Trump's First 100 Days
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What's up, everybody? Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem. I am Dave Smith. He is Robbie the Fire Bernstein. How are you today, good sir? Oh, I kickstarted Porch Tour. I ate a lot of brisket, and I had a good time. Porch Tour is in session, my friends. Where'd you have the brisket at? Oh, I had a double brisket day. First at some local spot, which was solid, and then at Bucky's after my show when I was drunk and high. And let me tell you, I don't think the Bucky's sandwich was technically better, but I might have enjoyed it more.

You know, a lot of people won't double up on brisket in one day.

But I've always felt that's what separates Rob from the rest of these pretenders. A lot of people have brisket in the morning and they're not going back for brisket later that same day. Not Rob, though. Well, me and you, buddy, we are, well, in a couple days, headed out to San Diego to do the American Comedy Company, which I'm very much looking forward to. That was just one of my favorite clubs that we did. What was it?

I guess a year and a half ago or so now. So really looking forward to being back there. Come grab some tickets. If you're in the San Diego area, comic Dave Smith.com, that has the ticket link for you. And I'm hoping to walk around and see some more homeless penises. Cause they were truly impressive. The last time I was out there, it was wild. And I remember, you know, I have not been, you know, I haven't shit. I'm even trying to remember when was the last time I was in Los Angeles. Um,

You know, I used to go to L.A. all the time. We used to do like we had a little Legion of Skanks residency there at the comedy store. We used to do, you know, the New Year's Eve show every year. And for like three or four years in a row, we did it.

And then Rogan's podcast used to be out there. So I'd go out there to do that sometimes. I always like be out in L.A. a few times a year. And then since we stopped doing that, I like almost never go. And, you know, during all the COVID years, L.A. was so crazy. Like I remember I got an offer at one point to do a gig there, but it was when it was like you could only do 50 percent capacity there.

Like you couldn't sell out the room. They would only let you sell half the tickets. And they said, just didn't make sense. And then San Francisco, I've, I've never been to San Francisco since it's like deteriorated from what I've heard. I remember going to Hollywood in L in LA, like man years ago at this point, but I was out in Hollywood and the homeless problem was like out of control. Like,

uh, but San Diego was, it was the one kind of California city where I would like start up close rather than just seeing it from, you know, like on the news or whatever. Um, I had actually been, which was, uh, always the only way you can learn about anything, but it really was, there is something like, I remember me and you talking about it quite a bit when we were out there last time. So you go to San Diego, first of all,

Like most cities in California, it's stunningly beautiful. Just like an unbelievably beautiful... California is an amazing...

state. It's the sunshine state, right? Or is that Florida or California? It's California, right? I think. Oh, is that Florida? Let's just go with it. Well, whatever it is wrong anyways, but it's, but California is like, it's like the most beautiful, you know, like naturally the most beautiful area. And so you come, you know, you're in San Diego and it's just like the, the city's beautiful. The water's beautiful. It's so you go in that downtown area. It's like,

great restaurants, a lot of cool culture. Um, there it's, it's an expensive area. It's, you know, people living there and eating there are upper middle class people. And it's like, everything's very nice. And then you just have these entire blocks taken over by homeless people. And I just, it, there is something about that. That is, um,

Just profound. I don't know. It's just like you walk around there and you're like, there's something it's a comment about like Western civilization, the United States of America, like just everything where you're like, how is it that you have all of this? And you, and yet while you have all of this, the one thing you don't have, the one thing you can't muster is the, the courage to,

to protect it and say like no we're not just gonna let you come and ruin this like what are you and it's anyway it's just wild and as we've talked about many times in the past it's not an issue of like having a heart or not having a heart it's not an issue of being like cold and callous and just being like fuck you homeless people you're on your own it's like it's a it's weakness because it's not as if it's like helping the homeless people to allow them to live on the street you're not like

You know what I'm saying? Like it'd be it'd be more humane to force them into some type of facility than to allow mentally ill drug addicts to just lay on the concrete. It's pure weakness and cowardice. And I don't know, there's just something really interesting to me about that. Like, it's like, come on, man. Can't like the men in this town get together and be like, no, we're not taking this shit. Anyway, really looking forward to going back.

But that is that was my big takeaway from last time we were there. All right. So, you know, the thing I was thinking about a bit this morning that I thought we would open today's show talking about a little bit was that we are approaching. I think either tomorrow or the next day is Donald Trump's hundredth day.

in office in the second term that is. And I thought, you know, while, you know, there's been a lot going on in the news in those hundred days and there's been a lot going on for me personally in the last few weeks, that was kind of a good opportunity to kind of zoom out and assess the first hundred days. And then, of course, a big part of that story is

is what one of the things you sent me, Rob, for the topics for the show today, is that in at least a couple of the more recent polls, Donald Trump's approval rating has pretty drastically declined. I think there was a CNN poll and maybe a Washington Post one that both had him at like 40%. This, of course, is...

Coming only a few weeks or a couple months after he was pretty consistently having his highest approval numbers. Now, again, I'm not trying to like, you know, you take all these polls with a grain of salt. I don't know exactly how accurate they are. I mean, clearly, as we've mentioned many times on the show before, it's there's there was something revealing about Trump.

This last election cycle where the pollsters were constantly telling us this was a toss up election. But yet all of the reporting since has indicated that the internal Democratic polls told you that Donald Trump was going to win every single swing state and the popular vote.

