RFK vs The Machine
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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, everybody? Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem. I'm Dave Smith. He is Robbie the Fire Bernstein. What's going on, sir? How are you?

I got to start scheduling some more porches. This last weekend was pretty magical. It's got me fueled up. I got to get out there and get this winter porch run scheduled. That sounds good. Just pick areas where it's still pretty warm in the winter. There's enough places in this country. We got a whole fall season. Vegas, Arizona, Pacific Northwest. I just got to sit down and get it done.

All right. Nice, nice. And then, of course, me and you, this weekend is the big one. We're out in Hyenas in Dallas and Fort Worth. Great clubs out there, man. I'm really excited to go back. That was one of the best weekends we had last year was that Hyenas run. So very much looking forward to getting back to that. And then, of course, we got a bunch of stuff coming up. Me and Rob will be together on the road quite a bit throughout the rest of the year and with his team.

to be a pretty wild year. So it's this week is Dallas and Fort Worth. And then we got Casper, Wyoming, Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Detroit, Kansas City, Poughkeepsie, Philly, and Bozeman, Florida.

Montana. Looking forward to all of those stops. Comic Dave Smith dot com for all of those ticket dates. And of course, if you're a fan of this show and you haven't already, go sign up at part of the problem dot com and become a supporting listener. You get the members only episode every Thursday. Plus you get all the episodes like you get them first

uncensored, ad-free, all at partoftheproblem.com. That's where all of our episodes stream now. And of course, if you're not a subscriber, you can still check them out everywhere else that you get podcasts. But we do appreciate those of you who sign up. And my Talmud presentation is up. You can check it out. Run your mouth. Ooh.

I don't think I will have made anyone any less anti-Semitic. I'll tell you that. The more you delve into it, you're like, they have a point. The more I started pulling up quotes, I was like, well, that one's out of context. But here's one that reads even worse. But the first 15 minutes are real funny. And then I think it got a little too technical and complicated. But check it out. It's up there. I think you'd enjoy it.

All right. Absolutely. I definitely will be checking that out. Okay. So let's get into it because there's a lot. A lot has happened in the world of politics since our last episode. We did the members-only episode on Thursday. The last one we did for the general public was on Wednesday. Or I did that one solo, I guess. But there's –

There's a lot happened. We had the final night of the Democratic National Convention, and then, of course, we had the big Robert Kennedy Jr. announcement. So let's start diving into all of this. Let's start with now that we've had a few days. It's been a week since the beginning of the DNC and a few days since the end of it. We could kind of look back on...

how we feel it went or thoughts on Kamala Harris's speech or any of this stuff, anything you want to add, of course, Rob, you can. I would say that my...

My biggest takeaway from the Democratic National Convention kind of almost brings me back to how I was feeling last week, last Monday, which, of course, was the first day of the convention where they had Joe Biden, the sitting president of the United States of America, speak on opening night at the very end.

of the event. It was on late. I think it was around 11 p.m. or something like that. And they had Hillary Clinton who had spoken earlier in the day that they clearly got the ones they want you to forget about out of the way on Monday.

Are you having issues with your focus, Rob? You're like crazy out of focus to me. Oh, do you mean visually? Yeah. Yeah. No. Is the Internet connection? Maybe it's on my end. I think I don't know. It seems fine on my end. Frank, is there a problem? I think it's just your Internet, Rob. Oh, OK. Well, maybe it'll kick back in at some point. Whatever. That's what it is.

So they got those guys out of the way on Monday, and then they proceeded with the rest of the convention. I will say, after watching Kamala Harris speak, and after watching the whole convention, the thing that really stands out to me, and there's something very disturbing about it. Now, I'm trying to figure out the way to put this exactly right. So I'll say...

There is there's been an accusation made from progressives and even from some non-progressives about Trump supporters for about eight years now. And the accusation has been essentially that that MAGA is a cult.

MAGA is like basically a big cult and they all follow Donald Trump no matter what he says, even when he's attacking democracy or the Constitution or whatever, exactly however the line goes. You've all heard it. And as somebody who's been a pretty sharp critic of Donald Trump, I can say that there's not.

There's at least a kernel of truth to the idea that Donald Trump has a cult-like following. And it can be kind of frustrating, especially from, I think, like our perspective, where we're often criticizing Donald Trump. But it also is kind of from a place of like, man, we wish this guy could be better. You know what I mean? Like, it's almost like I think

I think in many ways that the Donald Trump voters deserve a better Donald Trump than they're getting. And I have been making this point often for the last eight years, and I'll continue to make it. And I've talked about many times on the show how frustrating it is when Trump supporters will, it's like they will tie themselves into knots to always make an excuse for him.

Even if it's something they agree with you on that, you're like, look, this is a disaster, right? Fauci's terrible, right? And they're like, yes. And you're like, OK, well, he was kept on the task force through all of 2020 by Donald Trump. And it's well, he was tricked. He was lied to. Hindsight is 2020. None of you know, just like and you're like, come on, man, stop making excuses for this guy who's supposed to be the fearless leader. Then he should be better than being tricked or he shouldn't have people around him who are tricking him and whatever. But

So there's no question there is something to that, that people who support Donald Trump have a real attachment to him. And in some ways, they blind themselves to kind of some of his obvious failings. I think that's reasonable enough. However, I guess my takeaway from the convention is kind of this. It is...

The level of cult-like behavior that you have on the Democratic side of the aisle compared to the Trump supporters is 10,000 times creepier. And I think that this convention really demonstrated why exactly that is. And part of it is because it's not even a cult following of a person, which as you know,

As much as that's not great, there's something so much creepier about blindly following the machine.

