Debate RECAP
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What's up, what's up, everybody? We are live. Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem, a very special debate recap episode. Of course, I'm Dave Smith, and as always, I am joined by Robbie the Fire Bernstein. How are you feeling this morning, brother? I enjoyed watching those debates last night. All right, very good. Well, let me just real quickly before we get into it, I want to say thank you to all of

Uh, we, me and Rob will be out in Oklahoma city, uh, this weekend. Um, Oklahoma city will be there, um, tomorrow and Friday. And then, uh, Saturday night we'll be in Tulsa, Oklahoma, uh, comic Dave smith.com for those tickets. And of course, Rob's on the road, a whole bunch. Where are you at after that? Rob, uh, go to porch store.com. I've got 10 porches left, Byron, Michigan, Salt Lake city, uh,

and a whole bunch of others filming in Denver in October. Go look at the line at porch tour.com. Hell yeah. Okay. Sorry. I'm just trying to, to share this link right now. I apologize. We got a little bit of a late start here. I had a couple of technical issues on my end, but I solved them, which is a first. We were all very impressed, Dave. Listen again for the average person, not that impressive for me, but,

Pretty damn good. Okay, sorry. And now I'm trying to tweet and... While we're stalling, I'll read off more cities that I will be in. Providence, Rhode Island, that's a pretty town. Miami, Florida, Jacksonville, Florida, outside Chicago, Mesa, Arizona. We're porching, baby. All right, all right. I'm ready to go. I'm sorry, guys. I'm focused. I'm locked in. All right. We had a presidential debate last night that was...

I would say of unique significance. There's just there's really nothing else that we can compare this election to. It's just different. It's an unprecedented election on every in every way you could think of. And

It looks like, at least right now, the overwhelming odds seem to be that this is, well, it certainly is the shortest presidential election in terms of when both of the candidates were in. It was an election that was basically just the convention to the election day. Typically, that's the end of the fourth quarter of a presidential election.

In this year's election, we didn't even have the candidate until just a few days before the Democratic National Convention. So you've got a shorter period, and it looks like this is going to be the only debate that they do. I guess that's not 100% official yet, but it certainly does look that way. And the race, at least according to the polls, is in a dead heat. So in an environment like that, there's probably never been a more important consequential debate.

I want to give a few thoughts on this. I want to get Rob's thoughts. I kind of want to give my broad thoughts on it. And then I want to hear yours. And then we can kind of go into like specific moments of the debate. I'm going to say this to open up and I have a feeling this is going to get some people angry and some people might disagree with me on this, but just hear me out before you have an immediate reaction. I'm going to tell you this overall,

Kamala Harris won the night. And here's why I think Kamala Harris won the night. I'm not saying that she was great. I'm not saying that she was likable. I'm not saying anything like that. In terms of just like purely scoring this as a debate, then maybe Donald Trump won it. He probably landed the stronger blows on her than she landed on him. However, if you zoom out and you look at it, what...

There was really never a huge chance that she was going to land substantial damage on Donald Trump. Now, I'm not saying there was no chance that that could happen. Anything is always possible. But the real question of this debate was, could Donald Trump substantially change the nature of this race?

ranging from could he land something devastating, like a devastating performance like his last one against Biden, which again, wasn't really Trump. It was Biden collapsing. But would Kamala Harris have moments where she collapsed?

Would Donald Trump facilitate that or not, you know, not get in her way while she's having those? But would we come out of this debate going the race is now in a different place than it was going in?

Kamala Harris largely has not been defined to the American people. She is a third-rate politician who was an inconsequential, not very visible vice president over the last four years. So the question is, would he be able to define her and then define her as this? I'm just saying when you come out of it, I don't think any of that happened.

I think we're leaving this with the presidential race in the exact same place that it was before the debate started. And I don't see how you can look at that other than an L for Donald Trump. That's just, that's what the game was. It's over. And now I think we're right back. I don't think the polls are going to be moved by that debate performance. I could be wrong, but that's my feeling going into it. I think Donald Trump is,

Okay, I'll do Trump and then her. Donald Trump had some good moments. He had some good moments. The good moments were, of course, what we could predict the good moments were going to be. The good moments were when he was hitting her on inflation, on immigration. However, overall, as a debate performance for Donald Trump, he was...

I felt like fairly low energy. He was rambling and he took the bait at times when it was really stupid to take the bait. I mean, the one that stands out to me particular in particular was when the topic of immigration comes up and Kamala Harris, which this was obviously game planned and it was obviously like this was her strategy and he fell right into it.

She turns and starts just saying how his rallies suck and everyone's bored at his rallies. And if you watch, they're leaving early because they're so bored at his rallies.

And it goes over to him. And of course, he cannot help himself. He immediately has to go, no, my rallies are great. Your rallies are nowhere near as good as mine. You can't even have a rally like mine. People love my rallies. And it's almost like, dude, do you not realize that she just got you to eat 30 seconds of the immigration topic with bragging about your own rallies?

Now he did pivot back to it, but still it was just such a clear tactic and he fell right into it, fell right into it. Um,

So he had some good moments where he was effective. He was he was much more aggressive with her than he was with Joe Biden. And I think part of that was because she did, you know, insult his rallies early on. So he couldn't stand for that. I don't know overall how that's going to play. I think that for for Donald Trump supporters who are like, you know,

edgy young men on Twitter. I think they tend to really like that. I I'm not sure that it plays so well with, um, with the broader audience, as far as Kamala Harris goes, you know, she, look, she had some very bad moments, um, right away. Her opening was terrible. Um, but, um,

She did not, you know, she didn't have catastrophic moments. She didn't like hurt herself in them. And then the other thing I'll say before I turn it over to you, and I'm curious to get your thoughts, Rob, is I got to say a word about the moderating where it is.

