Another Assassination Attempt
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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. We are back from our adventures in Oklahoma. And yeah, how are you feeling, Rob?

A lot of big news we got to get to. Well, I just firstly, I want to say I'm disappointed. I didn't get to see one tumbleweed in Oklahoma. That's why I went to Oklahoma. Not one. I didn't even see areas that look like they'd have good tumbleweeds. I feel like the whole thing I've heard of tumbleweeding in Oklahoma is just fake news. You've been misrepresenting yourselves to the rest of us, Oklahoma. It's not what you get there. It's just regular old.

cities towns strip comedy girls I will say we we drove from Oklahoma City to Tulsa and that it there is nothing on that drive huh

Except for construction of them extending the highway, which it doesn't look like they need more highway. Literally, it was the most like desolate rural drive and the whole way they're just widening the highway. No traffic whatsoever. But I guess there's some type of government crony plan there. All right.

I got to let people know before the country's over from presidents being assassinated that this weekend porch tour is back in action. It is extended porch tour. Ten more dates added on the road to filming a debut comedy special out in Denver. So Byron, Michigan this Saturday and then Salt Lake City on Sunday. And sadly, I can't do Detroit opening up for Dave's. This is your only chance to see me, Detroit. Oh, are you not? You're not going to be in Detroit? Okay. All right. I'm going to have to spend my day in synagogue repenting to the good Lord.

Well, I guess we go our separate ways then. Rob got a little bit too big for... Well, listen, man, I do... I will say before... Obviously, we got to get to this big news of this second assassination attempt. But I do want to say, man, to just everybody out there, like, I'm fucking really excited. I'm really proud of you that you're filming your first special. Me and you have known each other since you, like, first started stand-up. And, like, it's been cool, dude. It's been cool to watch you, like, you know...

But for people who come out to our shows on the road, they know Rob is a goddamn hilarious comedian. And your stuff is so sharp. I'm really excited for you to put out a piece and for people to see it and stuff. I think it's going to be great. So, yeah, that's awesome, dude. All right. Thank you, sir. Of course. Now we... And I mean it. I wouldn't say it if I didn't mean it. Even though I mean it, I still hesitate to say it. I'm like, I don't want to be... I try to hold you down as much as possible. I don't want you... I don't want you knowing you have options. Okay. Anyway, Rob...

So, look, there was a second assassination attempt, it seems, on Donald Trump. A lot of these details that are coming out right now are, let's just say...

You never have all of the information at this time when something like that happens. And hey, look, in the Kennedy assassination, we still don't have all the information many, many, many decades later. I would say my first thought on this, as I tend to like to start with kind of the meta analysis, is just that it is so interesting.

It's unbelievably insane that we all kind of we've talked about this a lot on the show, Rob, how you just you have this feeling even after the assassination attempt of of Donald Trump, the first one, even after Joe Biden dropping out of the race, even after Kamala Harris being put in there where we all everybody, I think every even normies who don't pay attention to politics at all. You could just feel in your bones that there's going to be more big things happening.

before this election happens, that there's going to be things that are either unprecedented or just incredibly rare, incredibly wild. And we all kind of know it's not over yet. We still know, oh, you know, we still got half of September and October to get through. You know, it's like there's still going to be more crazy shit. And it's just really weird. That's how you're supposed to feel when you're watching a movie, right?

You know what I mean? You're supposed to feel when you're watching a crazy, like, thriller that, like, oh, they got to top this one now. They got to do something crazy. We got to end on some type of – but we're just watching real life, yet we all feel that way. And we've all known this. And so in some weird way, I feel like we were almost, like, preemptively –

What's the word that I'm looking for? Like desensitized, like preemptively desensitized to how crazy it is that this actually just happened. And so in these situations, I feel like you've got to almost force yourself to really go like, no, that actually just happened again. Look, we could get into the details of what we know so far about this. And I'm really not. I think for people who listen to this show, I was like, I'm really not.

A kook. And I think I go out of my way to try not to be. I don't like when people get too kooky and too out there. Obviously, there are conspiracies that are real, but there are a whole lot of theories that aren't. You see that all the time on the internet. It's crazy how there's a conspiracy about everything. A lot of them are nonsense. But if you just simply start with the fact that

that the goddamn Secret Service allowed this to happen again is just insane. And, you know, I'll tell you, sometimes when you talk about these things, you almost, you don't even need to jump to a wider conspiracy because what's right in front of you is already so bad. And, you know, in the same sense that, you know, like I got very little kids. If I just stop feeding them

and they die, then what did I do?

I killed my children. You know what I mean? Like it's no different than if I were to actually kill somebody. It's the same thing. There is a level of neglect and incompetence that is indistinguishable from an act of aggression. It's the exact same thing. And for after Donald Trump was, after this assassination attempt just a couple of months ago,

For the fact that they're putting this guy in a situation where somebody evidently with a rifle and a scope can be within a few hundred yards of him. I mean, I suppose you could say they improved.