So as I've said for a while, it's like, hey, how come we can't get polling that's as good as Kamala Harris's internal polling, which is kind of bizarre. But regardless of that, I do think what they're measuring there is correct. Like, I'm not saying the numbers are exactly correct, but I do think that Donald Trump enjoyed his election.

Highest popularity when he first came in and now he is right back to where he was or perhaps even beneath where he was in his first term. So that's a kind of interesting, you know, that's an interesting development 100 days into this.

What do you think, Rob? Just kind of where you could take it wherever you want to. But we're 100 days into this thing. And it does seem like the at least kind of like the hope for the potential of what this administration could be has now met the reality of the direction the administration's going. What do you think?

Well, firstly, I love his bravado because his last statement was, don't worry, the tariffs are going to cover every cost you've ever had. And we're going to be bringing down prices because of all the money we're bringing in from the tariffs.

To speak to what Donald Trump has actually accomplished in his first hundred days, I've observed a lot of noise and chaos and incredible bravado statements from the administration. And then, you know, the left overplaying how bad it is or what exactly he's up to. So to give the quick snapshot, he did not end the Ukraine war in a single day.

uh in fact i don't know if he's walking away from it i don't know if he's uh no longer going to engage in the peace process but isn't going to continue to send arms over to the ukraine i don't as a person who regularly follows the news i don't even know what the next is uh what what the next course of action or steps being taken is there

In terms of border control, it sounds like they've actually gotten control of the border and that we do not have as many people coming into the country. In terms of sending people out of the country, it's a bit of a mess. I don't think that they're deporting at higher rates and they seem to be having at least creating some news about mix-ups. In the case of the Maryland man, that guy's from El Salvador and was returned to El Salvador. I think that there's more of a problem with the due process with the Venezuelans that were sent there. But

anyways I don't know that it's been the uh most fluid process in terms of actually engaging in the deportations uh from an economic standpoint the tariff policy is he going for more tariffs is does he is he actually even trying to create manufacturing jobs at this point is it just tariffs other than preferred American Industries uh are other countries blinking once again a lot of noise

I don't actually know what's happening there, but I think that's where he's actually losing the general public the most is in two things. One is I think they wanted to see a bigger cleaning up of the deep state. Doge apparently, I guess, did something with USAID.

But they haven't really sold me on that storyline. And it's apparently over. And I haven't heard a new thing from the administration of what they're doing to clean up the fraud in government. So USAID storylines over. There's no new plan for fraud in government. Pam Bondi, Kash Patel and all the rest. I haven't seen them actually go after Donald Trump's enemies or what the deep state apparatus was. We seem to be given all the support that Israel continues to need.

And everything else is a person who daily follows the news as a job and reads a lot. I don't know what they're doing. So that's my hundred day scorecard. People don't like the tariffs. They want to see the economy improved and they want to see some of the other things that Donald Trump said he was going to do actually get done. Yeah. So, okay. I think that's a great kind of a great assessment. And just to add to that and maybe like discuss some of the specifics there, you know,

Look, there's always – I've noticed this a lot. I'm sure you have too, Rob. There's always a tendency that all of us have to guard against sometimes to –

To act like or to act as if what you want to see means it's also going to be popular. You know, like it's like, oh, Donald Trump would be I see this all the time amongst hardcore libertarians. You know, like I remember I was I was, you know, kind of gently making fun of Nick Gillespie once because he had some post about.

about how, uh, how if Donald Trump dropped all the culture war stuff and focused on the fiscal insanity of DC, he'd have way higher approval. Yeah. It's like, yeah. Like, don't get me wrong. I kind of agree with your point, but for us to just project this onto the world, like you can't just pretend the world is the way you wish it was. And I said, I said, uh,

to him i go i said yeah no i i agree i said um matt walsh you know did okay with uh what is a woman but if he really wanted to sell some tickets he should make a documentary about deficit spending um because that's really what gets people moving you know it's like okay there is also real life um however so while guarding against that i'm still kind of going to do the same thing here but i think i'm i'm accurate that i i think that in in a strange way

There is this disconnect between where Donald Trump's base is and where the Donald Trump administration is. Or I should even add there, there's a disconnect between where Donald Trump's base is, where Donald Trump's rhetoric is, and then where the actual policies are. And I think where Donald Trump's base is, is that they have a burning relationship

very well-deserved white hot hatred for the ruling elite in the United States of America, that they correctly blame the establishment for ruining everything. I mean, just ruining everything from getting everything wrong, getting fiscal policy wrong, monetary policy wrong, foreign policy wrong, all of COVID wrong, like, and lying, not even getting it wrong, but just lying about all of it.

And there's also, I think, a very palatable recognition that severe crimes have been committed by the Biden and Obama administration. And.

Now, Donald Trump also with his rhetoric is pretty goddamn intense about this. Drain the swamp. Russiagate was a witch hunt. Everything Donald Trump says goes along with this. And so that works really well on a campaign.

Because your base hates the establishment, and then you're feeding them lots of red meat about how you're going to be a revolutionary type figure. But then when it comes down to the details, there's really nothing revolutionary about anything in this administration. Now, there are certainly areas where it is preferable to the alternative, where he's a little bit better than the other guys would be. In some areas, not all.

