Part Of The Problem - Mamdani's Historic Win

Episode Date: November 6, 2025

Dave Smith brings you the latest in politics! On this episode of Part Of The Problem, Dave and Robbie "The Fire" Bernstein discuss yesterday's elections including the mayoral race in NYC as well as governors in NJ and VA, the factors that lead to such big wins for Democrats, and more.Preorder Lauren Smith’s book here: https://a.co/d/67djjBpSupport Our Sponsors:Cowboy Colostrum - Get 25% Off Cowboy Colostrum with code DAVE at https://www.cowboycolostrum.com/DAVE.CrowdHealth - https://www.joincrowdhealth.com/promos/potpProton Drive - https://www.proton.me/davesmithProlon - https://prolonlife.com/potpPart Of The Problem is available for early pre-release at https://partoftheproblem.com as well as an exclusive episode on Thursday!PORCH TOUR DATES HERE:https://www.eventbrite.com/cc/porch-tour-2025-4222673Find Run Your Mouth here:YouTube - http://youtube.com/@RunYourMouthiTunes - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/run-your-mouth-podcast/id1211469807Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/4ka50RAKTxFTxbtyPP8AHmFollow the show on social media:X:http://x.com/ComicDaveSmithhttp://x.com/RobbieTheFireInstagram:http://instagram.com/theproblemdavesmithhttp://instagram.com/robbiethefire#libertarianSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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 burnstein how are you this morning sir or this afternoon i'm doing well how are you my friend that was awesome had tucker on big week who yeah it was a well it was a big show it's been a big week and of course i think this is another uh big show today rob because of course of course, last night was election night, and there's so much to say about this. And there's no one I'd rather sit down and break it down with the new, Rob. This was, well, I mean, let's start with this. This was a big moment in American history last night. You know, that was, first of all, Mom Donny's victory is a historic victory, no matter how you feel about it. You know, this is a big

deal. The fact is that we are in a rapidly changing country with rapidly changing political dynamics, but the fact that, you know, an open socialist, a socialist, Muslim, young, charismatic guy just became the mayor of the biggest city in America is a very big deal. So we're going to talk a bunch about that, obviously, and what this means. Also, the bigger picture of the election, undeniably, was that the Democrats had a good night. And this wasn't a midterm election. It wasn't the House and the Senate and a bunch of states on the line. It was a small off-year election. However, there were three very big races last night. There was the governor, the gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey,

and there was the mayoral race in the biggest city in the United States of America. All three of them went the Democrats way. All three pretty handily. And that's a good night for the Democrats. And a good night for the Democrats is a huge story right now. And, you know, I would argue a concerning one. But, you know, obviously we give our opinions on this stuff. But just breaking it down as an analyst.

The Democrats were a year ago today at the worst place I've ever seen one of the major two political parties in in my lifetime. I don't think anyone could really argue with that. There's, I mean, look, I wasn't alive during Watergate, but even during Watergate, man, like, they still had a Republican president and they had won 49 out of the 50 states in the previous presidential election. There's really the humiliation of the Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, you know, disaster in, in 2024, and the humiliation of Donald Trump having been, you know, the person that they launched more arrows at than any other person coming in and beating them again. The Democratic establishment has been in ruins ever since then. Their approval ratings have been like 24, 25%, just absolutely doing as bad as a political party could be doing. And they had a good night last night. And that's something they desperately needed.

So that's a big deal already. So yeah, that's the, you know, just the factual, you know, what happened last night. It was a good night for the Democrats. And it was a historic night for Zoranam Dani, who is now going to be the mayor of New York City. And there's a lot in there to break down. But I don't know. You can even lead us off here. Rob, any thoughts on any of these races last night?

I think there's a lot going on off the bat. I will say that these are all fairly democratic areas. So I don't know that you would have seen a Republican victory from what I was digging into. I guess these were outsized democratic victories. And the fact that Zoron, an absolute socialist, was able to win is incredible. concerning. I think what this speaks to more than anything is Donald Trump cannot just Jedi trick-go, no inflation, jobs are great, my policies are great, and just keep repeating it over and over and trick people into that everything's amazing. And we're kind of, I mean,

it's still great that on the national level, the Democrats have nearly no bench, and they are worse than Donald Trump. But Donald Trump is in everywhere. He's trying to get us into more wars. His tariff policy, at least at the moment, hasn't brought prosperity. I still don't think we've seen the worst of it. But there's nothing he's doing that feels like it's America first. I mean, we're seeing it more than anything with what's going on with you, Tucker, and everyone else is you guys are just anti-war. And the right tries to shame you guys out of the movement as if you don't represent the majority of the country right now. But I think the Republicans are failing.

