HHS Finally Admits the Truth
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What is up, everybody? Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem. Of course, I'm Dave Smith. Of course, he is Robbie the Fire Bernstein. How you doing today, sir? I'm doing well. Getting ready for some Texas porches. How about yourself, Mr. Smith? Ooh, Texas porches. That sounds fun. Where in Texas are you this weekend? Oh, I got Rockport, Texas on Saturday. I've got San Antonio on Friday and then Austin on Sunday, all stacked with some fine Austin comics. Gonna be a good time.

Hell yeah. Hell yeah. Sounds good. And the porch tour.com is the site as I've been led to believe. And then like 10 days out West and an upstate New York, Canada run. We're getting all over the place. Check it out. Upstate New York, beautiful country up there. I was just up there myself. Um,

Okay, yeah, and also then in a couple weeks, me and Rob will be out in Salt Lake City back at the Wise Guys out there, which is a great club. Looking forward to that. And then a bunch of road dates that we'll be on together for the rest of the year you can find at ComicDaveSmith.com. And as I mentioned the last episode, I will say once again, my weekend at the Mothership, the ticket links are up.

it once again, I did a better job of this last year than the year before, but warning people, if you want to come go get tickets now, because these, the, the shows at the mothership sell out quickly. And I want it to be, you know, some of my people in there and not just mothership people. Um, so go grab tickets. Always a really, really fun, uh, time, really fun time. That last, uh,

Last year, my weekend at the Mothership was... And I've heard from a bunch of people who were there that it was the Saturday shows, I guess. But it was one of my favorite nights of stand-up comedy in my career, which is there's been a lot of nights of stand-up comedy. It was the day that Trump got shot. And it literally happened... I mean, I was...

about to walk over to the club from my hotel i was leaving i was like getting my stuff together leaving my hotel and my phone just started blowing up i just went on there and saw the video of trump getting shot at men did shows right after that was crazy it's fun time fun night to do shows i was there for the saturday early show and just there's a silent observer in that nice little vip upper deck and then was that's a comedy i've ever seen mr smith

Oh, thank you. Well, thank you. It's fun. You know, there's moments sometimes like that that you just can't recreate. But like there's a thing where you just go...

And I think I spent like I did like a half hour on like probably did like half of my headlining set on the thing. But it's like we all just saw this thing. It was so crazy. Like, we're all kind of like, OK, let's unpack this together, you know. And so it was really it was a really fun, fun set. So anyway, I don't know how I'm going to top that this year, but I'm going to have to I'm going to have to set up a very high level assassination for before my shows in August. OK, so.

Speaking of, I don't know, speaking of high level assassinations, the Kennedys are known for that. And Bobby Kennedy is the secretary of the health department. There's been some interesting movement over at the health department over the last couple of days. It's been, you know, I don't know. So and maybe this is kind of like a broader topic, which I don't know.

You know, we just we spent so much time over the years talking about it. But so Bobby Kennedy just came out and said that the health department is no longer recommending that healthy children get the covid vaccine, which is good. You know, it's some of us might have been hoping for a little bit more out of this administration. But, hey, that's that's a positive step in the right direction. But I have just because.

I guess partially because the I guess yesterday or the day before was the five year anniversary of George Floyd's death. And so and then also with the, you know, the health department doing a reversal on the vaccines. It's just been I've been thinking a lot about like those years.

And there's just, there's been a lot of the, like the compilations that are on Twitter of like what the media was saying at the time. And it's so strange now, five years later to look back at,

at 2020, obviously the vaccines, we're talking more about 2021, 2022. But it is wild, like how much happened in half a decade, you know, in the last five years. And so there is something as we're kind of climbing out of that to, it just brings up a lot of these memories of how crazy everything went. Anyway,

Good move by Bobby to stop recommending that kids get this thing. It is one of those things, though, like when you just watch, even when government policy gets it right, it lags so far behind. Like, what are we even on? What, what, what?

What COVID strain are we even on? I don't even know what you call it. Like the last one I learned was Omicron. I have no idea what strain of COVID this is. It's certainly not the same one, right, Rob? It's got to be a different one now. I'm sure it's less deadly. It's like,

You've gotten to a point where the thought of a kid having like a severe negative outcome from COVID is like statistically impossible. I think kids get healthier from having COVID at this point. And like, so now they're finally like, oh, yeah, you know, we're not recommending you take that vaccine anymore, which, by the way, at the height of it, almost no one was given this thing to their kid.

Like, even at the height of it, when the overwhelming majority of adults had complied with getting the jab, some of us, me and you, Rob, remain purebloods. But even at the height of it, people weren't giving it to their kids in large numbers. Right.

You're almost like, who is even thinking about that? But anyway, they're not recommending it, and that is good. I thought COVID just went back to being the flu. That's what I thought. I thought we were just done with it. And you know what? At this point, if any parent out there wanted to give their kid the booster shots and give them some every year and every six months, maybe they should just get the Darwin Awards for getting rid of their own offspring. Yeah.

You can just do it at Planned Parenthood as very late abortions. I'm shocked that any doctor in the country was still recommending this. I'd be surprised. I'd love to know the numbers of how many parents were going into a doctor's clinic and recommending the latest COVID booster. This seems like

no longer relevant information or policy that even needed to be made. I'd love to hear the numbers. It just seems shocking that this announcement needed to be happened. And if we're going to revisit COVID, let's be prosecuting Fauci. I don't need these little tiny announcements about something that people shouldn't have been doing anyways. And I'm surprised was a law or a recommendation that was even still on the books.