But there's just something that's it's a recipe to be left not satisfied because you know what I mean? Like what the base really wants is something more radical than this. I would also OK to get into a few specifics here. And again, you know, this brings me no pleasure to say, but it does seem that.

so i you know full disclosure to everybody i've told i've said this before on the podcast right but like when doge was first created i was excited about it because i went well you know if nothing else i was created you know what on the campaign when donald trump was like we're gonna do this doge thing and have elon musk be in charge of it i was like hey if nothing else this is going to get the ideas out there and i think there's something really valuable in that and i think there has been something very valuable in that

But at the same time, what I initially said was like, you know, this isn't a real government department. I don't know. It can't really do anything. It's, you know, the Congress is still going to appropriate the spending. And so that's what you got to deal with. And as I've said publicly, I try not to reveal too much about private conversations, but I had a dinner with Vivek Ramaswamy. This was back several months ago when he was still a part of Doge. And

I expressed that feeling to him. I was like, yeah, this is really cool, but it sure is a shame. It's not a real government department or nothing. And you guys can't actually do anything. And he was like, dude, just wait.

Me and Elon got some stuff that we're working on and it did give me pause and to go, Hey, you know, have a little bit of humility. These are people who I think are, are much smarter and more successful than me. And Hey, maybe they got some plans. There's, there's a lot of brain power between Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk and a lot of money and a lot of influence and like, Hey, maybe they got something. So I tried to be kind of open to it a hundred days in now and

And it pains me to say this, but it seems overwhelmingly clear that Doge failed. Just none of this is live. I hope I pray to eat these words. I would. Nothing would make me happier than if I have to come back on the show at some point and go, I got that one wrong. It really did end up working out. But like, what are we talking about here? Two trillion dollars in cuts. Where are those cuts? Spending is going up.

It's not going down. There's no cuts. There's negative cuts. There's growth, you know? And so, yes, a lot of hay was made about mostly about unimportant things, if I'm being completely honest. You know, like the most amount of noise was like, they're funding transgender goat studies in Lebanon or whatever. And it's like, none of that was really the, you know, like, okay, so

It's insane that we're funding all of this shit. It's insane that we waste all of this money, but it's never like they even really mainstreamed the idea that like, no, we're fomenting coups in other countries against democratically elected governments or, you know what I mean? It was like, never like really got in to like the true criminality of USAID or the National Endowment for Democracy or whatever. And, you know, there was a lot of talk about,

But when it came down to it, Congress passes a CR that refunded like almost all the programs that Doge recommended cutting. And then Donald Trump is there to smear Thomas Massey for being against it. And so like, I don't know. So there, so in terms of the Doge thing, kind of a complete failure. Um, I do think that like, you're, you're absolutely right in what you said that, um,

Donald Trump has seemingly almost single handedly. He has stopped the flow of migrants coming into the country. And that's a huge W. You can't take that one away from from the Trump administration that they get an A plus on in terms of just the flow of people coming into the country. They get an A plus on going from the highest ever to the lowest ever is pretty goddamn impressive.

And, you know, OK, it was the highest ever a couple of years ago, but still under the last administration. And so they get credit for that. But it is the more you look at it. I do think there's just like a lot of things, a lot of things that Donald Trump is is doing that just aren't really what the base was looking for.

And I think that like in terms of like deportations, I think the issue that most Trump supporters had was like, look, we don't even know how many illegal immigrants there are in the country. There's something in the ballpark of 30 to 50 million of them somewhere in there. I think we don't really know for sure.

And it's kind of like, hey, they don't have a right to be here. They came here illegally and they should have to go. And then you have debates about like, well, I guess we should start with the criminals, start with the gang members, start with this, and then figure out how exactly to do this. But like there was never really a –

like a consensus that like, yes, we should be deporting legal residents who oppose Israel or something like that. That just wasn't like really what they were all about. And I definitely think that like the, you know, it was pretty clear while don't get me wrong. While there's a lot of Trump's base who support Israel, I don't think, I think overwhelmingly the Trump base did not want any more of this military adventurism. And he's, he's,

Look, he's conducted like a pretty serious bombing campaign in Yemen here. I think there's been... The last report I saw was there were around, I think, 100 people killed in the last few days over this. And it's like, he never really sold this to the American people, never really convinced... Had like a convincing argument of this is why we should go to war with Yemen. He's...

Listen, as I've said before on the show, he does seem to have stood up to the Israelis to some degree about Iran. We could get into that a little bit more because there's some more updates on that. But it's constantly flirting with another war with Iran. And there's just like all of the craziness is back, you know, like all of the every day he says a crazy thing, this and that. It just doesn't seem like.

Look, it doesn't seem like there's much of a payoff for what maybe people's most optimistic hopes would have been. And then to your other point that you mentioned there, I mean, at this point, it seems overwhelmingly clear that there will be no punishment for any of the crimes that were committed at the highest levels of government. We're not getting anything. They're not, oh, well...

We'll release the JFK files minus all the redacted parts. We'll maybe release some of the Epstein stuff minus anything that you'd really want to say. There's just kind of like, at least this is very true from my perspective, but I do think this is a part of the reason why you're seeing his approval go down is that it's just kind of like,

People had their hopes up. Donald Trump stoked that, like, really get your hopes up because this is going to be something. And then it's just kind of like, nah, it's really more of the same in most of these areas. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, a brand new sponsor who we're very happy to have on board. And that is American Financing. Prices for the last few years have been and continue to be high. And most people, unfortunately, have to reach for credit cards to cover bills.

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Call 866-886-2026. That's 866-886-2026 or visit them at AmericanFinancing.net slash Dave. All right, let's get back into the show. I also think a lot of the bravado works really well in the election.

