Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
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What's up? What's up? What's up? Good people. Happy Inauguration Day. Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem. Just me. Today, Rob is still on his way back from the West Coast. Thank you to everyone who came out to Bozeman. The show there was just
a lot of fun and it was a beautiful city and a lot of great people who came out. So thank you very much for everyone who came out. There was my first time in Montana and, uh, it was, it was a lot of fun next. I will definitely go back and I'll definitely, uh, stay for a little bit longer next time I'm there. Anyway, uh,
It is Inauguration Day. I just finished watching Donald Trump's speech moments after he was sworn in as the 47th president. A lot to talk about. It was pretty wild. It was just hard to kind of escape some of the the.
Just like how historical of an event it was, watching the culmination of the greatest political comeback in American history, I think by far. I don't think there's anything, honestly, that's even very close to Donald Trump coming back from where he was four years ago to this moment.
I'll talk about some of this stuff. And if we have time, perhaps I'll take some questions from the live chat. A couple things to promote before we get into all of that. Number one, we have a lot more shows on the road, me and Robbie the Fire Bernstein. The next stop is Louisville, Kentucky on January 30th. That's one night only. And then the 31st, February 1st,
The 31st and February 1st, we will be in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Comicdavesmith.com for those ticket links. And then we're coming to a bunch of other places. Key West is next after that. Then Buffalo, Boston, Chicago. We'll be on the road quite a bit. The other quick thing that I did want to announce, I believe this has been posted and it is official.
I will be debating Josh Hammer in an Oxford style debate at Princeton University. So this should be a fun one. It's an Oxford style debate. The resolution is the U.S.-Israel alliance, a strategic asset for American foreign policy. So a little bit different than previous debates.
Israel-Palestine debates that I've done. It's not so much about like who's the aggressor in the conflict or the Israeli treatment of the Palestinians. This is more about American foreign policy and whether Israel is an asset or not. Obviously, I'll be taking the negative and Josh Hammer will be taking the affirmative. So come on out for that. I will tweet that tweet
that link out after I'm done recording this show. So looking forward to that. Hope to see some of you guys there and we'll see. I have no idea what to expect in terms of an audience at Princeton University. We'll see. I don't know who's going to be in the crowd or what, but it's an Oxford style debate. So it's not necessarily advantageous to have the crowd on your side. So we'll see. Anyway, okay.
So today was the inauguration. I want to go through a couple of things that happened before the inauguration and then talk a little bit about Donald Trump's speech that he gave his first speech in his second term. I mean, what can you really say about the inauguration itself? It was a very interesting moment.
It's always, you know, like the first time Donald Trump won, of course, a lot of people had fun watching the inauguration, watching the compilations of people in the corporate media melting down over it. But I just don't.
You know, it may have seemed like at the time in 2016, there's no way there could be like a bigger freak out and a bigger victory for Donald Trump. But it's hard to deny that this just surpasses that by every metric. And the fact that he was.
Not, you know, not just all the January 6th stuff. You know, he I mean, since the last time he won the presidency, he's been impeached twice. He's been labeled domestic terrorist, the end of democracy. He's had the Justice Department weaponized against him.
He's had multiple assassination attempts. So to watch him back there and to watch like Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris have to be in the audience there, it was it really was like something it seems like something out of a scripted drama or something like that. It was just kind of surreal. Also, you had a lot of.
Obviously, the Trump influence. So you have this this weird mix of a crowd where you have, you know, George W. Bush and Laura Bush and Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, not there. No, no word from Big Mike. But yeah.
So you have all those people, but then you also have like Dana White and Tucker Carlson. And it's just very interesting to watch. By the way, I was, I think I mentioned on the members only show, I was planning on going, I got invited to the inauguration. It's when, when,
Between them moving everything inside and the just I was traveling back from Montana the other day and didn't get until till late yesterday. It was just a little bit too much. So I didn't end up doing it. But it was it was quite a historical moment to watch it. It was kind of surreal to me. And, you know, as as is typically the case with Donald Trump, it's.
From my perspective, Trump leaves a lot to be desired, let's just say. But man, is it great watching his enemies have to just be humiliated by him because Trump's enemies really are just some of the worst people in the world. All right. So speaking of that, earlier in the day, and this was really like,
This was something that a lot of us expected. We've talked about this quite a bit on the show, but seeing it happen was still totally surreal. This morning, in his final act as president of the United States of America, Joe Biden, who of course was also at the inauguration today and looked very Joe Biden-ish, but Joe Biden earlier today pardoned
Dr. Fauci, General Mark Milley, and the January 6th committee is truly extraordinary. This just does... I don't know what you could compare this to, but this just doesn't happen. And just some thoughts on this. I mean, look, first of all, obviously, it's like so blatantly corrupt and just...
I mean, I don't know. It just demonstrates everything. And of course, they can hide behind this ridiculous rationalization, which goes something like, we're just so scared that Donald Trump is going to be a tyrant and weaponize the justice system that we have to preemptively pardon these innocent people who Donald Trump maybe would go after. But this is just, I mean...
I don't know what to say. This just number one, it just doesn't pass the basic smell test. Like Donald Trump. Look, the last time he was in, he was following the Obama administration. Okay. Like Barack Obama, the amount of crimes that were committed by the Obama administration. I mean, we've talked about all of them over the years, but not just that. I mean, the guy kept a secret kill list, which included American citizens.
