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Hey, come see us for telling jokes in Philadelphia, Boston, Los Angeles, Palm Springs, Stroudburg, Pennsylvania, Cortland, New York, Oakmont, Pennsylvania, and El Paso and San Antonio, Texas. Go to JimmyDore.com for a link for all those tickets. Hey, this is Jimmy. Who's this?
Jimmy, it's Joe Biden. Hey, hello, Mr. President, and thanks for getting right to the point and not presenting us with some bizarre convoluted introduction. I appreciate it. I'm not finished. Oh, Jesus. President Joseph Robinette, J.R. Jr., J.Y. Young of Styx, Biden, Esquire, because I'm a lawyer, attorney at law, hail to the dang chief. All right, enough. How you doing, Mr. President?
All's funky, nothing's lumpy. Oh, Jesus. What does that mean? Jimmy, things are going very well. I just had a physical and I am in tip-top shape. That's great to hear. Although, from what I understand, you chose to forego the cognitive exam portion of the physical, am I right? There is no need for it. Ah, really? In this climate of grave concern over your mental acuity, there was no need for a routine cognitive exam?
Jimmy, I have nothing to say on the matter. Everything that needs to be said has already been said by my press secretary, Corrine Jean-Pierre Rompel. Oh, Bob.
I don't know if a reference to a French flute player is going to play, but holy shit. When pressed by the White House press corps, she quoted something my doctor, Kevin O'Connor, said a year ago. I don't need a cognitive test. I'm going to do it.
I prove my cognition every day in just the things that I do. Talking to world leaders, etc. Case closed. Nuff said. No, I'm sorry. Not nuff said. First of all, Donald Trump famously took this test and he bragged about passing it. Largely, it sounds like simply identifying pictures. Because of this, the American people know the cognitive test is routine. Why wouldn't you also take it?
Because if I looked at a picture of a water faucet and said dolphin, the American people would think that I'm not fit to be president. Because you wouldn't be. No, it's because they've given in to MAGA thinking and hate women's rights and also Jewish people. Yep. And some old-timey water faucets look like dolphins, to be fair. God damn it. Don't you see how much...
Taking this simple test would put the American public at ease about your fitness to be president. Why wouldn't you do such a simple thing?
Because I don't have to, Sammy. Like I said, the doctor said I didn't need to because of the things I do every day at my job. Like shuffle around aimlessly? You mean like that? Confuse people in places like that? Or how about when you lose your train of thought and stare into space like that, you mean? Shit your pants in front of the Pope? Yeah. Exactly. Extremely presidential shit, my friend. EPS. That's what I'm slinging.
Mr. President, did it ever occur to you that Dr. O'Connor might be giving the American people a sly message by saying that you don't need a cognitive exam? What the hell are you talking about, Slapjack? Perhaps he knows that you would fail the cognitive. And by saying you can tell his mental condition by how he does his job, he means obviously this guy is senile.
No. Yeah. No way. Yeah. Dr. Kev wouldn't do that to me. He's a good boy. Honestly, Mr. President, it's the most rational explanation. Think about it. Oh, my God. Yeah. I think you see now, don't you? Oh, my God. Yeah.
Jimmy, I just got a whiff of some sort of baked goods that took me right back to my childhood. And now I have completely no idea what the hell we were just talking about. I mean, my brain was totally reset by that shit. By the wafting aroma of freshly baked apple crisp. I'm sorry, what were we talking about? We were...
Never mind. Let me guess. How great I am with connecting with young voters. Yes. Yeah, sure. That's it. And to that end, I'm pleased to make the following announcement. I'm now on TikTok. No way. Well, my campaign is at least.
And it's my team that's running it. They won't let me near the damn thing. So as excited as I am, if you don't like our TikTok, you know, don't blame me. But we're already at 67,000 followers. Is that a lot? No.
Well, we'll grow from here. But my team, you know, they're putting up some classic Joe Biden memes on our TikTok page. Like Dark Brandon. You know that one? Yeah. With those beard red glowing eyes. Yeah. I thought it was against you. Me too. I thought it was negative against. No, we appropriated it. Yeah. Like Yankee Doodle. Yeah, exactly. What other classic Joe Biden memes are there?
Well, there's only that one so far. But they have to come about, you know, organically. You know, just some wacky stuff that happens in the White House. Maybe we can film a little sketch in the style of the popular NBC sitcom, The Office. Yeah, really current and up-to-date there, sir. Or maybe how about a clip of you calling a world leader by the wrong name? How about that? Now listen here, you little son of a bitch.
Because that would go viral for sure, and it would definitely get you more followers. Wait, for real? Because I would do literally anything for followers. Hell, I would stage fake gaffes that made me look bad. Good, because if your own official TikTok account was literally just you having seen your moments, that would legit get noticed. Are you kidding?
That would be the most boss shit ever. Hey, did I tell you how it turned out taking the cognitive part of my physical? People are pissed off, man, I'll tell you what.
Oh, I'm smelling blueberry pie taking me back to my childhood. About to have a brain reset again. Ever since we got this new White House pastry chef, it's like I'm in that movie Memento that came out last year. Oh, shit. This is Joe. Who's this? Look, I can't keep doing this. We have to go, Mr. President. Goodbye.
But you just called me.
So Bill Maher has done it again. He's done it again. He's done it again. And let's just get right to it.
But isn't it amazing to you, like it was in the paper today about this country came out of the pandemic way better. We just fuck. We won the pandemic economically. I mean, America. God, I don't feel that way. Explain it to me. I feel like inflation is insane. Numbers. Everything. Inflation is not insane. Bill.
Go buy a car. There's numbers. I understand. A house has tripled here. Look, I get that people... Buy some fucking eggs. Explain to me. I'm not an economist. There's feelings and then there's the numbers. Okay, what are the numbers? Well, the numbers have come down a lot in the last six months. Of course, they were...