Yeah, it's well, right. Yeah. I mean, look, I couldn't agree with you more. I mean, I understand legal technicalities with the auto pen aside that Fauci does have a blanket pardon. So, you know, I don't know what the you know, how practical it is to to prosecute him at this point. But I'd even be happy with just presenting the case.

find him, you know, like even just for the hell of it and parade him in front of Congress and actually force him to answer all these questions and unwind some of what was going on behind the scenes that he pushed this as far as he did. Yeah. You know, it's it's a tricky situation because there is a bit of a balancing act and part of the balancing act. And this is, by the way, one of the reasons why I don't like.

I don't like, you know, like racialism. I don't like people. I don't even like demonizing the left or the right, which I'm sure I've been guilty of a time or two. I'm not like trying to say I'm better than anybody else on this. But I think there is, you know,

We're all in a country together. And even if you could imagine a scenario where the United States of America's government ceases to exist, which is pretty out there, at least today,

let's just say hypothetically, we, the central federal government like was dissolved and we went to being 50 state governments, which seems like pretty crazy. Like that seems pretty beyond the pale that the USA doesn't exist anymore. But even so we'd still be neighboring countries. Like we're all still here and it's better if we can get along than not get along. And I think it's unfair when entire groups of people get demonized. Um,

I'm much more comfortable with demonizing the powerful as I think they deserve it. But so, so like, you know, essentially what I'm saying is like, in a way we have to move on from like the craziness of the last five years and of the last 15 years and things like, like COVID insanity has completely receded into the background now. Like nobody's really pushing it anymore. I mean, you still will see people like masked up at the airport,

you know i don't know maybe sometimes they have a cold or something like that um i do get the impression that there still are that they have a stupid disability yes right well there still are some percentage of people who are still living in that like paranoid state about germs

but it is such a small percentage. It's less than 1% of the people. Me and Rob are both very regularly at airports, so we see this, but it's a very small percentage. Nobody is really pushing any of this stuff anymore. It's kind of like

you know, even more so than the woke ism. Woke ism has also receded tremendously and it's not being pushed the way it was, but there is something where like, okay, look, we got to move on. We got to find a way to be a society and move forward together. But at the same time,

Sometimes there's something that's just too crazy that you're like, yeah, we can't just sweep that under the rug and pretend none of that happened. That doesn't seem like a satisfactory answer either. And I do, as we've said many times on the show, you know, we are firm.

firm believers that the people at the top who committed heinous crimes should be prosecuted. They should, there should be accountability for at least some people. And I do think in a weird way, that's what would allow us to move forward in a healthy manner. We will see not holding, not holding my breath on that. So there was, um,

Bobby Kennedy gave an interview to that CNN lady whose name I can't remember. You know, it's like you get to a point where she's like of the newer crop of corporate hacks, right?

And I'm just like, I'm over. I can't memorize any more of your names at this point. I know the whole old school. I know. I know the older, better generation of of hack journalists. But anyway, it's the one who, you know, is did the the.

Town Hall with Donald Trump last year. But so he gave an interview to her and there was this one portion which is going super viral and kind of touches on a similar subject to one that I found myself embroiled in. And it was over the role of expertise and trusting the science.

I found this very interesting. And then, of course, in this clip that we're about to play, Wolf Blitzer, he's from the older school of corporate hacks whose names I know. He was interviewing Lena Wen about this. So this is let's play the one. It's a Tom Elliott's tweet. Great Twitter follow, by the way. Tom Elliott, go follow him. This I found fascinating. I wanted to get your thoughts on it as well, Rob. So let's play this clip. Listen to this.

Trusting the experts is not a feature of science. It's not a feature of democracy. It's a feature of religion and totalitarianism. What we should do is trust the science. And we are going to do the science, and the science is going to be replicable, and it's going to be gold standard. People should not be taking medical advice.

I'm somebody who is not a physician, and they should also be skeptical about any medical advice. They need to do their own research. Dr. Wen, what do you think of that message? Well, I'm confused by that message, and I bet that many people are confused about this too. Look, I'm a clinician. I talk to my colleagues who are physicians and nurses all the time. And yes, we do our own research. And yes, we look at scientific articles and we parse through them. We look at recommendations.

But the thing is, there are lots of different clinical topics. It's not reasonable to expect that even clinicians and scientists look at the medical literature all the time and parse through the literature ourselves on every single topic.

This is the reason why we looked at guidelines. There are medical organizations that synthesize these data. By the way, we look up to the CDC, or at least throughout history, we have looked up to the CDC, to the FDA, to compile these studies for us and to make recommendations. And we have always, throughout history, depended on our federal agencies as the gold standard for expertise and

for information, for unbiased scientific data. And so it's very confusing and quite distressing actually to hear the person who heads up these agencies, to whom these agencies report, now say that expertise cannot be trusted. I'm confused because it leaves people wondering, well, what sources of information can I trust?

All right. So again, I found this to be interesting because so in the longer version of the clip, I mean, Bobby Kennedy, the CNN woman is like dumbfounded by this point that Bobby Kennedy is making. And the point is essentially that like, yeah,

Yes, there's science and knowledge is not religion. It's not an article of faith that a high priestess tells you what is true. And then you trust that person. You should try your best to be informed and make informed decisions and like educate yourself on, on say, you know, whatever the topic in this case, vaccinating your children and things. And it is funny that,

That especially I mean, I guess like the first thought is that it for all of the people who shouted so loud for so many years about threats to our democracy, including the current president of the United States.