American citizens who had not been charged with a crime. And by the way, didn't just have it on a list, ended up killing American citizens who hadn't been charged with a crime. No trial, no due process. I mean, just blatantly illegal. He also, um, violated, um, his war powers, uh,
he violated not only the, not only like the president's authority on war, but he even violated the amended extra authority that presidents are given. Barack Obama violated,
Obama launched wars. I mean, at least George W. Bush kind of pretended to get like he never got full declarations of war from the Congress, but he got those like, you know, votes on the authorization of the use of force against Iraq and Afghanistan. Obama, when he did his war in Libya, in Libya or Syria or Yemen, just didn't even ask.
just straight up told them like i don't care what you think we're fine so anyway my point is just there were these blatant crimes committed in the obama administration and donald trump ran on this kind of lock her up chant of hillary clinton and he never made moves to go after any of them uh criminally so it just seems pretty ridiculous to be like well our concern was that he could go after these guys who from your perspective have not committed crimes right
It just doesn't make any sense. The argument is so incredibly weak. If you made this argument about anything else, everyone would be like, look, you're grasping at straws here. What's going on is pretty obvious.
Donald Trump has brought in with him a small handful, a small handful of outsiders, but particularly in the health world, Bobby Kennedy, Jay Bhattacharya, guys like this. And they're concerned that in this process, they're going to find many of the crimes that were committed by people like Anthony Fauci. And there's, you know, look,
Fauci, there's pretty obvious crimes that you could point to, like the most obvious one being lying to Congress. He testified before Congress many times, made claims that straight up turned out to not be true. Things about, like he denied that they were funding gain-of-function research in the Wuhan lab, which is absolutely what they were doing. It was a blatant lie. And then his backtrack on it was that like,
He didn't consider that to be true gain of function, but this would never hold up like in a perjury case or something like that. It would just never hold up. So there's that, but,
You know, for everything, it's like when you see one roach on top of the carpet, you know, you lift that carpet up, there's going to be thousands more underneath. That's just what we know about. And I'm sure the crimes, I mean, you know, keep in mind, Fauci was the one who actually signed off on authorization to continue funding the Wuhan lab. You know, his...
His hands are in the cookie jar when it comes to the very creation of the virus that he was then tasked with, you know, responding to. So.
All of this stuff. And of course, it was just recently, you know, Rob was talking about this a couple of weeks ago on the show, but it's there's been all this recent reporting about Liz Cheney coaching witnesses on the January 6th committee. And, you know, look, it's pretty blatant. Like they these people committed some very serious crimes and.
people, obviously not Joe Biden, but whoever the hell is running things, they wanted to get these pardons done so that these people can't be held accountable for that. Now, I will say this, as blatantly corrupt as these pardons are and as transparently criminal as the government in D.C. is, I actually think this is kind of great. I think it's kind of great. I don't, you know, the reality is that
The odds of us ever seeing charges brought in
Anthony Fauci and him going on trial and, you know, being prosecuted, convicted for some of this stuff he's done. The odds of that happening were always very low. You know, look, Donald Trump has some some good qualities. But the idea that any of us would be coming into this with that expectation that he was going to be that good and that serious and that crafty with how to wield power, I just don't
I don't think that was ever a realistic hope. And so if that wasn't going to happen anyway, then all what this is, is essentially a tacit admission by the Biden administration that crimes were committed. And that might be exactly what we need as a shot in the arm for
to actually get someone to look into these. And to me, it doesn't really matter. You know, like none of these people, it's not like, oh, if you get Fauci, that would really be the end of the problem. Or if you get Liz Cheney or something like that, don't get me wrong, I would love to see these guys, you know, prosecuted and convicted of crimes that they did commit. But that wasn't going to happen anyway. And the truth is Fauci's old.
I mean, I don't know exactly how old Fauci is, but I think he's in his 80s. I mean, he's not he doesn't have whatever Joe Biden has, but he's not young. He's older than Joe Biden, I believe. And so it's not like justice being served against that one guy is great. And that's what we want. But even if that can't happen.
The truth is that what we want are these crimes to be exposed to as many people as possible. And the fact that he has a pardon doesn't stop anyone from exposing what he did. And so I hope that this actually, this could, you know, potentially backfire, have like a little bit of a Streisand effect or something like that, right? Where you're going, I mean, you're preemptively trying to protect these guys for crimes that
I would think if anything just leads people to ask the question, well, what crimes exactly do they need protection from? I mean, this is...
This is something. And look, again, just to be clear here, it's not obviously we want justice and we want people who committed crimes to be prosecuted for them. I'm just saying it was already such a long shot that we were going to get that, that I'm fine with the regime kind of revealing itself in the sense. I mean, like there's something about that where once you need a presidential pardon, OK, that that is acceptable.
at least in effect to the layman, that's an admission of guilt. That's how it seems to me, at least. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Kalshi. Of course, it is Inauguration Day, and so people are thinking about politics as often they do when they watch this show. Well, Kalshi is the first legal exchange where you can trade
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All right. Like I said, I will try to get to a couple questions in the chat if we have time. If you have a question that you want to ask, go ahead and throw it in there. By the way, if you want to be a part of the live chat, you got to sign up at partoftheproblem.com. That's how you help out the show. That's how you get the members-only episode. And that's how you get in our...