Does that make sense? That it's not even like you have one guy who you see as your leader, and for whatever reasons you think his good qualities cancel out his bad ones, or you're like, hey, you know what? I'm not even going to focus on the bad ones because, sorry, stakes are too high, and this is my guy, and I think he's the best guy for the job. That is much, much, much less creepy than a religious-like devotion to the machine to the point that you literally would have –

Just six weeks ago, seven weeks ago, whatever it is, you would have said all the things about Joe Biden. And now you'll just they can just take him out, plug someone else in, and you'll say all those things about her. Four months ago, three months ago, two months ago, no one would have acted like having tickets to see Kamala Harris is some event. But now you're all going to fall in line and pretend she's a cultural phenomenon.

She's the embodiment of joy or whatever it is. It's like there's something so much creepier about that. If Donald Trump had not debated Joe Biden, Joe Biden would have been the candidate over this last week, over this last convention. And instead, you're perfectly happy to have him subbed out and someone else put in and you will go right back to your same cult like behavior. That's.

That to me is so much creepier than just being a hardcore supporter of a person. Does that make sense, Rob?

The sheeple remain fully compliant and they will pledge allegiance to the Democratic Party. They just hand them the marching orders. There's nothing to think about. You want me to say that the old guy doesn't have dementia? I'll do that. You want to pretend like Kamala Harris talks like an intelligent person? I can do that. You want to pretend like being a coach was the greatest thing that ever happened, even if it was high school and you were the assistant coach? I can do that. Just tell me what you need.

Yeah, it's like there's this governor of Minnesota.

And he's been the governor of Minnesota all this time. I'm not saying he was like a huge national figure, but nobody has ever been talking about how he's America's dad or he's this. Oh, you got to check out this governor. He's really got the talent until the day he's picked. And then everyone goes, yep, America's dad. But you know what I mean? It's like, well, you just they just activated you. And now you just fall in line and say whatever dumb thing it is they want you to say. It's just it's.

It's amazing. And in some ways, and I think this is probably the strongest case for supporting Donald Trump, is that you're like, look, the real enemy here is not any one politician. The real enemy is the machine itself. You know, like, does anybody really think I mean, who's the worst of the worst? Like Lindsey Graham is as bad a politician as there is someone like that.

But if Lindsey Graham were to be removed, it wouldn't solve anything. There'll be somebody else who comes in who plays the same game. Maybe not quite as bad as him, but like still the whole machine keeps moving. So it's like the question is like the like or I should say the point is the real enemy is the machine.

The real enemy isn't Joe Biden or Donald Trump or even Kamala Harris. It's the whole machine. And if you have one side that is blindly obedient to the machine and it's almost an experiment that's being run here, is that can nothing but the machine win?

Like that's kind of the Kamala Harris experiment here. Can we just, is it as simple as we could pluck anyone in there and there's enough worship of the machine, the machine has enough power that it can get its candidate over the finish line. That's kind of the experiment that we're watching right now. There is just, there's literally no organic support. It's all manufactured. It's, it's all either fake, uh,

and created by the machine, or it's just people who simply are cult members who will just support whatever the machine tells them to support. And if that is enough,

That is a terrible, terrible situation for the country to be in, you know, and I don't even this includes if they can steal it, if they can do whatever it is, if they can do that, then essentially you've got no more even input from the voters or nothing that matters. It's just like, OK, this is this is it. We're here to worship the machine. And that's enough to take out their competition.

That's not a good thing. It's kind of like your trading spaces example, where if they can even get Kamala Harris by, then it shows the strength of the people. You were saying it during COVID. It almost felt like they were just sitting around like, can we get them to wear masks? Can we get them to take them off when they're in a restaurant? Can we get them to not go outside and exercise and get them to do it for the sake of their health? Right.

I guess this falls directly in line with that, where they're sitting around and they're really testing their strength of, can we get these idiots to support Kamala Harris? Do we have that much strength here that we can put anything by them? And it seems like the Democratic Party's coming together and going, well, it's better than the orange man. So...

We're on board. Well, and what I you know, part of what I mean by this, where it's just the machine is that, look, obviously, it's not as if the machine gets behind certain candidates. That's that's nothing new. I guess with Kamala Harris, what's new is that that's all that's there.

You know what I mean? Like, OK, at least with like Barack Obama, you can see where it's like, OK, the machine clearly got behind Barack Obama. But also he was this incredibly talented guy who did have grassroots support in all of this. With Kamala Harris, the experiment is almost like, OK, let's let's run that experiment again. But take away the talent, take away the grassroots support, take away. Can we just say that it's there?

Can we just tell you she's an amazing speaker and then watch her come and give the most average of speeches like that? You know what I mean? And to be honest, I don't exactly know. I don't know what the answer to this question is. I'm kind of shocked that it's gotten this far, to be completely honest. But I will say that the reason I say I don't know is also because.

