Trump's State of the Union Address
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Hey, what's up, everybody? Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem. I am Dave Smith, rolling solo for this episode. And, of course, we're going to be talking about last night's State of the Union address, the fifth that Donald Trump has given and obviously the first of his new addresses.

his new administration. Let me just real quick before we start, I just a couple quick plugs. There are still limited seats available for Buffalo this weekend. I'm headed out there tomorrow, tomorrow and Friday night. I'll be out in Buffalo with Robbie the Fire Bernstein. And then on Tuesday,

Saturday night will be up in St. Catharines, my first time back in Canada in many, many years. The early show is sold out. I believe there are some tickets available for the late show. It's going to sell out quickly. If you want to come, make sure you go over to comicdavesmith.com.

right away and get them. And then, of course, Boston, just a couple weeks away at Laugh Boston there. The ticket links are all available at ComicDaveSmith.com. And, of course, as I've mentioned a couple times, the tickets are moving fast. I will be back at the Soho Forum in May debating immigration against the Cato Institute's Alex Norwash. Looking forward to that very much. Should be a good old libertarian scrap of

about where exactly libertarians should fall on immigration with me being more of the restrictionist and Alex being closer to the open borders side of things. Okay, so...

Donald Trump's State of the Union last night. Let's get into this. I got a couple clips lined up, and there's a few things that I kind of wanted to talk about it. And also, I will do my best to get to some listener questions in today's episode. If you guys are in the live chat, go ahead and throw some questions in there, and I will do my best to get to some of them. Okay.

let me just say this to start I Generally speaking. I don't like State of the Union addresses. I think that they're boring and lame there's

They're just never good. They're never entertaining. They're never honest. It's always, you know, it's always spin. And I never like the special interest stories and all of that. I'm just not a fan of the State of the Union in general. So that's my bias.

coming into this and certainly You know look I'm a radical libertarian and so anytime we're talking about a president There's always gonna be things that I disagree with them on and there's several things that I think Trump said that I don't agree with him on and We could get into a few of those Great grading on a curve of that, you know all that being You know considered in the background

Let me just start. I'll start by saying that

In terms of effectiveness like just in terms of the politics, which is what a State of the Union is all about anyway So not not saying like how I personally felt about the speech like what how much I agree with what Donald Trump is saying or don't agree with him just talking in terms of like how effective he was politically in this speech I I would give Donald Trump an A+

I think it was his best State of the Union speech out of the five that he's given by far. I think it was his most effective by far. And he Donald Trump has really, you know, part of the reason, of course, why this is was his most effective State of the Union. It's not just that Trump got better. I do think he's gotten a little bit better in some ways, but it's not just that it.

It's that he is more enabled to be successful by the moment that he's living in. And this really is, if you kind of zoom out, one of the very interesting kind of big picture meta analysis of the current moment, which is that in a very weird way, Donald Trump and I think America as a country.

We are better off that Trump lost in 2020. We got four years of Joe Biden and then Donald Trump comes back in in the second term. Now, I'm not trying to downplay any of the very real pain that was caused by those four years of Joe Biden, although if I'm being completely honest,

A lot of that was baked into the cake already, like the price inflation that Joe Biden, you know, that we dealt with under Joe Biden. That was coming. Joe Biden certainly made it worse. But a lot of that was the result of 2020. You know, you lock down the entire economy and print trillions of dollars and start handing out direct payments.

that prices tend up, end up rising. And this is not rocket science. It's actually fairly straightforward. However, there were really bad things that Joe Biden did. Obviously the war in Ukraine, which we will get into was a, you know, a disaster that was really Joe Biden's, you know, I mean, not saying nobody else held responsibility, but the Biden administration held by far the most of it. And, you know, the very, you know, we were flirting with World War III and nuclear war. That's a pretty big cost, right?

So all that being said, you know, if Donald Trump wins in 2020 and forget any of you guys who may have whatever feelings you have about the 2020 election, leaving that aside, I'm just saying if Donald Trump had officially won and had, you know, got a second term, there's just no conceivable way that we'd have any of the positives that we have right now. None of them. I mean, literally none of them.

so we would not have had bobby kennedy at the health department we wouldn't have had tulsi gabbard uh leading the intelligence department we wouldn't have had um you know there's no chance that we'd have jay badacharya at the national institute of health um there's there's really no conceivable way we'd have cash patel running the fbi or dan pangino as the deputy fbi director um there's no way we'd have doge elon musk wasn't on board with donald trump in 2020. uh so anyway

This number one it got Trump, you know going through those years It got I think essentially what happened and this is also part of why Donald Trump has record high approval ratings right now is that

Okay, so in 2016, when Donald Trump ran for president the first time, Donald Trump had this quality about him that was very appealing to a lot of people, but also it was a double-edged sword. And it allowed a lot of fear-mongering about Donald Trump to seem reasonably plausible.

um donald trump was the first president in the history of the united states of america this had never happened before okay donald trump was the first president who had zero political or military experience that had never happened before okay like we had we had dwight eisenhower was president of the united states and he had no political experience but he was a five-star general who had led the allies to victory in world war ii

It'd be pretty hard for someone to look at him and make the argument. You don't have experience, sir. You know what I mean? Like it. So we, so for the first time in our nation's history and imagine, you know, this is the United States of America. It's the most successful, most powerful country that's ever existed. And we tried something in 2016. We had never tried in our hundreds year long history. And now, okay, there was something appealing about that.