He was like 300 yards away this time and he didn't, he didn't hit him in the ear. So, okay. A little bit better, but it is just like, it's unfathomable that they, that they would be this bad at their job. Like, and when the job is, and look, it's just impossible not to, in a situation like this, to not see the pattern when the job is protecting the guy who is

has had the entire, you know, again, however you feel about him. I think one of the reasons why our voices on this issue are a little bit more powerful is because we're not Trump supporters. We're not the guys who just like, are like, hey, you got to vote MAGA. We're not the guys who make excuses for all of his failures. We call him out constantly. But look,

however you feel about Donald Trump, the guy has had the entire apparatus weaponized against him for eight years. For eight years now. They framed him for being a Russian traitor. They impeached him twice on bullshit. They've

You know, they've made all types of accusations of him attempting to overthrow democracy, inciting an insurrection. They've weaponized the justice system against him to go after him for every little petty crime that would never even be brought to trial against anyone else. He was they had an assassination attempt two months ago where the Secret Service allowed

A guy to get within, what was it, 150 yards of him with a rifle where the guy is walking around for over an hour. We have on videotape walking around for over an hour, you know, checking out the area. People are yelling. There's a guy with a gun up there. He's still able to get all of these shots up. Donald Trump only survives because he turns his head at the instant split second. And then after all of that, this is allowed to happen again.

You don't have to be a kook. You don't even have to jump to a wider conspiracy. That's enough. That right there, that's enough. And then on top of that, who this guy is raises some alarm bells. But I don't know, Rob, what are your thoughts on any of this stuff?

I mean, I just can't believe that they failed this mission twice. I thought that after the first attempt, you know, they would make sure to get it right or they wouldn't have other failed attempts. I just... I can't believe that they haven't ramped up security. You know what? It almost seems...

Like it's a bit of another it's a bit of a bitch out where I think they're trying to make it that Donald Trump just can't live normally campaign normally. You know, like it's almost like they can't won't give them enough security to just go, hey, you're safe now.

And I'm not even talking about whether or not the deep state's involved in these attempts. I'm just talking about the actual secret service aspect of it, of giving the guy enough security. I believe that they told him he can't do more outdoor events, or at least that was an article at one point where they told him he was going to have to start doing indoor arenas for security purposes. I remember reading that, yeah. Yeah, I feel like I've seen him do outdoor events since then, though. Maybe they worked out the logistics on that.

Oh, no, he for sure has. I remember reading them saying they were going to cancel all of his outdoor rallies, but he's done them since then. Yeah. But it's just with all the money we spend on the deep state or not even the deep state, just the military and everything else, just have enough security. Yeah.

It's two months till the election for all your talk of democracy and belief in democracy and the democratic system. Well, part of it is that when you're running for president, you get to just be safe and you shouldn't be every single crazy guy or operative of the deep state can just show up outside your fence and start posting up.

It is so funny, dude. I mean, like all the talk about democracy because democracy is, you know, it's an illusion. It's not real. It's never real. There's no such thing really as democracy. There's never been one. The idea that like, you know,

However you think of democracy, the idea that the people really run the government does not exist. And everybody knows that in a sense. And nobody really believes in democracy. Like nobody. There's nobody who actually – it becomes this word that's just like a stand-in for all things good. You know? Like that's all it means. There's nobody –

Who, you know, like take like, say, like the people who talk about democracy the most, which I guess would be like, you know, politicians.

liberals and leftists, you know, take any of them and be like, oh, let's say let's say 60 percent. I got a new opinion poll that says 60 percent of America of Americans oppose gay marriage. Let's just say hypothetically, you know, opinion turns around on that and now say it's not that crazy that this once was the case in my lifetime. That was the case, you know. So maybe attitudes revert. And now 60 percent of the people oppose gay marriage. Do you think we should ban gay marriage?

Does any liberal actually believe that? No, of course not. And like, I'm not saying they should like you're against the policy. What if 60% of people believed in slavery? Should we just institute slavery again? Like, no, nobody really thinks that the majority ought to just rule with no restrictions. No one believes that. But then there's all these other kind of like, um, there's all these,

you know, like secondary issues where like if you were to, so you love democracy, but you're fine with Donald Trump getting kicked off of Twitter. Well, what is that?

You get to vote, but less people can hear from the other option. And then, of course, as you pointed out, you know, if you can't stop assassination attempts, you really don't have much of a democracy there either. You know, like you could vote for who you want to, but that guy might be killed. That doesn't do much. But even if you do stop them, but they're kind of constant and close. Yes.

then you disrupt a person's ability to live a normal lifestyle or even campaign normally or just go to sleep at night normally. So it's remarkable.

And I don't know. Okay, I'm literally just thinking about this because I don't actually know what the answer is. But one of the guys said something. There was a comment. They had like a press conference with the local police or something like that. And one of them said that, you know, essentially the issue is that he's not the president. So the level of security that he gets isn't like the level of security he would have gotten five years ago when he was president. It's two months. Seems...

Seems pretty obvious, like it's a pretty gigantic flaw in the system that that could even be said, because whatever it is in this scenario, when it's Donald Trump and there was just an assassination attempt, you'd think the security should be whatever the maximum is that you're capable of doing.

I think that's a reasonable expectation. By the way, I think this is how a lot of us felt about Bobby Kennedy. Like it was like, oh, well, we don't typically give Secret Service protection to a third party candidate. It's like, yeah, but he's not a typical candidate. He's a Kennedy. And there's a history of their family being assassinated. So like, give him higher security. It's so funny how easy this is to solve. You ready? I don't work in the government. You don't work in the government. I'll solve this right now. You ready? Yeah.

