A Coup De Main
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what's up what's up everybody welcome to a brand new episode of part of the problem i am dave smith he is robbie the fire bernstein how you feeling sir i'm doing well davey smith how about you very good very good can't complain busy as is the new normal i did uh i i did pierce morgan's show this morning and

And then I did Ben Swan's show, which was cool. I've never done his show before. I've been a big fan of Ben Swan for many years. So look for both of those. I think should be up soon. Pierce Morgan's usually out later the day that I record. I'm not sure when Ben Swan's Truth in Media show will be out. Was it Feisty again?

Oh, yeah, it was. I ended up losing my mind on this one because, well, I was on there with

So at first, you know, he does this thing sometimes. First of all, I never know what they give you no information on that show, which there's something kind of cool about that. I kind of like that. Like, I don't know what the topic's going to be. I don't know who else is going to be on the panel. And that adds, you know, when you do so many of these shows, there's almost like something fun about that.

You know, like, you know, when you do like, Rob, you ever do one of those like themed stand up shows where it's like no material. You just go on stage and like, here's the thing. I'm going to throw a topic at you and you riff off it. It's like you don't want to do that every day. But there is something kind of fun about doing it once in a while. So.

We start and then he does this thing where we start the panel and then like he'll like two people will leave and two other people will come on. And then so I was there for the whole thing. So at first it was like a real just respectful, like no one was interrupting and we're just all making our points. And then he brought Joe Walsh on and and he started calling Tulsi Gabbard a Russian asset.

And that's why I just, I, I couldn't take it. I just lost it. I think, I think I, uh, I think I might've called them the dumbest human being alive at one point. And I, I said, um,

There was one point where he starts like, you know, he started talking about the war in Ukraine. This is after he called Tulsi Gabbard a Russian asset. And he called her a Russian asset spewing Putin propaganda. And then he started talking about the war in Ukraine and they came back to me. And I was like, Pierce, I didn't realize I'd be doing this panel with a Ukrainian asset spewing Zelensky propaganda. And, you know, like, I don't know. I went and I called him brain dead a few times. Yeah.

Anyway, did he have any evidence to support this claim that Tulsi Gabbard's a Russian asset? She always agrees with Vladimir Putin. That's the that's the claim. And I did. I pointed out because I just find it to be such a particularly like despicable smear because it is like there's something about it where you're calling someone a traitor to their country, you know, and it.

especially someone who's like served in the military, I believe is still in the military. It's just wild. And yeah, and it's so stupid. You know, I made all the obvious points on it where I was just like, I was like, you know, if, you know, cause he at one point said something about her, like, well, Putin's happy to see her in there. And I was like, who cares?

Like if some in the year 2002, if someone was standing up and saying Iraq doesn't have weapons of mass destruction and they weren't involved in 9-11, Saddam Hussein would probably be happy to see that person in there. But what does that mean? Nothing. That just means that person's right. Who cares what Saddam wants? Anyway, it'll be up later. I'll share it on social media and stuff. So you guys can I hope you enjoy it. It was, you know, it was.

It is what it is. It was kind of fun. Anyway, so...

Let's let's get into some stuff for today. I did. I thought we should start here. So I was so I was at the UFC on Saturday. I am now in Trump's cabinet. It's what position is not exactly clear. No, I didn't. I didn't meet Trump. Did hang out with Vivek Ramaswamy a bunch. And it was just a great time. The UFC was was excellent. Yeah.

But, you know, it's something I've been thinking about a lot, something we've been talking about on the show, that there has been this enormous cultural shift that seems to have happened that has kind of, I think, caught a lot of people by surprise. And myself included, to some degree. You know, I did not realize the level to which

The hysteria about Donald Trump winning is just does not have the same energy that it used to have, you know. And now, look, I'm not trying to overstate this or pretend that the UFC is some type of like scientific random sample of Manhattanites or something like that. You know, like, obviously, this is kind of his thing.

you know, demo, but there still is just something amazing. Rob, I don't know if you've seen any of the, if you saw John Jones post fight, right? So he's does the Trump dance and then he runs over to Donald Trump and gives him the belt. - Which Trump wanted to keep. You could tell. Trump had a second there where he goes, I earned this. I know I didn't fight, but you all know I'd be better at this than you are. - I'm the UFC heavyweight champion. Didn't even plan on competing and I won it.

But there were football players. They're doing that as like an end zone dance now. There's something going on here. And it feels to me like culturally speaking, not saying like politically, but it does feel like there's like a coup de main. You know that phrase, Rob? I never heard that one. That's the first time I've ever heard that. So it's a French term. I'm not trying to, you know.

I'm not pro-French here, but you know there's... Okay, so you know a coup, a coup d'etat. So there's like these different types of coups, and one of them is a coup de main. And a coup de main is like, it's what the Taliban did after we pulled out of Afghanistan, is a good example. What Putin in Crimea did.

is a good example. I think even maybe ISIS in Western Iraq, when they, if you remember when they invaded and there were just the uniforms on the ground, like the army just basically gave up. So a coup de main is when, then I hope I'm using this term right, but that's not exactly the point. The point is just what I'm describing, but it's like, it's where you almost like

you surprise the enemy with so much overwhelming force that essentially it's not even a bloodbath, like, because there's not even a resistance. So if you think about Vladimir Putin taking over Crimea, I mean, you know, they frame it as he invaded Crimea. It's kind of a little bit true. He did send in reinforcements, but they had their naval base there already. And so essentially they went outside, right?

And everyone in Crimea was like, all right, we're a part of Russia now. You know, like I'm not even saying I do think that it was the popular opinion was that they wanted to be. Yeah. OK, so here's the definition. Am I getting this right? Oops. I just unplugged a thing.

