War Avoided, For Now
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what's up what's up guys welcome to a brand new episode of part of the problem i am dave smith he is robbie the fire bernstein we are actually both in our uh in our homes or rob's in his studio but close enough to his home uh and it's good it's good to be back how are you feeling rob oh man great weekend out in chicago and now i start porch tour it's the season of porches porchstore.com kickoff party in mobile alabama followed by pensacola florida come party

Hell yeah. And where can people go if they want to grab tickets? PorchTort.com. There's a lot of porches up there. So, you know, find the porches closest to you and pay your tributes.

There you go. There you go. Go see the Porch Tour live. It's become a legendary event. Also, happy Easter to everybody who celebrated yesterday. Hope you guys had a good one and enjoyed some good quality time with family and stuff like that. It was...

Was my birthday yesterday having to fall on? Oh, yes. Thank you very much. Then thank you. I just bring it up just to say thank you to everybody. I got a lot of nice birthday messages. Not 50, Rob. And we're very close in age. And I don't really feel like that's an appropriate joke for you to make. I'm not. I was turned 42.

42 years old which might as well be 50 honestly it's all the same at a certain point but uh it was i had a great uh birthday i mean i did start it in chicago but i was able to make it home pretty early and had a good uh good day with the family so a lot of fun um i

It's been a wild and tiring couple of weeks for me, but it's nice to be home. So anyway, and of course, as I woke up this morning, as most of us did, to the news that the Pope passed away on Easter, which I do not have a hot take on this. I really don't have much of anything to say about it, but that does just seem wild.

Like the Pope dying on Easter seems almost like, oh, is this a sign of something? Did anyone ever predict this? And then it means all of humanity is going down. Anyway, it was a nice time. I hope everybody had fun. And my condolences to the Catholics out there who lost their Pope on Easter. I married a Catholic, so I've learned how to be diplomatic with them. Sorry about that. Maybe the next one. Also, let's hope you get a better Pope. Yeah, maybe the next one won't be such a socialist.

Yeah, you know, it would just be cool. It'd be cool to have a pope who's not, like, lecturing about climate change and stuff like that. Again, he can say what he wants to, but, you know, that's not the best thing for the world. Okay, so...

Let's talk a little bit about this story. And I will, you know, we don't have, I don't have too much that's on my mind right now, I guess just between a lot of traveling and being preoccupied with other things. And also, it just seems like the Pope story has kind of been dominating the news today. But the one thing that we had not discussed yet that I really do think is worth bringing up is that it appears that

at least according to reporting in the New York Times and other major publications that is very much in line with what I'm hearing from behind the scenes, it appears that we came very close, really to the brink of a war with Iran that has been shut down, at least for now. Essentially, the New York Times is reporting that

It is pretty wild that Israel drew up plans for striking Iranian nuclear targets, whatever exactly that means. According to our own Director of National Intelligence and CIA, there is no movement on... Iran does not have a nuclear weapon and does not seem to be closing in on one. But regardless, Israel drew up these plans. The plans, of course, Rob... I mean, get this, it's just...

you can't make this stuff up. The plans, of course, Israel could not do themselves. So the plans that Israel drew up involved US backup and US strikes as well. This was presented to Donald Trump. Evidently, some senior members of Donald Trump's cabinet were all for this. And the

You could guess who they are already as a waltz Marco Rubio. And from everything I'm hearing and everything that's being reported, it seems that Tulsi Gabbard played a major role in convincing Donald Trump not to do this. And also from the outside that Tucker Carlson played a major role in this. So it's, you know, according to the times, the Israeli plans were to attack in May and

So this is like, you know, it's the 21st of April today. This is coming up in a couple weeks.

maybe two to four weeks or something like that. Like this was going down and Trump straight up thwarted it and was like, no, we will not back up. We will not back you up and we will not help you with this strike. And he said that, I guess they're going, they want to give Iran a few more months to negotiate before they make this move. So the threat is not off the table. It's, but for now, at least it has been, you know,

or left in question. So I guess the, you know, obviously like there's a lot of obvious takeaways from this, but, you know, since I've been fairly critical of Trump and been critical of Tulsi Gabbard as of late, I should give both of them credit that at least in this moment, they didn't go through for right now with these, you know, what would have been catastrophic political

And of course, Tucker Carlson deserves just immense amount of credit for the role that he's playing. I mean, thank God for these few people around Donald Trump. And then it also goes, you know, it's one more piece of evidence that the whole what you might even call the Donald Trump doctrine at this point, which is essentially something like.

it's a great idea to have war hawks permeating your White House because then everybody's scared of you or something like that. It just seems that it's like, well, it's actually a lot more dangerous because you might end up getting yourself into another war.

Although I suppose you could argue that, well, look, he's doing it. You know, he's bullying them and then backing out. Just seems like a very dangerous game to play, but I don't know. Any, any thoughts you have on any of this stuff, Rob? Yeah. Some, some things of interest. One is I,

you know sometimes you can give donald trump too much credit for playing the 4d chess uh you do wonder if in this case this was a intentional leak to actually pressure the iranians of hey wars on the table so it's time to sit down and make a deal um what would play into that is the fact that uh apparently the united states was sending bunker busters over to israel um and then they were starting to station uh the stealth bombers um which

also potentially for more strikes in Yemen, but seeming to channel the capability of a strike being imminent. So you do wonder if this was intentional of Donald Trump to get this story out there to try and poke at the...

iranians to go hey you guys better cut a deal with us and then of course get the classic israeli line of uh if you don't back us now then this will be our our last opportunity to actually prevent it which is something we've heard all the way back from the obama administration or i seem to recall hearing that from the obama administration um

And then maybe because you would know more of the details about what the actual Obama Iranian deal was that Trump thwarted. But speaking to the experts around Donald Trump, there was a story making the rounds in The Wall Street Journal the other day that I think that Bessette is at the Treasury or whoever seems to be smarty pants. So apparently they managed to get around Peter Navarro and have a meeting with Trump and get him to trump the pause on the tariffs because Navarro has been the hardliner on the tariffs.

