Trump Flirts With Disaster
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Hello, hello. What's up, everybody? Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem. I'm joined, of course, by Robbie the Fire Bernstein. I'm Dave Smith. We are both in our respective homes, what feels like for a very temporary period. But it is good to be back. We had a lot of fun up in Boston. You have a good time up there, Rob? Man, we had a sold-out show Saturday night, packed weekend, fans coming out, slinging some of these tees. Had a great time.

It was, it was, uh, I always, I said it like before we went, but Boston's just Boston's such a goddamn great comedy town. I love, and I love Boston's a great city. Although I do, I know Rob, Rob, Rob drove up there and you were mentioning it's the worst city to drive through. And then I came home and I saw my father-in-law and he was like, how was Boston? I was like, oh, it was a great time. And he goes, worst city to drive in in America. Yeah.

and he's a professional driver so i was like you know rob was just saying the same thing so figure that out boston make it easier to drive aside from that no complaints um and then we're uh what do we got well i'm i'm getting on a plane to go do some traveling tomorrow but next comedy gigs are in nashville um then i know we got chicago and rosemary uh your solo in nashville

oh are you not coming to nashville no that's uh you're there with the festival and whatnot but i'm gonna be in uh where am i this weekend i'm in steamboat and then uh des moines and then us and then we're in

wherever chicago i think i did i think i did know this at one point but now it does it is weird i really am like uh i'm like a special person to some degree where it's just like as a tit sweet it's like rob's not going to be there but i'm like then who will walk me to the club but who will be next to me who will pat my head if i have anxiety okay i guess

I guess I can do it on my own. I'm going to be 42. I guess I should be able to go somewhere by myself. Anyway, so a lot of stuff coming up. Make sure, what's your website again, Rob? RobBernsteinComedy.com RobBernsteinComedy.com and of course ComicDaveSmith.com for the rest of our, you know, for the year. We got a whole bunch of ticket links up there to see me and Rob, evidently not together in Nashville, but everywhere else we will be together. All right. So let

Let me just preface the beginning of the show by saying I did. I mentioned this on the members only podcast that we recorded this week. I did say at a certain point, I was like, I apologize. I'm going to have to repeat some of this stuff on Monday's episode because it's just like I need to say this in

in front of the entire audience and not just those dedicated subscribers. But by the way, this is kind of part of the cool thing about subscribing and getting the members only episode. Like you got to hear me as I was flushing out these ideas and I've thought a little bit more about them since then. Also, there's been some other developments since we recorded our members only show. By the way, if you want the members only shows, you got to go sign up at part of the problem

Then you can also watch the shows live, ad-free, uncensored. Only way to do that, though, is to sign up at partoftheproblem.com. So the latest is that yesterday, Donald Trump, of course, because he, you know, he's Donald Trump, he threatened to bomb Iran. This was, I think, in many ways kind of...

The most serious sounding of his constant need to flirt with yet another disastrous war in the Middle East. And coincidentally, the only war that hasn't been checked off of the clean break.

foreign policy, of what has become the famous seven wars in five years, that four-star General Wesley Clark, the supreme leader of the NATO allies, that he himself said that he saw the plans for, that we were going to have seven wars in five years. It obviously didn't happen in the five years, although there's actually quite a bit of evidence that they thought they would get this war quite a while ago. But

They of those seven countries, six of the wars have happened. This is the seventh Iran happens to be the same. Now, of course, there is absolutely no political appetite for another catastrophic, disastrous war in the Middle East. Donald Trump.

won the presidency twice explicitly on distancing himself from that type of foreign policy. And yet Donald Trump continues to saber rattle toward this, this policy, which would be again, as, as we both mentioned before, Rob, it would almost seem like, you know,

With Donald Trump just humiliating the Democrats and public opinion completely turning on the Democrats to the point that the brand of the party is toxic in a way like neither of the major two parties have ever been in my lifetime. And at that moment, you go, OK, there's probably only one thing that could totally ruin this and usher back in the Democratic establishment. And that would be another catastrophic war in the Middle East.

And so, of course, that's what we've got to move closer and closer toward. It's really it's astounding to say. Anyway, so Donald Trump is I have his quote here. He said, speaking to NBC News in a phone interview yesterday, Donald Trump said, if they don't make a deal, there will be bombing. It will be bombing the likes of which they have never seen before. Donald Trump is saying that they need now to make a nuclear deal.

or Donald Trump will bomb Iran like they've never seen before. This comes after, and I'm quoting here from Dave DeCamp's article over at antiwar.com. Go follow antiwar.com. Go follow Dave DeCamp. They are the best. This is after the U.S. intelligence agencies in their annual threat assessment said that there is no evidence that Iran is trying to build a nuclear weapon.

It seems that the 2003 ban that the Ayatollah put on weapons of mass destruction is still in place. Of course, we've heard...

endless propaganda over the years about how Iran is on the verge of building a nuclear weapon. And Benjamin Netanyahu was was decent enough to give us a timetable on when they were building that that bomb. They should have it in five years from 1992.

but also they should have it in five years from 2003. And then also they should have it in five years from 2015. And then also they should have it in five years from 2018.

My guess is they're still five years away, according to Benjamin Netanyahu. But we're really getting there. We're getting really close now to this war, to fighting a war against a third world country that does not have nuclear weapons, does not have an air force capable of reaching the United States of America. In other words, poses zero threat to our country. But

is an enemy of Israel in the region. And therefore we, I guess, got to flirt with this war. Um, I, you know, this is not just, uh, an isolated statement and I'm not, I'm really not doing the thing where people just flip out over Donald Trump saying something provocative. This is much more than that. I mean, this is, he is already, um, continuing Joe Biden's policy of, of back

unconditionally Israel, doing whatever they want to do to the Palestinian people, even when they're violating the ceasefire that the Trump administration pressured them to put in place. We still have to back them. He's talking, he's now openly, of course, put out the idea of ethnically cleansing Gaza on behalf of the Israelis. He has started bombing the Houthis for standing up to the Israelis. And now even though

On that signal thread, as was pointed out by his own people, this is completely in opposition to everything Donald Trump stood for. I mean, down to the detail of on Tim Pool's show, he said Joe Biden was an idiot for bombing Yemen for the exact same reason that he's bombing them.

