Trump the Gangster
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Get started risk-free at greenlight.com slash Wondery. What's up? What's up, everybody? Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem. I am Dave Smith. I am riding solo for this episode. Thank you to all of you guys for joining. Before we get into it, I got a lot I want to talk to you guys about today. Before we get into that, tomorrow I am heading out to Houston, California.

Texas comic Dave Smith.com for the ticket links there. We got shows Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night, I believe five total shows. And there's still a few tickets for some of them remaining. So if you want to come see me and Robbie, the fire Bernstein out in Houston, comic Dave Smith.com is the place to go. And then our next stop after that will be Buffalo, New York. And then I,

I, we got a whole bunch of dates for the rest of the year. So if you want to come see us live, go to comic Dave smith.com. The other piece of exciting news, which I cannot give you all the details on, but,

I did have a, uh, a great phone call with, um, Jean Epstein this morning, who is many of you hardcore listeners to the show will, will know is just one of my favorite people in the world. Um, and so it was great. It was great catching up with him. I will be returning to the Soho forum, uh, which is an amazing debate series to do another Oxford style debate. Um, we're still locking down the date, uh,

The opponent has been selected, but I'm not at liberty to announce that yet. Although my understanding is that he's agreed to it too. So it's going to be a debate on immigration. And I think it'll be one that people will really enjoy. So I'm looking forward to that. We should be able to announce all the details of it. I'm hoping within the next week or two, we'll have all of those details. But thesohoforum.org is the website. You should...

regardless of me debating there you should go check them out they're a monthly debate series in new york city and they get like

They get great people, a lot of really great thinkers and very relevant, smart people have debated there before. All their debates are online. You can check out their entire catalog. And it's really fun to go to them live. It's always a great time. So I used to, for years ago, when I was less busy than I am now and had less children than I have now, and...

lived in new york city there were several factors involved but i used to um i i've debated at the soho forum before and i used to regularly do stand up uh like at the the debate series before the debates and um i love all of the the people involved

with it. And so anyway, I'm excited to go back. So it's probably long overdue, but we did, I did firmly agree to return to the Soho Forum. So very much looking forward to that. And I think, I think you guys are going to enjoy it. Hopefully you enjoy it. Okay.

So let's get into the topic of today's show. And I've got an idea of some stuff that I want to talk about, and then I will do my best to get to some questions in the live chat as well, if possible.

So the, um, but as I always mentioned, sign up at part of the problem.com. If you want to be a part of the live chat, if you want to get the members only episode and a bunch of other goodies, that's how you can help support the show. Go sign up over at part of the problem.com. All right. So Donald Trump is, uh, he's president of the United States of America. I don't know if you guys heard one, a second term, pretty impressive victory. He's in a very interesting situation.

And I think as we've already kind of everybody knows at this point that Donald Trump 2.0 is quite a bit different than the first Donald Trump who came in and part of this might be the people he has around him part of this might be that he has learned some lessons and has a little bit of wisdom from having been in there for four years already part of it might be that he had a near-death experience and maybe it's changed him in some ways I don't exactly know maybe a little bit of all of those but I

Donald Trump, in his first four years, really made enemies in Washington, D.C. with a lot of his rhetoric. And I think the fact that he was so uncontrollable, there's something inherent about Donald Trump that is uncontrollable. It is not at all clear to me that even Donald Trump can control what Donald Trump might blurt out. And certainly...

The more you kind of examine the American system of government, you realize that most of the, let's say, the most powerful people in our society, certainly in terms of political power, were quite fine with Joe Biden being president.

think about that and it wasn't even it wasn't all the talking heads in the corporate media all the big donors all of them they were fine with joe biden up until that debate performance and why were they why did they have a problem with joe biden after that debate performance

Well, it was because it was too obvious that he couldn't win if he was this senile. And so they had to get someone who could beat Donald Trump in there. That's ultimately what got Joe Biden out. But as we all know, Joe Biden was senile for four years of his presidency.

Look, this is obvious. Everybody knows this. Anyone who is being honest with themselves or paying attention knew this at the time. But what's the really interesting insight from that is that, oh, all of these powerful people are actually quite fine with not having a president. Why would that be? Why would they be OK with that? And it's because they they know that they won't get any resistance from the man in the chair. You

You know, like you didn't have to worry about Joe Biden changing his mind and, you know, like taking some drastic new course of action. Whereas with Donald Trump, he's just much more difficult to control. You know, Donald Trump, even from 2016, 2017, Donald Trump, he always, you know, they may get their man in the position that they want, but Donald Trump might fire that guy and bring in a different guy who's not their guy. You just don't know what he might do, you know, and part of that,

is like to Donald Trump's credit. Part of that is that he actually has some things that he believes in. He actually thinks of himself as a boss because that's what he's been for his entire life. And part of it is maybe not as much to Donald Trump's credit that someone might just rub his ego the wrong way. And then he might just fire that guy because that's how Donald Trump operates.

Either way, that's kind of what spooked him the first time. You know, if you're talking about ending wars and draining the swamp, you're going to make some enemies in Washington, D.C., especially if they think you might actually mean it.