Right, right. A swift attack that relies on speed and surprise to accomplish its objective in a single blow. So like the idea of like being like that you don't, it doesn't need to be this prolonged conflict. It's just like one side has overwhelming force. The other side's like, all right, I'm not, this is going to be a bloodbath. I don't want to do that. So, but this was, if you look at Crimea, I think like,

that maybe like a couple people died in like some protests that it's not even clear like who killed who but there was no battle there was no fight for Crimea it was just like all right I don't you win we and there does seem to be something like that dynamic going on with Trump right now where it's like a few people on on the corporate media are being like we should still be hysterical and everyone else is like yeah okay

That's just not happening. And so anyway, I was I've been thinking about this a lot lately. And so then I'm thinking about this. And then, of course, this morning, I wake up to see all over social media this clip from Morning Joe, from Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, which is really I mean, it's just so entertaining and goddamn hilarious. Let's play the clip and then we can we can respond to it.

Over the past week, Joe and I have heard from so many people, from political leaders to regular citizens, deeply dismayed by several of President-elect Trump's cabinet selections, and they are scared. Last Thursday, we expressed our own concerns on this broadcast and even said we would appreciate the opportunity to speak with the president-elect himself.

On Friday, we were given the opportunity to do just that. Joe and I went to Mar-a-Lago to meet personally with President-elect Trump. It was the first time we have seen him in seven years. Now, we talked about a lot of issues, including abortion, mass deportation, threats of political retribution against political opponents and media outlets. We talked about that a good bit.

And it's going to come as no surprise to anybody who watches this show, has watched it over the past year or over the past decade, that we didn't see eye to eye on a lot of issues. And we told him so. What we did agree on was to restart communications. My father often spoke with world leaders with whom he and the United States profoundly disagreed.

That's a task shared by reporters and commentators alike. We have not spoken to President Trump since March of 2020. Other than a personal call Joe made to Trump on the morning after the attempt on his life in Butler, Pennsylvania.

In this meeting, President Trump was tearful. He was upbeat. He seemed interested in finding common ground with Democrats on some of the most divisive issues. And for those asking why we would go speak to the president-elect during such fraught times, especially between us, I guess I would ask back, why wouldn't we?

Five years of political warfare has deeply divided Washington and the country. We have been as clear as we know how in expressing our deep concerns about President Trump's actions and words in the coarsening of public debate. But for nearly 80 million Americans...

election denialism, public trials, and January 6th were not as important as the issues that moved them to send Donald Trump back to the White House with their vote. Joe and I realized it's time to do something different, and that starts with not only talking about Donald Trump, but also talking with him. All right. Well, a slightly different tone...

than they had when they were calling him a Nazi, but that was way back two weeks ago, Rob. And so times change. And sometimes, you know, you got to sit down with Adolf Hitler and congratulate him and say, "Look, is there any way we could work together? I'd like to reopen lines of communication." I mean, Rob, after all, that's what Mika's dad did.

Zbigniew Brzezinski met with a lot of people who weren't good guys. He even funded and armed and trained Osama bin Laden. He was willing to talk to people, you know what I mean? And so in that noble tradition,

Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, these two clowns who have been saying this is the end of democracy and Adolf Hitler has risen to power, are now going to tuck tail, pretend none of that's real, and go, oh, it's just important to communicate and come together on divisive issues with Adolf Hitler.

This is talk about a loss like just an overwhelming loss to the point that they know it They know we have to completely regroup here and change our entire model because in this you know in this war that they describe over the last eight years well as wars often do this war had an ending and typically speaking there is a victor and there is a loser and

and Donald Trump won and you guys lost. And that's what waving the white flag looks like. Your thoughts, Rob? - I just love that we stated our concerns and nobody cared 'cause we were lying about them. And we've learned that we can't shame everyone into just having our opinions. So we're gonna change course here. I think this is all downhill from the fact that Donald Trump has actually learned how to wield political power.

The last time he went into office, I think there was so much screaming and hollering. He said, all right, I'll take all of George Bush's people so that you guys see, hey, I'm working with the machine here. There's no reason to panic. Look, I got all the institutional players and all of those people just undermined him and they did him dirty. And so we learned the way that politics actually works, which is you need to have loyalists and you got to tell everyone, nope, this is the way it is. Go fuck yourselves.

And Donald Trump has picked cabinet picks or at least signaled that that's who he's looking to put in. And so now everyone's actually cowering because they're realizing they can't do what they did the last time around, which is just scream and holler and yell. It didn't work. I mean, they tried it through the election. This guy is going to be the end of democracy. You can't possibly vote for him. And like you said, it was just

two weeks ago. It's kind of like when they were describing the cheap fakes. It's amazing how quickly these people can turn choruses with a smile on their face and still pretend like they are the people to be listened to. Yeah, you know, yeah, exactly right. I've been saying now for a little while, which is kind of on this same broader theme, is that, you know, a lot of people were saying, like, I got in the argument with Michael Tracy about this, where I was saying this is going to be like...

this is going to be devastating for the corporate media and this is going to be kind of their final death blow or whatever. And they're, you know, well, I've talked about this before on the show, but people are like, well, they got, they had good ratings under Trump's first, you know, term. So, and I was like, yeah, I just don't think it's going to work again. I don't buy that. And I do think this is kind of evidence pointing in that direction. You know, I saw Tim Pool tweeted out the, the ratings for,

I got to go look up these numbers, which I haven't done, but I saw he tweeted this here. And I guess this was... So I guess some people are pointing out that this was the rerun of Morning Joe, not the live episode of it. But you cannot believe this, dude. Morning Joe...

