The Trump Ceasefire
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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. How you doing today, sir? I'm excited for Boozman. Booze. Boze. Everyone gets all mad at me. I think it's Bozeman. Bozeman? Doesn't matter. We're playing a fucking theater to start the year and I'm doing some skiing, so things are coming together, my friend.

There you go. We are. It's a big theater. There still are. The tickets are selling fast, but there still are some seats available. So go grab them now if you want to. Comic Dave Smith dot com. That is what is it this Saturday, the 18th, right? Yes. This Saturday, the 18th, one night only. Our first time out there in Bozeman or Bozeman or Bozeman. I'll be Bozeman. Will Rob will be a boozed man.

For sure. While we're out there. Very, very excited for this one. We got a lot of hardcore fans out in Montana and it's great to go out and see them. And then we got a lot of stuff coming up the following week. Fort Wayne, Indiana and Louisville, Kentucky. ComicDaveSmith.com for all of the ticket links, plus a whole bunch of ticket links for dates that we have later in the year. And yeah, well, there is a major news.

this morning. In fact, maybe not even this morning. I think it was this afternoon that it became official. I had earlier a few hours ago, I had was we, you know, we're on a group text and we talk about different topics that we might be covering on the show. And I had sent over a Dave DeCamp article from yesterday, a

about this very topic, but now it seems to have become official since then. By the way, shout out to Dave DeCamp, who's just, his reporting is phenomenal. If you want to keep up with what's going on in all the wars, you got to be reading Dave DeCamp and the guys over at antiwar.com. I go there every day and it's, you know, people ask me a lot, how do you stay up on everything that's going on? That's a really, really excellent tool for it. So anyway,

It looks like there is a ceasefire agreement in place that has been agreed to by all parties. The piece that I was referring to that Dave DeCamp wrote the other day was that apparently Trump's envoy went over and put some real pressure on Netanyahu and got them to agree to this ceasefire. Hamas,

essentially has agreed to this deal for quite a while now. There's a lot of moving pieces here, so I want to get into kind of talking about all of this. But let me start by, I'll just, hold on a second here, I have it here. Let's start, I'm just going to read a little bit. This is from the Los Angeles Times article.

um uh more than 15 months into israel's i'm sorry the the title is ceasefire deal reached between israel and hamas in gaza a ceasefire deal promises to end more than a year of conflict in gaza strip

More than 15 months into Israel's devastating war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip, the two sides have agreed to a ceasefire deal that would pause fighting and free some Israeli hostages in exchange for the release of Palestinian prisoners, according to U.S. officials Wednesday.

U.S. Qatari and Egyptian negotiators spent months holding extensive rounds of talks with Israeli and Hamas leaders to broker what would bring a partial end to the conflict that has left 46,000 Palestinians dead, around half women and children.

Palestinian officials estimate. For the record, I think these numbers are way off, but that's not really the point right now. The war, which destabilized the Middle East and unleashed protests across the U.S., began on October 7th. Yada, yada, yada. Israel immediately launched a relentless barrage of airstrikes, stuff we all know.

Anyway, that's essentially what we need to read, I guess. That is the deal. A ceasefire, some, you know, of course, even the framing in the Los Angeles Times is forget hostages versus prisoners and that whole debate. This is, I think, a very positive step, obviously. Donald Trump...

Again, I want to say I had a tweet about this, and it's all a big if at this point. We don't know exactly what's going to happen. We don't know if this ceasefire is going to stick. You know, the way these things work, this deal could fall through later today, and, you know, we'll see what happens. And it's quite a leap from that that.

this ceasefire will actually lead to like an end to the war. And of course, there's also the possibility that after this pressure, that it will be followed up with like a giant concession to the Israelis. Trump's got enough hardcore Zionists in his cabinet and inner circle that it's not impossible that that would happen. But I will say like a big if, but if Donald Trump

actually just pulled this off. And if Donald Trump does successfully end this war, he is starting his presidency as a hero. I mean, he's starting his second term as a straight up legitimate, heroic president. If he, I said this on Twitter earlier, but if he is able to end this war, and let's say he negotiates an end to the war in Ukraine too, put him on Mount Rushmore. Yeah.

what can i say no matter what else he does those would be the two greatest accomplishments of his life um the uh close third is working out the deal to end the war in afghanistan but if he can accomplish both of those things put him on mount rushmore and i also did offer on twitter he can take lincoln's spot either that or roosevelt do not come after my thomas jefferson um but either of those guys can go anyway

That's just a start, but it does seem to be an interesting development, particularly given how pro-Israel Trump is and how pro-Israel his appointments have been. It certainly does seem interesting that he would be the guy who was able to pressure Netanyahu to take this deal.

Well, there's not much left to bomb in the region. Doesn't have any hospitals left. Seems like a bit of a Jew deal at this point. Hey, we'll stop bombing you for 40 days if we can get back the hostages. And they go, all right, yeah, I guess at this point that's all we're going to get is 40 days for us to move back north, move some bricks around, and then for you to potentially come back in.

well look that that certainly is possible um again we will see it's very early in this thing to really know what this is gonna do but i it's hard to not um look at this you know as just a positive i wanted to um it's also an interesting note there was a piece dave de camp again wrote um a piece uh earlier that um

And this is really something. Ben Gavir has threatened to quit the government. Ben Gavir is the national security minister in Israel. He has threatened to quit the government and called on finance minister Smotrich to join him because he's so opposed to any ceasefire deal. And he...

