It's Not About the Rhetoric
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Join millions of parents and kids building healthy financial habits together on Greenlight. Get your first month free at greenlight.com slash wondery. That's greenlight.com slash wondery. What's up? What's up, everybody? Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem. We are live.

at partoftheproblem.com, which, you know, guys, this is what's cool about having your own thing, being independent here. I got Ari Shafir coming over. We're going to record a State of the Union episode, which everybody always loves. Maybe not everybody. Maybe that was a little Trumpian of me to start that way. Everybody says it's tremendous. Um,

But so we decided to go a little bit early today, but we can do that now. So we're just streaming live right to part of the problem.com. That is the place, by the way, if you want to support this show, that's where you go. You get all of the shows live, uncensored, ad free. You can sign up.

You also get the members only episode every week. There's different levels where you can get extra goodies and stuff like that. The part of the problem inner circle is now there at part of the problem dot com. So please, if you can make sure and go go sign up. How are you feeling this morning, Rob? I got to meet David Stockman last night at the Soho Forum. He's a hero, was a sweet guy. It was very cool.

I am a little bit jealous of you. I'm a huge David Stockman fan. Of course, we've told the story on the show before, but me and you, a decade or more ago, more, more than a decade ago, bonded over David Stockman's great book, The Great Deformation. And that guy is incredible. Just an unbelievable person.

brilliant mind. Um, that's cool that you got to go see him. Of course he was debating at the, the legend, Gene Epstein, Soho forum, uh, which is in New York city. If you guys are interested in these ideas, if you love debates, make sure to go check out, uh,

Soho forum debate there. They're very reasonably priced the tickets and stuff too then they have great debates all the time Where are they? They're not in Soho anymore, right? Where are they right? He's got this a beautiful theater. We should actually play it sometime I think it's called the Sheen Theatre. It's like a 300-seater, but it's really it's an elegant one feels like some nice, New York City highfalutin type a type place I like an elegant an elegant theater. I

I do. And if you don't like elegant theaters, you can come out to Porch Tour. I'm a man of the people and I'll be right in people's backyards. You can catch me in...

You want to take this thing to the other end of the spectrum? Yeah. Sure. Then you go check out a porch. If you want to feel like you're joining a militia, but one that just likes to sit on a lawn and drink beers, I will be in Byron, Michigan this Saturday and Syracuse, Utah on Sunday. Come hang out. Hell yeah. Rob is only comfortable in – it's got to be either like drinking a beer on a porch or Carnegie Hall. Rob doesn't really like the middle ground. It's like a comedy club for the weekend. That's not really Rob's style.

Yes, absolutely. Go check out Rob on the road on his road to filming his first comedy special. And of course, we're going to be back out on the road for the rest of the year. Comic Dave Smith dot com. Got a bunch of dates coming up. I know we're back in Detroit, Philadelphia. Bunch of great. Prater presents Skank Fest. Looking forward. Of course. Of course. Skank Fest is coming up very soon. All right. So let's let's start getting into some stuff here because there's I got some things on my mind.

Number one, Donald Trump did a Twitter spaces last night. You'll never get me. Nananana boo boo. Can't shoot me. You know, it was and I cannot overstate this. It was so incredibly bizarre. It was one of the most bizarre to me, at least one of the most bizarre things.

things in this presidential race so far, which is really saying something because there's been a lot of pretty wild stuff that's happened in this presidential election. But so Donald Trump goes on this Twitter space. I don't know any of the people who were on it, the hosts.

Not that that means they're nobodies. I just I don't know. You know what I mean? There's people out there who are huge. I just don't happen to know him. But he goes on. He had his son, Donald Trump Jr., on with him at one point. They very briefly talked about the assassination attempt up front and then just talked about like cryptocurrency. Yeah.

for uh it's just so like to me it was like so tone deaf i i don't know it was very bizarre donald's got a product to sell after uh he went back to twitter and abandoned truth social you know and trump shoes he sold those out bibles he sold those out and you might think he's just running a presidential campaign but you know papa trump's got to make some cash on the back end somehow well just to be clear here but yes i'm sure there's something like that too i don't know but

There is Donald. OK, so Trump talked briefly about the assassination attempt. What I've noticed, say, in the 24 hours since we last recorded is you've started to see the narrative that is emerging after this apparent second assassination attempt on Donald Trump. And I just want to be clear here that.

Donald Trump seems to be a willing participant in this narrative. Let's go to the CNN video because they have a little clip from Donald Trump in this Twitter spaces. And then you can kind of get a flavor for what the corporate press's narrative on this is going to be. So let's go to that tape. The former president is online tonight promoting a new cryptocurrency venture. Just moments ago, however, he was asked about yesterday's incident.

This was his second attempt in your life in under two months. What do you make of that? Well, there's a lot of rhetoric going on. A lot of people think that the Democrats, when they talk about threat to democracy and all of this, and it seems that both of these people were radical lefts. That was the foreign president just moments ago. Here's his running mate also tonight, also pointing the finger at his political opposition.