It was inevitable when we gave out $6 trillion so that everybody could hide under the bed from the forever flu. That was never going to end well. It was taken by the richest people ever and didn't get where it needed to go. A lot of it was stolen. We agree on that, too. We won. Was there some response needed? Of course. You don't want the hospitals overrun. But it was just a massive overreaction, and that did cause some of the inflation, but
So Bill Maher is about as in touch with what's going on with struggling Americans as Martha Stewart is with hip hop culture. Okay. But I mean, come on. She's been in jail. He's sitting there with a cocktail and a joint in his hand. And everybody knows when alcohol is involved, that's when the truth happens. We won the pandemic. This guy's been hanging out with Biden too much. I think he means we've won a game of pinochle.
By the way, if inflation wasn't insane, would he be wearing that shirt? Come on. We won the pandemic. Me and Seth MacFarlane are still white guys that have our TV jobs. When Jimmy Kimmel won, the three Jimmys. I just can't get...
So let me just show you how much. So the woman gives three great examples. What about- I know. I'll be a little more while you try to tell me. I know. What about- There's feelings in the numbers. But Bill, let me show you rent versus income. We'll go back to 1985. This is rent. This is how rent has gone. Wow. This is how income has gone. And it-
Rent went down slightly during the pandemic, and then it's right back up. So Bill Maher says...
So Bill Maher would tell you that you shouldn't rent. You should buy a house or you should live on your boat. What? You don't have a boat? What are you all fucking losers? That's what Bill Maher would say. Do you know the real Marie Antoinette never said let them eat cake? Somebody made that up as an insult to get people mad at her. But now they actually say that. They're actually saying that. This is real. This is... Let them buy a house. This is like a Rorschach test.
What do you see when you see this, Bill Maher? He sees the economy's great. We won. That's what he sees. So here, by the way, homes built by the United States by decade. Look at all the houses they used to build in 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000, and then it stopped. Well, I think what we've learned from this is Bill Maher's paying less for hookers right now, and he's happy with that. Well, he's paying more for a pomade.
The money I save on my cheap labor hookers, I can put in pomade. It looks like home building tapered off just slightly since the oligarchs decided to crush humanity. Yeah. But I'm sure there's no correlation there, right, Bill? It's just a coincidence. I don't want to be labeled some kind of fucking conspiracy nut, but I think at some point we have to stop using cooking books as references points. But...
This is here. Even PBS knows things are fucked up. So here's what rental prices are unaffordable for a record number of Americans with half of all renters paying more than 30% of their income for rent.
And utilities, according to here, here we go. There we go. It's heard from they're all described as cost burdened in housing market lingo. That means they're paying more than 30 percent of their income toward rent. Your study found that in 2022, 22.4 million Americans were in that boat. Tell us more about what was behind that. That's correct. We saw a record high number of cost burdened renters in 2022. Part of this came from record. I like how they say cost burdened.
Is that unbelievable? The rent is too damn high? That's like a liberal term for indentured service. And why is Hannah Gadsby never funny? I swear to God, cost burden. That's like calling indentured slavery. I mean, that's like calling a homeless person skyroofed. That's like calling them unhoused, which is the new correct term.
We're cost burdened and unhoused. So anyway, she says cost burdened. Here we go. Rent growth that came at the end of 2021 and early 2022. And that was really from a surge in rental demand in a period where we just weren't building enough. So we weren't getting enough supply. We were seeing a huge increase in the number of renter households. That drove vacancy rates really low and it really pushed rents up and it made it much harder for people to afford their housing. And I understand that this was something you saw across income levels, correct? Yes.
That's correct. We saw a large increase in cost burdens from 2019 to 2022, an additional 2 million households, and an increase of about 3 percentage points, pushing the total cost burden rate up to about 50%. We saw this across every single income category we looked at, with especially large increases among middle-income renter households. But even
And among the lowest income households who make less than $30,000, their cost burden rate increased by a percentage point and a half to another record high of 83%. We can all imagine what that might mean for someone already making low wages. For how many Americans did that mean homelessness or sacrificing essentials? Lower income households who are severely cost burdened, meaning they spend more than half of their income on rent and utilities,
are less likely to spend on things like food, health care, retirement. So we see significant differences between those who are severely cost burdened and those who are not cost burdened. So there's certainly tradeoffs that are involved when you live in unaffordable housing. This year, we have also seen a record high number of people who are experiencing homelessness. And so certainly this lack of affordable housing is pushing people into these situations where they just can't afford anything and they end up in shelters or they end up in places like in cars on the streets where it's a more visible form of unsheltered homelessness. How much of that in 2022 was sort of
due to the pandemic and the burdens on families from that. The rise in homelessness really came at a time when we saw pandemic relief measures ending and rents were also increasing at some of the fastest rates we've ever seen. So it really put a lot of households in a bind. Whitney, I do understand that in the last year, rental prices have been slowing. Does that mean things are getting better for renters now?
What we're seeing in some of the rent data is that there's a slowing of rent growth and in some markets there's actual declines in rents. But what we saw during the pandemic were such significant increases. So in some quarters, rents were increasing by more than 20% year over year. And so we're really in a situation where things are much less affordable than they were pre-pandemic. We are seeing some of that market cooling, some deceleration of rent growth, but in most places, rents are in fact still growing. When you talk about supply, the supply of low rent units, according to your report, has precipitously declined in the last decade.
So those renters, I assume, will continue to feel the squeeze. What are effective ways to address that problem and rent affordability overall? We're really going to need every tool that we have in the toolbox. And so a lot of policy momentum right now is just around increasing supply with the idea that a lot of supply at the higher end will filter down and provide rent relief further down the market. And so we're seeing a lot of zoning reform across the country. What we're really going to need, though, are increased subsidies. So things like public housing or housing choice vouchers and a much broader commitment from our federal, state, and local levels toward really
addressing the affordability crisis, both toward increasing affordable options and toward really addressing this problem of rising homelessness that we're also seeing.