Look, it's a given. Anybody who pays attention over the last eight years should know. It's a given that any of the corporate media hacks who moderate these debates are obviously going to have an anti-Trump bias. That goes without saying. That's always the case.

Last night's debate was by far the most egregious version of that that I've ever seen. It was it really was a three on one debate where not the moderators were not only in the framing of their questions were half of I mean, half the questions were like now, you

Donald Trump, people tend to feel like you're a piece of shit. What do you think? Why are you such a piece of shit? They'd be like, okay, Kamala Harris, why do you think Donald Trump's such a piece of shit? Not only was it questions like this, but they were...

Doing something that moderators tend not to do. Usually there's occasional isolated incidents of this. And it was it's been controversial in the few instances that moderators have ever tried to play fact checker. But they try. They were playing fact checker, but exclusively with Donald Trump.

All night. And Kamala Harris, we could get into this. She threw out some pretty fat lies. Not a word. Not a word from the moderators. And not only that, I thought the most egregious moment that I actually couldn't believe was

was when they asked Donald Trump about how he had said that he did lose the election in 2020, Rob, you remember this point, where they said, well, you recently admitted that you lost the election, so which one is it? Did you lose it? And he goes, no, no, no, I was being sarcastic. I said we lost by a hair or something like that. He goes, I was being sarcastic. No, we won that election. And then he gives a whole speech about how they won the election. And then it goes back to the moderators, and the moderator goes, it didn't sound like sarcasm to me.

And you're like, yo, what? You're just interjecting your opinion in this? It didn't sound like sarcasm to you? I mean, look, like, you're the moderator of a debate. That's fine if Kamala Harris wants to say it didn't sound like sarcasm to me. But for you to just jump in and, like, take with not even pretending that it's a fact check, just like, I want to offer my opinion.

Into this, like I thought you were a pretty lousy president myself. I thought that was wild. And I will say this. And this, I promise, is my final thought before I turn it over to you, Rob. I I do think that that helped Donald Trump.

Like, I think that's the biggest victory for Donald Trump coming out of this is that it was all so clearly rigged against him. And I'm really surprised that the it seems like the corporate media still hasn't figured that out.

hasn't figured out that like you can't be this blatantly bias or it kind of gives him street cred. Like, look, the whole establishment is against you. But anyway, so those are my broad takeaways from the debate. What do you think, Rob? All right.

You know, I agree with everything you said, except that last part, which I think this debate was it was Donald. It wasn't Donald Trump against Kamala Harris. It's what you've been saying the last couple episodes is actually Donald Trump against the machine. And we knew that the machine is going to cheat him. But it was is Kamala Harris such a lousy candidate and is Donald Trump so many tears better at this than than she is that he's going to have a knockout?

Is he going to figure out how to expose how dumb we've seen her off the cuff? And maybe she's not that dumb and she's actually been a drunk this whole time or they gave her the Biden meds. And that's why he failed the last time as he stole them. She came off fine. I mean, I might not like her. I might not like what she had to say. But in terms of, hey, is this person too dumb to get through a debate? She won that challenge. She did not come off. And I think what really gave Donald Trump the L is that he has nothing to say also.

And so eight years ago when he ran the first time, he said, I'll make it great. I'll do this. Don't worry. Best that you've ever seen. Like no one's ever seen. That doesn't work eight years later. You know what I mean? When you were the new pretty boyfriend or girlfriend and the new shiny object, all of that worked. It doesn't work anymore. And so, yeah, Kamala Harris is up there lying. But guess what? Donald Trump doesn't have anything to say either. Yeah.

And by the way, I'm secretly sitting over here rooting for Donald Trump. There's nothing I want more than for the Democrats to fail. But I'm watching Donald Trump and he kind of has to pick a lane where he either needs to be more informed on these issues, actually state policy.

actually have solutions to highlight the fact that Kamala Harris doesn't, or he's got to pivot back to when he's just being funny and charming, where he had a couple of those moments where he's like, go wake up Joe Biden at four in the afternoon. I started laughing. Like he had a bunch of good moments where I was laughing and I was like, well, at least that's fun. But when he's up there kind of ink, it doesn't matter. Yes. They cheated him. They only got one debate. Uh,

They got it on the platform that they wanted. They got moderators. She might have had the questions beforehand. We all knew that that could happen. But he sat there. He was rattled. He was angry. He came off as uncomfortable. And at the end of it, firstly, he had nothing to say when he had opportunities to actually state policy. And he missed some big shots.

There were some big, like you were talking about the fumbles on getting goaded about the size of his rallies or otherwise. But then there were also just some wide openings to smash her. The biggest fumble to me, and then I'll shut up, was the moment when they asked her about whether or not why he's calling her

why he's saying that she isn't black. And he just basically decided he didn't want to answer that and say, I don't care. When what he should have been saying is this is the most important thing to the Democratic Party. You

You're I'm the person who says, hey, well, let's put up the best person for the job. That's not your philosophy. Your philosophy is let's empower people in minority groups. And that's why you have this job. That's why Joe Biden picked you is to represent a minority group. And now it's really important to the Democratic Party that minority groups are being represented. And I think you are stealing from them in claiming to be a minority that you are not.

And it's on your birth certificate. It's in statements that you made. And so to your party and to what's important to them, I think you're being dishonest the same as you're being dishonest and all these other issues. I would like to move away from the racial identity politics and get the best candidate up here and talk about the ideas. That's not what you're about. And you're lying about it. But instead, he just punted and he looked weak.

Yeah, I completely agree with you that there's there were just massive opportunities and he he just didn't quite connect the dots.