So this is the... On Sunday at 9 p.m., I guess they have, like, the replay of the last Morning Joe. So this isn't live. Their numbers have to be better when it's live. But their viewers, they got... Listen to this, Rob. Total viewers, 28,000. Like, this is...

I mean, that's insane. That's a little viewers. That's the amount of people you can get on a special filmed in your friend's garage. That's how embarrassing amount of viewers that is. I don't know. You know, I'll be curious to kind of keep an eye on the ratings, but this is also a sign that they just realize that this business model, as you kind of said, of being hysterical or calling him a Russian spy or whatever is just not going to work.

This is just not... Whoa, what's that noise? That is wildly loud. What was that? That sounds like my rectum. No, it sounds like someone must be doing some form of construction. Oh, well, that's good. Can we just take a second? Let me investigate what's going on. I'll be back in a second. Go ahead.

Try to be quick because we are live. I'll take some questions from the chat while we get that figured out. Dave farted. That is fake news, sir. Fake news. It did sound a lot like a vibrator, and I wouldn't put that beyond Rob's range of possibilities. Okay. Let me see. Sorry. Yeah, a lot of people are hitting the vibrator comment. I don't know if that's exactly right.

Sorry, guys. Just looking for... All right. Some kind of not very friendly things being said about Tim Pool. Be cool, guys. All right. If you guys want to ask a question real quick before Rob gets back, happy to answer it. Dave, do you know if Sam Harris and Kamala Harris are related? Well, there are a couple of white dudes, so it is possible.

I don't believe there's any relation there. Okay, let's move back. Oh, by the way, I should, and I guess we could get into this as the next topic, but I should mention, and we'll set up the, well, of course, I will have him back on in the next couple days to promote it, but Scott Horton's book, Provoked, finally here. I mean, I'm holding an advanced copy, so that's maybe not the best way

way to do it, but provoked by Scott Horton is available now, uh, all over the place. I know provoked book.com is his site, but you can get it on Amazon and all that other stuff. I don't actually know. I'll ask him when he's here with the best way to purchase the book to help him as I know. I just got a couple copies off of, uh, Amazon. Um, just cause I always think like, you know, those rankings are just helpful to generate more sales, but, uh,

It was very kind of perfect timing that this book, which, by the way, I just cannot praise highly enough. I mean, the thing is like a masterpiece. It is just it's almost at this point like there should be no more debate about the war in Ukraine. You should just drop this book on the table and go read them and weep because this is the whole history. Look, man, this thing, first of all, it's.

It's a big book, okay? There's a lot in here. But literally, when you look inside, it's not quite as intimidating as it seems because half the thing is freaking footnotes. Sorry, I'm out of frame here a little bit. It's just all footnotes. For every claim he's making, he's like, and here, go look it up. This is true. Oh, does this sound like a pretty crazy claim to be making? Yeah, it is. But it's also true. And it's just a devastating case of how...

and the West and NATO just...

provoked this conflict over and over and over again until it led to the catastrophe that's on playing right now in Ukraine. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is CrowdHealth, longtime sponsors. We love these guys. It's an amazing company. As everybody knows, the health insurance system is broken. Premiums are always increasing. Deductibles are getting larger and claim denials are becoming more common.

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So, it was announced by the White House that Joe Biden has... Who am I kidding? Joe Biden has nothing to do with any of this. But the U.S., whoever that is, has approved long-range missile attacks inside Russia's borders. Wow.

i'll let you go ahead you give your thoughts on this rob but uh this is even for me i found this shocking and i'm pretty damn aware of how evil and criminal dc is but this was just wild to me

I'm sorry, go ahead. Just as I was about to speak, I don't know where that drilling's coming from, but... A lot of people in the live chat seem to think there's a vibrator under your chair that's going off. I didn't say it. I didn't say it. But the good people of the live chat, a consensus has been reached. Yes, in order to fund my new car, I've sold my butthole to OnlyFans, and there is an item inserted up there that I don't have control over. But this...

Dude, Biden, yesterday, there was footage of him giving a speech in the rainforest where he just drifted off. And it was so silly looking, I thought it must be a green screen. Me too. Me too. I had the exact same thing. I went, oh, that is actually just like a deep fake or whatever. Yeah. And you're telling me that that guy, after he lost election, is still allowed to escalate a war?

This feels to me like Dr. Strangelove and how I knew how to love the bomb, even though it's in reverse. And he tries to call up the Russian president and the guy's completely hammered. And so they can't quite deal with the situation because the guy in Russia is hammered. That's what this feels like. How does Biden allow to escalate a war? And particularly, I was reading an article in CNN. Doesn't it look fake?

Wouldn't you just be like, okay, that's not, listen, I don't like Joe Biden either, but that, guys, that didn't really happen. And he certainly didn't just wander off afterward. Into the desert. That version of the clone will never be seen again.

He'll find him in the woods 50 years from now, still alive, just like in part of some loyal tribe. Anyways, props to the Timeline Earth guys on that joke. But it's shocking to me that he's allowed to escalate the war. Zelensky was even in the newspaper yesterday saying we're going to be able, the next administration has a better plan, which is actually talking to Putin. My best estimate right now is essentially, you know,

It's saving face. Ukraine grabbed a bunch of property within Russia, which I think they're trying to basically swap back so they don't have to give as much land when they negotiate for peace. Russia picked up a bunch of North Korean soldiers that I guess they could just go tear it up.

And so now I think Biden's trying to save face and escalate it and basically thwart that a little bit so that when this war is over and we end up at the exact place that we could have been four years ago, except that Russia is going to end up with more land inside of Ukraine that it will hold on to, you'll end up...

