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What's up, what's up, everybody? Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem. I am Dave Smith. He is Robbie the Fire Bernstein. We are back.

from, from San Diego. We had a great weekend out there. We had a rough time getting home, the two of us, but we are, uh, we are back home. How are you feeling today, Rob? Uh, it was a fine weekend out in San Diego. And for all you good listeners, porch season is in session. I've got St. Augustine, Florida and West Palm beach this weekend. And then I think the following weekend I've got Lorden, uh,

which is right outside of DC. I got Virginia Beach. I got some spot out in Jersey and then a whole run of Texas shows. So we're going to be porching hard. Come join us. Hell yeah. Make it out there. Of course, me and Rob's next date together is in 10 days. We'll be out in Appleton, Wisconsin at the Skyline Comedy Club, which I've heard great things about. The

This is my, uh, it'll be my first time ever in Appleton. Um, but I've heard that there's a great club and it's a great town. I've already heard a lot of people are excited to come out. So looking forward to that. And then after that, we're, we're back at a wise guys in salt Lake city. We had a great time there, uh, last year when we were out there, we're up, you could still, can you still ski in June out there? But I, hopefully if, uh, unless I'm still shuffling around like a Chinese lady with an injured back, I'll do some mountain biking, some hiking or something. There you go. Yeah.

And then, of course, it all leads up to the one we're real excited about is the Denver Comedy Works. For the first time, me and Rob will be out there for a full weekend. Then we're back at Hilarities, the Comedy Connection in Providence, Tacoma, Spokane, Detroit, Tampa, Florida. A lot of fun stuff coming up. ComicDaveSmith.com to grab those tickets. All right.

So let's get into today's show. There are a few things that I really wanted to talk about. Let's start with Donald Trump, who sat down with Kristen Walker. I do not...

For the life of me, I do not understand why Donald Trump still does interviews with these people. I just I don't get it. It's like you're isn't your whole thing that you broke this media apparatus. Why? It just look, whatever. He could talk to whoever he wants to. People sure do enjoy him owning the journalists and stuff like that. I just don't when it seems like you're.

It seems like you're breathing life back into your enemy institution that you already crushed. Why go give them a thing that's going to be big ratings? That is beyond me.

There was one moment in the conversation that's really been going viral. It is Donald Trump discussing the ramifications of his tariff policy. And so here, let's play it and then respond. I was personally myself a little bit surprised that he took this line, but let's watch.

You said this week, got a lot of attention. You were at your cabinet meeting. You said, quote, I'm going to quote what you said, maybe the children will have $2 instead of $30. And maybe the $2 will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally. Are you saying that your tariffs will cause some prices to go up?

No, I think a tariff is going to be great for us because it's going to make us rich. But you said some dolls are going to cost more. Isn't that an acknowledgement that some prices will go up? I don't think a beautiful baby girl that's 11 years old needs to have...

$30, I think they can have $3 or $4. Because what we were doing with China was just unbelievable. We had a trade deficit of hundreds of billions of dollars with China. When you say they could have $3 instead of $30, are you saying Americans could see empty store shelves? No, I'm not saying that. I'm just saying they don't need to have $30. They can have three. They don't need to have 250 pencils. They can have five.

said this week. Got a lot of... All right. So this was the comment from Donald Trump that is drawing a lot of scrutiny. And I gotta say here, Rob, I think...

Listen, I think we've tried our best to do a good job here of just like calling balls and strikes. So like I will be the first one to give Donald Trump credit when he does something good. I'll be the first one to criticize him when I think he does something wrong. I'll be the first one to defend him when I think he's being unfairly, you know, villainized by the corporate media or whatever. This is retarded bullshit.

This is just ridiculous. It's ridiculous on so many goddamn levels. First of all, it's like you can't have it both ways, dude. You can't say that, like, maybe you only need $2. You don't need $500 or whatever. But then also go, oh, no, but it's not going to raise prices at all. It's like, which one are you talking about here? I also, by the way, you know, I do. I find this in a weird way to be kind of an interesting topic. This is something that I've.

I've talked a lot about with like close friends and family members about just how we get our kids too much stuff these days. And like, it's, I do feel like my, my house is just like full.

covered in toys. And I was like, you know, maybe in some way, like if my kids had less toys, they'd appreciate the ones they have more or something like that. But that's a very different conversation than a conversation about a government policy that makes it more expensive to get your kids toys. And I'm curious to get your thoughts on this, Rob. But I just for a few reasons, I find this to be totally indefensible. And OK, here's one of the major ones.

Well, a couple of them. I mean, obviously, the point that we've made a million times that you could keep making. He could just sit here and assert that the tariffs are going to make us rich again. It's like, well, which one is it?

Are we going to be getting more dolls or less dolls? You know, like, what are you talking about here? But if you're saying the tariffs are going to make us rich, you got a whole lot of problems there. Like, why? OK, then, like, why? Why wouldn't a full blockade make us rich? Why? Why do we trade with the world at all then? Why don't we get super rich and just never trade with? Why don't we make ourselves if the principle applies? Let's stop trading between the states. Right.

Right. Like let the states get real. Let's just stop trading between households. Just you produce everything in your household. If this principle is true and it makes you rich to stop trading with others, I don't see what the limiting factor there is. But regardless of that, one of the like when I'm having these thoughts and these conversations with friends and family of mine, I also recognize that I'm not in the financial position that everybody's in.

Many people are not in the financial position I'm in. And there's lots of good data on this. But if you look at the amount, like since the lockdowns and the price inflation that followed the insane monetary policy of 2020, 2021 credit card debt skyrocketed, like a lot of families are buying those dolls on the credit card.

Also, there are families that the difference won't be having 30 dolls or having two. There's families that currently have two that the answer will be have zero, which maybe would have been a better question, you know, for Kristen Walker to ask. Like, how about that? How about if it's the difference between now your kid doesn't get to play with the doll? The other thing, and I'm sorry, but there is a good argument.