It's the most anti-democratic worldview they have, that this is a crazy thing. She's confused. Dr. Wen is confused that you would suggest that we shouldn't just trust the expert class and that we should encourage people to educate themselves. It is such an obvious thing.

it's such an obvious view and her, this idea that, you know, we, for years we looked up to the CDC. I'm sorry, who, who did, who looked up to the CDC for you? I'm sorry. I just never knew this was a thing. I'd never, never once in my life heard a real person. It have a real moment where they talked about how much they admired the CDC. I mean, I know during COVID, um,

There were a lot of people who started having like a religious devotion to the CDC and believing everything they said, and they got everything wrong, everything. So like, what the hell are we even talking about here is truly bizarre. Like I said, obviously this very closely mirrors an argument that was launched at me a few weeks ago. And again,

number one, I think it's like, it's the dumbest non-argument imaginable. Number two, you're like, man, you guys got to read the room because no one is buying this bullshit right now, especially in the wake of this, this, you know, this catastrophe. So I don't know any, anything you want to add, Rob. All right. First, I just have to say, I really dislike that lady. The second she starts talking on a personal level, I dislike her. What's interesting.

Interesting to me here is...

I think one of the reasons why people like democracy and they like the illusion of government is that they like the idea that there's an adult in the room and that they're able to handle things. And so they like the idea of, oh, there's going to be an expert class. The expert class will be appointed by the government. They will go and do their research. And so I don't have to think about or worry these things because there's going to be an expert recommendation that came from this government system that's very good at doing it.

And I think what we just learned through COVID is they are not, and they, and they do not have your best interests in mind. In fact, they've probably been hijacked by corporations, uh,

And they will use that power to rob you of your freedom or your wealth or to rule over you in whatever capacity they can. And so we kind of have to, as you said in your debate multiple times, we got to embrace reality. We got to see the world that we live in. And so after the failures of COVID, that's partly why Bobby Kennedy is now in that position is because people really don't like what happened over COVID. He had the storyline more accurate than our government did.

And so now he's letting you know, yeah, we can't trust these institutions. They're kind of corrupt. I'm here and I'm cleaning it up. And in the meantime, I'm not a doctor. I can't make recommendations. And there's a little buffoonery in that, but we'll just go with it. I'm not a doctor. I can't make recommendations. You're going to have to do your homework. People don't want to hear that because they don't want to be responsible for their own decisions.

It's a lot easier to live in a world where view where just one government expert tells you, Hey, here's the food pyramid, eat muffins, muffins are good for you. And then you go, Oh, I'm going to eat muffins. That's what the government told me. And if you're a doctor, it's a lot easier not to really have to do your job and to just go, Hey, there's no liability on me. If I just take, why do I, why do you even need to have a job? Then if you're just going to repeat the recommendation from the CDC, why can't I just go into like a chat GPT type thing for the CDC and go here? What's the recommendation?

Why do I need to see a health? Why do I would even pick a health expert if you're just going to repeat their gospel? So I think the honesty of RFK here of, hey, government is failing you and we cannot just rely on these recommendations, I think undermines the entire pitch of government, which is, hey, you can just outsource and trust us to handle things.

Yeah, no, I get that. That's a good point. And I think there is something that's a little bit more unsettling about, you know, understand like you said, grappling with that reality that there isn't this, you know, that there isn't this this class of experts who are trustworthy and who you can kind of outsource, turn your brain off and outsource your thinking to them. I don't know how anybody still lives with that.

You know, it's like it's just been so obviously shattered. But of course, then the you know, which again, I know about this a little bit, too. But the there is this this intentional conflation that where, you know, it's like.

If you say that you shouldn't just trust the experts and that you should do your own research and you should educate yourself on a topic, that does not mean that you're rejecting the concept of expertise. That doesn't mean that you're saying that like, oh, there aren't legit experts out there.

Like, obviously there are. But as Bobby Kennedy has made this point in other areas, and I always thought this was a really great example, was that he goes, you know, because he was an environmental lawyer for years and he goes, every suit that I ever brought, like the prosecution had experts and the defense had experts. And we called these expert, you know, we called them these expert testimonies. And they would say that diametrically opposed things.

Because you could find experts who view things this way, or you could find experts who have the complete opposite opinion. You know, like still to this day, this is true across every field, across every single field. In economics, you can find professional economists who will argue that raising the minimum wage will hurt.

um, what will lead to an increase in unemployment. And then you can have others who will argue it won't. And they're both experts. They're both trained. They've both studied. They have exactly the opposite views. And this is true across every single field, across every single field. And so, you know, this kind of, um,

When you live in a world where over the last, you know, however many years in recent history, the expert class, the expert foreign policy class has been pushing us into disastrous wars. The experts in economics have been pushing us toward devastating economic policies. The experts in health have pushed us to devastating health policies. And that a huge component of

to this kind of like expert

to the makeup of the expert class is also who ends up getting into the positions of power in government. And, you know, Rob, I've noticed this tendency that the experts whose expert opinion is that the government ought to have a lot more power end up being disproportionately represented in the official expert roles within government.

And like, this is very obvious. You could look at this across like nobody can actually argue that this isn't the case because it's just it's true across every sector. And one of the things that's really amazing that that's been interesting.