How big is our military and

and take two of your marine groups that shouldn't be doing anything right now we're not in any wars they should just be sitting around harris bragged there's no combat anywhere they should just be sitting on a base doing training exercises so why not make their training exercise for the next two months hey assist the secret service on uh protecting the uh guy who's running for president problem solved what there's i know there's still team six so is there a seal team one two three four and five

Well, listen, dude, to just think that we have by far the most powerful military in the history of the world and we can't protect our borders or our presidential candidates is pretty wild. But the, you know, the idea here of saying, OK, so Donald Trump.

Is so if what you're telling me is that essentially it's always this insecure when he's not the president, like the guy running for president, it's always this easy to touch them or to get that close to them. It if that's the case, in a sense, it is remarkable that this doesn't happen more.

And, you know, you think about it's a country of, you know, 320 plus million people and at least tens of millions of people like passionately hate Donald Trump's guts in a way that is even as somebody who is kind of known for hating politicians, even I find to be somewhat irrational. Like it's just it's it's.

It's irrational how much people hate Donald Trump relative to other politicians, you know, relative to like, I don't know, you know, like any I understand being a liberal. I understand being a leftist. I'm a Jew from New York City who was raised by a single mom. Like, that's my world. You know, whatever my politics are like, those people are my people. They're where I come from. I understand what it is to be one of those people. And I have no like a.

You know, I don't hate them. I understand why you'd hate Donald Trump. I understand why you're a liberal. But it is just totally irrational for you to hate Donald Trump so much more than you hate George W. Bush, for example. There's just nothing that Donald Trump's done that's as bad as what George W. Bush did. Like, I'll put it up. He lied us into a war where a million people died.

That's worse. Objectively. Maybe you don't like Trump's comments about Mexicans or his tweets or the fact that he cheats on his wife with porn stars. You know, there's things. And there's actually other foreign policy things that Donald Trump's done that are really terrible. But none of them hate him for that. That's not what drives the hatred of Donald Trump. So there's you have this irrational, intense hatred of a guy felt by tens of millions of people at least.

And it's this easy to get that close to him. It really is just hard. It's hard to believe that. Now, I remember right after 9-11 thinking about like just how easy terrorism is.

And like that was, you know, like back in the days when like Dick Cheney would be like, it's not a matter of if it's a matter of when. And I remember I would always think about how we had the the it was the Q train and the D train, I believe, at the time they'd run. They run on the Manhattan Bridge and there's zero security.

There's, you know, like, I mean, there's they have kind of things where after 9-11, they were like, if you bring a big bag onto the train, it's subject to random screening. But.

There's never anyone there doing it. I haven't ridden the subway in a few years now, but I used to ride it all the time. There was never anyone. You could have come on with three-pack duffel bags onto that train and gotten right onto the bridge, no problem. People make space for you because they think you're crazy. They're like, sir, yeah, please, let's clear out of your way.

And I remember thinking like, yo, it's so easy to hit us. Like it is a guarantee. But that never happened. You know, I'm not trying to put that out there. Don't do that if I just put that idea into your head. But it is – I don't know. That's one of the things I've been thinking of here. Like it is just pretty wild. Yeah.

Like that you're telling me. And, and especially like when this isn't like a, like the situation post nine 11, it's not like, Hey, you have to cover every potential target here, which is kind of impossible to do in a city like New York city. You know, this is one guy, one guy's the target. And, and, you know, who knows what is really going on. But it would be, it's just, look, it's one of these situations where,

It would be you'd actually be more of a kook to not consider the fact that this also might be one level up from just gross incompetence. I mean, I'm sorry that looking back at that first one, it is it makes absolutely no sense.

that there would be this level of incompetence, that this would be allowed to happen during a Trump rally. And I am sorry, but the fact that there has been almost no information found about that first shooter is wild. You're telling me that first guy was a young person who was so radicalized that he was ready to go attempt to assassinate a president?

And yet he had no social media footprint. I'm sorry. No, that doesn't exist. No, that's not true. Sorry. No, there's no such thing. There's no such thing as a radical young person who doesn't go on social media. That just doesn't exist today. I'm sorry. That makes absolutely no sense.

Like and and there's just things like that that you're like, I'm sorry, that doesn't that doesn't check out his cell phone being traced to D.C. Sorry, that's really shady. What was that radical young person who stays off social media doing in Washington, D.C.? Like, I'm sorry. Like these are these are questions that if we were not living in such a corrupt system, it would be the obvious like.

All of our resources are going to finding out the answers to that. How could that possibly be the case? And meanwhile, what's actually happening is like no resources are going toward it. It's completely moved at, you know, like, like the media you think would be if we lived in a sane world demanding answers to this question every single day. And in fact, they've all moved on. And now you have this guy who, what, just happened to be part of the volunteer Ukraine defense project. Yeah.

who spent like apparently spent a lot of time in Ukraine was there at the very beginning of the war well that's a coinkydink you know like what

What are we now? OK, I guess on its own, you don't like have to jump to the craziest conclusion there. Like it. Look, anybody who's going to go attempt to kill a former and potentially future president is going to be a nut. There's no question about that. So nuts are going to do nutty things.

