to make a deal, but Republicans didn't.
But then a foreign country came in and murdered all the Republicans who didn't want to make a deal.
Even those Democrats might feel differently about the deal now.
Now, to your point about Mark Levin and the people, you know, you threw a thing in there about can we publicly hang you after if you're wrong, like a voluntary agreement, no aggression, but just like can we all come to the agreement that if you're wrong about this, like, you know, you go grab a great big samurai sword and you fall on top of it in front of all of us to watch.
Now, that part seems to be the unlikely part, Rob.
But it's a really necessary ingredient.
It's a really necessary component.
Because, you know, I know I've heard you make this point a million times before, and it's really true.
It's really one of the things that we have to deal with is that the purpose of propaganda.
Because here's the thing, right?
It's like in a weird way, like guys like me and you are playing a different game than propagandists are.
Like we're making arguments about what we think is correct.
And so you're even approaching it from like, okay, well, you're making the opposite argument.
So if you do that and we turn out to be completely right, can we then admit that we were completely right and you were wrong?
But The propagandist is not playing that game.
It doesn't really matter to them whether they're proven wrong in the future or proven right in the future.
You can see that all the people who supported the war in Iraq are the same ones who are supporting the war in Iran right now.
The point of propaganda, the point of 14 days to flatten the curve is not, it's so that if you accept that, well, now we've got you.
And yes, down the road, we can all abandon this and admit that it was never 14 days.
And in fact, we need three months to flatten the curve.
Oh, it's going to be six months, maybe nine months, maybe four years to flatten the curve, you know, like whatever it might take.
But the point is that, like, once you accept that, now you're in the middle of lockdowns.
And it's a lot harder to get from lockdowns out of lockdowns than.
To prevent lockdowns from ever happening.
And so, what, you know, it's very easy for someone like Mark Levin to make the argument we can put boots on the ground, we can do this no problem.
But we all know, Rob, if we put boots on the ground and a few of them are taken hostage by the Iranians, Mark Levin's not going to go, I was proven wrong, therefore, we got to go home.
He's going to go, You would leave your boys behind, you scum, you know, or whatever.
And like, so this is constantly what the propagandists do.
And if you even just try to spot, The truth tellers from the propagandists.
It's really not that hard to do.
But what the propagandists always have to do is just get through today's bullshit in order to get the policy moving.
And they will speak with complete certainty and smear you with moral indignation and all of that.
Because by the time you realize they're all full of shit, well, it's kind of too late in a way.
We already got boots on the ground in that scenario.
But yes, I mean, I'm sorry.
I just find it impossible to believe that Mark Levin really believes that we could, with what type of like, With special forces, we could have a uranium extraction effort.
Have you seen?
There's been a few like military experts who have like broken down what it would take in order to actually do this.
Like, you have to build like, you have to build runways for planes to land.
Like, it's just such an operation that you'd have to do on the ground.
And of course, the whole time you're just a sitting duck target.
So, like, this is all completely made up.
Mark Levin does not.
Care about extracting the enriched uranium.
Mark Levin cares about this regime falling because Israel views them as an existential threat, which I don't believe they really are, but that's the Israeli perspective.
And that's one of the things, you know, that's true in every war in my lifetime.
Every single war in my lifetime, DC has claimed this is an existential threat, because of course you have to make that claim in order to launch a war.
But nobody's ever really thought it was.
And maybe some people right after 9 11 actually believed Saddam had WMDs or something.
But even then, the idea that the USA was under an existential threat from Iraq is just ridiculous.
Anyway, I guess my point is, you know, like in the same way that they used to say about Ukraine, that Joe Biden would constantly be trying to tell you this is a must win.
This is a must where we cannot let democratic Ukraine fall to, you know, authoritarian Russia or whatever.
But really, everyone in America on some level knows that if the borders of Russia expanded to Ukraine, this wouldn't be an existential threat to America.
None of us go, oh my God, how are my kids going to live?
If the borders of Russia could expand to Germany and we wouldn't.
It wouldn't be an existential threat to us.
In other words, you had a situation in the war in Ukraine where, from Vladimir Putin's perspective, this is an existential threat.
This is a must win.
From Zelensky's perspective, this is an existential threat.
It is a must win.
From our perspective, we're kind of LARPing.
We're kind of pretending that we have that type of dog in the fight.
And the same thing is here with Iran, where Israel views this as an absolute must win.
Iran obviously views this as an existential threat.
They're the only ones who are actually correct.
In this being an existential threat.
And America's just kind of like, eh, we don't really like that you enriched up to 60%.
We'd rather it be 3%.
But it's just no.
So even as we try to exit, you got to understand that these guys are playing for keeps.
These guys believe that this is absolutely necessary.
And that's tricky.
That's when you're in that situation, because the two things we really got to do here to end this war are get the Israelis to back down and get the Iranians to make a deal.
And it's very hard to get one side to back down and the other side to capitulate to some degree when they both see it as a matter of survival, which is how they view it.
Well, I guess the ceasefire round two shall continue.
There you go.
I wanted to play this clip.
In fact, I was thinking about playing it yesterday, but we didn't end up getting to it.
But there was a clip of Vivek Ramaswamy that was going viral.
On social media from a turning point event.
And I thought it was interesting.
And it was a question, which I guess at this point, like, which it is kind of interesting for the people who, you know, are still supportive of Israel, or in Vivek's case, maybe like quasi supportive, kind of trying to walk that line.
But like, I just never, it never ceases to amaze me that they now cannot go to a turning point event.
No matter who they are, they can't go to a turning point event and take questions without knowing that this most uncomfortable of questions is coming.
And it's just been interesting to see all of them kind of stumble when dealing with it.
Now, Vivek Ramaswamy, no, I just, you know, full disclosure, I haven't talked to Vivek in a while.
We became very friendly in 2024, and we spoke quite often.
I think he was on the show three or four times.
During the campaign, I really liked Vivek personally, and I agree with much of what he was running on.
I thought there were, I liked his candidacy.
I think we both liked him running for president a lot because he would get, he would insert issues that were very important issues to be talked about.