But this time around, Donald Trump is doing a little bit more than just saying that. And so obviously we've been covering for a few weeks on the show the reaction to Doge. You know, if you want to make some enemies in Washington, D.C., you should talk about, you know, forcing government agencies to open their books and floating out the idea of trillions in spending cuts. That'll make you some enemies in D.C. But this time, Donald Trump has really done it.

And he has really he appears to be gearing up to commit what is the cardinal sin in Washington, D.C. And what Donald Trump seems to be about to do is end a war.

And that is not something that you're supposed to do in Washington, D.C. Let me tell you, they do not like that much. Look, think about it like this. What was undeniably the thing that got OK, aside from aside from his debate performance where he was a vegetable? What got Joe Biden the most heat in the the legacy media?

In the dinosaur media, perhaps we should call it. What is the thing that he got the most heat for? What was the biggest controversy of his? It's the Afghanistan pullout, right? Now, don't get me wrong. Joe Biden certainly botched that withdrawal. But, you know, the level, well, just put it like this, okay?

Think about how big a scandal Biden's botched withdrawal from Afghanistan was. And again, he clearly botched it. But if you really think about it, think about how big a scandal his mismanagement of the pullout of Afghanistan was, and then compare that to how big a scandal it was

Say when Obama launched the war in Libya or in Syria or when he backed the Saudis in their war in Yemen, this gets this is like not considered a scandal at all. In fact, the entire corporate media and I still see people make this claim to this day claim that Obama's administration was, quote, scandal free.

They don't even consider this a potential scandal that a president just launches a war without congressional approval, an aggressive war, right? Like nobody's even making the claim that anyone in Libya ever attacked America. No one's making the claim that Bashar al-Assad attacked America. No one's making the claim that the Houthis attacked America. And nobody's making the claim that

Congress gave approval for these wars. So Obama's literally launching illegal, aggressive wars, and it's not even considered a scandal. But Biden ends a war, which everybody acknowledges was a disaster, a 20-year catastrophe. That's the huge scandal. And by the way, I mean, if you look up the numbers,

I think there was, I think 17, um, us soldiers died in the pullout of, uh, of Afghanistan. And then between like some of the, with the drone strikes and a few, like if you take it in totality, I think it's like between 150 and 200 people died, um, in Joe Biden's pullout of Afghanistan. Now don't get me wrong. That's really bad. I'm not,

saying that's good. And it is a scandal. And there's, you know, we've gotten into this in the past. We could get into the details of why that withdrawal was so poorly managed. But just to keep, we're talking about less than 200 people dying.

You're talking about the war in Yemen. It's in the hundreds of thousands of people died. The war in Syria is somewhere in the ballpark of 500,000 people died in Libya. I don't think we have any good numbers on it. But I mean, it's been a failed state since then. And there were like open air slave trade markets going on, and I believe still are. So it's.

at the lowest in the tens of thousands probably in the hundreds of thousands so just think about that right like it's pretty crazy that you could start a war in a legal aggressive war and and kill hundreds of thousands of people and somehow this isn't as big a scandal as ending the war well

Donald Trump now seems to be serious about ending the war in Ukraine. And some of the statements that he's made and that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth have made have made it pretty clear that they're on the path to doing this. And look, all it really took was America deciding it was time to

And the war. And it seems like you got the commander in chief and the defense secretary saying, oh, we've decided to end it. Well, if that's true, then the war is going to end. As anybody paying attention knows, this is this is a war that could have been negotiated away before it started and at many different points during the war. So it is it what the the obstacle to peace was Joe Biden. And that's that's just the reality of it.

of the situation. So keeping all of that in mind, I want to go through, there's, there's a clip here that I saw yesterday. Um, that really it's, it's rare that this happens, but every now and then I'll see a clip where I'm just like, Oh, there's so much here. There's so much here to unpack. We're going to have to go through all of this. And it's a clip from, um, uh, Senator, uh, what's his freaking name? Sorry. My apologies. I, uh,

constantly forget Van Hollen, Senator Van Hollen. Um, so we're going to play the clip in a minute. Let me just say, by the way, first of all, before we even get to, uh, um, uh, Senator Van Hollen's remarks, uh, because, you know, this is a Senator, uh, talking about the current, uh, situation and it did just kind of, uh, I don't know. I mean, it,

it kind of like made me think about congress in a way now van halen i think is a is a democrat but regardless of that isn't it kind of interesting in this moment in this really almost miraculous seeming moment and when i say miraculous i don't mean that everything's perfect i just mean that we're living in a political reality that would have seemed impossible just a couple years ago

Sure would have still seemed very unlikely a year ago. Even if you thought Donald Trump was going to win, it would have seemed unlikely that so many of the things that are happening would be happening. And the kind of the cultural shift has been really quite amazing in this moment. Isn't it starting almost to become apparent how just irrelevant and incompetent Congress is in general? I mean, it's like,

Donald Trump, you have this huge cultural shift. Donald Trump...

who, you know, just a couple years ago, Donald Trump was the guy who was, you know, an insurrectionist, a traitor to his country. He was, you know, a convicted felon or he was about to be a convicted felon and he was going to go to jail and he had all these charges. He was going to be removed from ballots. And now you're in a moment where,

Somehow he like got hold of like the cool kid energy and he's all over like podcasts and he's you got NFL players and UFC fighters doing the Trump dance. And they're just the cultural shift has been phenomenal that ultimately culminates in this guy winning every single swing state and the popular vote for the first time in his three tries. Okay.