But it does seem a little bit that that does add one more major layer of eyebrow raising that you're telling me this guy's this guy's motives and actions also happen to align perfectly with the war party. You can't ignore that. Like, you can't not see that. And look,

Tucker Carlson called this out well over a year ago that you just... You kind of... You game this thing out, right? We've all known this. Look, I don't think...

I think everybody who pays attention or has any level of knowledge about how the mechanics of our system actually work was always thinking, and I was thinking this back in 2016, I had a joke on this on my first comedy special on Libertas, where I was always like, oh, we're all just kind of waiting for them to assassinate this guy, right? Like, everyone's just kind of like, I don't know, the CIA really doesn't like Donald Trump. Well, what does the CIA do about that?

i'll just kind of assume we know but if you if you game the thing out where it's like okay they tried to frame him for treason that didn't work they tried to impeach him that didn't work they tried to invoke the 25th amendment that didn't work they tried to you know they tried to lock him up that didn't work what's next how many more steps do we get until the final one and keeping all that in mind and then seeing that there have been two attempts at that is you know

Makes you wonder, you know, I'm not saying that's enough to get a conviction in a court of law, but in the court of public opinion, there's a lower standard than that. And like, I don't know, my eyebrows are certainly raised.

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All right, let's get back into the show. I'll tell you my takeaway is that the left has lost their right to tell me about how words lead to violence. And aren't you concerned that you're where? And I'm sure we'll hear more of it. They love it. They even said that our jokes lead to violence or, you know, trans suicide because you're talking that they can't change anything.

There's nothing they love more than talking about how your words that are inspiring other people to take violence. And in this case, there's an actual video of the guy going, well, there's never been an issue that's more black and white. This is good versus evil. Ukraine, we as good people need to stand for Ukraine. And now listen.

I don't I think, if anything, the deep state's good about washing their hands clean by finding lone crazy people. So as to whether or not this was a lone crazy person or someone that they. Oh, yeah, it's always right. You'll never know. It's always a crazy person. Whether. Right. Right. Exactly.

Although I think they like second shooters. I think they like pawn pieces of a crazy person and then a second shooter. That would be – that's the way I assume they operate. But who knows? I will tell you this, as fun as it is to flirt with these conspiracies. The guy is alive and in custody, and that doesn't line up with how they would typically do things. So if this guy has a –

an untimely death in the next couple days, that would point more toward their typical, you know, the way that it usually goes. Usually their fall guy is supposed to be, like, moderately incompetent. Maybe they went fully incompetent. So, you know, never go full retard. Yeah.

Yeah, there you go. Well, to your point, which is a very good one, it is pretty crazy the way that the kind of the establishment, you know, the media and the political class have pretty like in unison been talking about how dangerous Donald Trump's rhetoric is for eight years. And this is crazy.

It's a tactic that gets used. I mean, this gets used on me all the time. I can't tell you how much over the, you know, the last couple of weeks when there was a lot of, you know, the whole controversy with with Daryl, with Daryl Cooper and between me doing the World War Two episode and then having him on the show, I got a whole lot of this. And it's such a.

It's such a bullshit critique where people will be like, well, they'll say you're running cover for the Jew haters. Right. So you're you're essentially now if there is somebody who's like a Holocaust denier, even though I'm not and Daryl isn't shifting the blame onto Churchill helps their cause or something like that. And you're like, wait, hold on. Is what I'm saying true or not?

That should be the only standard. The standard isn't then what someone else wants to do with that information. You know what I mean? Like, so if Donald Trump says that they're, you know, they're ruining this country or Hillary Clinton should be locked in jail, you can't say like he's not allowed to say that because then his someone might take that and do something with it. But then likewise, you

It's like they don't even apply it to themselves where you're like, I don't know. You guys are the ones who have been like hyping everyone up on what a threat Donald Trump is to everything. And so, yeah, look at that. You don't get to play this card anymore. You don't get to play the card of saying like, oh, yeah.

Well, you know, which they do all the time. If you remember, this is how they took out Bernie Sanders, too, or attempted to with the Bernie bros thing was that Hillary Clinton was saying, oh, Bernie Sanders supporters online are sexist.

They're sexist because, you know, whatever, someone online called Hillary Clinton a cunt or something like that. So now Bernie Sanders isn't allowed to challenge her on health care? Like, what? It doesn't make any sense. And, of course, also, they never actually, like, there's never, like, any scientific way where people...

Like, look through it and go, well, how many Hillary Clinton supporters have said nasty things to Bernie Sanders or something like that? You know what I mean? I get this. I get this all the time where if there's like people will call on me to denounce Bernie

people who follow me on social media who say some like bigoted thing. So there'll be, you know, there'll be like a thread. I'll be arguing with someone about whatever, you know, and, and,

they'll then someone in the replies will like, you know, say something like they, they hate Jews or something like that. And then there'll be like, Hey, Dave, will you denounce this guy? And I'm like, Hey, a bunch of people who follow you are calling me a Nazi in this same thread. Are you going to denounce all of that? Are we going to go through this and denounce everybody else? Or how about that? Here's a radical idea.