I think revealed on a mass level throughout the COVID insanity is that there are so many people, Dr. Wen being one of the chief examples who not only, it's so bizarre because

And she has not only completely walked away from what she was saying just a few years ago, she would never bring up what she was saying a few years ago. And she won't even be in an environment where anyone will bring it up to her face and like push her on it. Like, hey, you literally said this.

And you I mean, she was out there, Rob, if you remember, we played it on the show years ago. She was the one out there saying that we can't give people their basic liberties back if they're not vaccinated, because we need that as an incentive to make them get vaccinated. She can't defend those comments anymore.

She's a goddamn monster for holding these views publicly. And yet, so simultaneously, she's like, hey, completely forget about all that stuff. Completely forget about my track record. But I'm also still going to lecture you about how we're the real experts and we're the ones you really have to trust. I mean, especially, you know...

It's just so wild. And look, as I've as I've said many times before, I'm not I you know, I'm really not the expert when it comes to this health stuff. And I'm you know, I'm not claiming I'm an expert on on any of the stuff that I talk about because I'm not I'm not a real expert.

And there are but again, there are experts who are diametrically opposed. You know, I just saw earlier today that Pierce is Pierce Morgan is hosting another debate between Benny Morris and Norman Finkelstein today. These are two real experts.

like legit experts on the history of Israel-Palestine. Again, they have completely diametrically opposed views, you know? And so what are you left with? It's like, I don't know. I guess I'm going to read both of their books and see who I think is more persuasive, which is what I've done. I've read books by both of them. You know, it's like...

And by the way, I think Benny Morris' books were really, really good. 1948 was phenomenal. Really good book. But like, okay, I think he gets it wrong ultimately in his conclusion, or at least his conclusion today. But anyway, but just being a layman when it comes to the health stuff, to listen to anyone sit there and go like,

Okay, first of all, I've argued with my former family pediatrician who is arguing with me to get my six-month-old vaccinated for this thing. I was clearly right, and the doctor was clearly wrong. Also didn't know anything about it. But even beyond that, it's like, dude, the CDC, the health establishment in this country gave us the fucking food pyramid. Like,

This is what means. I don't know if you remember, Rob, we're a few years separated in age. I can't remember who's older or younger. By the old standards, muffins are the most important and nutritious food you can consume. That and with bread. It's what's at the top, the base of the pyramid.

Yes, that's what you're supposed to. This is what they told us. I remember being told this in school. Like they had it on the blackboard, like pulling it down on a rolly thing and showing us the food pyramid. That's what they told us. You know, you're going to want to limit your meat and vegetables, but have a lot of white bread.

Really cram in that white bread. And listen, I'm sorry, but you see this everywhere that when you like the hippie who was hanging out at like a farmer's market was 100,000 times more correct than the expert class was when it came to health.

You know, it's like, I'm sorry, we live in a disgustingly unhealthy society. It is, I mean, I'll tell you, as somebody who travels the country a lot, I cannot tell you how many obese children I see. I'm talking seven, eight-year-olds who are obese. You go-

You got them by the elbows. It's like pushing an old lady in a wheelchair. Yeah, it is. It's really disturbing when you see it so much. But like there's I'm sorry, like there to just like anybody who actually cares about health.

You must be disgusted by this entire system. There's just no way you could be defending it. I'm sorry. You walk into the supermarket and everything. And even in like nice neighborhoods, like you walk into the supermarket, it is just dominated by like aisles and aisles of, of gushers.

You know what I mean? Just like just like poison, absolute garbage that is that is killing our people. If you if you turn on the television, every other commercial is for a fucking pill that you're supposed to. This is the expert class's view on health. Have a whole lot of white bread, some candy and then take a pill.

to deal with that. Also, you're going to want to take a pill to deal with how you're depressed from all of it too. And it's like, I'm sorry, none of this is good health advice. And then obviously you had the biggest, you know, if you were an expert in healthcare or, or in health in general, you had the biggest test of your life,

come before you, the once in a hundred year pandemic, and you failed it on every single level. You got absolutely everything wrong. So how on earth do you turn around after that

And be like, I'm in a position to tell you that we ought to be trusted and you can't do your own research. And while it also is, it is true, like there is a point to what she's saying where she's like, look, like there are –

There are technical questions in which you need a level of expertise to interpret data and to understand things. While that is true, it's simply not the case. And people often use that to make a case that is not true. And it simply is not true that a regular person of reasonable intelligence cannot read data

and gain perspective on things. And by the way, the way that us non-experts do that typically is that we inform ourselves by reading experts.

Because believe it or not, there are a lot of experts who also disagree with your official experts. And some of them make very compelling arguments. And so you read them and then you read your hack experts try to counter those arguments. And one of the things that ends up pushing a lot of people away from the regime official experts and toward some of these more dissident experts is

is that you guys tend to not have a response to the points that they're making. And instead, you immediately go to attacking the character of the people making the arguments. And that is a tell that typically means it's because you can't take on the actual argument. And that's part of the reason why you guys are losing this war very badly.

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Any other thoughts on this stuff, Rob? It's enough Lena Wynn for one day. Hopefully we don't see, I can't believe they still roll her out. Once again, still a health expert. Yeah, it's really, it's not even, you know, and it's not just, there's a mix of two things. And this is true with a lot of the people, you know, who exposed themselves during COVID. But it's not, there's number one, there's the stuff that they just got wrong, right?