And they can say what they want on that signal chat about the way to sell this thing is to be like, Biden was weak and we have to be strong. But the reality is that Biden was bombing the same group of people for the same reason. And Trump said it was stupid. Trump said, why are they always trying to bomb everything? Pick up a phone, do some diplomacy. Anyway, he's back in there now. So that's changed. And.

You know, it's just at a certain point, you do have to be honest about kind of the broader picture. I think there was a lot of excitement about Donald Trump's presidency. I think that this is the way I said it on the members only show the other day.

Right. And I think I pretty much still feel this way. But I basically said, imagine you could pick like three baskets, okay, for Donald Trump's second term. And in one basket, you would be like, these are the good things that will get out of it. And in one basket, you'd be like, these are the bad things that will get out of it. And then in another basket, there were like the question marks. Maybe this could go good. Maybe this could, you know, and

And we've gotten I think we kind of knew like I think we I talked about this the episode that I said I was going to support him. We knew what a lot of the bad things were. We know he's terrible on Israel. He really doesn't get it on foreign policy. He really you know what I mean? Like is just awful on that.

On the positive sides, you were like, he's much better on Ukraine. He's much better, like a real improvement from the Biden administration. And then of course, in the positives was that he dealt just in

enormous blow to the corporate media. The way I said it was, I think in 2016, he destroyed the Republican establishment. And in 2024, he destroyed the Democratic establishment. He was a reset in a lot of ways in American politics, or maybe not a reset, but like a massive, you know, like if it was a snow globe, you just grabbed it and shook it up. Everything's different now.

It also just culturally, I think there was something very important about the Trump victory. But then there were these basket baskets of question marks. And, you know, as Donald Trump was actually putting Kash Patel to head the FBI, at least attempting to put Matt Gaetz at the Justice Department, was putting Tulsi in charge of the intelligence community. There was this question mark that started to get raised that was like, hey, maybe, maybe the guy learned something.

And maybe because he's been so burned by this system, he's actually in a different mindset now. Maybe he's actually like going to be doing some really good things that are better than what we could have hoped for. I got to say at this point, I think those question marks have been answered and all in the negative, just all bad.

You know, like you got a guy out here who is telling he is telling his people to primary Thomas Massey and telling them to support Lindsey Graham.

Tell me that. I mean, that just tells you the guy, the man has learned nothing. He's learned fucking nothing. He is no better than he was the first time, you know? And like, obviously in some ways it'd be easier for me if he, if, if he had, but it's, you just, I'm sorry. I can't.

I can't bullshit about this. Like, come on, you're flirting with another war for, for Iran. You're completely unwilling to stand up to these Israelis on anything. You're, you're now even sabotaging your own legacy and your own administration just to do their bidding. What can you say about this? You know, as I mentioned, and for those of you who did watch the members only show, I won't be on the same rant for too much longer, but there's, you know,

When you finally have a real mandate from the people for mass deportations, it is now overwhelmingly popular with the American people to have mass deportations. That's how much Joe Biden overstepped. That's how much he fucked up that now it's actually popular to have mass deportations. And so what do you do? Well, let's wade into the most controversial issue and deport people who are here legally for the crime of writing an op-ed against the Israeli government.

Like what? Like if you wanted to sabotage the deportation process, I couldn't think of a better way to do that. Hey, okay, what do we got? 30 to 50 million illegals in the country. Let's send 200 to the most brutal jail in El Salvador with zero due process. What's that going to do? Lead to mass deportations or sabotage the public interest in them? Which by the way, are not happening. There aren't mass deportations. And I do, look, I think...

I think I'm trying to be fair to myself here. But I also but fair. I don't want to go easy on myself here or be overly hard on myself here. Like, I, I think I did lay this out as I was saying, I'm going to support Donald Trump. Like, I was like, look, he's going to disappoint. He's going to be bad on this. He's got but at least we get some positives that we don't get if Kamala Harris wins. Yeah.

But at the same time, I also did champion a lot of the people he picked and because they seemed better than the alternatives. I mean, I just I couldn't imagine whoever else the director of national intelligence was going to be being better than Tulsi Gabbard. I couldn't imagine whoever the head of the FBI being being better than Kash Patel or whoever the health secretary being better than Bobby Kennedy. But at the same time.

you know, you got Tulsi, you know, cheering on leveling an apartment building, literally as they're saying to him, hey, we traced this guy, we traced missile guy back to his apartment building where his girlfriend lives. So we leveled the building and she's sending like thumbs up emojis and saying job well done team. I got every time I hear from Kash Patel lately, it's never about the criminals in government anymore.

This guy was on a goddamn media tour for two years. Everything he ever said was that there's all these criminals in the FBI. We got to get these people who committed all these heinous crimes against our republic. Not talking about that anymore today. Now he's talking about bringing down drug dealers and sex traffickers. It's like, okay, but that's not what you were saying before. Then Bobby Kennedy is out fighting the real health crisis, which is anti-Semitism. So I'm just saying, looking around the room, looking around the administration at this point,

You know, I think we got the positives out of Donald Trump that we would get.

But man, this all just points in such a bad direction. And it's disappointing. It's just really disappointing. It's a, I knew I would be disappointed, but it is the level of a Greek tragedy that these guys had this mandate and this opportunity, and they're just fucking it all up. So anyway, just wanted to get that out on record in front of the whole audience, because I think, especially after, you know, throwing my support behind the guy, I do feel an obligation to do that. I will say my final caveat to this, um,

And then you can weigh in on whatever you'd like to Rob. But I will say that I saw, you know, one, I saw one person today say on, on Twitter that, um,

That they said that they said that, well, there's somebody who I respect very much had posted a thing about how some of the libertarians who have, you know, supported Donald Trump have just become Trumpsters at this point, and they'll defend him no matter what he does. And they were like, they'll probably cheer him on when he if he launches a warrant around. And then I saw one guy underneath that said, it goes, I know Dave Smith sure well.