And there is a lot to be said for selling yourself to be in there. And even if you do not, let's say you do nothing as president, but you just don't allow the Democrats to get back in office and continue to censor the Internet or the other shenanigans that they were pulling of bringing people across the border. That's a bit of a win. There's a win in just place holding the office with the Republicans that the Democrats can't kind of do the worst of their agenda and enact that and then enact that upon us.

When you're actually in office, bravado statements about what you're going to do when you can actually just be getting things done doesn't work anymore. So, for example, when you start telling me, oh, I'm running the next time again, you're

What does that do? Why do I even need to be involved in a conversation about whether or not Donald Trump's going to be a good third-term president? Why does that matter right now? You got at least two years to go accomplish incredible things that all of a sudden there's a worthwhile conversation. Is Donald Trump the grand saver of the American Republic that we need to revisit third-term presidents?

There's no reason to have that conversation right now. In fact, it's just annoying to kind of throw out there. And even if it's just that you're trying to troll the Democrats into speaking about it, that's still just annoying because you're actually provoking the nonsense conversation. Or when you start telling me as you walk back all your tariffs that know the revenue coming in from tariffs, which as far as I understand, don't really, they've mostly been walked back except for China and China.

even that critical industries, he's starting to kind of cave on. So what, how exactly are tariffs going to start bringing down prices for people or what, what, what is the tax revenue that's coming or what is the tax savings that's going to exist for people? That sounds like nonsense. So I'm just saying once you're, once you're in office, nonsense, bravado statements, um,

firstly for me just trying to decipher through the bullshit if the bullshit's being initiated by donald trump and then the media is overreacting to it i'm still kind of annoyed with donald trump because he's engaging in bullshit you know what i mean like it's still right kind of the starting point of it uh but my broader point is just bravado doesn't really work when you actually have the tools to implement your policy and you could just engage in good policy

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, that's it's man, there's so much bullshit around all of it because there's there's so much bullshit that comes out of the Trump administration. And like you said, the media always has their bullshit overreaction to it. But it's kind of but like, look, there was a there was a bunch made about how the the Nasdaq had like it's the worst April since the Great Depression.

But then at the end of April, it recovered a bunch. And then there's all these Trump people being like, oh, look, you wrote all these articles about how it was so terrible, but I bet you're not writing any articles now or whatever. And you're like, yeah, but what you guys are leaving out is that it was when he walked back the tariffs.

that it recovered. So like, no, that's not really, I don't know. You don't get credit for that. You don't get credit for like driving your car toward a tree and then swerving at the last minute and not hitting it and being like, look, everyone was freaking out about us hitting the tree. It's like, yeah, because you were driving toward it. Like, that's why everybody was freaking out. And this isn't just the media freaking out. This is the markets freaking out. It's all like, like, I don't know what to say. Again, like we've covered this whole time. Like,

Tariffs are bad economic policy. If you want to make some 40 chess argument about how you can use them as negotiating tools, like, okay, but that's not the argument Donald Trump's making. And it's like,

Oh, did you see – did I mention this on the podcast or something? Because Bob – did I mention this? I think I may have told you this when we were hanging out. But Bob Murphy just had the best take of this ever because there was some free trade versus protectionist debate.

And Bob Murphy was reviewing it. And the guy who was debating on the side of tariffs, he mentioned this Abraham Lincoln quote. Did I mention this to you on the podcast? I don't think so. So he quoted Abraham Lincoln. Leave all your feelings about Abraham Lincoln aside. But he quotes Abraham Lincoln. And he had some quote where it was like, he goes, when we trade with the world, we get the goods and another country gets the money.

But when we trade with ourselves, we keep the goods and the money. And like, you could see where the, like in a way there's like a nice ring to that statement, you know, like you could see where like, if you weren't thinking about it too hard, you'd be like, ah, that's right. We got the goods and the money or whatever. And then Bob Murphy just goes such a great Bob. This really is Bob Murphy at his best. He's a brilliant economist. Um, and he goes, oh, it was interesting. He goes, Hey, you know, the first thing Abraham Lincoln did in the civil war was put a full blockade around the South.

I guess he was doing that just to get them richer. You know, I guess he was doing that just so that they would keep the goods and the money and they'd be even richer than being able to trade with the rest of the world. Or it's like, or no, he recognized that actually that makes you much poorer in order to do it. Right. Like we put a full blockade around Germany in World War Two, put a full blockade around Iraq in the 90s, full blockade around Yemen.

after the Saudi invasion in 2015. There's a full blockade around Gaza right now. None of these blockades are put there because they just want to make these people richer, right? It's just like, no, it's actually what everybody recognizes, including Abraham Lincoln in the Civil War, is that

They are trading with other countries who make certain products more efficiently, and therefore that makes them wealthier too. So it's like, you know, but... By the way, the statement's not even accurate. I had a phone call with the great Gene Epstein the other day. We spoke for about an hour on the phone on tariffs. I downloaded a whole bunch of information. And Gene, I apologize if I don't relay this information with complete accuracy.

But a lot of the money that we spend abroad then comes back into the United States of America when people buy our treasuries, I guess in part holder dollars, although he wasn't saying that, but a lot of it just comes back into our stock market. I understand that the stock market's not everything.

And maybe it favors the elites that have those holdings. But the idea that we just can't like even if you want to go with that, that is being true of, oh, we could just spend the money here and then at least the money stays here. A lot of the money that goes abroad ends up coming back here by way of investment so that the idea that we're just handing the other people the money and then it disappears from our economy. I don't even think that's accurate.