You know, like it's almost like because, you know, me and you are stand up comics and, you know, sometimes it's kind of inside baseball. But like for people who don't know, you know, like stand up comics will have like you'll have like a joke and you'll work it over a period of time and kind of figure out till it's like, oh, now it's landing. You know, like I had this idea. I think this is funny. And then you kind of figure out how to say it where you're like, oh, now it's this is crushing. And you could have a thing where like the.

that idea that you had two months ago was getting chuckles in the room, but then you figured out the way to say it. And now it's like getting a standing, you know, ovation in the room. Like it's, it, you can, there were so many moments in the debate where Donald Trump tried to hit her with a thing. And I went, yeah, that just didn't quite land. Like he didn't, you know, the moment that I was thinking of that literally just popped into my head as you were saying like, Oh, there was this moment for a huge SmackDown. Um,

I thought if you remember, I think there were actually a couple different points in the debate where Kamala Harris looked at him and said, hey, I'm not Joe Biden. You know, like you're attacking Joe Biden, but I'm come.

Kamala Harris. So I don't even know who you're talking about. And it was almost like, I actually thought it was effective the way she used it because it was like, Hey buddy, have you not adjusted to the last two months? Like that's not that guy. You're attacking that guy, but you're running against me. And I feel like to, which is look all this, all you really judge these things on is how does this come off to normies, you know? And I think to a normie,

That sounds kind of right. Like, it's like, yeah, why is he attacking Biden? Biden's not here anymore. Now you're just kind of attacking this pathetic old senile man who's not even here to defend himself and has already dropped out of the race. Now you just come off kind of like you're a dick and a bully, whereas like we all kind of already agreed. And the reason,

We all agreed that that guy was too senile to run for president. And the reason why it wasn't landing is because he didn't connect the dots, which is not that hard to do. I mean, I can't imagine if you were prepping for this debate that you wouldn't go... Like, the response from Donald Trump should have been like...

That's right. You're not Joe Biden, but you're not running on what you ran on in 2020. And you're not running on the last four years where you were vice president. So who are you? That's the question. You're right. I'm criticizing the last four years. You don't want to stand by those four years because they're a disaster. You don't want to stand by what you ran on in 2020 because it's a disaster. So what are you running on?

Because so far I've got you're some lady. You know, like there was just a way for him to really nail her there. But he didn't exactly connect it. Instead of pointing out that she's abandoned her positions from 2020, he just insisted that those are her positions.

That was his line of attack. He just went, no, she is for the Green New Deal. She is for decriminalizing border crossings. She is for Medicare for all. She is. Well, she's sitting there saying she's not.

And then after she says she's not, he goes, no, she is. And he never even connected the dots to go, no, but she is on record saying she's for these things. All the normie American person got out of that was that she says she's not for it. And then Donald Trump insists she is. It just didn't like it didn't land the way you need it to land. Look, I'll tell you, like, I know this.

just from my little experience, right? Which is nothing like what Donald Trump is doing. But I know that like, okay, if I'm talking to...

I don't know, like, let's say I go on a podcast that is like it's a podcast about Austrian economics. And they want to interview me about why I think Ludwig von Mises is superior as an economist to Frederick Hayek or something like that. You know, well.

If I'm doing that show, I can kind of already assume everyone who's listening to this knows what Austrian economics is. Because the podcast is about Austrian economics. We're having a debate between two of the most famous Austrian economists to ever live. You know that the audience knows this already. But if I go on Joe Rogan and there's something I want to say about Austrian economics, well, the first thing I have to do is explain to the audience what Austrian economics is.

Because obviously I know I'm not talking to an audience of 600 people who are nerds about this shit. I'm talking to an audience of 15 million people. The overwhelming majority of have no idea what I'm talking about. So you just know going in there, it's like, oh, okay, I got to explain this to people. My point is just that you have to explain that to people. You have to connect those dots. And he never really did.

He never really explained to people that it's like, no, this is what she did. She was running on this. Now she's walking back on all these things. You know, he kind of alluded to at one point that she stole all of my views or something. But I just felt like he never really landed that blow. Of course, he never, which is still baffling to me.

He made, like you said, he got in some good digs on Biden. But again, the problem with it was what I was saying before. Now, like if you don't connect the dots, now Biden's just this old guy who's not there. You're just picking on an old man who's not around, who's objectively just really sad. Like...

What he didn't do was what I've been saying for months now that he needs to do, which is that connect that to her. Why is she, you know, responsible for this, which she is largely. And he didn't do that. I also did, you know, to your point, Rob, where you said he really just doesn't have that much to say either. He was, he was rambling for so much of the debate and he,

You know, I got to say, I think this is something that hardcore Trump supporters are they're probably going to disagree with me on this. But I also think it's something where they tend to miss this, that there was so much of what Donald Trump said, where he just he sounds like a kook.

You know, like if you're not following what's going on with the fucking eating animals story, that it just sounds kooky. It's like, wait, what? What are you even talking about? There were points in the debate where he was just saying things that you're like this. This sounds like to the average person. I think this is going to come off sounding wild and slightly unhinged.

I just thought there were a lot of moments like that where he had an opportunity. He could have really done something. There were these like knockout punches that could have been landed. And I don't think they were. I think the you know, I know that. Listen, there were moments that I enjoyed. You know, the thing where he said, excuse me, I'm speaking to her like, OK, that was a fun zinger.

I just thought that like, in terms of like, even the zingers, he was labbing. I was like, these are like, these are jabs. They're not knockout blows. Like he touched her a little bit with that one, but he didn't like devastate her. And there were openings for that. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is monetary metals. If you guys have been listening to the show for a while, you know how much I love this company.

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All right, let's get back into the show.

So I want to discuss some of the policy fumbles. Sure. I think some of the biggest missed opportunities. All right. There's a Jay Leno joke. I once saw him. He did an appearance once he retired on The Tonight Show, and he told this joke about there was this newspaper article about this guy who was jerking off and coach on a flight. And what I'd like to know is how do you have the elbow room? So what I call that, I call that an X factor joke where it's like not what you'd be thinking about.