As I'm watching this, the other thing that I just think about, I mean, look, the first one is just so hard to take away that it's like you literally just subbed out Biden and subbed in Kamala Harris and it didn't, it doesn't cost anything. There's just no, there was no, you realize how fake all the support for Biden was and how easily it can be transferred to somebody else. I will say I also do

I'm not convinced that it can work. You know, like there is something that at least I saw through the convention where you watch it because, by the way, they're very blatantly ripping off Obama. I mean, this is like what they're trying to recreate, which is

to some degree in terms of conventional political wisdom, I guess kind of makes sense. Like he's the last really successful model. Why not try to recreate that? It worked when he was the first black president. Why not for the first female president of color or whatever? But they have like from the artwork, like they got the same guy who did the hope change stuff to do the Kamala Harris stuff. There's been lots of like in the presentation, they're trying to present her in a similar way. But,

But you sit here and you have this whole convention and this whole kind of media apparatus machine because this is the machine. So the whole machine is behind her. And they're telling you constantly they're describing her as if she's Barack Obama. But then you just get her. You don't get Barack Obama. And you see the contrast. Barack Obama just spoke the other night. I mean, you just see she's just simply not nearly as good at this as he is. And it does.

at least make me wonder, is it possible that there's going to be, like, that there could be a negative effect to all of that? That you're kind of building up this entree the whole time, and you're like, don't fill up on appetizers, man, because this entree is going to be the most delicious thing you've ever eaten. And then when you get it, you're like, ah, yeah, I just picked this up at a gas station. It's not really anything that good. They're building her up like it's something really big, and you do wonder, it's like,

OK, she gives this speech. It was a very whatever speech. She's going to have to at some point do interviews. We'll see if they're going to actually do debates. That seems to be up in jeopardy now. But I do wonder if like when you build her up this big as if she's such a generational talent, is that going to backfire when people see what she actually is, which is thoroughly unimpressive? I guess we'll find out together. That's what makes this fun.

Yeah, yeah. But it was just, you know, like, it was kind of unbelievable to just watch the way, you know, there's such an illusion of a process, and then the machine gets behind whoever they get behind.

And it's just I guess it was just even for me, it was like laid a little bit more bare when you just had this scenario where the machine literally just kicked out their president, just kicked him out and then picked her. And like everybody's just going to fall in line. I mean, or at least, you know, a lot of Democrats are seemingly just falling in line. It's pretty wild to me to say.

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Okay. So, yeah, I mean, I guess aside from that, my, my takeaway from the convention, um, I thought not a very good convention for the Democrats. That's kind of how I felt about it. Um, I thought the, uh, Obama, the Obama's night was their best night. Clearly, um, Bill Clinton's speech was underwhelming. I thought Kamala Harris's speech was underwhelming. Um, and it just, it, it,

Like everything in terms of like the production of it, everything looked good. Everything came together. They filled it up with a lot of people. It wasn't like a disaster, but I did think it was overall a pretty like I did not find it to be a very effective one. I guess we'll find out in the next couple of days what type of bump Kamala Harris got off of it, if any. I don't know. I wouldn't personally I wouldn't really expect much, but I could be wrong.

Well, I think for people that were watching it, she came off fine. She came off presidential. I think some people were enthusiastic by...

the general spectacle of it. However, it doesn't mean anything because we know what she might look like in a debate. We know what she might look like in interviews. Even at the beginning of her speech, she's getting annoyed with the audience for clapping too much and you got to see a little bit of her true colors and her inability to even manage what's a good situation. Too many people clapping for you. Even there, she's losing her cool a little bit.

there was no substance throughout the entire thing. I felt like I was watching bat mitzvah speeches or wedding toasts of just thank you and this person. So the whole thing was theatrics. They've been able to dominate the news cycle of look at this and the enthusiasm for Kamala Harris. That's been the storyline so far. If you're a Democrat and you were just like, hey, can we get someone who's

uh presentable in the race if you watch kamala harris speech she did fine she read off a teleprompter she was enthusiastic so in terms of like the opening scene of the kamala harris movie it's starting off on a high she's coming out of the convention with the news cycle saying hey we've got a good candidate and for the core supporters looking at it going look i think we can win this thing

But that's the opening scene. We're first starting this thing, and now it's a race against the clock of can they keep her in the basement long enough that nobody sees who she really is? Yeah, well, this is also it. Clearly, one of the aspects of the Kamala Harris campaign is that is like, can we make sure she doesn't actually say anything?

And that's been that's been a I mean, it's really look, obviously, political theater is not something that was invented in 2024. And that that's, you know, people like me and Rob, I guarantee if we could make the world in our image.

Well, first of all, a lot of things would be different, but certainly if we could at least make one aspect of the world in our image, we would probably like a much more substantive policy discussion to be what dominates political theater, right? Like a real presentation of your policies, real arguments about why one policy is preferable to another, things like that. That's not really what you get in politics in general, right?

However, what seems to be different about this year is that almost every other year, almost every other year, really with 2020 as the exception where Joe Biden figured out this blueprint of simply I will just hide.

I'm not saying anything. And let this just be a referendum on Trump. It's Trump. And that's all you see up there. Do you like him or do you not like him? Because if you don't like him, vote other guy. I'll be in my basement like that was Joe Biden's 2020 campaign. And then some, you know, we'll return to normalcy kind of thing, which, you know, was appealing in 2020 to a lot of people for understandable reasons. But previous to that.

when Obama was running for president, even when Bill Clinton was running, when George W. Bush was running, all of them, there would always have been, okay, there was a primary process where they at least pretended to have some, some,

different policy views. And then someone emerged as the winner from that. And then they argued their policies to some degree, at least with the other side. And this is part of what I meant when I said it's just it's an experiment in purely the machine with nothing else attached to it. Right. Because it's not like

Obama running in 2008 where you're like, okay, the machine got behind this guy. The guy is saying we're going to end the war in Iraq. We're going to close Guantanamo Bay. We're going to end torture. We're going to reinstitute habeas corpus, like all these things that he was actually saying he would do. This Kamala Harris, okay, Kamala Harris ran for president in 2020 and

And she has been the vice president for the last four years. And she has walked away from what she ran on in 2020. And she's not running on Joe Biden's legacy. Like she's not she she will not dare for which is, by the way, pretty interesting. Right. Because doesn't that totally reveal how much the corporate media's line was garbage and that we were pointing it out? And we were totally right about this, of course, like most things that.