I'll defend what I'm saying and you can defend what you're saying and then we'll accept that we can't control what everybody else on Twitter says. But anyway, to that point, there is something where if you're going to blame anyone for their rhetoric, I mean, look, I

It's not that that never makes sense. Like, look, I was the first to say, I do think that like, while I think January 6th has been greatly mischaracterized, and I don't think it's fair to call it like an insurrection. I think that's kind of ridiculous. It's not as if a group of armed people, like, you know what I mean, went there to overthrow a government or something like that. Oh, look, a door's open.

Well, look, I mean, it was a mix of kind of like a riot that got a little out of control. And then I think probably 80 to 90 percent of it was just what you were saying. So it's like there was like this small group of people who like smashed some windows and had some shoving matches with cops. And then there were a bunch more people who were just like, oh, they're opening the gates.

We're going to walk through. If you watch the videotape of January 6th, it's a whole lot of just like tourism, essentially, like just just your Fox News watching grandpa walking around. That's where they and then there's some mischief going on. There's some younger people who are like taking, you know, farting on Nancy Pelosi's desk and stuff. So whatever. I wouldn't call it an insurrection, but I would totally say.

that Donald Trump was absolutely reckless in his rhetoric and kind of like led his people to do something where they were going to get in a lot of trouble potentially for doing it. Like if you're sitting there and saying they stole this election from me, that's a – you know, OK. You're like –

Like if you're a leader, you got to be prepared to like, okay, well, what's the plan of action here? You know what I mean? You're the guy who's supposed to lead a plan of action. You can't just bitch and moan about it and then tell people to protest. Like I do think that's irresponsible. And in the same sense, there is something to like,

Yeah, guys, you can't just tell everybody that this guy is Adolf Hitler and it's the end of democracy if he wins. And by the way, right now, it's a coin flip of an election. You know what I mean? So like you leave people in this. And the thing that's different with the Donald Trump thing is that they do they do make it uniquely about him.

Like, there's almost like a wink and a nod. Like, you know, democracy is over. Hey, guys, it's a coin flip. The United States of America might be over in the next month and a half. And by the way, this one guy is responsible for it. If it just wasn't him, we would have America. I will say, no one's responsible except the people involved. But...

You could say it is wildly irresponsible rhetoric. So yes, that's a long way of saying I agree with you. Anybody who's on that side, like spare me with your rhetoric is dangerous nonsense forever. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is My Patriot Supply.

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And it's shipped for free. Get your four-week emergency food kit now at preparewithsmith.com. That's preparewithsmith.com. All right, let's get back into the show. I think that's a reasonable take. I guess...

You know, I don't know. I guess the other question here is the political one, which is separate from the question of what actually happened here. But the political question, I guess, is, hey, we do have a presidential election coming up in a few weeks. And what impact do you think this is going to have? I would say, you know, interestingly enough, I think the biggest impact of this election

is that it reminds everyone of the first one.

And it brings that back into the news cycle for whatever I've been talking about this for weeks, for whatever reason, Donald Trump does not want to force that issue. Um, he did bring it up in the debate, but very, very briefly. And just to go like kind of bake, basically make that rhetoric point that we were just making, you know, I took a bullet because of the things you say or whatever, but he doesn't really want to make that like a central issue of the campaign. This is, uh,

fairly shocking to me because I think pretty universally

On the left, on the right, no matter where you are, pretty universally, the thought that people had in their mind, if you can zoom back to seven weeks ago or whatever it was, when Donald Trump was throwing up the black power fist and screaming, fight, fight, fight, pretty much all of us went, Donald Trump just won the presidency.

That was that was almost now you have to remember this is a time when it was against Joe Biden. And so things have drastically changed. But it was amazing that like.

You know, when when the whole thing about the election was it looks like Joe Biden is too weak and senile to to be president. And then Donald Trump survives an assassination attempt and he just looked strong on all of our monkey brains. We're like, this guy just became the head, the head alpha. Like, there's just no fighting that anymore. And you would think that Donald Trump would want to keep that moment alive.

Like the moment when we all felt like you just won the election. He has not been working to keep that alive. This is not nearly as dramatic as that because you don't have video of Donald Trump with blood on his face, throwing up a fist and the Secret Service around him. And you don't have it's not like, you know, this is just a report of what happened. But what it does is it brings that first one back in because it's impossible to not.

see these, you know, in connection. And so that I think might have an impact on the race. This story alone, it's almost not sexy enough because there's not like video of it. You know what I mean? But I do think it makes you think about the first one and it does, it, um,

It makes it impossible for people to not entertain conspiracies in their mind. You know, like, you know, even even the people who say are like, you know, like the the pundits or whatever, or the Internet commentators who are would be saying there's no conspiracy here at all. Even in their mind, they're like, maybe.

Who knows? Who knows how far deep this actually goes? And so that I think I think that really helps Donald Trump. I think it helps him when he's viewed as the guy who is the target of a larger conspiracy. I think that's always been his strongest appeal is that, you know, like like if if you could run a counterfactual.

And I don't know. I don't know this for sure. But imagine when Donald Trump walked down the escalators and announced he was running for president and gave the whole thing about how Mexicans aren't sending their best, they're rapists and they're killers and some, I'm sure, are good people.