And OK, it's just like a comment on Twitter. But I was just like blown away. And I'm not blown away by much. But I was like, does any anybody actually thinks I would just because I'm like, well, I did support this guy. So I'll rationalize and like defend getting in another war in the Middle East. Is that but just for anyone who may have that, I will say this. If Donald Trump.

actually does launch a war in a round, not only will I not support it, I will apologize for the rest of my life for voting for the guy. That undoes any positive that might have come out of this. So just to be clear on that, it would be the most disastrous policy. And I just can't even believe, maybe like I didn't even mean it, but I can't believe anyone would think like,

you know, that somehow we're, we're now in the business of just sucking up to Donald Trump. Fuck that. I was, I was as sharp as goddamn critic in his first four years. It was a pretty sharp critic for the next four years after that. And I supported him this time. Cause it just seemed like in the moment we had two options and one was clearly preferable, but I have no loyalty toward Trump or anyone in his cabinet or, or,

Anything about the administration. I have loyalty to my principles and my country and my family, but none of that leads towards supporting a war in Iran. Okay, go ahead, Rob. Anything you want to weigh in with? On the...

Topic of not cleaning up the deep state and all of the problems in government. You know, Donald Trump was scorned by Netanyahu in that Netanyahu was the first one to back that Joe Biden had won the election. And then even during the campaign process, you know, he was inviting him to Mar-a-Lago.

And then even when they attempted to assassinate Donald Trump, he didn't really want to explore the storyline of who was trying to assassinate me. And he didn't want to, he wanted to thank the secret service. So it's, um, it's not completely surprising that, uh, they just seem to be moving on with status quo. Uh, I still have some hope for cleaning things up, particularly, uh,

RFK Jr. I hope he doesn't use all the resources just to find out about this anti-Semitic health issue and maybe goes after. But the other thing that's just interesting to me about the Iran situation is my read was he was trying to end the Russia-Ukraine war and perhaps get a pass from Putin.

to be a little bit more aggressive towards Iran. It's a little bit surprising to me without that being wrapped up and also with Donald Trump saying that he's fuming with Putin at the moment, that now he's willing to ramp up the Iran pressure because that seems like a bigger...

than just isolated Iran. If he's duking with both Putin and then maybe goes back into Ukraine and says we are going to support Ukraine and then also starts going after Iran, that sounds to me like a much larger war than just us bombing Iran. Yeah, which, by the way, is even in isolated Iran is a large project. Yeah.

I mean, again, this is not, you know, and there's military experts who understand this shit a lot better than me, but it is not comparable to the war in Iraq. It's not comparable to any of the terror wars. Iran can touch thousands of our soldiers over there. We have military bases all throughout the region that they can hit.

and the idea that we're just going to go in there and like bomb their nuclear sites which again they don't have nuclear weapons but bob their nuclear energy sites or whatever um and they're not going to respond is just that not living in reality uh well who knows maybe that's just channeling israel hey go for it now's your window we're not going to get mad at you yeah well look i mean that's that'd be pretty bad too but uh i guess perhaps better than the uh alternative

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let's get back into the show um anyway it's uh it it's interesting because there are uh there's a real you know there's a real split um amongst trump's base over this issue and there's you know obviously like on the left there's there's a lot of people who oppose this stuff too but forget that i'm just talking about donald trump's base here it's

It's interesting that it's like there is essentially no way to actually launch this war without completely dividing Donald Trump's base. And, you know, you can just read the room in terms of like not not just social media, but like in terms of like high profile Trump supporters, he will lose a ton.

over launching these wars. He's already lost support over just continuing to back Israel and bombing the Houthis. But if he really steps this up and starts bombing Iran, I mean, I just it's going to be a political nightmare for him. So we will see what he chooses to do. I mean, there's obviously, you know, there are things that

particularly when it comes to foreign policy. It's true with government policy in general, but particularly when it comes to foreign policy, there are, we've watched a lot of wars get started when there is absolutely no popular support for them on the ground, you know? But it's just like, well, this is what some powerful people who really control our foreign policy want, and so that's what they're going to get. All right. Anyway, you know what? Let's go. I thought this was...

This was quite entertaining to me, but let's go to the Rabbi Senate testimony, which was... It had to be anti-Semitism. This clip is going super viral. It kind of is on the theme of what we were talking about with this big divide about...

you know, kind of the non-interventionist streak, the America first people who support Donald Trump and then the neocons and the neocon like supporters of Donald Trump. I will say, I must say that even I have seen,

This video is going super viral. It also has a lot to do with the whole woke right debate that I've kind of publicly been in with Constantine Kassin and James Lindsay, although I haven't actually had a formal debate on the subject. I don't know that anybody...

has and I've offered many times, but anyway, whatever. But I've seen people like, like I saw Will Chamberlain and I saw Matt Walsh and like people who like, I wouldn't have thought would have jumped on this, that were at least this, this was too far for even them. And they were like, yeah, no, this is woke bullshit. Like we don't, this isn't how, this is everything we've been against. Like it's always interesting to me

And I find it endearing and I appreciate it in people. But where you just see sometimes you just see people, even when it's against their interest, go like, yeah, I I'm not comfortable being this big of a hypocrite.

You know, like just like I'm not comfortable preaching against something every single day for 15 straight years and then embracing that exact thing the next day. I'm not going to do that. And so I do appreciate those people who are saying that. By the way, it should also be mentioned that this was this witness. Hold on. Sorry. One second. Let me because I saw.