That like, you know, maybe we give our kids too many toys. Maybe my house is filled with too much cheap toys that were made in China. And maybe in general, kids would appreciate things more if they just had, you know, like we do have for people, at least in the situation, like a certain amount of abundance. We have more than we really need. And there is to some degree like a minimalist argument for why, like, you don't want to have too much more than you actually need. Yeah.

Of all of the people in the history of the world who have ever existed, I don't know that there's one human being who is worse equipped to be the one making that argument.

than Donald fucking Trump. I mean, I'm sorry, Rob, that is goddamn insane. It is insane to spend your entire adult life being the poster child of capitalist excess to the point that you're going to, I'm going to take a shit on a gold plated toilet. I'm going to live in a, you know what I'm saying? Like it's just for Donald Trump.

To be the one making the argument that people and like, again, it's just I'm sorry. I just I'm somebody who's driven by like principles and logic and just explain this to me. Then, like, if this is what you're saying, then wasn't price inflation actually a good thing?

Wasn't Joe Biden's economy actually good? I mean, it forced you probably to get less things, you know, maybe that's nice. Maybe you don't need all that stuff. Maybe you should have less stuff. Ah,

i don't know dude i mean this is just to me to try to sell this and not spin it as like look this is the cost i'm going to be honest with you these are the negatives that are associated with this policy but here's what i think the benefits are but to spin this as this is a benefit and of all people for donald trump to be spinning it's like i'm i'm sorry i just can't defend this this is too ridiculous

What are your thoughts? Well, I think that's a very funny observation. I hadn't even thought about that of Trump preaching people on that. They don't need to be to consume an excess. Um,

My thought was a little bit different that, you know, Trump saying Trump picked a very good example here because when he says, hey, your kid will have three toys instead of 30. I think we can all go, oh, yeah, if my kid needs to have less toys and there's an American job for him to have the less toys, maybe that's a worthwhile tradeoff. And so we picked a very good example for selling it. She asked a great first question. She didn't write ask the right follow up question, which is, are you acknowledging that prices are going to go up?

Because now what happens if prices are going up on things that aren't toys? What if we're talking about not being able to buy a washer and dryer? What if we're talking about not being able to buy clothes? And then how much central planning do we want in our government? Where are we going to figure out what goods are considered excess goods that the government can decide we're going to put a tariffs on those. And then they're going to be other favorite industries that don't have the tariffs because the government can understand, Hey, you being able to consume this such as a car, you need a car to get to work.

right like maybe we could maybe we could break them down by essential and non-essential goods

Which already is kind of happening. I read this article. Firstly, is for car manufacturers, the increase in cost, I think, was expected to be $6,000. And so Trump temporarily has halted the tariffs on some base items such as like steel. And so because General Motors was able to lobby the government and that it would affect their business, you know, their now preferred industry.

What about every small business owner that can't actually get Donald Trump's ear and explain, hey, you didn't give me enough notice on this. You're ruining my business. I don't have enough time to make these adjustments. And so to me, part of the tariff just speaks to do you want central planning in the economy? Do you want the president to be able to say these are goods that you should not have in excess? So.

We're gonna tariff them. These are important goods or these are favored industries. There's not gonna be a tariff on it. And then what's gonna be the fallout from the market versus central planning? This is a president saying, "Hey, I don't think it's important for you to be able to consume blank amount of this item." Now, the two that he wants to tell you about is pencils and dolls.

But what other items are you going to see price increases on? Are those ones that will be vastly more detrimental to your lifestyle? And then what? Does he make an adjustment down the line? Did he not foresee it? What does those adjustment periods look like? This is all just the stupidity of central planning. Yeah, no, I think that's absolutely right. And there is something like the point you're making is a really good one. And there's something very frustrating about like,

Constantly, almost like minimizing what the issue with rising prices is. You would think after living through the last few years of serious price inflation that that would be gone.

um, that it's like, yeah, dude, this isn't just like, oh yeah, you got to pay a couple more dollars for cheap Chinese garbage or something like that. It's like, what about really important items? And there's always, this is something that's always been frustrating to me. Um, as I've, I've, I've said this many times over the years and I really, I'm, I'm,

very influenced by Hans Hermann Hoppe, the great German libertarian theorist and economist. But he always used to say that essentially, like, that libertarians needed to learn a conservative lesson and conservatives needed to learn a libertarian lesson. And from my perspective, I think most good libertarians did learn that conservative lesson, which is like that there's something about, like,

If you want to have a free society and you want to have a stable society, and particularly if you want to have a libertarian society where the government isn't like hyper regulating social activity, well, then you've got to you've got to find other ways by which to promote social cohesion and normalcy. And like you can't just have a nation of degeneracy. That's not going to work out. And that's kind of the conservative lesson that libertarians needed to learn.

But then there's like an economic lesson that conservatives need to learn that they just never seem to make any progress toward. Maybe sometimes when the opposition party is in, they seem like they are. But it's like things like this. Like you if you want to say, oh, rising prices is just you know what I mean? That's just your kid having three dolls instead of 30 dolls or something like that. It's like, listen.

First of all, as I mentioned, we've seen what rising prices did over the last few years. There is no... You can't remove these economic issues from cultural issues, societal issues, religious issues, all of it. You know, it's a...

I think it's right around the divorce rate is like right around 50%, something like 50% of marriages end in divorce. The number one reason for divorce is financial difficulties.

This is the number one thing that breaks families up. This isn't just a question of like, are your kids going to have $30 or $2? In fact, a lot of times it might be the question of whether your kids are going to have two parents or not. It's not a game to just make life more expensive, especially...