Um, is rain person telling us they're going to do another Trojan horse thing where housing choice vouchers? What the hell does that mean? Put more houses. So houses are cheap and you could buy a goddamn house and own something, which I thought you're supposed to be able to do. And then I don't need your, see the slowly we're going to take all your control away from you. Oh, there's a problem, isn't it? Well, we've got, we got to use everything at our disposal. House choice, like school choice vouchers.
Some people say, Kurt, that we don't even need new housing, but we just need to restore and preserve what we already have. New homes are poorly built and exploit natural resources. Preservation and restoration provide just as many jobs and as much housing. This is what some people say. So, for instance, you know that more than 15 million homes are sitting empty in the United States?
Google that. Could you see? Could you see? This sounds like what people criticize China for. They destroy these things that have been around forever to make this gaudy, ugly, like shopping mall stuff. They'll destroy antique. So that's what we're doing. That's what we're doing. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Hey, Siri, how many empty homes are there in the United States?
15.1 million vacant homes nationwide in 2022. These vacant homes, which include rentals, represent 10.5% of the country's total housing inventory. Oh, so that they're all, especially here in New York, and I bet you London as well, for an investment. Tim Dillon told me this a long time ago. Yeah, they buy it and they say it's in the goddamn building. And no one lives in the building.
That's what China does too, but people bought crappy buildings that no one lives in, that they didn't need to live in to do that. They're doing it with sweet real estate here. They're giving it to foreign investors. Wow. Yes.
Well, so it's on purpose. So the whole thing's on purpose. So this homelessness, this is all... Again, there's a billionaire class that run everything, and they want to crush most... They want to crush the working class. They're going to get you on a UBH to get your UPI. You need a place to get your UBI. So they're going to put you on... That's right. They want you on a UBI so then they can control your money, turn it on and off. Where you can live.
Where you can live, where you can spend it. And then they don't have to put you in a concentration camp because then no matter where you are, it becomes a concentration camp. Because if it's your car, they have a kill switch on your car. They can just turn your car off. They can then turn off your money. They can then turn off your bank account. So now you are concentrated wherever you are. They've got you completely controlled. No more prisons because everything's a prison. That's right. No more prisons because everywhere's a prison. You know what happens in prison?
A lot of guys turn into women out of necessity. So this is happening right in front of our face, and you have guys like Bill Maher who say this.
But isn't it amazing to you, like it was in the paper today about this country came out of the pandemic. The paper. It was in the paper today. What paper is that? Bill Barr, what paper are you reading, Bill? My toy, the paper. You're reading the LA Times? You're reading the New York Times? You're reading the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post Times? The paper I wipe my ass on, okay? Okay. It's in the paper. He says the paper as if the paper is the news.
The reason why I have a show, the reason why Glenn Greenwald has a show, the reason why Russell Brand has a show, the reason why Gray Zone exists is because you can't believe what you read in the paper, Bill.
It was in the paper today. It was in the paper. He didn't read the paper, first of all. It was in the paper today, Bill. Did you scan your phone while you were taking a shit and look at some headlines? That's what he means by the paper. Here's his assessment. Way better. We won the pandemic economically. We. We won. He says that because the stock market went up because they threw $6 trillion at it.
And he's invested in the stock market. So he looks at his portfolio. He goes, we won. Did Crystal Ball. Have you what? And Bill, have you driven around the country? No. He told me Williamson. Why would I do that? He goes, why would I do that? He said to Mary. Crystal Ball told him how they gave up. They bailed out the stock market. What? Wait, I didn't hear about this. She was right. Of course. He's already forgotten. You got to switch to Sativa, buddy. Indica is not good for Bill. That is just. We won.
We won. We kicked it. We won. What's her name again? That guy has a fucking show that people look to because he comments on current events and politics. What the fuck? He became a CEO. You might as well listen to John Bolton about who we should invade next. What? He became like... So he starts out as the business guy, builds his business up, and then he has other people doing all the research and work, and he's at his...
chilling smoking indica and getting drunk and lightly not knowing about things and why would he want to look into any of it since it's going great it's going great for him skated saying the n-word on tv he skated on those charges why would and he's forgiven for by the way i don't even think he should be fired for saying it because the thing he said is right he goes i'm a house n-word sir yeah you are bill you ain't no field you ain't no field slave you're a house slave that's right yep
I just, that breaks my brain. Hey, you know, here's another great way you can help support the show is you become a premium member. We give you a couple of hours of premium bonus content every week, and it's a great way to help support the show. You can do it by going to JimmyDoreComedy.com, clicking on Join Premium.
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I want to tell you that they did a funding bill. Senate passed the Ukraine funding in pre-dawn vote. This is true. This just happened. They do more before 530 than you do all day. So J.D. Vance sent this out. He said, I just sent the below memo to every one of my Republican colleagues in Congress buried in this bill's text.
Is an impeachment time bomb for the next Trump presidency if he tries to stop funding the war in Ukraine? All I can say is, thank God they're not going to let Trump stop a war. Why would you want that to happen? So he this guy's by the way, he sent this memo the day before the vote. And here's what it says. Here's the background on it. President Trump was wrongfully impeached by the partisan Pelosi led House of Representatives on December 18, 2019.
At the core of the impeachment was a pause on funds appropriated to Ukraine, $391 million in security assistance, $250 million through the Department of Defense, Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, and $141 million through the State Department's Foreign Military Financing Program. So that's why they...
The false argument put forward by Democrats was and is as follows. As President Trump had allegedly paused these funds because he wished to see the corrupt nexus between the Biden family and Ukraine investigated. President Trump had abused his power with the aim of interfering with the United States presidential election.
On page 425 of the committee report on the first impeachment states, quote, the president froze military assistance to Ukraine against UN national security interests and over the objections of career experts.