OK, so so this witness was introduced by Republican Senator Bill Cassidy. I'm getting this from Sagar and Jetty, excellent journalist. Make sure you go follow him and follow Breaking Points. Great show. Who this is. This was this witness was introduced by Republican Senator Bill Cassidy, who has openly decried critical race theory.

So just to be clear, these are the anti-woke Republicans who call on this rabbi to explain what we must do. Here, let's play the clip. Anti-Semitism is not just an age-old prejudice. It is a contemporary crisis manifesting on campuses across the nation. It is not enough for individuals or institutions to merely claim they are not anti-Semitic.

As my father once taught me, it is not enough for people, especially public figures, to be neutral or not be anti-Semitic. One must be anti-anti-Semitic. We must demand the same of our universities and government institutions. This hearing, in my opinion, is an attempt to be just that, anti-anti-Semitic.

Anti-Semitism. All right. That was Rabbi Joe Jorgensen, everybody, bringing you the latest. We must, and I will give this rabbi the exact same response, literally verbatim, the exact same response I gave to Joe Jorgensen when she said it's not enough to be passively not racist. We must be actively anti-racist. I will say when this rabbi says it's not enough to be not anti-Semitic, we must be actively anti-anti-Semitic.

No, we fucking mustn't. That's how freedom works. Actually, there is no must here. There is no we and there is no must. People do not have to go out fighting against anybody having an impure thought in their heart or head. That is actually not the role of government. It's certainly not the role of religious leaders. It's not like this is just bullshit. And then, of course, first of all,

It is, this is the identical creed to the woke left. Exactly, exactly the same thing that they say. And of course, it's a tactic used in exactly the same manner. Because, okay, first of all, you might just go like, well, okay, we have to be actively anti-racist or actively anti-anti-Semitic. It's like, okay, so now, well, what exactly do we have to do to these people who have committed thought crimes?

Like, what is it that we have to do? We have to assault them. Do we just have to ruin their lives? Do we have to get them fired? Should they be censored off the Internet? Like, what exactly do you mean by being against this thing? Oh, and then also who gets to define what the thing is, who gets to define what racism is or what anti-Semitism is? Like, what is what is racism? Is it racist if I point out that, like, we have a major problem with black crime in Chicago? Is that racist?

OK, is it racist to make an argument about disproportionate numbers? You know, this is what the woke left rely on for all their claims of racism. Oh, there's a there's a disparate outcome.

Is it racist to point out that like the percentage of Jews in the population versus those in, say, the corporate media? Like, is that like what exactly? Oh, no, you don't ever have to define that. You just say we're going to go to war against that. Oh, and by the way.

Every single American, every American, including the Jewish ones, I know from firsthand experience, every American who opposes the foreign nation that is Israel's government is labeled anti-Semitic. All of us. 100%. There is nobody who is a public figure in the United States of America who opposes Israel's action, let's just say in Gaza. Let's just leave it at that.

that was just against this war who has not been called anti-semitic so what oh okay so now what are we doing here we're shutting down an argument by calling the other person a bigot and then implying that we must censor that bigotry who does that sound like who does that sound like

And it's amazing to me to see, you know, the guys like, like, you know, I haven't seen any of them comment. I saw James Lindsay retweeted somebody saying that, like, no, this is totally different than the woke left shit.

It was just so ridiculous. But I saw Eric Weinstein like jumped in on agreeing with James Lindsay about the woke, right? Tell me one of them, Constantine, Eric Weinstein. Okay. James is gone. He's that guy's lost his mind, but you too, you're looking at this. You don't see any parallels. Really? You don't see anything in there. That sounds a little bit like the identical argument that the woke left has been making for the last 15 years that you're,

Your opposition to a policy can be given the least charitable interpretation called just assuming that your motivations are bigotry and therefore we must be in a war against you. Doesn't ring any bells? Because it's giving me a lot of deja vu over here. What do you think, Rob?

I, uh, I agree with everything you said. And this is, uh, this is compliance talk. This is, I'm going to Lord over you and you're going to be bitched out because our agenda is so important that even if you're pointing out true information, if it gets in the way of our agenda, it needs to be censored. This is the kind of stuff that they did with, uh, green energy and the existential crisis of global warming. And this is what they did through COVID would be, be the even better example because they stripped us of more of our rights and they censored us more on that particular topic.

Although it did happen with global warming. You get the little fact check on the bottom. But that's what this allows for, is that anything that you say, even if it's truthful information, if we have an agenda of that, we have to be anti-antisemitism. So then even if you're pointing out true information, that doesn't help us eradicate the antisemitism or might lead to antisemitism, such as criticizing Israel, which might lead to people also conflating Israel with the Jews.

So then we can't have that. And so, yeah, this is that nonsense compliance talk. And it's this fake, hi, you're either with me or you're against me. You're allowed to be neutral. You're allowed to have your own interests. We have this sometimes with, or at least I've confronted this sometimes where people, I really like telling jokes and I'm really interested in the Fed. And sometimes people get really upset that you're not more passionate about the thing that they're passionate about.

And it's like, well, I, I'm not forced to use my time to pursue your agenda. If you have an agenda that you're really interested in sharing the narrative about, go ahead and do it. Yeah. But I'm out here and I'm trying to work on jokes because that's what I love doing. That's the value I think I bring to the marketplace. How much time should I give up for my passion to pursue this other thing that's less interesting to me?

And that's what this kind of falls into is I understand that it's in this rabbi's interest to protect the Jews from anti-Semitism as much as possible, and that's his passion. But to be standing up in front of the United States government and preaching some sort of a anti-anti-Semitism whatever, I mean, you're just forcing your thing on us. That's all this is. It's compliance talk. No, that's absolutely right. And then like – and maybe this is like in addition to all of that stuff, but I just go like – I just feel –

Like, why would Jewish people want to do this? It's so short-sighted. It's so, like, you're sitting here and you're going, look,

Um, by the way, like, I'm not denying that there has been a rise in anti-Semitic tweets on Twitter. And I don't know exactly. I mean, you know, when you talk about like, like, obviously, a lot of the protests, as we've been talking about now for a year and a half, a lot of the protests against Israel,

They are they're they're a different type of people than me and you, Rob. You know what I mean? These are not exactly like, you know, libertarian gold bugs who are out protesting the war in Gaza. And they are I've certainly seen some slogans and chants and behavior, frankly, that I really don't like. I also you know, it's like.