When so many Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, so many Americans are putting necessities on the credit card. You know, like there's some of these studies where it's like, I mean, you could sometimes they manipulate the numbers and it's not exactly what it is, but it's still pretty close. But like where they'll be these things of like what percentage of an of Americans can come up with a thousand dollars for an emergency? And it's like a shockingly high percentage of them can't.

And like or, you know, sometimes like I've seen people nitpick these studies where I'll be like, well, they do have credit cards like they could put it on the credit card if they needed to. But still, like it's still pretty wild. And like the idea that we're going to embark on a policy that is going to make life harder for these people is not something it's not something that should be shrugged off any more than during lockdowns when they shrug off the non-essential jobs policy.

Who cares about that job? That's not essential. Go look at the mental health results of that policy. It was not good. Oh, yeah. Natalie pulled up one of them here. It says most Americans can't afford $1,000 emergency expense report fines. Now, I have seen I think there was something where people said, like, this didn't account for credit cards or something like that.

But regardless, even if if you're if most Americans can't just come up with a thousand dollars with that, that's a really that's that indicates something. There's a real problem there. And of course, there's a lot of government policies that have contributed to that. But I just like I will I will never be on the side of anybody, particularly people, you know, when it's a conversation about.

between a billionaire and a multimillionaire which is what you're watching here this conversation between donald trump and uh and and kristen walker and it's like yeah like you you both anytime listen i don't have money like either of them have money but i'm doing well enough that if i were to ever talk about prices going up i would always be like conscious of the fact that like

Oh, there's a lot of people who that's a completely different situation for. And like, yeah, it is kind of true that like if my coffee, my cup of coffee goes from like four dollars to six dollars, it doesn't mean that much to me. But I also know that there's like there's a whole lot of people out there who it's like, OK, well, I can't get coffee out now if that's the case. Like there's and it is, you know, the the.

What is it? The average, the median salary I think is under $60,000 a year. I think the median household income is under $80,000 a year. And if you're in a situation where you're making around the average or beneath the average salary, prices going up is a huge deal to you. It's crushing. It changes your trajectory of where you were going in life. You're like, oh shit, thought I was gonna be comfortable for a second here.

Nope, I'm back to being totally screwed. And, you know, I just think there's something really fucked up about rich people downplaying that. Like, that's an acceptable, you know, again, like I said, Donald Trump, of all people, being like, no, it's acceptable that you'll be able to, you'll be able to, um...

To have less stuff. What is it? The median salary in U.S. 2025 is about $61,000. Okay. Did I say under 60? Okay, I was wrong. I guess it's a little over 60. But still, I was pretty close. Yeah. Yeah.

I don't know. Tariffs are bad economics. If you want to make an argument that they can be used as a leveraging tool to get a better outcome, okay, fine. But then your whole argument hinges on the outcome. But the tariffs themselves are just a bad policy. And for this reason, that raises prices and that makes life harder for middle class and working class people destroys poor people.

And yeah, it doesn't matter that much to rich people. That's the truth. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is ProtonMail. ProtonMail is an email service by Proton designed to replace your Gmail account for all of your important stuff so that you can have a more secure emailing experience.

Your Gmail is full of junk after so many years after all. So switch to ProtonMail. It's a great way to start all over again. You can continue using your Gmail for garbage, but use ProtonMail for the important stuff. Proton will always have a freemium version, and you can later change to a paid product if you're convinced about that.

the product. Go create an account for free today. ProtonMail, it's the more secure way to do it. Make that your default email. You're going to be happy when you're more secure. Check them out. You can click the link in the episode description to go create an account for free today. All right, let's get back into the show. That's really what it is. Okay, anything else on the tariff talk or you want to switch gears here, Rod? Let's switch gears. Okay.

So I did I didn't want to make this an entire episode, but I did feel and for those of you who listen to the the members only episode this week, by the way, we do record a fourth episode that is only for subscribing members. But you got to sign up at part of the part of the problem dot com in order to get that episode. But so sometimes it goes like this where I'll figure something out.

on the members only episode. And I'll be like, you know what? I didn't even want to say this on the show for everybody, but I'll say it for you guys. And then as I'm saying it, I'm like, you know what? I think I'm going to have to bring this up on Monday. So you guys who watched that episode, we may have seen me develop this thought a little bit, but I do feel that I kind of have to respond to Matt Walsh.

who was on a Tucker Carlson show. And they, I ended up coming up for quite a bit of the conversation. And what, what started it of course, was they were talking about the debate with Douglas Murray. We don't really have to get back into that. This has kind of been litigated to death, but it was an interesting dynamic. So here you have Tucker Carlson who has, let's say,

Him and Ben Shapiro have been not seeing eye to eye for the last year and a half or so. And now he's got Ben Shapiro's guy, his big number one guy over at Daily Wire. And the topic of, you know, Israel is coming up. And it did. Again, much like I said with when Jordan Peterson went on Rogan, I did appreciate that I thought

I got it was like about as nice as I could expect somebody from the Daily Wire to speak about me there. There was an interesting thing in this clip. And there's there's one part where, look, I don't even know how to say it. I can't like beat around the bush. There is this strain of kind of non interventionist types of.

who do not wish to criticize Israel.

