Part Of The Problem - Mission Accomplished

Episode Date: January 8, 2026

Dave Smith brings you the latest in politics! On this episode of Part Of The Problem, Dave talks about various right wing influencers' takes on the war with Venezuela, how it relates to previous wars of choice in American history, and more.Support Our Sponsors:Hexclad - Find your forever cookware @hexclad and get10% off at https://hexclad.com/PROBLEM! #hexcladpartnerSheath - https://sheathunderwear.com use promo code PROBLEM20Vandy Crisps - https://vandycrisps.com/dave Use code "DAVE" for 25% offYoKratom - https://yokratom.com/Part 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://robbernsteincomedy.com/eventsFind 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.

Hey guys, before we start today's show, just want to tell you about our long-time sponsor, which is, of course, yo-cratum.com, home of the $60 kilo. If you are over the age of 21 and you enjoy cratim, make sure to get your cratim from yo-cratum.com. It's all lab tested. It's delivered right to your door, and it's the best price you'll find anywhere, $60 for a kilo, plus they've been a longtime sponsor of the part of the problem podcast. So make sure you go check them out, yo-cratum.com. All right, let's start the show what's up everybody welcome to a brand new episode of part of the problem i am dave smith i am riding solo uh for this episode but uh very happy that you guys have all tuned in

and for those of you guys who are are watching live which you can only do if you uh sign up and become a supporting member supporting listener supporting viewer over at part of the problem If you guys are in the live chat, if you want to throw some questions in there, I'll do my best to try to get to some of those. And Natalie, if you can grab some and put them in my chat here. We'll answer some questions you guys have. And then, of course, tomorrow I'm headed out to Philadelphia, not too far of a trip, which is what I like.

And I'll be at Helium Comedy Club all weekend, one of the best comedy clubs, one of the best comedy towns in the country. So really looking forward to that. Of course, Robbie the Fire, Bernstein is not here with us today, but he will be with me all weekend at helium and also we got uh drew montana and uh chris faga are also going to be on the shows both really really funny guys so this should be a fun a fun weekend my first uh stand-up shows of two thousand twenty six uh two thousand twenty five was the best you know year of touring standup of of my 20 year career so i'm very excited to to start 2006 and hope to do a lot of fun

shows uh this year all right so oh comictap smith.com by the way if you you want to go grab tickets to any of that. We got a bunch of dates up on the website coming all over the country. So I guess obviously the theme for today's show is just going to be more fallout from this week, which already has been pretty remarkable. It's pretty amazing to see where the lines are kind of drawn and who's good on issues when they really matter. And it's you know, it's it's it's eye-opening every time these things happen. Every time that there's like a kind of major stress test or a major event, it just kind of, it reminds you, well, I think there's this dynamic where amongst the political commentators or people talking about this stuff on shows or writing about this stuff, it's always like, you know, when they say, you ever heard people say like, if you believe in free speech, like it doesn't matter if you support speech that you. like the whole question is whether you support speech that you don't like right so like

joseph stalin and adolf hitler they believed in free speech that they liked they just didn't allow a speech that they didn't like so that's kind of the test of whether you really believe in free speech right it's kind of an age old you know saying or idea there's something there's almost a similar version about that about being right on an issue when it matters like every like everybody's good on the Iraq war now, everybody's good on COVID now, everybody's good on wokeism now. But the question is like, where were you when it actually mattered? Where were you when it was really difficult to stand up against these things? And a lot of people don't want to point that out at all.

And so you get this dynamic where people just, they seem really good on a lot of issues, but then when one comes up and it's actually challenging to oppose it, they cave very quickly. And there's been a lot of that. And I would think that, well, as we'll go through in the show today, that you would, first of all, I'm just, I'm, look, don't get me wrong. There's a lot of great people who have been opposed to this whole action in Venezuela for obvious reasons. But it is, it is, it's sad. It's sad to see how many kind of right wing pundits. just fall for this stuff over and over again.

And it almost at a certain point, it's like, geez, man, if you guys haven't learned anything after all this time, what's the point of even trying to continue, like talking to you? Like, you know what I mean?

Like, if you're never going to get better, after getting things wrong seven times in a row, you know, I think I mentioned on the last show, I'm debating, or I'm supposed to be debating Dinesh D'Souza next week. and I think the topic is fairly broad.

It's like America First or what that means or something like that. But, you know, it's all like ahead of this debate, which he knows, you know, we're like negotiating the day and the time right now. But I just thought it was so crazy that he tweeted at me the other day. You know, I had some tweet about how, you know, I don't support what Trump's doing in Venezuela. And he tweeted back at me like a Venezuelan, like it's just like a video of some random Venezuelan guy, like, crying happy tears because Maduro was removed. And he goes,

we support this. And I just, I couldn't imagine. And it's like, imagine you had supported the war in Iraq and you were on record cheerleading the thing and then admitting it was a disaster and then apologize for your support. But you would still use that as evidence that, well, look, here's a happy person. Like, look how happy they were when Saddam Hussein fell. They were tearing statues down if it's like what it's just crazy that anyone would go along with this again and i guess in a sense it's like shouldn't you i mean i understand like i'm flirting with some type of fallacy here like this isn't a complete argument but like when ben shapiro and lindsay graham are thrilled with the administration what does that tell you when when the never trumpers who hated trump's guts