Right. Right. Without making any additional statement about, you know, the economics of tariffs or whatnot. I'm just saying if you want on that idea of we send the money out and then now that money is. Well, firstly, if they're just holding our dollars, then I guess that means we can rob them through our inflation and that helps us. And then if they send the money back here because they're investing in our companies, they're not really keeping the money.

They're actually lending it. No, that's a very... We can just continue to buy from them. That's an important point. But I think that, you know, like as you were making the distinction between like campaign rhetoric versus policy, there's... On the campaign trail...

Donald Trump would say things like, you know, it was always like the narrative was kind of like, hey, the world is ripping us off. I know how to get them to not be ripping us off anymore. You threaten them with a tariff, you hit them with a this, and then they stop ripping us off and then we prosper more. He talked a few times about like eliminating the income tax right now, just this week. He said that they were talking about eliminating the income tax for everyone who made $200,000 a year or less.

The thing is, that's not going to happen. Again, I hope to be wrong about this. Nothing would make me happier than if income taxes were eliminated on everybody making 200 grand or less a year, and nothing would make me happier than having to eat my words on this. But that simply is not going to happen. That's not on the table. And so what you end up getting is just the tariffs.

Not the tariffs replacing the income tax, the income tax and the tariffs on top of that. So it was something that you could sell on the campaign. But once you're actually in there and what people all people see is the market doing poorly and prices going up and things like that, that's not going to be very popular. And so, you know, look like I think Donald Trump.

Like the way I viewed it, this is what I said on Rogan's podcast earlier.

On the election, I was going to say the election night, but it was the day after the election. It's like Donald Trump had a mandate in three very key areas, like a real genuine mandate. It was to deal with the illegal immigration crisis, to get the economy turned around and to keep us out of foreign wars.

Like those were the areas where it was like super majorities of the American people were behind that agenda. And he succeeded on one of them.

You know, but he really has not succeeded at the other two. And I think that's pretty much what explains his approval numbers going down. By the way, I'm still rooting for the Trump administration. I still don't regret supporting them. I think it's clearly preferable to the alternative, at least as of now. Obviously, a major calamity could change that.

But, you know, we got to be honest about these things. And I think that's about where we are. And fake polls. They all love me more than they ever loved me. It's going to be the 51st state. We're going to own Greenland. No one's going to be richer. Sure. Just do something. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I, Oh, and you also made a, just a very good point that there is something, there is just something about the optics of a hundred days and talking about your third term and how we're going to like, you know, completely change all the rules to give you a third term where it's like, dude, you got to succeed with term number two before, like, look, let's just be real about this. Okay. Donald Trump's first term ended in 2020. Yeah.

the worst year in modern American history. And is he's a hundred days into his second term. Like dude, before, first of all, also like, let's be brutally honest here. Donald Trump won all the swing States and won the popular vote against Kamala fucking Harris.

He had Joe Biden at the beginning of the race and Kamala Harris at the end. These are like the two worst candidates. You know, if you and I mean the saying 2024, Joe Biden was a substantially worse candidate than 2020 Joe Biden, who wasn't great either. But 2024, Joe Biden was substantially worse. Kamala Harris was like the worst candidate the Democrats have ever fielded for president. I mean, like just horrible. So you beat them. It's like, dude, like.

it's not such a given that you'd win a third election. Let's see where we're at. But there is something very weird about like, like the move is to do so great that your base starts going, Hey, how,

how the hell do we get a third term out of this guy? It's not to just you as your approval numbers are falling, start leading with like, I should do this again. And, and, you know, look, I, the other thing that you mentioned there that I do really think is worth me agreeing with is that

And this is part of not the only reason, but it is part of the reason why I still do not regret voting for Donald Trump is that, look, there is there was a humongous cultural impact.

of Donald Trump winning this election that was very good for the country. And part of that was the fact that you're like, yeah, you, you didn't allow these Democrats to take power. And I really, I don't think it's unreasonable for people like me and you specifically, Rob, to have been very concerned about the censorship that might've happened under a Kamala Harris presidency. I mean, there was unprecedented pressure,

levels of censorship and attempted censorship in Joe Biden's four years. And if they came in and got kind of a mandate, like, yes, we saw these four years and we're giving you another four years, which is essentially what keeping the vice president, you know, the vice president winning the presidency would have been. I don't know what that environment looks like for guys like me and you. You know, it's like particularly also because

We are not flying under the radar nearly as much as we were during the last rounds of serious censorship. We're we're a much bigger show and much more in, you know, in the public conversation. You know, I said this on air.

I was talking about this, uh, on Saturday we did our, um, we, I do like a, uh, a monthly, uh, zoom call with the people that top tier subscribers at part of the problem.com. It's a great, uh, group of people that we have there. I really always enjoy it very much. Um,

And if you want to get in on that, go sign up over at partoftheproblem.com. But so I was kind of talking to them about it because, you know, we do it every month. So this was the first time we did it since all this stuff with my debate on Rogan and all this stuff has happened. And so we were talking about it. And like one of the things I was saying, I've been thinking about this quite a bit because I remember –

You know, if so, like I got on, I got on Joe Rogan's podcast for the first time in 2016. And I think then I did it again in 2017. And like,

This is kind of like when I started building a little bit of an audience. And I remember always being very concerned. And then through the years, you know, we've talked about both, but obviously are part of the problem in our circle. Facebook group got booted and you had major problems with your YouTube channel during COVID. And there was always this kind of concern that it was like, well, listen, like it's it's like.

you're growing and you're trying to get bigger and bigger, but you're flying a little close to the sun here. And at a certain point, like they'll come for you and they'll, they'll censor you. And this used to be the way it worked. And, you know, you could get,

The treatment that Alex Jones or Milo Yiannopoulos or Gavin McInnes or like all of these people just got shut down. Now, I mean, of course, Alex Jones survived it and is still there. Gavin and Milo, I think to a smaller extent, I think they were really impacted by their cancellation and unfair, very unfairly. Yeah.