All of this war, everything we spent, there was no reason for it. All the lives that were lost on the Ukrainian side, no reason for it. Firstly, you would have ended up in a better place if we never provoked them into the war. But you're going to end up in the same place we could have been in two years ago without all the death. And so this seems to me like this is a last Hail Mary to try and save face and not have to give up as much territory to the Russians. But it's also just so incredibly stupid. And I don't understand how a guy who just lost an election...

and clearly should not be in this job anymore is allowed to, in this weak cabinet, be like escalating a war. That should almost be against the law. - Yeah, I mean, and particularly for the people who have been hysterically screeching about democracy for the last four years. You know, like it's like, this is pretty, I don't know if there's ever been,

in my lifetime, a foreign war where there was such a contrast between the two major party candidates on it. Like even in 2004, John Kerry didn't run against the war in Iraq.

He kind of said it was wrong to invade, but we're there now. And so we got like there was kind of like it wasn't like he was running on pull out right now. And George W. Bush was running on stay there forever. Maybe you could say Obama McCain on Iraq was it was a pretty big contrast. Right. But this would this would almost be like if Obama won the election. And then in the lame duck period, George W. Bush announced the surge.

That's not what George W. Bush surged in Iraq after he won reelection in 2004. I mean, don't get me wrong. It was a disaster, but he won. And then he got to say, hey, I won. And now we're going to, you know, escalate this war. I think it was a couple of years later. I think it's 2006 was the surge, if I'm not mistaken. I got to go back and reread more Scott Horton. But I'm pretty sure I'm right about that. But, you know, this is.

One side said, "Hey, we don't need to be fighting this war. We can negotiate this away. I want the dying to stop. That's it."

And the other side said, we have to fund them forever until they've won, whatever that looks like. And then you have a landslide victory for the guy who was against it. And they're going to, in the lame duck session, just take this drastic provocation, which doesn't even seem like, it's not even clear. They don't even try to explain to the American people why it's necessary to take this step or what the benefit of this step is. It just seems to be

all provocation and i you know donald trump came out and and uh gave a you know he put a video out giving a um an address about this and it is

It seems to me almost like, okay, because we're all kind of wondering, well, what are they going to do? And this is really the time, particularly, and nobody's been confirmed by the Senate yet, but particularly if Tulsi Gabbard is in charge of the intelligence community and Matt Gaetz is in charge of the Justice Department, well, it's going to be a lot trickier for them to box him in in the same method that they did last time. But the thing is, those people aren't in charge yet.

And so now they've got the next, you know, whatever, two months to set up their plan.

And it does seem like maybe this is part of it, is that they're trying to box Donald Trump into a situation where he's not going to be able to end this war. And maybe they can provoke Putin to do something where then Donald Trump would look weak if he didn't, you know, like continue the war going or something like that. So I do think it was powerful that Trump kind of came out. I think I think that speech was as much for Vladimir Putin as it was for anybody else to be like, hey, just a reminder that.

In two months, somebody who's willing to negotiate is coming in here. So like, don't do anything too crazy right now. Cause that sure would be a big mistake, but it is a,

as you said just a wild flaw in the entire system that this even could be done that you even could do this that the a senile guy who was so uh mentally incapacitated that he had to drop out of his re-election campaign and then they lose this huge uh uh that you know donald trump wins a huge victory on election day and then they can just say on an issue of like

such importance that, well, we're just going to do exactly the opposite of what the guy just ran and won on. I know I've made this point before, but it is wild how much, for the people who say they love democracy so much, they are totally unconcerned with where the American people are on the issue of war.

They just don't care at all. Every time it's like the Americans have never had a referendum on being the policemen of the world or being constantly involved in wars, let alone this particular war. There's never been like, oh, let's have an up or down vote.

See where Americans stand. All you can really see is that the anti-war candidates for president almost always have an enormous advantage over the war hawks. You know, like I pointed out, it's like this is why Obama beats Hillary Clinton. This is why Trump beats Hillary Clinton. This is why Obama beats McCain. This is why Trump beats Kamala Harris. Like the candidate who's more anti-war seems to win a lot.

And then it's like, oh, doesn't matter. We're just going to do that anyway. It is...

It is wild. A lot of that is because we're insulated from the problems of war, which is the reason you don't see quite the... Like what you did during Vietnam is because we don't have to go fight in Ukraine right now. And if you did have to fight in Ukraine, it was because you volunteered to be in the army. On top of which, with the way the Federal Reserve prints and spends money, while inflation is more on people's minds, it's not quite like war rations during World War II that you weren't able to get meat. And so...

they've done a very good job of trying to pick fights that our soldiers don't have to get involved in and also just printing all the money so that we don't quite have to feel the pain of it. Yeah, well, that's right. That's the whole game. I hope Trump goes apeshit on this and goes, like, I already had this thing practically negotiated. Knock it off.

It's the one area that Trump himself and the people around him seem to be really good in terms of foreign policy, is that there's at least a lot of people, not everybody, not Waltz, his national security advisor, and Trump.

I'm not sure. Even Rubio, I think, was decent enough on Ukraine and has said some things about Ukraine that were pretty good. But Pete Hegseth has said great things about Ukraine. J.D. Vance is great on Ukraine and like a whole bunch of the other people around him, Tucker Carlson and David Sachs. And I think Elon Musk even is pretty good on this issue. So there's all of these people around him, including the new commander in chief, who want to end this war.

This is where that could have been ended before it started. And yet here we are. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is ProtonVPN. Proton created ProtonVPN to further protect the journalists, activists, and everyday citizens who use ProtonMail. ProtonVPN breaks down the barriers of internet censorship, allowing you to access restraints,

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All right, let's get back into the show. Here, I have to show you this. I covered it on the last Run Your Mouth, but this was in CNN yesterday. Natalie, if you're there, if you can just add it to the screen. I have it right here. It's the article where Zelensky says, here, we don't need all this other stuff here. Hold on.