They were going, oh, you know, the economy is great. Joe Biden is such a huge success. The only problem is his age or the only problem is that people don't realize how successful the economy is or anything. So then why isn't his vice president running on their track record?

Why isn't she running on this will be a continuation of the Biden administration? She's not running on what they did on immigration. She's not running on what they did on the economy. She's not running on what they did in Ukraine. She's not running on what they're doing with Israel. She's running away from all of it.

From all of it. She's saying, when I get in there, we're going to tackle prices. We're going to have this whole new scheme of price controls. That's what we're going to do when I get in there. Why aren't you pushing for the administration to do that right now? You're the vice president and the candidate. You think you'd have some influence around there? She's not running on the immigration stuff. She's not defending that track record. She's also very noticeably not running on anything that she ran on in 2020. Right?

In 2020, her biggest thing was Medicare for all. That was at the center of her campaign. She's not mentioning anything about that anymore. She was saying that we should decriminalize...

of illegal immigration, that the taxpayer should pick up their health care and all types of that. She's not running on any of that stuff. So you're left in this thing where she's straight up. By the way, her website has like no policies on it. Like I think if you go to her website, at least the last time I went to it, there's like a takedown of Project 2025 on it.

But there's but she doesn't have her own version of that. And I'm not even saying she needs to have like a 900 page policy document. I'm saying she doesn't have a four page policy document. Like, it's just not the end. And there's no pressure. There's no pressure from the machine to even go like, well, you have to run on something.

Like, you know, OK, you don't want to run on what you ran on last time. You don't want to run on the administration that you're the number two in, but you got to run on something. It's like, no, even though even the part of her speech where she was talking about policy was just like totally vague.

The stuff about big corporate America and price gouging and all this, she didn't lay out a comprehensive plan or a coherent plan on what constitutes price gouging, what mechanisms you're going to use to control these prices. It's just that's it. It's just the machine. No candidate, just the machine. It's really fascinating to watch.

That's such a good point on the 180 from the Biden administration and his accomplishments where they were trying to say best president ever. Economy's great. You just don't realize it. Nancy Pelosi should be on Mount Rushmore because if that was true, then it would be like, yeah, it would be like a coach who won. They love coach examples now. If you had a coach who won four straight seasons in a row and he was the championship coach and he's retiring because of his age,

and you escalated the assistant coach to the coach position, he would go, I'm going to continue everything that that guy was doing. We've been winning, and I was lucky to be here and see the way that that guy operated. Our policies are working. And now since I'm younger, I'm going to be able to continue this for longer. Let's keep doing it. 100%.

It's a great contradiction. The fact that she's not trying to champion and basically remove herself from the administration as much as possible. Doesn't that at least validate the fact that over the last three years, it has been terrible.

Yeah, I mean, right? Because that's a really good example you use. And it's like, yeah, you win four Super Bowls in a row, but the head coach is 84, and he's like, I can't do this anymore. So the defensive coordinator is taking over. The first thing he's going to say is like, listen, we're going to run the defense exactly like we've been running the defense. We still got our star quarterback. We still got this. It's a well-oiled machine. If our only weakness was that this guy was too old, well, we plugged that up, and now we're ready to keep going. But of course, that's...

she's not running on any of that. And she's, she's not, um, uh, you know, she's not running on any of the woke shit because she knows how unpopular that is. She's not running on even her, her portion with Israel and Gaza. She's like, it's like, she's trying to distance herself from the administration without saying anything. You know what I mean? Like it's somehow that like she is, uh,

She'll say, it's like, hey, we always have to defend Israel no matter what, but also it sure is awful what they're doing to Gaza. It's like, can I have all of the support? Can I have the Zionists and the pro-Palestinian support now? That's it. It's like, so again, you really do see it's almost in some way part of this experiment here is like,

Can we remove everything, all of the illusions? Can we remove a candidate or a campaign or them standing for anything? And can we like this is to support Kamala Harris is as close to it's even more so than Joe Biden. It is just can we just get people to support the machine? Nothing else. Straight up like I vote for the machine. That's it.

I vote for the fact like that. It's never been more self-evident that there is a machine because the president of the United States is senile and clearly incompetent of actually being a president. And so now it's almost like, you know, this thing is running without a leader right now. Do you like that?

Would you like to continue that? And I got to say, and this is maybe where I'm struggling to articulate this as precisely as I'd like to. But I guess my point is that I actually I find that much creepier than a cult of personality. I find that creepier in some ways than supporting a dictator.

Like supporting a dictator, at least you're saying that's the guy. He's the guy who leads us. He's the guy who at least theoretically is accountable to us. Whereas just supporting this machine is going, no one's accountable. We don't even know who's running it, but let's keep this machine going. And I can support a leader who doesn't even have to pretend to be campaigning on anything.

on anything. Like there's not even like the most basic levels of accountability. Like the most basic ones would be, why aren't you running on what you ran on in 2020? Did you not believe that then? Or do you still believe that now? Did you change your mind? Explain that to me.

Did you get to studying and realize Medicare for all isn't actually a good system? Did you did you change your mind on whether illegal immigrants should get free health care? Why aren't you running on that anymore? I thought that's what you used to believe in. There's not even a single like not even that phrased in the nicest, most gentlest way is asked of her.

and she's not in taking interviews so she doesn't have to answer any of these questions it would be so great to watch her like imagine she flip-flop on support for the ukraine war and she has to explain her stance and she goes well it turns out russia's not that big of a country it's more of a middle country and when a middle country invades a small country it's not big enough for the us to get involved with

Well, OK, so, yeah, right. So we'll see. I mean, I guess you'll have to do an interview at some point, but who the hell knows? It's just been really anyway, just kind of fascinating to watch this this experiment unfolding. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Proton VPN.

