Constitutional Crisis
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Hello, hello, what is up everybody? Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem. I am Dave Smith. He is Robbie the Fire Bernstein. How are you today, sir? I'm doing well. How are you, Mr. Smith? Ready for that debate tonight? Yep, getting ready. I hope I'm ready because I don't have too much time.

I can't be like, I got to crack a few books at this point. I know what I know. Another head for the mantle. That's what you need. You need someone to make prosthetic heads that you can hang over your fireplace. Well, you know, one of the things that's interesting. So for people who don't know, I'm going after the show today, I'm headed over to Princeton University. I'm going to be debating Josh Hammer, who is the he's a senior editor at Newsweek.

And I don't know too much about him. I've I read like a couple articles that he's written and I listened to two speeches that he gave. He seems like a smart guy, like, you know, and like a worthy debate opponent. And so, you know, we'll see. And it's one of these things. The debate is over the the U.S.-Israeli relationship and whether it's positive for America or not. And.

One of the things, by the way, for people I know, Natalie, I've mentioned that someone had asked in the live chat, and it will be streamed. It's going to be live on YouTube. I could find the, I'm blanking at the moment on the name of the group who's putting this on. Sorry, I probably should remember that. I'll remember them by the time I get there. I can include it. Sure, sure, sure. Yeah, that's perfect. By the way, Natalie just said if you didn't hear off mic, she will include the link in the episode description. But, you know, this really is my, as you've come to know over the years. By the time.

Yeah, that's a good point. Okay. Anyway, well, you know what? But it won't be the live stream then, but it'll be up on YouTube. But if you've worked with me for years, you know I only learn names like once I get there. It's always five minutes before we get there I figure out how to say the town. Or after we say it on the podcast a whole bunch and everyone gets mad at us. Yeah, but even then I keep saying it wrong. Yes, that is a part of my process. Sure, Rob.

If you want to be on. But anyway, so it's Steamboat, I believe. Am I getting that right? Yes. Steamboat Institute are the ones they're they're they're putting on the event. And it's at Princeton University. One of the things that's weird about these debates, particularly.

over the topic of Israel, although I don't think it's quite as unique to Israel as some might make it out to be. You know, I've over the years, and I think this is really part of how me and you have built this show up and how I've kind of built my following is that I'm just OK. Obviously, I'm biased when I say this, but I'm pretty consistently right about the most important thing when it really matters. So like, you know, in the same way, I was not

Right. You know, I don't even exactly remember. Like, I don't know if I had a strong feeling about it, but I wasn't like the war in Iraq. I was too young to like know what the hell I was talking about. And I didn't like have a show or anything. So I went. But just for an example of like the war in Iraq, everybody's against it now.

You know, but like what really mattered is whether you were for it or not at the time. And me and you have just kind of consistently been on the right side of all that, like being that all of our takes and all of our takes, all of our takes on the most important issues aged very well, you know, but.

I was in the middle of, you know, I was on Joe Rogan's show arguing against lockdowns in 2020 and calling them totalitarian. And that was like, now if I say, oh, the lockdowns were totalitarian, it's like the emotion is gone. So it's kind of hard to argue with that. Who could argue that a lockdown isn't totalitarian? Like by definition, isn't that what it is? You are locking people down and deciding whether or not they can do anything. Anyway.

The war in Ukraine was a big one. The COVID vax was a big one where they're just these issues that are like super emotionally charged. But Israel's up there. It might be the most, you know, but it certainly is one of them. And so when you go into these debates, it's especially with someone I don't know, like Josh, who's

I really like, I'm going in just to argue the position and have like a civil exchange of ideas, but I'm not sure, you know, you go in in the back of your mind where I'm like, I don't know if this guy might, I have to be prepared for the fact that like this guy might come at me, you know, on some, like you're a self hating Jew, like whatever, you know, I just don't know enough about him from the little I've seen of him. I don't think he will. My guess is he's going to come in and, and debate the issue, but you never know. Uh,

So it's a little bit of a weird, like, you know, it's like, I'm fine with it being like a vicious fight and I'm fine with it being a battle of ideas. It's a little weird not knowing which one you're going to go into. If he starts calling you a self-hating Jew...

You should just whip it out and go, I love that I don't have foreskin. You see this college-age woman who came out today for this debate? That's your advice for me. Not even, all right, I will take that into consideration. And I'm re-questioning whether you're the best advisor to have. But somehow Rob is my senior advisor. Look at this and tell me you think I hate being Jewish.

Well, it is. I also I'm just kind of interested to see because I don't think Princeton was ever like really the the hotbed of any of the kind of protests or anything like that. Like, I don't know. I think those kids are smart enough not to protest. Well, just like we'll go make money and not do stupid things. Well, I mean, Columbia is a pretty prestigious school, too. And that's where they're dumber.

I don't know why, but they are. Are Princeton people smarter than Columbia people? Yeah, they're more like the fruitcake smart kids. If you're a fruitcake smart kid, you go to Columbia. And if you're just a, hey, I want to go make some money smart kid, you go to like Wharton or Princeton. You should work for Princeton, dude. That was the best sell ever. I'm, you know, I was just going to go there and tell them you all wasted your money on tuition. You're listening to me. Like engineers, MIT, if you're a little more fruitcake-y, you might try for Harvard or Brown. You see? Yeah.

Yeah, and if you just want to, like, drink other dudes' piss, you go to Yale. Everybody knows that. Skull and bones, baby. It's the Ivy League fruitcake delivation. But anyway, it's an interesting place to be. It's interesting to be in a debate about these kind of, like, polarizing white-hot issues. And even particularly with the...