Because he could Donald Trump, there was certainly one aspect of it that was very advantageous to him. And this is why he was able back in 2016 to be able to stand up on on stage and say, you know, Hillary Clinton says she's going to fix this thing. She's been here for 30 years. She can't fix it. How come she hasn't done it yet?

oh, I'm outside of all of this corruption. You see the big money? I don't need any of their money. Like, he could blame all of the failures of government on the people who were involved and take responsibility for none of them, very reasonably, because he wasn't. And he was on the right side, like, as a, you know, just as a citizen, he was on the right side of some of these issues. And so he could play that. Now, on the other hand, the flip side to that was that they could play the card of,

you know, you can't trust Donald Trump with his finger on the button. This guy's going to launch nukes. The market's going to crash. This guy has no idea what he's doing. So they could kind of play on the fear of the unknown. Then once Donald Trump was president, and especially because Donald Trump is, he is not presidential in the sense that he's not like every other president. Like every other president has something

this thing in common that Donald Trump doesn't. Donald Trump doesn't care about, you know, politeness or like he just he doesn't play that whole game that almost every other politician was playing.

And so during Donald Trump now, during the first term also, you have these huge protests all around the country. I mean, really, really dumb ones and some very violent ones later in his in his first term. But there's you know, like if you remember, like the the woman's march.

uh happened in early 2017 it was like right after he was sworn in as when the women were wearing the vagina hats it was very bizarre um but i mean there were like hundreds of thousands of people out on the streets donald trump was getting and college campuses if you can try to put yourself back in 2017 i mean it was like just a wild environment so there was all this kind of like

upheaval. There was all of this. It was like by its very nature, there was this departure from normalcy and into this new thing.

you know, into whatever this is. Donald Trump's pissing everybody off. The media is freaking out. You got the Russiagate story that really started getting traction. So now people are watching CNN and MSNBC. I know it's crazy to think about now, but people were watching CNN and MSNBC because they were alleging that like the biggest scandal in US history was going on right now. Russia had hacked our democracy and installed Donald Trump. And so there's just like, it's almost like if you could describe

Look, even 2017, 2018, 2019, at the time, we would have described this as like we're at 11. The level of hysteria was just crazy. And then came 2020. And you're like, oh, my God, if you thought we thought we were at 11, turns out we were at two. Now we're in this whole new world. And OK, so you've just got.

All of this hysteria. Then 2020 comes, you have lockdowns, you have the George Floyd riots, you have all of this. And by the end of 2020, and for all four years, essentially the corporate media and the Democrats were arguing that like, look, this is Trump. Like we were kind of a normal country. We had our problems. And now this guy just destroyed all of that, you know? And

Even if you were somebody who was, let's say, like center right. And you probably maybe voted for Donald Trump in 2016. And maybe you liked him. You were more you preferred him being president to Hillary Clinton. Maybe you even preferred him being president to Joe Biden. But there was a feeling.

And this was palpable at the end of 2020, where there was just like a feeling of enough already. Enough. And like, even I think a lot of people who recognize that like, okay, at least 50%, maybe even a lot more than 50% of the problem is that these leftists are just hysterical when Donald Trump does anything. Still.

We just don't want any more of this. And so let's at least get somebody who doesn't make this part of the country hysterical. And there was just this there was a feeling and this was not just a feeling. This was explicitly the pitch of the Democrats, particularly when Joe Biden won the nomination, that it was like, let's get back to normal. And Joe Biden was.

kind of uniquely positioned to be able to sell that message in 2020. He, look, he was already on his way to being senile, but it wasn't nearly as bad as it got over the last couple years. But Joe Biden could just be like, hey, I am a dinosaur. I've been in the Senate for 40 years.

Like, you know what you're getting with me. I was the vice president for four years. I was a senator for many, many decades. Like he in many ways represented what the American establishment for the last, you know, 35 years. So in a lot of ways, the promise was a return to normalcy.

Joe Biden and his surrogates explicitly said this over and over again in many different ways, but they were very clear. This is what they meant. We can let's just OK, enough of this crazy new experiment in Trump. Let's get back to normal. And there was nothing more devastating to that argument than Joe Biden's four years as president, because.

What I think every now look up Not to be a little self-serving here, but I was one of the people far from the only one but I was one of the people Arguing for the first four years of Donald Trump's administration that like actually that wasn't the case as I think it was Michael malice who had the Coined the term that Donald Trump was not the river. He was the dam, you know people thought that Donald Trump was

was like, like the corporate media's analysis was almost like Donald Trump had ushered in this new age of craziness. Whereas our understanding, which was fairly obvious to me, but has kind of been proven true over the years was that no, no, no. Donald Trump didn't usher in this craziness. We went crazy. And the result of that is Donald Trump. Like it's not, it's not that Donald Trump came and changed the political landscape for

to the point that there's this huge populist movement. It's that the establishment failed so bad for so many years that the American people were so furious at the establishment that they were ready to just pick Donald Trump because he was the biggest middle finger they could find. So in this scenario, it's like Donald Trump isn't the fire. Donald Trump was the spark.