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To check out an exclusive and limited time offer, go to protonvpn.com slash Dave Smith. Once again, this is a limited time offer, so go check it out today at protonvpn.com slash Dave Smith. All right, let's get back into the show. Anyway, the other big news that, of course, we have to talk about

is Bobby Kennedy. So the day after, Thursday was the final day of the convention, and very wisely planned, they took the next day, this was a pretty savvy political move, the day after the DNC ends, Bobby Kennedy gives a speech

effectively announcing that he's ending his campaign and supporting Donald Trump. I know people will give me pushback. I had a long post on Twitter that went kind of viral about this the other day. I know I hear all the people, he didn't end his campaign. He's just, you know, he suspended his campaign or he

He's just taking himself off of the swing states. Yes. Okay. Fair enough. But when a candidate comes out and says, I can't let the other side win because this guy is better. And then is speaking at that guy's rally later that night, he's effectively dropped out and endorsed Donald Trump. This is, you know, it's,

I was saying when last week, when, when it seemed like this was going to happen, that I didn't think this would be a huge game changer. I, I'm always skeptical of how much weight endorsements actually have. I will say,

Looking at it, it was done in about as effective a way as it could have been done. I did think Bobby Kennedy gave one of the best speeches of his life when he announced this on Friday. It was just incredible. And there is something kind of powerful about having Bobby Kennedy...

come out and deliver it the way he did, where you have Bobby Kennedy's son and Jack Kennedy's nephew saying like, I've been a Democrat my entire life. And the most important thing right now is that Democrats don't win. It means that this, they have become the party of war censorship and, uh, you know, uh, attacks on our children as he kind of phrased it. Um,

I got to say, I did think it was pretty powerful. So I'm kind of interested to see what effect this has on the race. I think it was very powerful. And I do think it's interesting the way that it might play in the swing states. Maybe it takes the race away from the stealable margin that the Democrats need. There's one fateful flaw here, and it could be that the rest of the nation's not that intelligent and they don't care about this.

The win to me would be you take Bobby Kennedy and you tell him, hey, you're going to be in charge of the environment and you get to go all about whatever your environmental talk is and you're going to talk out against censorship and you get to work in all these categories. How do you have Bobby Kennedy talking about the health category without admitting that you made a mistake throughout the covid regime?

It's an inherent contradiction to go, hey, this guy would have better protocols for how we should be handling the health situations without platforming

His biggest talking point, which is we messed up COVID, which I was in charge of. That's that's part one. Part two is even Bobby Kennedy had to walk away from the health talking point because at least in terms of the larger conversation about childhood vaccines, I'm not saying he's right or wrong. That did that came off unpopular enough in terms of the general nation that he had to go, hey, this is not what I'm running on.

So, it seems like I do think if he was actually commanding 5% in the swing states and now those go to Donald Trump, that's a huge talking point. I think if Bobby Kennedy was running solo, hey, I care about the healthier kids and here's the problem, is an extremely compelling talking point. I think letting people know, hey, you're getting fat and I can make you healthy, everyone wants to look better. That's a charming and sexy talking point. Oh, wait, I'm fat because they're just poisoning my food and you'll take the poison out and then I can be thin?

That sounds great. Who doesn't like that? But I don't understand how you have Bobby Kennedy having a serious conversation about what's wrong with health care in this country without walking back where you were with COVID.

Yeah, it's I get your point for sure. And it's not just that, you know, Donald Trump's handling of covid or the people he put around him. But it's the fact that he's still bragging about Operation Warp Speed. And I don't know how you square that circle with Bobby Kennedy now, you know, and if you try and get both, then you have to be out there lying.

And so if you guys are just out there lying, you're not the truth party and you're not you're not going to win the media war because we're also just hearing like, wait, this sounds slimy, too. This sounds the same. Oh, she brought Bobby Kennedy over to be the hey, we've got to be honest and we've got a level with everybody and we're going to bring back truth and transparency at the same time while he doesn't criticize Trump in the way they handled covid. How does that come off?

It just sounds like I just think you should have platformed him to a different lane, which could have been, hey, we're going to take on the online censorship or, hey, we're going to take on, you know, he's been a lifelong environmentalist and he's got better ideas for the whatever the hell. But I think the second you platform him in the health lane, you've just got this giant contradiction. You're going to have to figure out how to sell, which I think just just kind of deflates the entire the entire thing of bringing him over.

Well, I don't know if it deflates the entire thing. It definitely makes it a little bit more of a difficult sell. You're right about that. One of the things, so it's kind of interesting, right, is so Bobby Kennedy's campaign, you know, now that it's over or, okay, again, you know, not technically over, but whatever. You guys get what I'm saying. It does leave me kind of just reflecting on the campaign in general.

And what like what what was that what was kind of the long term value of it. It's a bit of a you know I had Bobby on the show back when he close to when he first announced that he was running and.

And I loved it. It was a great... I really thought it was a great podcast, and I found him to be a super interesting guy. And still, to this day, there's just several personal qualities about him that I really like. And

Obviously, we kind of had a bit of a falling out politically over the Israel stuff. And then he was good enough to come back on the show. And we argued a bunch about that. That was really the thing that came up between us, between my interest in his campaign and the campaign was was his position on the war. I do think, look, it's like impossible for me to not say that.

that I do think that really held the campaign back from what it could have been. It's just whatever, you know, it is what it is, whatever was going on in his mind or whatever the reason is why he decided to go the way he did on that, I think really hurt him from what this could have been. It's also noteworthy that in this incredible speech that he gave, that didn't come up.