I guess the thing is, when I went on, probably the most pushback I ever got was when I went on Rogan's podcast and talked about the war in Ukraine the first time. Because the war had like...

it was going on for a few months already, but the war was like in the, it was still in the, like at this point, you know, the propaganda about how Ukraine's going to win is kind of gone. Now it's kind of like, what deal are we actually going to get? But back then it was like, no, we're taking back Crimea. We're doing the whole thing. I got so much. It was like, it was like kicking a hornet's nest, you know, like the swarm that came after me, which I find kind of interesting in its own way. The thing about Israel, I guess, is that Israel is,

somehow always maintains that status. It's always the third rail. Like it doesn't matter if it's, you know, obviously it's been more so over the last year and a half, but Israel at all times, it's like, if you even start talking about say like the Israel lobby, people already kind of look at you like, Oh, what are you saying that the Jews run everything and that there's this conspiracy, but you're like, yeah, but how would you not talk about that? Like, how does it, you know what I mean? It'd be like, if you were like talking about,

Whatever, if you were talking about gun control and you brought up the NRA, no one looks at you like, what a crazy thing to introduce into this conversation. You're like, obviously, that plays a major role in how all of this works. No matter what side of the issue you're on, whether you're for gun control or against gun control, no one would deny that the NRA is a factor in there. And so there's just a lot of strange...

Kind of dynamics to the debate. And it'll be interesting. I have no idea what the crowd makeup is going to be like or what side they're going to be on. It's an Oxford style debate. So you're kind of hoping the crowd isn't all on your side. It's more to your advantage if there's more people who are against you because then you got more people you can pull over. So like like with an Oxford debate, if 100 percent of the crowd agrees with you, you can't win.

You know, it's literally, it's right. Like it's impossible to win. There's no one that you can persuade. And all the other guys to do is persuade one person and he gets the win. So it's, it's kind of like it works against you if the crowd is on board with you. Anyway, it'll be, uh, it'll be interesting. And I'm looking forward to that. I'll be curious to see if there's any, uh, noisy protesters.

Or any real elite college professors just standing on the side with, I should be in there. Why is this guy in there? They do. The thing about it is... It's real snobbery. You know, I don't think there'll be protests. Sweater vests and just holding a vanilla folder for no reason. Well, there is an inherent kind of bias against people in colleges. Understandably, you know, because it's like...

the fact that I've like tonight will probably be the most time I've spent at college. And so they're like, it's kind of in a way somewhat of an inherent critique on the institution for me to even be here in this debate. And so, you know, there's no question that like,

professors, this is, I've made a lot of enemies over this dynamic in my career, but there is something where like there are people who are products of institutions taking

tend to not like when somebody is not a product of an institution and rises to have more influence or has a seat at the table because they feel like, hey, this is why everyone at Cato hates me. You know what I mean? Like Cato, people don't know, is like the biggest libertarian think tank.

And all of them hate me. And you would think inherently, you'd be like, well, here's a guy who's kind of popularizing your message. Maybe not exactly the same as your message, but pretty close, a lot closer than most other people. But when you're when you've been at Cato for 15 years and you've, you know, moved up the ranks and played the game and kissed the asses and then finally got the approval and

And now you are their senior immigration studies person. Yeah. You don't like that. Some shit talking comedian just gets to, you know what I mean? Like lap you in this game. And so I do, I do think with professors in general, there's just a dynamic like that. I mean, I don't know if you've ever seen, but like, uh, Charlie Kirk does a lot of those things where he goes to college campuses and like argues with the kids. Um, and yeah,

It's it's amazing how many times they'll bring up the fact that he does that he dropped out of college and like think that that's like, you know, you didn't even go to college. You didn't even graduate like they're stuck in that mentality of like, this is what matters. And then you're like, OK, fine. I mean, he didn't graduate college, but he's fucking great.

Running circles around you in this debate right now. So that's more of a comment on you than it is on him, you know, it's anyway We'll see. We'll see how it goes. It should be fun. I always enjoy doing these things. Okay, so

Let's get into some stuff here and then we'll... A couple things that are going on that I wanted to talk about. And then I had a bit of a message for the Libertarian Party that I thought I would do at one point in the show. And then maybe we'll check in if we have time and take some questions from the chat. So the big...

uh talking point today uh that's circulating around i haven't seen a good compilation video of this yet but i know it's only a matter of time until tom elliott has a good one um but it's constitutional crisis we are in a constitutional crisis rob um so i don't know how how are you holding up through this crisis you're doing all right

Well, I'm just happy that people are talking about how presidents aren't supposed to do executive orders and not supposed to have wars and Congress is supposed to allocate the budget and no one else is supposed to do that. Oh, no, no, no, Rob. I'm sorry. You maybe didn't check the fine print. None of that is a constitutional crisis at all. Oh. Turns out that's totally cool. The crisis is that Trump might defy a judge's order. Right.

That's literally what they're all freaking out about. It is... It's just hilarious. I don't know what to say. It's just like... It's... The Democrats and the corporate media, they always, like, rely on taking things to DEFCON 10 with Donald Trump. It's like their only...

mechanism to deal with him. And so they just constantly, I don't know if you guys saw it. Jon Stewart actually had a really funny, uh, bit where he was talking about, um,

Trump, you know, when you saw Trump fired like a few of the inspector generals and he's going off and he's playing this montage of everyone freaking out about it. He's like, oh, my God, he can't do that. And then they cut to someone at NBC, I think, was reading the law. And they were like, the president may fire inspector generals, but he is required to give written notice and 30 days notice or something like that.