So just apply it to politics. And I'm going to give a cheat code to all the politicians out there who are seemingly terrible at this. It's very easy to lie and pretend like you can fix things. You just need to have some sort of a reason or some sort of a storyline. So, for example, one of the biggest fumbles that Donald Trump had was, hey, you want to replace Obamacare. What's your plan?

And he literally fumbled and said, I don't have a plan. If I'm in control and I can remove Obamacare, I will come up with something better. And when he was really openly saying, I have nothing at this time, he was kind of showcasing, I don't have anything. And every single time I go to you, don't worry, the best, the best, the best. I'm just, the bravado doesn't work anymore. He's got to pivot the lie, just have a reason.

The reason could be as simple as, oh, I'm actually going to return the insurances to the states. There's more competition. You can buy it over state lines. I promise you your insurance is going to be cheaper. And with competition, you'll have better coverage.

That doesn't even need to be true. The markets might not work that way. Hey, I'm going to create a new marketplace where everything's going to be. And I've heard him say this. There's going to be public pricing on everything so you can shop around. Once these companies have to display their pricing, it's going to be cheaper. And what Obamacare did was actually increase the insurance company's profits by limiting competition. I'm going to fix the markets.

You just need to come up with something. It doesn't even need to be true. The other gigantic fumble was on Ukraine, where for some reason, you know, he just starts talking about the money. And firstly, he really messed up on Nord Stream because at the end of the day, Biden took out Nord Stream. So to pretend like you were the strong. Oh, God, so stupid that he's going to brag. He's bragging that he killed Nord Stream.

He's bringing, which by the way, this is a little bit of an aside, but it is because it's so backward. It's the stupidest goddamn policy that Donald Trump insists on.

that God, man, he is just such a disappointment. Man, this actually gets me angry to even say. But so like Donald Trump is going to brag that he, for anybody who doesn't know, okay? So the Nord Stream Pipeline is this natural gas pipeline that was set up between Russia and Germany and that was essentially going to deeply integrate Russian and German interests.

And Donald Trump is sitting there bragging about how he's the one who killed that. Like, hey, guys, isn't that a really great thing that I isolated Russia from Europe? Right. Isn't that wonderful that I made them not have mutual mutual interests and I left Russia more isolated? Like, yeah, that worked out really great. But then on top of that, you're like, dude, fucking Joe Biden or, you know,

the West, somebody under Joe Biden's control, essentially, in the biggest ecological terrorist attack in human history, took out the Nord Stream pipeline and then tried to blame it on the Russians to juice up the war propaganda. And yet you're going to sit here and brag about how you're the one who really took it out? Just insane. What he should have said is, you know,

We've never looked weaker and people are dying for no reason and you're marching us towards World War III without a plan. And that's why we need to deescalate and end this war because we are not winning it.

And people are dying for no reason. And it's because you claim that Putin wants to go take over all of Russia and you are lying. That is not true. And you're actually making us look worse to the rest of the world. And there is death on your hands. But instead, he didn't want to take on this core idea of, hey, if we don't oppose Putin now, he's going to go take over all of Russia. So he just kind of ceded the whole thing to her of, yes, it's OK if he needed to explain everything.

it's not that ukraine lost this thing is over and we're marching towards world war iii and you are responsible for deaths for no reason for no strategic advantage and it's because you guys haven't thought this through but instead he pivots to never would have happened once again a grandiose claim never would have happened which he could have explained why it wouldn't have happened because listen i wouldn't provoke them by putting military gear over there and saying we're going to join nato he doesn't explain the problem the problem is that he did send in

the military gear to Ukraine. But yes, you're right. Look, Rob, I mean, you're absolutely right, dude. And he could have easily just said he could have even just stuck to like, hey, Joe Biden told us we were going to win this war with sanctions.

that we wouldn't even have to send weapons in. That's what all of you guys... Joe Biden was bragging about how he was going to crush the RuPaul. Fast forward two and a half years, and hundreds of thousands of people are dead. And you're looking over at me? You know, like, there were so many ways... And look, I know we're...

We're in like the last few weeks here of a presidential election. And I know that Trump supporters are not going to like hearing us say this, but I'm sorry. Like my job is to tell the truth. That's my commitment to the audience here. And it was just what was so glaring throughout the entire debate was just what the problem with Donald Trump is. And it's just always been the problem with Donald Trump. It's like,

It's not what the left projects onto him. It's not that he's Hitler. It's not what the right projects onto him.

It's just that whatever the, the equation that is Donald Trump, you know, it's like, if you, in order to be a successful politician, if you needed like a certain amount of bravado and brashness and a certain amount of like edginess and a certain amount of like comfortability in front of the camera, and then a certain amount of knowledge about what you're talking about, he is a 10 out of 10 in brashness.

comfortable, whatever, and a zero out of 10 in knowing what he's talking about. The guy's just never read a book about anything. He doesn't know anything. And so he's just left having his instincts, which are largely correct.

But then no real knowledge or substance or understanding underneath that. And so he's just left rambling. He's just left rambling about a whole bunch of stuff and just sounding like a kook. And just not, you know, what is he? He's rambling about how she's a communist and, you know,

Israel will be gone in two years if she's president. And she basically loves the Palestinians, but she doesn't even love the Palestinians. But she does love the Palestinians. But she's she really hates Israel. Israel will be gone. I'll be so much better for Israel. And then the incoherent thing about how just because I'm in there, what's your answer to why Putin wouldn't have invaded if you were in there? Because he wouldn't have because I would have been in there.