He favors, you know, just ethnically cleansing the region. But anyway, there are some people in... What was his name? Gavir. Close. Very close, though. I understand. Sometimes people mispronounce it. The reason I bring that up is not just to trash Gavir and Smotrich, who always deserve it, but...

it makes it seem like the case for optimism about this is a little bit stronger when you have high level people in the Israeli government pitching a fit like this. You know what I'm saying? Like they're like, seem to be setting up almost as if like you are, you know what I mean? You're betraying us or something that seems to indicate that they believe there's a real chance here that there's actually peace talks going on. Listen,

All of that is very unclear, obviously, that it's just being reported 20 minutes before we started recording that this deal is official, although it's been, you know, rumored for a couple days now. But, you know, another aspect to this that is almost just painful at this point, but what a humiliation for Biden, you know, and Biden is a guy who we are no fans of, but man, it's like,

How much humiliation can one person take? This is just a total humiliation to Biden and the entire Democratic Party in the middle of, you know, everything else between the election and the fires in Los Angeles and Mark Zuckerberg and like all these other factors to come in here and to look. I'm not saying this is entirely true. There's lots of moving pieces with this, but.

The idea that Trump's first envoy that he sends over there could immediately get Israel to snap into fall into line. I mean, it's just like Joe Biden has just been like,

just impotently threatening or not threatening but like impotently signaling that he really wants israel to not do this or he really wants them to not do that while they laugh in his face and do it for the last year and a half and for trump to just come in and demonstrate that you can just put a little bit of pressure on them and get them right into ceasefire talks i mean again

I can't stress, there's nothing new about this deal. This is the framework that's been on the table this whole time, that Hamas has been repeatedly saying they agree to, and it's just the Israelis who won't agree to it. Like, they're the impediment to peace here. If Donald Trump is able to just come in before he even takes office, he's able to get them to agree to that. It just shows how weak Joe Biden has been as a leader. And

Look, I mean, who could really be that surprised by that, right? Like, if you just look at it, you'd go, oh, yeah, Joe Biden is old and weak. And Donald Trump, for any of his faults, is a boss and a person like he exists. And he's not just the machine running things.

Look, I don't know. I don't want to get too optimistic here. It's also quite possible that there is something more that we're not exactly seeing going on here, if that makes sense. Obviously, Donald Trump is very pro-Israel. A lot of people in Israel are very pro-Donald Trump. It's quite possible that part of the calculation here is just that, to make Joe Biden look really weak and make Trump look really strong. But

Either way, this is a positive development. And if nothing else, you know, it's funny because I'm on, I was just, just for a few minutes, but I'm just kind of watching the reaction. You know, I've been arguing with a lot of these like pro-Israel guys online, online on Twitter for the last few days. And it's, uh,

you know, it's been somewhat entertaining and somewhat frustrating. But it's interesting to see how many of these pro-Israel people are furious about this. They're all over Twitter, just furious about the deal. Seth Dillon from the Babylon Bee wrote, "How can there be a deal with terrorists that doesn't involve unconditional surrender?"

And which I'm a smart ass. So I responded back. It's going to be very difficult to get a complete unconditional surrender out of Netanyahu. But yeah,

But he's but, you know, he's the Babylon B guy. So I figure you could take a little joke. Right. But isn't it kind of interesting? And I just I would say incredibly revealing that for all of the and my God, I mean, I've really particularly over the last few days, but really for the last, you know, since at least since October 7th, the.

how vicious people are coming at me. It's like, oh, you're a Jew hater. You love terrorists. You don't care about these Jewish children who were gunned down at a music festival and all of this stuff. And the meanwhile, my attitude about this is like, hey, look, even if the ceasefire deal doesn't hold, let's do let's let's get some of these hostages back. Right. Right.

I mean, that seems like at least a good, at least if this ceasefire deal is going to go into effect, then it seems like the first step here will be that there's going to be some hostages freed. I thought that was your whole thing, right? And this is what I've heard for over a year now, that this is Israel's real concern is that there's these hostages being held. Well, it looks like a deal's in place where you're going to get them back. Shouldn't that be, like, can't everyone consider that a win? Or was it never really about that? And as Rob said, you just ran out of hospitals to bomb.

Just saying, if it's really about the hostages, I think you would support this deal, but we'll see. We'll see what, what ultimately ends up coming of all of it. All

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dot M E slash problem for 15% off your purchase. Thank you to Lumen for sponsoring today's episode. Let's get back into the show. It does. If, if you say like, if, if at least your starting point is, let's just say that you think this is a good, a good thing. It's better to have a ceasefire. If you know, again, like I said, I've, I've listened to countless, countless,

pro-Israeli people tell me for well over a year now that their main concern is getting the hostages back and that they really do feel awful about the innocent Palestinians who are being killed. Okay, well, it seems like if you care about those two things, this deal would be pretty good. But let's just say the...

deal, let's say even the prospects of the deal leading to an end to this war and actually an end. Like if we could just start with the starting point that that's a good thing. All right. If that is your starting point, that if the war were to end, if the hostages were returned and Palestinians stopped being slaughtered and the war ends, that would be a good thing. Like let's just for the sake of being crazy, let's suggest that that's good. Well, then there's kind of something bigger that's revealed here.

which is that this deal was on the table this whole time. And the only reason why it hasn't come to fruition yet is because nobody put any pressure on the Israelis, who, by the way, are objectively our fat welfare mom. Like, we're supporting them doing this. So, like, no one's able to put pressure on the regime who's conducting this brutal military offensive, who is relying on our money and weapons and intelligence to do this.