The impeachment inquiry report states that the president did so despite longstanding bipartisan support of Congress, uniform support across federal departments and agencies for the provision of Ukraine and military assistance and his obligations under the Impoundment Control Act. So if you don't know why they impeached Donald Trump, they impeached Donald Trump because he wouldn't, he paused funding of the Ukraine war machine. That's what this is about. That's why they did this. Okay. Um,
The supplemental impeach, that's why. He wasn't impeached because he wanted his rival investigated so he could interfere with the presidential election. He wasn't? Is it because he crossed state lines? Trump was impeached for putting a pause on money to Ukraine. How ironic. The main reason to vote for him is now an impeachable offense. Yeah. The main good thing Trump did, did he even pause it or was he just saying he was going to? He did pause it.
So in this new, the supplemental impeachment time bomb, so in this new bill, Trump has said he wants to settle the Ukraine war, and he said he'd do it in 24 hours. In this bill that they just passed, the bill includes $1.6 billion for foreign military financing in Ukraine, $13.7 billion for Ukraine security assistance initiatives,
And those funds expire when? September 30th, 2025, nearly a year into the possible second term of President Trump. These are the exact same accounts President Trump was impeached for, pausing in December 2019. Every single House Republican voted against his impeachment for this resolution. Wow. So if you want to know how crazy your country is,
Mass murder and suppression of your constitutional rights is not an abuse of power, but a slight pause giving away your money to Ukraine is currently the only viable reason for impeachment of a president. That's amazing. This is real. So if President Trump were to withdraw from the or pause this new funding that they just passed for the war in Ukraine in order to bring the conflict to a peaceful resolution over the objections of career experts.
It would amount to the same fake violation of a budget law from the first impeachment under markedly similar facts and circumstances. Partisan Democrats would then seize on the opportunity to impeach him once again. The Washington Post has reported that tying President Trump's hands on foreign policy is very much top of mind for Joe Biden's administration officials who are openly boasting about their plans. So.
Not coincidental. Incidentally, the U.S. official said the hope is that the long term promise, again, assuming congressional buy in, will also future proof aid for Ukraine against the possibility that former President Donald Trump wins his reelection. So the conclusion is the supplemental represents an attempt by the foreign policy and deep state government
foreign policy blob slash deep state to stop president trump from pursuing his own pursued policy goals on foreign policy and if he does so anyway to provide grounds to impeach him and undermine his administration so here here's what aaron maté had to say about it how crazy would it be for the house of representatives to go along with this and president biden to sign it into law
For the fate of the planet, it would be suicidal just prolonging this proxy war that is already lost and has already cost Ukraine foremost so many lives and so much of its future. But Joe Biden, who is responsible for this proxy war, who really began it 10 years ago when the administration he was serving in, the Obama administration, backed a coup in Ukraine, is
is desperate to prolong this war, at least until after November when he's up for election. And amazingly, it was revealed recently in the Washington Post that in the words of one U.S. official, the White House is trying to, quote, future-proof Biden.
the ukraine proxy war from a future president so thinking here if they can pass 61 billion dollars in funding that will lock in this proxy worth funding for long after this year no matter who becomes president next so say the voters decide they don't want to go with president biden anymore they want to change of course they elect president trump
Trump will be locked in to allocating billions of dollars to fight a proxy war with Russia. And that's why in the same article in The Washington Post, they admit that only half of the $61 billion that are allocated here for Ukraine will go towards Ukraine's current battlefield needs. The other half goes to funding this proxy war long into the future. And that's a reflection that Joe Biden
who claims to be standing up for democracy in Ukraine, actually hates democracy at home. So much so that his pro-democracy bill for Ukraine actually defends against the possibility of democracy unseating him in the next election. So let me bring in Aaron Maté. He's the host of Pushback for the Gray Zone. And in 2019, he's going to be talking about
He received the prestigious Izzy Award for Outstanding Achievement in Independent Media. Most recently, in 2022, he won the Pierre Spray Journalism Prize. His writing appears at his sub stack, mate.substack.com. Hello, Aaron. Thank you for being with us. Can you believe that they're doing this and they're doing it right out in the open? And of course, the media is not reporting it the way that we're reporting it here, correct? It's good that you brought up the precedent of Trump's 2019 impeachment.
Because as you talked about, that also was an attack on democracy. The people elected a president. His name was Donald Trump. That's who was president. And when he paused those weapons to Ukraine, the national security state bureaucracy freaked out. And even people like Alexander Bindman, remember him, the star witness who was like one of the worst. He said that he was concerned that Donald Trump was undermining U.S. foreign policy.
well the last time i checked it's the president not unelected bureaucrats like vinman who set foreign policy how long has it been since you checked though and look and and even before the impeachment 2019 how did this whole thing begin it began when the people inside the biden white house right now
Joe Biden, Victoria Nuland, Jake Sullivan, Antony Blinken, they backed a coup in Ukraine, overthrowing a democratically elected government, which set off this entire mess. And since they've come back into office after Trump, they've made it far worse by pushing Ukraine and Russia into this catastrophic war. And now they're trying to safeguard their proxy war.
against U.S. voters. So as the Washington Post said, they want to future-proof this proxy war in case U.S. voters vote out Biden in November. And the
the money that will be allocated now goes long into the future, which shows a few things. First of all, it shows that this idea that we care about Ukraine's current well-being and its defense is a joke. No, this is money to keep Ukraine fighting long into the future rather than advocating the diplomacy that has always been available and that the U.S. has undermined at every turn. Last week, you covered this, Tucker Carlson interviewed Vladimir Putin. Putin said he's open to diplomacy. Diplomacy that Putin wants
It's going to be a worse deal for Ukraine than Ukraine could have gotten before Russia invaded and after Russia invaded. Just looking at after Russia invaded, there was that peace deal reached in Turkey in April 2022. We all know what happened. Boris Johnson came over, delivered a message to Zelensky on behalf of Biden that the U.S. and U.K. would not back Ukraine up if it reached a deal with Russia. And therefore, that was in order to keep fighting.