People don't need to see my chase. Zelensky says Ukraine war will end faster under Trump presidency. And then here was a quote. He said that the war will end faster with the policy of this team that will now lead the White House, referring to the incoming Trump administration. This is their approach, their promise to their society and also very important to them. He added Zelensky stressed that on Ukraine's part, we must do everything to ensure that the war ends next year through diplomatic means.

Well, there you go. That's pretty promising. Yeah, he's like, hey, the new people, they're not going to make us go fight and die. They're actually willing to have a conversation with Putin and put an end to this. It's interesting because it's always been kind of unclear, like the position that Zelensky was in. And sure, you could look at lots of times where he's begging for more money, demanding more money and all this stuff. But he also was...

in the process of negotiating an end to this war a couple months into it, and it was the West that made him stop. And so you do kind of wonder, like, at a certain point, you know, I'm sure he doesn't want... He doesn't want this war to end with the worst-case scenario for him personally.

Which is pretty bad, which is that the Russians ultimately get their hands on him. And I don't think the Russians would like Muammar Gaddafi him, but they'll certainly bring him back to Russia and give him a sham trial and then throw him in a Russian prison. And that is not where you want to end up if you're Zelensky. So I'm sure that, you know, like that doesn't surprise me that this is his attitude toward it.

Anyway, okay, by the way, let's switch gears because I do want to get into this Bernie Sanders thing. And I'm not sure exactly how much time it'll take. So let's get into this a little bit because I also do find this to be another kind of fascinating development in the political landscape. And so one of the things that's happening here, so like I was arguing with...

Ryan Grimm on Twitter last night and into this morning, who, by the way, I like very much. I really do respect him and I enjoy all those guys at the breaking points, you know,

team, Crystal and Sagar and Ryan and Emily, I think they're all great. Now, Ryan, I think it's fair to characterize him as an anti-war leftist. And I've noticed there's this kind of... The dynamic that I'm referring to is that a lot of leftists right now, particularly kind of like the Bernie Sanders wing of the Democratic Party, are kind of having like an I told you so moment

Which makes sense. And to some degree, they get to do that. You know, they still have this feeling that Bernie Sanders would have defeated Donald Trump in 2016. And it's only because the DNC stole it from him that we got a President Donald Trump to begin with. And all of this stuff about like all of the woke insanity things that the.

corporate liberals like to focus on and all of this like, you know, threat to democracy in January 6th and all of this just doesn't move the needle with anyone. But if you actually had principled leftists who were talking about a message that resonated with the working class, you could win. And Bernie Sanders would have won. And

I don't know if that's actually true or not, but they I'll admit they have an argument to be made. Like, I don't know, but there is a point. And so that's kind of been an interesting thing to watch that emerge. And anyway, so the argument I was getting in with Ryan was over Social Security and it started because.

Well, Kyle Kalinske, again, who I don't have anything against. I've done his show before, and he's treated me with nothing but respect, and I want to show him the same. But he had this really awful post where he essentially... Here, I mean, we could even pull it up, I guess, if you want to. If I'm going to talk about this, I might as well get what he said right. So here, hold on, I'll send it over to you, Natalie. Just give me one second here.

That's right. Oh, I didn't quote tweet him. Sorry. I had, I'd replied to him. So this is C out of respect. I didn't quote tweet him. I'm not trying to come at you like that, bro. Um, hold on here. I'll send it over to you, Natalie. Okay. There you go. So he essentially, he was responding to a Vivek Ramaswamy video, uh,

And he wrote that his quote, his tweet is, "Poverty rate for seniors before Social Security, 40%. Poverty rate for seniors after Social Security, 10%. Vivek wants grandma to starve." That's his take. And look, this was particularly awful because the video that he pulled up, do you have it up, Natalie?

So let me just try to like paint the picture here for you of what I saw and why I responded to this on Twitter. Because this is first off, you know, Vivek's a friend of mine and I like him very much. And I think he is essentially correct on, I don't know, 90% of the things that he discusses and

You know, my only critique of Vivek as far as the Doge stuff goes is that he's not going further. You know what I mean? Like whatever, whatever Vivek Ramaswamy wants to cut out of the federal government, I want to cut that and then some more. So here, if you could just scroll up, Natalie, to the, so if you see the, his response here, so click on his tweet and then I want to show the video that he is responding to. Okay.

Oh, is this going to give us trouble here? Can you see? Because there's, yeah, if you go, hold on. If you go down, he's quote tweeting a video. I know it got community noted. It wasn't like that before. I have a plan for how we fix Social Security, and it's brilliant, Dave Smith. Do you? Yes. So instead of having government just take all of our money and spend it and pretend like they're saving it, why isn't Nancy Pelosi investing it?

It would be better. Honestly, Rob, that's something to consider. And just to conceptually understand what they've done to us, where they force us to save money, and then they spend all the money and pretend like they still have it, where you could have been investing for your own retirement. So the idea that like...

Most people would probably have done better in the market if they took that percentage of their income and they just stashed it for themselves for retirement. But the idea that the government's just been taking the money forcibly and then just spending it and at some point in time that's going to run out or it's going to be lost to inflation.

So all these people that just buy into Social Security like it's actually some sort of a safety net at its absolute best. It's a Ponzi scheme that when you and I get to retirement, they just go, oh, yeah, that was for the baby boomers. Thanks for paying into it. Yeah, well, that's more likely. No. So it's the so his tweet there is, quote, tweeting, protect Kamala Harris. That's the name of the Twitter account, which.