Imagine the media reaction and the reaction of the political class to that had just been like, oh, OK, cool. Trump threw his hat in the ring. He's running for president. That's cool. We're not going to obsess over him. We're not going to cover every one of his rallies. We're not going to be appalled by every single thing he said. Like if they were just totally I don't think Donald Trump ever becomes president.

Like, I just don't, I think that his biggest strength was always that he just pissed everyone off so much. And then all of his people were like, he sure does piss off the people we hate the most. And, and this, so anyway, my point essentially is that I think this type of thing is what helps Donald Trump the most. And this brings that story back. Um, I think now it's kind of, uh,

You know, even to me, and I complain often about the short attention span of the general American public and the craziness of the 24-hour news cycle and stuff like that, it was kind of amazing that they were ever able to get away from that first assassination attempt being the story of the campaign. But...

subbing out a presidential candidate and subbing in a new candidate is pretty big news a few weeks before the election. So that did take a lot of the oxygen out of the room. But I think now this kind of I think this kind of forces it back. Like, I don't see how you can not. I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe in a week, I'll be like, yeah, no one's talking about this anymore. But I kind of don't imagine that's going to be the case. I don't know. What do you think, Rob?

I think at least for this week, it's going to have to be in the news. And I think people are going to have to contend with the fact of are people not playing fair that they're taking out Donald Trump. So my guess is Solis gives him underdog, hey, they're trying to kill me status.

And yes, I do think that you're right that for this week we are going to be forced to discuss what is going on in this country that for the first time in both of our lifetimes we're actually watching. Well, I guess you were. Were you alive for for what's his name for for Reagan? I don't know how old you are. I know you know. No, I was. All right.

Dude, relax. I think we're pretty similar in age, but whatever. That's not cool. No, I was born in 83. I think Reagan was shot in 80 or 81. So it was before I was born. This certainly isn't normal. I think 81. No other president has survived two assassination attempts. I don't think that they're going to be able to get around discussing what the hell is going on. Okay. So look, I think that's right. And here's what I...

Look, it's not like with JFK or something like that, right? There's probably, with the exception of World War II, I think...

In terms of historical events, there's probably been more books written about JFK than anything else. There's just an enormous amount of people who have done deep dives into JFK and serious, serious deep dives. And so there's a lot of information we know. We know that Lee Harvey Oswald –

visited the Soviet Union. You know what I mean? Like, we know like, where he was, we know stuff about, you know, him about the guy who killed him about like, all these different players involved. We don't have anything like that, on what happened yesterday. That's just, you know what I mean? We don't have any, not a single book has been written about it. It just happened, right? So it's, I'm not like even saying that we have like, a real theory here put together. But

Okay, so take something like 9-11. You know, I mentioned this briefly on the show with Daryl, but it's like, so on the anniversary of 9-11, there's always a ton of people. Did this not go off? There's always a ton of people like on social media who are jumping into the conspiracy theories and stuff. And generally speaking, I think most of the 9-11 conspiracies are

There's not really as much there as people think there is. I think that Loose Change was a fun movie. Let's say that, okay? It was a fun movie. We all enjoyed watching it in our 20s. Nobody mentions Building 8.

that's a good point i think it is there a building that's right you see you've never even heard of it i don't even know i don't even know and no one's willing to even ask that question but okay so essentially here is the real 9-11 conspiracy and i think this is the only one that's that's a really good one um like there are some things that are like don't add up like um

But they don't necessarily like, okay, like, like that passport surviving makes absolutely no sense. But also maybe that was planted. That doesn't mean that there was a larger conspiracy necessarily. Like there's not, but, but here's the real conspiracy. It's not missiles hitting the Pentagon and it's not even building seven. Like it's,

The real conspiracy is that from the redacted 28 pages, we know that there was pretty high-level Saudi involvement. Okay? So here's the real rub of it, is that the obvious question is, well, how far up exactly did that go? You know? And we are going to get to the bottom of that. Like, who exactly knew what? And if Saudi Arabia, if it does go up, like,

as high as we know it went. And if it goes any higher than that, then that opens the door of real questions of like, wait, would Saudi actually do this on their own? That doesn't really make sense. Saudi Arabia is totally dependent on the United States of America, and they

know that our intelligence agencies are going to figure this out. In fact, our intelligence agencies did figure this out many, many years before they let the American people know about this, right? So Saudi Arabia probably wouldn't take that risk unless they had a green light. From who? You know? Who are they going to get a green light from? And it's...

You got basically to Tel Aviv and D.C. are your two targets in there. You know what I mean? Like, who the fuck gave you permission to do this? And so, OK, so now we don't know what the answer is to that. Right. But the and it's a similar thing with with the Trump stuff. Right. There's an there is an answer that is revealed in the fact that no one's even trying to get that answer.

Like that itself tells you something. Wait a minute. How has that not been the number one priority of this entire apparatus that we call the federal government to get that information? What the hell? How far up does this go in the Saudi regime? And who the hell did they get permission from? There seems to be no effort to even figure that out. And of this entire, you know, like this entire apparatus that we call the media, the

You would think if there was, there were all these journalists, well, they would be, what's your role? Your role, if nothing else is to demand that we get to the bottom of that. Right. I mean, I'm sorry. Is that not the biggest story ever? You're telling me that's not a big enough story that you wouldn't want to throw some journalists on that one, you know? And like the fact that there is no like political will to,

to make sure we get to the bottom of this and it's essentially just left to like some people online. You know, some people on the internet will try to figure it out. That in itself tells you something. It tells you something very powerful, which is that like this machine does not work to attempt to get to the bottom of this. And again, that's true with 9/11, it's true with the Kennedy assassination, it's true with these Trump assassination attempts.