You would think in this moment where he's signing executive orders like crazy and where, you know, the you know, you have Doge going through all these different, you know, departments and government. Quietly, what happened here is that the Republicans also have the House and the Senate and the Supreme Court. But just focusing on the Congress, you have all these Republicans, right?

who for years have claimed, you know, to believe in the constitution and to oppose big government. If you go back through all the old, you know, Republican, uh,

the all the old Republicans in Congress, they have all said things about Obama's reckless spending, about how Barack Obama and Joe Biden were gutting the Constitution. And, you know, they want to balance the budget. They want to repeal Obamacare. They want like all these things that they claim they want to do. How many of these bills have been put on Donald Trump's desk so far? What are you waiting for? You got the numbers.

So do it. Send them something. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, that's right. Find out maybe they were always full of shit. So this is the big problem that America has. It's like you got these Democrats. We're about to hear from one in the Senate and in the House. You got these goddamn Democrats who are ruining America. And then you have the Republicans. And the major problem with Republicans is that they're all a bunch of Democrats, too.

That kind of sums up the problem with politics. Anyway, let's hear from one of them. Let's play this clip and we'll try our best to break this down.

right now but what they did in munich with president zelensky was primarily to bully them right the secretary of treasury handed him a piece of paper that essentially required ukraine to hand over about 50 percent of its mineral reserves to the united states simply in payment of the support that we've already given which we've given because they were a democratic country

attacked by Putin and the Russian forces. I mean, can you imagine FDR in the middle of World War II saying to Churchill, you know, you know, we're not going to continue to help you until you turn over half of your coal and mineral reserves. That's not how you behave when you want to support a friend who's under attack by an authoritarian like Putin.

right now. All right. So let's, so this was okay. Just a short little clip, but there's so much in there that I find so fascinating. And so almost to begin to break some of this down there, cause there's a few different layers, right? So he's going, look, um, Donald Trump's treasury secretary, like basically is, is trying to shake down the Ukrainians, you know, like they owe us their like resources because of all the money we've given them. And

Okay, this isn't how it works. I mean, we were supporting them because they're a democracy against this invasion by Russia. That's why we were doing this. You don't go and try to shake down your friends. I mean, just imagine if FDR was trying to shake down the British during World War II. This is essentially the point that he's making.

So there's a few things that number one, it's just like, I swear to God there's, and I guess this is really kind of the definition of the red pill, but there are some things in life. It's like these lessons about the, the nature of reality where once you learn them, you just can't unsee them.

You know, like you, you just can't, it's like, that's why the red pill is such a good analogy. It's like that you already made your choice to take that pill. You don't get, you know, it's like when Morpheus offers Neo the choice, he goes, you could take this red pill or you could take this blue pill. You take the blue pill, you go back to sleep. You'll never remember any of this and you'll go live your life. You take this red pill. You're going to see how shit really works. It's like, that's your point of choice. After that, you don't have a choice anymore. Like once you've taken the red pill, you can't unsee it. You

But one of the things is like, oh, my God, it's this fixation on World War Two. It's like once you see it, you can't unsee it. This example has to be brought up over and over. And every single war has to be viewed through the lens of World War Two.

You know, my friend Daryl Cooper, who's been on the show, I'm going to he's going to come up again in a second. If you guys remember, he stirred up this huge controversy last year. And oh, my God, I just it's almost like I've never seen anything like it before in a few different ways. But one of the things that was great is like the controversy proved his point. Correct.

Like, it's just as everybody is getting outraged, they're proving him right in what his central claim is, which is that this is like World War II has become this, as he called it, this load-bearing myth.

And he doesn't say that meaning myth like it didn't happen, just the fact that like it's taken on like a life of its own, where now it is like it's the entire justification for the entire regime. And that's why if you ever go at that, because it's a load bearing myth, if you ever go at that, everyone freaks out because they know you take that one out and everything else crumbles with it.

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And so no matter what, like, even if let's just say, hypothetically speaking that even if the, um, let's say that the correct lesson from world war two, like, I don't agree with this, but let's just say for that, that the standard lesson is the correct lesson to learn that like we, the, the problem was that, um, um,

You know, we shouldn't have appeased Hitler. And this was this was the Neville Chamberlain appeased Hitler when he gave him Yugoslavia. And that was the problem. The issue wasn't the war guarantee with Poland. The issue was that we should have gone to war with Nazi Germany sooner.