And I guess Hamas never would have attacked either because he would have been in there and everything would be great because he would have been in there. And, you know, the other thing I also got to say is that he he had he also really had no answer for the covid stuff. He had no way. Isn't it remarkable that after the last four years, you would have a presidential nominee facing off against Kamala Harris and

And can't really nail her on COVID. Just all he can do is brag about how he did such a great job. Like as if we're supposed to look back at 2020 and go, yeah, what a great year that was. We were all, you know, like the old hacky question was always, are you better off now than you were four years ago? And who the hell can say that? Who the hell can say that four years ago wasn't the worst year?

that you know and and like again he's just he was just left just rambling and i again i don't want to be like too harsh on him there were some moments where he landed good shots but but yeah overall i just i really agree with you the problem with the rambling is that you know they almost gave him too much time with the two minutes where he would kind of be done with the best ever and he would say that and go i have to fill another minute and a half

So to me, this debate was, can he expose how dumb Kamala Harris is? And not only did he not do that, she came off fine. I'm not saying I liked her. I'm not saying she didn't lie. I'm not saying I like what she had to say. I'm just saying in terms of, is this person too dumb for the job?

She was not. She came off fine. She came as as competent of a liar as anybody else. And every time he had the opportunity to showcase the fact that he actually had policy or a better agenda, he mostly just rambled and came off a little bit unhinged. And he had a couple of good moments, but for the most part, it kind of highlighted to me, hey, this guy just, he's just bullshitting too. It's hard to yell about how Kamala Harris is lying when he's basically doing the same thing and just, I'll fix it better than anyone, more than anyone's ever seen.

Israel won't exist. What does that do? You know, you're kind of it brings you to the same place. The other moment that I just thought was so disappointing was on the border talk. And, you know, the Democrats really pulled a successful dirty trick.

First is that Haitian story. So from what I understand, it's a comedy where a bunch of Haitians, I ended up in Ohio. I guess they're at the park and they're like, oh, wow, you just have free ducks in your park. And so they start eating the ducks in the park. And now that's not etiquette in America. Sure, you can go hunting for duck.

But you can't just go to the public park and go, oh, look, there's a bunch of ducks in the pond and start eating the ducks. People don't like – there's a little pond up the street from me. I like walking up there every once in a while. There's some turtles in there. If I showed up one day and all the nice turtles I like looking at were gone because some Asian people decided to make turtle soup, firstly, where's all the concerns about viruses and wet markets opening up in the United States of America?

Last I checked, that's how we ended up with a worldwide pandemic. So, you know, I think. Well, I don't I don't think that's actually how we ended up with it. But yeah, that was the story. I'm just saying that's still the official story from the NIH. So you would think that they'd be going batshit crazy over people eating wild animals out of. That was a good one. Batshit crazy. I appreciate that. That was good.

all right so the haitian story i'm just working off the headlines on that and then i think people took it a little bit further to go pets i think the democrats managed to get that story in there just before the debate said he'd be up there talking about people eating pets and it would discredit him on the entire topic because now he sounds crazy and it does and he does sound crazy but it's also like dude there's just

He has no ability to fucking focus. To focus, dude. And that comes from two comics with ADD. I know. Literally, I have no ability to focus. But I could do better than this. Look, it's like, here's the thing. You really do like with Donald Trump. And again, look, I'm not going to lie.

Again, Donald Trump benefits in many ways in our view because the other side is just so awful. And that is why we do find ourselves kind of rooting for him. You know, like the analogy to me is almost like it's like, I don't know, like Rob, if you had a girl, like a girlfriend who was terrible to you and she was like,

She was cheating on you. She was just disrespecting you. She was embarrassing you. Like this chick is just awful and she's bringing you down. And then you went to me and you were like, oh, I got, I got this new girl I'm talking to. Maybe I'll just dump her and go with this girl, but I've never met the new girl, but I'm immediately just like, yes.

Yes, dump this chick and go with the new chick, dude. And OK, I don't know the new chick, but I'm just like, yeah, but fuck her. Like she deserves to lose. You know what I mean? Like she that's kind of how I feel. That's the extent to which I root for Donald Trump. These guys deserve to lose for a lot of reasons that we've covered for the last four years on this show. But.

But the thing is, man, it's like if you had Donald Trump, it's like if I could grab him by both of his fucking dumb ears, the right one seems to have healed pretty nicely. Shockingly, by the way. But if I could grab him by both his ears and just scream at him, he'd be like, the thing about immigration, dude, is like zoom out.

Don't zoom in. Don't focus on the story of the last 24 hours, which is this thing which is kind of unverified. And like maybe it's true. I don't know. I don't care. That's not what you don't want to zoom into some very specific, very crazy sounding story.

that probably 95% of the people listening have never heard of and is going to sound insane. And then when the media just goes, well, an official person told us that that's not true. And then you're just left going, well, it is true.

and they go well the official person told us it's not true and you go but it's true like that's that's not good enough but what you want to do is zoom out and go hey in 2016 i walked down my escalator and said this is the biggest problem in the country and for that

People like you demonized me in the most vicious way. And at the time, you said border crossings should be legal. That illegal border crossings should be decriminalized. Well, look at you now.

What are you saying? Hold on. Let's just take a moment here. Let's all admit that I was right about that, okay? That on the most important issue that was central to my campaign, I called it right, and you guys all mocked me for calling it that. I mean, look, dude, this is so easy, right?

He could have created a moment right there just with that. That is the campaign ad for the rest of the election. There's no getting around it. You're all trying to sound like Donald Trump now. And instead, he just kind of went on and on about how they've ruined the country. They're eating cats and they've ruined the country.

Wonderful. Just if he wanted, the focused answer would have been, and people are going to have to fact check me on the numbers. I didn't look this up. And, but if you were Donald Trump, you could have spent five minutes and put this together. Hey guys.

Eight years ago, I said there's a problem with the border. For $20 billion, I could have built a wall, and this could have been over and solved. At this point, New York City has spent $100 billion catering to these migrants. You will not be able to afford the social services that you need. And if this continues, you're not going to feel safe in the streets of your town. Here's an example. What just happened with some Venezuelans. You could just name an example.

They love the stories. Oh, I know that little kid on a farm. You could have told one of these immigrant crime stories and then gone in here. Let me tell you what the Democrats did. I had border crossings at this level and they decided through amnesty and parole to get as many people over the border as possible.