Not haven't done a great job so far, guys. I'll be honest. And then that's that's a Vivek, the Vivek video. Do you see that, Natalie? It's a quote of Vivek Ramaswamy. It's a short clip of Vivek Ramaswamy. And he's talking about the thing that, you know, you're you've probably heard him say before where he's going like if your Social Security number ends in an even number. Oh, here it is. OK, we got it. Yeah. Security number ends in an odd number. You're out.

If it ends in an even number, you're in. There's a 50% cut right there. Of those who remain, if your social security number starts in an even number, you're in. And if it starts with an odd number, you're out. Boom. That's a 75% reduction. Then literally, stochastically, okay? One of the virtues of that... Okay, so that's it. That's the clip that was tweeted, okay? So then Kyle takes this and posts what I said about the...

Poverty rate for seniors was 40% before Social Security, and it was only 10% after Social Security. And, you know, therefore, if a vape wants old people to starve to death, that's the only... So I responded to this, and I said, Kyle, with respect, this is an awful post on so many levels. I said, number one, you just get it wrong. He's not talking about cutting Social Security. That's not what this comment is about. This was his... This is his argument for...

of the legality of firing bureaucrats and having mass layoffs is he was saying it's illegal to like target people and fire them but it's it's legal if it's random so you could just say hey if your social security numbers ends in an even number you're fired he's talking about gutting three-letter agencies he's not talking about cutting social security so number one you just objectively got it wrong

You know, like this is not what he's talking about. But since the topic of Social Security is brought up, I was like, number two, correlation doesn't equal causation. Just looking at the poverty rates doesn't tell you anything. It doesn't tell you that Social Security is responsible for the poverty rate. I said, for example, the poverty rate has fallen since I was born.

it's not because i was born and it's not like if somebody were like oh my god if dave dies then the poverty rate will go back up you know what i'm saying like you can't just look at the raw poverty rate this was in the middle of the great depression there were many factors affecting the poverty rate of old people and social security is not the only one so the 40 to 10 thing doesn't even really make sense um i said number three

the young people who pay into Social Security are poorer than the old people who receive it. And so this objective fact alone destroys the poverty reduction argument.

In general, the younger people who have to pay Social Security have less wealth than the old people who receive it. Anyway, and then I said something about like, you know, it's wrong to ascribe these motivations of like, oh, you just want old people to die. Like, come on. It's just a very bad faith way of engaging with people. But anyway, so Ryan picked up on this and started arguing with me about it. And anyway, I was just kind of like...

I do just find it's hilarious to me that, look, there is one, it's one thing to have kind of the classic argument of redistributive policies versus free markets, right? Like, and I am squarely on the laissez-faire free market side of that argument, as I know you are too, Rob, but there's an argument to have there. And the argument is something like, you know, well,

I don't know, there's this huge disparity of wealth and some people have so much more than the other that we got to take a little bit from the people who have so much and give more to the people who have so little. Okay, I don't agree with that, but I can wrap my head around it and understand that some people do believe that and it's an argument worth having. But in this case, when you're talking about taxing young people to give the rewards to old people, you're talking about

a transfer of wealth from a poorer group to a richer group. There's just like no justifying that. Like no matter how much you try to twist yourself into pretzels, how

How are you on the side of a transfer of wealth from a poorer group to a richer group? Everybody, the socialist and the laissez-faire free market guy should all agree on that, but that's not what we want to do. Like, even if you're going to say, well, there are some seniors who are in poverty, like, okay, but then the argument would be that those people should get laid.

the social security not that rich old people should and ryan responded with something about like well what about an old person in poverty and i was like yeah but you're taking from a group that is on average poorer than the group you're giving it to and so like yeah you could come up with a scenario where there's some grandma who's in poverty and needs social security okay fine but like most of the grandmas are not

Most of the time, Social Security is like a 25-year-old is working and their money is being taken and given to pay out some 70-year-old. And in the United States of America, we don't have this mass problem of...

70 year olds being out on the street. I'm not saying there's none. It's a very big country. There are old people who live in poverty, but we have a, a epidemic level of 25 year olds who still live at home and are like in a, in a,

like prolonged state of adolescence because they could never, they have no conceivable path forward to owning a home and starting a family and having financial independence. And now we're taxing these people to subsidize the boomers

who took advantage of this whole system. This is just, to me, absolute madness. And so I do, while I really do like a lot of these anti-war leftist types, I think now that you almost see the corporate Democrats being destroyed, the corporate media being destroyed, there's this reemergence now of the populist socialist left who want to say, no, they really have the answers. And I do think it's important for us to be like, no.

Sorry, that argument also has to be soundly defeated. And the Vivek Ramaswamy's and Elon Musk's of the world are way closer to having the correct answer, which is cut government spending. And the idea of like more social programs or protecting social programs is the exact wrong attitude to have.

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Act now before the IRS takes more aggressive steps. Take control today. Visit TNUSA.com slash Smith or call 1-800-958-1000. All right, let's get back into the show. Any thoughts on any of this, Rob?

I agree with the overarching picture of what you're saying. I did a quick Twitter Gronk search over here. I don't know if that's the way that's pronounced. And it seems like about 20% of seniors rely on their Social Security.

But just speaking to the point that if you do believe that society should have some sort of a social safety net, and let's say that there will be a forced insurance program, the idea that the poor 25-year-olds need to pay into it and will probably never be able to collect, or if they are able to collect, it will be virtually useless because of inflation, and that the, I guess, 80% of seniors that don't actually rely on Social Security are

are entitled to it, even if they're getting more than what they... And the thing is, oh, well, they paid into it, so they're entitled to it. But the government spent all of it. It's not actually being saved. And at some point, we do need to have a conversation about the liabilities that government has on its book. I believe the interest as of next year currently is the largest expense...