And I would say both Tim Pool and Matt Walsh fall into this category. Now, full disclosure, I like Tim Pool and I like Matt Walsh. I don't know Matt Walsh. I've never met him. I have met Tim Pool many times and I liked him a lot. But I also like Matt. Like, I think Matt's an important voice. I think his documentaries are good. I think he's like he's been a very effective voice arguing against a lot of woke insanity.

um he's a strong voice for like social conservatism and i think that's been particularly important over the last few years but both of them kind of take on this um they they have this tone and this line of reasoning whenever it comes to uh israel specifically weirdly not with other countries but with israel where they will take the non-interventionists

officially, but then they will also kind of like mock people who they claim have Israel derangement syndrome. They just they get fidgety and defensive in a way that they never would with other foreign countries. And this is part of like what Matt Walsh is talking about in the episode. It comes to a lot of this like, look, I don't care. I'm an American. I don't care what's going on over there. And

Just to be clear, I think that would be a completely reasonable position if the U.S. government wasn't already involved in this. But once we are, I think you kind of don't get to play that card anymore. It's like on the level of like in 2006, sitting here and being like, I just don't care about Iraq anymore.

why is everyone so obsessed about what's going on in fallujah i mean who cares this is america it's like oh okay well the reason why we're focusing on that right now is because our boys are dropping bombs on human beings over there right now oh and they're doing it for a reasons like they were lied into it and likewise

When it comes to Israel today, it's like, listen, dude, if you're a non-interventionist, well, we are intervening. We are propping up this country. This country is actively trying to get us more intervened in the region. And so at a certain point, not criticizing them just comes off as cowardice. Like, as I said to you on the members only stream, Rob, I have and I have always said this.

If you do not care about politics, I have no counter argument to that. Like if you're like, dude, I just don't care. I want to tune out. I want to tune out, tune off, go live my life. I don't want to focus on all this other stuff. I have no argument to that. Fine. Then go do that. I focus on this stuff because it fascinates me. If it doesn't fascinate you, then I completely understand it. But if you do this,

And you're a political commentator for a living. And you also kind of brand yourself like the guy who I'll say the thing. And I don't care about the flack that I get back from it. I'll say it. It's like, okay, but you won't say this one.

You there's this one line. And I understand you don't want to cross the line because there's a lot of flack that comes with it. Like, OK, but then like, I don't know, there's something I kind of can't respect you being this person that like I think if you're if you're going to say that you're against all these wars and you're a non interventionist, then I don't know how that comes without being critical of Israel. Yeah.

No, you don't have to go down. You don't have to be like a Jew hater. You don't have to be deranged. You don't have to make it something you focus a ton on. But it is on the level of being like, look, I'm a...

It's like you're sitting in 2004 and you're like, I'm a non-interventionist. I don't believe America should fight wars that we don't have to be involved in. I don't think we should do nation building or democracy promotion or occupying foreign countries. I don't believe in any of that. And I'd be like, I know, right? That's why I can't stand Bush and Cheney. And they'd be like, what's with the obsession with Bush and Cheney, dude? Like, I don't even care about them. They're in Washington, D.C. and I live out here in Alabama. Like, I don't care. That's all. It's like, oh, no.

come on like let's just be real here take this to its logical conclusion that i'm not even saying you don't have to obsessively hate cheney and bush but if i ask you have to go like yeah i don't like yeah those guys are wrong i don't know and there was something about this which was so like i don't know dude it's like matt walsh has all the balls in the world when it comes to calling out gender theory you know

But then, like, I'm just watching how uncomfortable he is in this Tucker interview when Tucker's asking him specific questions. And I just found it interesting. And then he did at one point in the debate, he tried to insist that Douglas had made one really good point. That's the clip that we're about to play. And then we'll we'll respond to that. But any any thoughts on any of this stuff, Rob?

Well, I think you said it during the Iraq war, you weren't criticizing what we're doing. Like, you know, we spend way too much money over in Israel. Their lobby is a little bit too advanced and good at strong arming our government and making sure that they continue to have their support. And so if you're America first and you don't like foreign aid and you don't like other countries intervening in our government and managing to get a lot of aid, well then Israel's probably on top of the list of people that you'd want to criticize. Yeah.

And so, you know, I'm just saying, if you totally believe, hey, we don't need to be sending and propping up other countries and spending our money abroad or being involved in these messes. If you want to look at the current world environment and what the most egregious actors are of people who are getting our money, I guess you'd be opposing Ukraine right now and you'd be opposing Israel. And if you do a daily show or a pretty frequent show, we are commenting on things going on in the news and you don't like our money being spent in those places.

Why aren't you talking on the two biggest topics on the exact thing that's important to you? Yep, 100%. And believe me, there's a lot of things I wish we didn't have to focus on. Almost everything I focus on, I wish we didn't have to focus on.

Like, I don't I don't think there should be gone to work during COVID. Yeah, right. Exactly. I want to talk about it. We wouldn't have had to spend any time talking about lockdowns if the government hadn't instituted lockdowns. But the thing is that they did.

And so then just not talking about it isn't really an option unless you're going to leave this space altogether, unless you're just going to unless you're going to be that guy who goes, I'm not interested. I'm tuning out. I'm focusing on my own life. If you are more power to you, if you're not and you're staying in this, like I'm going to be a political commentator through the year 2020. You got to have something to say about lockdowns.

For it or against it. You can't be indifferent. It's too big of a deal. Okay, let's jump in to the clip here where Tucker asks Matt Walsh a very pointed question. And notice, see, by the way, if you think I'm like, I don't think I'm like inferring something that's not there. Just right away, pay attention to how the reaction. It was interesting. I really did. And I thought they both made valid points. They both know more about the subject than I do. A lot more. That was very clear to me.

Um, and I, I think he could chop off the first hour of the debate. It was an interesting conversation. Who do you think made a more compelling case on the mat once they actually got down to the question at hand? I don't know. I think that it's just, you can watch him going like, all right, there's the correct answer. There's what Ben Shapiro will say about this. Um,

I mean, it was literally that I've never seen a moment like that other than when I asked Bobby Kennedy if he thought Israel had too much influence on American politics. And it's just this like long pause of like weighing out every so careful. Just answer it, Matt. Like, what is a woman? Just answer the question, dude. It's a real simple one. You know, I mean, look, he went on a whole thing before this about how Doug was just basically made this whole nonsense experts argument and all of this. But like, anyway.