And Jon Snow's like, oh, so that's the fight? The fight is just over whether he gave the notice he was supposed to give to her or not. And you're like, you just can't make this 11. Like, it's just not that big of a thing.

but this is what they're attempting to do. It does seem, I'm curious. It's like what Biden did with the student loan debts. Oh, I was actually have a clip of that. It was so funny, man. It's like literally just the exact thing that Biden just did like two years ago. What, uh, you gotta look me in. What is, uh, what is Trump ignoring? I don't know how I missed this. You know, there's, I think there's a couple things. Um,

But it was, you know, I actually have to double check this one. I think the one that they were flipping out about the most had to do with a judge striking down the birthright citizenship thing, which does seem like it's like, yeah, you can't do that through executive order. But at the same time, it's like, you know, also like a president defying a court isn't actually unprecedented. I think the issue really comes down to the fact that like,

It's I know people will claim they love to use the term what about ism when you say stuff like this. God, if there is one word that I could strike from the English language, it would be what about ism. It even it even overtakes anti-Semitism and transphobia for me as words that I would just love to not to not ever hear again. But.

What about is I don't even know where the word came from. I hate it linguistically. I think it's a terrible word. Like, it just sounds like a teenager. It sounds like a teenager, like pulling gum out of their mouth and twirling their hair with the other finger. I'd be like, yeah, just did a what about is, you know, but it's also just like it's like a way to dismiss words.

putting anything into context or pointing out hypocrisy. You just have a magical word you could say that. And I'm not saying like there is a scenario where like it would make sense to be like you're distracting from the issue by being like, what about this unrelated thing? You know, if I'm like, you know, Rob, like you got blackout drunk last night and came home and beat the shit out of your girlfriend, dude, like this is a real problem. And you went, yeah, well, you smoked weed last month. You did. OK, fine.

But we're talking about this right now. Isn't the word for that a red herring? Yes. Right, right, exactly. But if I... This is not a whataboutism where I go, look, over the last 20 years, okay, there have been, as you just alluded to, Rob, right? We've had...

decades-long wars that were undeclared by the Congress. If you read the Constitution, it is very clear. One of the nice things about the Constitution, by the way, it's not that long of a book, pretty easy to read, pretty simple to kind of understand. I mean, you could argue over finer points, but it's more or less pretty easy to understand. It's not like...

It's really not actually that complicated. And they're very clear. Only Congress can declare wars. We have fought decades long wars without congressional declarations of war. Now that in Iraq and in Afghanistan, they got like these authorizations of military force, which is like, that's not what the constitution says. It says you have to declare war. And again, even those are like,

incredibly sketchy and have been pulled. So like the, we gave the, the Congress gave the Bush authority to gave the Bush administration authority to use force against Saddam Hussein's government. Right. Saddam Hussein's government fell like a few weeks after we invaded. So that was gone, you know? And then we just stayed there for 20 years. You know what I mean? So it's like, that's not, you didn't really have anyway, but,

Either way, you didn't have a declaration of war. The other wars, besides Afghanistan and Iraq, the wars in Libya, in Syria, in Somalia, in Yemen, the drone bombing campaign in Pakistan, they never got anything.

Just never even like went to court. Right. So we have like you had torture was instituted in the Bush administration, which is clearly a violation of the of the Constitution. You've had I mean, what could be a more clear violation of the Constitution than Barack Obama having U.S. citizens killed?

assassinating US citizens. I mean, just read through the Bill of Rights and you tell me if there's any way you could interpret that to mean that you can murder an American citizen who hasn't been charged with a crime. Forget a trial. Hey, George Washington didn't realize how cool drones were. Yeah, I guess that might be part of it. But anyway, so the idea that we've lived through all of this

And none of these people ever called any of that a constitutional crisis. None of them ever thought about like lockdowns. Just look at lockdowns. You're like, you know, I remember one of my favorite moments through all of COVID. It was very early on. It was my governor, Governor Murphy, here in New Jersey. Tucker Carlson had him on and said, actually, Natalie, see if you could find this. Tucker Carlson, Governor Murphy said,

First Amendment. Let's see if you could find that because it is almost worth playing as people talk about a constitutional crisis. See, go on YouTube for it or whatever. Maybe you might have it right there. Well, yeah, let's let's let's play this.

After the state of New York, no state in the country has been hit harder by this virus than the state of New Jersey. As of today, New Jersey has more than 71,000 cases of it. More than 3,100 people have died so far. Since the 21st of March, all residents in the state have been under a stay-at-home order, and that's had a big predictable economic effect. In the past month, 577,000 New Jerseyans have filed for unemployment.

THE GOVERNOR OF NEW JERSEY SAYS FOR NOW THE SHUTDOWN WILL CONTINUE. GOVERNOR, WE REALLY APPRECIATE YOUR COMING ON TONIGHT. THANK YOU VERY MUCH. I KNOW YOU HAVE A LOT TO DEAL WITH. I WANT TO SAY AT THE OUTSET, I MEAN THIS SINCERELY, I ALWAYS PRESUME GOOD FAITH IN THE DECISIONS OUR LEADERS ARE MAKING RIGHT NOW BECAUSE I KNOW IT'S COMPLEX ESPECIALLY FOR YOU, THE MOST DENSE STATE IN THE COUNTRY, SECOND HIGHEST DEATH TOLL.