So if that's the case, like if all of that is true, how can you even argue that Israel wasn't the impediment to peace this whole time? You know, if Hamas was willing to do this deal and this deal is a good thing and all it took was a little bit of pressure on Israel to get them to agree to the deal and now it's going to happen, I think that pretty much answers the question about who stood in the way of peace this whole time. And that, look, it's just, it's interesting. It's interesting to see how this will be, um,

how this will be processed and how this will be understood particularly given the fact that donald trump has rhetorically been so incredibly pro-israel and that so many of those really hardcore pro-israel people supported donald trump enthusiastically because of that and so now if he's the one to do this it'll it'll just be interesting to see

how this, how everybody reacts to this. I don't know. Any, any thoughts on any of that, Rob? I think the Israelis went on a nice regional bombing spree under the weak Biden regime because they were able to get away with it. Uh,

Donald Trump was signaling in the election with his choices that he was going to be backing them even more than the Biden regime and that they were going to get more of a free pass. So it is interesting to see that. But it might be just like what you said. Donald Trump's good with the optics and Israel might turn to bigger fights such as even Iran. But at the moment, I guess no one in America likes seeing the images coming out of Gaza. So could be Trump was smart enough to squash that.

Yeah, I mean, I think that there's no question, right, that it was for the Democrats, it was a political nightmare that this was going on throughout the entire presidential election year. This was just an incredible thorn in the side of Joe Biden and then ultimately Kamala Harris. You know, I've talked about it a bunch on the show before, but there's –

According to most of the opinion polls that I've seen, and this is a few months ago since I've looked at them, but it's about 50 percent of Democratic voters consider what's happening in Gaza to be a genocide. Probably tank Bobby Kennedy because he couldn't take the mantle of being the true Democrat while supporting it. And 100 percent. And right. It's like run the counterfactual like he he was he's the anti-war candidate.

Except he couldn't be the anti-war candidate anymore. So I absolutely think it really hurt him. But there's no question that this was like a huge problem for Kamala Harris and Joe Biden, too.

You know, if you've got 50% of your voting base views you as facilitating a genocide, that's not good. That's not good politics. And again, as I've made the case before, and I really do think this is a... I'm not saying this is like...

the entirety of the dynamic, but it's a huge, huge component of it, is that like, look, where are the young leftists who are outraged about Donald Trump? They're silent. I mean, compared to 2016, it's like night and day. There are no protests against this Donald Trump getting the presidency once again. And so much of that is because those young leftists have been protesting a genocide for over a year.

And they...

It's just much more difficult to get that energy out of them to turn around and protest on behalf of the regime facilitating the genocide. That just makes it much more difficult. And there's no question in my mind that really hurt them. And despite that, they were still unwilling or unable to put any pressure on Israel, not just to get Israel to like stop the war, but to get Israel to stop like

you know, being so blatant about it and wagging that, you know, I mean, again, you think back to the South African case that they brought to the International Court of Justice. And, you know, it was all just Israeli leaders in their own words saying the most outrageous, provocative and genocidal things. It's anyway, I guess my point is that

although it's not exactly the same dynamic, it was still going to be politically damaging for Donald Trump to have this. One of the things I've been thinking about a lot more recently is like, okay, what exactly is Donald Trump gonna do here? And how exactly is he gonna keep this coalition together? Or can he?

You know, if Donald Trump does look, there are people like like me who, as I said, when I first supported Donald Trump, I supported Donald Trump because I thought he was better than Kamala Harris and it was necessary for her to lose. But he didn't.

Disappointed isn't even the right word, but he did a lot of terrible things that I hated in his first term. And as soon as he starts doing terrible things, I'm going to be criticizing him for those terrible things. But I'm a little bit of a special case. But even with groups like I mean, I just don't see how, you know, if Donald Trump really wants to like.

govern as he campaigned, if Donald Trump is going to push us toward war with Iran, or he is going to push toward allowing Israel to like annex the West Bank or something crazy like that, if that is what ends up happening, he's going to lose everything.

huge portions of his base over that. You know, it's not just going to be me. There's going to be a lot of other people. I mean, I don't know. You know, I'm not even saying this from any private conversation or nothing like that. I'm just saying this the same way I would if I didn't know any other people involved. I think Tucker Carlson is going to keep supporting our guy if he's pushing for war in Iran.

I don't think so. I don't see how that possibly happens. And that's, you're talking about the most influential right winger besides Donald Trump in the country. I think you could lose that guy's support. And then of course, he also has a lot of pro-Israel support. You know what I mean? So it's like, however he plays this here and Donald Trump does have an ability to kind of do something where he could sell it to every side. You know, like this, this could maybe be something where he, like, I could see this

Ultimately, him being able to sell this as like the pro-Israel move or something like that. You know, he could be like, look, they did what they did. You know, they took out Hamas, which isn't true, but you know, you can say that. They took out Hamas. I'm sure they killed a lot of Hamas militants. I'm sure in between those hospitals. And they got the leader.