You know, like this, his position on the war in Gaza did not come up. His position on the war in Ukraine came up quite a bit. And he is just so good on that stuff. I think I think, you know, as I look back at the campaign, obviously, there's the major issue that I had with that. Obviously, there's other issues I have with Bobby that we don't agree on. His housing policy and stuff like that, I thought was very, very bad, like straight up really dangerous and really economically unsound stuff.

But he was just nothing short of heroic on the COVID vaccine, on COVID.

the war in Ukraine, on the national security apparatus, the military industrial complex, on censorship, on government corruption in general. I mean, there's just these issues that he was phenomenal on. And you saw a lot of that in the speech. And so I will say, like, as as this kind of ends or transitions into the next thing, I am I'm glad he ran. I think we're a better country for Bobby Kennedy having run this campaign and

And the other thing that I'm really left with that I think a lot of people who saw that speech, you know, I was at my my in-laws house this weekend. I took the kids and my wife down there and I was watching it. I watched the speech with them.

And I was interested to just kind of see their reaction to it. You know, like they follow, you know, politics and they follow my show to some degree and stuff. And like they know kind of what's going on. But they were just both blown away by the speech, as was I. I had to say as I was watching it. And one of the things –

And it's really, this is, I got to like do a deeper dive into this because it's just not something that I focus on. I'm a little bit embarrassed to say that. But one of the things that I thought was really amazing about Bobby Kennedy's campaign is that he made like,

He put health right at the center of his campaign. Like that was if there was one thing that was the major thing he was running on, it was probably that you could argue also some of the other stuff that I just mentioned. But I do think that was kind of the centerpiece. And it was just hard to not notice. It was like so glaring that you're like, oh, no one who's running for president ever talks about this.

And that's like, you know, like he would say these things about how like he goes, you know, we lead the world in chronic illnesses. And I was like, really? I didn't know that. I didn't know that we lead the world in chronic illnesses. Like, OK, why is that? And some of the stuff that he was rattling off in that speech, I don't know. Did you catch the whole like the end of the speech where he was talking about like how unhealthy our kids are?

And like some of the numbers are like truly wild, like where he's just talking about like, okay, he's going like from 1960 to today. Like back then, this was the rate of autism in young boys today. Here's the rate. Here was the obesity rate. Here's the rate today. Here was the diabetes rate. Here's the rate today. And going through all these different things. And it's like, yo, we are like dying as a country. Like our children are sick and like,

Well, how does that not come up all the time? How is every presidential campaign not talking about this? Like maybe they're disagreeing on what the solution is. OK, maybe they're disagreeing on what the culprit is. But you're telling me that's just not coming up. Like what could be more important than that? What's more important than all our kids are sick?

Jeez. It's just like it's unbelievable to see him focus on this and then to go like, oh, wow. Like what? Forget just how bad a sign for a society it is when your children are sick. How about when your children are sick and you don't care?

Like it's not even an issue. It's not even an issue that's ever brought up. I mean, maybe like the closest it'll come is like maybe someone from the Biden administration will brag about how the price of insulin is down or something like that. Oh, we passed this bill and it made insulin a little more affordable. But they're never having the conversation of like, why do so many people need insulin?

What's going on here? Why is it that type 2 diabetes used to be called adult-onset diabetes because it was unheard of in children? And now we have a huge percentage of our children who have it. What? What's going on?

How did this happen? And then it seemed like so much throughout the Kennedy campaign, the accusation would be that he's a kook because of what he describes as the potential culprits in that. So it's like, oh, no, you kook vaccines aren't the reason autism is increasing. It's like, oh, OK, so what is?

And what's the plan? Oh, that's oh, there is no plan. Oh, you have no interest in figuring it out. Not only do you have no interest in solving it, you'd just rather not talk about it. And you're almost mad at this guy for bringing it up. So I don't know. I don't know enough about it to like, you know, conclusively say this is what's causing it. I do think that there's a general acceptance amongst Americans that essentially our food is poison.

And everyone just kind of knows that. Like, yeah, no, if you go to like, you know, when you go to the gas station, Rob, and you walk up to the counter to like get some, you know, zins or whatever it is that you're in there for. And like, you know, the thing, the thing, the zins, which nobody can actually demonstrate are bad for you are like way behind the glass. But everything else that you pass by on your way is just like garbage, junk.

Just poison until you get up to the front. And within those poison, maybe if you're trying to be smart, you'd be like, I found some trail mix or something that's not complete poison. If you got the cheaper brand of trail mix, that's poison too. But I got the more expensive one that's not poison. But everything else is just poison. Poison all around you. And we all just kind of know this and accept it. Like our government went to war with cigarettes.

because smoking is bad for you. It's like, okay, smoking is bad for you. How about everything else in every gas station across the country? Me and you travel this country a lot. It's just poison everywhere. You know what I mean? And it's just weird that that doesn't come up as like, it's like, oh, we're choosing to poison ourselves

And that almost never comes up. I do just find that kind of interesting. And Bobby Kennedy, in a very unique way, inserted this obvious thing

into the conversation. Like he, he kind of just one man insisted we're talking about this and that has kind of moved the needle in a pretty tangible way. And I, I would, I just think as the campaign ends, you can't not give him credit for that. Whether he's perfectly right about all the things he says, I don't know. Um, let's assume he's not, but still, um,

He's at least bringing up the issue. And then, of course, you have what is kind of one of the differences in the Trump versus the Kamala Harris campaign is that you have Trump at least goes, oh, that's very interesting. We should we should think about that. Maybe we'll do something about that. Whereas Kamala Harris is just like not interested in talking. Sorry.