But the issue was that the floor was covered in gasoline. Now, Donald Trump happened to be the spark who came along. But like when you had this situation, any spark could have set this thing off. So anyway, the four years of Joe Biden really just disproved the idea that if you remove Donald Trump, we return to nothing.

1985 or something like that. If you get rid of Donald Trump, we go right back to whatever you think normal America is. The fact is that Joe Biden became the president for four years and nothing went back to normal. In fact, it got even crazier than it had been under Donald Trump. And so there was something it's like,

The American people were so furious with the establishment that they were willing to vote for Donald Trump and make him the president in 2016. And then the American people were so frustrated with the craziness that they were willing to give the establishment one more shot. And then Joe Biden blew that hand.

And so now it was like now by the end of four years of Joe Biden, Donald Trump actually felt like more of a return to normalcy than another four years of this insanity would be. And so...

Anyway, I say all of that to say this is why Donald Trump has his highest approval ratings. And this is why he was able to give that speech that he gave last night. And this is why he was able to be as successful as he was with the speech, which I really do think there's no. I mean, look, man, like people in the corporate media and people in the media.

You know, liberals and leftists who hate Donald Trump, and there's still plenty of them, they can try to spin this any way they want to. But this was just a huge win for Donald Trump. I mean, in terms of, again, leaving aside the substance, in terms of the effectiveness, it was an A plus for him. Let me ask you something, guys. How well do you sleep at night?

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he had, he had some great lines and we got a couple of the clips, uh, played there, but there were some lines that were just killer that were just like very, like really hit home. I don't want to give them away cause we're going to play a couple of the clips, but I'm sure you guys have, have seen a lot of them. Um, but I did think the, uh, when he was going through the social security, um,

And talking about the amount of people who are aged, you know, like he's like, we had this many thousands of people who are between the age of 150 and 159. And he goes, he goes, it's a healthier country than I thought, Bobby is just great.

Great line. The Pocahontas thing will play in a second. Great. He was just Donald Trump has found a way. I think David Sachs said something to this effect, but Donald Trump just threw out the speech. It's like he's figured out. And this was always something about Donald Trump. That was this was true. It's been true. It's why he's been president twice. He's always able. The analogy that I used to give is that it was it would almost be like

You were at a poker hand or you were at a poker game and like the, imagine almost like you could pick your hand and then there there's like pocket aces and no one wants to play them. And Donald Trump just comes along and he's like, I'll, I'll play pocket aces. Those are really good cards.

I'm quite happy to play those. And for whatever reason, all of the establishment politicians, many of this is because of their the pressure from donors, the pressure, like their own constraints. And there's several of them. And not just the pressure from donors, but like the pressure to be able to go through the revolving door and get some cushy job after you're out of politics or any of that stuff. But they have these constraints. And one of the rules is you're not allowed to play pocket aces. And Donald Trump just didn't have those constraints.

So he's just like, I'll play him. You know, like, securing the border. It's like a wildly popular issue. Yeah, what David Sacks said is that it was something along the lines of like, Donald Trump was able to race to the 80 on every 80-20 issue. You know, like, it was like all of these issues that are like 80% agree with this 20% disagree. Donald Trump would just consistently put himself in the 80%. You know, it's like, whatever, like,

Dudes shouldn't be competing against high school girls in sports like just like the most common sense thing that somehow in this crazy last decade in America has become an issue that for whatever reason, most Democrats, almost all of them are constrained from agreeing with like they cannot do that.

But he can come out and just say it. And then like most Americans can go, oh, yeah, right. Obviously, we agree with that.

You guys take the 20% who don't agree with this and we'll take the 80% is the game that Donald Trump was able to play all night long. He also, I mean, he was sharp. He was on point. He delivered the speech well. Donald Trump usually is not the best at reading a teleprompter, but he really got it done. And then it was like,

such a huge contrast where not only does he, did he have an A plus in terms of effectiveness, but like the Democrats, they had an F minus in, I mean, it was just like, if I couldn't believe it, you know, first of all, I've, I've been watching state of the union speeches for a long time. There has never been one quite like this in terms of how, what,

wildly disrespectful and childish the opposition party was. I remember back when, I can't remember which one it was, but it was one of Obama's State of the Unions when the Republican congressman screamed out, you lie. And Obama was saying something about how Obamacare would not give health insurance to illegal immigrants. And one of the Republicans screamed out, you lie.

And this was like a huge controversy in the media. It was like, hey, man, like, you know, the norm is that you can clap or you could not clap.