Like appeasement didn't work and only aggression would work. Let's just say like hypothetically that was true. It doesn't follow from that that therefore aggression is always the answer. Therefore appeasement is always wrong. Because like you could pick a million different examples from history where aggression ended up being wrong and perhaps appeasement would have been much better or at least some type of like

de-escalation, you know, call it whatever you want to appeasement is kind of a loaded term, but, but it's constantly like always, they have to go back to this. So you have Daryl Cooper goes on Tucker Carlson's podcast and he says that he goes,

He goes, you know, my my buddy Jocko is like, you know, he's got Anglo-Saxon, you know, family members or whatever. So I like to kind of tease him and kind of like provoke him a little bit. And I'm probably being a little hyperbolic when I say this, but I say that, you know, Winston Churchill was the true villain. And it's not that Winston Churchill killed the most people or committed the most atrocities that I see him as like the real villain of this war.

So he makes that statement and everybody loses their fucking shit. I mean, every goddamn notable historian and cable news host and every everybody's talking about Daryl. They're flipping out on him. They all pretend he didn't say, hey, I'm being hyperbolic here. They all pretend he didn't say, obviously, he didn't commit the most atrocities. But the idea that some guy would even say.

say this out loud gets this giant freak out. Like, don't get me wrong. Daryl Cooper is phenomenal. He's an incredible historian. His, his,

his series are like some of the best work out there. I've been recommending him forever and I love him and I, I wish he was like 10 times bigger than he is, you know, and, and hopefully he will be. Um, but the re the, the actual set for a guy who's got like a few hundred thousand, you know, like, like Twitter followers, the, the,

how outsized the response was to that. He could be talking about any other historical event. And like, again, I don't think he got it wrong. I think he's right. But let's say he got it wrong. If he had talked about any other historical event and got it slightly wrong, he just never would have generated that type of response.

because this is what World War II is. It's not just the story of a war that happened in the 1930s and 40s, America's part in the 40s, but it's not just like a war that we fought in the 40s. It is the justification for the continuation and the beginning of every single war since then. Every one of them.

And there is not one war in the world, but believe me, as someone who argues about Israel-Palestine all the time, every single defender of Israel will bring up World War II at some point.

Just always has to happen because that's just got to be thought of as that was just good. And therefore, why can't we do good again? It's just like it just it's this myth that gets people to turn their brains off. And that's why it's so valuable to them. That's why it's been so effective for so long. Anyway, speaking of Daryl Cooper, so Daryl Cooper did respond to this. And I did just, you know, I kind of had like a somewhat similar thought in my mind. But anyway.

you know, so I'll say what my, the thought that I had in my mind was just that, um, you know, like, yeah, we did kind of shake down the British in world war two. And, and I didn't even, you know, like Daryl knows more details about this. I mean, he's a real historian. I'm just a comedian who's talking shit, but, um, it's, but I was kind of like, in my mind, my first thought was, uh, it was like, well, you know, we did take over the British empire.

i mean they were the most powerful empire in the world at the beginning of the war and at the end of the war their empire collapsed and america became the most powerful empire in the world so yeah in a sense we did shake them down i mean even if you don't want to say like directly or literally we'd tip it anyways so daryl cooper uh responds to this uh this clip we just played and he says fdr took u.s bases in the west hemisphere in exchange for um

uh decrepit world war one destroyers demanded full payment in gold and cash for supplies until the uk was dead broke then mockingly uh designated lend lease as hr 1776 just to twist the knife the uk didn't finish paying us back until 2006. so it's funny when you get a good historian who's uh not part of the regime it does help for these things too so like first of all the guy's completely wrong

Like by his own logic of this, but that was only kind of one of my major takeaways from this. There's something that's actually much deeper and more fascinating to me. And I swear that I just, I don't believe a U S Senator doesn't get this. So I think this is just like, this is the propaganda. This is what they say when they're on a news show about it, but it does certainly, I

I think this hits, it strikes a chord with the blue pelt. Now, luckily for us, I think there's a lot more red pelt people than there used to be. To one degree or another, you know, there's layers of being red pelt. Like, you could understand this, but then you kind of understand the next level and the next level. But unlike the movie, right? It's not just one red pelt or one blue pelt. The analogy is not perfect. But I think between...

Russiagate and really COVID, COVID probably being the biggest one. I think Biden's them covering up Biden's senility. I think there's just been a mass awakening of people recognizing some basic truths like everything in the corporate media is lies like that, that you are when you turn on CNN, you're watching propaganda. This is state propaganda,

period. The fact that the kind of scientific institutions can't be trusted, the foreign policy institutions can't be trusted. I just think there's a lot more people who have woken up to this. And so we're kind of in a different spot. But generally speaking, I think with blue-pilled people, I think when you say things like

You know, you don't go and shake down your allies. We are funding this war because we love democracy, you know, because we love the good guys and we're the good guys and they're the bad guys. And we're like, that's how this really works. I just don't believe that any U.S. senator really believes that, you know, one of the greatest movie lines of all time. In fact, I might rank it as my favorite.

maybe the best movie line ever and the best, like there's a real libertarian, you know, comment to it. But of course this is, I'm talking about in the Godfather when Michael Corleone. So if you don't,

I assume most of you know the Godfather, but the story starts out with Michael Corleone is like the he's the straight edge son and he goes to the military and his role is he's going to be legit. He's not going to be like in the crime family. And then when he comes back, ultimately his father gets shot and his brother ends up getting killed. I can't remember exactly, but ultimately he decides that he's going to take over the family business and he becomes the heir to the Godfather. So he's talking to his wife.