You know, the big difference between conservatives and liberals is that we have no one has tried to kill Kamala Harris in the last couple of months. And two people now have tried to kill Donald Trump in the last couple of months. I'd say that's pretty strong evidence that the left needs to tone down the rhetoric and needs to cut this crap out. Well, the day began, as you know, on similar lines in a similar tone, talking off camera to Fox Digital. The former president directly blamed the president and vice president's rhetoric, quoting

Quoting him now, "The rhetoric is causing me to be shot at." He added, and I quote, "They use highly inflammatory language." He said, "I can use it too, far better than they can, but I don't." A bit later, he posted this on social media, quoting again, "The rhetoric lies as exemplified by the false statements made by comrade Kamala Harris during the rigged and highly partisan ABC debate and all of the ridiculous lawsuits specifically designed to inflict damage on Joe's, then Kamala's political opponent, me.

taken politics in our country to a whole new level of hatred, abuse and distrust. Because of this communist left rhetoric, the bullets are flying and will only get worse. Joining us now is former Harris Communications Director Ashley Etienne, Republican strategist Brad Todd and CNN senior data reporter Harry Enten. Brad, obviously, Vice President Vance went on to say that he'd do his best to tone down the rhetoric

Do you think it's really a genuine promise, given what we just heard him say and what the former president has certainly said in terms of contributing to very heated rhetoric? Well, you know, since Donald Trump came down the elevator in 2016, Democrats have constantly said that the Constitution would be shredded, the country would end. All right. We can pause it there. So I just wanted to—you can take that down, because I want to discuss this a bit. So—

You kind of get it just from watching it right there, right? So there is, in a very bizarre way, there is...

You see this now. This is what's fascinating about watching the corporate media. It's fascinating about studying propaganda in general. You can kind of watch the way it works, right? A narrative is being crafted here. And without even like explicitly saying it, it's very clear what it is. The conversation now is going to be about the rhetoric being used. Okay. Okay.

And Donald Trump and J.D. Vance clearly are willing participants in this. Like they are also saying this is what the conversation ought to be about right now. The rhetoric of Biden and Kamala Harris and the left, whatever the hell they mean by that exactly, is this is what's leading to Donald Trump getting shot once and attempted to be shot again.

And then you're going to have you could already see what this whole panel discussion is going to be right. Like, do you even need to play the end of that? Everybody knows what the points on both sides will be. The Republican guy will say, well, look, they say Trump's going to be the end of democracy. They say he's all of this stuff. They've had this alarmist rhetoric since he started running for president. And then what's the the progressives response going to be? Well, look at Donald Trump's rhetoric. Donald Trump. I mean, by the way, of course,

Donald Trump also plays whatever role he's a part of perfectly because even that tweet or the Truth Social post is just so hilarious. It's so Trumpian. If I really wanted to use the rhetoric, I'd be better at rhetoric than any of them. And by the way, in the same thing, he calls Kamala Harris a communist, which is just like, I don't know, it just kind of writes itself. Like it leaves you, but this is almost, this is when propaganda is perfectly effective, is when you can have almost like,

The way it works is they kind of like they limit the discussion to here. Okay, we're going to have a conversation within this space.

what tom woods calls the three by five index card of allowable opinion and then you want to say something within that you know like the old gnome chomsky thing you want to have a very limited range of allowed discussion but then you want to have a fierce fight within that range okay so trump just opens the door for that perfectly because he's like their rhetoric is over the top these commies and

And then it's so easy to go like that, but that's the same exact thing, right? Like, well, I mean, okay, you're saying they call you a Nazi. You're calling them a commie. What really is the difference here?

Anyway, let me start by saying this, because obviously we did talk a lot about the rhetoric in our last episode. I talked a bit about this after Donald Trump was shot the first time. I do think there's an interesting conversation to have there. One of the things that I find to be interesting about it is that it does, in a sense, give

It kind of calls the bluff of the anti-Trump people. Like when you when you speak the way you do about this guy, but then you also say like, oh, political violence is never the answer. There is something that just doesn't quite jive with those two positions. Right. So like I saw I watched a few minutes of a Pierce Morgan interview.

He had a panel. I know Jimmy Dore was on it and Joe Walsh was on it and a couple other people. But so Joe Walsh, you know him, Rob? I've done Piers Morgan with him before, and he was like a – he's like a never-Trump Republican type. You know what I mean? Like was a Republican but is now voting for the Democrats because Trump is such a unique threat. Yeah.

And at one point he's talking about the rhetoric and he's like, well, Donald Trump has to tone it down too. And I hate political violence, you know, blah, blah, blah. I don't support this. And then at one point he goes, but look, I do think the truth is that Donald Trump is a unique threat to democracy. And if that Donald, if Donald Trump wins, we no longer have the United States of America. It's just like you hear him say that and you're like, okay, but look, if you really believe that, then why exactly do you not want him shot?

Like, I'm just saying, like, I'm not saying you should do anything illegal. I'm not saying you should shoot him. I'm not saying you should want him shot. I'm just saying, how can you have two views simultaneously? How can you have the view that this guy is literally Hitler, but also we wish Hitler a speedy recovery?

It does seem to me that you got to pick one of those two. Right. So there's an interesting conversation to be had there. As we said before, there's an interesting conversation about the, you know, does rhetoric lead to a higher likelihood of violence? Outbreaking. There's a conversation to be had there. There's I also think it is, I guess, interesting.

Look, I don't nobody should legally be held responsible for their rhetoric being too heated. I mean, short of a direct incitement to violence, speech should be protected. And that's foundational to having a free society. Right. You couldn't.