Like how much they just got the whole thing wrong. I mean, like not small things, like really, really major things. And by the way, nobody's done a better job of tearing this stuff to shreds than than Tom Woods. His book Diary of Psychosis was phenomenal. Also, his like his online quizzes that he made with all the charts and graphs. I mean, it's all almost all of it's in Diary of Psychosis. But yeah.

I mean, he really demonstrated this stuff. And by the way, he's got degrees from Harvard and Columbia. So I think he's allowed to have an opinion on this or maybe not. I don't know. Does that qualify you as being expert enough? But there's I mean, literally like all of it didn't work.

And this is like pretty clear at this point. There's been major studies done on this. I know that one of the biggest ones was the John Hopkins study that looked at all the lockdown areas versus the not lockdown areas and could find almost no difference. It had lockdowns or not locking down had almost zero effect on how much the virus spread.

Um, mask mandates didn't work. School closures didn't work. Vaccine mandates didn't work. Like every policy that they pushed just didn't work. So that's part of it. It's like, no, you, you lose the expert claim because you're wrong about everything. What good is, is expertise if you're wrong about everything? Um, but then the more disturbing thing is that it just exposed like what,

what tyrants these people were in their heart of hearts that like, which has nothing to do with expertise. You know, it has nothing to do with, with how well, you know, any subject it's, there's a more fundamental, like how you, a question of how you view Liberty. And when you, when you start saying, you know, when you're Arnold Schwarzenegger, and if you remember his quote, Rob, where he said, he said, fuck your freedom.

to this was his message to the unvaccinated your freedom his goat yeah right and you're like yo wait a minute this is somebody who held political power in the united states of america there's a governor of one of our our biggest states

That is wild that you view freedom as this thing that can be taken away at the whims of rulers. That is profoundly disturbing. And we should never forget those people. Those people who are in positions of power who became tyrants immediately. It's almost surprising to me that at these news networks, they don't have to pay...

the doctors better for two years and be like, we need your help selling this storyline and that they pay them enough that they don't have to continue to work after that. Because I'm shocked that they don't need new experts to come in and sell the next story. I'm shocked that after you've gotten this many things, this is so wrong and not just wrong, but where you were pitching the country on stripping people of their freedoms, the fact that you can still go on television and share your opinion without people just

protesting the offices of CNN in a peaceful manner and saying, please put someone else on the air is very nicely. Yeah. Yeah. No, the fact that the fact that they don't recognize that they have to kind of get rid of all of these people in order to rebuild any credibility is, is kind of amazing. I'm, I'm not necessarily a

Upset at it. It's good in a way that they're this incapable of adjusting to the facts on the ground Hey, so, okay. Let's let's switch gears a little bit because we should We should talk a little bit about the latest developments over with on the fronts with both the proxy wars that were involved in as None of them are particularly good

But it's very interesting that it looks like there's been some good reporting on this. I sent you the piece that Jeremy Scahill had over at Dropsite. Jeremy Scahill's a legit expert, a legit expert, but he's a legitimately great, a great journalist.

who's done some phenomenal work over the years. His book, Dirty Wars, was phenomenal. And he's just been great on the foreign policy stuff in general for the last 20 years or so.

so he had a great piece about this. Axios had a piece about it as well. But evidently, Witkoff and Hamas came to tentatively to an agreement that seems to have then been killed by Israel. The agreement would have gotten 10 or the deal was that to return 10 living people

hostages in exchange for, I believe it was a 60 day ceasefire and some humanitarian aid and things like that. Looks like the deal, Israel weighed in and killed the deal. They said it was in effect a surrender to Hamas and all of this stuff. And it's just, it's like one more example of

Obviously, there have been too many to even list off here, but it is like yet again, one more example of Israel being the impediment to any type of progress to any toward the prospects of peace. It's one more example of Israel clearly not holding retrieving their hostages as their highest aim. It is.

And it's just one more example of like why the U.S. should not be allied with Israel. They're clearly taking steps that are not in our interest. But the other thing that I just couldn't, as I was reading about this last night, I just couldn't help but find myself putting myself in this position. But like, can you imagine if that was like your family members? Yeah.

Like that was someone you loved who was one of the hostages and there's a deal on the table and it's agreed to in principle. And then your own government is the one that's going to kill the deal that would have gotten these hostages returned. I just can't, you know, I'd be ready to go peacefully protest and ask very politely for my government to take a different course of action if I were in that situation. Anyway, just pretty, pretty wild.

Yeah, well, you know, it's always interesting when you actually see the coverage from Israel and they'll tell you storylines that we'll never see here. And so you'll see publications in horror. It's actually trashing Netanyahu or you'll see other government officials saying Netanyahu

that what's happening in Gaza is terrible and this is not a way a Jewish nation is supposed to operate. So my guess is, although you might not hear that reported across our media, my guess is that the sensibilities in Israel is that there's a large demographic that upon seeing this will have your exact reaction. Oh, yeah, it's funny. I remember when I was debating Laura Loomer earlier,

about Israel Palestine shortly after October 7th. I think it was late that year, late 23, maybe early 24. We were debating the topic and I was talking about how Netanyahu was propping up Hamas for years. And she had never heard of this because she's an American Zionist.