It's the same thing as the woke left, though. When they just start characterizing it as if Jewish students in college campuses, in 2025, in a first world country at elite universities, you're looking for victims. It's like, okay, fine. But you're going to have to really explain this to me. Really explain it to me so that it makes sense. You got to really have an argument for how exactly these people are oppressed. Look, I'll say...

And this was never, you know, I as far as like the trans issue was concerned, I was always my biggest thing was always pushing it on children. I thought was fucking insane and like just horrible. I thought there was on top of that kind of like a more interesting discussion about kind of the woke demands that other people recognize your identity.

quite frankly, delusion. That I thought was crazy. I never cared about the female sports stuff. You know, like I'd agree. I'd be like, yeah, that's crazy. But like, I don't know. Who the fuck cares about women's sports? You know what I mean? That was always my attitude. Sorry. I don't mean to be a dick, but honestly.

And then that Riley Gaines chick, when she told her story about how she's like, look, man, like we're on this like swimming team. And there's like a dude with full dick and balls in our locker room. And we're all changing. We're forced to change in front of this guy. She's like, this is really weird. And I'm like, I'm Christian and married and I don't want to do this. And you're like,

All right. Yeah. Okay. She's got a good point. Yeah, that's a fair point. You know what I'm saying? I'm like, if you now, but again, with the Riley Gaines story, right? The real issue wasn't just that a woman was being forced to change while a man watched her. The real issue was that that was backed up by the law. That was backed up by the rules. If she went and complained about that, she got reprimanded.

Not the guy. And in fact, you know, whatever. And so that's really the issue there. And likewise, if you talk about like back in the day with like, I don't know, like

any type of like bigotry or like, you know, old school racism back in the day, the issue would be that like, oh, and the system is actually protecting those people who are bigots. The system has bigoted themselves too. And so there, but in other words, like if you were going to tell me that like on a college campus somewhere today, someone punched a Jewish kid in the face for being Jewish, you know, you'd be like, oh, okay, we'll call the cops.

Now, if you then told me that, like, no, the cops come in and they go, yeah, screw that Jew, you know, punch him again, then okay, all right, now we got a thing where you could say there is, like, a systematic oppression of this group of people going on. But

First of all, that's not what's happening. In fact, the system is working against the pro-Palestinian activists. The Columbia, the epicenter of this whole thing, has already revoked the degrees of a bunch of people. We've seen deportations of people who were legal residents over this issue. And then you go like,

look, all I know, and I don't know, I haven't been there, but like they did host a Seder for the Jewish students last Passover at the Columbia encampment. So like, how

How anti-Jewish is it really? You know, I'm not saying it's not at all. I'm saying I don't know. But if we're not talking about like a crime, if we're not talking about like Jewish students being assaulted or or like harassed, and I mean by the legal definition of harassment, not just like this woke version of they felt they didn't like what they were hearing. Then what are we talking about?

You're talking about the same shit the left woke was talking about. Like what? Oh, students feel uncomfortable. Okay. That was the safe space argument. Like, oh yeah, you're supposed to feel uncomfortable when you go to college. If you go to like, if you are actually uncomfortable,

which I'm not a big believer that that many people should do. But if you're saying at 18 years old, you should spend a couple hundred thousand dollars and go away for another four years of school because kindergarten through 12th grade has not been enough school and you're not ready to enter the real world yet. So you need four more years of school to just be lost in thoughts and learning and reading. Okay, if you're going to do that and you're not confronting ideas that make you feel uncomfortable, that is an absolute waste.

an absolute waste. You must confront ideas that make you extremely uncomfortable if you're ever going to be even approaching something that could be considered educated.

And so what are we talking about here? They're talking about a bunch of nonsense. Like the bottom line here, right, is that this rabbi, right, it's your group and you want to do what's right for your group. And like, okay, but I'm just making the point that like Jews are two, also my group, Jews are, we are 2% of the population. We are extraordinarily successful in this country by any metric.

doing quite a bit better than just white people in America are doing. Okay. This society has been extraordinarily hospitable and welcoming to Jewish people. There have been no obstacles in our way for success. And in fact, we've achieved quite a bit of it.

But there are some protests we don't like on college campuses and some people say some things on Twitter we don't like. And so you're going to the United States Senate to lecture everybody about how we must be combating that. Honestly, you could look at that and not think that's going to engender more more resentment. Really?

I like I'm just so shocked that anybody like if if your goal was to make Jews more accepted in the society, how anyone could think this was the way to do it. You know, it's like you were if you were like going over to like your friend's house and they were having a party and you were like, I really want to win everybody over and make sure everyone here likes me at this party. So I'm going to start by complaining about everything about the party.

I'm going to go up to everybody and complain about how they're doing everything. Our derbs aren't that good. We really should have more drinks here. We should like what this is just guaranteed to make more people hate you. Why would you approach it this way? It's just it's and like the bottom line is this right? Because the truth is that whenever there's any policy, right, you could always find people

people who are bigoted, who support or oppose that policy for bigoted reasons, almost always. You know, if the policy is

affirmative action or DEI, you could find proponents of it who just hate white people. And you could find critics of it who just hate black people. You know what I mean? Like there are, if you're an anti-black racist, you're going to oppose affirmative action. And if you're an anti-white racist, you're going to support affirmative action. But there's also lots of non-bigots who support and oppose it. And so,

If you're arguing for the policy of affirmative action, you can't just go, oh, all the races oppose it.