The slippery slope of not allowing that means you could shut down all speech, essentially. I could say, hey, this guy's an awful president. And then if someone goes out and shoots the president, I'm not responsible because I said he's an awful president. I have to be allowed to think and speak. Otherwise, we don't have any freedom. However, there's anyway, I guess my point is just this.

There's all types of interesting conversations about political rhetoric. However, right now, in the current moment, this is a limited hangout at best and a total distraction at worst.

None of these after sitting here and spending a day and a half looking into who this shooter was and what just happened. It is nothing but a pure distraction to be talking about whether Donald Trump should stop calling them commies and they should stop calling him a fascist.

That's just not what this conversation ought to be about. It's totally taking you away from the actual important conversation here. And why Donald Trump and J.D. Vance are willing participants in this itself is an interesting question.

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The bond is financing a publicly traded mining company located in the Western United States. Click the link in the episode description or head to monetary-metals.com for more information on how to participate. All right, let's get back into the show. This is bitchy, feminine, and lame. This is very left tactics. There's something funny about it. It's

It's true. The Democrats keep going. Trump is literally Hitler. He's a threat tower democracy. And they're doing that because it sells. And so that's why they're up there firing up their base. And they're making these grandiose claims that if Donald Trump is elected, it's literally the end of our democracy. And he's right. That is fiery rhetoric that might get crazy people to go, well, why would I leave this up to democracy if it's going to be the end of the democracy? But

it's so feminine of the language that they're using is it's it this is not the way you win as the republicans what you should go is hey we've got a deep state and they're trying to take me out and guess what's going to be the end of our democracy it's if you guys don't show up in massive droves and actually win this the proper way because we have to get rid of this system that will always try and take out the people that are willing to actually represent you and drain the swamp

That's what he needs to be talking about. He needs to be talking about, listen, I'm not leaving my security to these people anymore. You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to hire my own army. If you want to join my army, come join my army. You guys can be the outer perimeter. Secret Service can have the inner perimeter. Let's make me safe. Let's go. Can you imagine if people started showing up with the monster trucks to be outside of Mar-a-Lago and what the imagery of that would be of the deep state has failed me? Do you guys want to actually be the ones to protect the president?

I'm just saying he's got so many options here to look fucking cool and to go, we have to win and we got to take this thing back. And this one, it's funny. It's a little bit funny to prod at the Democrats, but it's feminine and lame. Well, listen, okay. So I totally agree with you, but.

I just want to make it clear. I'm going further than just that. What, what I'm saying is that, okay, so we have a situation here where like, just to be clear, I'm not just saying that, um, that, um,

It would be good politics. It would be more effective for Donald Trump to spin this as he's actually running for them. Well, look, I'm just saying, OK, so what we know right now, like, let's just take take this at face value. OK, the second thing.

Second would-be Donald Trump assassin takes – just happened. The second would-be Donald Trump assassin, this guy gets stopped. We now know – so Ryan Routh, the guy involved in this second assassination attempt –

By the way, I'd highly recommend for people if you're on Twitter or X, Max Blumenthal had a great thread on this the other day where he's actually got like the manuscript that this guy wrote. For those of you guys who aren't following this, the –

apparently the FBI took down all of his social media, but a bunch of people got like screenshots and got some, cause you know, this is the way the internet works now. So there's a lot of things there, but this guy, this isn't just some dude. Now I'm not saying we know exactly what this guy is yet. We don't exactly, but a few things that we know, uh, this, it was reported in the New York post earlier today that, um, it was either in 2002 or 2003. Yeah. Excuse me. It was 2002. She had a police officer,

standoff where he was charged with a WMD crime, a weapon of mass destruction. Just reading here quickly from the New York Post, the alleged gunman who authorities say tried to kill former President Donald Trump was arrested with a bomb, a quote, weapon of mass destruction following a tense police standoff in 2002, according to authorities.

It's just one incident in a long history of dangerous and unsettling behavior recounted by cops and neighbors in his hometown. Ryan Routh, 58, was charged with possessing a weapon of mass destruction after Greenboro, North Carolina police arrested him during a traffic stop that escalated dramatically when he barricaded himself in the office of his roofing business. Okay, so here's one piece of information. This guy was charged with

with having a weapon of mass destruction back in 2002. Now, the reason why this is particularly interesting, I mean, you know, not too many of us get that charge, Rob, you know, like we...

I'm not saying we're all choir boys here, but it's pretty rare that you catch a WMD charge. The last I heard of was Saddam Hussein, who caught one of those. He was later cleared of that charge, though, tragically after he was already sentenced to death. But so, OK, so this is in 2002. Now, we know more recently this guy has been in Ukraine recruiting volunteer fighters for the Ukrainian army.