Um, at one point when, when he's decided to take over the business and his wife is, uh, K right. I haven't seen the movie in a few years, but if you guys remember, it's more or less, she goes, uh, she's like, what are you doing? You can't be working for your father. And he goes, listen, my father's a powerful man, like a Senator or a president. And this is how powerful men are. And she goes, listen to yourself, Michael, do you have any idea how naive you sound? Senators and presidents don't have people killed.

And his retort is now who's being naive. Okay. And it's just like the perfect line. It's the perfect line because it's, it's the perfect like red pill, blue pill distinction. Like that is the normie blue pilled attitude. What do you mean? He's like a politician. He kills people. But of course the red billed attitude is like, yeah, that's what makes him like a politician. Duh. And so anyway, there is just this, there's a feeling that you get here where it's like,

Why you know why is our government doing gangster shit and and make no mistake about it? What Trump's doing is gangster shit, you know and look I'll tell you I Just to be very clear here. I don't support this. This is not something that I think is a good idea I mean, I think we should end the war And the the war never should have been started. It should be negotiated away, but I got to be honest as somebody who has

okay, like there are certainly experts who have studied this issue more than me, but compared to like a regular person, I have studied this issue pretty, you know,

pretty deeply. This is the war in Ukraine has been one of my major focuses for many years now. The new Cold War between the US and Russia was one of my major focuses for many years before this war. So just from all the years of interviewing Scott Horton and reading all his books and all the years of covering Russiagate and all the, you know, this is just something I've been focusing on for a very long time. And

For anybody who has been focusing on it, you know,

As I said in the last episode, Ukraine, the Ukrainian people really are true victims in all of this. This was a war that America led Ukraine into, as John Mearsheimer said, led Ukraine down the primrose path. And he said this back in 2014. And so it is, you know, essentially we convinced Ukraine

the Ukrainians, against the will of the Ukrainian people and against the will of the Ukrainian elected officials. We convinced, and when I say convinced, I mean we...

backed a coup against the democratically elected leader of Ukraine who had decided to make a deal with Vladimir Putin. I mean, he he ultimately decided that that was in, I mean, say his people's interest or his interest or whatever. But he ultimately decided to calm things down with Russia and make an economic deal. I mean, think about this. This is what kicked off the Maidan protests.

was that Yanukovych, the democratically elected... Give me this. We're all in the business of democracy promotion. Well, the democratically elected president of Ukraine with elections verified by the EU... So this was...

As legit as elections get, even the West claims this was a legit election. So their democratically elected president, he decided when he was, and I think he was conflicted himself, but when he was deciding between signing this partnership with the European Union or signing an economic deal with Vladimir Putin, he ultimately decided he was going to go with Putin. That was the course that this country was on.

was to have decent enough relations with Russia. And then the West comes in and pours tens, maybe even over $100 million into this protest effort against Yanukovych, which ultimately leads to ousting him and him fleeing for his life.

OK, and then under the new government, they push them into the civil war. I think something like 15000 people died in the fighting in those years between Maidan and when Vladimir Putin invaded. And so I'm just saying that.

Ukraine, look, Ukraine is a pawn on the chessboard. And there is, you know, I do think that it's kind of fucked up. Even though we spent all this money, it's kind of fucked up for us to then go extort resources away from Ukraine when really the rightful owners are the Ukrainian people. And by the way, when I say this, I do not, when I say rightful owners, I don't mean in any commie sense of the word. I'm not,

but it's not my conception of property rights. I'm not saying that like

all of the people or the workers own. I'm saying like from a real hardcore Lockean libertarian perspective, like, I don't know the people who homesteaded it or something like that. Like they have a better claim on their resources than we do. And so I, you know, look, I am because I recognize that governments are gangs and are governments are essentially just the most successful gang.

like the mo this is basic rothbard anatomy of the state but a government is basically the most successful gang who took over the entire area and decided that they were just going to set up shop there they didn't have to leave we just ruled these people well because i recognize that i believe in very limited government very limited like picture the most limited government much more limited than that um so limit the entire thing so

Okay, I want there to be less gangster shit. I'm not on board with government doing gangster shit. I also do recognize to the extent that government exists, that's what they do. That's what they're in the business of doing. Every inch of it is gangster shit. And so when people come out here and they go, oh my God, Donald Trump's doing gangster shit.

Why we're that's not why we're supported that we're supporting, you know Ukraine because they're a democracy. Okay. Yeah, that's right. We're supporting Ukraine because they're a demand the country who's democratic first of all, they the u.s. Back to coup in 2004 in Ukraine and then in 2014 so their democracy is

Is less than 10 years old, if you could even call it a democracy or 11 years old now, but you can't really call it that anymore because they're not holding elections. And Vladimir Putin has excuse me, Zelensky is a very low approval rating. So anyway, it's a pure fantasy to act like we weren't always doing gangster shit.