And if you're arguing against it, you can't just go, all the racists are for it. You got to actually take on the arguments that the people who aren't racist and support or oppose it are making. And the bottom line here is just simply this, because there's so many, there's so many people, ourselves included, but there's so many people who oppose what Israel's doing to Gaza, who don't have anything against Jews. Some of us even really love the Jewish people and still can oppose this. And

And the bottom line is that this rabbi supports the war. You support the war. And so you don't want protests against the war. And this is just like, and this is what really makes it woke, is that

You support the war. You don't like the fact that there's critics of the war. But rather than even attempt to take on their arguments, you're just going to smear them all as bigots and say the problem we have here is a rise of bigotry. Isn't that weird, though, Rob? Right. Like they're saying the problem we have here is anti-Semitism. And for some reason, it's spiked right after October 7th.

I got no clue what that could be. I don't know. It's something. Something's been going on since then that's really led to this crazy rise of people hating Jews. I don't know what it could be. I don't know. I'm sure there's been countless images of babies being pulled out under rubble.

Maybe, maybe that has something to do. No, no, no. It's just an irrational bigotry. Just an irrational. It's like, come on, man. This is just so it's so transparently bullshit.

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So, yeah. Any other thoughts on that, Rob? Or do you want to move on? Let's move on. You know, Jewish guy being Jew in front of Congress. Yeah, there you go. Well, that is true. More news at six. Okay. So let me...

You know what? I wanted to talk about this. There's this clip that I saw, and there was something that – like, Megyn Kelly had been talking about this recently. I watched her – she did an interview with a New York Times journalist, and they were kind of talking about – it's kind of interesting. Like, the idea –

It has to do with kind of like the idea of objective journalism, which is actually something was a theme of mine for many years that I always hated. I always hated the idea of objective journalism. And when I say that, I don't mean I don't hate the idea of objective journalism. I hate the idea that anyone is ever doing objective journalism. Like, let me be a little bit more clear on that.

I'm not saying a journalist could do a piece where they're like, I'm trying to objectively cover this news. But I hate the person themselves being like, I'm not a commentator. I'm an objective journalist. Because it does almost in a weird way elevate you above human status.

You know what I mean? Like, you're almost like, I have no feelings of my own. I have no opinions of my own. Well, okay, obviously that's not true. You're not saying you don't have any opinions here. You're claiming that your opinions do not color your journalism at all, which is like a bullshit claim to make.

Like, of course they do. And you must if you're being the slightest bit humble, you have to admit that that's true. So anyway, so this woman who is the head of NPR, I think me and you watched one of these clips together, but she recently was at some congressional testimony. And, you know, the Republicans are talking a big game about cutting funding for NPR. This is something that PBS and NPR are always kind of have been in the Republican arena.

You know, in their talking points that, hey, we should stop giving them money because they're so goddamn progressive and they're public, you know, they're publicly funded or at least partially publicly funded. I maybe this administration is more serious about doing it. That seems almost like the type of thing the Trump administration would do, you know.

All right. Hey, we're going to, you know, we're going to defund, you know, the entire federal apparatus. It's like, all right. Yeah, actually, we're not going to do any of that. But we.

No more NPR money. You know, like that seems like the type of thing that might get done. But nonetheless, it's kind of an interesting conversation. So let's play this clip. And then I'm curious. Why should the Republicans have to contend with the media apparatus that's sponsored by the government and undermines their agenda and just as propaganda for the other side? Why have 100 percent? You're right. And first of all, especially now today.

Like, we are so past the point where there was even slightly an argument for why you would need a publicly funded news radio or whatever. I mean, first of all, like, why can't you just do it on your own?

Like just be a podcast or be a radio show or be whatever. But if you're telling me there's not enough of a market for it, we can't make it on our own. Like, okay, well, it's the most oversaturated market in the goddamn country right now. So if you can't make it, there's plenty of other people. There are plenty of left-wing people

podcasts and news shows and all of this and there's plenty of right-wing podcasts and news shows and there's plenty of centrist ones and there's socialist ones and libertarian one i mean there's just everything and and so of course right away you'd be like why should the government be funding one of them and then particularly if you're in the government and don't share the ideological foundations of that what why should you be funding somebody whose ideological foundations are in opposition to yours and then on top of that we've also just

I think we are, we're just way past the point where you can even have these things in America because we're so divided culturally and we're so like, you know, just living in different realities right now that to have tax dollars funding either any side is gonna be like seen as by a huge portion of the American people as like, oh, this is insane. You're funding like propaganda that is filled with lies.

I mean, like, I don't know, like, like, I think our side is right. You know, like, I think we're correct on the issues. But I will tell you the story of the last five years is that our government was funding a virus in a Chinese lab with substandard regulatory regulations.

safety procedures and then allowed the virus to get out, knew that, conspired to lie through their teeth about it, then locked the entire Western world down on the basis of pseudoscience, then lied through their teeth about that.

then tried to demonize everybody who questioned the lockdowns of being these evil people while telling you it was racist to tell the truth that the virus came from this lab that our government was funding, then denied it, then lied under oath, talking about Fauci here, saying that they never did gain a function and that they didn't fund that lab when they clearly did. Then they pivoted to a vaccine that they knew wouldn't do what they were selling it as. So I could tell you the whole story.

NPR will have a completely... NPR would think that's nuts, what I just told you. And they'll go, no, this is what happened instead. Now, I think they're wrong and I'm right, but like...

We are just experiencing two different realities here. You know what I mean? And like, I don't mean that literally. Obviously, there's only one reality and we're living in that and they're delusional. But I'm just saying it's true. The gap is so wide that you just kind of can't have this anymore. Anyway, let's let's play this clip because I did. I just found this to be kind of fascinating. So let's jump into it.