And so now whatever Putin is going to offer Ukraine will be worse than what he was offering back in April 2022. What's the alternative? Funneling more money into this disastrous proxy war, sacrificing more Ukrainian lives and having Ukraine lose more territory. That's the path this has been on ever since February 2014, 10 years ago this month. And when I tell people this,
They look at me like, but Putin's a thug and he invaded Ukraine and Donald Trump is a fascist. You know, I mean, Cornel West can't stop saying that. He's a duty head, too. And and so do you.
So to me, it kind of this kind of thing that they're doing and they're doing it right out in the open. So even if you vote for Donald Trump because you like him, the idea that he's the only president in my lifetime that didn't start a war. And for some reason, he has an aversion to starting wars. Even if you vote for him, the deep. So this this proves what Donald Trump said, that the deep state really does run thing. This is the deep state. These are corporations having control of government.
And they're all and there's even from everyone from AOC to Adam Schiff to Bill Maher is out there saying you got to vote for Joe Biden because of democracy. It's the exact opposite. These people are undermining democracy. These people are the fascists, meaning they are doing the bidding of corporations through the mechanisms of the government. So to screw who? Us. So isn't that so the real fascists here are the people in Congress, the people like Donald
All those people, the AOCs, the Joe Bidens, the Republicans, Mitch McConnell's, they're all they're the real fascists. Ironically, in this situation, Donald Trump is the opposite of that. He actually represents democracy in this situation. Would you what would you say to that? Me, someone like me saying that.
Well, I would say that they certainly don't believe in democracy. I mean, the ultimate example is the fact that when Trump was elected, rather than let him govern and, you know, fail on his own account or succeed on his own account, they framed him as a Russian agent. The National Security State collaborated with the Democratic Party. They framed the president as a Russian agent, which engulfed his entire first term.
And those of us, the few of us who were against this, we were told to shut up and we were confined to the margins. And everybody went along with that. All the progressives in Congress, much of the progressive media, because people got so duped by this obvious scam that was, you know, had many motivations. But one of them was to criminalize any diplomacy with Russia so that.
Under Russiagate, basically, if you didn't believe in this idea that Russia installed Trump in the White House and that they weren't in cahoots and all of a sudden you were somehow then supporting Trump and supporting Putin. And that same playbook has been used to push through the Ukraine proxy war to the point where every single progressive in Congress voted to give the military industrial complex now more than 100 billion dollars.
for this disastrous proxy war. Every progressive, one time for 24 hours, they advocated diplomacy. Remember about over a year ago now, they put up that letter calling for diplomacy with Russia. And then they retracted that letter. All it took was a little freak out from some neocons online and people like Max Boot
David Frum and the Democrats withdrew their meek call for diplomacy with Russia. So we live in a complete McCarthyite environment. It,
it's a scam because the people being ripped off are the people paying for it. We're all paying our taxes. It's tax season. How much of our money now is going to these neocon disasters, not just in Ukraine, but also for the genocide in Gaza as well. I mean, Trump plays a role in this and that he appointed people who all openly opposed his stated agenda. He claimed in 2016 when he ran that he was going to drain the swamp and that he was going to stop foreign interventions.
He appointed people who had the exact opposite agenda. So whatever he intended when he was running, he didn't execute when he ran for office and that ended up undermining him because a lot of these people took the same side as the national security state bureaucrats who were trying to frame him as a Russian agent. How depressing do you find this? I mean –
I don't get depressed about stuff like this. I get depressed about the genocide in Gaza. That's gutting. Well, this is also a genocide. This is also funding. I mean, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have already been slaughtered in this war for nothing. It's true. You're right. I don't want to minimize that. It's very depressing. But look, I do think things are changing. There is now more faith in independent media, more than it's ever been before. And I don't tether...
The work I do to any outcome, I just try to do the best work that I can. And I'm grateful. Jimmy, I mean, listen, looking back at all these years, we've been calling this out from the start and we've been warning about the consequences. And think about how many people agree with us and have come on board to our perspective. And I'm just now concerned with stopping the genocide in Gaza and speaking truth and letting the people do with that what they will.
I mean, you don't have to be a fan of Donald Trump to realize that we're being railroaded here. And it's a high-speed railroad, which our funding for the Ukraine war could have actually funded in the United States 10 times over. Somehow we don't have the money for high-speed railroad in America, but we have the money to send that money, instead of having high-speed railroad here, to Ukraine. So Senators Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat...
And Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, they've teamed up and and they and they've also made it impossible for Trump to leave NATO. Right. Have you or they're trying they're trying to. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They passed a law that would basically prevent Trump from leaving NATO.
Trump has criticized NATO. I don't think he actually would ever do that. Look, if you look at what Trump actually did in office, he did contribute to this Ukraine war. He tore up these really important nuclear arms treaties with Russia. He sent weapons to Ukraine that Obama wouldn't send. And I don't think it's because he wanted to do that. It's because he was facing Russiagate. He was being accused constantly of being an agent. And he was incentivized to disprove
his fanatic Democratic opponents who were obsessive about their conspiracy theory. And he unfortunately, he didn't stand up for what he ran on, which is getting along with Russia, which is what he campaigned. He talked about on the campaign trail in 2016. He said, I don't want to go. I don't have World War Three over Ukraine. So he got it. But just once he got into office, he just didn't have the fortitude to stand up to the national security state.
And luckily, I think all the advisors who he appointed who sabotaged his stated agenda of not getting involved in foreign wars, now they all hate his guts openly. Nikki Haley, John Bolton, Mike Pompeo. So if he wins again, they won't be back.
But certainly the people that Joe Biden has brought in are they're just an unbelievable threat to the planet. They had every opportunity to avoid Russia's invasion. Russia put out this draft treaty in late this in late December 2021, a few months before Russia invaded. Biden could have you didn't have to accept all of Russia's proposals. He could have at least engaged with it, though. But they basically rejected the whole thing.