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NOW, TODAY IN YOUR PRESS CONFERENCE, YOU GAVE A DIFFERENT RATIONALE FOR THE LOCKDOWN. AND YOU SAID THAT YOU CAN'T FORESEE NORMAL GATHERINGS CONTINUING, I THINK IT'S A QUOTE, UNTIL ESSENTIALLY THERE ARE NO MORE CASES. WHY THE CHANGE? AGAIN, IT'S GOOD TO BE ON WITH YOU. WE BELIEVE COMPLETELY THAT WE DON'T GET AN ECONOMIC RECOVERY UNLESS WE'VE GOT A

complete or near complete health care recovery. So flattening that curve reduces the amount of hospitalizations, reduces the amount of intensive care beds, ventilators, health care workers needed, et cetera. And so you want to get the line to cross between that and your capacity. If we had let this go, we think three plus million New Jerseyans would have been infected. The number, thank God, is going to be a lot less than that, Tucker. But we're still not out of the woods yet.

My comments today were directed at things like high school graduations, religious gatherings that folks had asked me about for June. And I just, I can't say with confidence, I think April, the next couple of weeks is gonna be our toughest period. May, I hope, please God, assuming folks stay home, will be a little bit better.

I can't predict with certainty into the summer. So my rationale is the same. I just got to make sure that I'm being straight with people about the timing and frankly, what we don't know yet.

But the standard that we're not going to have these large gatherings, including, as you said, religious services or NFL games, which you have in your state, until we're basically at zero new infections, that's not a standard that we apply to any other infectious diseases, including diseases that kill, you know, as many people as this is projected to kill. So why the different standard in this case?

Yeah, I wouldn't say it's a different standard and maybe it's the way I said it today, but here is the reality. You get that economic recovery, that responsible reopening after you've cracked the back of this. I don't think any of us can expect that we can get this to zero, particularly in the absence of a vaccine. And it sounds like that's a year, year and a half away. But I do think, and I did say this today, and we believe this strongly, that we need a much broader testing regime.

And that will give us confidence if we can quickly test folks. Rutgers University, our state university, by the way, started this week with this alignment test, which they think to be scaled up dramatically. That would give us an enormous amount of confidence to be able to say, you know what?

That is just not the case that the lockdowns were stopping the spread at all. And you can look at this like you can look at the areas that did lock down and didn't lock down and you don't see any reduction in the spread of COVID. So it's just all so crazy. What a wild time this was. And by the way, I should also point out, I think the part I was looking for is coming up soon here. But I but I should also point out that, you know, this was I believe this was in April or

that he's, he did this interview. So this is, you know, the lockdowns hit in March. This is the next month, April. This was the only time that any lockdown governor got a grilling. Like all the other press conferences would just be like, you know, like Andrew Cuomo, you're so hot. Like it was just insane. It was insane. I remember, um, listening to, speaking of constitutional crisis, I remember, um, uh,

Andrew Cuomo said in one of his first press conferences after the lockdowns, because remember, he used to give them every day. He said in one of his first press conferences after the lockdowns that they were just suspending speedy trials because they were like, there's just no way, you know, the system's moving so slow that there's no way we can just give everybody a trial when they're supposed to. So we're pushing them back because we don't want to just let people go. They might be guilty.

It's just being like, "Yo!" And he said this in front of a room full of reporters. Not a single one of them followed up on that and just went, "Are we in a constitutional crisis now?" Because the right to a speedy trial is enshrined in the Constitution, you know? And so you kind of have to do that. You don't have the option. Nope. Elizabeth Warren wasn't out on TV screeching about constitutional crisis. None of that.

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It's just, I guess the broader point here is just the idea that this represents a constitutional crisis, whereas all these other flagrant violations of the Constitution don't. That's not whataboutism to point out. You know what I'm saying? Like, that's not something that should be dismissed. It kind of proves that these people are not serious. They don't actually care about the Constitution at all. You get my point, Rob? It makes sense to me. And I don't understand the...

So Donald Trump has not, I would think, violated the law yet where he took someone who was born in America, declined their birthright citizenship and ejected them from the country. So it sounds very early. And I would assume the birthright citizenship, it seems like Donald Trump does have a bit of a claim there. So my guess is it's going to advance past the first court.

So until he actually violates the law, like if he just wants to say, hey, I want to end birthright citizenship and a court comes along and says, well, you can't end birthright citizenship. That's not the end of that process. And he hasn't actually violated the Constitution, which seemed to me. Yeah. Whereas in all of your examples, they actually did take away protected rights, such as going to a synagogue. And so I think that plays into what you're saying of he didn't really care about the Constitution there.

Dude, anybody who's read the Constitution knows damn well that 90 plus percent of what the federal government does is not authorized in the Constitution. You read the Constitution and you look at it, the government that we have in no way, shape or form even resembles the government that they're laying out there, which was supposed to be and was at one point the most authoritative

the experiment in the most limited of governments. That was the whole idea of the thing. It was to just put constant shackles on the government. The government can't do this, the government can't do that. We're going to take the powers of a government and we're going to divide them up into three co-equal branches which can all check each other. Then you have the 10th Amendment, which is another check on top of that, which expressly says in the Constitution that

that any right that is not expressly granted to the federal government falls to the states and the people. So like, it's not, it's not like, oh, if we didn't mention it here, you could interpret that we also have this authority. That's why we have a federal reserve. Yeah, there's no, there is no authorization for a federal reserve or a department of education or a department of

energy or a CIA or an NSA or any of these things. It's very clear that none of this should exist if we're following the Constitution. So the idea that we have a constitutional crisis because Trump is defying a judge's order is just ridiculous. The Constitution was shredded over a hundred years ago. We do not follow the thing anymore. And, you know, we could get into who exactly is the most responsible for shredding it and we could have a whole long debate over whether it was Lincoln or Woodrow Wilson. But it was one of those two. But

But the thing is long dead. So it's just—it's a ridiculous, you know, assertion. OK, we got to this point. Now, the Bill of Rights, as you well know, protects Americans' right and shrines their right to practice their religion as they see fit and to congregate together to assemble peacefully. Mm-hmm. By what authority did you nullify the Bill of Rights in issuing this order? How do you have the power to do that?