Talking about NPR, NPR is not biased in its coverage. You're talking about the national shows that originate out of- The national news shows that we produce. I'm speaking about our editorial news gathering function. There is not bias in NPR. Okay, just pause it already. I will say, I admitted to this the other day on, yesterday.

Pause it already. This, look, this is what I mean. But there's a real old school, like journalist thing where this is how you're supposed to talk about your news coverage. I just, but I don't know. I don't know how we ever lived in a time where people would accept hearing this. Like, what do you, what does that mean to say your coverage is not bias?

First of all, it's a joke because NPR is as everybody knows. And I'm not like I don't even hate NPR. I mean, I kind of do. But like it's something that like I'd like if me and you were in a car ride together and you were like, you want to throw on NPR for a minute? I'd be like, all right, let's hate listen to NPR for a fucking minute. You know what I mean? Like it's it's.

But to say that they're not biased, everybody, including the people who like NPR, of course know that it's bias. But well beyond that, there is no such thing as non-bias news coverage. It just doesn't exist. You always have biases in some area. And maybe you could argue that my biases are correct, but there's always bias.

There's always nobody. If you think about it, it's like it's like the type of thing where you go like you'd have to be so open minded that your brain falls out of your head. Like, what does that mean? If if you were covering a story about slavery, do you do you cover that by by going like, no, I'm not taking a position pro or against.

I'm just telling you that there was this one group for slavery and this one group against slavery, and I will treat them both equally. Like, no, nobody does that. Everybody has, look, there's, even just when you say, when you have the entire media saying that Donald Trump represented the end of democracy, okay? Now, right away, the first thing that jumps out of you there is that that's kind of a hysterical claim and there's no real evidence to suggest that, and this is, right? But forget that.

In order to truly claim that you had no bias in your reporting, you would have to treat that as a completely debatable subject, whether it's good or bad. Like, in other words, you don't say, and maybe the end of democracy would be a good thing.

Because if you're pro-democracy, that's a bias. Now, you could argue that is a completely justifiable bias. But the idea of arguing that any to sit here with a straight face and say our programming has no bias. What world are you living in? No programming, no programming. There is never once in the history of the world been a news program that didn't have a bias attached to it. It's that simple.

Your bias might be that you're pro-free speech, that you're pro-democracy, that you're pro-West, that you're pro-America, that you're pro-women, that you're pro-LGBT. It might be that you're pro-white people. It might be, you know, whatever it is. There's lots of different ones you could have, but there's always a bias.

And so this, I think just eradicating this mentality, pretending is a positive thing. I think it's one of the best things about like the new media landscape is that nobody's really pretending that anymore. Nobody's like, there's no one out there who's really pretending, oh, this show is completely unbiased. Imagine Rob.

It's on the level of us saying that about this show. Imagine we were to say we're completely unbiased on this show. Of course, we have tons of biases on this show. We're pro-market. We're pro-peace. We're pro-America. The whole thing is biased. That doesn't mean I still don't think we're telling the truth, but it does mean that like, oh, yeah, no, we have a perspective here that we are giving you. Who would deny that and think anyone could believe them?

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such clear bias if you turn to your liberal friend and said hey I'm interested in learning more from a liberal liberal perspective they'd say well are you listening to NPR it's been around for a long time it's literally one of the best outlets or if you're like hey there's so much conservative radio and so much conservative podcasting where do I get more of like the liberal voices and more of the liberal arguments to understand these things well have you checked out NPR I mean they've been around for 60 years doing great liberal coverage

Well, that's why I said it would be on the level of us claiming we're not a libertarian podcast. You're just being like, no, there's no, we're just being objective. And if that makes libertarianism look good, then it does. But like, that's no, oh, no, I'm not libertarian. We're every bit as socialist as we are libertarian, Rob. Right? Like, what are you talking about? And you don't have to pretend that in order to argue that, like, no, I think I'm right about this. All right.

Anyway, let's keep playing. I'm sorry. Go ahead. Also, there were both PBS Newswire NewsHour and NPR were better pre-Trump. And then when Trump won, the media landscape changed where the media companies that Week Magazine, there were a bunch of them that were, I'll just say better.

And then they stopped reporting actual information and started reporting spin because they realized that they didn't have enough control over the narrative by just reporting actual information, that that wasn't enough in terms of just kind of picking the topic and the lens they had to actually report you spin. And so you'd be more instances of like what we saw with Rachel Maddow when in the middle of a Donald Trump speech, they don't give you the actual news because they don't want you to see the information.

They have to spin it ahead of time. They can't let you see it. Yes. They'll have to stop live and go, here's the spin because actual information became dangerous for people to know. So particularly in the last decade, these people have engaged in

doing intentionally biased media because they thought that their agenda was so important that they had to be biased. NPR is a definite example of that. I thought one of the things that was interesting about that congressional hearing was that they really brought the receipts over the way that NPR has covered these topics. And Hunter Biden's story might be one of the best examples. Yeah, well, that's coming up in a second. So let's get. But yes, you're absolutely right. No, it's 100 percent. And by the way, just to

what you're saying, NewsHour on PBS, I used to think, like in the pre-Trump days, I used to say, I'd be like, oh, that's probably the best like TV news show on the, aside from like, you know, I loved Stossel and Judge Napolitano and Kennedy. But like, I'd go, that's probably the best, like, you know, just, and it was always liberal, but just because it was like,

It was like higher IQ. It was like, oh, they're actually diving into a little bit of like, hey, what's going on in Somalia right now? Let's actually talk to some experts about that. And it wasn't just like, you know, whatever, like dumb cable news shows or something like that. Anyway, let's keep playing with this clip.

Yesterday. That was a long time ago. Speaking with our editorial leadership, one thing that came up quite frequently was the Hunter Biden laptop story. Indeed. And our editorial leadership today says, you know, we wish we'd gotten on that earlier. And you, in fact, expressed a regret yesterday in the hearing. That was one of the newsworthy things. You came out whole from that hearing.