And then, as we talked about after Russia invaded, they sabotaged a peace treaty. I mean, and amazingly, and this is the most amazing part, try to find in U.S. media, even most progressive media, any mention of the multiple sources now who say there was a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia in April of 2022 reached in Turkey. The basic bargain was Ukraine would pledge neutrality. Russia would withdraw to its pre-invasion lines.
And they were so close to signing it until Boris Johnson came over and told Zelensky not to. Is there any mention of this at all in U.S. media? When Vladimir Putin repeated it again in his interview last week with Tucker Carlson, did anybody report it? Has anybody reported the Ukrainian officials, including the head of Ukraine's delegation in Turkey, who said that, yes, we had a peace deal and all we had to do was pledge neutrality and we could have ended this war? Another Ukrainian official said,
Recently said he said, quote, Putin did everything possible to make peace. That's not a Russian propaganda saying that that's a Ukrainian official saying that a veteran diplomat. Did anybody report that in the U.S. media? No, because we live in an Orwellian state where the narrative has to be preserved.
that the reason why we're spending so much money on this proxy war is because the Russians won't negotiate. They're a threat to the planet. They're going to take over Poland next, unless we stop them in Ukraine. So we have a complete media obedience with the Biden administration and their allies inside the CIA and the rest of the national security state. It makes it very difficult for normal people to have the information they need to make a decision. So do you,
So I spent a lot of my time trying to convince people, and we've done it on this show with our friend Ben, what's his name? Ben Gleib. Oh, yeah, yeah. Who said the Democrats are a little better. Former presidential candidate Ben Gleib. Former presidential candidate Ben Gleib. So he's just one example. I mean, nothing against Ben Gleib. But I'm just saying we do this every day of my life. I have another Ben Gleib in my life, and I have to convince them
that the political parties are not opposite of each other and that they agree on all of the worst things. It's like your parents are getting divorced, but they both agree that you still should go to military school. There's no winners. And the Democratic Party abandoned any semblance of being anti-war and pro-worker about 30 years ago.
when Bill Clinton got elected president. That was the end. That's when Bill Clinton went on to gut welfare. At the same time, he exploded the prison population, put 100,000 more cops on the streets, deregulated Wall Street, and... Wow, that almost sounds like a satanic inversion of everything he supposedly stands for. That's exactly right. And he consolidated the media from 50 giant media companies down to six...
And then he was trying to privatize welfare, but luckily, according to Thomas Frank's book, it was that blowjob that stopped it. So Bill Clinton came in and did a Ronald Reagan wet dream, and then we've got nothing but Ronald Regans ever since.
yeah and yeah even brock obama bragged he said that his policies would be considered moderate conservative it was then if it was in the 1980s so he's bragging that he they all praise around so that's why this country is like this and before i let you go uh this bill again all these billions of dollars to ukraine for war and tying the future president's hand to make sure he has to do it but they won't at the same time
Fund their own country. Like, again, we could have high-speed rail. We could have free college. $10 billion would pay for community college for the whole country. They won't give people health care. They won't do anything about it. They won't build affordable housing. We just did a story before you came on.
They call them cost burdened. That's what they say about people who can't pay their rent because they have to pay 50% of their income in fucking rent. They call them cost burdened, which is like calling homeless people skyroofed. If you don't like poor illegal immigrants flooding the border, how about really rich ones that don't even bother to come here but own all the property and no one can live in it? That's even better. We have 15 million...
empty houses in America because we allow that kind of foreign investment to buy up all our... And they're going to put the illegals in those houses. So that's why it still blows my mind that when people like Cornel West came on my show and he pretended that fascism was a thing that might come to America. He's been living in it. He's been living in it for at least a decade or two. And he thinks it's still going to come if we vote for Donald Trump. It's just this kind of... I mean, you're from Canada, eh?
So you probably have a better perspective, although Canada is just as shitty as America is now. I would say it's worse with the euthanasia program. We still have socialized health care, which is... You still have that. So are the Nazis. And they got Nazis. And now they're saluting Nazis. And we're funding genocides left and right. They're sterilizing kids with mental illness, and next step is offering them euthanization. This has reminded anybody of anything?
So what's the button you'd like to put on this segment, Aaron Maté from maté.substack.com? Well, you know, you interviewed Dennis Kucinich recently, and to me, he embodies the Democrats' lost opportunity.
Right. What's his message? Exactly what you just laid out. We're spending all this money on these disastrous foreign wars. We could be spending it at home. Is there anybody in the Democratic Party who can credibly lay claim to that argument now? No, because they'll vote for it. I mean, honestly, I think the progressives who voted in lockstep with Mitch McConnell and Joe Biden to now authorize more than $100 billion for the UK in proxy war, they should like that should be whatever else they do in politics.
That should be their legacy. To me, it's the biggest betrayal I can think of in my lifetime of progressive politics than to give $100 billion to the military industrial complex to fuel a disastrous proxy war that has ruined Ukraine and threatened the world. And these are all progressives doing that. So,
So doesn't that make them by definition not progressives? That's the thing. Well, yes. Yes. Yes. So that does. So people keep saying, well, the left has lost their mind. They're not left. The people they refer to the Democrats as left. And I I'm tired of getting in that arc, that semantic argument and tell people that the Democrats aren't left. If you're if you're for lockdowns and mandated medical treatments and
And if you're for censorship and if you're for war, you're not left. You have two completely right-wing parties. And then my friends who are right-wing go, well, we're not for war. And so now I'm stuck with this goddamn semantic game I boxed myself into. That's the joke. Remember when in the Tucker interview and Putin wanted to join NATO? Yeah. And they told him he can't. And Tucker said, why do you think that is? And he goes, well, because Russia's kind of tight-knit and it probably wouldn't go. You know how Germany's a bitch and goes along with whatever it's told? Yes. Like not having gas cheap. They are.