And here's how many people crossed while they were in charge. And then they pretended like they wanted to solve it by legalizing the current level of immigration. Joe Biden said that he did not have the power to close the border. And if we allowed the current level of illegal immigration to take place legally, then he would close the border.

And then when that failed, they got rid of amnesty. And guess what? Border crossings have dropped. They've done everything they can to bring as many people over the border as they as they as they could. And the second they're back in power and not up against an election, they will do the same thing and you will not feel safe at home.

That's what he should have said. Instead, he meandered into cats and he got let them get away with the storyline. And it's just I don't know. It was just such a dropped ball on really what might be his biggest and best talking point.

And again, I just I can't stress enough. And if people don't, you know, like I understand if people want to say, oh, you you hated Kamala Harris in the debate. I completely get that. I mean, look, her she has the energy of like.

The fucking like most annoying chick in your seventh grade class. Who's like running for school council. You know what I mean? Like she's just got that energy about her. She's incredibly phony. Um,

She's not impressive. She doesn't really have anything. She doesn't have any real arguments. She also, much like Donald Trump, has never read a book about anything. I mean, it's amazing how easy it would be to stump either of these two with just very basic questions that any educated person should know. You know what I'm saying? You could just literally... I mean, I don't...

If you, you know, if you were like talking about the war in Gaza or something like that, and you just went like, okay, here's a question to both candidates. Israel has for a long time occupied the Palestinian territory. What year did they start occupying them? Do you think there's a chance either of them know?

Like, honestly, do you like I mean, but I'm just saying, like, do you think there's a chance either of them? No, I'm saying like very basic information like this. Neither of them know. They just don't know, which is really like just a sad statement for the country. But whatever. Yeah.

But like, look, I understand that she's terrible and all of this. And I understand, as I said, that the media was outrageously unfair in this debate. But the point I think we're really making is like what I said at the beginning. This was his shot and the shots were right there.

Like the kill shots were right in front of him and he failed. He failed to deliver. He failed to land that knockout blow. Like if she was a boxer, she was carrying her hands around her waist. Her chin was right there in front of you and you landed a few jabs. That's kind of how I'd look at it. Like a boxing match where one guy has their hands down and the other guy is able to land a few jabs.

That's not great. And that was your only chance. That was your shot to knock her out was last night. And you didn't do it down to look. I'll say this. I did think that I thought Kamala Harris had a very bad opening and Donald Trump had a strong opening. I thought that was at that point in the debate. I was like, this might be a very, very good night for Donald Trump.

And then everything after that, he pretty much just let it fall through. Look, down to even details like he actually, Donald Trump had a good closing. He won the coin toss and got to close out the night, which I think we're all shocked there was a legitimate coin toss. I assume they had like a, you know, one-sided coin back there. But,

Then what did he do? What did he do for the first time in his closing statement? He hit him with what is one of Donald Trump's most powerful lines. It's not quite as powerful as it was when he used it against Hillary Clinton, but it's still somewhat powerful when he says she says she has all these, you know, solutions. Why didn't she do it already? Why doesn't she do it now? Right. But that's not a powerful closing statement. Right.

That's a question you actually ask her. That's something you say three times during the debate and demonstrate that she can't respond to it. That might make sense in your opening. You know, that might make sense in your opening to say, you know, she says she's got all of these solutions, but she's been in the White House at the highest level for the last four years. Why hasn't she done it yet? You know, I bet you throughout this whole debate, we won't hear an answer to that simple question.

And then demonstrate that she can't answer it. You don't close on that. It's not, it's just not nearly as powerful. You know, when you're closing, you're,

Especially when you're going last, like you're closing and she doesn't get another closing statement. This is the last statement. Well, this now is you could say that in an ad. That doesn't matter. You know what I'm saying? You can always say that the value in saying something like that is to demonstrate that she has no response. At this point, your closing statement is almost like the debate's over.

You're not really debating her anymore. You just get to give a little ad at the end. The end is to sum up what happened in this debate and make sure you drill that narrative into everybody who's listening's head. So they're like, oh yeah, that was my last thought of the debate. So again, I just think that, you know,

There are a lot of advantages to Donald Trump's style over traditional politician styles. A lot of the a lot of politicians are, let's face it, they're nerds. And Donald Trump is not a nerd. He's a bully, but he's not a nerd.

And by the way, that dynamic is part of the reason why Donald Trump infuriates the political class so much, because they're all a bunch of nerds and he's a bully. And all of these nerds remember how much they hate a bully, you know? And Donald Trump's just like, Donald Trump's thing is that he's the guy who just like,

Had a rich dad and gets a hot chick and is kind of a buffoon. And he has the nerds going like, oh, it's so unfair. You know that this guy is who this guy is. Kamala Harris literally said it at one point. She literally brought up that his dad had money. Like this is, you know, we're psychological creatures. This actually does play a role in there. But.

So there's advantages because say like when Donald Trump's debating Jeb Bush, well, what has Jeb Bush been doing for the last six weeks? He's been at debate camp.

You know, because he's a nerd. So he's been at debate camp and they're working on all these debate techniques and all this shit. And Donald Trump isn't doing any of that. Donald Trump didn't go to debate camp before a debate because that's for nerds. That's not what that's not what Donald Trump's of the world's do. And so there's an advantage to that, because like you would see if you remember these little moments from back in those debates, like there was one.

So like Donald Trump would be debating Jeb Bush and Jeb Bush comes out tense and tight. And it's like, well, OK, I've remembered all of my talking points. And Donald Trump is just like cracking his neck and he's like loose and he's like, you're gay, you're lame, your mom's ugly, you know, and it's just like he's just cool and freewheeling. And these other guys are uptight and nervous. And there's something about that style that can be effective, right?