So at some point, this doesn't play out. And at some point, we're going to have to deal with the fact that government's been lying about its ability to manage these things. It did not save an investor money. It could have done that. That would have made sense. Like, listen, if you like wealth redistribution and you understand that some people are idiots and you think government should step into people's lives and force them to save to retirement. So we're going to have everyone pay into an insurance fund so that the biggest fuck ups amongst us when they get to retirement, if they have no money, well, or

if things went wrong in their life and they got sick or whatever, well, we're going to be able to pull through. But the problem is, Social Security is a pretty good example of the fact that government can't do that. What they can do is take a percentage of your wealth and then squander it on wars and other stupid shit that nobody actually wanted. And at some point...

i don't know are we going to go to war with someone we default on our debt where does this head long term i mean if you really want to i i completely agree with you and also just the logic of it i mean ryan was actually arguing with me at one point he goes well if your concern is wealthy uh elderly people receiving social security money then we can alleviate that by raising their taxes

And I just found this to be like such a, just an example of somebody who's kind of married to their ideology. It's like, well, I still have to force this back into some tax and spend redistribution scheme. And because I responded to him and I said, like, well, yeah, I mean, I guess we could also have a policy where we subsidize Elon Musk and then raise his taxes to try to recoup the money that we subsidized to him. Right. Right.

Like that could be a policy, but isn't it easier to just not give them money to begin with? Because all we've accomplished by that is like paying a bunch of government employees salaries to do bureaucratic work. Like the obvious answer that's right in front of everybody, right? Is like, if you're concerned about say that 20%, you said of seniors who rely on social security is to means test social security and say, okay, well for now, those 20% of people keep it.

But wealthy old people don't get it. Sorry, it's not there. You got defrauded. The government took your money and spent it. You don't get to rob the next generation who are far poorer than you for that money because you got robbed. That's not right. So anyway, this just seemed fairly obvious to me. So anyway, I want to get into the Bernie Sanders clip because I do just find this delightful.

deliciously entertaining. And so Bernie Sanders, I guess, was just on the Lex Friedman podcast. I missed this episode. There's been a lot going on in the world. But I have seen that Bernie Sanders is coming around now. He came out and had he wrote an op ed, very critical of the Democratic Party kind of abandoning the working class. And Nancy Pelosi was very offended by that. So we had did not abandon the working class or whatever.

Overall, I do tend to side with Bernie Sanders in that argument against Nancy Pelosi. He's got a really good point. But at the same time, I also do. And like the policy, these policies will be a disaster that this is not the answer. And so I do kind of feel a need to talk about this. Anyway, let's play this clip that I sent from from the Lex Friedman podcast, because this is just one of our favorite topics to rip Bernie Sanders for. Let's play.

Since running for president, you've often been attacked, especially from the right, about being worth, I believe, $2 million and owning three houses.

So from my perspective, the answer to that is most of your wealth has been earned from writing books and selling those books. And you are one of the most famous politicians in the world. And so your wealth in the context in comparison to other people of that fame level and other politicians is actually quite modest. So what's your response usually to those attacks? Do I own through?

Three residences. Yeah, I do. I live here in Burlington, Vermont. We live in a middle-class neighborhood. Nice house. Guess what? I'm a United States Senator and I own a home in Washington, D.C. as do most senators. You know, you live there year after year. When I first went to, actually, when I was in Congress for 16 years, I rented all the time, but I got elected. Okay, got a six-year term. You know what? Let's buy a house. So we bought a house and guess what?

Like many thousands of people in the state of Vermont, I have a summer camp. It's a nice one on Lake Champlain. That's it. Now, how did I get the money? You're right. Just pause it for a second. It's just, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I just love that. He's trying his best to make it seem like, ah, I'm just a working class dude. Yeah. You know what I mean?

"Yeah, I got three homes and I'm worth 2 million bucks, but you know, like, yeah, there's a lot of richer people than me in Washington, DC." Like fair enough. And just to be clear here, I have nothing against anybody owning three homes or making millions of dollars. I'm all for it. I admire people who are successful, but isn't it, but Rob, isn't it just so hilarious that, and you know, in the moment, so he's, 'cause he's kind of justifying having the two homes

He's like, well, I'm a senator. You know, I live in Vermont, but then I also have to be in Washington, D.C. It made more sense to buy than to rent. But then he's also got to throw in the third home. And this was news to me. I did not know that the location of his third home was in a place called Lake Champaign. It's just so funny to have to say that, but be arguing like that's not that extravagant or anything. I mean, I summer at Lake Champaign like everybody does.

I'm 36, I have no kids, I work three jobs. Most days of my life I probably work like a 12, 15, I work long days every single day. Every day. I don't own a single home. I don't even have a nice apartment that I rent.

And now I guess if I wanted to be in debt and get a mortgage, I probably could have a modest home somewhere. But like then you got the burden of ownership and all the taxes and the fees and the maintenance and the upkeep. The idea of having one nice home is pretty incredible.

The idea of having two nice homes is like, wow, that's really great. The idea of two nice homes and a vacation home on top of that, it just shows his salesmanship of, yes, I have the three homes, but the modest, I mean, yeah, the nice homes. One is them on the lake. One is by the job. And then one is in the other. Yeah, that's all very luxurious, buddy. Yeah, listen, Rob, I own one home.

and I was under the impression that I'm fucking killing it. Okay? Like, I would, I'm like, things are going so great, dude. I own a nice home. Like, this is, it's just, look, if you want to be real here, again, just own it. Like, yeah, you're doing phenomenally well. You get book deals. People like to bribe you.