In our nice live chat here, be a part of the community. All right. So the other thing that I guess we should spend a minute talking about, even though it doesn't technically have to do with the inauguration day, although I guess it does have a little something to do with Donald Trump. But it looks like Donald Trump saved TikTok yesterday.
And it's unclear to me exactly what's going to happen. But it is interesting that Donald Trump essentially came in and said he was going to sign an executive order to like give TikTok another six months or something like that. Like he can't undo the bill that was passed in Congress, but he can.
you know, use his executive powers to like give them a little bit more time. We'll see what's going to happen if there's going to be a forced sale or if TikTok is going to shut down or what. But one of the things that's interesting is that there's a lot of people who have, you could say flip flopped on this issue, or you could say they've evolved on it, depending on how charitable you feel like being. But
Trump and many people in the MAGA world were like the harshest critics of TikTok and to some degree for good reason. But of course, it's mostly because they were trying to position themselves as the China hawks. They and, you know, TikTok is kind of owned by.
by China a little bit. You know, it's not like it's not exactly owned by China, but the parent company does, I think, have some Chinese shareholders. And there's for a long time, there was a
you know, the view was that, oh, well, because China's so involved in TikTok, it's poisoning our children's minds or something like that. And so that's why we need to ban it. That's why we need to shut it down. That was always very in the background and no moves were ever, it never really came close to being banned. It wasn't until, you know,
another foreign country got involved. That's really what led to this bill being passed. And you could listen to the head of the ADL in his own words talking about this. What really happens here with TikTok, and I think it's important for people to kind of keep their eyes open about this and understand what's going on. It is not that China owns TikTok.
That is not the problem. There have been members of Congress, you know, Bill Clinton sold secrets to the Chinese. Members of Congress have been having affairs with Chinese spies. There's never this type of snapback reaction. OK, however you feel about
the CCP or their influence in America or any of that. That's not what got it done. What got it done was that as Israel has been conducting this war against Gaza, TikTok has been like the number one news source for young people in this country. And it is dominated by the pro-Palestinian side, by the critical of Israel side. That's what got the thing shut down. And, you know, TikTok,
I was going to say quietly, maybe quietly isn't exactly the right term. That might be my own bias, but I was going to say TikTok quietly became like the news source for young people. And as somebody who's not a young person, I mean, I'm not exactly old, but I'm not young. And
I'm never on TikTok. I don't use the thing. And, you know, it's just like this totally was off my radar. But, man, I mean, if you had seen the reaction over just like the last few days, I mean, this is the social media app for young people. And
Essentially, the establishment had no control over this thing. You know, they could say like, oh, the problem is that China has control over it or something like that. But I don't really think that's the issue. The issue is that the corporate media and the political class and all of these guys, the old institutions,
have, you know, this is something very scary to them. I mean, it's very, first of all, it's already, as we talk about all the time with all social media, it's already scary to them that they've lost their monopoly on the flow of information. But now you've got the, the young people, the Gen Z, you know, 22 year old kids who are not only do they, it's not like a,
us, like 41-year-olds like myself or anyone like around my age, we kind of like remember a time when the corporate media was dominant. We're still very aware of the corporate media. And then we go to like these other – now we have the alternative shows on the internet. But these young kids, these 22-year-olds, they never even – like –
There was never even a time when they knew about the corporate media. They are just completely removed from that world. You know, you saw this...
Back last year, when Osama bin Laden's letter to America went viral, and it was all driven on TikTok. I mean, some of it spilled over into other platforms, but the main engine for it was TikTok. So imagine not only has the establishment lost their monopoly on the flow of information, but the new thing that's coming in that is the dominant force in that scene is undermining the current war effort.
Well, that's the type of thing that'll get a reaction out of Washington, D.C., and that's what it got. And for Donald Trump to come in, look, you know, I want to be clear about this, and I think I'll get into this a little bit in the rest of the show, but I'm not...
My role here is never going to be to be a Donald Trump cheerleader. I mean, I certainly will give him credit when he does the right things, and I'm going to be very critical of him when he does the wrong things, just like I was in his first term.
I expect, particularly on the issue of Israel, for Donald Trump to do some bad things. I look at who's in his cabinet, look at the people around him, look at who's giving him money, look at his own rhetoric. I expect bad policy to come.
It can't be ignored, though, that he already got a ceasefire deal and that he has, you know, very subtly kept that TikTok engine alive, which is, look, they are not quiet about this. This is not what, it's not what the ADL wanted. It's not what APAC wanted. And so if you already see him very early on kind of going against
that powerful, that power source, there's at least something encouraging about that. And the TikTok thing is interesting. I think also, I don't know if you saw it, there's like the straight up Chinese version of the app, I think, and like a whole bunch of people were signing up for that. One of the things that's interesting about all of this is that this is going to be
You know, assuming that in another six months they still haven't sold or something like that and they're going to try to shut it down again. This is going to be an interesting experiment. You know, there's never there. We've never really seen anything quite like this. I mean, what was the one I'm blanking on it, but what was the one? Was it parlor? The one that they like shut down?
Red Note, yes, that's the one I was looking for. Thank you, Natalie. The Parler, I think, was crushing it. It was either Parler or one other one. I might be confusing them, but it was crushing it. They came out and they were like, hey, we're going to be the free speech alternative to Twitter. This was at the height of Twitter being the most censorious that they've ever been.