Incredibly, they're getting the blame for the shutdown, which usually the Republicans, the one shutting it down and they get the blame. But for some reason, that's not working well for them. And I think it just speaks to Donald Trump's just lying of it's going to be great, is easy when you're on the outside. But when you're in the inside and you're actually in charge, you're making the decisions and people don't see it being any better, it doesn't help if you just try and lie to them like Biden and go, no, there is no inflation. No, there is no problems. Everything is better. Yeah, yeah. Well, look, I mean, there's, because I want to be reasonable with this. And I have said this before, particularly about the Mamdani situation, but let me just reiterate it once again now that

he has officially won, even though that seemed like it was clearly going to happen. And he, you know, he won handily, too. He even beat the spread. So there's no talk that, oh, that Republican guy is the reason why Cuomo lost. But Mamdani being, momdani being the mayor represents many people's failures, including mine and yours. Like, I'm not absolving us from this. I accept zero responsibility for this. I did everything I could to shame Cuomo. The fact that that guy came back and Democrats allowed him to. No, I more just mean that any of us who have been, you know, arguing for sound economics and free

markets and all of this, I feel like, goddamn, you know, I've been on a lot of big platforms over the last few years and I guess I have not convinced enough people. People took more of that vaccines and drink more fluoride than you and I could have ever expected and you know you can only reason with them so much yeah but I no but I mean look I'm being very serious here like I've I've been you know look obviously we take less responsibility we're not as important as but I just mean that it's us it's every other libertarian podcaster is every conservative commentator it's every institute and think tank it's like hey Cato and Mises and I mean the the organizations that I love the Mises Institute the Libertarian Institute All of Conservatism, Inc., all of the Republican Party, what a goddamn failure.

You've been trying, you have been essentially probably nothing has kept the, what America is, the broadest of broad, big tent, conservative right-wing world since the end of World War II, the thing that has been the lone consensus issue has. been anti-communism, anti-socialism. There was a, you know, there was a split between like the cold warriors who wanted to fight communism globally, militarily, and the more non-interventionist right-wingers who thought that that might turn us into too much of a communist country if we go and try to create government programs to fight communism. But the one thing that united all of them was being opposed to this, being opposed to socialism. And so, if you

look at all the effort, 60 years of effort, and at the end of that, the biggest city in the country elects an openly socialist candidate. I'm just saying that's a failure on everybody's part. We did not make the argument convincingly enough, or making the argument convincingly enough isn't really what it's all about and there's some other path. But that being said, well, look, it also, of course, Mamdani being elected also is a result of the failures. of the establishment of the Democratic Party, obviously, right? It's that the fact that Cuomo was in, was such a weakened position that he can't, he can't even look at essentially a communist kid and go, get out of here, man.

The adults know what they're doing here. Like the fact, like how bad would you have to be to be the son of a governor, the former governor, like a guy who had every advantage in the, he's been in New York City before. mom dani was a i was going to say a citizen but that's like not even close before mom dani was a thought you know he's he's been in the city since before mom dani was alive and he's got you know all the connections to the establishment i just huge huge advantages but he's got he did such a bad job that he can't he couldn't even convince new york voters that like look you really want to go with a guy who has no experience who's been a citizen for five minutes

who's preaching communism that's who you want to go with you have to fuck up really really bad for the average person to go over you yes you know well when when you put up a guy with a beret and a person who killed people's grandmothers and then you got to govern new york and you start making it a referendum on having more support for israel you're choosing to lose now as to why this kid came out of nowhere generated so much excitement and people are so dumb that they're voting for socialism, I think just, I mean, it speaks to people's stupidity in their belief in government to provide them free stuff and just candidates, even like Donald Trump that are willing to speak to the working class and go, hey, everyone else is stealing from you. I'm going to try and

make it better. Well, look, I mean, there's no class, there's no question, all of those things are factors. Now, look, Rob, had they had more time, maybe they could have asked them to visit Israel one more time. Maybe that would have been enough, but there was only so many times you could ask him to visit Israel. And it just none of it. So look, there's a failure all around here. And I'm not even passing the buck. Like, I'll accept some of the failure here. God damn, we really got to convince this next generation that socialism is like the, not the, what they want to embrace. It's going to be a goddamn disaster. It's guaranteed to be a disaster. In fact, it will be exactly as disastrous as as much of it is tried.

That will be exactly how much of a disaster it is. But look, to the thing, and you got at it right away, and I think actually we should spend quite a bit more time talking about this. But the biggest failure, right, like in the same sense that like, I'd say like even the Mises Institute, I'll put some of the blame on, right? But then obviously who takes so much more of the blame is conservatism, ink, because you guys actually had all of the backing and all of the budget and all of the numbers and everything and still couldn't deliver this message and still couldn't convince people that freedom beats despotism.

That was the task, by the way, was convincing people that, like, you getting to be the author, of your own script is not preferable to some bureaucrat being the author of your your destiny. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Proton Drive. If you're tired of big tech snooping through your files, switch to Proton Drive. It's end-to-end encrypted cloud storage trusted by over 100 million people worldwide so only you can access your photos work and personal files it's free to sign up and supports our show when you do it check them out proton drive much safer uh than more secure than other alternatives if you're interested we have a link in the episode description you can click on that and go check it out for

yourself and uh yeah proton drive a more secure way to store your photos and files all right let's get back into the show like that anyway so in that same spirit Look, the Democrats having a good night here. And yes, Rob, you're right. These were, I mean, you know, look, they were Democrat favored areas. I don't know if I'd quite say democratic strongholds outside of New York City. The previous gubernatorial race in New Jersey was substantially closer than this one. And Virginia is, okay.

Like, I mean, Obama carried Virginia and stuff. But, like, it's not California. Like, I don't know. Like, especially, I got to say. In a year coming off of the humiliation in 2024 and the Democratic Party having an approval rating in the 20s and after COVID and after Joe Biden and after Kamala Harris, I don't know. Is it that wild to think like, hey, Republicans, if you get your shit together, you could be competitive in Virginia because they weren't competitive.