Yeah, yeah. I'm sure in between those hospitals, there were some Hamas militants who got taken out. And they took out no question, like a huge portion of the leadership of Hezbollah. They got Bashar al-Assad out of power. They completely decimated Syria's military. They seized Syrian land. You know, they're...

you could spin this like, Hey, you guys got a lot of what you wanted. Now you have to stop. But that would be a way if he can ultimately bring this war to an end and not have a major escalation with Iran or with, um, you know, the West bank or something like that, that kind of would be a way that maybe you could keep that whole group together. You know, everyone could kind of see what they want to see in it. I don't know. I'm kind of thinking out loud here, but,

It is possible. We'll see. We'll see if he's able to do that. It's a, nonetheless, it's, it does. It reminds me of the, the Iranian hostage crisis.

where they, I mean, I think they had actually worked out a deal, like the CIA had worked out a deal to not free the hostages until Ronald Reagan came into power. But it was one of those things where this was a huge scandal at the end of Jimmy Carter's presidency. And then Ronald Reagan comes in and the hostages are freed. And whatever the, you know, there could be some like real shady backroom deals going on here.

We don't know that. But just speaking on the optics of it, this looks so great for Donald Trump and so terrible for Joe Biden. It really is like I've just never seen any election like this, including 2020 and even including like January 6th. If you want to extend the election in 2020 all the way into the first week in January where you had the Capitol riot, I don't I can't.

think of another election where it's not just that the Democrats lost, it's that they got obliterated at every front, every front.

Their coalition evaporated. Their propaganda apparatus has been destroyed. Their number one city is on fire at the moment. People like Mark Zuckerberg are coming out trying to suck up to the new cool kids. You know what I mean? Like just being like, oh, yeah, those guys are old and lame and they suck. And now you have this war, which, by the way, had its most resistance from Democratic supporters, not from Republican voters. It was Democratic voters.

who were the biggest resistance to this war. And now your rival comes in and at least has the appearance. I'm not saying this is exactly what it is, but has the appearance of like ending it before he even sits in the Oval Office.

You know what I mean? Like, you just like, when you look at this on paper, you're like, Jesus Christ. I mean, the Democrats might be the new Whig party. Like, they may never recover from this. I mean, I don't mean to like overstate the case here, but just looking at this, like the optics of it are so bad for them. So bad. You know, if you imagine you're one of those, I think it was, it was over 70% of the

of Democratic voters. Last I looked, again, this is a few months ago, and these opinion polls are never perfect, but it gives you a little bit of a gauge. It was over 70% of Democratic voters supported a ceasefire, okay? So they wanted this, what Donald Trump just got, without even having to step foot in the White House.

Which means what? I mean, it means that Biden could have done this at any time. All it would have taken is a backbone and maybe being able to complete sentences without stuttering and needing someone to tell you where to exit from after you were done speaking. But that's, I mean, just imagine, like try to think of that. Imagine there's a policy that 70% of your voters want and all you had to do was go and ask for it.

And then your opposition leader just goes and asks for it before he's even sworn in and is able to get it. Pretty damn incredible. It's really hard. Again, I kind of feel like, as I felt when we were talking about the fires out in California last episode, it's kind of hard to overstate how bad these optics are. And everything, for whatever reason...

And, you know, maybe my spidey senses should be going off. Maybe we're getting set up for something bad here. But it is unbelievable how much everything seems to just be breaking in Donald Trump's favor, at least in terms of optics. Like, it's just like, oh, my God, the narrative just writes itself. I mean, I can't imagine like how much fun it would be right now to be like, OK, I guess I was going to say a Donald Trump speechwriter. But then as I thought that in my head, like,

I don't know if anyone else is writing those speeches. Be great. Every time Donald Trump. Wonderful. Super wonderful. The most wonderful. He's actually been reading a teleprompter the whole time. You take them off the teleprompter.

There's a lot of tremendous is in here. Are you sure we need that many? And there's just like some short Jewish guy like now you need you need all the tremendous is they got to hit him. But if you were like if you were like a press secretary for Donald Trump or something like that, what a fun time. You're like, oh, dude, this is perfect. Like, just sit down and spin some talking points out of this. Donald Trump delivered what Joe Biden couldn't while Joe Biden was still occupying the White House.

And I mean, this is no, you know, look again, let's just say it doesn't end the war. Okay. But let's, let's say you just, let's say 50 hostages get back over this. How is that not already a gigantic win? Just saved 50 human beings lives, right? I mean, that's, that's,

Like, and all it took was some pressure was going, Hey, the next guy needs you to clean this up. And I will say that, you know, there, the comment that, that Donald Trump made several months back,

where he said, I forget exactly what he said, Rob, if you remember, but he said, like, hurry up and finish the job to Netanyahu. He was like, finish the job, got to get it done. I do think while, you know, that was not exactly a perfect statement in my estimation, there was something there that kind of indicated that he's like, I can't have this nuisance once I'm president.

like i got enough on my plate enough i'm trying to do i can't like this can't keep going on now joe biden of course had also or it wasn't biden i think it was blinkit who actually said to um netanyahu that you have weeks not months back nine months ago and you could just tell clearly that

If that is the case, those words were just, they were viewed as being empty by the Israelis. And because they were. If you don't start listening to us, we're going to send you bigger bombs. Yeah, right. But ask you not to use them. Remember that? They sent them. There you go. Where's any of you all these weapons? We'd ask you to not drop these on civilians. But here you go. I know you dropped the last ones we gave you on civilians.

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here in a second. I apologize. I didn't have it up. By the way, guys, if you want to be a part of the live chat and interact with us live on the show, go sign up at partoftheproblem.com. That's how you help support the show. And you also get lots of goodies. You get to join the live chat and you get our fourth episode every week, the members only episode. Only way you can get that is if you guys go and sign up at partoftheproblem.com.