Um, you could even maybe boo at certain points, but you don't scream out and heckle and call the president of the United States a liar. Like the entire corporate media was like, that is just, that is bad decorum. And that's just not right. This was like a controversy. Donald Trump went in there. He was getting heckled immediately. One guy had to be removed. Others walked out there typically in a state of the union, the way it would almost always be is that like,

on controversial partisan issues the opposition party wouldn't stand and clap for you um but then if you just said something that was just like generic like everyone could get behind that you know then like everyone would clap and republicans would clap for obama democrats would clap for george w bush like that was just part of the state of the union if you said something that they were like yeah even we agree with that the democrats wouldn't clap at all they

They did not clap at all for Donald Trump the entire time. In fact, it's very interesting what they did clap for, which was continuing the war in Ukraine. Anyway, we'll play that clip in a second. But I mean, like they wouldn't even clap. They wouldn't even clap for like, he's like, hey, here's like a little kid with a life threatening illness. And he always wanted to be a cop. So today we're going to make him a deputy secret service, blah, blah, blah. And we're going to give him a little badge. And his dad picks him up and like,

the Democrats wouldn't clap for that. They wouldn't clap for anything. They wouldn't clap for the American who was returned from Russia, who had been imprisoned by Russia. Like literally, and, and,

Look, on top of that, and look, again, I don't really these these I don't care about these stories. I think it's kind of I always find it kind of in poor taste. Every politician does it, but I don't like it when they kind of like use someone who's going through a tragedy or something like that and then try to score political points off of them. Not a big fan of that. Yeah.

but they all do it and man it makes you look bad when you just don't clap for something that like is just everybody should agree that's a positive thing they the democrats just i mean the word was like is impotence i don't know their whole thing was like you're gonna you're gonna hold up false signs while the president's giving his speech you know you've got like you've got

A popular president who's got his highest approval ratings that he's ever had, and you're just sitting there being the grumpy losers who won't even give him credit for anything good he does. And it's just terrible optics. Terrible. It's also, I got to say, and this is maybe me personally, I don't know how much everybody agrees with this. And this might just be my own temperament, but I just hate the idea of like,

heckling and hissing and booing and it's just very childish it's a very it's a an extremely infantile response you know i hated when the libertarian party did that there were people in the libertarian party who did it when donald trump came like i totally understand if he says something you disagree with and you want to boo or what i could get that but just like what are you like a triggered college kid like i just

I don't know. I just, not my style. I don't like, and I really don't think it played well, especially when you have Donald Trump out there. And this really is, look again, this is still Donald Trump's best quality, right? If you look at Donald Trump through his entire life, the thing that's most impressive about him is his, he's the, he's the best marketer, the best self promoter in history. And there's just nobody like him became world famous from being a real estate developer. What? Yeah.

Who the fuck becomes world famous from being a real estate developer? Real quick, think of famous real estate developers. Okay, you got Donald Trump. Give me five more. Donald Trump is the most famous man who's ever lived. His silhouette is more recognizable than Jesus's. You know, I mean, like he's just X and he's great. So what you have here is, and the reason he's great is he knows how to create the optics. He knows how to put on a show. And so here you have Donald Trump

at the height of his popularity, at least so far. And here he is getting on the 80 side of every 80-20 issue. And here are the Democrats being children, helpless to stop him anyway. And just what? We're going to scream till we get kicked out. And then a bunch of us are going to walk out of the room. That's your ace in the hole.

i was just it was terrible and and it's almost look there's one thing like i've talked about this quite a bit i'm sure because it was really one of the major stories of the election but

Look, I used to say this when the Mises caucus was taking over the Libertarian Party. It was one of the reasons why we were successful. This stuff, social psychology is a huge part of this stuff. And people could dismiss like vibes or whatever. But this is how politics actually works, whether you like it or not. And believe me, I'm one of the ones who doesn't really like it. I really wish that the way American elections and American politics worked was that

It was issues driven. And like the merit of people's arguments about policy positions is what should determine who votes for who, you know, and that should determine who the American people support. You know, who has the best argument about how monetary policy is going to lead toward prosperity or who has the best argument for what foreign intervention we should be a part of or not a part of or what, you know, like I wish that was the way it worked.

I'm kind of a dork about this shit. But look, that's just not the reality. It's just not true. And everybody knows that. Everybody knows that. There are people all throughout this country. I mean, there are people...

by the tens of millions who vote in elections, passionately prefer one candidate to the other, like might hate that candidate's guts and love this candidate. And they don't know anything about policy. They've never read a book about policy in their entire lives.

Probably not even read like too many articles about it. Maybe seen a few shows on something once. There are people, that's just the reality of the situation. So people get emotionally invested. There's cultural forces, right? Why do you think red states stay red and blue states stay blue? People vote the way their daddy voted, the way their grandfather voted, the way, you know, like that's just, this is the reality. And when you understand that, what Donald Trump was able to do throughout the entire campaign

is that he made the Donald Trump campaign a party. It was a fucking party. That was Donald Trump. That was his campaign. There's going to be drinks, you know, there's going to be dancing. Kid Rock's going to be there. Hulk Hogan's doing a thing from the 80s. Tony Hinchcliffe's telling jokes. Rogan and Theo Vaughn are there. Like, it was just like, oh, this is cool. This is fun.