It was always gangster shit. The difference is that, and I think this is essentially why so many people support Donald Trump. The difference is that he's proposing doing gangster shit. That's at least conceivably in the nation's interest. He's, he's at least going like, Hey, we're gangsters here. We do gangster shit. Why don't we get something for all this money we've put out now? Again, I don't agree with that because I think,

I'm not saying like the American people are responsible for everything their government does, but, you know, I don't know. We have to some degree allowed our government to do this. And I don't think that the Ukrainian people who have had their country destroyed and are going to lose part of it, they should have to pay us back.

I'm a little uneasy with that. I don't agree with that. But to hear a senator sit there and try to like have this like, oh, my God, he's going over and shaking them down like he's a gangster. But that's such bullshit because that's not what America is all about. America is just about supporting democracy. I mean, it's just it's it's all so laughable. There's no way a sitting senator actually sees things this way.

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account. If you order by 3:00 PM, they'll ship your order within the same day. So you have peace of mind right away. Go check them out at my website, prepare with smith.com. All right, let's get back into the show. We just had, we had to fight a war against Russia because of the threat to democracy. I mean like if we, if we have to fight a war, if a democracy is threatened,

Yet we can prop up the government of Saudi Arabia. We can prop up the government of Israel. Israel has had control of 5 million people since 1967 who have no rights whatsoever. That includes voting rights.

But we can prop them up and yet we have to go to war to defend democracy here, but it's also okay to prop up all of these countries that are antithetical to democracy.

It's like it doesn't even make any sense. It doesn't pass the basic smell test like there. That's just not what's going on here. What's going on is that the government's always doing gangster shit. Finally, Donald Trump comes out and is just like, I'm going to do gangster shit on behalf of the country. And then all these people are outraged and they pretend that this is the first time gangster shit has ever happened.

Go listen. If you want to see on the topic of Ukraine, go listen to the tape of Joe Biden. In fact, Natalie, why don't you pull that up? Joe Biden, Ukrainian prosecutor. Just put that into YouTube and it should spit out the video pretty quickly here. But it's like, it's just so funny to me to be like, oh, all we were ever doing over there was protecting democracy. And then Donald Trump wants to do all this gangster shit with the government. Yeah. Okay. Did you find it?

Because this is where you could see how like what I'm talking about when I say gangster shit is all that they do, all that they do. We'll have that up in a second. And then I will I will go through. Natalie's got some questions pulled up here and then I will go through the chat and maybe we'll answer a few more questions in the second half of the show. All right. You can pull that video up whenever we have it, Natalie.

Here we go. Yeah, here we go. This is 2006. Oh, sorry. This is Biden's comments later, but you can just skip right to the comments. Yeah. I remember going over convincing our team, our others to convincing us that we should be providing for loan guarantees. And I went over, I guess, the 12th, 13th time to Kiev. And I was supposed to announce that there was another billion dollar loan guarantee.

And I had gotten a commitment from Poroshenko and from Yatsenyuk that they would take action against the state prosecutor. And they did. So they said they had they were walking out to press conference and I said, I'm not going to or we're not going to give you the billion dollars. They said, you have no authority. You're not the president. The president said, I said, call him. I said, I'm telling you, you're not getting a billion dollars.

I said, you're not getting the billion. I'm going to be leaving here. I think it was, what, six hours? I looked at it. I said, we're leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor's not fired, you're not getting the money. Oh, son of a bitch. Got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid. There you go. By the way, he's talking about Matt Taibbi's done great reporting on this. The prosecutor he's talking about was investigating Burisma, the company that his son was making $100,000 a month on the board of.

So that's it. You take out, you fire a prosecutor and put in a guy who we say, he says is solid. In other words, our guy, or you won't get this money. Now tell me that's not gangster shit.

This is what governments do. Okay. This is the nature of governments. They do gangster shit. What do you think? You know, like for all these people who love to bring up world war two, what do you think world war two was? Do you think that was a love fest? It was all about democracy promotion. Yeah. That's why we partnered with Joseph Stalin or his love of democracy.

The whole thing is just so fun. But it's interesting to see people try to kind of spin this when I think so many people are waking up to what is, I think, in many ways the most important red pill, which is just that governments are gangs. That's what they are. Gangs with a monopoly on aggressive violence.

Anyway, I just thought that was too great. All right, let's dive into some questions here, and we'll go through a few of these, and then I got to pack and get on a plane tomorrow morning. All right, Dave, the State Department just declared eight drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. These cartels are not only smuggling drugs, but people as well. What are your thoughts?