And people wanted that. There was a lot of demand for it. And then they got it taken off the app store. And once you're taken off the app store, I mean, that's basically it as an app. Like you're totally screwed. And if people have to go to your website and download, it's just not going to work.
so there was but this is totally different because this is not something that's like building that has potential that a lot of people want to sign up for this is an already established like this is the go-to social media site for an entire generation and so what happens when you try to remove that i mean like what do they think they think these 20 year olds are going to go all right tick tock's gone i guess i got to turn on cnn or read the washington post
I mean, that's not going to happen. There's going to be some other app. There's going to be some other, you know what I mean? Like there'll be somewhere else where they all go. And so there's something just kind of interesting about that. Like trying, like there is so much toothpaste out of this tube. There is no way you're putting it all back. And, and,
So anyway, I'm just kind of interested to see what that means and where people go from here. I don't think it's going to work out the way that some of the people in the establishment
uh, want it to. Okay, here, let me, um, let me take a couple questions here. I got, uh, David strong name. Uh, it says Dave in light of the pre pardons, this means the fifth amendment no longer applies and they are, uh, and they are compelled to testify. Uh, should they bring up all the pre pardons and force them, uh, to admit and expose their criminal actions? That's an interesting question. Uh,
And if they lie, then they committed perjury and can be charged with that regardless. Well, I don't know exactly how you're even going to get them in the trial. Is that right, though? That's an interesting. So like, I don't you know, I'm no lawyer and I'm not sure. So is that right? Do you lose the Fifth Amendment if you already have a pardon? Right. Because you're not technically incriminating yourself because you can't be charged for it. OK, but then how the hell do you even get them on the witness stand?
It'd have to be somebody else involved, I guess, who's charged them. They're testifying at their trial. It's an interesting question. I really I really don't know. I think, you know, we got to be somewhat realistic with our expectations. And this is one of the things that's interesting about the dynamic of Donald Trump winning again is that there is this there's this feeling of like revolution, right?
There's this feeling like the regime has been defeated because Donald Trump's been put back in there. Now, that's not true. It's just simply not true. There has been no revolution in our system of government. The regime has not even kind of been defeated yet. And you know that they're going to have some tricks up their sleeves. And, you know, that'll be interesting to see.
But there is something interesting about it does seem like that's what so much of the Trump base wants this to be and believes it is. The reality, I think, for people who pay attention to this is that, like, I mean, you see what's up there. It's not, you know, Donald Trump is he's not a revolutionary figure. He has a handful, a small handful of outsiders with him.
It'll be interesting to see what they can get done, but there's far more establishment type picks than there are outsiders there. And Donald Trump already had four years and there was no even attempt at any type of like revolution in any, you know, sector.
of of this country and so that's not exactly happening so so in other words my point is just that we don't have the revolution i'm not expecting to see mass trials of all these people i'd love to but i don't think that's going to happen um what i'm interested in is how much of this stuff can be reversed and how much of it can be exposed that that
actually might be interesting and like i will say that with like if you're looking for a revolution out of this uh presidency bobby kennedy and jay batacharya are probably the closest to it we'll see maybe i'm wrong maybe cash patel is really going to be that guy maybe tulsi's going to come in and be great um maybe pete hagseth will be great i i don't know but there's you know
Let's just say, like, if we were, if we really, if the hope really is that Fauci is going to be charged and prosecuted, we're already at, we're already like 10 levels beyond what we can reasonably expect here. So at the very least, I hope this stuff is exposed. And if it could be done that way through getting them to testify, then yes, I'd be all for it. All for it. Okay. So I guess we could move to Donald Trump's speech.
um because he did give his speech oh here let me um let me actually answer this jason asks what do you think about the rumor of a vape being kicked from doge yeah that is the rumor um i do not have anything to confirm or deny that but i'll say it like this i know that um
Obviously, the rumor, they said something about tension with staff or something like that. I don't even understand how this is possible. What staff? You guys just invented a department and made two people the head of it. Was he having a problem with the staff? Don't they work for him? I don't exactly get it. But
Obviously, in the background of all of this is that Vivek really pissed off a lot of the MAGA base with his that whole post about American culture. And, you know, he went after Saved by the Bell and Boy Meets World and that kind of backfired on him. I understand why.
why so many people were upset about that tweet. I do not think that the reaction by some is justified at all. And I think that, I think Vivek Ramaswamy was a real asset to MAGA and it'd be very foolish and short-sighted of them to try to boot this guy over something that I just don't think warrants that.
Here's from what I've seen as somebody who's watched this movie a time or two, as I've said before, and watch, this is what's going to happen over the next few weeks and few months. There is going to be an attempt to remove all of the good people around Donald Trump. So all of the people who are a threat to power.
They are going to systematically try to remove all of them. And this is what happened in Trump's first administration. You know, it's like he came in there with some guys who were outsiders, or at least to some degree, or at least maybe some of them were insiders, but they at least departed from the establishment. You know, someone like General Michael Flynn,
Steve Bannon, a true outsider. OK, and what happened? These guys were systematically removed from the Trump administration. And that's what they're going to try to do. They're going to try to get the people who are a threat to power out of there. And I will say that Vivek Ramaswamy being one of the absolute best people who Donald Trump's got in his orbit, him being removed so quickly is a really bad sign.