Like the fact that every it's true with Jeffrey Epstein, man, the fact that everyone isn't dropping everything they're doing to try to figure out what's going on. I mean, think about that, right? Like how much like this doesn't,

What I'm saying, this doesn't give you the answers to what happened, but it does totally give you the answers to how corrupt this whole establishment is. It's like you think about the Jeffrey Epstein story, right? That we know that there was a serial pedophile, right? There was a serial child rapist who led a child rape ring, right?

which involved the most, you know, like powerful people in our society, in the political world, in the cultural landscape, you know, like they were all implicated this. We know that it was a blackmail operation. OK, where they were they were getting powerful people to rape children, right?

And then blackmail them with that information. And by the way, we also know that when our government caught them, word came down from the top that he was intelligence. Like,

Holy shit. If you're a, if we had journalism, if we had a real media, then they would be like, yo, we're going to drop everything until we get to the bottom of this. And not only are they not dropping everything, there is no exaggeration here, zero interest, zero interest in getting to the bottom of it. And so, you know, when people, um,

Like when the Brian Stelters of the world and when when people in the corporate media, you know, they get on TV or they write, you know, their articles in newspapers talking about kind of like the dangers of misinformation and the dangers of wild conspiracy theorists. Right. Like you think about the amount of the amount of fury that someone like Candace Owens has

generates against herself because she's going down these rabbit holes and you're not allowed to do that. You know, it's like, well, look, if you want to know why there's such fertile ground for conspiracies, I mean, look no further than that. That's in a sense, the biggest conspiracy of all is that.

is that you guys have no interest in getting to the bottom of these conspiracies. You have no interest in figuring out the biggest goddamn stories. And one of the things that that also like lets you know, it becomes kind of like, um, like what I was saying before it, okay. It doesn't give you the answers to the actual conspiracy. It doesn't tell you, was that guy, you know, the first guy who, who, uh, uh, shot Donald Trump,

or the guy who shot Donald Trump, that guy, it doesn't tell you, like, who was he meeting with in D.C. Okay, he was meeting with, you know, a guy at FBI counterterrorism or something like that. Like, it doesn't tell you that. You know what I mean? It doesn't tell you, like, the details of what...

actually went down, but it gives you a window into something much bigger than that. Right. So like number one, what it gives you, it gives you a window into the fact that you're like, Oh, we don't actually have, um, a journalism class.

That's not what they do. They're not in the business of news. They're in the business of propaganda. It tells you that the whole government apparatus, the whole intelligence apparatus isn't actually an intelligence apparatus. They're not actually trying to get down to figure out, get to the bottom of what really happened here. If anything, they're a cover shit up apparatus.

They're like a group of paramilitary spies who are in the business of propaganda. It's like – and in a sense, one of the things that it really opens you up to understanding – because this is something I think also that people get wrong sometimes is that they go –

you know, this is a very standard left-wing critique of the mainstream media, is the problem is that they're profit-seeking. You know, the problem here, and it's not that there's not a kernel of truth to that, right? Like, it is true that, like, there's a reason why all the commercials on CNN and MSNBC are, like, you know,

pharmaceutical companies and weapons companies. You know, I used to always, I always thought it was so funny that meet the press was sponsored by Boeing. Like what? Like, is anyone as if like someone watching meet the press is just in the market for a fighter jet? Like why the hell would you want to advertise on meet the press? That makes no sense. It's obviously just so you can cut a check to meet the press and just be like, Hey, you know,

Hey, here's several million dollars. Maybe big weapons companies never come up in any of your news coverage. But the point I'm making is that we'd actually live in a much better world if it was just the profit motive. Because there are these stories that you cannot tell me would not generate enormous interest. Like if the New York Times or CNN actually said, okay, we've got this machine here. This machine has...

i mean i don't know exactly what the budget of uh of the new york times or cnn is but in the billions right like they've got a lot of money these companies these are not mom and pop shops and they said hey we're gonna take you know whatever uh turner i think owns cnn uh or at least they used to um

But so let's say Turner, this gigantic, you know, multi-billion dollar machine was like, we are going to focus so like a huge percentage of our resources toward getting to the bottom of 9-11, getting to the bottom of the Epstein story, something like this. You cannot tell me that wouldn't generate enormous interest.

Like they would break all types of ratings numbers. If there was one cable news show today that was just dedicated to that, it would be the number one show in cable news. No question about it. And so that's,

What that tells you then is that you're like, oh, you guys aren't even in the business of making money. You guys aren't even in the business of ratings. It's not about that. It's that like you're actually in the business of protecting the powerful, right?

Like you're there to make to basically run cover for these powerful people. And that's look, that's essentially the only answer. It's the only answer you're left with. Once you realize that they don't actually want to get to the bottom of big stories, they don't actually want to advocate for the people. They don't want to hold the powerful accountable. They have zero interest in it.