They got blown out. And I'm sorry, this is a failure of the Trump administration. Let's just be honest about this. And what the hell is the point in not being honest about that? And Rob, you know, I think you laid out a lot of the things there for sure. I mean, look, let's just say it like this. Donald Trump came into his second term. He's about a year in, right, a little short of a year in his second term.

He came into it with his record high approval ratings, the highest approval ratings he had ever had. He, Donald Trump had, in what was kind of an unthinkable way, just a couple years earlier, Donald Trump had flipped everything around. He had won the day. He had taken back the culture. He had taken back the moment. He had his highest approval ratings.

UFC heavyweight champions are doing the Trump dance after they win. He's with Rogan and he's with Theo Vaughn and Andrew Shulton. He's like recaptured this thing. He has his best electoral performance by far of the three times he's run. gets the most votes, finally wins the popular vote, wins every single swing state, wins the House, wins the Senate, has the Supreme Court, you know, perfectly.

And now, less than a year later, this party that was in the dumps has a solid night outperforming where they had been in these states in the last few years. And Donald Trump is right back to his approval rate, is being in the gutter. I mean, this whole thing, look, and look to your point, I don't think, obviously we're all somewhat tempted to kind of like put our own, to, as everybody in this world is, you're always kind of tempted to seek confirmation bias and to find out that the answer here

is that I was already right about all of this stuff. But I'm sorry, if you're just trying to, like, if you're looking for just sober analysis here, right, all three of the big three races, last night, which is the governor of Virginia, the governor of New Jersey and the mayor of New York City. All three of them, the winning candidates, centered their campaign around the unaffordability crisis, all of them. In other words, Rob, it's still about the same thing that it was always about, which is the economy, and more specifically, that the price of everything is outrageously high. It's still, and so essentially, for all the other, For all the other distractions, Donald Trump could sit here and try to spin it in whatever way he wants to about how wonderful everything's going.

But the truth is that, you know, the CPI says what? We were like a little over 3% or something like that year to date. It's like, okay. So what that means to the regular person is that all the pain of the Biden inflation plus more, plus more. Things are more expensive now than they were during the worst of the crisis. of the biden administration right so that essentially now they the government of course because you know they have government math and dc you know economists and they'll try to spin this in a million different ways but what it actually means right like as we always say right the cpi is like um which forget

the way that's calculated but prices in general it's it's the increase in prices like gaining weight it's not oh well it went up by four percent last year but three percent this year so we're down one percent. No, it's not. We're up. We're up seven percent, or actually more than that if you do the compound math, whatever. But the point is that things are worse. The same crisis is still there, but is even worse now. And guess what? Nobody, I'm not even saying that people have been completely persuaded by our arguments on foreign policy, although more and more of them certainly have been. But like, no matter how much you want to brag about bombing, you know, Yemen or toppling the Syrian government or backing Israel as they attempt to kill every last man,

woman and child in Gaza, or bombing Iran's nuclear facilities, or bombing, you know, boats off the coast of Venezuela, but any of this shit, no, what is that done for America, any of it? You know, like all of this investment, the right wing being totally split over all of these fights over foreign wars um none of this is doing anything for the america first agenda none of this is doing anything for making life better for americans and what look by and large you can just look at this stuff um the tariff policy has been incoherent and um frankly somewhat unhinged like i don't know what to say like and um There's a lot of just like the bullshit is back and there's a lot of talk about all these different things.

There's a lot of, you know, interviews where he's calling someone fake news or doing whatever. But like when it comes down to it on the issues that really matter, the American people are not seeing some night and day difference. They're not essentially you had a golden opportunity, but you really haven't delivered that much. and look though even the one area where Donald Trump really has delivered the most undeniably is the border and the border being under control but mass deportations haven't happened there's been a lot of noise about them but they really haven't happened and I guess and maybe this is somewhat unfair but I think in a lot of ways people while people are glad that the flow of migrants isn't what it used to be now we're just living with the results of all those millions of people coming in and under Joe Biden. And it's not as if they're being removed. So we're just accepting that like, okay, that happened to us and this is our country now. That's the best we can do is like, okay, I got the bleeding to stop, but you're going to have to live with the wound. Okay, that's not like the best sell. The fundamentals of the economy are exactly the same, Rob.

All of the problems, like, I mean, the major fundamental economic problems are all the same. We're debasing our currency to continue to essentially what monetize the debt at a snail's pace or something like that, essentially just slowly destroying our currency to deal with the fact that we have a government that's way too big for us to be able to afford it. We're still getting involved in all these foreign conflicts. We still, you know, like just all the fundamental problems are still there. And at the end of the day when people are going to vote, the fact that Bobby Kennedy told us to stop taking Tylenol just isn't that great of a win, man. Like, what are we really? we really have here. And so for all of the people, because it really is, this is a, like,

I'm somebody, you know, I was talking about this with Tucker, Rob, but like so many of, say, like the more establishment, uh, Republican types who like, you know, they really want to, whatever, cancel Tucker or get people like me to just go away. Um, and they're like, no, the real concern is the Democrats. You guys are always picking on the Republicans, but the real concern is the Democrats. So unlike them, I think I actually believe that a lot of more. I'm very concerned about the Democrats actually getting back in power on a national level. But take a look at, if you are really concerned about that, then last night should be a big wake-up call for you. This party was so down and so out and so fucking stupid and talentless and

destructive. And you allowed them back into the game. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, a brand new sponsor, who we're very happy to have on board, and that is cowboy colostrum. Cowboy colostrum is 100% made in America from 100% American grass-fed cows. Unlike other colostrum brands, cowboy colostrum is sourced from the first milking of U.S. grass-fed cows. Don't worry, cowboy colostrum only collects the surplus colostrum after the baby calves have had their fill. If you don't know, colostrum is kind of like what what the mother gives before the breast milk comes in, and it's very, very important for babies.