That's above my pay grade, Tucker. So I wasn't, uh, I wasn't thinking of the bill of rights when we did this. We went to all, first of all, we looked at the data. So essentially that's it, right? That he goes, uh, it's above my pay grade. I wasn't thinking about the bill of rights when I did this. Are you telling me, how's that not a constitutional crisis? I had the guy, it's very clear. Tucker's like, this is so clearly protected. Uh,

under the constitution and you're defying that by what right like where do you get the authority to i mean if you like if the constitution is the supreme law of the land and you swear an oath to it whatever where do you get the right to to violate it and his response is that's above my pay grade did you imagine it's like no that's exactly your pay grade that is exactly what you specialize in doing it'd be like if i told you that podcasting was above my pay grade

What? That's the job. And so you could have one of the lockdown governors, the only time, correct me if I'm wrong, I really do believe this was the only time that anyone ever, think about what a pathetic media core we have, that this was the only time that a lockdown governor was ever asked directly, where do you get the authority to do this? And his answer is, I don't know. I'm not thinking about that. I don't know. So

Sorry, but hearing AOC and Elizabeth Warren shriek about a constitutional crisis is kind of laughable when all of them cheered this shit on. By the way, why don't you pull up that AOC clip that I sent you? This was a this was a fun one. There were a bunch of clips of Joe Biden saying essentially the same thing. You already alluded to it, Rob. But, you know, AOC is capable of speaking. So it just makes for a better video to play on the on the podcast.

There has been thought, I believe, given to this. Senator Ron Wyden has already issued statements, for example, advising what we should do in a situation like this, which I concur, which is that I believe that the Biden administration should ignore this ruling. I think that we, you know, the courts have the legitimacy to

and they rely on the legitimacy of their rulings. And what they are currently doing is engaged in an unprecedented and dramatic erosion of the legitimacy of the courts. It is the justices themselves, through the deeply partisan and unfounded nature of these rulings, that are undermining their own enforcement. So you're saying the Biden administration should ignore this court, but what

What does that look like? What does that actually mean? You know, I think the interesting thing when it comes to a ruling is that it relies on enforcement. And it is up to the Biden administration to enforce, to choose whether or not to enforce such a ruling. OK, so that was our that was our last constitutional crisis. But see, that one was about the abortion pill.

So that's okay. It's such an odd thing to say in government. So can I just go commit crimes and then it's up to, I guess, whoever to decide whether they want to enforce that I committed those crimes? By the way, I think I actually did get that wrong. I think it's about the funding freeze, not about the...

But so that's essentially – so now if Donald Trump – whether birthright citizenship or the funding freeze or whatever, it's like – so if he defies the courts on this one, somehow that's a constitutional crisis. Yet this isn't because it's an issue you like or something? Like –

I'm talking a little out of pocket here, but firstly, there's something different about executive powers that restrict the monster as opposed to like build the monster. And by monster, I mean government. But more specifically, there was that law last year that Congress couldn't just outsource like the the regulation of businesses because they had been doing that. That was like a big hearing. Right. And it sounds like some of this U.S. aid stuff is.

It's not like Congress specifically – it seems to me delegated money, for example, to give it to Politico. They didn't specifically give – they were just giving money over to the agency. I don't know. Is Congress allowed to do that? Is that the proper use of congressional funds that they can just fund an agency and then an agency can go spend it however?

I don't know enough about this, but it would seem to me like that almost sounds like the regulation thing where they're not actually doing the job. They're just handing it to someone else to do it. Well, it's look, I mean, all of these things, right? Like it's it's the way this thing just grew. And then they always find some rationalization. So like, look.

Of course, if you read the Constitution and you go, Congress is supposed to appropriate the money, and then you see that Congress then just appropriates it to—or if you see, for example, that Congress writes the laws, right? They are the legislative branch. This is how the Constitution—now, then they create an agency that writes as many regulations as they want to that is enforced by law. They call them regulations, not laws, but—

Look, whether or not you want to say, I mean, this is the thing that like legal scholars will argue over these interpretations, but like if you could make an argument that like, well, Congress did write the law and the law was to create the EPA and then the EPA will write all of these regulations and that, but it's obviously so against the spirit of the thing, like whatever, you know what I mean? Like whatever, uh, um, you know, this is like, even when people will say, uh,

When, you know, I've made the point, as many people have many times during this Ukraine-Russia war, that promises were made that NATO wouldn't expand one inch to the east. Okay? And what people who counter that will say is they'll go, nah, that doesn't count because they made those promises to the Soviet Union. And the Soviet Union doesn't exist anymore. Okay?

Now it's Russia, you know, or they'll say that, well, they were really talking about the unification of Germany. They weren't specifically talking about, you know, like advancing NATO into Eastern Europe, which is not exactly true because there is, if you read through the notes from the meetings, like, no, there were a couple of points where they specifically said, because we promised this, we also couldn't bring Poland in and stuff like that. But yeah.

even like getting lost in this debate, it's like, okay, fine. But it was clearly totally against the spirit of the thing, the whole spirit of the thing. If you look through the meeting, like you can, and you can read the minutes of the meeting. It,

The whole thing was like the U.S. and Germany and NATO and England and everybody going to the Soviet Union, be like, hey, if you pull your forces back and allow the reunification of Germany, we won't take advantage of this moment. That was the whole thing over and over and over again. We won't take advantage of this. We won't be dicks to you. We won't put our military hardware closer and closer to your country. Like, this was the whole spirit. I mean, why would you promise to not...

like if you were saying NATO is going to reunify, excuse me, Germany is going to reunify. Well, why would you promise to not move NATO into Eastern Germany? Because it's closer to Russia, right? Because it's coming closer into your sphere. So the whole spirit of the thing was, and like, it's kind of like that with the constitution. Even if you can make some abstract argument that like, well, technically Congress, it's clearly against the spirit of what the thing was suggesting. But, um,

What was that? Oh, sure. Go ahead. To state it a little bit differently, what do you call Congress circumventing our laws to go pay for bioweapons in China? What do you call that if not a constitutional crisis? What do you call having state-funded media that then acts as an authority and tells you that a laptop that would have influenced an election isn't real?