Again, not the average guy type of thing to be doing. He was also making recruiting attempts in Afghanistan. He was praising the Free Syrian Army and he was demonizing Iran. In fact, even seemingly rooting for Trump to be assassinated off, you know, his tearing up the Iran deal or something like that. Just saying these happen to be

I don't know. These goals happen to align with the CIA. Let's just say that. Right? I mean, we're talking about the war in Afghanistan, the war in Ukraine, Iran, even praising the Free Syrian Army. This is enough to get

your eyebrow to raise a little bit, particularly the fact that he was going to Kiev. Like, how is it exactly, Rob? You tell me that a guy who's, like, look, the article says he was charged. I don't know ultimately what he was convicted of here, but it at least raises, like, the questions of, like, how exactly is this guy going back and forth to a war zone, coming in and out of the country without having any issue? Yeah.

right are you telling me like he's is he a convicted felon because i think weapons of mass destruction would be a felony so like anyway this is this in itself is more than enough it it more than meets any reasonable threshold to where the question you would be asking yourself is is this guy connected to intelligence

That we're at least at that point, like in the same way that like, I don't know, you know, I always try to come up with these analogies, but let's say like you caught your wife or your husband having an affair. Okay.

You catch them having an affair with somebody else. And then you guys are working on the relationship. You're like, you're going to stay together. You're going to make it work. And months later, your wife or your husband, they lie to you about where they're going. And you catch them. They were hanging out with the person they were having the affair with.

OK, you find that they lied to you. They said they were going to work, but they really went over to that person's house who you know they had been having an affair with previously. Now, I'm not saying that's enough to convict them in a court of law over continue. You know what I'm saying? Like, I'm not saying you have beyond the shadow of a doubt proof that they were, you know, sleeping together again. But you're well past the point of where you're like, that's the question we're asking.

The question is not, you know, was our rhetoric too intense in our fight about this? The question is like, what were you doing there? And so all I'm saying is that in theory, if there was somebody who was just like an MSNBC viewer, right?

who went and tried to assassinate Donald Trump, then perhaps the reasonable question would be, were they, was the rhetoric so intense that that influenced them to go make an attempt on somebody's life?

However, when they're going to Kiev to recruit for the Ukrainian army and praising the Free Syrian Army. By the way, do you guys, if you don't know who the Free Syrian Army is, this was the name given to the collection of Syrian rebels who the CIA was funding and arming to overthrow Bashar al-Assad in 2012 and 2013. That's who he was praising. The CIA's shock troops.

in Syria. Okay? That is not somebody who was radicalized by Joy fucking Reed.

Okay, that's not somebody who just like they they listen to Rachel Maddow talk about how Donald Trump's a racist and then wanted to go kill him. It's something a little bit deeper than that. Okay. Now, again, I'm not saying that this is proof that this guy is connected to intelligence. We're way too early in the understanding of this historical event to have any type of conclusion like that. But it's enough to say that that's the question.

It's enough to say that's what I'd be asking about if you're Donald Trump taking to the media or to a –

Twitter spaces or whatever the next day, it seems like that's what you'd bring up not to get into this ridiculous conversation about is it their rhetoric or is it our rhetoric? Because the truth is, if you're going to convict anyone and I don't mean legally, I just mean like if you're going to if you're going to put blame on anyone because they're using extreme rhetoric, we're way past the point of everyone being guilty of that. Way past the point.

At least 10 years past the point of where, yes, Donald Trump has said many times it'll be the end of America if Kamala Harris wins. And Kamala Harris and Joe Biden and all their surrogates have said many times it'll be the end of democracy or whatever if Donald Trump wins. That is not the relevant question here. Clearly. I mean, absolutely.

much like just what i've said right now is as much as you catching your wife or husband going to hang out with that person who you knew they had an affair with already the question is are you having an affair again the question here is was this guy connected to intelligence that's the question and so it's again it's not just your point that this would be it wouldn't be like bitch

Gay energy to be like talking about like well you said mean words It would be it would it would help Donald Trump more to like start dog whistling about the conspiracy Like what really is going on here, but I'm not even just saying it would help him I'm saying it's totally appropriate at this point for him to start saying hey, what the hell is going on here? And again the look

I'm just saying like the preponderance of evidence or whatever, or the circumstantial evidence here is you have a guy who is clearly undeniably at this point in the crosshairs of the deep state, the deep state. It's not as if, look, that whole, the, the, the steel dossier may have come out of the Hillary Clinton campaign, but it,

It got legs under it when the FBI and CIA took up the story. OK, it was three letter agencies that were framing Donald Trump for treason. It was three letter agencies that were spying on Donald Trump's campaign and on Donald Trump's White House. It was the Justice Department who started trying to charge him with every goddamn bullshit charge under the sun that they could come up with. That's who.

It is the deep state that's been going after Donald Trump for all of these years. And now we just happen to have his second assassin or would-be assassin is praising the Free Syrian Army and the war effort in Ukraine.

I'm sorry, but in that situation, to be having a conversation about the rhetoric on cable news is – it's not even a limited hangout. I was wrong. I shouldn't have even said it like that. It's just a distraction. This isn't even part of it. I'm sorry. This just isn't even part of it. It's like if you were –

It's like if there was somebody who was going, let's say somebody was going to Moscow and helping Vladimir Putin in his war effort. And you found out that they had praised Adolf Hitler and were, you know, whatever, like had like all the same views, Adolf Hitler aside, but like all the same views as the KGB or something like that. And then you were like, they were radicalized by Sean Hannity.

Like, no, they fucking weren't. That's not where you get that from. This is a much deeper level of like being a part of something here. Like maybe there's an explanation for this that has nothing to do with him being connected to intelligence. And it was just another Secret Service failure. And this guy just happened to be a nut. And he was a nut who got radicalized on behalf of the Ukrainian effort. It's possible. OK, it's way too early to like completely rule that out.