Very unfairly. I mean like in the Milo example, it was like do you remember they got him for the most ridiculous thing ever They got him for opening up about being abused I don't think he would have called it that but like it was insane anyway, so that was always a major concern and one of the things I've been thinking about over these last few days while there has been this kind of There's been

You know, you can call it whatever you want to. And I'm not trying to make myself out to be like a victim here or something like that, because I'm not I don't feel like I'm a victim. I actually feel quite safe. I hope I'm not being naive in saying that, but I feel quite safe, actually, where I am right now. But there's been an attempt to like.

attack my reputation in a way that I've never experienced before with really, you know, big figures writing pieces and all of the, all going at me. And it's not like they're not overtly calling for me to be censored, but it does seem like the only logical conclusion is that they're calling for Joe Rogan to not have me on the show anymore or something like that. But the thing I've been thinking about a lot is just like that. I'm so lucky that this happened now, right?

You know, like I'm so lucky that we're kind of in the situation we're in now where Elon bought Twitter, where Zuckerberg bitched out, where YouTube kind of decided they don't want to do this anymore. And that whole censorship regime has kind of receded. And now I'm in the environment where I'm like, you know, for the moment, I was the talk of the who's, you know, spreading misinformation or whatever they say. But like that is...

You know, look, I think that's a big deal for the country. I don't mean to just make it about myself, but like for me personally, it's like, hey, I think Donald Trump winning was a huge part of this. And so like I'm I'm not unappreciative of how important that is. The other thing that's also made me appreciate is like Trump.

how brutal it must have been for those people who were the victims of those cancellation mobs in those days where they could really get you, where they could just get you. And then it was like, oh, dude, like, okay, yeah, you have the freedom of speech. You can keep saying whatever you want to, but you don't have a Twitter account, a YouTube account. You can't be on iTunes. You can't be on Facebook. You can't be on Instagram. You know, it's like, oh, you're pretty effectively removed from the conversation. And

I, while I still am dealing with like the kind of like, whoa, there's a lot of people, you know, talking about this. It doesn't have the teeth to it. At least it seems again, I could be wrong about this. I really hope I'm not wrong about that one, but it, but there is something kind of different there. And Donald Trump winning isn't the only aspect of that, but it certainly is a major one. And so I wouldn't want to, um, I wouldn't want to downplay that. And that's much more important than just me, obviously. Yeah.

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All right. Let's see. What should we... What do you want to go to here, Rob? Oh, do you want to... You know what? This is just...

as we were talking about this stuff, there's also kind of, I've got a clip here of Rachel Maddow that I did think was pretty funny because it kind of demonstrates the whole thing that we're talking about. It's kind of on topic where it's like, you know, it's like there's the Trump craziness, but then there's the reaction to Trump from the media, which is like 10 times more crazy. So it makes him seem less crazy somehow. But here was Rachel Maddow being interviewed about kind of her take on

On the first hundred days of Donald Trump's second administration. Let's let's play this clip. Was there some profound failure of imagination on our part that we did not reasonably anticipate how effective Trump and his cabal of doers would would be? And the reason why I say that is they destroy, they wreak havoc. Can you just pause it already? Yeah.

Suppose it already, dude, Rob, just think about the framing of this question is like, this is where MSNBC is, right? So we're talking Trump's first hundred days, right? Here's Rachel Maddow on Trump's first hundred days. So we just did a whole topic on this, right? But imagine this is where MSNBC still is. There's still go. Did we just not fearmonger enough?

Was that was the problem that we just didn't realize how bad it would be? And isn't that amazing, Rob, that that's still their takeaway? Not that we overplayed our hand and therefore couldn't talk about the very real issues with Donald Trump. But maybe we didn't. Maybe we weren't alarmist enough.

is where msnbc is it's dude it's it's so like reminiscent of 2017 2018 where the dynamic is always like you almost want to be pissed off at donald trump but then you see the corporate media and you're like nah you know what you i think i'm back with him it's just too crazy imagination is a very funny word from a journalist yeah we have spun more outlandish stories

Yeah, yeah, exactly right. All right, let's keep playing. Oh, so much damage. And then they're told that's illegal. They're told you can't do that. They're told that that is wrong. And we see that, right? But the damage has been done. And then you have people like U.S. citizens that are now being held in prison. I mean, it's these types of things that really make me wonder, did we, again, have a failure of imagination? Can you just pause again? You said, I actually look at it, I think...

You know, we haven't played a mainstream news clip on the show in a while, and...