Checking in on the live chat. How are you guys doing? Ooh, saw a comment here about the Whig Party. Did I get something wrong? All right. The Whig Party was a political party active in the United States during the mid-19th century. Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, no, I guess someone else said... Someone else said... Yeah, the Whig Party was an old party that went extinct. And then the Republicans came in and replaced them. But yeah, they were... What was it? Like in the 1850s, they were...

They were one of the major parties, and now they're not. Do they wear wigs? You know, I don't know where the name came from. Maybe. I think a lot of people did wear wigs back then. I'm not sure. But it's wig. No, I think it was W-H-I-G. So I don't know. I don't know the origin of the name. It'd be cool if they were the big judge ones, you know, like the curly ones, the white, and they all wore them. Yeah. The colonial wigs. Yeah.

Well, whenever I don't know if this is accurate or not, but whenever I picture like the founders having a discussion, I'm always picturing like half of them in those wigs. But I don't know if that's right or not. Teeth.

Listen, Rob, nobody's past is perfect. Okay. But like, come on. The only way I can think straight is with a colonial wig on and slave teeth in my mouth. And slave teeth. I'm sorry. Listen, Rob requires what he requires. Okay. So let's, let's switch gears a little bit here because I do want to make sure we talk about this a bit.

one of the, or the big story, I guess, from yesterday, which is a little bit overshadowed by this potential ceasefire deal being reached. But yesterday all day was Pete Hegseth's Senate confirmation hearing. He was the first one up. I believe Kristi Noem is next. And then I'm not sure about the schedule for the rest of them, but we are confirmation season has,

has begun. I do not know that there's ever been, um, a confirmation process that was quite as interesting as this, uh, this one following this presidential election, um, for only a few reasons or because of a few picks. Um, but Pete Hegseth was up first, um,

I'm sure you saw some of it, Rob. Any thoughts on the Pete Hegseth confirmation hearing? Speaking of the Kristi Noem one, because they always try and make people look as bad as possible, so I wonder how many people are going to ask. Did you own any pets that you didn't kill? I wonder. That might come up a bit. That's going to come up a bunch.

I'm sure it will. I don't expect the Kristi Noem one to be quite as contentious as some others. The Pete Hegseth one has been pretty contentious so far. What do you what do you think of how contentious it's been? How's he doing in your opinion, Rob?

Well, by all accounts, he's a smooth son of a gun. He's got the slicked back hair, that little grin, just going, I'm too handsome for you guys to get anything on me. So it seems like he dodged and weaved and handled it just fine. The dumbest moment I saw, and I covered this on Run Your Mouth, I can't remember the senator's name, but one guy went on this tirade of who amongst us is actually qualified for their jobs and hasn't shown up drunk for work. Yeah.

Which I just thought was the dumbest argument for why this person should be left alone is that none of us can live by this standard of being qualified and working sober. And then my other takeaway that I thought was hilarious was he had all these women who were just absolutely yelling incoherent nonsense at him, including the Asian lady who might as well been yelling, you ought to now! You oughta!

- Order now! So you get all these women yelling about, what do you mean that, do you really think that mothers shouldn't be serving in the military? And it's like, they're kind of proving their own point of, I actually think after this conversation that women shouldn't have any jobs.

I mean, it really is unfortunate that if you're defending, you know, women in the military, this is who you have at your back. I've been... I find the...

Not that this is anything new, but the entire confirmation process is all just so childish and dishonest. You know, like it's just so. First of all, his Pete Hegseth's position on this, which I don't even find to be a

a particularly controversial position. This was the consensus up until five minutes ago, but his position is that women shouldn't be in combat roles. That's very different. And you watch every one of them twist that into being women shouldn't serve in the military, but he's been consistent on this, that he's like, no, women are great. Yeah. There's tons of, there's tons of stuff to do, but I don't, but you know, I mean, look,

women being in combat always to me felt wrong and you know i it's like for some reason we've uh gotten into this incredibly bizarre culture where that is somehow taken as being like a like a sexist statement or something like that like it's whereas like

It's very bizarre when you think about it that it's like, so the pro woman position is to throw them into...

combat fighting it just doesn't i i wouldn't see if you were suggesting that you throw any of my family members into combat fighting and i was opposed to that i would not think that you were taking the pro my family position like i would think the pro my family position would be to keep them out of combat not to put them into it but there there are these kind of you know i

I don't know. There's something and this is one of the worst parts about political correctness is that it it shuts down conversations that are often important conversations to have. And it trains people to kind of.

to hear dog whistles. It trains people to like, here's something that they think is offensive label you as the offensive person and then shut down whatever conversation you were having. But the truth is that, um,

Almost everybody accepts that there are to some degree gender roles between men and women. And that is not that that has to apply in arbitrary ways. But certainly, I mean, look, if I if any of you, including you, Rob, who is one of my closest friends, including you, Natalie, including almost almost everybody I know. In fact, I think I would say everybody I know.

If let's just say someone's breaking into my house in the middle of the night and I turn over to my wife and I go, all right, you got to go deal with that. I'm scared. You got to go deal with it. Right. Everybody I know would never look at me the same.

Like you just like forever would never be able to respect me again as a man, nor should you, you know? And you, I mean, like, I don't know exactly what like your reaction would be, but like, if you try to imagine that that's real, that I was just a scaredy cat and sent my wife to go handle what could be a combat situation rather

than going and doing it myself, instantly everyone loses all respect for you as a man as they should because that's just your job.