Okay? They didn't want Russia to join because it would be too strong a faction within NATO. They wanted to balkanize it and break it up into small, easy-to-control pieces. You know, like they did here. Yes. They did the thing they wanted to do. Weakening Russia? And you're like, hey, it's weakening us. Yeah. The idea is to do that everywhere. That's the game. It's to make you, or your left, your right twix, but I like left twix.
That's stupid shit. So that's just what I've been fighting against. Do you share my opinion, Aaron, that there's a... Because a lot of people respect you. People don't respect me. But a lot of people respect you. So do you think that there is... I have this theory that there's... And I'm sure by a lot of people, there's a global cabal of billionaires that are really warning everything. The WEF, it used to be hidden like in the Bilderbergs, but now it's right out in the open at the WEF and the WHO.
And and they're bent on destroying societies like in America. If we have a civil war, that'd be good for them. And that's why I've heard that that the Scottish commentator talking about that people who are are meant to be kept on edge. And that's why they won't fix homelessness. That's why they won't give you health care. That's why they won't stop crime. That's why they won't.
uh, give you, uh, education or infrastructure, uh, and they want you to beg for authoritarian rules or, or authoritarian solutions to your anxiousness. Do you share that? Cause that's what I really think is happening. And that's why the borders open them. There's many reasons, but that's certainly one of them. What big reason the borders open is they need, they need, uh, immigrants to join the military because nobody's joining and they, they need to suppress wages because it's a tight labor market. But the third reason is to create chaos, uh,
And you see them giving $53 million in credit card money to immigrants, which again, not to demonize migrants. Why should you have to qualify that? That's insane. It's insane on the face of it. If I was a migrant, I'd want to come here because that's the game. They want us to be hating each other.
They want you to hate someone lower on the economic rung than you, Kurt. That's the game. And I've always told people, if you find yourself being angry at someone on the economic rung lower than you, you're probably being manipulated by someone higher on the economic ladder than you. Well, yeah. You know what I think? I think it's not billionaires that's up. I'll bet you there's such a thing as trillionaires. Yeah, that's another thing. And they're just true shit rolls downhill. So, of course, there's trillionaires. They act like slaves themselves, right? Yeah.
It's like a pyramid scheme. The money flows up. They got to pay their upline and you're in their downline. And then at the bottom of the base, we have, of course, the homeless. Then we're going to bring in illegal immigrants above the renters. You can see every level of it at the top. That's probably what all them UFO sightings are. Those are trillionaires, not time travelers. They're so rich they get to live in another goddamn dimension.
Like Bill Maher lives in another dimension than you do. I know. Everybody making more money gets to move to a higher. That's what I bet you. That's what it is. So, Aaron, what's your comment on my theory about the billionaire class keeping everybody on edge?
I certainly think there's a deliberate effort to keep people in precarity. I mean, when you do that, first of all, when you have this permanent underclass of people who, for example, need to go to the military to be able to have a shot at a future because it pays for their college, that's on purpose. You keep people deprived of the basics that they need to live. What's called dog tags. And they're forced to go. For example, those three young soldiers who recently were killed in Syria,
Were they over there in Syria and Jordan because they cared about stealing Syria's oil? No. These were three young black people who were in the military, I'm assuming because it was paying for their future. And this country puts people in that position where their best shot sometimes is to serve the country. And meanwhile, everyone...
everyone lacks the basics like healthcare or, you know, some people lack the basics like healthcare or shelter that people are just trying to survive. So there's no time to organize. Like, but of course, what bigger scam is there than taking more than a hundred billion dollars. Now they want to make it $161 billion with this new Senate bill and funneling it, funneling it into a proxy war in Ukraine that just kills people. It's such a scam, but there's not the space to organize, to oppose it because people are just trying to survive. So in that respect, I totally agree with you that it's deliberate, uh,
For what it's worth when it comes to migrants, I support giving them money. I think it's the least we can do when we've done so much to destabilize their countries. And I would support even paying reparations to their home countries for the sanctions and the regime change efforts that we've launched there. So, and by the way, for all the Republicans and Democrats who are upset about
people coming in the country, an easy solution is stop destabilizing their countries. Stop imposing sanctions that the U.S. knows destroys Venezuela's economy and same with other places. So that would be one solution. Well, how about we let them do it and then we make you, the regular citizen, deal with it? You deal with all the fallout and we keep invading their countries. How about that? That's what's going to happen. That's what they're doing. And so, yeah, again, I'm for –
helping people but you don't see that do you think there's a bigger game being played that they're gonna give right very publicly in new york city alone they're gonna give credit cards 53 million dollars in credit cards a month
To migrants who aren't citizens, while citizens and veterans and are living in cars and under bridges, and they won't give fifty three million dollars to those people. So I you can can't can't you. So the fact that they won't do both at the same time tells you there's a game being played, right?
Yeah, I think that's fair. And I would support funding everybody. But you're right. Yes, there's always this effort to pit people against each other. You talked about this a lot. And I definitely think that is a like a divide and real strategy that we're living under. Absolutely. So just like I saw in Boston, they're they're they're how they closing down community centers in black neighborhoods and filling it with migrants. Well, I guess their lives don't matter after all. I guess they're hung.
And so it's like you can do both things. You can have a community center for those people and you can help those migrants. How about you take the $160 billion you're going to give to a war and you do both? You help the community center and you help the migrants. This isn't an either or situation, but they're purposely making it that. So we keep fighting each other. And then middle class hardworking or working class people are
are now angry at people lower on the economic ladder than them because they're giving them all the things that they're supposed to be having. They're supposed to be having community centers and they're supposed to be having schools. And so that's the game that seems so obvious to me that this is happening. And it's even starting to creep into local news even. Hey, this is Jimmy. Who's this?
Jimmy Dore, this is Vince Vaughn calling your YouTube political comedy program. Vince, friend of the show, Vaughn, how you doing? I'm doing all right. How are you, baby? I'm doing okay, Vince. What do you have for us today?