because he threatened to end forever wars and regime change wars. When all those people who hated him because of that are now his biggest champions and love everything about the administration, like, no exaggeration. Donald Trump in the last week has gotten praised by Ben Shapiro, Lindsay Graham, and Jeb Bush. Jeb Bush is praising Donald Trump's leadership. Isn't that a sign to you? and as I said on Theo's podcast it's not like the situation is oh jeb bush got better on things and that's why he's praising trump now it's not like oh jeb bush moved away from his brother and

the neocons and their whole agenda and so now he's happy with trump it's no it's that trump moved all the way over to him that's obviously why he likes what trump's doing now how isn't that so obvious no it seems to i mean i guess it seems to be for a lot of us but maybe not for everyone Anyway, I wanted to respond to speaking of Ben Shapiro, who I mentioned, one of the people who was praising Donald Trump for this policy. Let's check in with him and see what he had to say about it. Just like with the Vietnam syndrome, the Iraq syndrome ushered in a period of American retreat and international chaos, led by Barack Obama and Joe Biden predominantly. Withdrawal from Iraq led to the rise of ISIS under Barack Obama. Pause it already.

Okay. So now he's saying much like Vietnam syndrome, America has been suffering through Iraq war syndrome. And isn't it, look, this is just, there's something so utterly depraved, but very revealing about people who use either of these terms. So what they mean when they say that we developed Iraq war syndrome, or Vietnam syndrome is that Americans, the syndrome that we have, the sickness, is that we kind of tend to go like, oh, maybe we shouldn't go on these giant murder campaigns, on these giant state-sanctioned, state-backed, mass murder campaigns that just ended nothing but destruction and the blood of innocent people

and bringing hell on earth to a whole generation of children and just inflicted. inflicting an unthinkable level of human suffering on people who didn't do anything to anyone. That's the syndrome. They view that as a sickness. That is something that requires a cure, the idea that you'd have an allergy to war. And by the way, in all these cases, we're talking about wars of choice, you know, not wars of necessity, but that the Americans, that's the real problem here. That's, in fact, a lot of people think the worst thing about the war in Iraq were the million people who got killed.

A lot of people would say that the worst thing was like the nine million people who got displaced or maybe the 15 million people or something like that who had friends or family members killed or tragically wounded. A lot of people think the worst part about the war in Iraq was the thousands of our brave young soldiers who were killed, the tens of thousands who were injured, the tens of thousands who committed suicide and some people would even say that the worst part about it was the trillions of dollars that work costs from the American taxpayer you know and like look obviously it might be a little unseemly to like say the worst thing about something that killed so many people was the price

tag but you know you do have to understand I mean when you waste trillions of dollars that's real wealth that's extracted from real people's lives that's making real people who are poor much much poorer. And so there's a real, you know, there's a debate about what the worst thing about Iraq was. But, you know, I really would say the worst thing about the Iraq war was the syndrome. That's what these people regret about it. The syndrome. The worst thing about the war in Iraq, the real problem with that wasn't that we got so many people killed and waste so much money, or even that we gave around that much more influence and control in the region. It was a big gift to them. No, the real problem is that it had the effect.

of making Americans not want to do more of this. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Sheath underwear, long-time sponsor of this podcast, a great sponsor who's been with us forever, and a great product. The most comfortable pair of Boxer Briefs you will ever wear. The only underwear that I ever put on, my precious body, is Sheath underwear. I'm wearing a pair right now, as I speak to you. I love them.

And I've had them, at this point now, I've had them for years. and the pairs that I have pairs that are like three, four years old, and they're still just as comfortable as the day I got them. So definitely go check them out. Sheathunderware.com. The promo code is Problem. That'll get you 20% off your entire order. Support the sponsors that support our show. Sheathunderware.com. And again, the promo code is problem for 20% off your entire order. All right, let's get back into the show. That is really the problem. And the next thing he says there is just utter bullshit. It's so, for anyone who actually knows, like, to tell the story of like, well, we had Iraq war syndrome and then see, the problem was because of that, we pulled out. There's this age

old thing they always keep saying. It's such bullshit. The problem with the, the, the re, we pulled out of Iraq and that's what led to the rise of ISIS. Now, first of all, it's just not true. I mean, it was one factor of why ISIS was able to invade Iraq, I guess. Like if we had had our troops there, it might have been a little tougher for them to get in. But what happened is that Barack Obama, as you may have noticed, didn't pull out of the region. He toppled Gaddafi and he attempted, he started a civil war in Syria with the attempt to topple Bashar al-Assad, which ultimately ended up working in the Biden presidency. but Barack Obama, in his attempt to overthrow Bashar al-Assad next door in Syria,

started arming all of the anti-Assad rebels. And this is what led to the rise of ISIS. There was American trucks and weapons that ISIS was using to invade Iraq. So to just tell the story is like, what happened as we left? Like, that's not exactly right. There's a bit more to it than that. And isn't it interesting that, like, for all these people like Ben Shapiro, who are supposedly, supposedly critics of Obama, that they always leave out the detail that he armed al-Qaeda and ISIS knowingly. Like, it was actual treason what Barack Obama did.