But that's the question here. The question is like, I don't know. This this this smells like three letter agencies. Look, dude, he was in a goddamn BlackRock commercial.

Both of Donald Trump's assassins or would be assassins were in Black Rock commercials. Does that not strike anybody as a little bit odd? Is that not something we might have a few questions about? And yet Donald Trump, this guy who will stoke conspiracies about everything else, about everything else, he'll he'll stoke a conspiracy theory.

the the muslims were celebrating in the streets after 9 11. russiagate was a witch hunt they're just trying to take down your favorite president yet the people who bring rifles to where he is one of whom shoots him in the face that we're not gonna we're not gonna speculate about at all no questions something's not adding up here man

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We might need a fact check that the second shooter was in a BlackRock commercial because I've heard that it might have just been footage from Kiev or something else that they had sponsored or something along those lines. Okay, fine. Everything you're saying still stands. Look, there's just more than enough here. There's more than enough here to go like, no, no, no, no, we have some serious questions. And of course, like, you know, the FBI just comes in and like,

takes down his social media. You know, they're going to do the typical thing that the FBI does, which is like, it's like, okay, we will be confiscating all of the evidence that

We will run an investigation and you can take our word for what we find, which we all know is what they do is they don't run an investigation. They run a, you know, control of information campaign. So it's not as if we can like, like they're there to just get rid of the evidence. And so it's not like we can trust them. We got to sit here and wait for like Ian Carroll to make a good video about it or something like.

I think I might have sent this video in the chat, but DeSantis said that Florida is going to run its own investigation because the FBI can't be trusted on this, which I thought was fascinating. Yeah, that is interesting. But I wonder what actually is going to come of that. I don't know. I'm not buying it, I guess I would say. So what did DeSantis say exactly? Yeah.

I mean, do you want to hear? Natalie has it. Why don't we why don't we pull it up? Joining me now for the governor, Ron DeSantis. So this happened here in your state. What are you going to do about it, governor?

Well, the state of florida own investigation. Uh, cl violations of florida law an interest in vindicate where this guy came from, were the people of our s I don't think it's in the country to say that agen

which are trying to prosecute Trump in South Florida. They're on appeal at the 11th Circuit trying to reinstate an indictment that had been dismissed, that they're the best people to turn around and, one, give us the truth about this defendant, but also to prosecute the case where they don't have as strong

of jurisdictional claims. And so we are going to be doing our investigation. I'm going to have more to say on that very shortly about what precisely we're going to do. But I would know, Jesse, you know, I've played golf with the president when he was when he was in office at that course. It's a great golf course.

part of the property, the hole and then the 17 that up against the fence line is covered with with s just walking by, you coul

But that is clearly the biggest point of vulnerability on that course, because if you're burrowed into those in those shrubs, you have a pretty clear line of sight on a number of golf holes. And so when I heard that this had happened, there were kind of conflicting reports. Maybe two people were shooting at each other. They said, no, this was meant for for President Trump.

I immediately knew exactly what part of the course it would have been in. So how did this guy get in there? How was he able to burrow in? And yeah, we're thankful that the Secret Service agent, when he saw the muzzle of the gun, fired and caused the defendant to leave. But

That guy was burrowed in there, it seems like, for the rest of the night. How did that happen? Right. Thank God for that agent. Thank God for that agent. But that course should have been swept before and that vulnerability should have been neutralized. When you hear the Democrats talk about this, I don't personally feel that much sorrow or that much sympathy or even regret that this happened twice, Governor. How do you understand that?

I think a lot what I saw, I saw a lot of Democrats attacking Trump today really didn't even give this much of a thought. They're just all out with the rhetoric all over again. And look, we'll see.

Who what this guy consumed? It seems like he was a consumer of a lot of these corporate media narratives that the Democrats propagate. We'll see. I think that's what the. All right. Yeah. Let's turn this off. OK. To me, the the interesting part was just having someone in the government going, I'm not going to trust the FBI in the investigation. Now, with that said, do I actually think Ron DeSantis will run an investigation that links him back to the Ukraine and then want to actually shed light on that?

probably not it seems pretty unlikely i'll i'll be pleasantly surprised if anything but that is the case but yes i don't think that ron desantis the guy who wouldn't even come out against the ukraine war when he was running for president is gonna actually get to the bottom of this and i'm sorry but the point i was making before is that there is and and maybe i'm struggling to find the the best analogy for it but there is just something where it's like look

If if somebody was saying I wanted to go assassinate Donald Trump because he's such a racist or he's such a he's such a threat to democracy, then maybe I'd buy into this narrative that it's because he's consuming the corporate news or he's watching cable news and that. But this guy actually went to help out with the Ukrainian war effort.

That just points to like a deeper level of radicalization and a more complex story than just, you know, he was all swept up in Wolf Blitzer or something like that. I'm sorry. I'm just not buying that. It just – it comes to a little bit of a different level. Anyway, it is –

We will see one of the things that's very interesting about the first Donald Trump and second Donald Trump assassination attempts is that they're happening in 2024, not in 1963. And this is not a situation where we have, you know, the...