It seems like interest rates were starting to climb in the bond market and they realized, hey, we got a lot of debt to finance. This actually, our system playing a bit of a game with China of whose system is going to break first. And I think they didn't like the look of what was going on in the bond markets and said, I think we better pause on this. Just claim that this is what we wanted the whole time. Declare victory and the people are negotiating with you. But for the people that think that Donald Trump is the grand wizard and always has some huge plan,

It does seem like we hear stories sometimes if it's just who he last had a conversation with and if they get them to just make it Twitter official. Yeah, yeah, no, that's right. Well, so a couple things on that. Like, number one, it's just like more broad points, but number one, with the Iran deal really was, it's kind of an interesting thing because it was interesting

I would argue one of the best things that Obama did, maybe the best thing that Barack Obama did, and he had a disastrous foreign policy in many areas. A disaster in Iraq and Afghanistan kept both of those wars going. I mean, he did...

you know, end the war in Iraq and then reinvade the country at one point there because his project in Syria had been so disastrous that it spilled back over to Iraq. I mean, it's, it's, you can't even make the shit up like how bad it was. You had, I mean, there's lots of Pentagon looking at ISIS going, you're going the wrong way. Yes.

Quite literally, yes. There's there. I mean, there were all types of reports about this. There was a major report in The New York Times about this, about how in Syria you had Pentagon backed forces fighting CIA backed forces like just the craziest foreign policy you could possibly imagine.

Of course, he overthrew Muammar Gaddafi in Libya and led to the catastrophe there. Now that a lot of people who supported that intervention are now trying to walk that back as if they never really did. But we got your writing. We know what you said at the time. But so, you know, and then, of course, obviously, his policy in Syria is a disaster. But so

So then after his disastrous policy in Syria, he has to send troops back into Iraq to now fight on the other side of the Iraq way or the other side of who he was supporting in Syria. Essentially, it's just the whole thing's nutty.

But the one thing and then, of course, the catastrophe in Yemen that he backed in 2015. But like the one good thing. And then, by the way, part of that catastrophe in Yemen was, as Obama officials have themselves said, because the Saudis were pissed off about his good policy in Iran. So then he backed their war in against the Houthis in Yemen to win them back over or whatever, to placate them as the quote. But.

You know, the thing, it's a little bit interesting with the Iran deal because it's like the whole thing was fake, but yet it was still a very good deal. And the, you know, the popular kind of like Fox News talking point at the time would be that Obama gave Iran a bunch of U.S. taxpayer money in order for them to get rid of their nuclear weapons.

But none of that's real. It's all just made up. None of it. What happened is that the U.S. had a bunch of assets. So for people who know the history just very roughly, in 1953, under Dwight D. Eisenhower, the CIA overthrew the democratically elected government.

uh in iran um and installed the shah as a dictator the shah ruled until 1979 when there was a revolution and this is when the current iranian regime took over um and it's part of the reason why they hate our guts so much because we once overthrew their democratically elected government uh not the only reason there are several reasons but that's one of them and so essentially right

Just fast forwarding to the Iran deal. Back in '79, when the government that we backed and propped up was overthrown, there were like some Iranian assets, there was Iranian money that we froze in international accounts. Now, this money had been frozen the entire time, and a few international courts, I believe two international courts, had ruled that like, you gotta give this back to them. It's not yours, it's the Iranians' money. So that's what they got back.

It wasn't U.S. taxpayer dollars. It was their own money. I mean, you could argue it wasn't theirs. It was the previous regimes. But you're getting into murky territory here. It was any government that has money, they have it because they took it from their people. So a previous government had taken it from the people, is giving it back to the new government. You know, whatever you want to argue with that. It simply wasn't U.S. taxpayer money. It was Iranian money.

And also they didn't have nuclear weapons. So like all of this was made up. It was all nonsense. It was, we gave them money that was already theirs and they got rid of a thing that they never had, but it did lead to a new inspections regime. So they opened themselves up for a lot more in inspections. Essentially the whole point of the deal was just to take the neocon pretense for war off the table. So the, the, you know, it was a, it was,

kind of brilliant in that it called their bluff. You know, like the neocons were basically saying Iran's developing a nuke. That's why we have to go to war with Iran. And then the deal was like, okay, well, they just agreed to a whole new inspections regime. So aren't you thrilled? And then all the neocons went, no, no,

No, we're still not thrilled because blah, blah, blah. But the point is that they never believed Iran had a nuclear weapon. That was always just a pretense. And so they were annoyed that you took that pretense away from them. And this is part of the reason why Israel so opposed the Iran deal. So then, of course, Donald Trump comes in. He tears it up. He didn't exactly tear it up, but he had the U.S. back out of the deal. The deal is still in place between Europe and Iran, but...

regardless of that. But he basically tore it up because Obama's a loser and Obama's bad. And so everything he did was gay and everything I do is great. And so they tore that up. Now, then Joe Biden came back in and there was actually some pressure on Joe Biden. There was a divide amongst the Democratic establishment. Some of them really wanted him to get back in the same deal, but ultimately he didn't. And so now we're back to having Donald Trump in there. And now Trump is going,

Iran has to come to the table. They have to make some type of deal.

even though they did and he's the one who backed out of the deal that they were already in but again essentially what all this but and this is really one of the major problems with donald trump is that it's all so much about his ego and his achievement that he just wants to get them back into a thing now that was the trump deal not the obama deal so he can say like i made this deal happen now it's got you

you know, a gold plated seal of Donald Trump around it. So that's, that's essentially the situation there. It's like, there's,

Hopefully there's a way over these next few months and evidently we don't have a lot of time here because who knows Donald Trump said no to him once but who knows if he's gonna say no to the Israelis again Hopefully they can work out something in this in this time period to get back to some type of you know Enhanced inspections regime or whatever Iran has to do to take this bullshit talking point that they have a nuclear weapon off the table by the way one more thing

and should be mentioned is that even according to all the reports on this, even the Israelis were saying that these strikes would like thwart their ability to go nuclear for a year.