Okay, so now he's trying to figure out how is there a way that you can say Douglas Morey made some point or something like that. So here's what he's got. He made one thing. He made one point that I thought was really good, which is a simple one. I like simple points. Me too. And at one point he asked Dave, because once they got into arguing about what happened after October 7th, how Israel responded, and Dave has all of his criticisms about what Israel has done.

And then Douglas Murray said, well, what would you have them do? What would you prefer for them to have done? If they want to rescue the hostages and also destroy Hamas, what do you want them to do instead? And then from what I remember, Dave, he pointed out that, okay, destroying Hamas and rescuing hostages are kind of, are not necessarily the same objective. And then they started talking about rescuing hostages. They didn't really circle back to the destroying Hamas part.

And I would have liked to see him stick on that point, like get an answer. So if you're Israel, you have a foreign, you know, these foreign enemy that's come into your country, slaughtered hundreds of people. What should how should you respond to that? And I think he should have he should have pressed that and he didn't. And so it became sort of unfocused because I would have I would have legitimately like to hear the answer to that.

For sure. What what would you have them do? So we could talk about maybe there are other ways to rescue the hostages. But do you think they should try to destroy Hamas, given what happened? And if you do, how else should they go about it? But they kind of moved on to other things and it became this kind of it became a sort of unfocused, in my mind, sort of like circular conversation situation.

As these debates tend to devolve into very often. If you were in control of what people on Twitter debated, what would they be debating right now? Let's pause it here. All right. So...

You know, really the thing that kind of got this response out of me was that Matt Walsh very specifically asks, like, I would like to hear the answer to this question. So let's try. I mean, I've given this a thousand times, but why not? Let's give it again. No matter how many times I say this is there'll always be people who go, Dave never offers a real solution. He never offers an alternative. Yeah.

If I'm being completely honest, I don't even remember being asked for this in the debate. But the debate went in so many different directions. I do. I got to start, though, by saying I think it's kind of funny that after this most pregnant of pauses, Matt Walsh comes up with, you know, Douglas Murray did make one really great point. It was a simple point. And I like a simple point. And then never gave a point. He claims that he asked a question.

Like a question isn't a point. It's a question. And like, if he had pushed me on this question, I certainly would have been happy to give my answer. I don't remember. Did I give this answer a little bit on the thing? But regardless, I mean, getting into it, it's like, okay, I don't know. He didn't give a point that Douglas Murray made. It was just a question. But

Listen, as I said, as Matt Walsh repeated, these are separate goals. If the goal is retrieve the hostages and the goal is destroy Hamas, those are two different things that you're trying to accomplish. Now, you could say you're trying to accomplish both of those things. But if you're asking how to accomplish them, just understand that those are two different goals which might actually be in conflict with each other. Like...

Okay, if you want to... Now, look, I'm not saying... Just to disclaimer this. I'm not saying that...

Hamas can be trusted or that they come through on their word or anything like that. But the truth is that the best way to get hostages back, and this is not just something that we know because we can deduce it, but we know it because we can deduce it. But we also know this is the way that's been most effective for Israel retrieving the hostages that they've gotten back is negotiating.

That's how they got just during the first phase of that ceasefire, which never even made it to phase two that Witkoff, Trump's envoy, negotiated shortly after Trump won the election. Israel got like 30 hostages back. Right.

By negotiating with Hamas. As of, I believe it was October 10th of 2023, Hamas offered a deal where they'd return all of the hostages. Now, it was, you know, in exchange for some things they wanted. Israel may have felt that some of those demands were unreasonable. But the truth is, if your number one priority is getting back the hostages, then...

you try to negotiate for those hostages back. And I would argue that I do think that is what any government's number one priority should be. If they have hostages, they are citizens taken into another country. And by the way, I would definitely say, seeing as how there was at least one Israeli with U.S. citizenship who was a hostage, it should 100% be the U.S. government's number one priority to get the hostages back. I don't think that's

It's too wild for most people to understand that if your number one goal is retrieving hostages, what you're not going to want to do is level the place.

That seems to be inconsistent with the goal of getting the hostages out. And in fact, some of the only Israelis who have been loud protesters of this war have been the family of hostages because they're like, yo, what are you doing? You're leveling the place where like our daughter is, you know, you can imagine how infuriating that would be. But so that's the first part.

of all of this. The second part is that, and I think I did very specifically say this in the debate. It's like, look, let me say, okay, a couple things here, and you can jump in anytime you want to, Rob, but there's a couple things here. Number one, I do, it does bug me a little bit

if you're opposed to something when people will say, well, what's your plan? Because you don't actually have to have a substitute plan to say like something is egregiously wrong. I could give you a substitute plan, but you don't actually have to have that. You know what I mean? Like if you, if you see somebody like, you know, I don't know their, their kid isn't listening to them. And so they just kick their kid in the face and knock them unconscious. You could be like, whoa, that's horrible.

That's no way to respond to your kid not listening to you. And then if someone goes like, well, what's your plan for what you do when they're not listening to you? It's not actually incumbent on you to have an alternative plan in order to say this one is morally unacceptable. So that's kind of first.

And if we're having a debate about Israel's response to this and someone is taking the position that what they're doing is morally unacceptable, the onus is not on that person to have an alternative plan. So first off, that's like a bullshit cop out response. However, the plan is fairly fair.

Fairly obvious what Israel should have done after October 7th, right? Which is that number one, there should have been a real like immediately what they should have done is ramped up border security and started negotiating to get the hostages back. Take whatever deal you can to get these people back. Nothing's more important than precious, innocent life being held in captivity.