He always really positioned himself as like the man with the plan to shred the deep state, and here's the legal way to do it, and here's the legal way, which was always, you know, I'm not sure if he's right or wrong or, Whether that could actually be accomplished, but I sure like the goal and I like someone saying they have a plan for it.
But he's always, from the very beginning, or, you know, when I say from the very beginning, during his presidential campaign, he tried to, you know, what do they say?
Sit on the fence about the Israel question.
And I guess just fundamentally, my feeling.
And I'm curious if you agree with me or not on this, Rob, because I'm actually not sure how you feel.
But my feeling, we'll get into it in this clip, is that the political realities, the cultural realities in America today are just, you're going to have to pick a side on this issue.
And I just do not think this hanging out in the middle is going to work.
And only 50% of that is because of our side, the critics of Israel.
The other 50% of that is because that also turns you off to all of them.
But I just, I think going forward, I don't think this, I don't think there's really much middle ground.
To meet in.
I don't know if you agree with that.
I think the wheel on this has only recently changed, and it might even be as recent as the Iran war.
And I had said that I didn't think Israel was actually going to be the make or break campaign issue because I think it's more America first.
And if the economy here is great and you're right on every other issue and you still want to send support over to Israel, I don't think people really care.
And I think the wheel has turned because, like the Epstein scandal, I think if you're still supporting Israel, you're letting people know.
Hey, I'm deep state or I'm owned by private interest.
I'm not America first.
And I think that this is now a crucial signal for are you here to represent the American people, keep us out of foreign wars, and make our country better?
Or are you here because of lobby interests that you're going to basically rob the public purse for private interests?
And I think Israel is now a crucial signal that people are aware of what do you care about more, private interest or making our country better?
And if you're out there with all the old talking points about number one ally, Uh, protects our interests in the region.
All the stuff that we've heard over the years after we've just gotten ourselves into such a big mess on their behalf, I think you're just signaling you're not owned by private interest.
And so I think you're right.
I think that this is like the Epstein scandal where you got to take a side, which is the American people or private interest.
All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Cowboy Colostrum.
Cowboy Colostrum offers the highest quality bovine colostrum available in the United States.
Cowboy Colostrum is 100% made in America.
From 100% American grass fed cows.
And unlike other colostrum brands, cowboy colostrum is sourced from the first milking of US grass fed cows.
So don't worry, by the way, they only collect the surplus, the colostrum.
So the baby cows all have their fill, but they don't overprocess or strip their colostrum like a lot of other brands do.
They leave it whole, full fat, and high protein for ultimate nutrient density, making it the highest quality bovine colostrum you can buy.
Cowboy is easy to drink and it's made with delicious natural ingredients and no artificial flavors.
You simply add a three milligram scoop of either their chocolate, their Madagascar vanilla, or their strawberry into your coffee or smoothie in the morning or afternoon.
And as an added bonus, the natural growth factors and peptides in cowboy colostrum make your hair and skin look great too.
Obsessed With Israel Spending00:15:03
So for a limited time only, our listeners can get 25% off their entire order.
Just head over to cowboycolostrum.comslash Dave and use the promo code Dave.
That's 25% off when you use promo code Dave at cowboycolostrum.com slash Dave.
All right, let's get back to the show.
Yeah, I think the way you put it is really important because you're right that, theoretically speaking, if you were really focused on this country and your domestic agenda and you were putting up wins, okay, but you were like, we're still going to send the $4 billion a year to Israel and we still want to move their embassy to wherever they wanted and blah, blah, blah.
I think maybe you could get away with that.
The thing is that the Israel lobby simply will not let you be America first.
So it's almost like it's become this thing now that you kind of can't walk away from.
Or you can't, you know, I've seen people attempt it.
I've seen Matt Walsh, who's probably done the best job that I've seen, and it's still just fallen completely on its face.
Like it's still just not, you know, because he's in this weird position where he's naturally an America first guy.
He clearly does not give a shit about Israel, but he also works for Ben Shapiro, you know?
And like, so, okay.
And also, like, you know, after watching the whole Candace Owens thing, you really see like that's a clearly a real red line over there.
And so he's saying things like he's going, he's trying to take home.
And I don't want to straw man Matt, but he doesn't want to have a conversation with me.
So I'll try my best.
But the, it'll be, he'll say something like, hey, all you guys, whether it's the pro Israel side or the anti Israel side, you guys are all so obsessed with Israel.
Like, I just want to be interested in America.
I don't care about that.
You're all kind of Israel first because I'm the one who really cares about this.
And it's like, clever try, you know, nice try.
But you really can't equate the side of people who are going, we shouldn't be involved in this at all.
And we're critical of Israel because they're doing things that are bad for our country.
And we want to be America first with the people who are going, no, no, no, we should be focused on this.
That's just not the same side.
And if you're an America First guy, I want to focus on America.
It's obviously only cowardice that stops you from going, well, yeah, of course.
That means we don't want to fight wars on behalf of other countries.
Oh, and which country is trying to get us to fight wars on behalf of them and succeeding?
Oh, yeah, this one.
So we have to oppose that.
It became too impactful to not care.
I think what I had said, and this was maybe a year ago, but that, you know, if AOC is in the election and she's the only one talking out against Israel, but someone else you think is going to do a better job for the country, you're not voting for AOC because she's the one who's breaking up with Israel.
Now it's so impactful where you're talking about gas prices going up and a possible global depression.
I mean, you're talking about tremendous risk factors that don't need to exist on the table.
And somebody who is bad on everything else but saying, hey, I'm done with the Israel thing.
That's impactful enough.
People might go, Hey, I want to see that breakup.
That's a campaign issue.
Yep.
No, I agree.
And, you know, I used to say with Ukraine all the time, because I used to just like frame it like this, especially just knowing that, like, you know, Americans don't know the geography of the region.
I'm not saying they should, just like that, whatever.
But I mean, I don't even know what percentage of Americans knew that Ukraine wasn't in Russia before the war started.
But I used to always say that it's like, Hey, like, If it really comes down to it, are you willing to lose one of your children?