That is on you as a man. That's part. And all men know this. They, they, this is something that's very baked into us from a pretty young, at least teenagers that it's like, you got to be prepared to fight, to defend the women and children around you. That's it. Now we live in a civilized society. You're like, hopefully maybe it doesn't come to that. But if it does come to that, you have to be prepared to do that. And it's,

if you weren't, you would be totally shamed. You would lose all respect that you have from everybody. I mean, I'm talking about from your brother, from your father, from your best friend, everybody would never look at you the same. It's like, okay, if that's the case, which it is, and I believe rightfully so, then we should be allowed to have a conversation about this. What exactly is the role of women in combat? And then, you know, it's a whole other door that people don't like to, um,

to examine, but the rate of sexual abuse in the military is off the charts. It is a major, major problem, and it's very much covered up. Actually, Senator Al Franken, of all people, I believe had actually done some good work on this, and then, of course, he went down for posing as groping a sleeping woman's

breasts. It didn't really help with his whole fight against sexual assault in the military, but this is a major problem. He was proven the port of how much of a turn on military gear is and why men and women need to be separated when they're wearing that kind of gear. Yeah, he's like, look at how distracted I am right now. Do you not see this? But, you know,

It really just, it is not, at least to me, it's not that controversial of a position. And this doesn't, you don't have to, or you can't extrapolate from that, that therefore there should be gender roles in society across the board in every role.

We're talking specifically about combat. And I really don't think it's an unreasonable thing to say that, like, yeah, men should be doing our combat fighting, not women. That is, I think, his position. And I think it's a pretty reasonable one. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Tax

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Take control today. Visit TNUSA.com slash Smith or call 1-800-958-1000. All right, let's get back into the show. As it is, he walked that one back to say if they can pass the test. And even that I'm going to say is this caught my eye because even that's a bit of a weaselly move because on the same charts where they're complaining about that women have lower standards, it seemed like there were also lower standards based on what your age was.

So, if anything, it should just be there's one standard, which means if you're 43 and you don't have the body of a 22-year-old, so you can't be in the Navy SEALs, then you can't be in the Navy SEALs. So, I even thought that that was a little bit inconsistent, at least based off of the criticisms I was seeing, because on the same chart, it seemed like there were lower allowances if you were older. Yeah.

Yeah, well, I mean, look, he totally walked it back. And I agree with you that there's an inconsistency there. And it's like, you should be more clear with your position or don't walk back your position. But it also does seem like, you know, if you want to like.

So in an example like this, like even as you joked around at the beginning, you see all these like clucking hens around him and you're like, really, you guys are supposed to be convincing us that women should, you know, should be in combat. But you would think.

if you actually wanted to stand up for women here, maybe you disagree with Pete Hegsteth, you disagree with what I'm saying, and you wanted to stand up, then you would think your response would be something about how actually women excel in combat. And it doesn't, you know, everyone who's looked at this can see that it's not actually a problem and it's not holding us back. And it is, but none of them even like came with that. They all just come with this, like you hate women.

this shit which is just so boring and lame and i've been married to 12 of them well they're i mean i guess we could touch that a little bit too i do think i'm just here with my 14th loving wife who's here to support me well this isn't it so gross though the way they just bring up so much of the personal shit i mean i gotta say i really hate that and i think i think it's just wrong and i don't i i

I think if we were like a better society, we wouldn't do this stuff. But, you know, I don't... Look, I'm not trying to be like judgmental of other people because it's easy to be judgmental. But I'm lucky that I found my wife. And, you know, I'm given different circumstances in life. Like, I don't think I'm any better than someone who like marries the wrong person. The marriage falls apart, marries another person, it falls apart. You know, this is just...

A lot of this stuff is outside of our hands. So handsome that women just walk up to go. Here's my vagina. Would you like it? But he is he is a real Ken doll looking motherfucker. That's for sure. But I do just think, you know, I don't I don't believe in in cheating.

In marriage, I have never cheated on my wife and will never cheat on my wife. I think it's wrong. I also don't think it should be brought up publicly. I just think that's so gross. Like, it's not anyone's business. That's like...

Now, if you're alleging criminal activity, that's one thing. But if, you know, someone was investigated and cleared, uh, of criminal charges, the idea of just bringing it up, um,

just because it's going to embarrass you and embarrass your family in front of the world. I guess I always go to like, man, how about the woman? She's kind of innocent in all of this. And now she's got to be publicly humiliated. Are there kids involved? And it seems like so many of these people just don't care about that at all. And I don't like...

you know, again, I don't believe in cheating. I think cheating is wrong. I think that's what marriage is about is committing to one person and, and being faithful to that commitment. I also do not think it's any of my business. I don't think who you hooked up with is like any of my business. I, you know, like, I just don't like that. I would never in even just in like, um,

like in a personal way or in a professional way, like if I, if I had found out that like Rob, like you or Natalie, like cheated on their last girlfriend or boyfriend or whatever, um, girlfriend for Natalie, boyfriend for you. Um, but if I found out that you guys cheated, I would, that would never like affect my thinking of like,

oh well then i don't think you're right to be on my show because you cheated you know what i mean like this is none of my business that's that has to do it like i i think the mature correct thing is to compartmentalize these things and be like that's your personal life that was your relationship i do not know what was going on in your relationship i don't know all the details about it i don't know who knew what i don't you know and i just i i find it like profoundly disgusting

to bring up all of that stuff to score political points that just should never, that, that should not be in a debate. I would never bring that up in a debate with someone like in a debate with another, like, you know, political pundit. I wouldn't be like, well, your first marriage fell apart. Jesus Christ. It's like a scumbag. Are you that you'd even bring that up? Like argue the point. If you think the guy's not qualified, make that argument. If you think the guy got something wrong, make that argument. But also just like, um,

you know, rumors that you were drunk at a Christmas party or something like that. It just all seems to me to be like way below the belt. Now it's not quite as bad, at least so far as like Kavanaugh territory, but it does seem to me to just be way like below what any decent society should, should tolerate. And, you know, as I mentioned before, um,