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Um, so, okay. So that's number one, have a real open, transparent investigation into what the hell happened on October 7th and tell the truth. Don't go around spreading all types of like, uh, um, horror propaganda, trying to make October 7th seem worse than it was. What really were the failures here? And if you had that, what they would have come up with is that

the Netanyahu government embarked on an explicit policy of propping up this ruthless terrorist organization so that they could deny the Palestinian people a state. And then they totally underestimated the threat of Hamas. They thought they could control the height of the flame. Turns out they weren't able to. So what you'd want to do, rather than not protecting your border and propping up a terrorist organization right next door,

Stop doing both of those things. Protect your borders and stop propping up Hamas. After that, I think like, look,

I've never suggested that Israel was supposed to respond to October 7th with zero violence and that there would be, I don't think it's practical to expect just about any government to have a response that involves zero violence. However, Israel had a long history of dealing with the terrorism problem through targeted assassinations and special operations and intelligence operations.

They never treated the terrorism problem amongst Palestinians as a problem for the regular old army. Just bomb cities. That was never how it worked until Benjamin Netanyahu came into power. And so, yeah, I would argue that Israel had an opportunity. As I've made this point before, I know sometimes people think this is a little like hippie-ish or something like that, but I don't think it is.

And if you if you recall after 9-11, after after 9-11, they had these huge candlelight vigils for the victims of 9-11 in Tehran across the Muslim world. There were lots of people who felt terrible for America. And if we had.

Just fought the war on terrorism with special operations forces, as we did in the months following 9-11, which is what took out most of the Al Qaeda cells in Afghanistan. And if we had done that and then caught Osama bin Laden in Tora Bora and then wrapped up the whole thing by New Year's Eve of 2001, we could have maintained the moral high ground in that.

But instead, we launched multiple 20-year occupations and killed hundreds of thousands of people. And then we were left with, instead of a few hundred bin Ladenites, tens of thousands of them and hatred across the Muslim world. And Israel could have, like everything you see about global opinion turning on Israel didn't have to be this way. Israel could have taken this opportunity to go like, look, we're going to have this transparent investigation. We're going to admit that

that we made a huge mistake by propping up this terrorist group so that we would never have to give Palestinians their independence. And we could have said, right now we're going to do that. We're going to take our boot off the neck. We're going to end the blockade. We're going to end the occupation. But we're not doing that unless we get our hostages back. And if there are any more rockets coming in, then we're going to do X, Y, and Z. We're going to make sure that we let the world know that we do value Palestinian life, and we'll make sure we're not going to kill an unnecessary amount of people. Like,

Again, I'm just spitballing here. I'm not a fucking expert. But there were alternatives where Israel didn't convince the world that they were the monsters that the world is seeing right now. So, no, I don't think the onus is on me. I don't think that it certainly wasn't a good point that Douglas made. It wasn't a point at all. It was a question. But honestly, I don't think the onus is on me to have the answer to that question. But the answer I just gave is much better than what they did.

I don't know. Anything else you want to add to that, Rob? Well, in regards to not having to answer that question, Douglas Murray refused to answer for why is Israel justified in killing kids and civilians. And he mostly lied and said they have not. It's most of the damage that you've witnessed was booby trapping done by Gaza. And that, of course, they always like to say Israel doesn't target. Well, they seem to hate a lot of it.

Uh, so I don't know what that means when you keep going, well, it's not our intention. Well, if you explode a building with kids in it, it might not be your intention to kill all the kids in it, but it will be the natural product of what you're doing. So it doesn't really help to say it's not our intention. Uh,

But speaking to, you know, go after the leadership. There's money, there's influence, there's people who are making money off of what's going on over there. And they quite specifically, while taking food aid, decided to continue to send money, which is the most fungible of all goods. So, you know, if every single item that goes into Gaza can't go in there because it can be used as a weapon, if someone can explain how money works.

can't then be converted into weapons through the tunnel. Oh, the tunnels with Egypt. Well, my guess is the money is what helps those operate at the highest capacity and is what actually makes the most amount of weaponry available. I don't think it's the food that you send in. And I think that Israel has not...

taking the opportunity to go after whatever leadership of Hamas exists in Qatar. I don't know. People want to say that that's a different branch of it. Someone's making money here. And I bet if you turned off that money and all actually offered some incentives for peace, you might have some opportunities there. But as you said, the framework to me appears to be Israel trying to do everything they can so that they have people that they don't have to offer a state to and that they've got no choice but to murder. Yeah.

Well, you know, it's funny, too, to see. Yeah, I completely agree with you. I mean, it's amazing. The potatoes are dual use, Rob. And so we can't let those in. But suitcases of cash to Hamas, that could only have one use, I guess. That could only be used for aid anyway. But it's like to hear Matt Walsh of all people.

Kind of going like, you know, it's like, why even is it such a good point to ask? Well, then how do you get rid of Hamas? Like, how about if you got to if you got to murder tens of thousands of innocent children, then you don't then you don't get rid of Hamas. Like then you hear here's a principle for Matt Walsh, which will be tough, I'm sure, for him to figure. But let's say I I had this principle that's that's against murdering children.

This might be hard for you to think of. Let's call it let's call the position pro-life. OK, you know, imagine you were a pro-lifer who was against murdering innocent children. And then I were to say to you, like, you know, you made this really good case being against, you know, abortion. But, you know, a really good question is like, so then what do you do?

You know, what do you, and then I think you realize right away, that's actually not a hole in the pro-life argument. It's not a hole in the pro-life argument to be like, but you haven't spelled out what that pregnant teenager should do. And like, look at some point as most pro-lifers do, they probably do what I just did, which is like offer some other, oh, you can give the baby up for adoption, or maybe there'll be some social services, or maybe there'll be this or that, or maybe you should not have protected, unprotected sex, or maybe you should, whatever. But like,

You could have the principle that it's wrong to murder a baby and you don't actually have to have any more than that. We do this all the time where we say like, no, I'm sorry for moral reasons. That solution ought to be off the table.