Are you willing to sacrifice your brother or your son or your uncle or whatever to make sure that Luhansk is ruled by Kiev rather than ruled by Moscow?
Because when you say it like that, it does make it kind of clear how ridiculous all of this is.
And the question that you're, Rob, when you look at the fact that the Strait of Hermos was open and well, and that all of these types of scenarios like desalination plants being destroyed or bridge and power plant day or all, None of these have been removed from the table.
We're really threatening the world economy.
We're really, you know, which is a dangerous, delicate thing to mess with.
And we're doing all of that, if we're being honest, over whether the Iranians have a 60% enrichment latent deterrent or a 3.5% enrichment latent deterrent.
Does anyone actually care about that enough to sacrifice all of this?
And I think the answer is obviously no.
Anyway, let's hear the question and what my buddy Vivek Ramaswamy had to say.
Hi, my name is Nora Long.
I'm a student here.
As you know, the United States has spent $12 billion on Israel.
This could provide for 3.5 million children with free health care for a year, 2 million families with a year's free groceries, or 600,000 families with a year's free rent.
Since one of your main campaign promises is to provide for America first, will you commit to lobbying Congress to stop the funding of Israel?
So I'll say a couple of things, Nora.
So I want to separate two important and different themes here.
Okay, this is really important here from me.
It's very personal to me for a reason.
When I ran for president, what's that?
We'll stick to Nora's question for now.
So when I ran for president, I was the only Republican on that stage who actually said that in the long run, I think it was in the best interests of the United States and for what it's worth in the best interests of Israel, but I'm looking after the interests of the United States to say that $3.8 billion a year, it should be sunset.
That's what I said.
And I took a lot of heat for that when I ran for president.
So that's one thing.
That's a good point.
That's one thing.
But I would be.
You know, part of the reason that Vivek has a problem here, and look, obviously, like I pay attention to this stuff very closely, and I'm friends or friendly with Vivek, and we spoke a lot during that year.
And so I remember this.
But part of the reason why no one even remembers that Vivek Ramaswamy took this position is because he'd always kind of couch it in this language of like, this is what's best for Israel and the United States, and it should be sunset in the future.
Which isn't it funny, just to the question, Rob?
Like, hey, why is it that I'm watching my city crumbling and I'm watching drug addicts and homeless people and illegal immigration and all of these problems and life is so much more expensive and I can barely keep my head above water and yet we're sending tens of billions of dollars over this foreign country?
And Vivek's response is like, we should only do that for a little while longer.
You should only sacrifice everything you have here over there for a little bit more.
But if you remember, He used to try his best during the campaign.
And I even back then thought it was doomed to fail, which was a very different reality than today.
But he would say, You know what?
I'll tell Benjamin Netanyahu, you go kill the terrorists on your southern border, and I'll go kill the terrorists on our southern border.
So he was kind of trying to have a message of essentially non interventionism, like signal to people like us enough that he's saying, Hey, we should do our own thing and they should do their own thing, but also weirdly like endorsing the killing.
On his southern border, that Benjamin Netanyahu's doing right now.
Which, if you remember, this is the middle of 2024.
He's been slaughtering people for, you know, six months or whatever it is now, eight months, 10 months.
Well, maybe I guess Vivek was out of the race by then, but six months.
So, you know, it's just, I don't know, it just doesn't work because he's still not addressing, like, kind of the core foundation of the question, which is, at a time like this, why should we be worried about the well being of any other country?
Why does the well being of Israel even come out of your mouth?
Like that, just, and he says first and foremost America, but I think a lot of these people want that to be the sole priority of people looking for political power in this country.
Anything, any thoughts on this, Rob?
No, I want to hear more of this fence sitting.
All right.
Yeah, let's keep going.
Complete.
If I did not also answer a second dimension to this question, which is that I do think it is strange.
As the person who stood alone on the Republican debate stage and took criticism from people on both sides of me, and this hurt me in my presidential run, I will say this.
It is beyond bizarre to me, the fixation on that $3.8 billion of the federal budget, when you look at the extent of far more inexcusable Waste, fraud, abuse in a lot of different directions.
Foreign aid to hundreds of other countries that we also should not be supporting.
Which raises a deeper question of what the heck is going on with this particular person in that obsession.
I mean, this is just goddamn.
I'm just so sick of hearing this.
It's just like the most disingenuous argument, man.
It's like this is the best they could come up with.
And like, okay, sure, maybe she didn't like pose the question in the best possible way, but look.
It would like this point that Vivek, that a lot of other people have made, this would make sense if the four billion were the extent of it.
Like, if that was all that anyone was talking about, it's like, dude, you guys really okay, yeah, they're number one, but we also give money to Egypt and Jordan and Europe and Ukraine and all these other countries.
So, why the focus on Israel?
But, like, how are they going to say they're going to sit here and say that we it's like it reminds me of it's literally the thing.
When Tucker Carlson had Ted Cruz on, Rob, and you remember Ted Cruz goes, he goes, listen, I'm the biggest defender of Israel.
The whole reason I ran for Senate was to be Israel's number one defender in the Senate.
And like two sentences go by.
Tucker says something about Israel.
And then Ted Cruz goes, why are you so obsessed with Israel?
He goes, wait, I'm obsessed with Israel.
And he says to him, he goes, you just told me the reason you ran for Senate was to be their number one defender.
And again, for people to go, why are you guys so like, Hyper focused on this.
Like, no, it's not that we are, it's that the entire ruling regime is.
It's like, Rob, I don't know.
Again, if you want to go to the money, oh, there's much bigger line item budgets.
Well, how much has this war in Iran cost us so far?
Like $100 billion, something like that?
Okay, so there's another $100.
How much did the terror wars cost us?
Oh, like $8 trillion.
Oh, okay, this is starting to get pretty damn expensive, isn't it?
Let's imagine all the other foreign aid to the region is also foreign aid to Israel.
And not to mention the fact that The president of the United States openly says that his biggest donors are the Israel lobby and that they give him hundreds of millions of dollars and then they come in demanding things and he does whatever they want.
So that's why we focus on that.
All right.
I got a bunch of thoughts here.