You know, back in the 60s, this is what the media used to do. They used to just not report on this stuff. Like, it was no... The whole press corps knew that JFK was cheating all over his wife. They knew Martin Luther King cheated on his wife. They knew all of this. And they didn't report it because it was seen as, like, beneath them. Like, they were supposed to be journalists. This was supposed to be a serious profession. We're asking you about...

troop movements in Southeast Asia. You know what I mean? We're not asking you about whether your wife is pissed off that you're seeing Marilyn Monroe. Like that's just that that's tabloid crap. And I think that's how it should be viewed. That is tabloid junk. It has nothing to do for it to be even mentioned at a Senate confirmation hearing. It just shows like how, um, how unserious we are as a country, man, not of his alcoholism, but how he's able to function so well as a drunk.

There you go. I think it was that you may not have that quote exactly right, but it's pretty close. It's pretty close to being true. The story they had in the New York Times. I might not have this right. I covered it months ago on Run Your Mouth. But the big scandalous story to showcase his alcoholism was that he had to go home like early from a wedding and they had to send a car team to pick him up for work the next morning. And I'm like, wait, so the guy still showed up to work like it couldn't have been that bad. Just sounds like a guy at a wedding. Like, what what is this?

how is this newsworthy? That's the thing. That's the thing about it is that it leaves you no sense of like what exactly happened. You know, like it's like, cause this could be, this could be a story that's like, yo, this guy was plastered and embarrassing himself and screaming and he had to be restrained and had to be taken back. Or it could be a story of like,

he had three whiskeys and hadn't eaten yet and he went like ah dude this like hit me a little too hard i'm gonna have to get out of here you know what i mean like it's like which one is it we don't know and either way it has nothing to do with whether he should be the defense secretary or not um and and especially especially

given the state of the world where the, there are these, these two crazy volatile wars going on one with a nuclear superpower, you know, like, and America is deeply involved in both of them. In fact,

you could really argue that we are the other side, right? Because Ukraine is not fighting this war without our support for all this time. And Israel is not fighting this war without our support. Like we are the deciding factors in this. I mean, there might be, there are wars where other forces get involved, but it's not always so black and white that like this war would not be happening if it wasn't for this. So, you know,

France might be sending some weapons to Ukraine. But if France stops sending all the weapons they're sending or the money they're sending, Ukraine's still going to be fighting this war. But that's not true for the U.S. Like, they would not be fighting it without us. And so, like, anyway, my point is just, like, I think there's enough just in terms of policy. Maybe the confirmation hearing should just focus on that. Where are you on these issues? Maybe that should be what you judge, you know,

potential defense secretary off of. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Prolon by El Nutra, the only patented fasting mimicking diet that combines the benefits of prolonged fasting with a science-backed nutrition plan so you can hit your health and weight loss goals without actually having to give up all food. Feeling sluggish, low energy, unfocused, your body might be telling you it needs a deep clean.

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There was this one moment that the internet is getting quite a kick out of with Elizabeth Warren, which actually was kind of an interesting moment. Let's play that video clip real quick. You're quite sure that every general who serves should not go directly into the defense industry for 10 years? You're not willing to make that same pledge? I'm not a general, Senator. You'll be the one...

Let us just be clear, in charge of the generals, you're quite sure. All right. So that was the line. And Pete Hegseth's supporters on Twitter are touting this as Pete Hegseth dunking on Elizabeth Warren and making her look foolish to the entire room.

don't know that I'm agreeing with that. You know, this is actually a, in my opinion, a pretty reasonable demand by Elizabeth Warren. And personally, I'd like to see, I mean, I'd like to see legislation passed that would enforce this. But I certainly think, like, I don't know why it's unreasonable to demand of all of our public servants that

you shouldn't be able to get rich off of these positions. You know, I mean, there is no question. We talk about it all the time on this show, Rob, you, you always bring this up, but there is no question that like, we all know there's this huge revolving door game that goes on where people who do the bidding of the regime are made rich for doing the bidding of the regime. And I don't understand exactly why we shouldn't,

all oppose that. And I mean, all oppose that, like, no matter what your politics are. I don't care if you're a left winger or a right winger or a libertarian or a classical liberal or anything else, a progressive, a socialist, a Nazi or whatever, whatever, you know, ideology you can think of. I don't see why anyone should believe that you can get rich off of

essentially doing the bidding of powerful interests with taxpayer money. This is ridiculous. You know, you'd be Nikki Haley, who's like an ambassador to the UN as is worth next to nothing. And then all of a sudden she's on the boards of these weapons companies and she's making millions of dollars. Who can support that?

And I don't think it's unreasonable for Elizabeth Warren to be like, hey, Pete, you said none of the generals should be able to go make money off of their military service. How about you two? I don't know. What do you think, Rob? Works for me. Actually, I mean, Elizabeth Warren is terrible on nearly every issue, but when it comes to the

The revolving door of government, particularly in the financial sector, and I guess here in the military industrial sector, she's spot on. But the same issue exists in the pharmaceutical sector. The old head of the FDA should not be on the board of Pfizer now. It's across the board.