So even they're not claiming that it's like, oh, this is one and done and then we're out of here. It's like, no, you're getting pulled into another prolonged war, which, you know, as we've learned over the last few decades, they can last for quite a while. We've fought the longest wars in American history in the Middle East, and there's no reason to think that this one wouldn't be another one of

that magnitude. And also, there's no reason to think that it wouldn't be much, much bloodier for U.S. servicemen who are all throughout the region that Iran can touch. So anyway, catastrophe has been averted momentarily.

We'll see where all this ends up going. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show with father's day coming up and the summer on its way. We got to tell you about small batch cigar. This is, I know a lot of people struggle with what to get their dad or their uncle or their grandpa on father's day. If we got, if you got a cigar enthusiast on your hand, please,

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button first and they shop their newest arrivals. Plus, make sure to use the promo code problem. That'll get you 10% off your order. Plus you get those 5% reward points that I mentioned. Smallbatchcigar.com promo code problem for 10% off. All right, let's get back into the show. There's always a like just a lack of information from the Israeli government, which is so

So what do you think is their current breakout period now? And so what are these specific strikes do to delay that? And what's the point of it? If I guess in a year from now, you're in the exact same place. So then do you have a new plan for in a year from now? It just doesn't sound like much of a...

I'm just saying if you wanted to sell it to people, it's more of a sale to go, hey, these people can't have a bomb, and we actually have a way right now to do targeted strikes, and then that's going to set them back 20 years, and we don't even think they're going to retry it. That's a little bit more of a sale. The, hey, we're going to push them back a year, well, then...

I don't know, are they in the exact same spot in a year? And then what's the plan for a year from now? What are the odds that that pulls us into a bigger escalation with them? It just, it seems, I don't know, a little bit too loose of a plan to even want to push forward with it. If you wanted to end their nuclear program, it just doesn't seem like enough information.

Yeah, well, it's it kind of fits into the bigger theme that I've been mentioning quite a bit now is that you just, you know, I think I said this to you, Rob, when we were hanging out in the green room and in Chicago there and.

there was one point, I don't know how we talked. We were talking about the show 24. I think you made a joke about 24. It's something about Janine Garofalo being on 24 and how wild that was, you know, in hindsight or, or at the time or whatever. And I was saying that like that, the post nine 11, which by the way, I was a big fan of the show 24. I don't agree with the propaganda at all, but it was excellent show. Love Jack Bauer. But yeah,

That period, it's like the post 9-11 period was the last. It was like the last time we had good propaganda.

I don't even mean like, you know, there were some people who fell for the COVID propaganda, although obviously I think as you could see from the result of it, the propaganda wasn't that good because almost everybody saw through it eventually. But like that was the last period. It was post 9-11. Back then there used to be good propaganda and like none of these wars even have the good propaganda now.

like it's just because it's like impossible it's like you know the the propaganda through the whole ukraine war always relied on somehow saying that like listen you know luhansk must be ruled by kiev and not moscow and that really really matters to you because and you're like yes just

No, it doesn't. Like, that's just not good. And then the propaganda with like the Houthis, like no one's no one's even trying to make an attempt that the Houthis pose some threat to us or anything like this. It's just too. But like the propaganda with Saddam Hussein, that was good propaganda.

And then they did a lot of the things that you're talking about. Like they would lay out, okay, this is all we need to do. And then this is going to happen. You know, there was like a major threat. Don't get me wrong. All of this was lies, but they had a major threat. Saddam Hussein has nuclear weapons and he's in bed with the terrorists. He's about to hand off a nuke to the terrorists and they're going to nuke Kansas. And all we got to do is go in there. It'll take a couple of weeks. And then, and this is what they said, the propaganda for those, my age, now that I'm 50, they're,

they can remember was that we will be greeted as liberators and

The war will be a cakewalk. It'll be paid for in oil and democracy will sweep the region. It's like, this is what people were told. And they were told this by the experts. And this was their, this was like, oh, okay. Now, if you're going to imagine just saying, if you, before the age that we live in today, because we're talking like 2002 now, you know, there is no social media.

I don't know. Was there, did any social media exist in 2002? I don't think so. I don't even think there was MySpace, but I, compared to today, certainly there was no social media. There weren't smartphones. There weren't podcasts. There weren't, and there was a large degree of trust in institutions, certainly compared to today. And so if you could imagine being told, if you tell someone, on one hand, the threat is that America could get nuked.

And then on the other hand, this is going to be an easy war. Look, we had already fought a war in Iraq in 1991, the Persian Gulf War, and it was over quickly with almost, I think, no American casualties or certainly minimal American casualties.

And so you could see where we'd be, hey, dude, all we got to do is go do another little one of those things. And we're taking this huge threat off the table and it's going to be great. We're going to be greeted as liberators. It won't cost us a thing and democracy will sweep the region. That's a fairly, that's good propaganda right there. Well, okay. I guess that's enough for me to support. You know, I mean, I guess maybe you could say 15 days to flatten the curve was the last good propaganda that we had. Because that is, again, it's just, it's a reasonable buy-in.