Firstly, I do think it was respectful of Vivek that he's going to a turning points event.
And in memory of Charlie Kirk, he busts out at the Beavis and Butthead haircut.
So I will say, I respect that.
There you go.
This feels a lot like when the left, when people started picking up the stories of the tranny happy story hours, and then they're going, oh, why are you so obsessed with this?
All right.
Well, do you guys not care about it?
If you don't care about it, then just drop it and quit reading books to kids while you're dressed in trans, and then we don't have to comment on it.
Why is it just when we comment on that we don't like it, suddenly we're obsessed with it?
You're the ones who are pushing it and we're calling you out on it.
And the question here, I guess, you know, he's weaseling out of the question, which is really, do you think we should be fully supportive of Israel all the time?
Are you not America first and are you going to fight wars on their behalf?
And the answer should be no.
This is a mess that we don't need to be in.
And so, yeah, the four, like I said, two years ago, the $4 billion in foreign aid to Israel in the scheme of our budget, who gives a shit?
I mean, if that's the extent of what we got to pay off Israel so that, hey, they're still our number one ally.
And we think it's important.
I'll have that conversation.
Go back before this Iran war.
If that's the beginning and end of our support to Israel so that the lobby keeps their mouth shut, fine.
It's $4 billion.
But that's not really what we're talking about here.
What we're talking about here is foreign entanglements and wars that we, you know, are going to bankrupt our empire and are not on our behalf and are creating all sorts of unnecessary risks for our country.
That's the real question here.
I mean, if you want to divert it back to the nonsense $4 billion and go, hey, it's $4 billion, why are you focused on it?
You're anti Semitic, you're only focused on the $4 billion I'm giving to Israel.
No, I'm interested in all foreign influence that's bankrupting and corrupting our government.
And the biggest risk one right now is Israel and the fact that we're fighting a war on our behalf.
Do you think that we should be supporting Israel in this way?
Yeah.
Well, and then the other, look, all great points.
But in the others, you know, as you said, the comparison, I really like the comparison to the drag queen story hour.
Also, just the comparison to any other political topic.
Like, if I ever just went, like, if I were to ever just say, hey, what's your opinion on whatever property taxes?
Or something like this, you wouldn't go like, well, look, I agree with you on your opinion on that.
But I also think, like, what is with this weird focus on property tax?
Like, are you obsessed with property or something like that?
It's like, I don't know.
This is the topic at hand.
But the other obvious comparison that I just see, and I got to say, man, I just, after the last 15 years of this shit, and really, I guess it's been going on in different forms for longer than that.
But I just cannot tell you how much this man, and I'm coming from this look, my perspective here, just to be clear.
Is somebody who agrees with Vivek Ramaswamy on a lot of issues and knows him and likes him.
Like, those are my dogs in the fight.
I like this guy.
He was my favorite Republican running in 24.
If I have to ever hear again somebody ask a completely reasonable question, and then the response to it being, I'm wondering about the motivations.
You know what I'm saying?
And now look, Viveka's not being shitty to her.
He's kind of talking about other people.
But why are we even talking about that?
She didn't say anything about like the Jews.
Like, I wonder, do you think the Jews are smelly and gross?
Should they be allowed to live in society?
She didn't say anything that even hints at anything about a religion or an ethnicity or a culture or a people or any person with an immutable characteristic or whatever.
Wind Subsidies Disagreement00:04:44
She goes, Hey, at this time in America, why are we sending all this money over here when it should be taking care of us?
America First has been the entire banner that all of these guys have been running under.
So, anyway, just totally reasonable question.
Why are we even talking about bigotry or because this is the shit that leftists used to always do.
Which was always the most infuriating thing to anyone who's an honest actor.
It would be like you come in and say something that they disagree with, and it's not even like they try to take on your argument.
They immediately go to why you must be such a horrible person, and that's the only reason why you would even have this argument.
And I mean, if that's the spirit of like Turning Point USA now, which at its best I thought was always to combat that stuff, then that's a sad day.
Anyway, here, let's play the rest of Vivek's answer.
I think it's just about saying how many more American lives we could have improved with that $3.8 billion, because you could be talking about $3 trillion that we could be recapturing and recovering from wind subsidies to third world country foreign aid that's actually a lot of which is corrupt.
So here's what I'll tell you what I do think underlies it.
I think it's this mentality that somehow it is a mindset that one country in the world in the U.S. relationship with it, or particularly, even let's just talk about it, Jewish Americans.
Are somehow responsible for the struggles of Americans here.
And I think that was also ridiculous.
And I don't think that we should be.
Just don't pause it for a second.
Once I can say.
You know, it's like Vivek brought up wind subsidies in there, Rob.
And me and you completely agree with him on wind subsidies.
But I just, I gotta, you know, say, because there's such bigger things than wind subsidies out there.
Like, why this obsession with wind?
And it almost seems like what Vivek is saying is that anyone who ever worked for Con Edison is responsible for all of the problems.
Of society, like you just want to what do you just want to kill everybody who ever worked for Con Edison?
I mean, I just no, I'm not saying you said that, the vake, it just you know, that's the like, what is this?
This is so like it's such a pathetic straw man that you just you're just going because because you don't want to take and this is the thing, and I'm you know, I've not that I'm not saying like vake has admitted to me that he doesn't really believe the stuff he's saying publicly, that's not true at all, but I've always just like every time I've talked to him privately like this, I always just approach him with the Presumption that you already know I'm right about all of this, you know, and then like I just start from that part.
I go, you already know what the obvious answer here is.
Um, and that this just isn't going to work.
I've personally told him when he had answers like this, like in the past, like, hey, dude, this isn't going to work.
You got to take a stand on this.
And I, I don't know.
I just find this to be weak, really weak.
And, you know, like, I also think even if you want to come at it from the position of, like, hey, look, there are these people that are critical of Israel because they really don't like Jews very much.
And I want to differentiate between them and that.
I just don't think the move isn't to sit here when you have someone who doesn't appear to be one of those people at all asking a completely reasonable question.
How about just take the correct position and act like those guys don't exist in your response?
You know what I'm saying?