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Look, man, if you, you know what the corporate media loves more than anything else, and you can watch this. Once you see this, you can never unsee it. But what they love more than anything else is a story that will get clicks that doesn't threaten powerful people. Any story that could get ratings but doesn't threaten power, they're all over it. And so that's why they love a hurricane.

They love a plane crashing. They love something where there's like, oh, there's a little bit of disaster porn here, but no one at a high level really cares.

Right. They love fights about abortion or transgenders or whatever. You know what I mean? Like fights like that. They love. Oh, my God. Is there a new transgender bathroom bill? That'll be wall to wall coverage on CNN because it divides people. It pits them against each other. It gets everyone emotional. So they want to watch. And no one in power is threatened by that at all.

No, nobody at the CIA is really worried about a fight about abortion. You know, I'm not I'm not saying abortion isn't an important issue. It's a very important issue to have your opinions on it. I'm just saying that it's like that's what the media is there for. But they're not going to be there. You know, you will never see a story on the news about the secrecy of government just never comes up.

It never, there's not like, with very few exceptions, like Tucker Carlson was an exception. And of course he ultimately got fired. You know, there, there were like, there were some people, the late Phil Donahue, who was a little bit of a goofball, but he was, he was a real one. He worked for MSNBC and he used to do like real shows and they fired him because that's what happens when you do news. They were like, no, that's not what we're here to do. But so that I'm just saying, like, I think that,

There's something, there's something, there's been like in America, a great awakening over the last decade. And there's a lot that, there's a lot that contributed to that. Part of it was that our own, our own government class has just become more decadent and unimpressive and less able to keep things going.

to keep the appearance of, you know, the illusion going. Part of it is that technology has exploded and we just have, you know, like access to alternative viewpoints and things like that, which I guess this show is a small part of. And part of it's, you know, just because we're in...

a state of slow collapse in our country. We're in the, we're in the crumbling empire cycle of things here, but it's not, it's not all good. I mean, it's kind of dangerous because things spin out of control and people have wild theories and you know, there sometimes that can be risky. But I think that when things like this happen, it's like,

People on some gut level know all of the stuff that we've been saying on this podcast. I think almost everyone knows this on some level, whether they've like really thought about it or not, that you just go like something about this whole goddamn system is bullshit. And like, you know, like, like put it like this. Okay. Let's say hypothetically we could declassify everything.

let's just say we could snap our fingers and we knew it all. We knew everything that the CIA had ever done and the FBI and the NSA has ever done. We knew every, the truth of what,

everything that happened with Kennedy. And I'm not even just saying like you could declassify the records. I'm saying, you know, the conversations, you know, the shit that was never written down. You know what I mean? Like, you know what really happened with Nixon. What's the story with Nixon exactly? It was like, oh, the most popular president in history, the guy who won the biggest election ever won 49 states a couple of years later is removed from office. And the guy, it was over a scandal at Watergate where almost all of the people involved were working for the CIA.

And, oh, the guy who broke the story, Bob Woodward, was some young journalist who wasn't even a journalist. He was Navy Naval Intelligence. You know, like, I don't know. I don't know what the real story there is, but it sure ain't what they told us, you know. And so, like, what if you could know the real details of that story and 9-11 and the Trump assassination attempts and like all of it, you just got the real and Jeffrey Epstein, all of it. You had all the information in your head.

what do you think that would look like you think you'd come away from it and go rock please no i mean some yes sure but not all uh but i'm just saying if we if you did know all of that information does anyone believe that what you knew would be remotely similar to the official story

Does anyone believe that? Is there one human being in the United States of America who actually thinks if everything was declassified and every private conversation was known and you knew the truth about JFK and 9-11 and all of these things and Jeffrey Epstein and all of them, that you would go, it's just like they told us in the official story.

That's what it is. No, of course not, right? So the question isn't like, are you a conspiracy theorist or are you not a conspiracy theorist? The question is like, are you a conspiracy theorist or are you fucking brain dead? Like, which one is it? Like, do you have any idea? Like, the only type of...

The only type of good thinker is a conspiracy theorist. Then maybe the question would be like, are you a good one or a bad one? You know, because like, obviously, I'm not saying every conspiracy is true. And I know there are some of those QAnon people who are still hanging on to like, you know, Donald Trump is really still the president or something like there's wild ones. But no, I'd say this. No responsible person who pays attention to this shit can not be a conspiracy theorist to some degree.

I guess we could wrap on that. Guys, come on out. Listen, I'm going into a crazy time of year here where I'll be out in Austin. But then we'll be in – well, we won't be in Detroit. Oh.

Oh, I'll be alone and sad in Detroit. So come out and spend some time with me. Detroit and then Kansas City. Rob will be there with me for that one. Poughkeepsie, Philadelphia, Bozeman, Montana. We've got a lot of fun stuff coming up in the rest of the year. Comic Dave Smith dot com. Of course, guys, go if you haven't already. If you love the show and you want to support it, go to part of the problem dot com. Starting this week, all episodes are airing live, uncensored, ad free, only at part of the problem dot

So thank you to everyone who's already signed up to support and please consider doing so if you haven't already. All right. And of course, porch tour.com for all of Rob's dates, go come out and see Rob on his way to a film in his first comedy special. We're all very excited for that. All right. Catch you guys next time. Peace.