Every speech, every campaign rally that Donald Trump gives, it was like it was a night of entertainment for the people who went there. On the other hand, you could have a screaming old man in Joe Biden. He's going to take away democracy. Or you could have Kamala Harris, you know, warning you about the dangers of like it was just like that. That sucks. And here again, he's able to do it.

Here again, Donald Trump's up there. He's being funny. He's taking popular issues. He's talking about how great America is going to be. He's selling you on how everything is going to be so wonderful. And then here's a bunch of grumpy children in the crowd. Which would you rather go to?

You know, like if I told you there's two rooms in an office building, I go, one of them is like the company Christmas party and the other one is full of HR people getting everyone in trouble. Do you think you might have a preference on which one of those rooms you walk into? This is the magic that Trump's able to create. And it really is just, I don't know, it's incredible to watch. Incredible.

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It's amazing that like you have the Democrat, the Democratic Party is, I mean, what a multibillion dollar operation, you know, I mean, it's an operation that when in power controls trillions of dollars, but as an organization itself is a multibillion dollar organization.

Kamala Harris raised an insane amount of money. Joe Biden, I mean, he started losing some when he went senile, but he raised a ton of money in 2020. They're a huge... And they've had one focus. I mean, one focus since at least November, probably if we believe some of the reporting about the internal polling, they've known for quite a while that they were going down in this election.

And their one focus is like, okay, how do we get back? We're down and out and Trump's higher than ever. How do we deal with that? And then to look at it and you're like, and this is what you came up with. You'll have an old man wave his cane. You'll, you'll have a bunch of miserable, like ladies heckling. Okay. All right.

Anyway, let's play a couple of the clips. I think I got two clips lined up. In either order, Natalie, let's go to one and get a little feel for it. This is my fifth such speech to Congress. And once again, I look at the Democrats in front of me, and I realize there is absolutely nothing I can say to make them happy or to make them stand or smile or applaud. Nothing I can do.

I could find a cure to the most devastating disease, a disease that would wipe out entire nations or announce the answers to the greatest economy in history or the stoppage of crime to the lowest levels ever recorded.

And these people sitting right here will not clap, will not stand, and certainly will not cheer for these astronomical achievements. They won't do it, no matter what. Five times I've been up here. It's very sad, and it just shouldn't be this way.

Like, do you not, do you see what I'm saying here with how brilliant Donald Trump is at this? Not even saying you got to support him as president or you don't like his latest policies. There's plenty that I don't like. But like, this is just like brilliant framing. I mean, you know, you ever been in like an argument? It could be with like a, like your husband or your wife or boyfriend, girlfriend, or just like a friend or something. You ever have anyone call you defensive?

in an argument, I'd be like, you're being very defensive right now. And it kind of immediately, like, it just puts you on the back foot. Like all of a sudden you're on your heels, not the balls of your feet. Cause when you get called defensive, you like, if that bothers you, you're kind of proving that you're defensive.

And then if you don't think you're being defensive, you'd be like, I'm not being defensive. It's a very defensive thing to say. It's just like a weird little kind of framing tactic that could kind of make you go like, ah, shit, you almost have to force yourself to calm down and very phonily be like, I don't think I am being defensive. But if that's how you feel, it's just a difficult thing to deal with. I mean, that's Donald Trump. Look, think about this, right? You have a president who's popular, right?

Okay. Just won a very big election, took every single swing state and won the popular vote. Then he's up here. Almost everybody. Oh, I mean, if you say again, make it 80, 20, take out the 20% of people who hate Donald Trump the most, like, you know, the ones who passionately hate Donald Trump. And just think about the other 80% of the electorate. Almost any of them would at least have something they like about.

Donald Trump. You know, I do. I do think there's a lot of wasted fraud in the government. That'd be kind of cool if we could cut some of that or yeah, illegal immigration. I mean, it's super majorities of the American people support mass deportations. Okay. So it's not the, the,

The Joe Biden immigration policy is wildly unpopular. Nobody, almost nobody supports that. When we remove that 20 percent, you're down to nobody is supporting that. So at least kind of like that, you know, you might at least kind of like maybe we should negotiate a peace in Ukraine. That's a popular policy. A lot of people like that. And so even people who don't support Donald Trump probably have like a few things that they like about him.

And think about how powerful it is for Donald Trump to get up there and say, listen, no matter what I do, these people are going to have the same reaction. And then the camera pans to these people having that reaction. Also looking miserable, looking miserable. Again, who wants to join that? This is just such bad politics. Like who, who wants to be a part of the miserable group?

Do you want to come up? Do you want to come over here? Like if there are two people and one person is inviting you to a party and the other person is inviting you to come be miserable with them, who do you think might be more successful in that scenario? This is what Donald Trump was able to do.