Like, that's the way to actually pull.
If you think that's a really ugly path to go down and you want to pull this back away from that, which I'm sympathetic to that view, okay.
But then, like, just go, yeah, it's insane.
It's absolutely insane.
You're telling me a country that's $40 trillion in debt has to subsidize another country that has universal health care and free, you know, like all these like perks that American citizens don't even get?
Screw that.
We're not doing that anymore.
And if I'm ever in a position of power, you can guarantee that's gone day one.
Why isn't that the answer?
And then, even you could add on to that.
And by the way, that's not nearly enough because we got much bigger fish to fry than that 4.5 billion.
Why does it even need to be phrased in this way?
I just, I don't know.
Like, I just disagree with this, like in principle.
But I also just go, I think a lot of these guys are almost like playing this game where it's like, let me try, you know, I know politically speaking, there's landmines on either side of this issue.
So let me try to just not walk on any of those landmines.
And I just don't think that's going to work.
I don't, you know, even Vivek says, Oh, taking this position, this is why I got criticized from both sides of this.
Stealing Labor And Wealth00:17:27
It's like, yeah, that's right.
That's what this will end up doing.
I'll, someone like me will end up looking at this and going, Oh, this is so weak.
I just, I can't get behind this.
And then someone like Ben Shapiro will look at this and go, He's basically Adolf Hitler, you know, like, I don't know.
He's like, so it's just, you're not, You're just not winning over anyone with this stuff.
That's my feeling.
All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Massa Chips.
You've been hearing about them everywhere.
You don't have to overhaul your whole life in 2026.
Start with simple swaps like upgrading the snacks in your pantry to ones with real ingredients like Massa.
It's the easiest way to eat clean without feeling like you're on a restrictive diet.
Massa Chips contain just three ingredients no seed oils, no mystery chemicals, just real food.
And they're made with 100% grass fed beef tallow.
These chips don't only avoid all the bad stuff, they taste great.
Snacking on Massa chips is nothing like eating regular chips.
With Massa, you feel satiated, light, and energetic, and there's no crash or gross, sluggish feeling afterward.
And because these chips are made with real food, they're more satiating.
So you don't find yourself uncontrollably binging and still being hungry.
Plus, if you love Massa, you got to check out Vandy Crisps.
Vandy is Massa's sister company.
They make the most delicious three ingredient potato chips you'll ever taste.
So Massa makes the tortilla chips, Vandy makes the potato chips.
And if you're ready to give it a try, Go to massachips.comslash Dave.
That's M A S A chips.comslash Dave and use the promo code Dave for 25% off your first order.
Or you can click the link in the episode description below, massachips.comslash Dave, promo code Dave for 25% off.
All right, let's get back into the show.
Hey, good for the turning point kids that they're not letting people off the hook on the topic.
They are not.
They are not.
Hey, okay, so let's get into this Hassan Piker interview with what's it called?
The Opinion, I believe is the name of the show.
I sent a few clips of it, Natalie, and we could just pull whichever one.
But so Hassan Piker, who's been like, he's a lefty streamer who's very popular.
He is very dumb.
And I just, I don't know.
I've just always found him to be laughably unimpressive.
He's, if you remember Rob, we've done a few episodes over the years where he had segments on us and we did responses to it.
And I challenged him to debate a few times back in the day, which he was never interested in doing.
But, you know, I don't know.
I don't even know what exactly to say about this guy.
So he's been kind of the center of some controversy lately because, of course, you know, he's a real hardcore lefty.
And so he's broadly speaking, I guess, good on being against the wars.
But then, of course, because he's like a lefty collectivist, he's always got to like overstate in these ridiculous ways.
So, like, his big thing was he said America deserved 9 11 rather than being like getting it and going like, oh, American policy by.
People in power provoked the reaction of 9 11.
He just goes, No, we deserved it.
Like, what do you mean?
Some old lady deserved to die?
The thousands of people deserved the tower to fall on you?
Like, no, dummy.
That's not like it's like, and he doesn't even realize he's undercutting his own message because the whole thing you're trying to say is that the kids in Gaza didn't deserve it, right?
Like, this is the same mentality as the people saying, Oh, yeah, you deserve it.
So, anyway, it's just, they'll just be things like that.
He just always kind of has these, and then he's known for doing this ridiculous thing where they do these like, I don't know, like 15 hour live streams.
Anyway, I don't know what more to say about him than that.
But in a kind of almost, I think, you know, I don't know, maybe I don't have my finger on the pulse that well, but this seemed to me almost kind of like a moment.
If you remember, Rob, like when, I don't know, when Saturday Night Live had Shane Gillis on, or when Netflix started booking Tony Hinchcliffe and Mark Norman and guys like that.
And it felt almost like a moment in the culture where it was like, oh, cancel culture kind of lost and they're kind of, because Hassan was amongst like, Liberals is a very controversial guy.
And so the New York Times is like, no, no, no, we're going to have him on anyway.
I think there's kind of a recognition that, like, we got to go to where the audience is.
We can't, you know, like, we can't do this cancel culture nonsense where we cancel all the people who could maybe make us money and get us views because that's what we're in the business of doing.
So here.
So anyway, they get into this is so bizarre to me because I am a little bit out of touch with like lefty insanity these days.
But so as you see, Rob, it seemed to me, I didn't watch the entire thing, but it seemed to me that the conversation was around.
The morality of stealing.
And then they just start getting into a whole conversation about this nuance.
So let's pull up one of the clips, Natalie.
We'll try to go through all three of these.
Let's see what is going on in crazy, like what seems to be like two New York Times future wine moms.
I don't know.
How would you describe these later, Rob?
There will be cats in their future, undoubtedly, and a male model who read a magazine about politics once.
Let's watch the conversation.
Yeah, no, I'm pro piracy all the way, like across the board.
Would you pirate a car?
Yes.
You know, if you could, if one could pirate a car, it was just a classic thing back in the day.
The government funded anti piracy initiatives would be like, dude, would you steal a car?
Yeah, sure.
If I could get away with it, if it was as easy as, you know, pirating IP, I would do it.