So she's like, what are you talking about? And then she goes, what's your source of that? At what point? And I was like, the Times of Israel, Haaretz and the Jerusalem Post. Like all the newspapers in Israel, they're all this is like, you know, there's no secret. Literally, I said to her, I got on October 8th, the front page of the Times of Israel was Tal Schneider's piece.

netanyahu's uh support for hamas blows up in his face or something like that was the title of the piece and it's like yeah no this is openly discussed in israel they talk about this all the time it's widely debated and contested and all of this but in america it's like you're you're looked at like you're a conspiracy theorist or something like this ultimately the new york times and the washington post did end up running big pieces on this buying quiet was the the piece in the new york times but this is when we debated it was before that piece had been written

But it's like, oh, yeah, no, they talk about it over there. I as I have maintained on top of everything else, I mean, obviously, I've I am very convinced that what Israel is doing to the Palestinians is unspeakably evil.

a video that's going super viral of a little girl burning in a fire from this week. There's been dozens of more kids have died just in the last few days over there. It's just absolutely horrible. I'm also completely convinced that it's very clearly not in America's interest to be funding and arming and supplying Israel in this effort. But I am...

More and more, I'm just blown away by how how short sighted and how self-destructive the Israelis are being and their their and how.

how short-sighted and self-destructive the loudest supporters of Israel are being. It just seems like all around me, I see, and sometimes right in front of me, I just see people like destroying their own reputation, their own credibility, you know, pushing people not only to the other side, but like far to the other side. I don't know if you, you know, I don't think we actually talked about this on the show, but

But one of the one of the craziest things I've ever seen was the response to Theo. Did you see the clip on Theo's podcast? So he just had like a moment. This is like a week ago or two weeks ago, maybe. But he just had a moment on his podcast. First, he's being Theo Vaughn. First off, he is the he's the most unhatable person in America.

Like, it's like impossible to hate this guy. He's just like a cool, funny guy. He's certainly never claiming to be like the guy who's read everything about this conflict. He's had people who are pro Israel and people who are critical of Israel on his podcast. And, but anyway, he just had a moment where he was like, he basically was just, just saying, and I think he was like getting emotional as he was talking about it, but he was like, it's crazy, man. It's like, we're living through a genocide in real time. And,

This is the type of stuff you read about in history books. And now it's like right here. And we're all just like, no matter how much we talk about it, none of us can stop it. It's just so horrible. What's happening to all these little kids over there. Just like a moment like that. And then you watch like the insane Zionists on, on social media, just trashing him. It's like, it's so crazy to me that anyone, anyone,

anyone's response to someone feeling bad that little children are being tortured to death and starve to death, that anybody who's feeling who feels for those kids, your response to them is like, you're a bad person.

Like, is it don't you find this insane? Wouldn't at the very least, wouldn't your response to them have to be like, I know, I know. And you're right to feel this way. It is so horrible. But here's all the reasons why we just absolutely have to do this as tragic as it is. But they don't even attack it that way. They just go like, no, you're a monster. And like, what do you think that does? Like, do you not have enough? Can you not like have enough of a moment where you could like

take a look at yourself from outside yourself. Like you could transcend the argument you're having right now and go, man, this makes my side look really bad. Like if, if we, if we have to demonize someone for having a heart, then probably that's not like a good long-term strategy. And likewise, like,

I'm just thinking about this as I'm reading about Israel killing yet another proposed ceasefire. You're like, do you guys not worry that this might look bad? Like, does that not even enter your mind? Is there no one at the highest levels of the Israeli government who's like, hey, guys,

We're now like 22 months into this thing. We've completely destroyed Gaza. We're openly planning the ethnic cleansing of the entire strip. We spent two months allowing zero food to get into Gaza and we're bragging about it. And now there's a proposal to have a ceasefire and return some of the hostages and we're killing it.

this might end up backfiring. Like this might be bad for us in the longterm. It is shocking to me, shocking that there is not more awareness about this from the pro Israel side. Like this is one thing. And you know, it's like a weird dynamic. Cause you know, it's like a, isn't it? It's one of the, I think the art of war things is like, you don't get in the way when your enemy is, is making a mistake, right?

So you're kind of like in this weird tribal game where it's like, I'm on this side and you're on this side. It's like, hey, if the other side wants to make their side look really bad, I'm not going to stop them from doing that. But I must admit, I'm truly baffled by it. I'm truly baffled by people going like, whoa, let's pump the brakes on this or the lack of people going, whoa, let's pump the brakes on this. This is clearly not working out well for us.

As we were talking about this, I remember one of it was that, man, it must have been late October, maybe November 2023, where we were doing a podcast and we were talking about exactly that. Like we were like, hey, read the room here, Israel. Like this is going to be very bad for you if you go through with this. This is almost two years later and still not reading the room. It's just wild to me.

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Anyway, any thoughts on any of that, Rob? I just saw this story today. Is the guy who was negotiating this the guy who got the one American out or is it a different person? Yes. No, it's Steve Witkoff. Yeah. OK, well, I did think it was interesting that, you know, I guess the guy who might get the ceasefire is the one that the neocons were calling an anti-Semite. I guess he's still working on the case.

I mean, the fact that there's any progress in an offer on the table sounds like some improvement, but it also just feels like the Israelis are looking for every excuse to not have to

ramp down their operations. Yeah. Yeah. No. Well, I mean, that was that was that was made pretty clear once again. All right. The other thing that we should touch on a little bit is that Donald Trump is now at the threatening Putin stage of negotiations. He's also cutting deals at the same time. He's doing both.