And that's looking to make health care free so you guys can be as sick as you need. Yep. Right. Isn't that essentially it? And it's look, all of the conversations, it's not just the Democrats, it's kind of the Republicans, too. But all of the conversations about health care are kind of amazing that like, you know, in in 2008,

This was the major issue that the Democrats ran on. This was right at the center was Hillary's version of healthcare versus Obama's, ultimately Obama's versus McCain's. Obamacare was one of the first things he did when he got in as president.

There was talks about the Republicans of repealing and replacing Obamacare. Of course, in 2020, Medicare for all, back when Kamala Harris believed in that, was one of the big issues, particularly that there was this, you know, there was a pandemic that year. So health was a big issue.

topic of conversation. And even throughout all of that, none of it ever came up. It was always just a conversation about like the last link in the chain, your health insurance. You know what I mean? Like forget how you got sick. The conversation is now about what your deductible could be for, you know what I mean? Like that was the conversation or throughout COVID or any of it. The conversation was about like, have you worn your mask and have you got your jab?

There was never like a real conversation, even in, even when like little things would come up where they'd be like, Oh, you know, like 70 something percent of the people hospitalized with COVID were obese.

okay why was that and of course america i mean did terribly against covid is our country if you look at the uh like our uh the percentage we are of the global population versus the percentage of covid deaths it was like we were way more than what we should have been and why is that it's like oh yeah everyone knows oh yeah because we're an incredibly sick society all right well you know

Seems like maybe we should talk about that. It was very powerful when Bobby Kennedy, he just read off a bunch of stats about how sick our children are. And then he goes, why are we choosing to do this to our children? And I was just like, God damn. Yeah, that's a really good point. Why the hell are we choosing to do this? Why would any people choose to do this to their kids?

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in terms of the power that RFK support for Donald Trump will, will have, I do think there's something, um,

I see some of these narratives sometimes, and sometimes they're not exactly what I'd want them to be. But I do think I have a decent knack for going like, okay, no, this is stupid. I don't think this is going to work and be effective. That's how I feel about calling Kamala Harris a commie. I don't think that's good. I do think there's something about...

There's something about Bobby Kennedy, which maybe I kind of overlooked this when I was just talking about it before it had happened because I hadn't heard his speech yet. I did think there was something really powerful about Bobby Kennedy. Again, his name being Bobby Kennedy and him saying, look, the most important thing here is that a Democrat can't get elected. As the Democrats have just they've gone off the deep end. And between Donald Trump himself, a former Democrat,

RFK, Elon Musk, just like a lot of the guys in his orbit were all Democrats. And I think there is something powerful about that group.

That narrative, the narrative being like the Democrats have become the party of war, the party of censorship, the party of corruption. That's what they are now. They are no longer the party of the little guy. You know, now, obviously, Bobby Kennedy in his speech was talking about like what the Democrats were in the 60s.

There's a lot of seeing that through rose-colored glasses. You know, how much can you really blame him for that? It is his father and uncle who he's talking about. But it's certainly a powerful argument to be like, yeah, that is not the Democrats of today. We'll see. We'll see how effective that is. It's...

It's getting interesting. You got Kamala Harris got to run out the clock. Bobby Kennedy just flip sides, endorsed Trump. I guess now Trump is amongst what I think are just lying polls and interest in Kamala. I think probably is back in the lead or has closed whatever they were saying the gap is. I don't pay that much attention to the polls.

but it will also just be interesting to see how Bobby Kennedy is actually utilized for the rest of the campaign race if he kind of now is a little bit more of a quiet character or if Trump kind of throws him at the media a whole bunch. Yeah, that will be interesting. Let's play this clip from CNN responding to the Bobby Kennedy speech. I did find this interesting that this is – the media response in general I found interesting. This one stuck out to me, so let's play that clip.

I was watching that and Donald Trump last week stood and said in front of a bunch of groceries and said, I haven't seen any Cheerios in a long time. I had Cheerios for breakfast. This was cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. And trying to get any logic out of that is good luck with that, because it's one, you can't understand what he says to. If you can, you can understand what he says. And reminded of a line of Mel Brooks is blazing saddles when somebody gets up and gives an indecipherable speech. He says, cuckoo.

Who can argue with that? That's authentic frontier gibberish. And that's exactly what that is. Yeah. I was watching. All right. That's something just pre first of all, I, I don't even know what the point of bringing up the Cheerios thing was. And then to let everyone know that he had Cheerios for breakfast. Donald Trump says he hasn't seen Cheerios in a long time. Um,

Was that responding to the Bobby Kennedy speech or when Donald Trump was out there with all the food? He was referring to that when Donald Trump was out there with all the food. And he goes, he hadn't seen Cheerios in a long time. I had Cheerios for breakfast. But this was cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. It was just him trying to get that awful line out.

was why he started with that, which, by the way, I think he's trying to paint Donald Trump as like a rich, out-of-touch guy or something. Like he hasn't seen Cheerios in a long time, but I had Cheerios for breakfast this morning. You had better breakfast, dude. You're on the news. You can do a little better than General Mills Cheerios. Well, also, just like it is kind of, I don't know, maybe this is me being removed into like the world I live in now, but like, yeah, no, Cheerios is kind of an old thing.

Like people don't most people I know, at least like if they have cereal, it's like there's all these newer, like healthier cereals. People don't just get General Mills Cheerios as much anymore. Anyway. Yeah, really? Have some eggs. Cut up an avocado. It's good for you. Anyway, so there but he then just very clearly like insults Bobby Kennedy's voice.