These rumors that you're talking about, these started before he was sworn in. So I just, that's something I'm very concerned of. And I think that it might be a little short-sighted for some of the MAGA people who are like pissed off that he insulted Saved by the Bell or something like that to not see the bigger picture here. But there's going to be efforts to get Elon Musk out. There's going to be efforts to get Bobby Kennedy out and Tulsi and, you know, everyone who's good. And so that is a...
That is something that we should be paying attention to. All right. Adam writes, Dave, will you still get a chance to meet Trump through Rogan, even if Trump's not likely to do more long form podcasts? Who knows, man? Who knows? If I do, I'll make sure to let you guys know. But, uh,
Anyway, we'll we will we'll see what happens. You know, I really don't I don't know. And of course, you know, everything everything changes once you're once you're president again. So I'd imagine that, you know, the way these things typically work is like, you
The presidents get insulated and a lot of people get kept away from them. So I'm not holding my breath for anything like that to happen. Honestly, though, as I've told you guys before, my attitude has always been that I don't really need to...
meet Donald Trump or me like like Joe's idea of us all doing a podcast together that would be really cool you know I would love to do something like that but it's like when I was uh when I was on Tucker's show and everyone was like oh we got to get everyone on social media it's like oh we got to get Dave and Trump to sit down Dave should be his you know like uh um advisor or something like that it's like you don't if you really wanted my advice you could just listen to any of my shows
I put my feelings are out there. They're public. So there's not really too much that I would have that it's like, oh, I'd say this privately to Donald Trump, but not publicly. It's it's if he wanted my advice, he can he can get it. But anyway, it'll be it will be interesting to see what happens. Who knows? You know, I certainly wouldn't turn down the opportunity to to meet him or obviously to podcast with him. That'd be pretty cool.
I'd be lying if I said that wouldn't be cool. Okay. All right. All right. Just sorry, guys. Just looking through the chat here to see because it's an interesting day. Wanted to see what other questions might be floating around there. All right. Let's go to Donald Trump's speech. He gave what I thought was a pretty good speech, had some very good comments.
portions of it had some not so great portions of it, but you know, that is, um, we gotta, we gotta deal with what we have, not with what we wish we had. So I wanted to, um, here, let me pull up, uh, say Sagar and Jetty was like, he tweeted a bunch of, uh, he, he tweeted a bunch of the lines out. So I was just pulling that up to go through it. Uh, Donald Trump, he, he opened his speech, um, by, uh, declaring that, um, what was the line?
Sorry, guys. I apologize for that. He opened his speech declaring that from this moment on, America's decline is over. This was a crowd favorite line. He
He said very early on that he's going to declare a national emergency at the southern border. All illegal entry will be immediately halted and we will begin the process of removing millions of illegal aliens. This is going to be very interesting to see now. It's.
You know, it's like with a lot of policies and the immigration stuff is probably the best example of this, but there can be things that are very popular with the American people that
Oftentimes, Americans have a blind spot to the actual logistics of how these policies are going to be implemented. And this is true in general with government policies. Like, you know, I think that, you know, like, for example, let's say people on the left who like to talk about gun control a lot. Right.
People on the left might it might be very easy for them to say we should ban all AR-15s. Maybe even some of them who are a little more to the left will say we should ban all all handguns or whatever. And that's one thing. It's one thing to say that it's.
Easy in your mind when you say I support gun control, even if even like a really radical version of it, like I support, you know, making private fire firearms, you know, illegal to own in your mind. You're kind of just saying, I wish we live in lived in a world without guns. And that's easy to do.
That's that's very easy. You wish we lived in a world without guns. That way, no one could run into a classroom and shoot everybody up. It's that makes sense on some superficial level. And that's very easy to say. It's very different. And almost no left winger who ever talks about gun control is ever actually really envisioning what it would look like.
You know, like, I mean, like, it's one thing to support in your head the idea, I wish we didn't have any guns in this country. It's a whole nother thing to actually support what it would look like to implement even just an AR-15 ban, let alone, like, actually attempting to go, because what's it going to look like? I mean, it would be a civil war in this country is what it would be.
I mean, there is the bottom line, no matter how you feel about guns, I'm not even getting into the argument against gun control, which I think there's a very strong argument against. But the fact is that there are tens of millions of Americans who are not going to give their guns up. So now what?
You know, I mean, like now what? You know, think about Texas. You want to try to disarm Texas? Do you know how hard that's going to be? I mean, you the amount of force and violence that you would have to be comfortable using to go door to door in Texas to round up all the guns. And what are you going to do to the people who won't give them up voluntarily, by the way?