Not good. Not good. And really, so much of that is just because of all of the, in the post-9-11 world, like all of the legal issues

you know, factors that come in with declaring a group terrorists. And, you know, it's unclear exactly what the Trump administration is going to do now that they've branded these cartels as terrorists, but certainly the possibilities are very close to some type of war. And I mean, that's, that's the last thing we want to do. Look,

It's already, if you, the bottom line, right, with immigration, if you're kind of zooming out from, the truth is that the immigration crisis, there's a few different things that are going on, right? So number one, you had like the insane flow of migrants coming in, asylum seekers, some of them will claim to be, but you have a huge flow of,

of migrants coming in during Joe Biden. This has already been drastically cracked down. What's his name? The borders are guy was just posting about these numbers the other day, but already the look when Joe Biden came in, the signal was sent that it's wide open. So they came in record high numbers. Donald Trump's in the signal has been sent. It's not wide open. The numbers have greatly been reduced. So that's number one. Okay. You don't in terms of that problem.

what we had was the worst of both worlds under Joe Biden, which is that you have de facto open borders and the war on drugs going on. Okay. So you have drugs are heavily criminalized in America and yet there's a market for them. There's demand. There's a lot of people who want drugs. And so then you have these cartels that will bring the drugs over the market and they make a ton of money off doing this. The, the,

To me, legalizing drugs is the best solution to all of this. I know there's some right-wingers who don't like that, but the truth is that it's the exact same logic as prohibition of alcohol. When you had prohibition of alcohol, you had a huge rise in the homicide rate because it was a black market now, and the only people in the black market are, by definition, criminals, right? And so criminals end up thriving in these black markets. And also, you have a big problem for anybody who's just like...

If you've ever like known anyone who sold drugs, like on any level, maybe I'm more of a, maybe I was more of a fucked up kid than some of you guys are, but I knew a lot of people who sold drugs. And, um, one of the things that happens when you're in an illegal market is that you have no security.

When you're in a legal market, if someone steals from you, you can call the cops or you can hire your own security or whatever. You have options. You have legal recourse. And so if someone like what I'm doing right now, being a podcaster, this is a legal market.

at least for now, maybe not in Germany, according to our most recent episode, but at least in the United States of America for right now, this is legal. Now, if someone were to break into my house and steal a bunch of equipment, I can have it insured. I can call the cops. I have other paths. But if you know anyone who ever sold drugs, if you have

If you have a bunch of drugs, you can't get insurance on it and you can't call the cops if someone steals it from you. You got to be prepared to defend it yourself. And this is where the guns come in. And this is where the gang culture, right? So there's like when you have a black market, you create all of these problems. And if you were to legalize drugs just in the same way when prohibition ended, the homicide rate drastically fell. And same thing would happen.

And the same, the same way that Al Capone took over the cities during prohibition. Well, now you got these Mexican gangs and, uh, then some other South American gangs, um, who are, who are dominating in, in the prohibition of drugs. And so that would be the best, you know, this would be the best solution that would lead to less bloodshed, not more. And, um, I just, I see nothing but very dangerous red flags, um,

by designating the cartels as terrorists. I do not think that is a good plan. Okay, next question.

Dave, if Trump ends up cutting a ton of spending and cuts taxes, how would we be able to combat the inflation to follow with more Americans having disposable income? I know it will balance out in the future because the cost of production would go down as well, but I'm worried about the short-term effects.

Well, you're going to be looking at deflation if you have big cuts in government spending, if there's less money printing. And yeah, I think you kind of answered your own question there. This is going to make the cost of things go down.

So this is ultimately I mean, this is what has to be done. And so I get your point if you're saying like in the tax cuts are like stimulative if you're like directly giving Americans tax cuts. But you got to keep in mind, too, that it's not the government spending all that money to.

It's not as if the government is taxing people and just holding that money. So I don't think that you're going to see any increase in inflation from the tax cuts and the spending cuts are going to be deflationary in nature. So this is it's going to be cutting the size of government is going to be an overwhelming positive. Believe me, we're we're still a long way away from seeing a ton of spending cuts and tax cuts. But hopefully you're right.

Okay. Dave, are you nervous about Doge auditing our gold reserves at Fort Knox? What should we expect when it comes out that the gold reserve is significantly less than reported or completely depleted? It's a really good question. My guess is yes. I mean, like I'd say like

closer to completely depleted if I had to guess. I mean, I don't know. I don't know any better than you do, you know? But it's like, why the hell have... Why have they been so secretive about what's at Fort Knox? Why have we never had an audit on this? My guess is, yeah, that it's been completely depleted. Now, what would... What should we expect? I mean, look, it's like one of these things. It's...

you know, the short term might be a little bit ugly, but I think that's necessary for a positive result in the long term. And it's kind of like,

You know, if you're if you're married to someone who's treating you really badly and is lying to you and cheating on you, looking through their phone, you know, this might be upsetting and it might not be good for the marriage in the short term. But if you want to know what's really going on, I just I always err on the side that we're better to know than to all be being fooled.

Um, so I would, I would still air it. Yeah. There'll be, people would be upset. It would probably have a negative effect on markets, but at the same time, it's like this whole thing is built on a house of cards. And so it's, it's kind of the only way to ever move to a better, more sane place.