Would you dine and dash from your local diner?
Never, never.
Except 35% mics, come on.
No, I wouldn't do that.
And if I saw somebody doing that, I'd probably pay for their meal.
Yeah.
Would you steal a bunch of money?
By the way, sorry, just stop it already.
Hold on.
Wait a minute.
Just pull it back a few seconds because that next question is really going to throw me for a loop here.
Okay.
Hold on.
I can't even possibly take on the next one.
But I first got to take on this.
By the way, one of the dynamics here where all of them are talking about stealing is that, as you could tell from the people, from the backdrop, and just knowing that every person in this conversation is rich.
Every person in this conversation is rich.
They're all in the top 1%.
Hassan Piker grew up like in a rich family.
He's worth millions and millions of dollars, lives in like, I forget exactly, but lives in a multi million dollar home.
But like, these are rich people.
And they're sitting there talking about the morality of stealing and when you would steal.
And they throw in little hints there where she goes, Hey, I always tip 35% at my local diner.
Well, just saying, I'm actually a very generous tipper myself too.
I typically do 35% or maybe above that.
But you know who does that?
People with money.
That's who does that.
It's not a conversation that Hassan goes, Oh, if I saw someone else do that, I'd probably pay for their meal.
You know who does that?
People with money.
People living paycheck to paycheck.
But listen, like all the people that they claim to represent, they are completely removed from their world at all.
Let's start that.
Now, second of all, Hassan's, this is insane and somewhat sociopathic for a rich adult to be saying, okay?
This is not a desperate person.
This is not, this isn't even a broke 20 year old in their dorm room.
And people of my age, no one amongst us has not.
Downloaded music for free or something like that.
But there is a big difference between going like, would you steal a car if it was as easy as taking a song from someone?
Because, and I think me and you even have slightly different takes on intellectual property, Rob.
And we could, we argued about this once in the past years ago, and we could, we could save this for another day.
But there's no question that there is a little bit something different about taking intellectual property than taking someone's physical property.
That is just a little bit different.
You know, like if you were to, if you were in a conversation, let's say you were talking to someone and someone said something that's a really good point.
And then you later in a conversation just said the same thing, but kind of took credit for it as if it was your point.
That's different than taking someone's wallet.
However, you feel about the first one, it's different.
And to say you would steal a car, the difference between stealing a car and downloading music is that, well, on someone, you could argue you're denying that person their sale that they should have gotten or whatever, but someone built a car.
You're stealing the labor of people.
You're stealing a physical, tangible thing.
And the idea that you just kind of laughingly go, no, I have no moral issue with that.
It's like, okay, all right.
I'm pro piracy.
Everyone should steal everything.
Yeah, but what's the result of that if everyone does it?
Really bad stuff, right?
That hurts all of us.
So I don't know.
This is already just an insane conversation by people who are clearly virtue signaling.
And posing as being a member of an economic class that they are not.
So, any thoughts on any of that, Rob?
I don't know.
I mean, theft, it's one of the underpinnings of society.
It's right up there in the Ten Commandments that if you just want to be able to get along and have a civil society, people can't just be stealing things.
It's up there with murder.
You know, I mean, how far away, if I can just take your stuff, can I just take your life?
Can I rape you?
I mean, and how's this going to work?
All of them are forms of theft.
By the way, no, you're absolutely right.
All of that is a form of theft.
Rape is a form of theft.
Murder is a form of theft.
Like, rape is like stealing your body or stealing access to your body.
Murder is stealing your life or, you know, robbing you of something that is rightfully yours.
Yes, this is the first thing.
I have little kids.
This is like what dealing with a two and a half year old is like when they're on a play date.
Two and a half.
I have a four and a seven year old.
Neither of them would have this issue today.
This is long behind us that I'd ever have to explain to one of my kids that's not yours.
You can't just take that.
It's giving me nostalgia thinking about these conversations because I have a seven and a four year old.
And so this is not an issue anymore.
And how's this going to work?
Yeah.
I mean, you guys are three rich people sitting in a room.
If you're advocating for, I guess, people can just take stuff, is that the life that you want to live?
That every time you try and park your car somewhere, I mean, does that mean that you don't blame someone for just taking your car?
If you parked your car outside and someone just took your car and you no longer have a car and you're a son, do you go, well, my values are for piracy and somebody took my car.
So, You know, I'm not going to stand by the state and try and regulate this.
That's why it's all complete LARPing.
That's what I was getting into, where it's like they're acting like they're the guy who might need to steal a car.
Meanwhile, they're the guy who's worried that their luxury car might be stolen.
And what they'll do is, like, this isn't a theoretical, what they'll do is move into the richest area in a gated community and have, you know what I mean?
Like, they won't be in the middle of all that chaos.
That's for sure.
Here, let's keep playing because I'm sorry, this next line just really got me.
Would you steal a book from the library?
Never.
Okay, pause it.
Pause it.
Have any of you been to a library?
Do any of you read books?
It's free.
Books at the library are free.
Nobody steals books from the library.
Maybe you don't return them, you forget to return them.
But what do you mean?
Would you steal a book from a library?
What even is that?
But then, see, here's the thing that they're trying to do, Rob, is that they're trying to go, it's not the theft that's an issue, it's the how good do I feel about the organization.
That's what matters.
So, like, it's okay at my whims if I just don't feel like this, then it's justified.
But it's, oh, library, that's like a nice thing where people read books and it's for the community.
So, you can't steal from them.
This is what's so psychotic about this.
So, let's go if a rich guy has a private library, can I steal from that?
And they might go, yes.
And you actually think that that's less degrading to society.
What do you think the ramifications are for promoting that you can just go onto someone's private property and take their stuff?
You're looking at a more violent world.
And guess what?
The elites are better at using violence.
So you're looking at the suppression of the lower classes because they've decided to engage in violence.
That's what you're advocating for.
Just think a couple steps ahead on how this plays out.
And what?
It's based off of the morality that there's no such thing as having success in life and accumulating capital, which, by the way, is the underpinning of capitalism and it's very important.