Important detail. They have guns. By definition, 100% of the people who won't give their guns up have guns. And so what are you going to do? You're going to need a lot more guns on your side. There's going to be a tremendous amount of violence that would be necessary. I mean, it would come to a civil war. There's no question about it, which is why even...
progressive Democrats don't ever actually say we're going to round up all the guns because they just know they know that's not a possibility. And so anyway, now immigration is a different topic, but there is something to the fact that like to do like mass deportations. I mean, you think about it the last time with Donald Trump. Now, don't get me wrong. He's got some more juice on this issue than he had last time, but think about how effectively they were able to weaponize that family separation stuff. And, and,
don't get me wrong to some degree. This is, it is the fact that the media weaponizes the decency of the American people against them. But part of it is also just the decency of the American people. And that if you, if you've got images now, of course they would use images where they'd show facilities that were built under Obama and they'd have pictures of little kids who hadn't been separated from their families. And like, yes, they're dishonest liars. We all know that. But, but,
The truth is that any policy where you're going, where you have federal agents going in and rounding up peaceful people is going to be very, very difficult to sell. It's going to be very, very easy for the corporate media to spin as like an outrage or maybe even in some places correctly call it an outrage. And the fact that
In abstract, most of America goes, yeah, illegal immigrants shouldn't be here. We shouldn't have open borders. We shouldn't have any of this. That's going to just like I was saying with the left and the gun control. That's a different thing than actually watching the policy being implemented and the level of violence that it might require. So this doesn't mean Donald Trump doesn't have any options. In fact, he's got a lot of options. I think that.
You have there's a certain number of cases of people who have already been like ordered to be deported who haven't been deported yet. There are violent criminals. There's groups that you could go after that won't get that type of backlash, which if the Trump administration is smart, that's where they would start.
It would start with things like that. And the most important thing right now, I would say also is to cut off the flow.
I mean, that's the real, if you ever want to get your immigration system under control, well, then you can't just have people flooding in and you have no idea how many of them are. So him declaring a state of emergency at the Southern border, that does seem to be a good first step toward that goal. But it's going to be very interesting. And Donald Trump has to be smart. You know, it's like even,
Even when you come in with some degree of a mandate, as I think Donald Trump does have in his second term here, that usually it's like, OK, you get like one or two signature things that you can do. And if one of those two is unpopular, there goes your mandate.
It's all over. You know, Obama, when he first came in, had about as much of a mandate as much as any president in my lifetime has. And this is we're talking Obama in January 20th, 2009, when he first came in the first time, had record high or close to record high approval ratings. And.
He had a lot of lofty thoughts about trying to do a two state solution with Israel, Palestine. You know, of course, if you remember, he went to Cairo and he gave that speech where he apologized for some of Americans foreign policy in the past. There were a lot of things he wanted to do. He was convinced to do the stimulus and health care first. And the health care, the Obamacare thing was just so unpopular that that was it.
Mandate done. And then good luck getting a two-state solution in fucking Israel when you don't have that mandate anymore. That's it. And so Donald Trump's got to be smart about this. He does have a mandate to get the immigration system under control. I think that's going to have to involve deportations. But he's got to be smart about what groups he goes after. And there's so many groups. I mean, look, you could just start with the violent criminals who are illegal immigrants, and that'll keep you busy for a while.
That's not good. You're not going to be able to generate that much outrage from people who are opposed to that. It's just going to be very, very difficult to do. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Tax Network USA. Do you owe back taxes? Are your tax returns still unfiled? Did you miss the deadline to file for an extension on October 15th?
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Take control today. Visit TNUSA.com slash Smith or call 1-800-958-1000. All right, let's get back into the show. Okay. Sorry, checking back in on the chat here. Okay.
Trump said, I will send troops to the southern border to repel the disastrous invasion of our country. We will also be designating the cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. OK, the first part of that's good. The second part really isn't.
Really isn't. And this will be a major mistake by Donald Trump. Look, that may sound like not that big a deal to people. It might sound like, oh, yeah, I mean, there's fucking these people are bringing drugs into our country. Yeah, call them terrorists. Sure. This is a legal issue. And post 9-11, what calling these group, what designating them as terrorists means is that the president has unlimited war making ability with Mexico.
Listen, I mean, I don't know who thinks this is a good idea, but you have to have your head examined. If you think actually having a military confrontation with Mexico is a positive for America, let's get out of this war business. I mean, which one of the wars over the last 25 years has made us so rich and so free?
And that second part is a huge part of it. I mean, like the one of the biggest reasons to oppose the warfare state is because it always inevitably leads to a crackdown on the liberty of the American citizens. And my God, you think having a war right here on our southern border, what's that going to look like? So this is, to me, the exact wrong way, the exact wrong way to go about this.
Trump said, "Today I will declare a national emergency and we will drill baby drill." I'd expect, I think today is going to be a big day of executive orders. That's what everything that's being reported on our next episode, we'll probably be going through some of those. I'd expect a bunch of them to be related to the energy sector, deregulation, more drilling, things like that.
And I think that's just great, just brilliant, well-played, very smart, and is going to be good for the economy, good for Trump, good for the American people. So I was happy to see that. He also said they were going to revoke the electric vehicle mandate, which is excellent. It's all, you know, like I think I've mentioned this before on the show, but there was one, this is like from a couple years ago, but there is one of, it's got to be up there with the best
interactions I've ever seen in a congressional hearing, but it was when Pete Buttigieg was testifying and, you know, the transportation secretary and Thomas Massey was grilling him about electric cars. If you've never seen this, just go watch it because, you know, Thomas Massey is a
He's got to be, if not the one of the smartest members of Congress. I mean, I think the guy went to MIT or something like that. He's just like a really brainy person. And even though he's like, you know,
He's essentially a Ron Paulian, like a libertarian type. He is like big on green energy and he built his own home and put his own solar panels in and stuff like that. So he like really knows what he's talking about. And him just tearing Pete Buttigieg to shreds. And his argument was just, it was so simple, but it was just that,
The whole electric car thing, like it's fine as long as only a few people are doing it. Like it's fine to have electric cars the way we have electric cars right now. But all this stuff about like banning gas fueled cars and insisting that people have to have electric cars, they have to be charged from the power grid. And we simply can't support that.