This one angle of JFK getting assassinated in this grainy footage, you know, and like in something like this, obviously there's no footage of it. At least that's emerged yet at all. But you can now you have these kind of like Internet, you know, people who are.

can do, at least attempt to do some real journalism on this. Now, I'm not saying all of them are great and there will be kooks out there who make claims they can't substantiate, but you do have a situation where it's much harder for journalists

say the CIA to have complete control of the flow of information. And so it'll be interesting to see what comes out. Um, clearly somehow they were able to say that that last guy had like no digital footprint. I don't believe that for a second. Um,

But this guy clearly had a serious digital footprint. And this also wasn't a kid, you know, like that's another kind of interesting element to this. This wasn't like, you know, one of these things where a 19 year old is radicalized and has kind of lost their grip on reality. This was a grown adult thing.

who's been very committed to several causes that happen to be the causes of the CIA.

We'll see what happens with that. OK, I wanted to go to on on this discussion because there is something interesting just about the the politics of all of it. There's a Hillary Clinton interview that's been been going viral. Now, I believe this is from before this assassination attempt. But there was just I thought this was kind of interesting enough because, you know, Hillary Clinton is just

The worst human being in the world is truly the herpes of American politics. Never goes away. Could always come back at any given moment. But here she is with Rachel Maddow talking about Trump. I think that's really a critical question. And I think there's a couple of things going on here. You mentioned the press. And sadly, the press is still –

not able to cover Trump the way that they should. They careen from one outrage to the next. What was outrageous three days ago is no longer on the front pages, even though it threatens the physical safety of so many people, particularly, as you point out, immigrants that he and Vance have decided to demonize.

And I don't understand why it's so difficult for the press to have a consistent narrative about how dangerous Trump is. You know, the late great journalist, Harry Evans, you know, one time said that, you know, journalists should, you know, really try to achieve objectivity. And by that, he said, I mean, they should cover the object. Well, the object in this case is Donald Trump.

his demagoguery, his danger to our country and the world, and stick with it.

You know, they were merciless about what they saw as President Biden's, you know, problems in the debate and calling for him to withdraw. I believe Donald Trump has disqualified himself over and over and over again to be a presidential candidate, let alone a president. The second thing, though, is that he's

Part of what Trump is counting on is for people to get desensitized. I mean, oh my gosh, did you hear what he said yesterday? Did you hear who he attacked? Did you hear the viciousness? And it just like with a shrug, okay, fine, we're moving on. Well,

Americans need to understand that they have to take Trump both seriously and literally. He has said what he wants to do. He and his allies with Project 2025, his desire to be a dictator, at least on day one, all of that is in the public record.

And I believe that more Americans have to be, you know, willing to endure what frankly is discomforting and, and to some extent kind of painful, uh,

to take him at his word and to be outraged by what he represents. And then finally, the hopeful side of this is that I do think more and more Americans are rejecting the kind of chaos that he represents. We can't go back. That's what the Harris campaign says all the time. We're not going back. We're not going back.

to what he failed to do to protect American lives during COVID. We're not going back to the romance with dictators that puts innocent lives at risk and America's security in danger. We can't go back and give

this very dangerous man, another chance to do harm to our country and the world. All right. All right. There is Hillary Clinton. I can't stand anymore. All right. Let's get her away. OK, so I did just find this really interesting that Hillary Clinton is complaining that the media isn't harsh enough on Donald Trump.

Yeah, it's just wild. But think about the first of all, you know, it's so funny, too, is like she goes there. She's like, they're not harsh enough. They always skip around, blah, blah, blah. And then what she offers is literally the exact same thing that everyone in the corporate media has been saying this entire time.

He'll be a dictator on day one. Project 2025. He's disqualified to be president. So she just offers nothing new. It's what they're already saying already. But I guess they should be saying it more. I did, to me, the most interesting part of all of this.

is, you know, we were talking about on the last show, and this is a major theme that I've had, you know, for many, many years now, but that essentially there's no such thing as democracy. And then, you know,

In actuality, no one really believes in democracy. It's just kind of this thing that makes people feel good about themselves. What the idea of democracy essentially has become is like a coping mechanism for people in advanced first world countries today to not come to terms with the obvious fact, which is that you are ruled.

You know, there's like that is just the reality. You are a ruled person. And that's that's just true if you live in this country. And, you know, look, I work five, six months out of the year for the government. They take about half of what I make.

Like half of my working is for my family and the other half is for the government. And I have no choice about that. I'm forced into doing that. I'm you know, we're we're not free people in this society. We're ruled. However, when you claim this thing about democracy, it almost gives you this out to feel like, oh, no, no, no. It's like we all kind of got together and decided. Right.

You know, like we're we are really the ones who rule ourselves. And we just we you know, we outsource it to the people in Washington, D.C. It's just not true. It's really not true. It's like, yeah, we decide between two approved upon candidates from the two major political parties that are allowed to participate, both of which will not stop the fact that you have to work for the government for a huge portion of your of your life. Yeah.

But then you have the people like Hillary Clinton who constantly opine about democracy and their biggest critique of Donald Trump, as she just said, is that he's a threat to democracy. Yet she'll also say in the same breath that she believes Donald Trump has been disqualified. She believes he's disqualified. Why is he disqualified? Well, because he's of his rhetoric. He's said things that I don't agree with. And so he's well, what exactly does that mean? Like,

What is it that qualifies Donald Trump to be running for president and what would disqualify him? Right now, the race, at least according to the polls, is like the closest presidential race in my lifetime. It's closer than Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump and it's closer than Joe Biden and Donald Trump were polling going into their elections. It's way closer than Barack Obama and John McCain or anything like that.