Yeah, you know, it sucks to miss two weeks of work, but if missing two weeks of work is going to mean that, you know, a grandma isn't dying in a stairwell, most of the American people go, okay, I'll do that, you know. They...

It's not just that they don't have any propaganda like that for these wars. It's that they know they can't. Like, they don't have the mechanism by which to sell that propaganda. And nobody is going to listen to them saying, no, listen, this is what's going to happen. Like, this, this, this, and this, and it's all going to be great. Nobody's buying that anymore. It's like selling a Tyson fight after the Jake Paul incident. Yeah.

So, you know, yes, yes. It's like the 80s or 90s. We've watched Tyson, you know, knock out everyone. That's our World War Two. We were very successful in World War Two. But then after the streak of Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, North Korea, you start putting up a bunch of losses and you start telling us, oh, yeah, we can get this done. No problem. People like not so sure about that. Sounds like you're just trying to make some money.

Yeah, no, that's exactly right. Mike Tyson, Jake Paul, it's like you would never, you know, because before that fight, you could show pictures of Mike Tyson hitting the bag and go, oh, that looks like Mike Tyson to me, man. Like what we get in there might be Mike Tyson. But once you've seen him in there, you're like, oh, yeah, he's 60. He's not...

We're not going to see Mike Tyson again. They're not going to convince me that like, yeah, maybe 27 year old Mike Tyson's going to get in the ring. I was like, no, he's not. And you know, so there's, there's an interesting parallel there. Oh, the other thing is just cause you mentioned it. You know, the stuff with the tariffs has also, it does seem like, you know, you're right that it does. Well, so many people, and this is a major problem that we have right now is that, you know, we,

Like I supported Donald Trump in this last election. I think there's many people, many people who supported Donald Trump in 2024 who didn't support Donald Trump necessarily in 2020 or in 2016. I mean, certainly he got, you know, he won the popular vote for the first time. He got millions more votes than he got in 2016. And obviously this is...

you know, exemplified by so many of the high profile people who supported Donald Trump, who didn't support him in the past, you know, like Bobby Kennedy and Elon Musk and Joe Rogan and just a lot of people who like came over this. And I think like this represents millions of people who are kind of in this camp where it's like, look, we recognized, you know,

in 2024 last year that like several of the dynamics had changed and you kind of reassessed it and you went, you know, all things considered for the country. I think it's really important that Kamala Harris lose and that Donald Trump win this election. But,

That is very different than the people who are just like blindly loyal to Donald Trump, no matter what. And what you end up getting is the same thing we saw in this first in the first term, which is that even when Trump.

Trump supporters can't defend Trump's policy, they have to go to this 4D chess thing. It's like, no, no, no, you don't understand. It's this giant plan, you know, where every reaction to his action is already accounted for, and then he's going to react to their reaction, and it's all going to come out the way Trump wants it. And it's just, for me, look, I'm not saying

There have been cases before where I thought what Donald Trump was doing was very reckless, and then it kind of resulted in something where I was like, oh, okay, maybe he was working on something here. You know, the one that comes to mind was him talking all types of shit to Kim Jong-un and then getting him to the table. Now, ultimately, him having John Bolton as his national security advisor killed the whole deal, but I'll still, you know, gladly admit

hey, he did talk a lot of shit and then get this guy to the table. So maybe there's something to that. However, you know, after living through 2020, this is really what broke, you know, for me of that. It's like, now you can't convince me that it's always some 4D chess and he's always smarter than everybody else in the room because it does seem like a lot of times he just gets rolled by the other people around him who are like, you know, manipulating him. Um,

And I will say with the tariff thing, it just doesn't seem like there's this great big plan here. It seems like they threatened something that they couldn't really follow through with, which to me seems like very bad negotiating. That's like a rule of thumb almost, like just in life in general. You never want to really threaten something that you're unwilling to follow through on. It's a good rule of parenting as well. Don't threaten something you're not actually willing to do.

You know, like if you're going to be like, you know, you do this one more time, no dessert tonight. And then they do it one more time. And then when dessert time comes, you're like, all right, just give them desserts. Like, well, then stop saying that. Don't say that unless you're actually willing to do it. But then with this, it does just seem. And then eventually they just write, like you said, kind of like, well, this is going to actually be bad for us. So we'll back off of it. And, you know, I guess.

I think me and you were talking about this recently too, but my major thing that I just think is so, it's really unfortunate. And, you know, we knew that there were going to be disappointments. Anytime you support a politician, especially one who might actually win, you're always, you know, there's going to be disappointment involved. The only time in politics that you can ever support someone and not be disappointed at all is when you're supporting a person who has no chance of winning. That's pretty much always the case.

But the thing I guess that's upsetting about the Trump administration is that it did seem like there was actually a – it was plausible, maybe even reasonable, to think that there was a decent enough chance that this guy who had been so profoundly burned by this corrupt system might actually be there to fight that corrupt system.

Now, I don't think any of us had any illusions that after four years of Donald Trump, we were going to have seen the CIA abolished and the FBI abolished and the Federal Reserve audited and government spending cut by $3 trillion. You know, none of us thought this would be the case. But we did maybe cautiously have some optimism that maybe we could move an inch in that direction, maybe even a few inches in that direction.

And what you're seeing already is just it's like, oh, these are all distractions. And this isn't even it's it's not that we're not even we're not even thinking of moving in that direction. None of these things are even on the table. You know, part of this is, again, that you see no effort to prosecute the criminals within the government. I mean, it really is wild.

that between the people that Donald Trump has as like department heads and at high posts, he's got Bobby Kennedy, Kash Patel, Tulsi Gabbard in there. I mean, some of the people who have been the most eloquent and passionate explainers of how criminal our government's been over the last few years.