Yes, yes, that's right. Well, this is Trump's negotiating style, right? So Donald Trump made some comments the other day about how, you know, Putin has lost his mind and I don't know what's happened to that guy. Yeah.

there's uh the then today he said something about like you know russia like he he was like vladimir putin doesn't realize how bad it would be for russia if i wasn't here you know there's like the kind of old trump like oh i got all these war hawks around me and they'd be ready to go to war something like that um look like i don't really have too much uh to say about it you know

I was certainly hopeful that it would have been easier for for Trump and Vladimir Putin to come to a deal here and end the war. I think there have been several obstacles to that. I think that, you know, I think a lot of a lot of lines were crossed here.

And Vladimir Putin is aware of that. And it's he's also aware of the fact, I believe, and I've got this from some pretty good sources. And I think he's also aware of the fact that like there is the permanent government and that it's not like he can really just make a deal with Donald Trump. You know, like he can make a deal with Donald Trump, but the next president could tear that up or the permanent government could simply just not abide by it. But it does seem like.

One of the things that is very unfortunate in this situation is that I think Vladimir Putin, a lot of the disincentives to continue the war have been removed from Vladimir Putin. And I think at this point, he kind of views it as like, look, this is his shot. He's got all the leverage right now.

There's no more, you know, it's like he knows that the the appetite for supporting this war in the West has been greatly reduced. He knows that even with more weapons shipments, it's not really making any difference on the front lines. He knows that the Ukrainian military has basically been depleted and now is his opportunity to

to carve up the portion of that country that he wishes to take and to decide whether he wants to push a little bit further and give himself a little bit more of a buffer zone, which is what this whole thing was always all about. Um,

We'll we'll see what happens. You know, I don't I don't put too much stake in Donald Trump putting out this threatening tweet or whatever. It's like this is kind of just the way Donald Trump always negotiates. Hopefully we will see within the next month or two a major summit with Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin and they'll sign some type of peace deal and we'll see an end to the killing there. I'm not sure if that is going to happen or not, though.

Hopefully we see it. Any thoughts on the latest? It doesn't seem too promising. It seems like the minerals deal almost gives us an excuse for continuing to arm Ukraine. And I don't know that we budgeted more funds to be sent over there, but it just seems like it's the same circular nonsense. Zelensky doesn't want to just say, hey, Putin can continue.

can keep what he conquered. He wants to say, no, we refuse to possibly accept that. And so I think until Zelensky kind of comes forward and goes, hey, this thing is over and lost, Putin has no real incentive to quit punishing him. And, you know, Donald Trump has tried to interject a couple of times and go, hey, let's get this peace deal done. I think the Russians know that stalling works pretty well against Donald Trump because he has ADD and he just kind of gets annoyed and moves on to other things.

And so I think they've learned that there's no reason to operate on Trump's on Trump's timetables. And so I don't know. I said on the last episode, it's hard to bet against Donald Trump because you never know when he just Michael Scott's the operation, like in that episode of Chili's and he just closes some big deal. And you're like, all right, I guess I guess this buffoon's great. So everything about it seems like, well, he didn't end the war from day one. The fact that he's getting up there now and going, this is a this a different guy, the old boot.

I would have got it done. Seems like you're really walking back your position from I'll have this done by day one. I think the minerals deal was foolish because it kind of gives them an excuse to go, no, we're getting something out of this. And it kind of maybe gives Ukraine more hope or more resources, even though I don't know the specifics of...

money being sent over there at this time uh but it does seem like it gives a platform to kind of keep keep us supporting ukraine which allows them to remain in the war um and anyways this seems like the same thing i've been over the last couple months it just seems like circular and that this thing's ongoing

Yeah. And I think that, yeah, look, I agree with you. And the minerals deal was a disaster. And we said it from the beginning. I mean, you can't look, you can't do that. You can't you can't speak out of both sides of your mouth and sell it to the Ukrainians as essentially a security guarantee.

Without the Russians hearing that too. And going like, wait a minute. Well, what do you mean? I think that was kind of almost the idea. Potentially. I think the, the leverage play is instead of just going, Hey, we're not supporting the war. It's we will continue to support the war unless you want to actually make terms and come to a peace deal. And then America going, at least we're getting something out of the security guarantee now and our willingness to continue to support them. But that's, we're going to start taking these minerals, which by the way,

I don't know if we're ever actually going to get any minerals because it's supposed to be like, it's a complicated, like 10 year joint plan where the money that we spend, I think it's reinvested over there. And so it sounds like that's just basically payment for, um, military gear. And then, uh, Kyle Aslan pointed out on, uh, on run your mouth. I had him on for this. And his prediction is basically that it's going to just be like a North Korea, South Korea situation. We'll just be, uh, like forever militarized zone, uh,

but he also said that it, that the structure of the mineral deal allowed for massive scamming and that you could just basically come up with large quotes of what you think you will be able to deliver by way of minerals. And so that you get large cash payments up front from the United States of America on something that then never delivers, uh,

and 10 years from now, and speaking to your point, if you get the Warhawk administration next, they might not really care about the American first minerals actually coming to the United States of America. So once again, just a creative way to kind of fund them in the near term while pretending that it's actually in America's interests. Yeah. Yeah. It's a look through the situation is a mess. And this is again, none of this is, is good. Unfortunately, you know, Donald Trump, uh,

As is often the case with this stuff, he just doesn't have a guiding set of principles or a theory that he's working off of. And so he kind of jumps around to a lot of different ones. And so he will flirt with some kind of Buchanan-esque ideas.

ideas about like America first and being non interventionist and this stuff. But then he'll jump over to like a big shiny deal. That's always, you know, cause that's really who Trump is in his heart of hearts is like, let's build a great big building. Let's make a great big deal. Let's get, you know, a big, beautiful bill. Like we were talking about on the last episode. And so he's like, while he would flirt at times with the idea of like, we should just get out.