Because first off, you can't understand them. Even if you can, you can't understand them. And it's like, that's going to be, it really is like, I don't know. I mean, disabilities in the democratic party. That's what I'm like all, all of a sudden just like attacking somebody for a legitimate, like neurological condition is that this is just acceptable now. Like it's, it's unbelievable. If you remember back to like,

The thing with Trump, when he did the like, oh, thing, and everyone was like, oh, my God, he's making fun of a handicapped guy. It's like, all right, but why are you just allowed to just literally – the guy gives, however you feel about him, the most thoughtful political speech that any presidential candidate has given this year. It's a low bar, but that's what he just gave.

And your response is like, well, I can't even understand this freak when he talks. Like, what? That is wild that that's CNN's take. Of course, they don't want to show people that speech. And they want just like, don't listen to the speech. Just listen to my summary of it. But the issue is that that speech is going super viral online. It's in millions and millions of people are going to see that speech. So I will say when I look at this,

You know, I and I kind of do have a knack for for picking this out where I go. I don't think that propaganda is going to work. I don't think that's going to work. What did that guy have to say when Fetterman was out there reading off of a teleprompter and couldn't read or whatever? Yeah. And hey, we can't have this guy in the Senate.

I mean, I was saying that, but I make fun of everybody and I'm mean. No, it's just it's wild to see that. Like it is also it's just like one more reminder that the kind of the progressive elite they you know, it's like we all know this. But examples like this really kind of it shines through where you just have that thing where you're like, oh, oh, oh, oh, I'm sorry. I forgot. You don't actually believe anything.

You don't actually stand for anything, you know? It's like, oh, all right. Well, now we all see what you are. You didn't actually believe any of that. It's just a weapon. It's just a tool. It's just like if someone's making fun of your guy, you can be like, hey, I'm very offended. We don't make fun of people's disabilities. But as soon as there's somebody else who you don't like, the first thing you have in your mind is like, oh, let me get a little shot in at the fact that the guy can't speak properly.

Yeah. All right. I mean, I don't know. Like, I'm fine with it. I'm not saying like we should have this like nerfed up world. I'm fine with like, OK, make your point. But then we all get to play by those rules. And then you go like, yeah, that's right. This guy does struggle to speak to speak. And he's still a way better speaker than your candidate.

Do we actually want to compare substance between this and what was said at the DNC by anybody or what Biden said anywhere over the last four years? Yep.

No, and look, he, I'll tell you, his portion about the war in Ukraine was phenomenal too. And like, I don't know, say whatever you want to about the guy, but that, but nobody, including Donald Trump, when he was at his absolute best on the issue, nobody has broken it down like Bobby Kennedy did. No presidential candidate, I should say, has broken it down like Bobby Kennedy did. And he's absolutely right about that. He was just going through how America is,

thwarted peace at every step of the way from before the war broke out to after the war broke out. And he brought up us overthrowing the government in 2014 to install our own government there. I mean, he went through the whole thing and he's absolutely right about it. And so anyway, I, you know,

He's he also talked a lot about censorship and how how blacked out he was from the media. And it is totally true. It's totally a fair point that he was like talking about how many interviews Ross Perot got in the corporate media compared to how he's been completely blacked out. And it is like, yeah, like.

Look, however you feel about Bobby Kennedy, he was a legit third party challenger. There was a guy who raised millions of dollars, had millions of people supporting him, had a big platform like, you know what I mean? Like he he was a legit contender and the media just totally blacked him out. And when they did talk about him, it would just be to smear him. And so it's like, yeah, well, how are you the party of democracy if that's what you do?

It's like that's not democracy. I mean, there's like I don't know exactly what the threshold is, but there's got to be a threshold where like, hey, this is a serious candidate. They get to you want your viewers to hear what they have to say. And it's just obvious that like CNN and the entire machine are in the business of not wanting you to hear what dissidents have to say. So anyway, I thought it was a very powerful speech. We will see where this all goes. I do think.

it's not that I believe the polls necessarily because I do not, but I do think that the trajectory of the polls over the next week is going to be interesting to

To go like, where is it? Is it going that like is it? Does it seem to be demonstrating that Kamala Harris is gaining or losing? I really just don't know this. We're so far out of like conventional politics or what there is a precedent for. You know, you're talking about like a convention with somebody who was just appointed president.

um, as the nominee a couple weeks ago. Um, and then a huge third party contender who is the son of a democratic legend coming out and supporting the Republicans. I don't know, man, I've never seen anything like this before. So who, who's going to benefit the most from this? I don't know. I will say I'm, I'm hopeful that, um,

The whole experiment of can you just support the machine? I'm really hopeful that that doesn't work. And I think there's a good chance that it still doesn't. I didn't think the convention was anything great. And I thought RFK probably stole a lot of their thunder. We'll see.

We'll see what happens. All right. That's our episode for today. Thanks, everybody, for listening. Don't forget, go to PorchTour.com to catch Rob on the fall Porch Tour now. No dates up at the moment, so check out Run Your Mouth. I did the Talmud thing, and I did a whole DNC recap with BK Chris. We're cranking out episodes, so check out the show.

Make sure to go check out Run Your Mouth if you haven't already. And of course, come see me and Robbie on the road, Comic Dave Smith for all those ticket links. See you in Dallas and Fort Worth this weekend. And yeah, of course, right here, partoftheproblem.com. That's where you can support this show. Thanks to all you guys who have already. And to the rest of you, get over there. Be cool. All right. Catch you next time. Peace.