I don't see as many of them in my Twitter feed. I haven't been consuming as much mainstream media as of late. Me too. It really lacks any specifics whatsoever as to what the havoc is. And if your one single example is the El Salvadorian who has sent back to El Salvador, not that I say that that was necessarily the right decision. I actually have mixed feelings on that one because he is El Salvadorian. It just lacks any specifics whatsoever of what,

what exactly is the havoc? What exactly is the defiance of law? I mean, a lot of these lower courts will end up getting overturned that would try to, I don't think regional judges should be able to, um,

hold back. I think there needs to be a secondary Supreme Court that almost... Or these cases need to get to the Supreme Court quicker. I don't really think liberal local judges should be allowed to counteract the president's policies, particularly if the matters seem to be more political than they are legal. But in this case, it's just such a nonsense claim where she doesn't give a single specific

other than one instant, which is one guy that's not wreaking havoc on a country. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's also the way she said her actual words were that we have American citizens sitting in prison and you're like, yeah, yeah.

We have lots of American citizens sitting in prison. Like, what are you? No, I know. Who is living in Maryland who's not an American citizen. Right, right. But so it's like, no, there's a case of a non-citizen who, and that is very debatable whether that was the right move or not. But like, that's not, but like, she just, an American citizen in prison. It's like, yeah, dude, we have the biggest prison population in the world. Like, yes, we have lots of American citizens in prison. What are you talking about here? Like, it's like you said, there's just no specificity

Excuse me. There's no specifics here. It's like, again, yes, it's not. The problem is like it's always in a weird way and perhaps even intentionally some conspiracy theorists might speculate. But.

The media always in their own weird way cover for Donald Trump because there are these things to be critical about, about how he kind of like really isn't doing so many of the things that he promised that he ran on. But instead, all they can do, it's like all they're capable of doing is shrieking catastrophe.

That's it. This man wore a blue suit at a funeral. Yeah. Yeah. It's just, everything's gotta be. Yeah. Something like that. Yeah. Right. He wore a blue suit to the Pope's funeral. My God, that really is wreaking havoc on the world. All right, let's keep playing. The other way around. I feel like the kind of pundit common wisdom heading into Trump's second term was that the comparison with the first term was,

or the difference with the first term was going to be that he was going to be more efficient. He was going to be better at doing what he wanted to do. And that's what we should brace ourselves for. And I actually don't think that's the way it's worked out. I think that he is definitely more ambitious in terms of the kind of radical change he wants for the country. I do think we're in the middle of an attempted authoritarian overthrow of American democracy. I mean, I think everybody who predicted that was right, but I don't think he's any better at it.

I mean, you just think about the litany of mistakes, things that they acknowledge. Pause it already for a second. I mean, just you really cannot overstate. It's unbelievable because not like.

It's the same thing we used to say back in the day when we used to pay attention to this more, when we used to always play the clips of Brian Stelter, that you would just go like, yo, they could they never even attempt to look in the mirror. They never even attempt to go like what, you know, like, look, dude, like even, you know, if you let's say you your marriage fails, you know, you get a divorce.

even if you want to sit there, like let's say you were married to someone, they were shitty to you. They were awful. They did a lot of bad stuff. The marriage ends up failing. Like at some point you have to look in the mirror a little bit, but maybe not at first. Maybe it takes a little bit of time. You know, we're now it's, it's, you know,

We're going into nine years since 2016. You know what I mean? Like, it's been a while. It's almost a decade since their major, like, upheaval of Donald Trump winning when they all said he couldn't. But, like, even in the marriage example I was giving, like, even if it was, like, 90% on them,

on the other person you were married to. Like at some point you'd be like, all right, well like 10% of it was on me. Like I could have done this better and this better. You know, you just like on some level, they are just like incapable. Rachel Maddow looks back and goes, yeah, all the people who said end of democracy have been proven right. We're witnessing an attempted authoritarian takeover. It's like, you don't have to be, you could make a claim like that and then not have to be specific about

I mean, like, like, I remember, as I've said many times when I when I debated Chris Cuomo, there was one point where I referred to lockdowns as totalitarian. And then he went, yeah, that's just hyperbole to call them totalitarian.

And then I responded by being like, no, listen, here's the situation that we're describing. Okay. Americans were waking up every morning to watch their governor on TV, to find out what they were allowed to do that day down to the most intimate details of like, can I have a funeral for my father? Can I go to work? Can I go work out at the gym? Can I go to my place of worship and worship with my, my, you know, like fellow, you know, uh, Christians or Jews or whatever. It's like,

I'm sorry. If we were looking at that on paper, that is clearly totalitarianism. Now, you could argue that the totalitarianism was justified. But if that's not totalitarianism, then the word has no meaning, you know? So it's like, okay, you could throw out like a provocative claim like that. But as we all know, at least all honest human beings, the more provocative the claim is, the more you have to be able to back it up with very specific details, you know?

She just throws that. What the fuck is anyone even talking about? Like, I'm just like you could be against some of the deportations. You could be against some of the policies, whatever. But like to just throw this out, like all those people who completely lost the day. Like, I mean, think about this. Right. You had everybody in the corporate media saying if this guy wins, it's the end of democracy. And then he was democratically elected. Right.

So like the voters rejected your argument and you're just going to say they won the day because we are witnessing it without backing it up in any way. Like this is the perfect cover for Donald Trump is people like this.

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Any thoughts on that, Rob, or do you want to jump back in? Let's jump back in. All right. Right out of the gate, they tried to cut off all federal grants for everything. And then within 48 hours, I had to take that back and say they didn't mean that. Remember Trump's big thing about like, I've turned on the water in California. And immediately the Army Corps of Engineers was like, yeah,

You just wasted all of the water that we had saved in reservoirs for the summer season. You know, the accidentally firing the Ebola prevention workers, accidentally firing the nuclear weapons people, accidentally firing the bird flu people, all of this stuff that they have done and then undone.