And yet there's still no move. But what we are doing is deporting every Israel critic who's, you know, not a citizen. We're getting rid of them. We're you know, it's always like and look, I feel like the same thing with the tariffs. It's like emblematic of that same problem that the real issue here is, and as I've said before, and I think that.

Probably there are some libertarians who fail to kind of address the first part of this. But like I've said many times, it is an outrage, an absolute outrage, like one that should get you white hot mad that our government subsidizes countries

including their defense, puts them under our nuclear umbrella of protection, which is there's a lot of countries that fall under this, right? And then those same countries, their governments will turn around and tariff American products. That is an outrage, okay?

But then it's also still the case that at the very foundation, a tariff is just a tax on trade. And that's just about as stupid as a tax on work. So when you think about it, it's like, so we're making it a crime to be productive.

We're making it a crime to work, and now we're making it a crime to trade with others, and the punishment is a fee and a fine. It makes no economic sense at all. But the real heart of the issue is that people will go, okay, this is unfair to the American worker. And what they see as unfair to the American worker is that

Other countries, you know, be it Mexico or China or wherever, they undercut us by, you know, paying people wages that are far, far lower than people in America would accept. And therefore, they can charge much less for their products. And it puts our companies out of business or something like that. And that in itself, I just think is wrong.

And that like, look, by economic theory and good economic theory, this happens all the time. If other people take work off of your plate and do it for much cheaper, then that frees you up to go do more productive work. Now, the problem we're having in modern day America is that people aren't seeing that more productive work.

So they're going, yeah, well, listen, this used to be a big steel mill town. And now the three mills closed. And now there's nothing here. So that doesn't seem like an improvement. We'd rather have these jobs that you used to be able to support a family off of. But the problem there is not that we're trading with the world.

That's not the issue. And if that was the issue, then why wouldn't we solve that by, again, just forget even the tariffs, just make it illegal to trade with the rest of the world? Why isn't anyone suggesting that? Or much, much higher permanent tariffs? The main problem that unfortunately nobody in the Trump administration is going to take on, what's actually like

devastated the American working class is that the American working class has to carry the biggest government in the history of the world on its back.

That's the major problem. The major problem is that unlike all of these other countries, the American worker has to carry the American empire on its back. You know, the $10 trillion that we've spent maintaining this empire in the last 20 years, that's all at the expense of the American people that you have to pay. You essentially have to pay for this through taxes, through debt,

And through inflation, you carry that entire burden on your back. And if you really want to solve that problem, we should be rolling back the empire, which we were never supposed to be to begin with. We're always supposed to be a republic. And the truth is that some Chinese guy who's working for $1.50 a day is not what's putting the burden on the American working class. It's the American government.

But I just don't see, I don't see any understanding of that. And I certainly don't see any political will to actually take that on. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Paint Your Life. Both Mother's and Father's Day is coming up. And I'm telling you, I already got one of these for my wife, but it's the best gift. You can now get a professional hand-painted portrait created from any photo at a truly affordable price. It's an unforgettable gift.

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I think that's well said. And a lot of stuff just gets mixed in with the tariffs for concessions. That's a gamble. But that's not saying that, hey, we need centralized government factory workers as a policy.

Like people seem to kind of, you know what I mean? Like there's, you might say, Hey, we've got a problem that China's just stealing too much of our intellectual property. And so tariffs, but that's not the conversation. The conversation is people seem to be bought into, Hey, I want my good factory job.

and tariffs are what's going to create it. And I don't think that makes, I don't think that exists in economic reality. I think people, the reason why you're not going to find your good factory job is probably because of inflation. And if you have a good factory job, they probably rely on imports such as cheaper steel or otherwise, so you can work in your auto manufacturing or something that's a little bit up kind of the productive chain.

Now, that's not true across the board, but I'm willing to bet that most factory jobs in the United States of America are probably actually benefiting from trade and the cheaper goods that we're able to get here.

Yes. Yeah, I think that's 100%. And I think that there's already been examples of what you're saying in these tariffs, where like they figured out that like, oh, shoot, we're tariffing components that American manufacturing needs in order to manufacture things. It's just, again, it's just a...

I think it's just it's a bad understanding of economics to think that any of this stuff and any more than like, you know, it's the great old. And I always blink this. I got to go look this up because I reference it enough that I should have that. But it was when Milton Friedman was visiting one of the former Soviet bloc countries. Yeah. There he goes. He goes, why are they digging with shovels? Shovels. Why don't they have excavators here?

And they go, he goes, no, it's a jobs program. And Milton Friedman goes, so then use spoons. It's just like the...

there's a lot of times in economics, there's like these logical understandings that once they click with you, you're like, oh, okay. Yeah, I get it. I get why I was thinking about this all the wrong way, because if you want it, if you really felt this way, then like you should be a full on Luddite. Like you should be against any technological improvement. You should, you should like be like, oh my God, like,

You should be against the freaking factories because the factories were putting all the all the agricultural work out of business. You know, like there there was if you go to like a poor enough, like primitive enough economy, you're going to get full employment.

You know, that's like that's what people like. They like to apply like today's morals or today's moral standards to, you know, like times where we were much poorer. And so it's easy for people today to look back and be like, oh, my God, they had child labor back then. Like they had nine year olds working. And it's like, yeah, the reason why they had child labor.

The reason why, say, like in the early days of the Industrial Revolution, why like child labor was so accepted is because child labor had been the way of the world for all of history before that. Before the Industrial Revolution, it was all like it was all backbreaking agricultural work or mostly. And.