And yet, for some reason, Ben Shapiro won't mention that in his list of criticisms about Barack Obama. And why is that? Oh, because Israel was on their side. Israel was in on that. And they also, Israel also is fine arming al-Qaeda or ISIS because they're rooting for them because they fight against the Iranians and their proxies. So that just gets left out. But also like what even what, so what is the implication here of the problem with Iraq, like,

if you're going to say that, oh, the problem is that Barack Obama pulled out, not the problem is that George W. Bush went in. But the problem is that Barack Obama pulled out, and that's what led to the rise of ISIS. Like, let's just say, for the sake of argument, Ben Shapiro's an idiot, and he doesn't know that Obama was arming the rebels in Syria, and that that's how the whole thing started. Let's just say. So what's the implication, then, that we're supposed to be there forever? Iraq, I mean, short of Afghanistan, Iraq is the longest war in American history.

But not long enough, I guess, for Ben Shapiro. I guess we should just always have troops. in Iraq. Anyway, let's keep playing. Iranian proxies around the region grew, and that eventually resulted in the cataclysm of October 7th, 2020. Joe Biden's disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan

resulted in the deaths of 13 U.S. service members and prompted, at least in part, the Russian invasion of Ukraine. China, posed. Yeah, put it again. Yeah, like, so first of all, if you're going to talk about the rise of Iranian proxies, well, nothing helped Iran more than George W. Bush invading Iraq and handing Iraq over to Iran. That's literally what happened.

He put their best friends, the Shiites in Iraq, in power in Iraq. They were mortal enemies with Saddam Hussein. So actually, you know, it's like with all of these things, it's such a perverse upside down way of looking at everything. Like, look, obviously, even with Biden. Obviously, Biden bungled the withdrawal from Afghanistan, and obviously he did not do it in a good way. And, you know, a lot of that is because he insisted on breaking Trump's timeline and just because he wanted to do something different and didn't want to do it on Trump's timeline. But isn't it crazy, Ben Shapiro will go, that withdrawal got all these people killed. That withdrawal got 13 people killed or something like that. And you're like,

yeah, well, the war got hundreds of thousands of people killed. So if people getting killed is the metric, I think the real problem is the war. Like once again, you know, it's like even like like if Ben Shapiro is going to say in the aftermath of Iraq and Afghanistan, just think about this, right? So like in the aftermath of the longest wars in American history, incredibly bloody and costly wars, the aftermath of these 20-year catastrophes, it ends up with Iran having, and they're probably he's having more influence in the region like okay but the lesson from that is that you shouldn't have invaded you shouldn't have invaded iraq and handed bagdad to the mullahs but no his lesson is

that's why we shouldn't have left that's why we so we should just be there forever i mean right that does seem like the implication let's let's go back to it and decided that it was going to spread its tentacles throughout Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Well, now, on the tail end of Joe Biden's catastrophic foreign policy presidency, again, in Iraq Syndrome presidency, just as Ronald Reagan once did, President Trump has now put the Iraq syndrome to bed. Trump has done so with what could be called the Trump doctrine. That's a term that I defined back in November 2024. With the following criteria, one, America's interests are paramount, and they include a lot of things, from freedom of the to the strength of American allies and contentious regions.

So, yes, oil interests. Second, America's interests must be carefully calibrated. Two, our investment in them. So big interest means big investment. Small interest, smaller investment. Third, all measures and means necessary to achieve America's interests are on the table, from diplomacy to military interventionism. And fourth, all of this should be made very public all the time.

The threat should be on the table. The threat of the gun should always be on the table. Well, President Trump has done this. Again, I said this was his doctrine in November 2024, and now in the last year, he has done it twice. First, he did so with the June 22nd, 2025 B2 strikes on Iran's nuclear reactor at Fordo, reestablishing America's deterrence power in the Middle East, reshaping the geopolitics of the region in dramatic fashion. Despite all of the caterwauling from his supposed allies declaring that World War III would break out because, again, they had been captured by Iraq syndrome, President Trump is not.

Well, now, President Trump has done the same with the ouster of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela. In pursuing these actions, Trump has reestablished American deterrence globally. He's made clear America's enemies are on notice, F-A-F-O. And he's demonstrating that such action doesn't need to lead to a quagmire or to a full-strand. Well, here's the thing, right? I mean, just what a child is like just so fundamentally unsurious F-A-F-O. Fuck around, find out, but also you don't even curse. so you won't say the words.

So an adult saying F-A-F-O. It's just the whole thing is so fucking cringy. It's all like, it's so funny, man. Like they're actually, again, like I said the last episode, this is how stupid they think you are, that they think they could be like, no, listen, Trump's laid out this whole new foreign policy. It's not neocon shit.

And it's also not isolationist shit. It's just kind of in the middle somewhere. Meanwhile, it's neocon shit. It's why all the neocons are praising him. It's exactly what they want out of him. And, you know, again, it's just so goddamn wild to sit here and say that Donald Trump, first of all, Ben Shapiro's claim is that Donald Trump has broken the Iraq War syndrome, this horrible, you know, disease where Americans aren't bloodthirsty savages looking to go murder

a whole bunch of people in some poor country who poses no threat to us. that horrible condition has been broken. But where exactly is the evidence of this? I mean, there's the popular support for military intervention in Venezuela was non-existent, was non-existent. Now that, of course, whenever there's a successful mission like this and Americans haven't taken losses and we got the head guy and Donald Trump's just telling everyone we're going to get all this oil,

now it's like people going, huh. But the last poll I saw was like split. it was like something like 30 something percent in favor 30 something percent opposed and the rest undecided there's like there's really no evidence at all that like the American people's appetite for foreign intervention has drastically changed so like bench people's just kind of making that up it's funny because it's like he's sitting here and selling you the idea that like his side has won out that they've won the argument amongst the American people. Meanwhile, the only thing that's happened over the last two years is that Ben Shapiro's been destroyed. You know what I

mean? That's like that he's gone from being a person who people took seriously to being a laughing stock. Yet he's telling you, what is it? What are we here? A week into this thing that this has already been proven to have convinced the American people that we can do these type of military actions and They won't lead to a catastrophe. And just, I mean, look, how intellectually dishonest is this whole thing? We have, look, we have absolutely no idea whether this is going to lead to a catastrophe or whether the situation in Iran is going to lead to a catastrophe. It's not like whenever they talk about it, and I'm sure Ben Shapiro would agree with this too.