It's a coin flip, according to the polls right now, over who's going to win. It comes down to these swing states, and they're all within the margin of error. And so you're like, well, why is it that Donald Trump is qualified? Well, it's because of the voters, right?

It's not because the media wants him to be the candidate. It's not because the big donors want him to be the candidate. They were throwing their money behind DeSantis and Nikki Haley. He's only there because his supporters, however you feel about Donald Trump, however you feel about his voters, his voters want him. He's got tens of millions of people who want him to be president. Is that enough? We'll see, you know, but.

It's just interesting that they could just say, oh, he's disqualified, though. It's kind of just one more example of how nobody actually believes in democracy. It's like, well, he's not he's he's disqualified. He's eliminated himself from the race. Why? Because I don't like him.

The will of the people be damned. I don't like him. He's not qualified. At least be honest then. You don't give a shit about democracy. You don't care. It's not like if 60% of people were voting for Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton wouldn't just go, all right, then he's our guy. He got more people. She doesn't care about democracy at all.

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I, I, I agree with you, but I just, she's such an idiot because unless you're censoring the entire internet, do you think that the news channels yelling more inflammatory nonsense about Donald Trump is what's going to win over the voters?

I mean, I mean, just look at the demographics. You think the swing voters are watching CNN on a nightly basis? And if CNN is louder about the fact that Donald Trump can't be trusted and that his rhetoric is violent and, you know, you can't remember he's outside of the norms.

You guys have drummed up that machine for as long as you possibly could. And guess what? People are desensitized to it because they realize you're lying and that it's annoying to listen to and that it's a temper tantrum and that it's not actually fixing things. And, oh, wait, Donald Trump had the border right. Oh, wait, Donald Trump didn't have us all in all these wars. That doesn't work. You're basically asking the news companies to just get rid of just close the doors on your business.

become completely irrelevant unless you want to go full dictatorship and censor the internet that the only place you can get information is from CNN. And so I guess if you're bored and you want to know what the machine wants you to know, you're like, I might as well find it. I'm not going to get the news, but I can find out what they want to tell me. But guess what? That doesn't work.

And so, I mean, that's why she's a loser is because her plan is, oh, the CNN war machine isn't being loud enough in criticizing Donald Trump and that his behavior is normal. His behavior is fine. What is he doing that's so outlandish?

Can you explain to me what the threat of Project 2025 is, which he has not endorsed? Which isn't even his. Yeah, it's not even his. But what exactly is the threat? Oh, my God. The boogeyman, Project 2025. And what is the threat of Project 2025? Oh, and the innocent lives that are... Wait, Donald Trump's responsible for more innocent lives being dead than what's happened in the Ukraine war? Can you explain that one to me? She is literally a moron.

Or Hillary Clinton's war in Libya or the war in Syria or the war in Iraq that Hillary Clinton voted for. I mean, it's just, you know. Donald Trump's got in a foothold because we're not doing enough to demonize the language that he uses. And since the CNN isn't daily talking about how horrible he is, that's why he seems to be getting more of a foothold. Great. Scream louder about the fact that Donald Trump is a threat to democracy and that his language is dangerous and have everybody turn off their television because you're not reporting anything. Right.

Well, you know, one of the things that's interesting about figures like Hillary Clinton, and this is fairly dominant in our political class, is that, you know, she really is a boomer.

Yeah, I mean, Hillary Clinton is in her 70s. And just something you know about, look, just people in their 70s in general. Forget really evil people like Hillary Clinton, but just people in their 70s. As you know, oftentimes they will have wisdom. You gain wisdom as you get older. But when it comes to, say, like, talking about new technology, you know how it is. I mean, I don't know.

I know like my mother or my mother-in-law or father-in-law, like, I mean, you know, it's a whole thing. It's a whole, I mean, I've had my, my father-in-law I've had, like, he, he will call me and he'll be like, he'll be like, I'm coming over. I have to print something. And I'll be like, oh, okay. Well, I was like, just, just email it to me and I'll, I'll print it out for you. And he goes, no, I have it in my hand.

And I'm like, okay, so you don't need to print it. But he's like, no, I need to mail it. And I'm like, well, if you need to mail it, you need to drop it in a mailbox. Like that's, that's how that works. And he goes, no, I got to mail it from the computer. And you're like, okay, okay. So you need to scan a document and then email it to someone. And he's like, yeah, that's what I said. And you're like, it's not.

It's not at all what you said. And by the way, he comes over to my house to do it. I would just buy them a printer, but there's no chance they know how to install a printer. Like I have to buy them a printer and then go over and install. Then it's going to have to be a phone call about telling them how to use the printer. Like if you could just imagine me trying on the phone to tell my father-in-law how to scan a document on his, like he's going to have to come over. I'm going to have to just do it. Okay. And then by the way, I'm 41. Okay.

Some 20 year olds will run circles around me with anyway, the point that I'm making is just that Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, a lot of these people who are the boomers who are in the political class.

They really do not understand the new landscape of information. And you can see this thing in them where they're like they're very frustrated that they they understand the old methods of propaganda. They understand how it would work in the 80s or the 90s.