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All right, let's get back into the show. that's a fucking failure if anything is a failure and uh just speaking about allowing them back in the game of course Donald Trump has the absolute worst way to deal with this which is he wants to get rid of the filibuster because he's now under the mindset of hey the Democrats are going to come back unless we can strong arm them and I don't think Donald Trump's just strong arming policies is exactly uh that favorable with the American people I think that's what gets him the pushback of the no kings protest it's what you know

Not that I care about what liberal media has to say, but I'm just saying if you're trying to win over the moderates and your preaches that, you know, you can make things better and that you can govern. And then your only way to try and enact your policies is trying to just ram it down everyone's throats while claiming that it's going to save us and that it's wonderful and that it's great. And we're not seeing any of this pay off yet while you just continue to spend money, not just on current wars, but escalating other foreign wars. I don't know. It just seems like such a train wreck. And just speaking to your point of like, if you don't want to lose to the Democrats, you got to you got to ramp down on your foreign policy stuff and start actually fixing the

economy. And part of that is not having government spend as much as it is as you're trying to increase spending. Yeah. No, I mean, that's right. That's right. And look, it's interesting in a way, too, because, right, you do see there is, as you mentioned, like you mentioned this earlier. And I guess I was particularly on this show, given what our last episode was to this episode, it's hard to not talk about this. And I'm not saying that this accounts for like a hundred percent or even like a huge percent of what happened last night. But just on the optics alone, the fact that there's like kind of a civil war on the right. And then at the culmination of that week, the Democrats have this success. That is something that's hard to not look at. And of

course, and I suppose with some level of like surface plausibility, both sides of this divide on the right can blame the other one for it. Hey, if you just got on board with me, we wouldn't be divided. You know what I mean? And we'd be united against the enemy or something like that. But of course, you could do that from either side. It's the same way as like, which, you know, they, um, mom donnie ended up winning by enough that it wasn't, it didn't come down to this argument but you know that so many people uh quomo supporters were saying this republican guy should drop out then the republican guy saying hey i'm the republican you lost the primary you should drop out you know again for the same at the same point mom donnie could have dropped out and endorsed quomo

and then he'd be the mayor now but like whatever it's that's not exactly you know you could look at it from any perspective but to me and i think there's a reasonable point here to be made let let's almost examine all of these cases. I mean, is it true? Let's just say that Tucker and me and Candice and Nick Fuentes are for everyone. Let's just say everyone on our side. We had just shut up and gotten on board with the Trump agenda. We didn't like it under Biden, but as soon as Trump came in and started, you know, back in Israel's war against Gaza, we were on board. And we didn't criticize them for bombing the Houthis, and we didn't criticize them for bomb in Iran or any of these things, and we were like, let's go get Venezuela. Let's just say we were totally on board with him.

Does anybody really believe that, like, that would have moved the needle or something that, like, the people in these blue or purple states would have been like, well, all right, Tucker Carlson's not complaining about the wars, so let's go vote for Trump. Or would the realities on the ground be exactly the same as the realities on the ground? right now. I think that that question pretty obviously answers itself. And I would just say, like, look, at this point, again, if you think about who, like, I don't know, I mean, I don't know.

I guess maybe someone could check me on this. But I think of the biggest right-wing political commentators right now, I think it's, I think Fuentes might be in the top three with Tucker and Candice. now like the ones who are doing the biggest numbers on their shows and um the goal of the the gop coalition is to what cancel all three of them like like maybe i'm wrong about that maybe they're three of the top five or three of the top four or something like that but they're about as big as anybody and you want to cancel all of the you want to kick out all the boats and then you know when you get down to whatever us and you know like there's a lot of other people like you're talking about

like picking a battle with like a huge huge portion of the constriction of the constriction here. And then I would also, you know, just like, let's say, let's say you are one of those guys who's just like, look, what's important. Because if you think about that, that whole conference thing that me and Tucker were talking about with all the worst people speaking there, their whole thing was saying Trump is not MAGA. And they're like, hey, MAGA is going to, you know, be ruined by this. And then their argument would be something like, hey, you know, Tucker, you know, gave two softball of an interview to Nick Fuentes, and that Nick Fuentes is a neo-Nazi, and therefore regular people are going to be turned off by this. This is going to fracture

our coalition. And if we really want the MAGA agenda of whatever, restoring economic health and strong borders and blah, blah, whatever, then we need to get those guys out of here. It's like, all right, well, even if you have that attitude, and probably more so if you have the Matt Walsh attitude, where he's like, I don't even care about this right wing in. fighting. I just want us to all fight the left together. If you want, but if you want the MAGA agenda, right? Well, you got to admit that at least part of this, the way that Donald Trump was able to win the way he won in 2024, like what was different than the years where he lost the popular vote and the year where he lost the election in 2020 and all the legitimacy of that election,

questions aside. But there's no question that like 2016 was like a coin flip. Like he, You know, it was like a few thousand votes in key districts that ended up winning him, the presidency against Hillary Clinton. Joe Biden, he did, you know, was much, much club. This year he won the popular vote. He won every swing state. Well, what made that? What was the difference there?