By the way, Ben Shapiro hosted Benjamin Netanyahu on his podcast. And this was after the 12-day war. And Benjamin Netanyahu was just talking all about how Iran is still developing nuclear weapons and they're developing intercontinental ballistic missiles that can hit Florida and that we're going to have to go take them out again. So it's like it's not even like their side is saying this worked. Their side is saying we're gearing up for round two. Like we're at halftime of this thing.

So how do you know what's going to happen? Like how do you know whether this is going to be a catastrophe? And Ben Shapiro knows damn well. he's not this stupid. He's not as smart as he thinks he is, but he's not this stupid. He knows that the goal of Benjamin Netanyahu and himself and Lindsey Graham and Mark Levin is regime change in Iran. They've all admitted this themselves countless times over the years. And so the question is, would that lead to a catastrophe or not? All the evidence in the region suggests, yes. We've run this experiment many times every single time. It has been a catastrophe in that region.

so the idea that he's proven you can avoid a catastrophe no he didn't like what again we was it was we were in Iraq for over a year before um before we got saddam right i think it was something like that um i think scott i think i said it wrong the other day and then scott corrected me about that um yeah it was it was over a year um and uh then then the following eight years after that were just horrible bloody civil war um but like okay so if george w bush hadn't invaded with the the whole country and had just like done a strike on some of saddam's mill i mean he didn't have a nuclear program but like if say he did and they had just done a strike on that and it didn't end in catastrophe like that doesn't prove anything you know what i'm saying

like that doesn't prove that like oh see you can do these things and it doesn't end in catastrophe catastrophe, especially if he was still talking about coming back and striking them again and trying to topple the regime. The point is, once you did that, it led to catastrophe. And of course, with the Venezuela thing, I mean, look, objectively, even whether you are on, even if you support what Donald Trump just did, if you support this last mission, and let's say you support the strikes on the boats or something like that, even if you support it, you got to admit at this point, Donald Trump is making, like, big claims about what we're going to do, how we're going to run the thing, how we're going to control the oil, how we're going to do all of this,

and it is just totally up in the air as to how that will go. There's just a lot of questions. Ben Shapiro, of course, already celebrating. And I guess what I was kind of getting at in the opening where I was kind of talking about how like, you know, it matters to be right when it's important.

You know, like, for example, it was an old Tom Woods example that he used in his book, Real Descent. There's a great book that Tom Woods wrote like a decade ago. But he said he made the point in his book that he was like, he goes, if you're against slavery today, he wrote the book in like, you know, 2015 or something like that. So he was like, if you're against slavery in 2015, that is really meaningless. Like it doesn't mean anything to oppose slavery today. like you should you know we all should but like everyone opposes slavery so what but if you were against slavery in 1840 that really meant something like if you you were against slavery in 1840 when like

the abolitionist party was getting like 1% of the vote and abolitionists were regularly lynched and stuff like it was dangerous and it meant something but you were like keeping an idea moving that that you know what it was a very important thing against the great injustice of your time so like that meant something. And in the same sense, it's like, dude, if you go back, I'm just saying like, if you go back and listen to what I was saying about lockdowns in 2020, I'd be proud of what I was saying. I'd be like, yeah, that's right. Like Ben Shapiro would be mortified by what he was saying about all this shit at the time. Ben Shapiro was telling what he called everyone dopes to take the vaccine and all this. But the thing, I guess the point is that these guys just

don't care about that. They just don't care. Like, it's like Ben Shapiro, he's fine to just celebrate, but hoist the mission accomplished banner. Celebrate it all. Look, these two things worked out. Even though he knows damn well, he has no clue whether they worked out at all. And he knows damn well that the last seven ones that he supported all ended in catastrophe. But that won't stop them from just hoisting up Mission Accomplish banner. Come on, man. How does anyone not see through that? All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show. which is hex clad. I've been telling you about these guys for a while. If you want to take your kitchen game to the next level, you got to check out hexclad. They've got everything you need,

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dot com slash problem for 10% off. All right. Let's get back into the show. All right. Here, let's play the last little bit. E to a quagmire or to a full-scale nation building, exercise draining America's attention and resources. Iraq syndrome should be dead.

And if it is, it died at the hands of President Trump. Yeah. Well, I don't actually think Iraq syndrome, as you call it, should be dead. And I think that any, I was going to say like any moral society, but I would change that even more to just any sane society. Any society that is not lost its collective mind should always have a syndrome about going to war. The war should always be an absolute last result or last resort.

You know, like this, it's, you know, it's so funny too because the, you know, half the, defense for every war is the you know the whole defense for Israel through the last two years was war's hell don't start a war you know you'd be like but look at this baby being tortured to death you're up yep that's why you don't start a war it's like okay well if that's your defense that war is hell then it should be a last resort you know you should have you should have an allergy to hell and if someone starts suggesting hell you should go oh well do we is that absolutely necessary right Isn't that the most, like, it's not even a left or right position.