And it's not incumbent on you to then have all of the other answers necessarily. And it's weird how like the standard is the standard on me or whatever is that I must have all of the answers to this. But you don't even have to criticize the government that's trying to get us into a war with Iran explicitly. Yeah.

It's like literally drew up war plants with us involved in them and is still working and has been working, has been working for many, many years. Again, this is not I'm not alleging some secret conspiracy here. I'm saying like Benjamin Netanyahu testified before Congress and urged the U.S. government to overthrow the Iranian government back in 2002. And he's been arguing for it the entire way since, including this week.

So, okay, here, let's keep playing because I think there was one more interesting part here. Circular conversation, as these debates tend to devolve into very often. If you were in control of what people on Twitter debated, what would they be debating right now? Everything we talked about for the first, you know, hour of this conversation is what, like, let's talk about the war on the family. Yeah. On marriage, things that affect our kids, you know.

How do we raise healthy, happy kids? Let's talk about that. Any of these issues is like serious, deep cultural issues in our country. Yes. Is what we should be talking about in my mind. You feel like it's very hard to go from affluence to less affluence. You know, that's yeah, we could we could turn it off. That was really the part I want. Again,

I care about all of those issues that Matt Walsh just mentioned. And I think almost like the angle he was coming at it from, because he said at one point, like the thing about how there's these like concentric circles, you know, I care about my kids more than I care about any other kids. Then I care about my friends, my family's kids. Then I care about my neighborhood. Then I care about my city. Then I care about my state. Then I care about my nation. And like,

I certainly get that. I don't disagree with that at all. I feel the same way. Just like the moral calculation changes a little bit when your government is funding the intentional murder of a bunch of children. It just changes the moral calculation. Like, I'm not, you know, I don't...

Like we care, we all care, you know, you don't want to see anyone get mistreated. Um, but of course we all care about our own first. That's just part of humanity. Um, and I care, like, I don't, I don't like that there's homeless people, but like I care, I care much more if my kid like skin their knee than I do about some homeless person. It's just that that's the truth. Um, um,

But like if I was driving in a car full of my family and like one of my family members got out and then just murdered a bunch of homeless people and then got back in the car, I'm not going to sit there and be like, why is everyone talking about these homeless people? I mean, like my kids skinned her knee at school today, you know, like you'd be like, oh, shoot. No, now we got to talk about that because you just can't do that. I don't know. And particularly when I'm being forced to fund it, I'm going to have a problem with it.

So, you know, unless the social conservatives want to abandon the pro-life position, I'd say that, like, you kind of have to acknowledge that us funding kids being killed is

is a bit of a moral issue that it's kind of incumbent on all of us to care about. And I also don't think, you know, I don't think these things are as unrelated as you think. I mean, if you want to talk about like the policies that have been bad for kids and bad for families, you know, a whole lot of families have been broken up by these wars over the last 25 years. Tens of thousands of people,

of our young guys have committed suicide in the aftermath of the wars. These are kids who now will grow up without fathers, or these are young men who will never have kids who they may have gone on to. Not to mention the, you know,

the $10 trillion we've spent over the last 25 years on all this shit, that has put quite a bit of pressure on families. As I got back to what I said before, financial stress being the number one cause of divorce. Well, we had to print a whole lot of money to make up that $10 trillion. And that's done quite a bit to hurt the purchasing power of families. So again,

I just don't think these issues are nearly as separate as people make them out to be. But also then, you know, on a moral level, I do just think that at least the way I look at it, there's, you know, I've taken a lot of flack for the position that I've taken on Israel. And

you know, like whatever. I took a lot of flack for my position on COVID and Ukraine and other things too, but I've taken a lot of flack for this one. And in many ways, especially at this point in my career, things are going pretty good for me. It might be a little bit easier for me to just not talk about this. I could have that same position, be like, hey, I'm vaguely non-interventionist. I don't really want to talk about this. But I'll tell you, like, I have a son and

I mean, I have a daughter too, but this, it affects me more thinking about my son, but like at some point he's going to grow up and he's going to know what I did with my life. And he'll know that I was like a, a person in this space, a political commentator that had a show with hundreds of thousands of people who regularly goes on shows with millions of people. And the idea that while this was going on,

Like for my son to know that while this was going on, I didn't speak out against it because it, it was a little bit easier for me or something like that. I don't know. Like my, my attitude as a father of a little boy is that like nothing, nothing scares me more than that.

More than ever, like having your son look at you and go like, yo, the worst thing in the world was going on and you were funding it and you didn't like say anything about that. You didn't want to speak out because it was going to what? Like some people might say mean stuff about you as a response. You know, to me, that's like.

it's kind of all related. I'm not saying it's exactly the same thing, but there's something, there is a relationship there between like the evil foreign policy and our own collective soul as a nation.

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problem to 87204 that once again text the word problem to 87204 paint your life celebrate the moments that matter most message and data rates may apply see terms for details text the word problem to 87204 for 20 off all right let's get back into the show um so yeah anyway i don't know anything else to to add to that rob no let's talk about this uh hero at the park

Oh, shit. Okay. You want to talk about that a little bit? Sure. We can do that kind of quickly at the end. So this is a big, this is a big story. Um, it's a, it's a sad story all around. It's a sad state of affairs. Um,

But so, yeah, I mean, I guess people have seen. So this is blowing up as a really huge phenomenon of a story. But so evidently now this isn't all on video, but evidently a woman at a playground called like a little black boy, the N word.

And then someone else rushes up, puts a camera in her face. Supposedly the child that she said that to was autistic and also going through her child's like diaper bag or, you know, some something that belonged to them.

Sure. Who knows? But let's just assume for the sake of argument that that's the story. So a guy comes up, puts a camera in her face like, did you just call this child the N-word? She's like, yeah, fuck you. I did. Blah, blah, blah. She has a whole thing. She drops it a few more times in the video. And

Then, of course, the video is posted as a like, I'm going to ruin this chick's life type post. She puts up a GoFundMe or something to raise money. And last I saw, she was over half a million dollars. She had started, I think, asking for 10 grand.