There's that we'd have to completely overhaul our power grids like no one seems to have a plan to do that. Certainly not by 2030. I mean, it's just goddamn ridiculous. So that was excellent that Donald Trump said that.
Trump said, instead of taxing our citizens to enrich other countries, we will tariff and tax other countries to enrich our citizens. He then announced that he was going to create an external revenue service to collect all tariff duties. Okay. This I just think is really bad, bad economics, bad Donald Trump, bad Trump. Look,
It kind of sounds nice, the idea of like, hey, we're not going to tax our own citizens anymore. Instead of an internal revenue service, let's have an external revenue service, right? Let's let all the foreigners pay the taxes. There's a few problems with this. Number one, let's get the first part right.
So, OK, I mean, if Donald Trump was literally going to say that, let's stop taxing our own citizens and start taxing foreigners. OK, fine. But then abolish the IRS and the income tax. Start with that. Start with that. And you know what? You'll get a lot less argument out of me. But of course, we all know he's not going to start with that. He's not. See, this is why I'm.
People always argue from – there's an argument in economic circles for many, many decades at this point now, but sometimes people would argue for a consumption tax rather than an income tax. And there are –
arguments to be made for why one is preferable to the other. I'm not so sure that a consumption tax is preferable to the income tax. I mean, a consumption tax is a lot more regressive than an income tax, meaning that like a consumption tax hits poor people a lot harder than the income tax does. I mean, the income tax
It is a big bill for most working people. But if you are really poor, you're not going to be paying too much income tax. But you got to consume. You still have to eat. Whereas, you know, the rich make much higher incomes. And yes, they consume also, but it's not like they're...
It's just you're going to end up getting a lot more of the revenue from poor people. I don't particularly like that. But the major argument to me against the consumption tax, like with if you remember last
what's his name the dude who died from covid uh herman cain when he ran for president was kind of like a novelty thing i think he ran like fried chicken chains and then ran for president and then wrote a book but yes is that yes i see someone uh kaz in the chat just part of that yes this is what i'm thinking of 999 that was what he kept running on and his idea was what was it it was like to
to lower the income tax to 9% and then add a consumption tax of 9%. Now, the reason why a plan like that is such a disaster
is that, so you're saying you're not abolishing the income tax. You are just going to lower the rates down to 9% and then you're gonna create a whole new tax and that rate's gonna be at 9%. Well, okay, now you've gotten the American people used to this whole new tax. And now of course the next government or the next people, or maybe even your administration by the end of it, if, you know,
If enough revenue isn't being raised, well, let's take that 9-9 and make it 11-11. Let's make it 15-15. Now we have these two different tax bases, and we can just raise both of them, which, by the way, is what always happens. This is how the income tax started. When the income tax started, they said it'll only ever be like 1% or 2% of your income. So what are you even fighting about?
But of course, as the great Ron Paul used to always point out, when you concede 1%, you concede 100% of the principal. And so the principal was the ultimate concession. Like this is how they sold the income tax. They go, it'll only apply to the rich and only be like 1% or 2% of their income. So what's your problem even with it? However, once you pass the income tax, what's the principal that you've given up? Is that the government owns your income?
Once there's an income tax, you've conceded that in principle, the government owns your income and you get to keep 99% of it. Let's say if it's a 1% tax because they choose it's only 1%, but it's their choice. Then, okay, so this obviously explodes and now we have the income tax that we know today.
Likewise, we all know Donald Trump's not actually going to abolish the income tax in the IRS before he starts his tariff policy. And so what we're going to end up having is what we have right now plus these tariffs, okay?
And then, I mean, Donald Trump is just wrong about tariffs. He just really doesn't understand it. If you think the idea is that we're taxing foreigners, well, no, we're not. We're not. The United States of America's federal government doesn't have the authority to tax foreigners. What we can do is say, if you want to sell your products here, we're going to charge you this much.
But like anyone with the most rudimentary understanding of economics should know that all that does is pass the costs on to the consumers. That's all the government has the power to do is to make products cost you more money. So now, like you, in other words, you already have the option of buying American made products. They're just more expensive. That's why people buy so many products that are made in China or wherever, mostly China.
OK, so all the government can do is take away that option from you, take away the option of cheaper goods, just in the same sense that like, let's say I went to let's say I went to like I'm a government. I have the power of a government. And I went to a store in my neighborhood here and they're selling something for a dollar. They're selling some trinket for a dollar.
And I said to them, well, as the government, I say that every time you sell one of these $1 trinkets, you owe me $10. Okay? Like I'm going to impose a tariff of $10 on these $1 trinkets. Well, do you think they're going to keep selling them for $1?