And the visual just works so well with what he's saying. And the fact is that anybody being honest about the situation, anybody being honest, knows however you feel about Donald Trump, he's right about what he just said. He's right about that. The Democrats are going to treat him like a unique evil no matter what he does, no matter how successful it is. They're going to call him Hitler and they're going to, you know, they're going to boo and they're going to pretend that everything's falling apart no matter what. And that just, it, it,

It's like perfect framing, and it's also true. And so it gets that nice ring of truth. All right, let's go to the next clip and discuss this a little bit. The media and our friends in the Democrat Party kept saying we needed new legislation. We must have legislation to secure the border. But it turned out that all we really needed was a new president. Thanks. The media...

I just like the image of this angry woman with purple hair. Like, I don't know. I don't know. I mean, I'm not trying to like, you know, hey, man, dye your hair, whatever color you want to live your life however you want to. But like in the game of politics, we are playing a popularity contest here. That's what democracy is. It's about like who represents more people or something, who at least can get more people to think that they represent you.

And like, what percentage do you think that represents? The party of angry, purpled-haired woman. Anyway, I thought the line was great. I thought that was actually probably his most effective line of the entire speech. Um...

It there to say, like, it turns out we didn't need new legislation. We just needed a new president really was powerful and kind of undeniably true. Right. I mean, this is what was the Biden administration's campaign strategy.

They campaigned on the idea that they wanted three and a half years into his administration after years of record high illegal entry into our country that three and a half years in, they wanted to solve the problem. And they got this bill.

And, you know, they said it was a terrible bill, but whatever, they're pretending it wasn't. And, you know, Donald Trump told the Republicans not to vote for it. So that's why it was Donald Trump who, you know, he's the reason why we couldn't. So we really wanted to solve this problem, but we couldn't. The problem is that Donald Trump hasn't gotten any immigration bill passed yet.

Everything he's done has been through executive fiat and border crossings are at all time lows. Border crossings under Biden were at all time highs and they're now at all time lows. So my God, the argument that the reason you couldn't solve the problem was because Donald Trump told some congressmen not to vote for it. That that just is not going to fly.

And, you know, this is something that I've talked about for years, but there is there's just no question that there's this is at least a huge part of the equation is that a lot of it's just about the signal you send.

You know, like when Donald Trump is up there talking all this shit about immigration, people tend to stop coming because they feel like, oh, we're not going to be allowed in. Even if he hasn't even done anything to ramp up immigration enforcement. And he's done some things, but I'm saying even absent that, that just word gets out. And then when the Democrats are saying, oh, you're such a Nazi for wanting immigration controls, and then they get the presidency, everyone goes, okay, it's open. They're going to take us now.

So they come in larger numbers. There's other factors, too. Don't get me wrong, but that's a huge one. And anyway, just a very effective, very effective line. Yeah, I look, I mean, there are things I could criticize, obviously, policy wise, you know,

In terms of substance of the speech, I got to say, and I guess this kind of crosses over, but as I mentioned before, I thought I sent the Elizabeth Warren clip, but it's not even necessary. But at one point, I mean, he was so great on the war in Ukraine and just how the killing has to stop. And at one point, this is like the only moment or one of the only moments when the Democrats clapped at anything he said. Think about how fucking stupid these people are. They...

When he said we've spent possibly up to $350 billion on this war, the Democrats started clapping. They started clapping about how we've spent a war that's ending in a loss. They were clapping that we spent so much money on it. And then when he said, oh, you know, he kind of addressed that and was like, oh, you guys are clapping. I know I'm sure some of you want it to go on for another five years. A bunch of Democrats clapped for that.

And Elizabeth Warren clapped for it. And then Donald Trump, of course, because he's Trump, he hilariously called her out and goes, ah, Pocahontas is clapping for that. And it's just laughter throughout the chamber. Again, first of all, he's right on the policy. He's right on the issue. Not only just right on the issue, think about how insane it is for goddamn Elizabeth Warren to be clapping over this. I also like, I gotta, you know,

Don't get me wrong because I feel this way about all politicians and I feel this way about all politicians when they're cheering on wars. I just always find it to be the the most disgusting thing that a politician can do. And particularly it's disgusting because like none of them are ever going to go fight in any of these wars.

And almost none of their kids are ever going, hey, Joe Biden, one exception to that, actually did have a kid go to the go to the war. But very, very rarely to any of these people. You know, they cheer on the wars because it's some other poor guy who's got to go die in it, not them. And I just I personally feel like I mean, look, I know I'm not I might be a little bit old for to see combat.

Not in Ukraine, but in America, in the American military. I'd be on the older side. But I feel like I'm still an able-bodied man. And I just I could never imagine myself supporting a war that I wasn't also willing to go fight it. Like if there if there was a war like that, you know, if an army invaded America.

I'd be willing to go and fight them like fuck that. I'm not letting a foreign military come take over my country. And so I'd be fine advocating for that war, but I'll be there with you. They just could never imagine it like advocating for a war that you're not willing to yourself go fight it.