And then just kept upping the goal because money kept pouring in. And now she's at like over half a million dollars. And there, you know, of course, as you could imagine, you've got people on the left are going like, see, my God, this is proof. Can the government tax that? You're a...

You're saying the N-word in the park collections. That? Did they want to cut it? Of course I did. I didn't report my N-word park money. You're telling me that's not deductible? That's a crazy thing for the government to take its cut of. Well, it does. It seems to me that there's an interesting thing going on here.

And I do think it's, you know, it's important when you see something, something like this is like it's information about our culture. You know, it's like letting you know, like this is where you are right now. And I think when you get that type of information, what you should try to do is assess it as rationally as you can. And like what I'm seeing is.

Because, of course, a lot of people will go, well, look, this is proof that we're in like a white supremacist country or something like that. Now, I will say, don't get me wrong. I do find the thing kind of disturbing. I think it's disturbing for a lot of reasons.

And to be clear, I don't actually think, you know, you should be using that word and certainly not towards kids at a park. Yes, I don't think you should. I don't think you should use like any derogatory language or curses toward a child. It's like totally fucking horrible. And, you know, like I have little kids.

I know about the playground rules. I even know about other kids being problems at the playgrounds, but like, that's not an option. Like you just can't do that. And I certainly would never send money to somebody who had just called a little black child, the N word that I would feel like sickened by that. I do understand what's going on though. And I think that a lot of it is that look, white people, black,

are especially young white people are starting to play this game now too. And it's a, it's a sad thing to see, but there is to look, this has been going on for a long time. This has been very true in the black community for a long time where they will defend their own and it does not matter. It does whatever. There was this kid who just raised something like $500,000 himself who, uh,

seemingly, I don't know if he murdered this guy or not. I guess maybe they're going to go to trial. But like the guy who stabbed the kid in the chest and killed him, like he just killed a white kid. And then he gets all this money. And it's just and of course, his lawyers and the civil rights activists around him will all make it a race issue. It doesn't matter.

whether Michael Brown attacked a cop or Trayvon Martin attacked a neighborhood watch guy or whoever, they're going to say this guy was a gentle giant. He was an angel. Like the OJ Simpson jury was the whole thing came down to all the black people voted not guilty for him. And half of them didn't even care whether he did it or not. And there also is another dynamic where like, look, I don't obviously you should never you shouldn't be calling anyone the N word.

You should never be calling a child the N word. But there is something where like when you stick a camera in someone's face and goad them into saying the N word and then post it online, you're attempting to ruin that person's life. And I think what you've seen from this is like it's white people going, okay, then we're going to play that game too.

Like you, if you go on social media, you could see videos all day long of like black teenagers beating the crap out of some white kid. And that doesn't ruin their life.

You know, but like a white person saying the wrong word will ruin their life. And I think at a certain point, there's it's just it's hit a point where like white people are not in larger numbers are just not willing to play that game anymore. They're not willing to say the thing that like everybody else gets to act in their group interest except for us. Now, I do think a much a much more preferable answer to that would be like, let's all stop doing that.

It's kind of a sad thing to see it coming to this. But it's also particularly tough when the entire establishment embraced this racialism for like 15 straight years. It's a very tough thing to turn off. And so here's where we are. I'll let you have the final word on that one, Rob. Then we got to wrap up. Yeah.

Yeah, listen, that I do not endorse that lady's behavior and you can't be doing that. But I think on top of what you're saying is sometimes you can have a bad moment in life and it doesn't need to be for the entire internet to judge or shame you for. And in this case, you know, in my opinion, words are not violence. That does not make it OK to engage in it. But it's not like not like she beat up the little kid.

And so, you know, you can have a bad interaction in the park and move on from that in your life. I don't think that that will, I don't think, I don't think that that autistic kid's life has been ruined over that incident.

Uh, and, uh, I don't know. There's something, it's like both parties are just wrong. You know, you're not allowed to do that at the park. Uh, but taking every moment that people have and then just post them online to try and ruin them. I don't think that that's necessarily. Yeah. I even, sometimes I even think violence is the answer is preferable to like, I

public public shaming ruining like i remember back in the day where and it was to me at least the worst thing that louis ck was accused of that i heard because i didn't really think that much of like like oh you're like you're like girls drinking in his room at like two in the morning and then he brings up like jerking off in front of you and then you agree and then he does it and then later you feel bad like i was like i don't know so leave don't be there to begin with i didn't there was one story

where I guess they were like on set at work. And he just went to one of the girls and he was like, Hey, can I like masturbate in front of you? And she was like, no. And then he was like, Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm like sick. I shouldn't have said that. And then to me, that was like the most inappropriate, but I almost go like, I think the answer to that should have been her boyfriend coming in and punching Louie in the face and then moving on.

And then you move on with your life. But your answer to this shouldn't be to like ruin you to put this out for everyone so that you're for the rest of your life. You're just known as this person. You can never get a job. You can never, you know what I'm saying? Like this, that's just.

that's not right either so i completely agree with you it's all kind of sad and wrong but i also do think it would serve people well to to read the temperature in the room and look it that stuff that i was saying about like how black people were siding with oj in the truck listen there's probably was a time where this was understandable and made sense and that black people have been over in this country for long enough that they were like nah that we're gonna be on the side of our guys

At a certain point, you have to stop doing that or everyone's going to do it. And so I would just say, I think we'd all be better off if everyone just stopped doing that. Perhaps that's a pipe dream, but I am not so sure it is. All right. We got to wrap on that. Thank you guys so much for listening. We'll be back tomorrow with a brand new episode. See you then. Peace.

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