But what made news was your regret that you had not done a better job institutionally on the Hunter Biden story. Yeah, and to be clear, I'm not on the editorial side of the organization and I was not there at the time. But you represented it as your feeling and as the feeling of the editorial team today. That's correct. Can you just pause again? I think this is really important.

Not coming out with information soon enough is as good as not coming out with it at all. That story was relevant prior to the election, and then it got suppressed because it would have influenced the election. It's almost like if you had information about why I should sell a stock because it's going to crash, and then you tell it to me after it crashes. That's no longer...

valuable information. The thing that I needed it in order to, or if you told me that there was poison in my water after I got poisoned by it, that doesn't help me. I needed to know that information before I consumed the water. So the news organizations love doing this, but they correct the record once the information's irrelevant and they do this a lot so that they could pretend like, oh, we just didn't do it soon enough. No, you suppress the information while it was relevant. And then once it became irrelevant,

Then you were content to actually share the story with us. That's suppression. That's what that is. 100%. And then look, she does this kind of moving the goalpost thing a little bit subtly there. But when she says quite correctly, she goes, look, I'm not part of the editorial team. And I wasn't at NPR at the time. It's like, okay, fine, fair enough. But your claim was not that you are not biased.

Your claim was that the programming at NPR was not biased. And so, okay, fine. You weren't there, but we're talking about them. That's who we're talking about. The organization that you now run. And so to actually with a straight face be like, Hey, and we regret not reporting on the Hunter Biden story to your point, when it mattered at all, the, it only matters now to point out how biased these guys are, but, but,

Okay, but why didn't you guys report on that? I mean, come on. You're really going to argue that that wasn't because of a pre-existing bias that you guys already had? Like, do you think if there was a scandal about Donald Trump in October of 2020, they would have buried that story and only be talking about it now five years later? I don't think so.

Okay, like it's like, oh, it's very coincidental that all your regrets happen to go in one direction and one direction only. And that happens to be in the direction that coincides with your obvious bias that you're denying. I mean, get out of here. Now let's just play the very end of it and then we'll wrap up.

We didn't get on it early enough. And so is that a mistake? Sure. We can acknowledge that we are not always perfect. My belief is that it's not our goal to be trusted. It's our goal to be trustworthy, which means we get up every single day and we try to do the best job so that we earn the worth, that we are worth people's trust, but we never assume that we're trusted. But they assume, speaking of assuming, they assume that you didn't cover that story more fully because you were biased. I do understand that. And that's why I think it's important to acknowledge when we're not. But you don't think that was biased?

I was not there and I cannot speak to the conversations that happened. So I don't know what went into it. But my view is that when we hear criticism, we need to take it on board and we need to examine what it is that is generating this criticism and determine what we're going to do about it. If we are going to serve the public interest, we need to hear from the public. And then we need to determine what of that is something that we can integrate in order to earn that public trust. By the way, that's it.

The end of the story. But you know what's a really great way to turn to the public is to not take government money. Just saying. That way you could really find out what the market thinks of your news. But look, for her thing here to be... And you notice at the end there, by the way, she really slivers away from the central argument because then he just has the obvious follow-up question. And this is not exactly a hostile interview, but the obvious follow-up question is like, okay, but people are going to say you didn't report on the Hunter Biden thing because of your bias. And then she goes...

Well, look, I wasn't there and I don't know the conversation, so I can't say for sure. It's like, but you started out saying for sure.

You started out claiming very authoritatively that NPR is not biased. And here's a great indication that they are. But again, she's still slithering away from the point here because it doesn't even... Okay, you don't know the conversations. Yeah, I guess it's true. If you knew all the conversations, you could know definitively that there was bias if they were saying something. But nobody...

People don't have to communicate. Look, me and you, Rob, this show, for anyone who watches the show, as you should have figured out already, we are very biased. Now, me and Rob have the same bias. We don't have to have a conversation about that before the show. There doesn't have to be either me or you like sitting down and going, hey, dude, I

We're going to try to make the government look bad and make the market look good on this show today, because that is already where both of us are, you know, ideologically or theoretically, like that's where we already are. We don't believe in, you know, like big government and we do believe in laissez-faire free markets. So that's going to happen in our coverage. Whether me or you communicate about that specifically is irrelevant.

And so if you have a bunch of liberals around who all hate Donald Trump, they don't have to be having a conversation about how we're liberals who don't like Donald Trump. It doesn't matter whether they're communicating that with each other or not. That's going to be reflected in the news coverage. And of course it is.

Like, who's gonna deny? At MSNBC, you got a whole bunch of progressives. And at Fox News, you got a whole bunch of conservatives. And so obviously, their coverage of the day's news is going to reflect that. And this old school model, this is, in large essence, this is why the corporate media is dead. It's also why people have such contempt for the corporate media. It's exactly why, by the way,

Even though MSNBC was more progressive than CNN, Trump supporters always hated CNN the most.

You know, it was fuck CNN chants at Trump rallies, not fuck MSNBC. I mean, I'm not saying one of those couldn't have broken out, but they always hated CNN more. And this is why, because at least with MSNBC, there was a feeling like they admit that they're the antidote to Fox News. They admit that they're the progressive news. But CNN pretends that we just play it right down the middle. And that's what's infuriating, because it's it's.

The real problem with it is that the whole game of journalism is telling the truth. The whole game is being honest. And how do you do that when your whole self-identity is predicated on a lie, on a blatant lie, which is that I am not biased?

I am, no, you know, who's biased. Every goddamn human being, every human being is biased, including these hacks. So anyway, that's my last Rob, you could have the last word and then we got to wrap up. Nah, let's wrap. I think we covered it. All right. Thank you, Rob. Thank you, Natalie. Thank you everybody listening. Um, got a lot of big stuff coming up this week. I think you guys are going to enjoy it. And, uh, our schedule will be a little bit messed up for warning here, but I'll make sure to get the episodes in. All right. Catch you guys soon. Peace.