You get the corporate media on board and they say the thing you want them to say. And then that's the only information that people have. And if somebody was called a Nazi or a racist in The New York Times and The Washington Post and on CNN, well, then they're going to be branded as that. I mean, that's what the news says. People believed the news when I was a kid. Like my parents believed the news.

It's a crazy thing for people our age to understand. But my parents looked at the news and they were like, those are the people in suits and ties on TV who tell us the truth. That's how they viewed it. I don't know how they were so stupid, but they did. That's how they viewed it. What Hillary Clinton just absolutely doesn't understand, and I don't think this is an act, I think they really don't get it, is that, first of all,

It's not only that, it doesn't matter what CNN says about Donald Trump. It just doesn't matter. They could say he murdered babies. They could say he's going to be a dictator on day one. It doesn't matter. In fact, it just helps him. That's the appeal of Donald Trump, is that every single Donald Trump supporter who's

thinks that CNN hates his guts and that they're lying through their teeth. That's what they all believe. The fact is that they now have other places they can go to get information. Okay? Now, sometimes that's good information. Sometimes it's really, really bad information.

But the point is that it's a whole new world. And so part of the thing that Hillary Clinton and I'll tell you this because I, you know, I worked at CNN for a year and like in the middle of Donald Trump's administration, like I've had like I've had

Private conversations with a lot of the players involved, Brian Stelters and, you know, Don Lemons and S.E. Cupps and people like this. And I'm telling you, it's not an act. They really don't get it. They don't get that what they're doing just helps Donald Trump. And that's why every single day they're like, maybe we just haven't done it well enough.

Maybe we should just... Maybe there's got to be something new. Look, I'll be extra outraged about Donald Trump today because they don't understand that, first off, nobody's watching you. The audience isn't there. I don't know how to explain this, but, like, there is, like...

I get more people to watch me. This is not an exaggeration. Okay. More people watch me do flagrant, like more people watch me do Andrew Schultz's podcast. Then the, then all cable news for that hour combined, like combine the audience of CNN, MSNBC and Fox news for any one given hour. And it's less people than a popular podcast has, has watching them. Okay. Um,

It's there is no audience there. And then to the extent that anyone watches you, you're,

They've already dismissed you as a liar. They don't believe any of it. And so they see you in the form of like a clip online and they go, ah, look, there they are trying to bring Trump down again. And why would these liars want to bring Trump down again? Must be because he's the hero. That's how it just reinforces their view. That's all you're doing with this. And it's kind of amazing to see their inability to grapple with it.

All right. Let me I'm going to read a few chats and then we will we will wrap this episode up. And then I got I got the great Ari Shafir coming out here. We're going to record a State of the Union in a few. Run your mouth podcast porch store dot com porch store dot com run your mouth podcast comic Dave Smith dot com. All right. Tyler says my 83 year old dad is Tucker Pilled. Well, that's pretty that's pretty good. That's about as good as you could hope for an 83 year old dad. That's awesome. Yeah. Tucker's the man.

Boomer dad does this too. Yep. Buy it. And then I need to come every time they want to use it. I know that's why I'd literally, I'd rather just have it at my house. I'd rather just have it at my house and we will solve this together because it's hard enough explaining it to them in real time, but to do it over the phone is just, it's impossible. It's not going to happen. Um,

OK, let me read if anyone wants to get a question and real quick in the chat here, I could I could get to one or two more. Tucker has been instrumental in bringing the older generation to podcasts. That is actually a very, very good point. And I think that's true. I think that I think that that.

Tucker, you know, being the Fox News guy and then transitioning and being so huge was probably one of the people who he had such a loyal fan base that and it was just like, you know, more than Bill O'Reilly. It almost like the podcast world wasn't as developed for him. But with Tucker, who I think also had a younger audience than than Bill O'Reilly. But but he did have some older people. And I think people loved him enough that it was like, OK, yeah,

All right, dad, you got to you got to join X and you can still watch Tucker and they might be motivated to actually figure out how to do that. All right. Gorilla Feet writes, Dave, why come to Montana in the middle of January? Well, I don't know. That's that's when they booked me. Seems like a great time. What's the problem with Montana in January?

Is Montana... What, because it's the middle of winter or whatever? I mean, I don't know. We're going to go to Big Sky. Yeah, we also, you know, we live in the Northeast, so it's not as if we're not in winter, in the middle of winter. I mean, Montana, sure. Does it sound like they probably haven't gotten snow plows there yet? Quite possibly. Are we going to get stuck? Maybe. No, you know, it's...

It's there's, it's just logistic stuff. That's when I had a free weekend and that's when the theater was free. And so that's when we're doing it. Um, okay. Let me see what else. Um,

Uh, okay. Last one. I'll read this. Uh, how telling is it, uh, these historians blast Cooper without doing, uh, the type of research on him. They accuse him of doing on world war two. That is a good, that's a pretty good point. It's a good, it's a good way to phrase it. It is, um, yeah, it is pretty wild. It doesn't really make any sense. And it does kind of reveal their own. Yeah. The lack of, uh,

The lack of the quality that they're demanding in him because they actually don't know what they're talking about. All right. We're going to wrap up the show there. Thank you very much, everybody, for listening. We will catch you next time. Peace.