It's the most moderate human position. Fighting a war should be an absolute last option that you only do when there's absolutely no other alternative. And in Donald Trump's own words, by his own statements, Maduro had agreed to give him everything. That's what he said. Maduro had agreed to give him everything, still wanted to do it. And, you know, in terms of like, as far as Ben Shapiro is sitting here, he's going to, he's

going to look at his viewers, who he has so little respect for that he'll just lie through his fucking teeth to them and go, Donald Trump has proven that it doesn't have to be a nation-building exercise. But Donald Trump himself is saying he's open to boots on the ground and that we're running the thing and that we're going to be choosing the next government. Well, what the fuck is that? That's nation-building. That's what he's talking about.

Like, I don't know. Now, does Donald Trump? Trump say a whole lot of dumb shit and only follow through on some of it, sure. But this is at least a question mark. We don't know what's going to happen here. You know, Donald Trump is bragging that they got this big oil deal. You know, that here, I'll pull up the tweet. Where is it Donald Trump?

This was announced yesterday that. he started posting this. Everybody's, you know, of course, got the, you know, the mission accomplished banners out. So Donald Trump posted, I am pleased to announce that the, I'm pleased to announce that the interim authorities in Venezuela will be turning over between 30 and 50 million barrels of high quality sanctioned oil to the United States of America. This oil will be sold at its market price and that money will be controlled by me as president of the United States of America to ensure that it is used to benefit the people of Venezuela and the United States. I have asked Energy Secretary Chris Wright to execute this plan immediately. It will be taken

by storage ships and brought directly to unloaded docks in the United States. Thank you for your attention to this matter. So Donald Trump is bragging that they've essentially that this regime is acquiesced. They're going to be turning over a whole bunch of their oil to Donald Trump. Now, it seems to me that the situation here is like, okay, so we don't have any of this oil yet. Donald Trump's claiming they have, but the dynamic is kind of like this. And it does seem that the vice president, who now assumed the presidency in Venezuela, so she did the first day she was talking like real defiant, but then she did start kind of saying like, hey, we should kind of make a deal and we should all be friends here and stuff like that.

But here's the dynamic in Venezuela, and this is why this whole thing is still a huge question mark and a big gamble, a humongous gamble. So Venezuela has for, oh, what year did Chavez come into power, like around 2000 or something like that? For about 25 years, Venezuela has been like a hostile regime to the United States of America. And what that means is that their people have been, you know, programmed, propagandized, brainwashed to really hate the Americans. You know, that's what the calling card of the regime has been. In the same way that our, you know, society has been brainwashed to hate Muslims and the Israeli society has been brainwashed to hate Palestinians and Palestinian kids have been brainwashed to hate Israelis. I mean, you know, in a lot of those cases,

the Israelis make it a lot easier for them to do that. But there's good, like, the whole, the government that's still in place, right? The government that's still in place, their whole calling card, their whole justification for existence has been that they oppose the American Empire, that they will not acquiesce to this bully.

And so you could see where, like, the new president of Venezuela now she's got to kind of tell her own people hey we're not back and down we're standing up but then she also doesn't want to get killed herself and Donald Trump's threatening her so she's going no okay let's kind of make a deal so she's walking a tightrope right now but the

tightrope here is this first of all if she's really just going to turn over 50 you know barrels you know like if she's just going to like turn over this insane amount of oil to the U.S., okay this entire government was picked by Maduro this is his government

still standing. Does anybody else in there get resentful about that and try to overthrow her? She's got her own regime that she's got to wrangle and keep together. And then how much pressure is there on the whatever percentage. I mean, Venezuela is like a country of 30 million people. I don't know what percentage exactly hate America, but it's in the millions for sure. And like, so they're going to have a whole lot of pressure against them. So again, Donald Trump getting this woman to agree to this and then posting about it on Twitter or truth social, that's not mission accomplished yet, man. That's just him saying we're going to do this, all right?

Like, is he really going forward with this? And then if he's saying he's not allergic to troops on the ground or something, look, it's just now he's put himself in a situation where his presidency relies on what goes on with the Venezuelans, what they end up doing. and if people want to say it's going to be this like fairy tale ending like okay you can make those predictions but there's a whole lot of goddamn factors in here and this is the thing man you start you start these wars you don't know which way they're going to go and by the way to the example that ben Shapiro used or he didn't use but he intentionally left out but there's and

there's a hot mic like recording where john carey's actually talking about this but when um there you know when uh when when when Barack Obama was arming uh al Qaeda and ISIS in Syria the plan was for them to put pressure on Bashar al-Assad so they were trying to get Bashar al-Assad to step down and they were like oh if if he sees these head choppers coming through these bin Ladenites he's going to fear for his life he's going to step down and and we can you know and and essentially we could have what we have now where the you don't have Bashar al-Assad in there and as Ben Shapiro himself has pointed out you break up what he called the Shiite crescent so you won't be able to get weapons from Iran to Hezbollah in Lebanon

through Syria so that was kind of the goal of the thing and but the plan was not that ISIS was supposed to turn around and invade Western Iraq that just wasn't part of it but you know they didn't get the they didn't get the memo on that and they're ISIS they you know they got their own ideas so like with all these things you always you have a game plan and they can game out oh this is exactly how it's going to go but it almost never comes to fruition exactly like that because there's just a lot of other factors that you can't take everything into account by the way of the other people celebrating Donald Trump here we should also point out here's Lindsey Graham. Let's go to that video. Here's

Lindsey Graham's latest on, you remember how Ben Shapiro is just telling us that it's proof that you can have these military interventions and they won't lead to catastrophe. Here's Lindsey Graham with the latest on Iran. He's not Barack Obama.