And so when all these people are just screaming about trying to protect the status quo and making sure that they can continue to fund things that obviously should not be funded, like the conversation here is not, all right, Elon Musk should not be allowed to take away funds that have been appropriated by Congress. And clearly we need some other mechanism to clean this up. It seems like they're just shouting to go, we need to continue with what was the status quo.

because it was hiding us moving forward on our agenda or things that the American people didn't want. So it's very rich to declare that a constitutional crisis because what is the return to the status quo? If the status quo was money being funded so that one side could get more favorable, basically have state-funded media and propaganda,

Or circumvent laws such as bioweapons, I mean, gain-of-function research, which is essentially bioweapons. The whole thing, partnering with China on that, just makes zero sense. Especially, by the way, especially with how hawkish so many of the political class are toward China and how they're always using them as the boogeyman and we should be afraid of them.

But behind—this is what we're actually doing, partnering with them on—again, call it a bioweapon or don't call it a bioweapon. In effect, the thing got out and infected, you know, tens of millions—sorry, billions of people. So, yeah, it is still that. Or handouts with just a label of trans study blank, trans this, trans that. That's just a handout to some guy and a way to get more money into—

you know, studying gender studies in college and to try and keep the institution of bullshit alive so that there's some prestige and status in studying these things and being in that universe. Right. Well, I mean, I remember, you know, so I was I was actually a constitutionalist for like a few years.

Like when I first like Ron Paul basically converted me to being a constitutionalist. And then very shortly after that, Murray Rothbard, you know, converted me to full Rothbardian ism. But.

You know, I basically came to the... I came to agree with Spooner about the Constitution. Like, the Constitution... He said it really beautifully. I'll probably butcher this up, but his line was, the Constitution either authorized such a government as we have now, or it was unable to stop it. Either way, it should be disregarded. You know, like, no matter what, this is where we are. But...

Even for those brief—I mean, there were always parts of the Constitution that I thought were really bad. The Interstate Commerce Clause I thought is terrible. But if you look at the way the thing grows, right, there's this famous—there was a famous—

that went to the Supreme Court during the New Deal when FDR was president. And it was a guy... So the Interstate Commerce Clause basically says that the federal government has authority to regulate commerce between the states and I think between the states and foreign nations. And I think they also said like Native American tribes or something like that in there. So they have some authority to regulate, you know, the... Now during the New Deal, they started going crazy with all of these rules and

about how much crops you could grow. It's just insane New Deal stuff that prolonged the Great Depression, and it's why the crash happened in 29, and the Great Depression lasted all the way up through World War II. Double-digit unemployment rates the entire time. FDR's New Deal was an absolute disaster. But so there was this guy who basically got... He got prosecuted for growing crops in his own farm.

He was not growing more than you're supposed to grow or something like that. And his defense was like, I'm not taking it across state lines. So the federal government has no right to regulate, right? This is not interstate commerce. This is just me growing something on my property. You have no authority. And the Supreme Court determined that because he was, because that could affect the price of crops in general, that it was there for interstate commerce. Now, I mean,

I'm sure this is the way the world works smart people can rationalize almost anything, but come on man I just look at that you go. It's totally against the spirit of the thing. This is not in any way Interstate commerce, this is a man growing something on his own property But they've interpreted the interstate commerce Clause to give them license to regulate what you grow on your own property so

You want to argue that that's constitutional? It totally violates the spirit of the thing, so obviously. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Monetary Metals. I've been telling you about this company for a while. I love these guys. Are you tired of paying storage fees and exorbitant premiums for physical gold all while it just sits there collecting dust?

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What to ever have it kind of reminds me when um, you know like sometimes when leftists will like invoke Christianity to try to own a conservative or something like that But it's like dude, you don't care about Christianity at all. So like what are you doing? This is such a bullshit game It's the same thing as when these leftists invoke the Constitution you guys don't care about this shit at all And you know that

All right. Let me just because we're we're it's almost the top of the hour here. So maybe I'll get into this. The stuff I wanted to say to the Libertarian Party. So I was going to yesterday I was writing out a long I was going to put out a long tweet that was like a message to the Libertarian Party. And I started going through and it was just getting way too long.