And I will say, I feel this way in general about politicians that I just think it's disgusting. They cheer on wars that they know they're not going to go fight in. You know, you've got these guys like Newt Gingrich or whatever, and there's a whole bunch of them who like, they got like a bunch of, you know, what do you call it? Deferments when they were drafting in Vietnam. Like they dodged the draft, but then they cheer for every other war. I just think, I think it's quite possibly like,

debatably the worst thing a human being can do. I will say, at the risk of coming off as a bit of a chauvinist, but that's never been a risk that I'm too concerned with, I find it particularly appalling when women do it. They just do. Maybe that's my version of my body, my choice, or something like that. But you know, there'll be all these women, I'm sure Elizabeth Warren would make the argument herself, right? That men should shut up about abortion because it's not your body.

Right. Like a man's never going to have to have a pregnancy. So you should shut up about abortion. Now, that's a pretty dumb argument because the pro-life argument for abortion is that it's on behalf of the baby. And so, you know, I can have an opinion on killing babies. But however you feel about that, isn't there something it's like, you know.

the ukrainian women aren't being conscripted they're not being forced to join this it's the young ukrainian men i shouldn't even say young it's it's ukrainian men who are being conscripted into this war forced at gunpoint to go be in this meat grinder to get killed over nothing to go get killed by the hundreds of thousands so that you can negotiate an end to the war in a worse position than before all of these guys got killed

It's like, and then for Elizabeth Warren to be sitting there cheering this on. Yeah. Let's keep it going for another five years.

It's just, I mean, I don't know. It's appalling. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is sheath underwear. I've been telling you about them for years because they've been sponsoring the show for years. Sheath uses moisture wicking technology to create underwear that keeps everything breathable and incredibly comfortable for you downstairs. I'm wearing a pair of sheath underwear right now as I talk to you.

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Just horrible. Yeah. So anyway, I thought I don't know how else to say it. And then at least as of the only poll that I saw, I'm sure there'll be more to come out. But there was a CBS News poll on your views of Trump's speech. People who watched 76 percent approved, 23 percent disapproved.

Seems to say it all right there. You know, like this was just it. It's a it's an interesting time that we are living through and a combination of I think a lot of the things that I've been talking about and then some other things have just created the conditions where Donald Trump is is back. He's stronger than ever. And the Democrats are completely lost.

on how to even attempt to start dealing with him. Like, how do we even attempt to start forming an opposition to this? Uh, it's remarkable how different it is from the first time that he was in. Okay. Let's, uh, here I'll go. Um, if you have some questions, put them in the chat, I'll try to get to a few of them now. Uh, let's see what we got. I see Natalie picked a few up here. Okay. Um,

oh one okay there's a little off topic but we'll we'll do it uh dave cuomo seems to be really serious about going from the worst governor to the worst new york city mayor does he even have a chance or are the people so blind that they would vote for him anyway um it's an interesting question i i don't know i was uh i couldn't believe it when i saw that he was actually running um

quote this Andrew Cromwell, he's going to, he's going to make me end up supporting Corinne Fisher, isn't he? I don't, I don't know who's a, you know, I don't know enough. I just, you know, I grew up in New York city. I have not been following this closely, so I don't know exactly where the polls are or who he's even running against. It's,

It's a huge advantage to come into a mayor, like running for mayor of New York City. It's a huge advantage to have the level of name recognition that he has. And I'd imagine his fundraising ability, although I don't exactly know after he was on the outs with the Democratic establishment where where he is with that. But I still imagine he's going to have a huge advantage in terms of, you know,

recognition and fundraising. So that I guess is, is something on, on his record, you know, again, I guess you would hope, I mean, he has such an awful track record as governor. It's not just like that. It's like you said, the worst ever. Um, I mean the dude, the dude forced COVID positive patients into nursing homes and then covered it up.

He killed a bunch of old people while he was locking the state down and lecturing everybody else about how they're going to kill old people. Literally, he was robbing Americans of their basic liberties on the pretense of you will kill old people while he was killing old people. You can't write this shit. And so, and just, I mean, I just, you know, listen, you guys know how I feel about that family. Just a...

Just awful. It's just awful. And yeah, I did, by the way, I did say this publicly. I don't know. I don't know what the path to making this happen is, but I, Andrew Cuomo, that's my next debate. That's who I, that's who I want to be about. I took out Chris. I took out Fredo. Now I want Michael.

Let's, uh, let's get that going. But I would, oh my God, I would love that. Be the, uh, that would really be the, uh, the achievement of my career. But, uh, anyway, that's probably don't hold your breath on that. I don't think Andrew's going to agree anytime soon. I guess your answer is I really, I don't know. I really hope that, oh my God, my fellow New Yorkers. I mean, I'm not, I don't live in New York anymore, but you know, I I'm born and raised in that city. Guys, we cannot be this fucking pathetic. Dear Lord.

Maybe one of the positives is that he did make some enemies in the establishment, so perhaps that'll come back to bite him. Okay, next question.

I would like to hear your opinion on all the videos that are coming out from Ukraine showing what he is doing to his own people with conscription of civilians. And why is none of this ever mentioned or shown on literally none of the world's Western media news? Mentally ill people with Down syndrome put on the front to me is crimes against humanity.