Then he always flirts with, ooh, but if we stay in, we could do this big, beautiful deal. I mean, look, you see it in terms of in Gaza. He's talking about like, ooh, the real estate we could develop there in Gaza. Like he kind of can't help but be attracted to that. But the fact is that we just need to get out of all of these different parts of the world. Like we have our own problems here. And the idea that the U.S. government, as I always love, I think it was Harry Brown.

who first said this, but I might be wrong about that. But I think it was Harry Brown who said, or is talking about the war on drugs. And he goes, he goes, the U S federal government can even keep drugs out of federal prisons. Right.

which really is something to think about when you think about like a federal prison, you can't even keep drugs out of the most controlled secure area. And yet you're talking about how you're going to police the entire country. Plus you're going to have the DEA going into South America and doing all this. But like on the most basic bottom line, it's like Washington, D.C.,

can't even control the crime problem in Washington, D.C.,

Like, so what are we talking about with bringing democracy to the world or whatever or managing every conflict throughout the world? It's just the idea that we can do this is ridiculous. And in so many of these examples, particularly in Ukraine and in Gaza, the U.S. involvement has just it's made it's turned what may have been a conflict into a catastrophe. Right.

And, you know, you can only do that for so long before you go, obviously, we got to get out of there. And I think that so much of this, too, and I think this is really part of the minerals deal or part of the mentality that goes into even wanting to go down this path is just a basic like sunk cost fallacy, right?

That it's like, well, look, we put so much into this. We can't walk away now without having anything to show. But that's a basic economic fallacy. That's just not an argument. It's not an argument for continuing to dump bad money after good money after bad. Vietnam, Iraq, Korea, is that you can just walk away with nothing and have spent a lot of money and the American people will move on.

I remember when I was... By the way, the Knicks are playing tonight. Big game four. I remember when I was a kid, the Knicks...

had, so they had this one great season in 1999 where we were the eighth seed in the playoffs. So we were the last seed to make the playoffs and then we went all the way to the finals, which I think it was the first time it had ever been done in NBA history. But it was great. It was a real fun playoff run. Great, fun team to watch.

And the Knicks, after this season, their front office, they gave Allen Houston. It might have been two years after that, but they gave Allen Houston the like the biggest contract in the NBA. They paid him like over one hundred million dollars.

And they gave him more than Kobe Bryant and Allen Iverson and like all the, and he just was not as good as those guys, you know, like he was a good basketball player, but he was not as good as that. And we totally overpaid him. And then the whole team just fell apart. It didn't do good. But I remember for the next couple of years when you would see like, it was a, was Ernie Grunfeld. I can't remember the guy's names, but the GM and the owner at the time, and they'd all be defect. They'd be like, no, Allen Houston is amazing. Let me tell you something. He's as good as Kobe Bryant.

This guy's going to be like unbelievable. And he wasn't like a new player. It wasn't like two years in the NBA. He'd been playing in the NBA for like 10 years. Like we knew who he was as a player, but they, but you realized as you're watching them. And I remember understanding the sunk cost fallacy back then as a kid that you realize that you're like, well, look, here's the thing, right? They can't admit that now.

Or your next thing would be, well, we have to fire you then. This is insane. You gave someone this insane amount of money who wasn't worth it. But you also understand where like, actually the correct answer is to admit it. It's not to say like, oh, well, we've spent so much that we got to keep going all in on this. It's like, no, this was a poor decision. You should reverse this decision. You should admit that this was a bad decision and not continue to make it going forward in general in life.

that's very tricky for people to do. It's very, very tough because what happens is you are, psychologically, you're incentivized to not admit how bad the whole thing's been. And I remember, I know I've mentioned this example before, but I remember watching this documentary on abortion and it was like from a pro-choice perspective. And they had this woman who was an abortionist

And she's like an older lady. She'd been an abortion doctor for like 30 years. And she's sitting there and she's going like, look, there's no moral question when it comes to abortion. It's not conscious. It's a clump of cells. It's blah, blah, blah. There's nothing wrong with having an abortion. And I remember just thinking to myself, like, yeah, you better believe that.

You better really convince yourself of that because you, of course, can't even entertain the possibility that maybe there's a moral component to this. Because if you do, oh my God,

Like, Jesus Christ, like all of a sudden you become a serial murderer of babies. If that's so, like, and by the way, I'm not like you could be pro-choice or pro-life. I'm not even like saying I'm just making the point that obviously if you're an abortion doctor and you've been performing abortions for many decades, you're

You have to be all in on that side. And so this is what happens. It's like over time, once you've gone all in on a policy, it's just like people's feet get more firmly planted

in their position and it's it's an unfortunate dynamic um okay we got to wrap up there uh go see rob this weekend in texas porch tour.com go check out run your mouth rob's other fantastic uh podcast and of course go to comic dave smith.com to come see me and robbie on the road a bunch uh for uh the rest of the year we got dates going all the way i think just about to the rest of the year and we will be adding a

PorchTour.com. Catch you guys next time. Peace.