And I mean, the argument typically is that these people are the most qualified. So like, you know, if you've risen to be the head of Goldman Sachs, you understand the financial markets the best. And that's why it makes sense for you to maybe have the position at the Treasury. But they got to work out some sort of a mechanism where you don't get to also just, you know, make sure that the...

That the bailouts are going to your industry, that only your pharmaceutical companies are actually being – your products are being reviewed or pushed through or because you have the patent on them, you want to see legislation that ensures that every single person in America has to take it.

So, yeah, this is a problem across the board. And that was a I'm surprised that the room laughed and got Pete Hegseth back on that because she was making a broader point of, well, you commit to not taking part in this revolving door and going from your post to then being in the military industrial complex. And he took a weaselly technical answer. Well, that's a general. I wouldn't be a general, but it's the same. It's the same question. And that was a weaselly answer.

Yeah, I mean, the, you know, to your point, it's like, look, I could totally see if there's an answer, if there's a situation where somebody has been wildly successful in the private sector.

And so they've made a ton of money. And then you're trying to get that person to do some role in government. And someone was going like, well, I don't want a person who's made all this money in this sector, you know, being in charge of the government. Okay, there's a little bit of a point there, but I could certainly see a counter argument where somebody would be like, that's because they're the best in this field.

That's why they've been so successful. That's why they should come here. But we're not talking about that. We're talking about people who aren't rich and successful in their field, leveraging a position within the government to then go get rich. And I don't think, you know, Pete Hegseth was a Fox News host for many years. I'm sure he made very good money off of that. But I don't think it's that unreasonable to go like, well,

If your goal is to go make money in this industry, then you're free to go do that. But if you want to come be the defense secretary, then you have to, you know,

You have to promise or you have to be forced potentially by law that um You're not allowed to trade that power that you have for future personal profits. It's really that simple I mean it's like there's you know when you it's a real problem that we have the ultimate solution to it should be that government shouldn't be so powerful but

While it is that powerful, when you're in a position, especially a position with a lot of power, like defense secretary, you are now...

moving mountains economically. Okay. And, and whether or not you want to think about that, that's just the fact. If you decide we're going to, you know, if, okay, obviously only the president, you know, Congress is supposed to declare the laws, but in real life, the president does. But, but,

The defense secretary, sure, has a whole lot of influence and power, and you're going to be making decisions that are going to make certain companies filthy rich, make other nations dirt poor. You're making, you know, and whenever you have that much power, the people who you're making filthy rich are going to be incentivized to want to make sure you do that.

And this is one of the ways in which they do that. And there's just no question about it that like whether it's making huge speaking fees, whether it's being put on boards and making enormous salaries, whether it's getting book publishing deals where huge checks are cut. There are all types of ways of paying people off after the fact. And it's a major problem. It should stop. I have no problem with this. This question from Elizabeth Warren. All right.

We got to wrap up here, but I do want to say, you know, Hegseth to me is really not the most interesting confirmation. He is an interesting one, but I am really, really interested to see Tulsi, Bobby Kennedy, Jay Bhattacharya. Did you hear the Tulsi story? Her flip-flop on 702? Yeah. Yeah. You know, I'm trying not to...

I'm trying my best to kind of reserve judgment, at least for now on it. But there's no question that Tulsi is, you know, at least signaled that she's going to be flip-flopping on, on fed spying. Look,

I don't even know what to say. Look, D.C. has a way of changing people and not for the better. Right. You think about some of the stuff Mike Johnson had said about federal spying and also about the war in Ukraine before he was speaker. And then he becomes speaker and all of a sudden he's singing a different tune. And a big part of that is because, like, well, you're just not going to be speaker if you're still saying that. And I think it's been stated, I think, openly by.

At least one senator, but I could be wrong. It could be more than that. But it's been stated that they straight up will not vote for Tulsi Gabbard unless she changes her view on, you know, government spying, FISA courts, stuff like that. If that's the case, OK, and I'm trying to hedge my bets here because I'm really I am waiting to reserve judgment. If that's the case.

I'm not so sure that like if I were Tulsi Gabbard's close personal confidant, I might be like, hey, just lie. Say what you need to say and get in there and then do what you were always trying to do.

I'm not saying that's the case. It's much more likely that the case is that people, once they get in these positions of power, tend to be corrupted. But I'll reserve judgment on that until we hear more from her at her confirmation hearings and then ultimately assuming she's confirmed to see what she actually does when she's in there. But yeah, things like this are typically what end up happening. And that's why her confirmation hearing and Bobby's and Jay Bhattacharya's are all going to be very, very interesting. All right.

We got to wrap up on that. Comic Dave Smith.com. Come see us in Bozeman, Montana. That is just a few days away. And then of course, Louisville and Fort Wayne coming up the following week. Comic Dave Smith.com. Rob, where should people go?

Crank it out. Run your mouths while I'm home. So, Robbie the Fire, all one word. Even if you don't, even though I think you guys would like it, it comes out on the days that we don't do part of the problem, cover topics that I don't do here. But even if you don't want to check out the whole thing, putting out all sorts of sketches and these wild news intros. So, if you've never checked it out, go give it a watch. Robbie the Fire, all one word. Hell yeah. All right. Catch you guys next time. Peace.