It does reflect their radicalism and their ability and willingness to just destroy. But they haven't done a lot of it on purpose. They've done a lot of it despite themselves. And their incompetence is not a blessing.

It's it's a lot of people glibly say like, oh, you should have enemies that are this incompetent. They'll fall down. You don't have to trip them. But their failure has been a wreckage, has created wreckage in the U.S. government. It just means that they're not that good at trying to do at doing what they're actually trying to do. All right. Do you do you want to take a stab at this nonsense, Rob? Well, I just want to start with the inaccuracy for examples.

From what I remember of the California water was that a lot of it gets dumped into the ocean to preserve some fish. And Donald Trump was criticizing that policy of dumping water into the ocean. And then on the avian flu.

I don't remember Donald Trump specifically firing and then rehiring the avian flu team. But there was a storyline of that. There was massive culling of chickens, which is what drove up the egg prices and whether or not Biden's policy for culling chickens was a was a good policy.

The nuclear engineer ones, I believe, is actually accurate. I think that in the Doge thing, they hired some staff and realized, oh, we actually need that staff. Yeah, yeah. But I don't see a lot of...

I don't see a lot of slash government spending or programming that has resulted in a failed state now of chaos. And so firstly, her list of examples sound like a very small and specific, uh, two of the four that she listed there sounded inaccurate. Are you endorsing, uh,

Biden's policy of calling the chickens and driving up egg prices. Uh, do you think that water has been well managed in the state of California and that, uh, Trump's specific water policy has created a problem. Um, and,

And so, I mean, the other two examples, I just don't remember what she just said, but it doesn't seem like we're in a state of chaos because of, and by the way, I don't think Donald Trump's great at governance. And I think that's the issue that he's having right now. So I kind of agree with her theme, but the hyperbole of that Donald Trump has rolled back government programming and now we're in a state of chaos, I just don't think is very accurate of what's happening in the country. Yeah.

Yes, also, there is... Yeah, I 100% agree with you on that. It's also just her point is totally confused. Like, it's like...

They they want to do all of this radical harm, but they're so incompetent that they can't do all of this radical harm. But that doesn't actually make it any better because it's their incompetence that is doing all of this radical harm. It's all just ridiculous. And the other thing I got to say here, which is, you know, OK, I'm I'm taking this back to libertarianism 101. But, you know, that's a really good class that everybody really should have to take.

It really should be a required class. I know there's a little contradiction there. It should be forced by violence for you to take libertarianism 101. But the idea that somebody is attempting an authoritarian takeover and the means by which they want to do that is to cut the size of government is retarded.

That is just absolutely ridiculous. This has never happened once in the history of the world. This is not the way authoritarian takeovers work. Nobody has an authoritarian takeover and step one is to give themselves less power.

It's just totally ridiculous. And the idea that it's like, no, you could you could make some argument if you wanted to, that Donald Trump is attempting to cut government down to the bones or something like that, and that we think that will have a negative outcome.

Now, I don't think that's a particularly good argument. And there's there's lots of things that would jump right up at you as as a big, you know, red flag that you've got that all wrong. Like, number one, like if Donald Trump really was, I mean, Rob, me and you wish that were actually the case. But like Donald Trump, there's a lot of power of things Donald Trump has to do that he's not doing. Donald Trump could have vetoed the continuing resolution.

he didn't have to sign that into law he could have vetoed that and say no get me send me a budget that has serious spending cuts in it i mean he's got a majority in both houses of congress you know like i'm just saying like like if you want to put on and this is part of the thing that'll actually make you furious with donald trump is you go if you if you want to run the counterfactual and go imagine donald trump was just a little bit better

There's a lot of areas where it's like, oh, yeah, he really could have done that. And what could, you know, especially when he was coming into that vote with record high approval ratings and he's coming off this huge win and he's become, you know, the cool kid and like whatever, all of this stuff. And he's the most popular Republican by far in the country. It's it would have just been I mean, amongst Republicans, at least it would have just been

Like there was a huge opportunity where he could have put so much pressure on the Congress to be like, well, what are they going to do? What are the Republicans going to not do that? And also, oh, it would have been so powerful because, man, he could have called their bluff because there's not a single Republican who hasn't ever said on record that they're for smaller government.

So what would you – it wouldn't have been on one of the divisive issues that some Republicans disagree with him on or something like that. It would have just been like, no, we're actually cutting government this time. This is the moment. Everyone's talked about it and not done it. I'm the best. I'm terrific. We're going to – do it in your dumb Trumpian way, whatever. But he didn't do that. He, in fact, was smearing the one –

Congressman Thomas Massey, who stood up against the insanity. So he's told... So it doesn't...

But again, that wouldn't, even if it were the case that Donald Trump was trying to cut government in drastic ways, which it's not, I wish it was, but even if that were the case, that wouldn't be an authoritarian takeover. That would be the opposite. That would be giving more power to the people and less power to the central government. That's not how authoritarian takeovers work. What the fuck are you talking about? This is so, it's so...

unbelievably stupid. All right, listen, we do got to wrap up there because I got to run. Thank you guys very much, as always, for listening. Come see me and Rob out in San Diego. Looking forward to this one. All right. Have a good one. Catch you later. Peace.