And I was able to write books about being a socialist where I made a lot of money and I will not be sharing that wealth. - Yeah, I mean like, look dude, it's just, okay, you own three homes and you're a millionaire. That is just objectively doing really well. And I'm sorry if you're talking to any audience, like it's like, I remember literally just the other day, I had some socialist on Twitter who was saying, he's like, "Oh, Dave, you don't represent the working class. You're a rich podcaster," or something like that. And I was like, okay.

what can i really argue with that for yeah i'm not i'm not claiming to have the same life as somebody who's a construction worker okay fine like i i don't know well okay but then you but okay but if that applies to me then

then why does that not apply to millionaire with three homes again i have nothing against that it's just the hypocrisy is just insane hey let's play a little bit more i i only advocate for redistributing other people's wealth yeah i want to keep my money it is my money i earned i wrote a book people liked it so it's mine right oh here let's uh let's play a few more minutes of this

I wrote two bestselling books, including this book on capitalism. It was New York Times bestseller for a while. And also another book was a youth book. And I make, I don't know, $175,000 a year. And that's more or less how I became the zillionaire. You got to pause again. I should also mention that sometimes the world is a little bit more complicated.

all right because imagine like even just the way he says i make 175 000 a year isn't like yeah listen dude this is a very very modest salary here it's like listen dude having your third home on lake champaign being worth two million dollars and making 175 grand a year if you're talking to regular people that's

Killing it. I don't know what to say here, dude. Like that's only 175 grand a year. Now I understand. Believe me, believe me. I particularly understand because I'm friends with a whole lot of really, really successful people who make way, way, way more money than I make.

And like, okay, that's yes, it's true that when you're hanging out, like how I'm doing in life may sound very good to you, but believe me, when I'm going and hanging out with Rogan and Patrick Bitt David and Vivek Ramaswamy and these guys, if I hang out with Andrew Schultz or Tim Dillon, it's like, you think I'm doing good,

Not compared to those guys, but still you gotta have some sense of perspective here when you're talking about your third home on Lake Champaign and your $2 million net worth and your 175 grand a year salary. That is doing very, very well compared to the overwhelming majority of not just Americans, of Americans, let alone the world. You know what I mean? Like you're doing very well. But again here, and this is the thing that somehow

This does not, Sanders supporters or democratic socialists, types like this, this attack somehow does not seem to land. And they seem to go like, no, no, no, whatever. He's still advocating for a system where his taxes would be much higher. But I'm sorry. Look, if your claim, which is Bernie Sanders' claim here, right, is that income inequality is

is a moral outrage. And that's what he says over and over again, that it is wrong. Now, I don't agree with any of this, just to be clear. This is Bernie Sanders' position, is that it is wrong that some people have so much and others have so little. Okay?

Okay? And that we should use the force of government to correct this moral outrage. That we should take by force from those who have and redistribute it to those who have less. Now, I don't agree with that worldview, but that's his worldview. I'm sorry. If it's a moral outrage, then you start at home. Listen, you have, there's homeless people out there in the world, and you have three homes.

Why should you not be giving one of those to someone who's homeless? And then you can make a real difference in a real human being's life. For that person, you just changed their world, right? Why do you need yourself to make three times the median household income?

How is that not a moral outrage if income inequality is a moral outrage? And it is completely within your power to do that. No one is stopping you. You can give your home to someone who doesn't own a home. You can give your home to Rob Bernstein, Bernie Sanders. All he wants is the lake house, okay? None of the rest of it. Just the Lake Champagne is where me and Rob are going to be partying once we get that home. But I'm sorry. This is like... This is on the level of like... I don't know. If you...

What is it for a libertarian if you were like, if I was just like, hey, it's wrong. I'm against the war on drugs. I don't think people should be locked up in cages for nonviolent victimless crimes. And then you found out that I was locking someone up in a cage in my basement for the crime of having drugs on them. You'd be like, whoa, well, then screw you, dude. You're a total hypocrite. I'm never going to take anything you say seriously ever again, because what?

You're doing the exact thing that you claim is such a moral outrage. I'm sorry that this is the exact same thing or the logic is the same. Why do you get to? And so anyway, I guess the point ultimately is that this whole thing is a scam. It's all a big scam. You write a book about how awful it is that some people have so much while other people have so little and you make millions of dollars off of it and then you keep it all.

What? Like, again, if Bernie Sanders did this, even if it was within reason, right? Like, let's say that Bernie Sanders made millions of dollars off of his book. And he goes, I'm going to keep $500,000 of say the $2 million I made off my book. And I'll give the other $1.5 million to a charity or to distribute it to people with less money or something like that.

It'd be hard to listen. I'd still disagree with socialism, but you'd go, Hey, look, man, this is a dude who practices what he preaches. You know, this is a dude who really believes in that shit.

But if you're not going to do that, and then when you look at his actual tax returns that he puts out and how he itemized his deductions so he could pay the lowest possible... I think he paid like 12% in federal income tax or something like this. They substantially less income taxes than I pay. And... Or a percentage, I should say. I don't know that total. But...

And then he like listed his wife as a dependent, like used all these tricks to pay as little taxes as possible. Like, I'm sorry, but if you're,

if you're ranting against the millionaires and billionaires and then you become a millionaire and then you start just ranting against the billionaires and then almost kind of like this mocking of people who would even like point this out sorry dude this is this is really weak really weak hypocrisy listen i'm i'm sorry what can i say i like to have caviar on the weekends it's nice yeah it's uh it's just it's simple caviar

He's a champagne socialist, literally, on Lake Champagne. All right. Thank you guys so much for listening. We'll be back tomorrow with a brand new episode. Catch you next time. Peace.