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okay dave what would your response uh to someone who holds the opinion excuse me to someone who holds the opinion that the quote gangster is a good thing when somebody like trump is doing it that it's only a problem when it's not the intro when it's not in the interest of the people of the country um okay well i mean

I guess there's a couple responses that I would have to that. So number one, it's wrong, you know? And maybe that won't move you at all, but I still, I'll lead with what I, you know, think. I mean, like the gangster shit essentially means,

stealing from people, killing people, injuring people or threatening to do all of that. And I do just reject that as morally wrong in the same way we would think it was morally wrong if individuals were doing that. But even if you forget about that,

to just totally table the the morality discussion because i understand that that doesn't always move people and it's it's easy even though i don't think it's fair it's easy for people to dismiss that and be like oh you know and anytime you're especially right wingers like anytime you're talking about morality it's kind of just like dismissed as naive uh that's not really the way the world works or something i don't agree with any of that it's like yeah i actually i think

Like, you know, when I was debating Josh Hammer, he asked me at one point during the debate if morality is a consideration for me when it comes to U.S. foreign policy. And I was like, yeah, it is. And I would also just say that, you know, two kind of more right-winger types that I think—

I don't know. I'm not claiming... I hate when people who are like, make appeals to Christianity or religion when they're not religious. And so I'm not trying to be that guy. I'm not exactly religious. I have a personal relationship with God, but I don't really subscribe to a religion or a particular holy book or something like that. But...

I would just say, I say this as somebody who's not an expert on theology, but I do think it's just, it seems to me it's completely incompatible with Christianity to separate morality from theology.

Government policy like I'd wait. I don't know. I must have missed that lesson from Jesus like at some point there's like these these rules of morality don't apply if They're good for your country or something like that But look more importantly than any of that the the flaw in this is like look gangster shit

is good for the gangs, but it's never going to be, you know, like I'm not saying like in any isolated incident, it couldn't be good for the country as well. But the idea that you're going to have like an empowered gangster class that rules you and that's going to end up being good for you is just, again, it's like it was the wisdom of all of the founders that that's exactly what you don't want to do. And they were right.

And this is part of the reason why America has been such a successful country, because it was at least started on this premise. But the the idea that like you're going to have this gangster class and you're going to continue to empower them and that's going to be good for you. Like, I don't I'm not saying like in an isolated incident or in crazy extenuating circumstances.

Perhaps there could be, for a short time frame, a benefit to that. But the idea of like, do you think any neighborhood is going to be better because they're ruled by gangs?

is any is that is that good for you in your household in your personal life and your like i don't really think so um and even in the business world i don't think it's like the gangster that i'm talking about and we're not talking about like threats of violence that's not really how most

businessmen succeed in free market or civilized Western societies. It's actually from providing value. And so, you know, I just I think it's very it's a very dangerous and short sighted game to get to play. OK, hold on one second.

All right. Here's the last one I have up here, and then we'll wrap on this. Do you see Trump throwing any Republicans under the bus in 2026 running for reelection? It's an interesting question, you know, because I'm thinking about it now. Right. Is McConnell.

I think is the only one who really didn't vote for his appointees and McConnell, I don't think is, is running again. So there's no opportunity there. A lot of this, I think probably depends on what happens between now and 2026. Uh,

I sure hope so. You know, I sure hope he does it to some of the ones who deserve it. But again, this is the problem with Donald Trump is it's just, you know, again, I'm trying to be cautiously optimistic. I mean, this is a different Trump than we saw in his first term. But the problem with Trump in his first term is that what some he ended up throwing the best congressman in the country under the bus, Thomas Massey, because Thomas Massey objected to the giant spending bills in 2020. Donald Trump didn't want to hear that in 2020 because he was trying to get reelected. And that, you know,

So he was trying to brag about the spending bills. And I understand, you know, there, it was COVID. It was a crazy year. He was trying to get reelected, but at the same time, Thomas Massey was 100% right about that. Thomas Massey accurately predicted that this would result in terrible price inflation for the American people. And so, uh,

You know, Donald Trump is the type of guy who is petty enough that if you cross him in some way, he might really try to get back at you, even if it doesn't matter to him because he's only got two more years in there and it doesn't even matter whether you get reelected or not. So that's an interesting question. I really don't know. As of right now, I don't know. Is there any like Republican in Congress who's actually like, you know, it's not as if we have like,

what Mitt Romney was doing in the first term or like Liz Cheney or there's not like a Republican who's out there like being the opposition right now. If there was, I think probably he would do that in 2026. But

at the same time i look at it like if i had to guess yeah there'll be some republicans who stab them in the back between now and 2026 and i would not be surprised at all if that results in donald trump uh trying to throw them under the bus and and get them primaried or something like that and you know donald trump doesn't have um

you know, none of these endorsements and all of this stuff. It's never, it's never like you have, you can just give 100% of your energy to someone else. But in the world of Republicanism right now, Donald Trump's the last guy you want to have as an enemy. And so I do think he should be using that. You know, I do think he should be, he, you know, my advice to Donald Trump during the campaign, which he ended up somewhat following, I'm not saying he followed it from me, but he ended up

ultimately kind of following my my advice to him was like you should be threatening the out of these social media companies you know and that and ultimately look what he did with zuckerberg now if you want to call me out i guess that is some gangster should i support so there you go there are some there are some limited uh examples where i will i will support some gangster being done but only

In the goal of rolling back gangster shit. So there you go. All right, listen, we're going to wrap up on that one. I will catch you guys out in Houston, Texas tomorrow night, Friday night, Saturday night. See you there. Thank you guys for listening. Catch you next time. Peace.