What do you mean exactly what do I have for you? Why this expectation right out of the gate? Why can't I just be calling to check in with my boy Jimmy D? I don't really know what to do with this pressure that you're putting on me is what I'm saying. Well, it's just that you have a regular segment on the Jimmy Dore show specific to Vince Vaughn. And when I see you call, I assume you're going to do the Vince Vaughn's... Yeah, Vince Vaughn's Tinsel Town Show Pigeons. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I get it. I know that's my job. But it's hard.
Yeah, but it's hard to do your segment? Yes, Jimmy Dore, it's hard to do my segment. Okay, for your newer viewers, let me give them a little background. I took over this gig from Rip Torn, who used to do a segment on Jimmy's show called Rip Torn's Hollywood Drunk Tank, where Rip Torn would dish on Hollywood celebrity. And how would he dish? Oh, and how he would dish?
Oh, he would set the fucking table with dishes, Jimmy. It was magisterial. But if I can be honest for a minute, 12 years ago, things were different. Hollywood was different. You could make different jokes.
Yeah, no, tell me. How so, Vince? Back then, it was the tail end of the entertainment industry that cool cats like you, me, and Rip Torn could even fucking recognize. Right. Back before superhero movies were the only movies that made money. Right. Back when Kardashian type people were on trashy reality shows and didn't dominate the aesthetics of fame.
Right. Yeah. I see.
Do you really see or are you being patronizing to me right now? No, I really see, Vince. Everyone sees. Okay, okay, cool. Just checking. I mean, I don't even know how to make fun of this shit. Really? The biggest entertainment news story currently is that Taylor Swift was at the Super Bowl to see her boyfriend, Travis Kelsey, play football. Okay, first of all, I cannot tell you one Taylor Swift song because I am not a 13-year-old girl. I've never rooted against a team so hard.
that I rooted against the Kansas City Chiefs. Did they win? Yeah. And I knew it. Well, look, Vince, and the reason why is because you just get tired. Winners that win too hard.
And then Taylor Swift being part of it. It's just like, stop. You know I don't watch football? Because when I was a kid in Cleveland, my dad would watch the Browns every Sunday. And I'd watch it break him every Sunday. Yeah. And so I never got attached to football because of that. Because now I think it's some kind of weird ritual to break you. Yeah, I think it is. Like that KGB guy who said that that's what the KGB is doing to demoralize you. Yeah. I think that's what football is. To demoralize people. Vince, in all fairness, she...
Taylor Swift has millions of... It just sucks that her boyfriend, Taylor Swift, the team she likes, gets to win the Super Bowl too. It's like she wins the Super Bowl every day of her fucking life. And then she gets... Is this... This has got something to do with me, right? First of all, it's an arranged relationship for like... Right. People go, is it a psyop? Like...
All of the crap you see is a mind war on you. Is it a psyop? Modern art was a goddamn psyop. All the things. Modern art was a psyop from the CIA. Operation Long Leash. But just regular TV commercials are a psyop. That's what that means. So the whole thing, even if it's not the Biden administration or whoever doing it, it's still that. Like in old Hollywood, they'd arrange. They had the gay guy dating the famous actress. So you think this is arranged, her and this guy? I don't know.
Even if it's not arranged, it's still arranged. These people. Yeah. Vince, in all fairness, Taylor Swift has millions upon millions of fans of all genders and age groups. Yes. And all of them are 13 year old girls. Jimmy, there are 40 year old men who are 13 year old girls. Do you understand what I'm saying? I do. Yep.
No. Really?
Come on, Vince, please. I'm just saying. And here's the headline. Megan, Duchess of Sussex, lands a new podcast deal after parting ways with Spotify. Finally. Okay, go back in time to 2012 and explain how this is entertainment news or entertainment news.
Or what any of that fucking means. I know, right? Right? The 2012 equivalent of that would be Princess and Inc. sports talk deal with AM radio station. Like, buddy, what did you just fucking tell me? Why am I caring about this? I know, okay.
I know. Oh, God. I can't wait, Vince. Is that the one with the stretchy guy? Yeah.
Totally normal shit for a grown-up to want to watch in a movie theater. But Jimmy, do you want to know something interesting about this upcoming Fantastic Four movie? Wait on me, Vince. I'd love to. This is the third time they've made a Fantastic Four movie in the past two decades. Yeah, that's true. So this is Fantastic Four 3?
No. The first two times they made a Fantastic Four movie, they bombed. But they kept thinking, ah, maybe let's try again. I'm sure there's a way to make a two-hour toy commercial seem cool and fun and a movie that makes sense somehow. So they're trying again. You can't keep Hollywood down, baby. Jimmy, my prediction, the third Fantastic Four movie is going to be a giant number two. Yeah.
Vince, have you noticed what's going on here? You've really gotten into a groove of your segment by just talking about it conversationally. You know what? You're right. I got so wrapped up in worrying about the fact that I don't care about any of this shit that I forgot that the true magic of Vince Vaughn's Tinseltown Show opinions is that I don't care about any of this shit. And neither do you, baby. That's right, Vince. Jimmy, if I were there, I'd give you a big hug right now. And there's nothing you could do about it. I'd nestle your head in my chest. Not in a gay way.
nonetheless thank you my friend for allowing me to find myself again find my center you know what I mean yeah I do Vince so we can expect more calls from you as usual with your show business updates actually I was thinking of doing more of like a science news thing or like a tech beat I don't know I'm just spitballing brainstorming just a thought okay I gotta go baby they're coming over ciao music
Hey, become a premium member. Go to JimmyDoreComedy.com. Sign up. It's the most affordable premium program in the business. All the voices performed today are by the one and only, the inimitable Mike McRae. He can be found at MikeMcRae.com. That's it for this week. You be the best you can be, and I'll keep being me.
Do not freak out.