He's not turning his back on the people of Iran who are demanding that their oppression end. And to the Ayatollah and his thugs, if you keep killing your people in defiance of doesn't Trump, you're going to wake up dead. Iran is on the verge of falling.

He's not Barack Obama. All right. So I don't know if you guys are keeping up here now, but you know how much the goalposts keep moving? You remember when it started with Iran can't be allowed to have a nuclear weapon, and then it was Iran can't be allowed to enrich up to 60% uranium, and now it's, we're saying Iran can't be allowed to have intercontinental ballistic missiles, even if they don't have a nuclear program at all. They can't be allowed to have, you know, mid-range intercontinental ballistic missiles. Now it's, you better be nice to your own people. This is the new line now. This is the

pretext for war now is that they're putting down protests. You know, it's like a, and I don't know, you know, look, the protests in Iran, they might be totally organic or partially or mostly organic. I mean, look, it is the, it is true that people don't much like repressive governments, or at least there's a lot of people who don't like repressive governments. And Iran is a very repressive government. And so it's quite possible there's people protesting out there. But also, you know, whenever, whenever there are protests against the country, that is on the CIA's kill list. You always wonder, like, what's exactly going on? In fact, it would seem, and I don't know the answer to this. I mean, I know that the CIA and the state

department and all types of forces in our federal government have fomented, you know, protests all across the world. That's something they're known for doing. But it would be almost crazy to imagine that there wasn't at least some type of effort to funnel money in there or at least support them or prop them up. But I've lived through this time. There's been protests in Iran like maybe at least like four or five different times in the last 20 years. There's been like big protests. And every time the Hawks always make a really big deal out of it. And they always say that the regime's close to falling.

And who knows? I mean, it is possible, you know, that eventually they're right. Like the boy who cried wolf, that story does end up with there being a wolf at the end of it. Right. So just because they cry wolf the whole time doesn't mean it can't ever come true. but you could also imagine right like if you picture it like being in the united states of America and if you think about like some of the protest movements here right like there's been you know like if you just think like yourself in the last 15 20 years or something like that

and you were to think of all the real big protest movements like you know you think of like occupy wall street where they had huge demonstrations or black lives matter protests or there was like the what they call the was the pussy march or the women's march where they had like i mean i think millions of of people out at them and if you were to um let's say like you just took like an like an aerial you know uh um camera shot of like some of these huge protests you know and you could picture it like you've seen a bunch of them in your mind where it's like blocks and blocks and blocks and blocks and hundreds of thousands of people out on the street you you look at that and go oh they had a big protest. But like, you could imagine in some foreign government, in some foreign country,

if they just started playing those images and they went, look, the United States of America's government is about to fall. But like, as an American, you'd be like, oh, well, no, no, not at all. You know, like, I mean, yes, this is a big protest, but we're not like anywhere close to it, even being in the realm of possibility that this thing is going to, like, overthrow the regime in DC. And so, like, I just, you know, people make like such a big deal out of it because I saw, you know, last week, that's what all, oh, the Iranian regime is about to fall. The people hate their own regime. And you're like, all right, guys. Well, you know, the regime's been in power since 1979. And it's spent much of its existence having the most powerful governments in

the world dead set on overthrowing that regime. And they've survived the whole time. So like, I'm just not convinced when people always constantly try to convince me how fragile the regime is. But like maybe, maybe this time is different. Maybe they are, you know, more fragile than they've been at the past. But anyway, none of that's really the point. The point is here you have Lindsay Graham saying that this is now the new, and he says that he's gotten this from Trump, that this is now the new red line. The new red line is like if they, if they shoot a protester, now we're going to launch a war over that. so it's not you know it's not the nuclear threat anymore it's not the missile threat anymore

it's not don't you at a certain point just start to like wake up like for anyone with an IQ over 85 you a certain point go it was never about any of those things isn't that obvious there's the same thing with Venezuela dude they've thrown out like 15 different excuses that are all just such bullshit and you start to see this is why the hawks are all happy right now they're all celebrating because they got Donald Trump's presidency they they totally wrestled it away Now, you know, who knows, there probably never even, there was probably never even a shot that he wasn't going to go in this direction. But that's what you got.

The Warhawks who champion every war feel no shame at all when it turns out to be a complete catastrophe. They will just get up and start champion the next one, demonizing anyone who opposes it. And that's that. And if it ends in catastrophe, it ends in catastrophe. I mean, they don't care. They're going to have the same lives no matter what, right? It seems to be, that seems to be the game as far as I can tell.

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All right, let's get back into the show. Here, let's play the Megan Kelly clip because I really did appreciate this. I think I mentioned this yesterday on the show, but I wanted to actually play this. to give Megan some credit. Because, man, let me tell you something. And I saw some people who were kind of a, you know, more like in our camp type guys who were kind of giving her shit about this and going, oh, look, she's, she's, you know, she's riding the fence or whatever and she won't actually take a position.