The norm was that as soon as you were able-bodied, you started working. Because if you didn't live that way, then people starve to death. So it was just kind of like, no one ever thought of like, you know what I'm saying? Like there's no moral question when it's do this or starve to death. And so it was like the, the,

industrialization is what put a lot of those jobs out of business, but we'd still all recognize, yeah, it doesn't matter. It's like, because we're living at a higher standard now, that's what you want. And I think there's something very unfortunate where, listen, and I would, I, you know, I think NAFTA was bad and GATT and all these things. It's all just like centralized managed trade stuff. Ron Paul did a great job breaking all that down back in the day. But

The truth is that while there was this period of kind of globalization, and when I say globalization, I don't even mean politically. I just mean in terms of like global trade. While there was that period, there was also this gigantic increase in the size and scope of the U.S. federal government and these forever wars that we've spent trillions and trillions of dollars on. And then when you look at that and it all doesn't work out, I think too many people are blaming –

the free trade and not looking at the major thing that's just been this incredible burden on the American worker. So hopefully people start to wake up to that. - You're not gonna get rid of the free trade without going backwards because I think like 95% of the rare earth minerals that we're using as key components in technology are not in this country.

So you're going to have to trade for something. So at some point, what you're really just advocating for is a centralized government policy to create more factory jobs. And was that really the dream? Was that really your dream in life? I think you just want a job that pays you well. And you're wondering what's going on that I don't have a job that pays well or specifically

for men which by the way i'm one of these people i prefer working with my hands i wish like i'd learned carpentry or mechanic or something else to have done in the years where i was uh working sales office jobs and all that nonsense that is absolutely soul-sucking did not play to my strength in any capacity school did not pay to play to my strength in any capacity so i i understand why people like look at it and go hey i'm willing to work hard and i want to show up and be able to just

You know, work with my hands and work hard. Like I get the complaint, but I think the idea that a centralized government policy to create more factory jobs that that it's just not going to work. It's going to be the windmills that are falling into the ocean or the solar plants that the Democrats were obsessed with that have all gone defunct. I think hundreds of billions of dollars were wasted amongst the Biden and Obama administration pursuit of green energy. That's what centralized policies look like.

Yep. No, 100%. Okay. Listen, we will. I'll try to take a couple questions from the chat. If you guys want to throw them in there, I'll jump to them. By the way, if you want to watch the show live and uncensored ad free, we're always streaming directly to part of the problem.com. All of our shows go live there. If you want those shows, go sign up over at part of the problem.com. And then you could be in the chat and get some questions. We do a whole other episode every week.

That is very true. Yes, that's true. We do it most weeks. We make up for it when we miss them. We just did a live from Chicago episode that is only available to subscribers. And yes, every week we do members-only episodes. If you want to get all that stuff, you got to go sign up. So before, if you guys want to throw your questions in the chat, I will try to get to a few of them. But I get before, while we're waiting for that,

So what is this? By the way, I have not very deeply been following this latest Pete Hegseth drama, but it does seem like it is it's being reported that he had another signal conversation about, you know,

about uh military attacks in Yemen and that evidently family members of his got added to this signal chat what have you what have you seen of this Rob so I the detail that's unclear to me is how this uh became came to light how they found out I mean the last time it was because they accidentally added a reporter and the guy reported on it uh but now it's uh being reported by uh you know the

Wall Street Journal, New York Times, everybody that he had another signal conversation going with his I know for sure his wife and I believe some other people and the same details that were in the other conversation with the, you know, people who are actually a part of the conversation.

security apparatus or the the big wigs your tulsi gabbards your head of the cia apparently that conversation was also happening with family members so sounds like uh yeah i don't know just sounds sloppy and more of a security breach and the kind of thing that uh you might want to button up it's um it's interesting you know because so

The one thing that's kind of funny to me about it was always, it's just kind of like, you're like, well, look, he didn't add an Atlantic reporter. So you're like, we're doing a little bit better. He just added his wife and his mom or whatever. That is an improvement. Now, Pete Hegseth is claiming that this is a false story and that it's just the enemies of Donald Trump that are accusing him of this. You know, I find something interesting about the political dynamic there. Like, there is...

And this in a way, in terms of politics, like I'm not saying in terms of like what's right or wrong just to regular people, but there is something where the Democrats and the corporate media have handed the Trump administration this perennial excuse.

That, you know, all these guys are just liars who are trying to make us look bad. And that does have legs to it, because to any reasonable person looking at it, they'd go, yep, that sure does seem to be the case. And that sure has been the case a bunch. It's a little bit tougher to play that to use that card when you just got caught doing this exact thing.

Just makes it a little bit harder to be like, ah, this is just how they always smear us. And you're like, no, but like last time you guys definitely did this. So I don't know. It's just hard to it's hard to be dismissive of the allegation that you did the exact thing you just did once again. Then it's very hard to use that defense when you just got caught doing it.

That's I suppose all I'll say. Yeah. Pretty, pretty amazing though. While it does seem like some other people have been drummed out of the Pentagon, Mike, Mike Waltz skates free after the most, like the biggest fuck up you could imagine putting a Trump hating fake journalist on a group chat with all of the highest levels of Trump's government. I think at the moment, Trump doesn't want to admit any mistakes or fault. And so he's a,

not looking to have to fire anybody. Yes, I think, uh, I think that's right. Uh, okay. So here's some questions. All right, Dave, who do you think is presenting the best, most fair, least straw man, pro Israel argument these days? Ooh, me. Yeah. I don't know if it's exactly a pro Israel argument, you know, that,

That's a really tough question. And, you know, I might be not the best person to ask about this, particularly right at this moment in my life, because, man, I could give you a long list of people presenting the worst, you know, most straw man arguments. But

I don't know. I don't know. I'd be interested to hear from you guys who you think. Who do you think presents the best pro-Israel argument, the best, most honest and fair pro-Israel argument? I don't know.