Oh, yeah. Well, okay. So first of all, I mean, I completely agree with you. And this is, you know, as I've said for a very, very long time, many decades now, or at least, okay, maybe not many, but it's going on two decades now. I've been saying, listen, man, the draft conscription is slavery.

and that's what we're talking about here and in fact i think it's you could argue it's like the worst form of slavery uh you know if i if i were to force you against your will to do my yard work and not pay you for that and you know and not allow you to leave then i have enslaved you um that's a hell of a lot better than forcing you to go kill or be killed

Like, why is it? Why is it just like, it's just like all these, you know, this is like basic libertarianism 101 stuff, but it's like when somehow when the government does it, we're supposed to have some completely different moral calculation about it. But like the conscription is not only slavery. It is the worst form of slavery, enslaving somebody and then giving them the job of would be murderer or murder victim as just like enslaving you to the most traumatic job. It's fucking horrible. And then God, and the idea that

professed free society like america would ever you know fund a conscripted army is beyond unconscionable it's yes it is a crime against humanity in the most basic sense um and and and look you're the other point that you make is a very important one why is it that where do we see these images you know you see them on twitter you're not you're not seeing them on nbc news

not seen them on cnn you know i mean this is just like this is you know as as much as all those people in the corporate media can talk about misinformation and all this stuff it's all a joke you only get the real information once you go outside of them and yeah i mean it's it's you know

again also the funny thing is that the propaganda for so long was that the ukrainians want to fight and then it's like yeah okay do they well the ones i'm seeing getting a gun put to their head and dragged off to the front lines don't seem to want to i don't think that those uh um you know what is it i don't i don't think people with down syndrome want to fight or at least not meaningfully i don't think they meaningfully consent to that

It really is something that like, especially when you think about the fact that like, you know, some of these arguments that I've been in over the last few years, so much of the like woke progressive shit where they'd say things like,

You know, like if a if a if a chick is drunk and hooks up with a guy, then she didn't meaningfully consent. So that was rape. If she regrets it later, it's rape because she didn't meaningfully consent. It's somehow it's like it was the guy with Down syndrome consenting to go join the army or any like do we care about these issues? It's even slight. Believe me, getting sent to the front lines to go take on the Russians is slightly worse than a hookup. You regret.

i don't know is that too politically incorrect to say uh but yeah so anyway i completely agree with you excellent excellent question um okay if you guys want we got time for like one maybe two more questions and then uh i i will have to wrap up gotta uh gotta head out to uh to buffalo um

Okay, Dave, Trump has done a lot, both positive and negative so far. What are you looking for him to do over the next few years as your highest priority? Okay, well, I agree with that general assessment. I mean, I think that there's a lot of good things that could be done.

There's a lot of things that even need to be done, I would say. And I'm not holding my breath for Donald Trump to do all of them. I think that if Donald Trump, you know, if I were to use an analogy, it's we are in a car doing 100 miles per hour headed off a cliff. And so if Donald Trump can slow that down.

At least that gives us some more time to where you get more possibilities and maybe we can wake up more people and maybe something positive can come out of that. Um,

Donald Trump, if you really wanted to solve the problems in this country, you're going to have to have drastic cuts in government spending. You're going to have to roll back the big banks and their grip over our federal government, starting with abolishing the Federal Reserve. You're going to have to abolish three-letter agencies. I mean, there's a lot that would have to be done. I'm not expecting anything like that to come of Donald Trump's second term.

term. This is not, it's not a realistic expectation. What, what I can realistically hope for Donald Trump is at least he's kind of, he's gotten the conversation started about cutting and spending. He's gotten the conversation started about what the government is actually doing with our money, how criminal it actually is. And he's, we've already gotten kind of like a complete rejection of the corporate media. Um, and, and if he can end the war in Ukraine,

and not step on one of these tripwires, which really would be like, you know, another disastrous war or something like that. And if he can be reasonably not too bad on other issues, then I think it will have been a tremendous success. And I mean, that might be a low bar, but, you know, I'm grading on a curve here compared to every other president. And it's already better than any president of my lifetime by far. This is really not even there's no comparison.

And so, you know, that's what I would say. But the real dangers are somehow him not following through with this Ukraine thing and escalating the war with Russia. And then the other real danger, I think the more likely danger

uh disaster is some type of war with iran um or some major action uh on behalf of israel allowing them to annex the west west bank going through with the ethnic cleansing in gaza something like that this could be a real disaster and really have the power to uh to undo all the positive gains that he's had so far so as long as he could just stay america first not get sucked into any of these stupid wars i think we'll probably be um

We'll probably be able to say that this was a successful administration, at least compared to what realistically could happen. There, I see Natalie. Oh, you must have... It's funny, I read it out of the chat, and then you grabbed that same question. Okay. Um...

I'm going to have to wrap on that one, guys. We will catch you next time. Listen, I will get the members-only episode out this week. It will not be at the normal time tomorrow, but as soon as me and Rob get up to Buffalo, we will record one and get one out to you. Do not worry. We won't miss that. I still owe you a couple members-only episodes. I will make good on those. Also, this Saturday, we are doing our Zoom meeting for the top-tier subscribers. Really looking forward to that. They're always a lot of fun. So I'll see you guys at that. All right.

Catch you next time. Peace.