Well, okay, a big part of it was that, you know, look, use the comedy guys as an example. He didn't have fucking Rogan and Theo and Schultz and all these guys, those type of guys endorsing them last time. He had all of them this time. And think about that. How do they all feel about Donald Trump now compared to a year ago? Not as good, you know? I mean, I don't know.

I don't know like exactly. I know that they've all at different points. I've heard Rogan say this isn't, and I'm not saying anything privately. I'm just saying what we've all like on their shows, what they say publicly. I've heard Rogan say, fuck, this isn't what I voted for. Fuck, that's not what I want to do. Well, this makes no sense. I've heard Theo be like, say to the vice president, but like, we're back in a genocide still?

Like, I don't know. I was kind of against all that. I've heard Schultz say, this is the opposite of what I voted for. I've heard of, and what is it? Why is it, right? That Donald Trump was really popular, even amongst, on this show. Like, I ended up supporting them. Why is it that Donald Trump was so much more popular in all these circles a year ago until today?

Why is it? It's the wars. It's Israel. That's why. There's a price to going all in on continuing Joe Biden's policy of funding the genocide of the Palestinians. There's a price. You lost all these guys over that. So even those people in the MAGA agenda, again, Rob, it all comes back to like what it always like comes back to. It's like which one do you care about more? And people say it's like, oh, you're making it all about Israel or all about the Jews or something like that, which is retarded. It's like, no. dude it's all about empire right that's what the whole thing is always about it's republic versus the empire that's what it's always about it's like this is it's liberty versus tyranny you know it's the people versus the rulers it's the empire versus the republic and part of supporting Israel right now requires the empire to continue it's not the only thing but but it's a big one and so like essentially like in a sense the choice was do we want to have this maga coalition

win, or would we rather make sure we get Israel all the weapons it needs? And it seems to me that the choice was made. And I don't think you could say that this is me making it about, you know, what I want it to be about or seeking my confirmation bias. But you explained to me why Theo Vaughn isn't big on Trump today and he was a year ago. What do you think it's over? You know, it's like everybody, it's like fucking, when you listen, I said this to Tucker the other day, but when you listen to Mark Levine talk at his goddamn festival, you would

think everything except the destruction of Gaza has been a major factor in how people act about Israel. You know, like you're Mark Levin, Rob. I go, why is anti-Semitism rising? Yeah, it's Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens, liars. Oh, okay. Why are the liars resonating with everybody? Katari money is coming in here. You know, it's everything else. It's everything except you guys just committed a genocide in 4K and forced me to pay for it. Everything except that. And so the idea that you can go, oh, we'll just keep doing that and funding that policy and also keep the MAGA coalition together, well, maybe you can only have one.

Let's see which one a lot of people would choose. Anyway, any other thoughts, Rob? I think people really care about things starting to be better here. And if you're spending money across the globe and you're picking fights and you're funding these wars it's not going to be better uh and speaking now to this lie about that uh venezuela is over drugs you know you can uh bring down fentanyl use in this country is if uh you get some jobs for all these people i bet if they could have good jobs i bet a lot of these people wouldn't actually be on fentanyl um and uh you know it's like what you're going to spend more money on these wars you're just

going to keep alienating other countries you're going to on off with tariffs trade deals how many small businesses have been crushed from this stuff. And just speaking, like, I think the wars are partly that people don't like them. And then I think they also just don't like, why are we spending all these money, all this money in other places? Can we just

focus on getting this country cleaned up? And I think there's just a lot of throw the bastards out. Kamala Harrison Biden could not have been any worse. And so everyone's like, we can't have that. And so Trump had a free permission slip to kind of go and do whatever he wanted to do. And

thus far, what he's done has continued all the wars, stirred up a lot of drama on tariffs, continuously told us, best, greatest, bam, man, man, like, it doesn't matter what the hell he says at this point. If it's not better, nobody gives a shit. And when are these tariff jobs coming in? All the tariffs that you did, when is, when am I, when are there going to be lines around the block for factory jobs? What, 20 years from now, when people actually build the factories?

When is that happening? So I think just between, listen, I, I think all these areas that one, might have actually gone to Kamala Harris. These were Democratic areas, but I think the extent of the victory showcases an outrage with Donald Trump. And I think to the extent that he just continues like everything is great, they will get crushed in the midterms. Yeah.

Well, I think that I think that's right. And no, I mean, look, again, I'm not even saying that like, well, look, obviously a Republican winning the mayor in the mayoral race in New York City. No, that's happened before, but like it was going to be a long shot under current dynamics. Obviously, Jersey's a blue state. You'd think Virginia should be a competitive state for the Republicans at this point. But I'm talking about more like there's the trend that even against, look, okay, New York City, again, just to New York City had a Republican mayor up until, what's his name, goddamn awful, worst mayor in New York City history, up until DeBlau. It had been Republican mostly for a stretch there.

I think Bloomberg left the Republican Party and became an independent at one point, but he won as a Republican. Giuliani obviously was a Republican. Now, look, obviously it's going to be a lot harder for a Republican to win today than it was for Bloomberg. But Rob, I mean, running against Cuomo and Mamdani, the Republican put up 6% last night. I mean, a truly pathetic showing. Pathetic. The candidate for Jersey, he was the same guy who ran last time, did substantially worse this time than the last time he ran.