But actually, I will say that I was, I was really proud of her for this. And I think what's awesome about it is that it's like, look, even if you're not all the way over here with me, you've got to at least admit that Megan Kelly is the alternative. Like, like, how you cannot come to the conclusion that she's come to should be disqualifying for being listened to anymore. Here, let's play the Megan Kelly clip, and then we'll talk about it. I have seen what happens when you cheerlead unabashedly U.S. intervention in foreign countries thinking it's for our good and for the national, the international good, only to wind up with

what we've called quagmire in places like Iraq, not to mention Libya, we're not great at going into these foreign countries, decapitating them at the leadership level, and then saying either we're going to steer the country to a better place or it's going to steer itself. Either one, they just nine times out of ten, they don't work out well. And what does it mean in terms of boots on the ground? Trump is saying, I'm actually fine with that in Venezuela. Well, whose boots? Because I have a 16-year-old boy.

And I have a 12-year-old boy. And I have a 14-year-old girl. And a lot of my listeners have children, too, who are actually the ones who might have to fill the boots. So I think I speak for a lot of moms and dads for that matter when I say, I'm staying in yellow territory until we know more. And I will not be joining the Fox News Cheerleading Brigade this time. I've been burned too many times. Yeah, I mean, look, like I get, if I wanted to nitpick here, I guess I could say to Megan, who I really do like very much, but I could say to her like, yellow, you're staying in yellow? I mean, I don't know.

I don't have kids that are that age. My kids are young. And so I guess it's not as real of a, like, risk. But I got the thought that, like, please, you're going to take my, I mean, over my dead body, would any government ever take my kids? and go use them to fight one of your bankers wars like sorry that ain't happening um but yeah I mean again this to me the reason why I'm praising Megan Kelly for this is because this to me is like this is the bare minimum of what obviously any of these guys should be feeling and and how how any of these guys like like Ben Shapiro or uh Mark Levin or Lindsay Graham or Douglas Murray or any of them

how you can support seven disastrous wars in a row and then with confidence tell you on the eighth one you got to support this thing and not even like you know like even like bringing up your responsibility for the rest of it and I do like the way that Megan Kelly said we call it a quagmire you know there's something about that word quagmire

it's like what a euphemism you know it's like quagmire I don't know kind of reminds you the guy on family guy or it's kind of just like a word like it's like a word for a like this is a little bit of a we're in a pickle you know you're like by quagmire you mean we just we just slaughtered people for nothing we just ruined millions of people's lives for absolutely nothing well i mean maybe not nothing but not anything for us not anything for them and not for any of the reasons that you liars fucking told us it was for. It is something.

All right, we got a couple questions here. Dave, how much do you think the CIA and the FBI are actually making the decisions and the Congress and the presidency are just lying to cover agency's actions? Yeah, well, they got way too much power. That's for sure. But honestly, I don't think, you know, I think Donald Trump is, is, this is him. No, he's the one response. responsible. Hey Dave, did you see Clint Russell saying that the reason why we invaded Venezuela

for the oil is so we can fuck up Iran? No, I didn't see him say that. I'm not sure exactly what his point on that is. I mean, I don't know if that's the reason. You know, it's not, like, I don't know exactly how much any of this is really connected to Iran and Israel and all that. I mean, I'm sure the Israelis are happy for us to overthrow the government in Venezuela. Why wouldn't they be a government that is friendly with, you know, a lot of their enemies. But I don't really think that was like the driving impetus behind this. I really think from everything I've read on it, I really think this is, this was Rubio and Trump. And the Rubio angle is all about Cuba and the Trump angle is all about the oil, about this big deal. You know,

I think Trump just thinks like, oh, this is a way that I could go. I could get a whole bunch of oil, you know, bring it into the economy and win the midterms. You know, can't deliver on any of the fixes the other way. So maybe we'll just go take someone's shit. And that'll be the answer, I guess. I don't know. But I'm open. I'm open to that stuff.

I don't know. I don't know. Question for Dave. Are you going to debate that Columbia professor Jeffrey Lacks? He called you out and said anytime any person. place on X. I have no idea who that is. So I don't know. I'd have to look into it. I'll check it out. Jeffrey Lacks. What did he, what did he want a debate on? Um, all right. It's, uh, Dave, let's see that it's not a members only. This is a public episode.

This is not a member's only episode. I mean, I'm not going to show my hog anyway, but that's a weird question okay um we got some knuckleheads out there in the chat all right there was a one more that i wanted to get to oh yeah i did want to say this before i uh before we we wrap up because i had seen um that dan bonjino i guess uh his is back he's he's back in the podcast world or something and he was like uh got into a thing where he was kind of like trash Matt Gates and he's gone on this whole thing where he's going

like his mission to coming back to podcasting is to like take out what he keeps calling the black pillars and essentially the black pillars are the people I think saying critics of the Trump administration so like that's you're blackpilled if you don't support what Donald Trump is doing

or something like that and I just I don't know I can't I almost couldn't believe it's real, that this is actually, I mean, I just, listen, I just assumed, and perhaps this was a wrong assumption, I just assumed that Dan Bongino, when he sold his soul and made his legacy of his life defending a pedophile, I just thought he would go away and maybe get like some cushy position on like the board of a weapons company or something. Like I thought he'd be handsomely rewarded by, you know, powerful people, but like he can never show his face around