Does anybody think that's how economics works? That they'll just go, okay, well, we're going to keep selling them for a dollar and we're going to lose $9 on every sale. No, they will be sold for $11.
because they need to get that ten dollar plus the one dollar that they needed to begin with and so who have i actually charged money to i've charged money to the customers of those stores to the american people that so all you're talking about is not removing this tax and adding another tax to the american people a disaster and if he actually implements it it will um it will
totally on it will undo all of the positives of all the stuff he's talking about in the energy sector. Um, uh, why in, uh, Tustin, uh, says tariffs are just used as a negotiating tactic, um, to get other countries to lower their tariffs on us. Listen, if that's the case, then fine. So in other words, right. To just to be clear for, for people, uh, um, so that they're following this, it's,
if your argument is that let's say China has a tariff on our goods as they do on many of our goods. So if China has a tariff
And then if Donald Trump's able to go and say, hey, I'm going to put a tariff on your stuff unless you eliminate the tariff on us. And then the result of it is that we don't implement tariffs and China reduces theirs. Then, yes, that would be a win win. And that would be a great strategy. And that, OK, I can't say anything bad about that if the result overall is less tariffs. But the major problem here, right, is that that just simply is not what Donald Trump is saying.
That is not what he's saying. And it doesn't seem like he's bullshitting. It seems like he really believes it. Now, if you're going to make the argument that this is all an act and this is 4D chess, I just...
I've heard a lot of arguments about how this is 4D chess from Donald Trump and usually taken to its logical conclusion. It leads people to believe that he was still really president in 2021 and was about to arrest all the pedophiles or something like that. I don't think it's true. When Donald Trump talks about tariffs, he specifically says that tariffs once made us rich and they can make us rich again. It does not seem clear that his end goal is actually less tariffs.
Now, if that were the case and that's how he's using them, then you got a whole different story. But I don't think that's right. Yeah, it's just the government cannot make people wealthier by stealing more money from them. That is just something that is economically impossible. Okay, let's see what else.
He mentioned Doge. He said, I will sign an executive order to end all government censorship and bring back free speech to America. That would be great. And I'm hoping that comes today. We will see. He threw some red meat to the base, said, yeah,
The government policy will recognize only male and female genders. He said, we will forge a society that is colorblind and merit-based. I certainly think that would be great. And to whatever extent he's able to do that, that is the way that any decent society or any decent government ought to treat its citizens. He said, my proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and a unifier.
And that will be interesting if he can pull that off. We will see. You know, look, obviously a lot of us will be looking for some...
some early signs that he does plan on doing things differently. You know, he said not today in his speech, but in a speech yesterday at an event they had last night, he said that he's going to declassify the JFK files. And I believe he said the nine 11 stuff. I think he said nine 11 JFK and Martin Luther King that I'll tell you.
Despite what may or may not be in those files, that would be a huge signal if he actually does that. Obviously, freeing Ross Ulbrich is one that I care about personally because I know his mother Lynn and I've known her for many years. He very explicitly made these promises over and over again. I'm hoping that we see that. He did say he'd do it on day one. I'm not going to lose my mind if he doesn't do it the first day, but I'm expecting it the first month at the very least.
Um, and I will lose my mind if he doesn't do that in the first month. Um, but I, I would look, it'll be interesting to see signals even literally today. I mean, like we'll get some more information at the end, but, uh, it, it would be very interesting to see signals, uh,
pardoning Snowden, even pardoning Assange, even though he's out, these things would be signals that he kind of means business this time. Or that he, when I say he means business, meaning he's actually here to try to drain the swamp and try to shake things up. That'll be interesting. And so, you know, from my perspective,
I'm sitting here. I never supported Donald Trump until this year. I never voted for him until this year. I was pretty highly critical of his first four years, I think it's fair to say. And I was pretty critical of him for the most of the four years of Joe Biden's administration.
I'm gonna try my best to approach this with an open mind, but my obligation is to always tell you guys the truth. So as soon as Donald Trump starts fucking up in a big way, my job is gonna be, you know, to be on his ass for that. All right, that's gonna get cut out of context. I just know it. Anyway.
One of the things that it's an exciting time for America. And I, as I said before, I don't think we really got the revolution that many people envision this to be, but I do love the spirit of that. And I love the fact that so many people are like America's back and like have this feeling of positivity. I think it's something we've, we've really needed in this country for a while and haven't had. And so that's kind of great.
And it's interesting. I mean, look, there's really never been a situation like this before. Donald Trump is far from perfect. And I think I, I like to think I, I know that about as well as anybody. I think that I've, you know, I, I,
You know, I think I make the case against him about as well as anybody does. But you got to you got to acknowledge that there's just never really been a situation like this before. I mean, Donald Trump, for all of his faults in his first term, he is it's quite possible that he had some vision of being able to work with the system. And it's very possible, and I would say likely, that he just totally underestimated how vicious they would be with him.
That doesn't exist anymore. That's I mean, this guy has been through everything that could be thrown at somebody. And he came out at the end of the day, a winner. You know, it's that old like if you come at the king, you better miss. You better not miss. You know, you swat. If you swat a bee, you got to kill the bee. You know, if there's there's a hornet in your yard and you go to swat at it, you got to kill that thing because otherwise you've just pissed off a hornet.
And maybe there's a chance that that's what Donald Trump is, that all these guys really came for him and he still won at the end. Maybe he's going to shake some things up or at least attempt to. I know I'm interested to watch and I'm sure most of you guys are too. All right. We will be back tomorrow with a brand new episode. We will, Robbie will be with me. I'm sure we will discuss.
any executive orders that were written today as well as other things going on in the world. Catch you guys then. Hope to see you at some live shows soon. Hope to see some of you guys at Princeton University for this debate. That's going to be a cool one. All right. Catch you next time. Peace.