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As much as there, you know, like I've said before, there's such a gap between the people who actually consume his work and those who don't. But I think Daryl Cooper in Fear and Loathing in the New Jerusalem actually probably presented the best argument. And when you're talking about this, you're saying the most fair. And I think what you're saying is the most on it when you say the least straw man, like the most honest argument.

And I think that he probably did. And that there is something compelling about it. And the thing is that in order to really present it the best way, in the most honest way, then you also have to admit the crimes that the Zionist settlers and the Israelis committed against the Palestinian population there. But you can also present it in a way where it's like, you know, look, like I always said, and I think this is, this is like when history is done right, like when, you

And I don't care about all these people who go like, oh, Daryl Cooper's not a real historian or something like that. And that's the same. Daryl Cooper would say that too. He'll go, I'm just a history nerd who reads a ton about this stuff and likes telling stories. But he does history better than 99% of historians do. But what you want to do is kind of like get people to understand that history

The history was was made up of real people who are human beings just like me and you are human beings. And they had all the complexities that come with that. They had their you know, these were, as he likes to say a lot, these were once three year olds.

You know what I mean? Who were like cute little monkeys, like my little three-year-old, and were just innocent little kids. And they had a lot of circumstances and different things thrown at them. And they became these figures and they did these things. And then to understand that there was a context, there was a time period, there were a lot of different things going on that informed their decision-making. And I think that like, if you take something like the creation of the state of Israel, even for say like a,

People like who are critics of Israel, like myself, it's easy today to say, like, just tell the story and be like, OK, well, like they you know, the creation of the state of Israel involved kicking seven to eight hundred thousand Arabs out of their land and making them refugees. Now, that's true. And I don't think you have you have to lose that point.

or lose any of your kind of like sympathy for those people or any of your understanding of how this created a tremendous amount of hatred and resentment and all of this. But I do think that like, and this is one of the things that Daryl Cooper does very well in the series is like, okay, this started in 1947. Let's think about 1947.

where were we exactly in history? And the fact that Jews had been through hundreds of years of pogroms in Europe and had been like horrifically mistreated. The fact that the Holocaust had just wrapped up a couple years earlier and

millions of Jews were killed by the Nazis. The fact that the allies had gone to total war, including targeting of civilian centers, just slaughtering people by the millions, you know, like bombing cities when the men were out at war.

And you know damn well that who's left there are the women and children dropping nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, firebombing of Japan and Dresden and all this stuff. And that currently, as this is going on, Stalin...

is like ethnically cleansing the ethnic germans out of eastern europe this is after in the war he sent his men on a giant raping spree through all of eastern europe so it's like with all of that in the background you could understand where like some zionist settlers were like hey who's gonna tell us we can't drive a few hundred thousand people off their land

You know, like, okay, yes, we need to create a Jewish state. They had convinced themselves, and you could certainly understand why at the time, they had convinced themselves that like, this is the only way we're ever going to be protected.

is if we have a government of our own that is dedicated to protecting Jewish people, and we're going to have to break a few eggs in order to make that omelet. But you look around the world and it's nothing but broken eggs. You can understand where they were like, who the hell is going to get on their high horse and lecture us right now about doing this?

So that, to me, is kind of like the best steel-manned version of their case, and it comes from Daryl Cooper, you know, kind of ironically, seeing as how he's portrayed these days in some pro-Israel circles. Okay, anything you want to add, Rob, or should we go to another question? Go to the next one. Okay.

Dave, do you think global trade is possible without American military subsidizing everyone else's security? Yes, 100%. The two absolutely do not rely on each other. It's like if...

If we abolished NATO and said we're not in these war guarantees with Europe anymore, we're not subsidizing their defense, we could still trade things with them. You in no way need one for the other. And in fact, what is the proof of that is that even countries outside of that umbrella, we trade with them.

China is a hostile foreign power and we still trade with them all the time. I mean, we may not trade much with Russia anymore, but we certainly were before. You don't have to have a war guarantee or have subsidized or be subsidized by the American military to trade. Because what happens is there's it's not governments trading with each other. It's companies and the companies trade for a simple reason, because they need the stuff.

in order to make a profit. So yes, of course you can have that. In the same way that like, you know,

Someone like we could trade between the states, even though we have different police forces that are protecting our property rights, supposedly. Infringing more than protecting, but are at least tasked with the responsibility to protect. And you could have trade between countries that have different militaries. None of those things are dependent on the other. All right.

Dave, do you believe that we've figured out zero-point energy and the government is keeping it on the shelf? I have no idea. Any take on that, Rob? I don't know what zero-point energy is, but would a free market have brought us to nuclear advancements? Probably.

i mean yeah you know the the army's using uh the small modular nuclear reactors and uh we fought a bunch of wars over oil and we uh dug up uh you know energy uh rail lines not i think bus lines or shuttles or whatever and replaced them with roads that everyone would be in cars

So do I think if we had an entirely free market, if we'd have this just giant working off a gas economy or whatever our current energy policy is? Absolutely not. I think in a free market, energy would look a lot different and probably have a lot more nuclear as a point as a as a zero point energy. I've never seen that term before. I think he's referring to like a nuclear fusion or something.

But I wouldn't know. Yeah, yeah, I wouldn't know. I mean, I'm sure the government has a bunch of stuff that they're not sharing with the rest of us, but I have no idea what that might be. All right, next question. We can make this the last one. How do you think a primary candidate in either party would do in the 2028 election if they ran solely on being anti-Israel? We'll go with the establishment on anything else.