But you got to have just like a little bit, a little bit of strategy, a little bit of focus, a little bit of discipline. And he has none of it. None of it. So, yes, to your point, Rob.

People who know that Kamala Harris is terrible, they still see that. People who know that she's lying and that know that she's walked away from all the stuff she used to say she believes and stuff like that, that's okay. But the thing is that the media, the moderators there, they're not going to hold Donald Trump's, they're not going to hold the viewer's hand and walk them through how terrible she is.

They're going to cover for her. And so you got to do that. You have to hold their hand and explain it to them. And, and he didn't do that. And she did, she did pass the lowest of bars.

You know, which is that she's not a complete disaster. She didn't implode in on herself. She sounded to know about as much as he knows to have about as much of a plan as he has. So like that was a real victory for her. The question coming into this was kind of like, who is this chick?

Is she even a professional? Can she hang on this level? And she kind of answered that, yeah, I can hang with him. And that's why I think it's a big win for her. All right, guys, let's take a moment right now. I got to tell you about something. I have your chance to win Skank Fest tickets courtesy of YoKratom.com, home of the $60 kilo. That's right. YoKratom, our number one sponsor, has your chance for three-day all-access passes to Skank Fest.

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Home of the $60 kilo. All right, let's get back into the show. And by the way, I mean, I will. Okay. In the, in the remaining time that we have here, I will say one more note on the, uh, the moderators, which like, I, I know everybody, look, I could have just spent this whole episode bitching and moaning about how unfair it is to Donald Trump. We could have easily done an hour on that, but at a certain point, you're just like, well, that's the game.

Well, that's the game here. This is like grown... On that note of it being the game, he could have refused the debate. He decided, hey, Kamala's so bad, anywhere, anytime, let's do it. I'm going to demolish her. And it's true. It's not fair that the Democrats got a repeat. The Democrats blew the first debate so bad they had to recall their candidate. And then they game plan to figure out, well, what...

Where do we want to do the only debate? How do we have the most favorable terms? Which news organization might give us questions beforehand? I'm not saying that that for sure happened, but just an example of, you know, once again, they didn't call her their borders are, but they said you were there exploring root causes. That's the way they framed the question. They were. Yes, they work for her all night. But at the end of the day, at the end of the day, you got to win. Same as Donald Trump didn't prove that there was election fraud the last time. So he's a loser.

So in this case, yeah, the other team might have had the better deck of cards in terms of being able to set a more favorable format, but you lost. And it's part of the game that you agreed to go do it there. This is like grown man shit, okay? If there are three guys with guns who are trying to invade my house,

And I am inside watching them on my cameras and I got my gun. Okay. And I'm, they're trying to invade my house where my wife and kids live. I don't get to sit there and go, this is so unfair that there's three of them and only one of me.

This is just not fair. Sorry, you don't get to do that. You don't have that option. This is life and death. There's three of them and there's one of me. Those are the breaks. Now, how am I going to win? That's the only answer. You don't get to sit there. So that's that. Now,

That it is true that it's pretty wild the advantage that these three guys have over me just being one guy with a gun and there are three guys with a gun. That is true. It is pretty wild that they fact checked Donald Trump so many times and let her get away with some of the shit they let her get away with saying like, look, yeah.

Well, I was going to give a few examples of that. The fact, listen, man, the Charlottesville, there were fine people on both sides thing is so goddamn wild. It is so wild that the thing about it is, is that there are these scandals with Donald Trump. And I got to say, most of them sound like complete bullshit, but there'll be these, these scandals where it's like, well,

The general who used to work for you, who you fired, said that privately you said, fuck all the troops or something like that. And Donald Trump's like, what? I never said that. And you're like, well, a general says that you said that. And it's just like, I don't know. He claims he said it. You claim you didn't. I don't really buy that. Donald Trump is saying that to his generals. That sounds kind of crazy. But the very fine people on both sides thing is on tape.

It's on tape. Literally, Donald Trump utters the words, there's very fine people on both sides. And then a reporter goes, wait, you're saying there were very fine people in the group of like neo-Nazis at Charlottesville? And he goes, no, no, no, no, no. I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying there were very fine people on both sides of the debate over whether we should tear down these statues or whether we should keep these statues. But no.

I totally condemn white nationalists and white supremacy and all of that stuff. That was his, it's on tape. You can go look at it, but they still bring it up. The project 2025 stuff, the, uh, the, a lot of the stuff about abortion where she was like, Oh, he's again, he has no exceptions. Donald Trump's always, uh,

First of all, nobody believes that Donald Trump is really pro-life in any deep way. Like, Donald Trump's a guy who, let's just say, I think Donald Trump's taken care of a few pregnancies in his day. That would be my guess. But regardless, she got away with a lot of bullshit, and they didn't fact check her over any of that. But you know what? That's the game. It doesn't matter. And to your point, Rob, which I do think this is a really, a point that's really worth considering, is that

Look, Donald Trump had his he had options here. And and, you know, look, I will say that fundamentally right now in terms of like like like just in terms of the like the actual existing fundamentals that are right in front of us, like where the state of the world is right now.

you could say there is simply no need for this. So if you could like, like imagine in my house, I have a fireplace and that's what I've been using for heat. I start a fire every night and that's what keeps my house warm. And then I get like panel heating put in. Now I have panel heating throughout my entire house or central heating or whatever. I no longer need the fireplace anymore.