And I was like, this just isn't good for Twitter. And also, I'm much better at speaking than writing. So I'm not that great at speaking. That's how bad I am at writing. So I figured maybe I would just say this because I was thinking about this the other day. And it was after I had a phone call with Michael Heiss. And I kind of was thinking about some of this stuff. And, you know, there was just, you know, obviously, Angela just stepped down as chair. And it it kind of seems like

the Libertarian Party is in a different place than I think it's ever been. Certainly at a drastically different place than it was when I joined. I joined the party in 2018 and I became very active in the party after the Joe Jorgensen, Spike Cohen run in 2020. And I've been less active in the party more recently. But I was just thinking about kind of

of the issues that when we first came into the Libertarian Party, and you remember well, Rob, because you were there, that we were kind of trying to insert. When I say we, I mean the Mises Caucus, you know, led by Michael Heiss. And there were all of these issues that we were trying to insert that, looking back at it now, have aged so well. And I

I was just kind of... Now, by the way, I'm not claiming that the Mises Caucus did everything perfect. There were problems, starting with me, and me changing my mind about running, I think, really pulled the rug out from underneath the...

from the caucus and at that point the parties, you know, recruiting strategy, fundraising strategy, their plans going forward. And it's, you know, that's on me and it's kind of on all of us that we really did not have a viable backup plan. And until Angela kind of figured one out. But

There were, I would certainly say there were people the Mises Caucus supported who we should not have, um, that turned out to not be worth our support. And perhaps we should have known that at the time. Um,

But, you know, part of this was that I had this phone call with Michael Heiss. And then part of it was that Nicole Shanahan, I don't know if you saw this, but when she was on the podcast, she said at one point that the whole Maha Maga coalition doesn't happen without the Libertarian Party and that the Libertarian Party was actually the vehicle that brought Bobby Kennedy and Nicole Shanahan and Trump's people together and turned into what is, you know, debatably the most powerful political coalition in the world right now. And.

I was just thinking back on this, like, Rob, do you remember that really the Mises caucus guys, at least in the Libertarian Party, were almost the sole faction who was arguing that wokeism is cancer and we need to get this the hell out of libertarians' minds? And just like, how well did that age? Like, it's just, also, we're also finding out now, even to a larger degree, although we've been saying this for years, that the whole thing was totally artificial.

It was totally a government construct. Like, this wasn't... Wokeism was never something that just arose organically from the bottom up. It was always a top-down government program, in effect. And, like, it's just...

Anyways, I mean, remember, like, look, there were when Joe Jorgensen ran for president, there were staffers who were tweeting things like it's not enough to be passively not racist. We must be actively anti-racist or posting things about the trans genocide. Do you remember this? But they just post about the trans genocide because like.

13 trans people had been killed this year, so they called it a transgenesis. It's just like these insane things. And I do think that, like, man, the Mises Caucus really was the faction arguing against that. And just in hindsight, we were totally right. Totally vindicated. Is that fair? Yes. That's what I like to hear. The other thing, which I thought was an interesting one, was immigration. I think the Mises Caucus, and this was not...

the entirety of the Mises caucus. There was division within the caucus, but I think it was guys in the Mises caucus who were really like, hey, I think we need to rethink immigration here. And I think that this idea of supporting open borders is not the correct libertarian position. And it's also just politically unviable. Like you can't. And now we're at a point where like,

super majorities of the American people support mass deportations? Now, I'm just saying, whether or not you're convinced by the libertarian argument on it,

You've got to kind of admit that it's a DOA position for a political party in 2025 to be running on open the border. Zero restrictions on who comes in. I mean, even Chase, who ended up being the nominee, he wasn't running on any of the woke stuff. He wasn't running on open borders because even he knows it's a goddamn disaster. He was running on trans whoreshit.

A little bit. But even I think he backed off like that. Then he would he was on the record for shit he had said before. And so he'd get asked about that, like by Liz Wolf. And he didn't. But he didn't really want to talk about it. It's not like he was bringing that up. Like, here's what I'm running on. You know what I mean? It's just when people would grill him about it.

He would have to admit like, yeah, I am kind of a woke tard at heart. So he said it's part of liberty that a person should be able to make their own blah, blah, blah. And he didn't own up to, hey, I'm an idiot with bad opinions and no one should have fronted me. Yeah. OK, fair enough. But anyway, that I think. And then the other thing that I was really thinking about was just that there's this thing that we really went all in on.

And it's hard for people to remember that, like, you know, back in 2019, 2020, the fierce Mises caucus opposition was like, you guys are right wing culture warriors because we wanted to abandon the woke shit. They said, you guys aren't real libertarians because we didn't support open borders. And they also said, I remember this. We always laid out the strategy that the strategy for libertarian candidates should be to utilize the new media.

podcasts that we should be like listen they're gonna black us out of the corporate media but we can totally dominate this new alternative media that's grown bigger than the corporate media and we were mocked for this I don't know people said oh yeah podcast bros that's the key to electoral success sure Twitter's not real life and all these shit like that and then you literally just watched as the Vivek Ramaswamy

Bobby Kennedy and of course Donald Trump, these guys became superstars off of that scene. Okay, Donald Trump was a superstar before, but he won the election off of that scene. I just think like for the Libertarian Party going forward, like,

at least take those lessons that I think we were like just objectively right about. I think there's a lot to be said for that. Firstly, there was the cartoonishness of you coming in with the largest coalition and being called divisive and the unity of the party and whatever that nonsense was. And then one of the things that was, or the two most annoying things about that, well, there's the autisms and lack of women, but once you move past that,

The most annoying things about the Libertarian Party, especially with Joe Jorgensen, is that they absolutely flaked on the COVID thing, which was, you know, I mean, talk about a libertarian issue. Oh, yeah. And then there was this kind of underlining of the old guard that felt like they that we needed to appeal to the liberal stupidity and the anti-racist, whatever that I don't know, even know what that means. But whatever that thing is, it felt like the Libertarian Party thwarted

Yeah.

as opposed to just being more macho and what Donald Trump is and just preaching, well, you've got the message that everyone wants, and that's that freedom's awesome. And we never should have shied away from it and trying to pretend like we're left makes no sense. That shit was always gay. Listen, there's no better way to say it. And I think you're 100% right that Trump winning and all these other conversations happening now kind of showcases just how wrong that old guard of the libertarians were. Look, it's very hard for me to...

just say this in a more delicate way, but the old guard of the Libertarian Party, and this was something... And I think this is part of what rubbed a lot of those guys the wrong way about the Mises caucus, was that the party was permeated by feminine men. And this is kind of an unfortunate thing. You know, Rogan had a great rant on this the other day. But there is...