And in Virginia, again, it was like a 25-point smackdown. Like there was not even a competitive race in what just objectively should be a competitive state for Republicans. And frankly, I'll say, given how bad the Democrats have been, it's just. state the Republicans should win. And so, no, it does. It shows something. And again, you know, to your point, there are just these fundamentals on the ground.

And the fundamental problem that we have in America is that the economy is a completely rigged game, rigged against the working people on behalf of the powerful. And this is now, you know, when Mamdani or when socialists talk about, about this. Again, it's almost like, you know, it's like Mark Levin talking about why there's this rise in anti-Israel sentiment. Like, it could be everything except the obvious thing. That's why it is. All you got to do is talk to anyone about anti-Israel sentiment who has it, and they'll explain to you very quickly what it is. But we're going to pretend it's anything except that. And so in the same way that Mamdani or Bernie Sanders, whenever they get at it, it'll always be like,

you know, the top one percent have so much and everybody else has so little. And you go, okay, well, why is that? Because the greed of the top 1% of the net is like, okay, but how do they facilitate that through their greed? Well, you know, they lobby Congress and blah, blah, blah, it's like, okay, they lobby Congress to do what? And then maybe they'll get into something to be like, oh, they cut their taxes. But then now we're down to a math question. Do tax cuts explain the transfer in wealth? Let's look at the, oh no, it doesn't even kind of come close to it. Now does it? Where were the big transfers of wealth from the working and middle class to the, okay, It was after the bailouts of 2008, and it was after the lockdowns and the bailouts, right?

So look, the fundamental problem here is that you got a government in Washington, D.C. That spends about $7 trillion a year. It's $7 trillion a year that's yanked out of the real economy and given to cronies. And then the entire rest of the economy is this kind of Wall Street casino system. that's all run off low interest rates and fiat currency. What has Donald Trump done to solve any of those issues, Rob? Has Donald Trump even pretended to grapple with one of them? Oh, what's he done?

Oh, he's increased it. He's increased government spending and asking for more. And so look, it's just like the fundamentals on the ground are like, we have to reject empire and reject big government in order to fix any of these. And Donald Trump isn't even prepared to even rhetorically do that. So, yeah, you could sit there and keep talking about how when you decided to change the tariffs because Canada said something about a Palestinian state, but that was really a brilliant economic move or something, but nobody's seeing it. Nobody's seeing it. The problem is still the same problem.

It's unaffordability. This is how Democrats are, you know, labeling it. But what is that, Rob, other than just saying the same thing we've been saying, except just for 20 years instead of for six months, which is that you're destroying the currency. That's the way someone who understands economics would put unaffordability. You're debasing your currency. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is pro long. I've been telling you about them for a while.

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more socialized medicine, more Medicaid access, like, they've kind of just given up the entire argument. So if it's just the game of your joke of, oh, I'll make minimum wage 20, I'll make it 40, hey, I'll make things free. I'll make more things free. So the Republicans are not winning a conceptual battle about why socialism isn't good all the way down to Donald Trump's central planning of trying to bring you more U.S. manufacturing jobs. So, you know, if the Republican party kind of stands for more central planning and he got another guy who's telling you, hey, I can make even more things free, it's a tough argument to win. Yes, because the argument is now between central planning or central planning for you.

You know, I mean, like, that's the only difference now. Now it's going like, hey, the government will go do a bunch of shit. And they're going, the government will do a bunch of shit, one of which will be paying your subway fare. Oh, okay. Well, I like that one because at least I get my subway fare paid for. You know, and I do think that all of, look, all of these things, like even like, say like the Epstein stuff. Now, I'm not saying that, obviously, the, you know, I don't think most voters vote over inflation much more than they vote over Epstein, you know, like the price of your health care and your groceries and immigration and, you know, schooling and stuff like this are much more important to most people than Epstein. But think about something like Epstein, think about how much damage that did to lose Trump so much energy and favor with so much of the, you know what I mean, like the people.

It sends a heavy signal that Donald Trump is not cleaning up corruption. And I think people are aware of the fact that corruption is why they don't have the economic opportunity that they're looking for. And so once again, that cedes more area to the socialists who I don't think most voters are so much ball. into the philosophy of socialism or that they prefer socialism, they just go, this is a rig game and this guy's promising to steal stuff for me. Yeah. It's like Robin Hood almost. Right.

Well, at least like, at least they're addressing a concern that might be one of their concerns. And, you know, like as a, as Tucker Carlson said on our last episode, and I think he's absolutely right about this, the thing here, and I guess what is. really the tragedy, to some degree in all of this, is that a true America first message could be a really big tent. This is a message that can win you national office. This is a message that could actually win you huge swaths of the left as well as the right in America. Just like the starting point being that it's like, hey, the role of the U.S. government ought to be what's best for the American people, period,

then not what's best for the world, not what's best for other countries. Not, you know, none of the, now that, if you had a real message that was just like, hey, like we are not wasting resources on foreign wars of choice

that we do not have to fight. And we are not going to have a wide open border, and we are not going to continue debasing our currency, and we are not, like a thing like that could have huge mass support. But the reason, and look, among so many of the people

who amongst the Trump supporting Zionists so many of them almost would get on board with that except we got to support Israel we saw almost so many of them got on board with it up to Ukraine

Rob they were still even riding with Ukraine but Israel it's a whole different story we can't not support them for the exact same reasons that I just argued we not support Ukraine because we can't afford to. And I mean, look, you got, you just think about the promises, right, of so many of the promises.