these parts again. I mean, I just assume that was obvious. But now, I guess they're saying, like, he hasn't really called out people by name, I guess, except for Matt Gates. But the implications certainly seem to be like Tucker Carlson or Candace Owens or someone like that or maybe me to a lesser extent or something like that. And like, I just, I don't know, it's just we're at the beginning of a new year. And I will tell you, there is something just exciting about the prospect that they're, like, do they actually think that they're going to like send Dan Bond to. out onto the scene now to come take care of this problem of people being critical of the Trump administration. Let's play. I saw this, Luke Regisowski. I'm sorry, I always mess up your name, but I know him well, but in my defense, it's a crazy Polish name. But he tweeted this compilation,

which I just love. Let's play the Dan Bongino video. Listen, that Jeffrey Epstein story is a big deal. Please do not let that story go. Keep your eye on this. Catherine Rumler, I want you, we need to keep the heat on this case, folks. There are a lot of people who are knee-deep in the Washington Swamp who are not telling you the truth about serious allegations out there that Epstein may have had video and audio of people out there doing things they shouldn't have been doing. And you should be asking yourself the question,

how is it that all these people, the CIA director, the Obama Fixer, Bill Clinton, all intersected past with Jeffrey Epstein. Jeffrey Epstein isn't with us anymore and nobody seems to want to talk about it outside of a few entrepreneurial media outlets saying hey this is a big deal

he killed himself again you want me to get I've I've seen the whole file he killed himself listen at Jeffrey Epstein's story is a big okay so look the thing that's that's amusing to me about this is that

if Dan Bungino if he wants to serve this function if he's going to be the guy because, you know, he had a real big show before he went into the administration and one of the biggest right-wing, you know, shows, conservative shows in the country

and talked about and as you could see right there used to tell the truth about stuff on it and that's why a lot of people were excited that he got the position as deputy FBI director. If he wants to pivot back now to coming in this world after

what he did in his time there, if he wants to come back and be like, I'm the one who's going to like take the fight to the whatever group. In the way the industry is, these days, it's almost impossible that he's not going to have to talk to one of us at some point, whether that's having Matt Gates on your show or having going on Tucker Carlson's show or having Candice on or doing something, I'd certainly be. more than happy to do it. But if you want to sit down and have a conversation about this stuff, then fine. But it's just so laughable. You're so vulnerable. We watched you lie through

your teeth. Look, he said, I've seen the files. He killed himself. I just want you to think about this, okay? Dan Bongino, after talking about this all the time, and you saw him right there in the clip saying, don't let up. Don't let up on the Epstein thing. We got to keep talking about this. None of this makes sense. What you didn't see there is he even went as far as one time on the Tim Poole show. He said, I have it on good authority that Jeffrey Epstein worked for Middle Eastern intelligence. Could be any of those Middle Eastern countries, of course. But so he said all that.

Then he goes in there. He says, I've seen the files. He killed himself. That was approximately two months before the official position of the administration. was that the files don't exist. They said he's seen the files and he killed himself. And by the way, as you know, because we followed this whole crazy train, right? You know, the end result of it is that the bill passed.

The files are to be released. Great. So now we all get to see it, right? I mean, I understand they just missed a deadline. But of course, this administration is that they ran on being the most transparent administration in history, right? So we're going to get all that information. So this will be great.

So let's see what Dan Bongino saw. I mean, Dan Bongino, by the way, you're coming back to podcasting now. The files have been declassified. I'm not a lawyer, but pretty sure you can tell us now. It's not classified information anymore. You can tell us exactly what you saw, exactly how you were able to look the American people in the eye and guarantee and promise that he killed himself. And you know that for a fact.

I mean, you must have seen some really strong evidence in order to know that for a fact. What we've seen so far is a fake AI image of Epstein attempting to kill himself in some way in his cell, but it was clearly determined that that wasn't a real video. So what is it that you saw down? I mean, look, dude, if you want to come back into this world, in this world here, as you knew before you went into government, in this world, the currency is honesty. The currency is the truth. So tell us, man, you went into government, looked us all in the eye and made up a big, fat fucking lie that you don't know.

And you know it. You know you did that. So now you think you're going to be the one to come back into this, you know, the podcast and game, and you're going to be policing this space, the black pillars. Like, okay, let's talk, dude. I'm happy to do it. an invite you can come on this show anytime i'll come on your show anytime like let's do it or do it with one of the other ones i don't care if it's me but how on earth is that supposed to work how on like i couldn't i guess i'm i'm slightly stunned that that they even thought this could work you know

that that dan bungino because he's he's clearly still like in in asset of the administration but like so this is what you sent him to do we got to get him back out there in the podcast scene to help control the narrative i just don't i don't see how it's possible i don't see how it's possible after the ebstein thing i think that um look donald trump was was severely wounded by his awful handling of the epstein thing but he's still Donald trump Pam Bondi and Dan Bonino and Cash Patel, their stock has gone to zero. Zero. Like, the reason why people liked them is because they said they weren't going to do what they just did.

You know, it's like, it's like, I don't know. I don't even know what to compare it to. It's like, it's like if a truck breaks down, I guess you could still like park it in your backyard and put like flowers in it or something like there could still be some other use that that was your only use this was the entire point the entire point of you guys taking over the justice department and the FBI was to get to the bottom of the criminals in Washington DC and you got us zero none you're done you're done around these parts anyway all right we're going to wrap up there that's the episode for today uh hope to see a bunch you guys out in

Philadelphia this weekend really looking forward to it and I'll catch you guys next time peace