Well, look, you already get into a thing where, like, as you said, and look, we can talk about this a bit more in some of the other clips too, where, like, what the results of this stuff actually are.
But.
You're absolutely right, Rob, when you go, you have a more violent society that way.
I mean, look, like, I, you know, again, this is like the, all of this is just based off commie whims.
And so this is like what happened under actual communism is that they'd write about the kulaks or whatever and how they're ripping off all the people.
And then, you know, in practice, what that ended up becoming was a peasant farmer who hadn't turned all of his grain over to the authorities, who was hiding a little bit of grain so that his kids didn't starve.
Then they'd kill that guy.
Because, so look, I don't know.
I'm not a giant corporation, but I am in the 1%.
I have a house that's way bigger than the amount of room that my family needs.
You know what I'm saying?
Like, I, and so I'm just saying, if you could very easily see them throwing me into a category where, like, it's okay to come take my stuff.
It's okay.
But if you come take my stuff, you're taking it away from my kids.
And if you're going to come try to steal stuff that belongs to my kids, I'm going to try to stop you with violence.
Now, I'm a peaceful person, but you're making me violent right now just in this thought experiment.
It's like you could already see exactly what you're talking about.
Like, yeah, this leads to violence.
Now, if we're going to use violence, who do you think is going to have more access to that?
The people with means or the people without?
My guess is the people with means.
All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Sheath, Sheath Underwear, the underwear of legends.
Sheath has been a sponsor on this show for, I think, four years now, something like that.
And I've just always been thrilled to have them on board.
One of our most loyal sponsors and one of the best products that we've ever told you guys about.
Sheath Underwear, it is the best, most comfortable pair of boxer briefs you will ever put on your body.
They also have shirts and hoodies and a bunch of other stuff, and they're all really high quality, really great.
Stuff.
Go check them out at sheath.com.
Use the promo code PROBLEM.
It'll get you 20% off your next order.
Seriously, check them out.
I mean this.
I only wear sheath underwear.
I'm wearing a pair right now.
It's all I have in my underwear drawer because they're the best pair of box briefs I've ever put on my body.
Go get some for yourself.
Get one pair, and I bet you'll be back for more.
Sheath.com, promo code PROBLEM for 20% off.
All right, let's get back into the show.
Here, let's keep playing.
What do you steal from the Louvre?
Yes.
I would not be logistically capable of executing such a fact, but would I cheer on every news story of people that I see doing it?
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Yeah, I think it's cool.
We got to get back to cool crimes like that, like bank robberies, right?
Stealing priceless artifacts, things of that nature.
I feel like that's way cooler than the 7,000th new cryptocurrency scheme that people are engaging in.
I just honestly feel like I'm watching two people go, You're so pretty.
No, you're so pretty.
And then the fat one going, You're both so pretty.
Like, this is why attractive people think that they're smart and have good opinions, is because people just look right into their eyes and go, Oh, you're so handsome.
Tell me more about this idea.
That is cool.
What does this even mean?
Like, yeah, dude, like being a mob boss is cooler than jerking off in your bedroom, but that doesn't mean that it's not more criminal.
Like, it doesn't mean that it's not more evil.
What type of metric is cool?
What are these people even talking about?
Here, just play the next clip because it's, I don't know, it's just fascinating to me that literally all, it seems like so much of this podcast was on the morality of stealing other people's shit that doesn't belong to you.
A bunch of rich people who have life better than 99.99999% of people who have ever lived, all talking about when it's okay for them to go take some stuff that somebody else produced, that somebody else produced that you didn't produce.
Violence Of Systematic Poverty00:03:10
And the fact that this is on the New York Times platform is, I mean, shameful for them.
For all of their grandiose claims of morality across multiple of their articles on such minutia points, the fact that they will blatantly endorse that theft is not amoral to engage in theft or that it's cool and that I guess if it's towards people who have wealth, means, or corporations, you should engage in it.
Here, let's go.
Absolutely.
Here, let's go to the next clip.
Wrote about the concept of social murder.
And Brian Thompson, as the United Healthcare CEO, was engaging in a tremendous amount of social murder, the systematized forms of violence, the structural violence of poverty, the for profit, paywalled system of healthcare in this country.
And the consequences of that are tremendous amounts of pain, tremendous amounts of violence, tremendous amounts of deaths.
And that Was a fascinating story from me because Americans are very draconian about crime and punishment.
They're very black and white on this issue.
And yet, because of.
Let's pause it for a second.
So he's talking about this Luigi Mangioni guy shooting this guy, and he goes, Americans are very draconian.
Meaning, like, this was kind of crazy because some people were actually cheering this guy on.
Typically, Americans are very draconian on the topic of premeditated murder, they've got this weird allergy to it.
They're so draconian about murder.
But look, like, dude, I mean, you just, it's just like what, commie gobbledygook, absolute nonsense.
Like, it is shit like this.
It's like literally like 100 IQ arguments with the, with, with like pure self assuredness that you are absolutely right in saying, it's like, ah, you see, it's social murder.
There's systematized poverty and the violence of poverty and all.
And you're like, oh, in other words, You get to make up whatever bullshit you want to justify violence.
That's what you're saying here.
That's the bottom line.
There's nothing like, what do you mean the violence of poverty?
Do you even know what poverty is?
Here's what poverty is for anybody who doesn't know the state of nature.
That's what poverty is.
Poverty is the state of nature.
No one needs to ask the question, why is there poverty?
We all know why there's poverty because that's the starting point.
That's what we've been given by God is poverty or by nature, however you view the world.
That's what we've been given is poverty.
Poverty is the state of nature.
Wealth has to be created.
But poverty, is there violent, like the violence of poverty, these ridiculous concept creep?
Well, yeah, poverty leads to a lot of miserable conditions, but no one did that to you.
Poverty As State Of Nature00:08:27
The world did that.
And that's what justice is about a theory of who did what to you.
In other words, Rob, in the most basic form, If you like, if you come over and like smash my TV to pieces and you have the same TV in your house, you could make an argument that like I'm entitled to your TV now because you came over and destroyed mine and you have the same one.
So I'm entitled, whatever.