Because I don't know why I always see, it's kind of like the Alex Jones was right phenomenon. You know, you see all the times that people say Alex Jones was right. And it's like, well, what about all the times he was wrong? And they're like, we're not going to get into all that. You know, I always see the promises kept. That's a big thing Trump supporters.

like to put promises kept and like okay what about all the ones that were broken you know i mean i'm i'm sorry i remember he said he was going to end the ukraine war on day one no look we all all knew that was a little bit of a goofy promise but like okay whether it's his fault or not didn't deliver on that you know ebstein files didn't deliver on that or was all this all this cash patel stuff you remember all the stuff cash patel promised rob i don't remember any of them being we're going to down Chauncey Billups. And I'm, okay.

And like, oh, that's great. There was a betting ring in the NBA. Okay, I'm really glad we got to the bottom of that one. And you can only just not deliver on so much before people will,

will recognize that. And I also do think that, you know, I think, I think that Trump's kind of cult of personality and Trump's charisma and just the, you know, included in that. charisma is how goddamn entertaining Donald Trump is, how funny Donald Trump is, how much

funnier he made the whole political circus and all this theater. I think that is fading to some degree. And I think that at a certain point, it's like people were so furious with the establishment and then they loved that the thing that they could throw Donald Trump at them, the biggest middle finger to the establishment and you could watch as he made them so angry and i think that was so satisfying for so many people you know and i'm listen i'm still an immature angry teenager at heart i still have these you know i said on the last podcast and i meant it when i said it that i go like you know that uh ben shapiro was calling ron paul a vicious anti-semit and i was like good now you get nick flintes you know like it just makes you like root for vengeance against that

person and that's all good and fun but i think as time goes on and as it gets a little bit less new and fresh and more kind of played out people you know what's still there is that people were furious at the establishment to begin with for reasons not just just because they felt that way there were reason and none of those reasons have like none of that's actually been salt um you know and this is something i would say almost like uh maybe like almost like as a message to other people who do what we do like to the other political commentators and i bring this up i swear i'm really not bringing this up just to be like uh petty or or to brag about me or something like that um but i saw and i just saw this uh was it yesterday or earlier today

but so I had gone on um I went on Stephen Crowder's show about a week ago and I don't know if you saw any of that but so I went on and I argued with Stephen Crowder and look I mean I just personally I thought it was just like I thought it was kind of dumb I as soon as it was over I was like well that was a waste of time like he was just kind of stupid um I thought it was very bad faith and kind of just like low IQ on his part like it was it felt like a it was like an MSNBC kind of gotcha style like he basically just kept harping the whole time on how i i called for trump's impeachment and i had said don't trump's a war criminal so that was like the whole thing so well you say don't don't trump's a war criminal i don't say don't trump's a war criminal oh it sounds

like you like obama more than you like don't trump like that was just the angle to go at me with and i don't know i just you know it kind of it felt like the josh hammer debate a lot where i guess that's the best argument you have i guess the best job josh hammer could start start with is be like, hey, everyone here, you like Trump, right? And then they go, yeah, you go, this guy doesn't like Trump. I do like Trump. You don't like Trump. And I actually did call Crowder out at one point for it, where I just went, I was like, you know, all you guys, all you neocons always like are trying to, you know, Ben Shapiro names me for the first time ever only after I call for Trump's impeachment, because you're all trying to be like, oh, look, this guy is against

Trump because now you think you can like win the social psychology of the argument or whatever. And And I did point out that all of you neocons were the original never Trumpers. At one point, I asked Crowder, I was like, who'd you support in the primary in 2016? And he was like, Carly Fioroni or whatever. It's like, okay. So like, whatever. But I was just making the point, you know, and I argued with him on all the topics. And I was like, yeah, dude, I'm not here to just kiss Trump's ass, you know?

And I guess when I was done with it, I was just like, oh, that was kind of stupid. And then someone, a friend of mine was like, dude, have you seen the comment section? And I hadn't. And I just went on to the YouTube. And it's on Stephen Crowder's channel. He's got five or six million subscribers on his YouTube channel. It's like he's one of the biggest online conservative commentators of the last 10 years for sure. And I mean, dude, he's just getting eviscerated in his own comments.

Like even Stephen Crowder's audience is like, dude, we're not just blindly support in Trump anymore. Like actually, this guy had an argument and all you had was, but you're not team Trump. All I'm saying is I think people should, I don't bring any of that up to, you know, whatever, who cares? It was like a dumb segment on a show. The point is just that it almost reminded me of even like going to Charlie Kirk's event and the crowd is so much more on my side than they are on, on Josh Hammer's side or going into Crowder's audience and even the crowd there is just like, now, dude. Like we're like a major thing is changing here, you know, and just doing the old tribal partisan bullshit is not. going to like that's not going to be enough to meet this moment in other words it's the point is in other words it's not good enough to just fall in line with the republicans you got to actually have

something that you stand for you actually believe in something and you have to actually have something that you could tell people like no this is what the problem is this is the crisis you're facing right and here's the solution for said crisis and so if we just fall in line with the republicans that doesn't mean, oh, now we have this big tent MAGA coalition. That means you're going to lose for sure. Like, you'd have to actually be for an America first agenda or you're going to lose. And that is something we should worry about because, man, we don't want to live through president AOC. Now, do we, Rob? I don't know how people on the right can't be getting sick of Donald Trump's most wonderful, greatest, never, no one's ever seen. And then, you know, doesn't pull through

on anything can't ever give a reason can't ever explain where he's coming from and i don't know how anyone can't just be sick of that shenanigans no i completely agree all right guys let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show which is crowd health an amazing company that i've been telling you guys about for many years they are a true alternative to the broken health insurance system that we all live under and now you can check out their black swan membership it's the health care alternative for people who want autonomy over their care, their costs, and their lifestyle. They just need a little help with the Black Swan type events that can happen in life. Well, for just $95 a month, you get access to a team of health bill negotiators,