Do you think the people in the U.S. hate Israel enough for any degree of success with that strategy? Well, no. I mean, I don't think that would be a good strategy. And I don't think that's what we should support. You know, it's like being the way to make it work.

Or not even the way to make it work, what's right, what you would want to see is like you don't even want to necessarily be anti-Israel. You know, I had some people, I don't think I even ever responded to this, but I have, I said in one tweet recently, or someone called me the anti-Israel guy. And I was like, I'm not even anti-Israel. I'm just pro-America.

Now, some people gave me shit on that who were like, you should be anti-Israel, but I don't really see it that way in the same sense that I don't think describing me as anti-American would be at all accurate, even though.

I've been very critical of the US government and for the exact same things that I'm critical of the Israeli government for. I mean, one of the major things I'm critical of the US government is for funding and arming Israel, right? I mean, so like, I just don't think

Like my my starting point is never to be like against the people of any nation or against like the nation itself. I'm critical of like what governments do, and I'm critical of what the Israeli government is doing to the Palestinians and what the Israeli government is doing to the American people, for that matter.

But I don't think any of that should ever be animated. And look, there are people who could make arguments, but I just never, I always find all of these arguments to be unsatisfactory to me. If you want to get into the business of demonizing the people themselves, you can do it to almost every group of people. And it's just not productive. And I don't think it's right.

You know, but if you want to demonize the people of Israel and you could be like, look at that, you know, look at the lack of protests over what they're doing in Gaza. I mean, there have been some, but not nearly enough. You could find man on the street interviews where random Israelis are talking about Arabs. There's no shortage of that. And it's pretty disgusting. The things a lot of them say.

But then again, you can also do that to the people in Gaza. And this is what almost everybody who supports the war does. You know, look at them. They're celebrating as this hostage is taking. Look, Hamas won this election. Look at this opinion poll where they supported this. It's like you could also do that within America, you know.

I'm old enough, Rob, now that I'm 50, I'm old enough to very vividly remember when every single right winger in this country supported destroying Iraq and you were some type of homo if you didn't agree with them. I could certainly do it to liberals and left wingers in America through COVID. Look how many of them would have. But.

You know, people are propagandized. People defend their government. People compartmentalize things. I've never made it my thing to like attack the people. And so if you are running a campaign that was just animated by like hating a foreign country, that's not going to that's not good. What you want to be animated by is loving your country and your beef with Israel should be that they're degrading our country.

That would be the winning message. And so to your point, if you're like, oh, I'm willing to go with the establishment on anything else, but I'm being pro is I'm being anti Israel. Well, then screw that. You're still with the establishment that's totally fucking over your country. And that that I don't think would be successful. Then you're going to get all of the baggage that comes with being critical of Israel and none of the backing because people are going to be like, oh, you're just a tool of the establishment. But what you what I think might be the more interesting question is that

you know, imagine a Donald Trump type campaign, but also imagine it actually being America first.

Like actually being willing to say, yeah, we're not fighting wars on behalf of Israel anymore. We're not backing up Israel and their wars. You could even I think the best way to do it would be to even do it from a pro-Israel point of view and be pro-Palestinian, too. Just be like, I love all these people. We just want them to get along. We're rooting for everyone to have success. You could even do it in a way where you you said we'll defend Israel.

You could do it in a way where you went, look, we're not going to let anyone destroy Israel. So if anybody in the region has any plans of that, let's not do that. Now, forget, you know, splitting hairs over whether that's the correct position or the libertarian position, which I repeat myself. But just on the scale of outrage is like, Rob, you remember last year.

when Iran sent all of those missiles at Israel. And there was a team of nations that came together to defend Israel. It was mostly America, but there were European countries. And then there were also some of the Sunni sock puppet countries, you know, the Saudis and Jordan and these guys, they all helped Israel defend itself. Of all of the critics of Israel,

obviously of us or whoever else, how many people were really outraged by that?

You know, it's like, OK, fine. Yes. Don't don't let these missiles fall on people. You know, I don't like any government intervention. But of all the government interventions, that one's not bad. That's not really the issue. The issue is whether the issue isn't whether we're going to help defend Israel nearly as much as are we going to help Israel aggress against all their neighbors? And that's what we should get out of the business of doing this. Any any final comment I'll give to you, Rob? Well, I would.

I would just state it a little bit differently. Foreign suffering is not going to be a primary driver for an American political campaign. And if you make it your... So if you were to come up and you said, I have no policy other than what's happening in Gaza is terrible, so we're not supporting Israel anymore, and someone else is pitching for a better economy, pitching for closing the border, it's not a sale to the American people. We don't care enough about... Take any issue of foreign suffering, and if you said, hey, what's going on is immoral, and this is going to be...

the central issue of my campaign, nobody cares. And on the same note, if the central part of your campaign is just where you don't want to support Israel, nobody cares. If you want to change the pitch to we're not fighting foreign wars, we're not sending all this money out of the country and we're being American first,

well, that's already not your question of running solely on being anti-Israel. I don't think the country... The country wants to live well here, and I think they look at the money and resources being spent on Israel, and that's part of a larger problem that people take issue with, or they look at, you know, basically our involvement over there and what's happening in Gaza, and I think people look at the morality of that. But people want to live well here. I don't think if you were to make that the sole part of your campaign, either off the human suffering, it's just not...

a major driver you could take any issue that faces any country in the world and go i'm running a campaign that we have to raise the wages over the chinese workers good luck in america with that one hey guys i won't even touch another foreign policy until i make sure everyone in yemen is fed good luck with that one yeah yeah exactly all right we're gonna wrap up there thank you guys very much for listening we will be back tomorrow with a brand new episode catch you then peace