That simply isn't necessary anymore. Now I may keep it because I like it. I may enjoy, you know, having a fireplace for whatever reason, because it looks nice on Christmas or some shit. But I don't need it to heat my home anymore. Because just like the fundamentals of the situation have changed. I have panel heating now. In the same sense,

With where technology is and where the flow of information is, we don't need to have this debate on ABC anymore. We don't need that. That's a choice, but you don't need to do that. We could very easily, Elon Musk could host an event that will live stream to Twitter that will get

as much, if not far more viewership on it. You could Lex Friedman or Joe Rogan or a number of other people could be the person who moderates this debate, who hosts this debate and get as many eyeballs on it. This is something different. We've never lived in a time like that before, truly, in the way that we do today. And Donald Trump could have made the decision that otherwise,

that I am going to accept those. I am not going to go with these hack corporate journalists. I'm going to push for it. And now it is true that there is no chance in hell that Kamala Harris would have done that. Right. OK, so this is the calculation here. There's no chance in hell that Joe Biden or Kamala Harris would have would have done a debate moderated by Elon Musk. Right.

But think about that for a second. Think about that for a second, because that's kind of the point. There's no chance in hell that they would ever go into an adversarial environment. So maybe that ought to lead to the question, why are you then? Why are you willing to do what they would never do? And just saying it's something worth considering. And if you're if you're a Republican and much more important than if you're a Republican, if you're a dissident,

So this includes Democrats and leftists and libertarians and all of it. You should be thinking about that. Like, why the hell should we continue to give this awful, corrupt, disgusting fireplace a monopoly on heating our home when we do not need them anymore? You know, like, let's change the analogy a little bit. And now I'm going to tell you that this fireplace is poison.

And it's poisoning my family. Why exactly am I still turning it on? I don't need to. I have another source of heat now. There's no need to do this. And that's something that, like, Donald Trump in this election had...

A profound opportunity. I'm not saying he could have lured them into that debate, but he could have made a real stink about it and gone like, no, there's no reason why I should be. Why should I go onto the networks that lied us into the war in Iraq and lied us through COVID? Well, he can't say that because he was part of it, but certainly could say Iraq.

Why should I go into these networks who have gotten everything wrong? There's a new form of communication. It's far more popular. Far more people are getting their news this way. Not to mention, by the way, the entire young generation, the entire young generation gets their news through social media. None of them get it through corporate media anymore. And so what does that tell you? Okay, this is the future.

This is the future. There will be there is nobody. No, I mean, OK, I'm obviously being slightly hyperbolic, but not that hyperbolic. OK, there is almost nobody who's 25 and you go, what's your source of news? And they go CNN in the Wall Street Journal. It just doesn't exist.

If you find that you've found a unicorn, OK, they all get their news through TikTok or through, you know, podcasts, through things like that. And so Donald Trump could have made this case, especially after doing the one with Joe Biden.

He could have said, no, I already did one of these. Okay. Now it's time for you to have the courage to come actually come into the lion's den. I'm just saying there were options there. And I don't know. There's a lot of like,

There's a lot of like the theory of gaming all of this out and figuring out like which outcome would have yielded the best results. But hindsight being 2020 and having the advantage of that, I can tell you that that was damn sure better than just walking into a corporate media debate and doing that. Yeah.

I agree with everything you just said. And, you know, that's part of the winning and losing thing is that he agreed to the terms and he wasn't able to flatline her. I also think he had a golden opportunity to take back the power from the fact checkers, which is the first time they did it. He could have just said, thank you for fact checking. I'd like to point out to the American people that in the last debate, I was fact checked over the Hunter Biden laptop story that turned out to be 100 percent true. And so I would encourage everybody.

We are here for me to debate Kamala Harris, and I think we should leave the news bias out of this because in the last election, you guys got it wrong.

And you can continue to fact check me during this debate, but I would like for the American people to know that you're just incorporating your bias into what she should be responding, not you. And that would have ended it. That would have been so good, dude. If he had just gone like, well, here's the thing about you guys fact checking, right? If you were fact checking in 2020, as you did at the debate, you would have said...

that Hunter Biden's laptop is Russian disinformation. If you were fact checking in 2017, you probably would have said I was involved in a conspiracy with the Russians, right? Well, here's the thing about your facts. They're consistently wrong.

They consistently turn out to be lies. So how about we just save your fact checking for, you know, like, yeah, I mean, it was just all right there. All right. Why are you instituting your news bias into what's supposed to be a debate between me and her on the ideas of what's better to lead this country? And I have better ideas. DT, I'm available for hire. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I don't let me know. Let me know if he gives you a call. I listen. I'll say this just in closing. I do think.

I'm not saying that this changed the landscape of the race. My whole point here is that it didn't. It didn't change the landscape of the race. And so I think we're essentially left in the place where we started, which is that I would say Donald Trump is an ever so slight favorite right now. If there were free and fair elections, something we're very confident in,

I think Donald Trump is probably going to win. And I mean, like if you flipped a coin 10 times, I think maybe he wins six of them, maybe a little less than maybe five and a half. I think he's got, he's, I think he's a slight, slight favorite, but it is, I think it's pretty close. And I overall just on the metrics that we gave you, I think Kamala Harris won the night.

Brings me no pleasure to say that. Not who I'm rooting for, but that's kind of my takeaway from this. All right, guys. Thank you very much for listening. We will be back soon. I'm recording another episode with – I got Daryl Cooper coming on later today. That episode will be out in the next day or two, so stick around for that. What were you going to say, Rob?

Yeah. Check out the Run Your Mouth podcast. Once again, I got live dates coming up at PorchTour.com. And then me and Davey Smith were, what is it, Oklahoma this weekend? Oklahoma City. Oklahoma City and Tulsa. Yes. And then Skank Fest. That's right. And then Skank Fest coming up. We got some fun stuff.

Uh, yes, that's right. And then, um, I will be in, uh, Austin, Texas. We're doing live Legion of skank shows at the Creek in the cave, uh, right before skank fest also plus, plus doing some other fun shows out there. And, and, and then finally, I will say thank you to everybody who's watching live, who signed up at part of the problem.com. If you want to watch the shows live ad free uncensored, you got to sign up over at part of the

problem.com if you love the show that's where you can go to uh to support us and we very much appreciate it all right thanks for listening guys catch you next time peace