Look, obviously, there are more masculine women and there are more feminine men, okay? They are not nearly as appealing to people. And that's just like... It's an unfortunate thing. Like, I don't know what to... If you imagine... Like, imagine...

If you're a woman, if you're one of the three women listening to this show, OK, and imagine and you're into let's say you're a straight woman. So we're down to one. All right. If you if you imagine like you saw you were out and you saw a guy who you thought was just like incredibly good looking.

Like an incredibly good looking guy. Like everything you're looking for in a guy, you see this guy and you're just like immediately very attracted to him. And then like you go over to talk to him or he comes over to talk to you and he's like, what's up, girlfriend? You're immediately going to lose all attraction. Like it's just going to like that's just not...

Okay, there might be exceptions to that rule, but generally speaking, him being super feminine is going to turn you off immediately. Likewise, if there's a guy, you see some super hot chick, and you go over to approach her, and she's like, sup, bro, and punches you in the shoulder and belches in front of you, that's going to be like, now you're still a man, so you won't lose all attraction to her, but that's going to be the biggest turnoff you could have. There's just something where like,

And what Rogan was saying the other day was he was talking about David Hogg and he was like, good luck getting dudes. Good luck getting dudes back on board. Guys in general are not going to follow the lead of a super feminine man. That's just not going to work out. Like if you're the guy who's like a guy barely brushes by your shoulder and you're like, oh,

I was assaulted. You're not the leader. You're not a leader of men. And I'm sorry. That's just, you know, it might be a harsh truth, but it's like, yeah, it's a truth. And so you can, and there was something, and I think it goes hand in hand with that. But one of the most important things that the Mises caucus was always pushing. And I remember getting in arguments with people about this. And it speaks to what you were talking about with the COVID stuff is that look, if we're going to be a third party,

and we're going to stand for this libertarian philosophy, then we have to, we have to

Take on the controversial issues while they're happening. We have to grab the third rail with both hands. That's the only way to make noise. And you know, that you have to—and this is one of the things, I'm not saying the Mises caucus messaging was always perfect. There was always—I always had critiques of messaging. I have critiques of almost every libertarian messenger, almost every one. There's like five that I think get it completely right.

But one thing you could say about the Libertarian Party after the Mises caucus took over it, took over the thing. The war in Ukraine broke out. We were against it immediately, loudly, when it cost something. Yeah, we got smeared as Russian assets or whatever. Who cares? They're going to smear you if you're ever being successful, no matter what. The war in Gaza broke out against it immediately when it was a really white hot. You know, these things like

You could just watch it happen. We know still to this day, right? Me and you benefit so much from having been right about COVID when it happened. Like people gain trust in you. And this would be this huge thing that the libertarian, it's so insane that the libertarian party doesn't get to own that.

That they don't get to say, hey, there is a party that was opposed to lockdowns when it happened. They can't really say that because they weren't. And like that, there is something about that that's connected to the masculine energy thing. There is something about that that's like, no, that's what it is to be a man. It's like, no, I'm going to say what I fucking believe. And if, oh, that means I got to take some arrows. Good. Fuck you. I don't care. You know what I mean? Like there's just the party needs that.

Anyway, I do just think I just kind of wanted to share that. I do think that there were, you know, and then, of course, the other big one, the last one I'll mention before we go is being well, being willing to leverage the Libertarian Party. You know that nobody else except people in the Mises caucus were possibly ever going to consider that doing what Angela did. And you can sit here and have your grapes about it and you could complain. She saved Ross's life.

Saved a guy's life who was wrongly imprisoned. It's more than the party's accomplished in its entire history. And that is a very real accomplishment. And then on top of that, where you see so much of the stuff that we're getting out of Doge and just the way the public conversation has changed. I mean, the Libertarian Party was an important part of this. And I think the Libertarian vote was an important part of it. Look, dude, you could just look at the numbers, right? So there's like...

You know, the Libertarian Party was finishing in third place in the presidential election every year. I think Gary Johnson got like four and a half million votes. I think Joe Jorgensen got like one and a half million votes. Chase finished like fifth. He lost to Jill Stein. He lost to Bobby Kennedy. He lost to the guy who told people not to vote for him. OK, so like where did all those Libertarian votes go?

Seems like they went to Trump. You know, like, it seems like that's kind of what happened here is that these votes went to Donald Trump. And with the political makeup of the United States of America, if you're talking about like 3 million votes, that's a huge deal, you know? And that's... So...

Look, I think these are all things that the Libertarian Party in the next iteration of it, whatever that's going to look like. And to whatever extent I'm involved in that, this is the type of thing that I would be encouraging them is like, look, man, say what you will about the caucus. We were dead right on these most crucial issues, which really were the things that we led with.

That were like, look, this is what the party should be about. And I think it's really hard looking back at it to not at least admit that. Like, if you're being fair, anybody who's following has been following the LP circles for all these years. You know that all the things I just listed, there were major debates about this and people were arguing against us on it. And they're, you know, where are they now?

Anybody really arguing? Hey, if we want to really have some success, we got to be social justice warriors. Social justice warriors for open borders. What a great political strategy that is. So anyway, just something I was thinking about and I wanted to do that little rant. We can wrap up on that. I got to head over to Princeton University. Looking forward to it. Hope to see some of you guys out there. Catch you next time. Peace.