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And, you know, again, Donald Trump, you know, he'll go down as a monumentally consequential figure in history, one way or the other. And I think perhaps Donald Trump was just like a necessary thing for this country. it was a thing to like break up the matrix and and he he was like a like a one man trust buster like he was just shattering monopolies and in every sense you know like who had a monopoly on information who had a monopoly on the news who had a monopoly on education who had a monopoly on your own mind like just he shattered a lot of things he provoked a reaction out of the establishment that probably no one else ever could have. But he had these fundamental core promises to Donald Trump.

And look, obviously, we're not even a year into his second term now. We'll see what happens going forward. But we've gotten almost five years of him being president now. And in terms of being hilarious, in terms of trolling the media, you know, he gets like an A plus. I give him an A, in terms of sealing up the border in his second administration, I'd give him an A. but on his major you know when they say promises kept well like the major fundamental problems we're like or excuse me the major fundamental promises were like we're going to drain the swamp and i'm going to deliver winning and he gets an F on both of those i mean what the the swamp is

as swampy as ever and everybody who knows everybody who ever knew that a swamp existed knows that even if you just arrest Bolton and Comey, that doesn't actually clean up anything, right? And in terms of winning, I mean, his last administration, he left us with Anthony Fauci in the year of lockdowns. And this administration is leaving us with higher spending, more war, more wars on the precipice, evidently. And a higher cost of everything than the last guy had.

That's going to be a tough, that's going to be very tough to hand off to the next, the next candidate. And, you know, as far as like the whole split over the last week on the right, you know, I just think it's interesting. Obviously, I always argue from the position of what I think is right and what I think is best for the country and what I think is the correct. policy. But if they even just want to have this fight over what's popular, it's like, well, look, man, I mean, we're not going to have a figure like Donald Trump to take on the Democrats in 2028. It's not going to be the guy who was the most famous man who ever lived, who's the most charismatic and just kind of alpha male who just sucks all the energy out of the room and becomes the focus of everyone's attention, who's got billions of dollars in the bank.

That's not going to be the next candidate. There is no one else like that. It's going to be somebody, whether it's J.D. Vance or, you know, God willing, if it was Thomas Massey, or if it was Vivek Ramoswamy, or if it was any of that, this is going to be somebody who's never put together a national winning coalition like this before. Now, they could do that on a true America first message. they could put together that coalition that carries the hardcore Trump base and gets people like us and Rogan and Theo Vaughn and Tucker Carlson and all these guys, right?

You could put together something where all of those people are on board or you could run on neocon policies, which are been universally rejected by the American people that no one's for and that is obviously the path to hand the election to the democrats and i'm sorry but like that it seems to me like it's pretty stark like that is the choice here you can either get on board with an america first agenda or we can lose to the democrats i don't see any way that we win without that i'll give the final word to you rob and then let's wrap up uh yeah trump's got some problems lurking because uh apparently i mean he somewhat attributed this loss to the fact that the government

shut down. They got a nice little hostage situation going in that the services that are already not being offered are things like people's food stamps. It's healthcare going up and then it's like even services that I use. Apparently there's a lot of delays at the airport. He had to get a private individual just to pay military

salaries. It's incredible to not be slashing other government spending and fixing the budget so you can find the money for these things that would be the last things you think government would cut. Like if he came down to the last billion dollars in government and decided where it was going, or the last 10 or 20, whatever, $100 billion, these would not be the first things anyone who's with a rational mind would be slashing. I'm not saying I agree with

food benefits. No, of course. I'm just saying if I had to decide what I was taken away, it's not the first thing on my list of things I'm taking from people. He's also got the Epstein storylines lurking and that people in Congress were trying to look into that. And then he almost got lucky with the shutdown. And then, of course, just the fact that he's looking to increase spending overall and looking to ramp up some of these wars. Conversations about Tomahawk missiles in the Ukraine. Conversations about, I guess, an invasion of Venezuela.

Not sure what the plan is there. Supposed it ceasefire in Israel that's still standing. And an Iran war being over while they're also saying that they're going back to nuclear facilities. So anyways, you know what the solution is? You come out to porch tour because I haven't plugged. you go got uh it's the last one yeah it's the last run of porches jacksonville this friday savannah on saturday sunday doing a day drinker in charleston and then the day before skank fest about uh 40 minutes outside of new orleans i'm doing a show and uh that's it

basically for porch store except for a one off in denver and some other scattered dates but that that's basically the end of porch store so uh come on out www dot porch store dot com grab the tickets last chance to see a lot of these jokes hell yeah all right guys uh we'll be back we got a another episode this week plus we got a members only that we'll be doing tomorrow so yeah look for that all right catch guys next time peace