I'm entitled to some form of, you know, what was the word I'm looking for?
Some compensation.
If the wind blows my TV over and it falls and shatters, I'm not entitled to your TV because you didn't do that to me.
The world did that to me.
And so, anyway, this is all.
And, you know, I'll say this maybe because we're coming out at the end of time here.
And honestly, this does not get any less retarded.
But I'll say this kind of in a similar sense to the warning that I've been giving to right wingers in America.
About why they should be very concerned about giving power back to the insane Democrats and why they should oppose what Donald Trump is doing because it's very likely to do just that.
But in the same sense, I would say, look, like Donald Trump right now has an approval rate.
Even Fox News was playing the other day.
It's like basically where George W. Bush's approval rating was two points higher or something like that in 2000.
After two disastrous wars and tanking the economy, Donald Trump's right around there.
I will tell you, and I think they're going to lose the midterm elections, but you know, the Senate is still somewhat competitive.
As of right now.
And you know, the only reason why the Democrats aren't a shoo in at this point is because people still really hate the Democrats.
They still really hate the Democrats over the last 15 years.
And that's one thing that, as much as people hate Donald Trump, that hasn't gone away.
I mean, the Democrats are not quite at the like 24% approval rating that they were at a year and a half ago, but they're at like 32.
Still really, really bad.
They're about where Donald Trump is at this point.
And so The thing is, part of the reason why we all really hate Democrats and lefties like Hassan Piker is that over the last 15 years, we've just seen how brutally authoritarian you guys will be.
The lack of empathy, the lack of morality, the way you will just viciously go after people.
If you remember, Rob, we talked a bunch about there was one story that blew up and got national coverage.
It was in 2020 during the Black Lives Matter thing, where one woman, just a regular lady who worked at a job, tweeted on her or posted on her private Facebook page, All Lives Matter.
And they got her fired.
They ruined this woman's life.
However, you feel about the statement, All Lives Matter, and it's a counter to Black Lives Matter or whatever, the statement was All Lives Matter, and that got her life ruined.
And this became a big national story.
People were arguing about how this is like crazy cancel culture.
And then there were lefties defending it, defending ruining some regular lady.
Not because, Rob, see, in this situation, even though you'd go, Wait, she doesn't have power.
She's not a big corporation.
She's not anything.
They decided she was a kulak.
They decided that, well, the white people are the powerful in this situation and the black people are the marginalized.
And therefore, you're fair game.
They were able to, because look, all you got to say is, Oh, that guy was guilty of social murder.
What's social murder?
I don't know, Rob, whatever the fuck I feel like it.
That's what it is.
And like between the cancel culture and the COVID tyranny and all of this, we remember watching you motherfuckers cheer on real deal tyranny.
Remember, Rob, our back and forth with Hassan Piker when he did a whole dumb segment about me was that he was supporting the vaccine passports.
Now, you would think, Rob, can a lefty really support an apartheid caste system?
Hmm.
In this case, I would think the unvaccinated were the marginalized.
No, he was fine with it.
He justified it in his own dumb way, you know?
And so just saying, dude, like you guys keep going down this path.
This is also your worst nightmare.
Like you guys are almost in a weird way.
This is the best Trump commercial you could run.
Man, he's fucking up in a million different ways.
But if you ever wanted to get, People like say, people like me and you, Rob, forget even people who are not as passionately against what Donald Trump's doing right now.
If you ever wanted to get us to go, you know what?
We might still have to support the Republicans, no matter how bad this is.
Because, holy shit, the idea of turning over any level of power to psychopaths like this is goddamn terrifying.
Like, this is the stuff of like, like this mentality is how nightmare scenarios happen in civilizations.
I'll give you the last word and then let's wrap up.
Yes.
To explain his outlook on health care, if my car were to break down and there was a mechanic down the street who can fix it, can I force him to fix my car at no pay?
Or you guys at the New York Times or you, Hassan, with big audiences, can someone with little audience force you to platform them?
What you're describing here is state mandated slavery where no one's entitled to charge for their labor.
It's just owed to other people and the state gets to allocate who has to give it to them and when they have to do it.
That's called slavery.
You guys are pro-slavery.
That's what you're advocating for here.
And of course, they'll use the fact that there's all these government.
Sorry, I know I always say last word to you, and then I have one more thing to say, but they'll use the fact that all of these government interventions have created a very unfair system.
And therefore, hey, man, they're all.
Yes, they don't have the government interventions.
That's what you and I say.
Well, by the way, when you talk about these things like social murder, and you'll talk about how these corporations are stealing from their employees because they don't pay them enough, how about the government?
You know, the government doesn't do social murder.
They just murder people.
The government doesn't do, doesn't steal in the sense that you voluntarily agreed to a thing, but they think you should get more, even though you voluntarily agreed to it.
They just take your shit at the threat of violence.
Why does none of this ever apply to them?
But anyway, so there's all, like, even the healthcare system, it's like, oh, there's this paywalled private system.
You're referring to Obamacare, an act of Congress that created this whole.
Uh, system that was signed into law by the president of the United States of America.
But in other words, so the government goes around just committing aggression against people, robbing from them, creating all these terrible policies.
And then your response to that is that, like, hey, we should also be just robbed from people.
We should also.
So then, okay, what's the end game of this is that you destroy civilization.
And by the way, Rob, this is we can watch it right now, right?
What is what is the even just the not maybe the end game, but what is the short term result of people stealing from stores?
It's fucking anytime you want to go get a stick of deodorant, it's behind a glass cage now.
It's prices going up.
That's what happens.
These big companies factor in that there's going to be some theft.
They know that.
They factor that into the price of it.
You're paying, when you order a UFC pay per view, you're paying also for all the people who are pirating it.
So, like, take me to the logical conclusion here what just you stealing shit, what results in a worker's parrot?
No, it results in a world where they are paying more.
They're more ripped off and they can't even just go into like a CVS and get something.
Now they got to go to a security guard before they get it.
It's disgusting, infantile selfishness born out of an inability to admit where you are in the world financially, where you are in the world in your life, because you have to LARP as some champion of a class of people who you do not belong to.