Part Of The Problem - The Feds on the Street

Episode Date: August 13, 2025

Dave Smith brings you the latest in politics! On this episode of Part Of The Problem, Dave is joined by Robbie "The Fire" Bernstein to discuss the national guard being deployed in DC, Dave seeing Tulsi Gabbard at Ron Paul's birthday, Trump's agreement with China regarding Nvidia, and more.Support Our Sponsors:CrowdHealth - https://www.joincrowdhealth.com/promos/potpProlon - https://prolonlife.com/potpMonetary Metals - https://www.monetary-metals.com/potp/Go to BodyBrainCoffee.com, use code DAVE20 for 20% off your first orderPart Of The Problem is available for early pre-release at https://partoftheproblem.com as well as an exclusive episode on Thursday!ROB LIVE DATES HERE:PORCH Tour: www.porchtour.comFind 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 welcome to a brand new episode of part of the problem i am dave smith he is robby the fire burns dean how you feeling today rob i'm doing well resting up getting ready for uh this is this is real porch season i mean i got a wild amount of porch is coming up 40 weekends uh just go to porch store dot com i already plugged them in tennessee this weekend and then a run from heck in Indiana, St. Louis, all the way up to Ohio. So Cincinnati, just go porch store.com. Come visit a local porch. Come visit.

I mean, I'd suggest going to the website and finding a porch where Rob's going to be. Don't just show up to random porches. I don't want to get. I respect that. You know, at this last porch, there was a team of four people in their lawn chairs, and they were trying to beat their previous record of how many beers the four of them could drink at a porch door. and they had like a pretty solid

a stock of cans going. I was like, you know what? I like this poor story game. What was? Did they tell you what the record was that they were trying to beat? You know, I was drinking too, so I don't remember all the details. I just remember enjoying that and taking a picture of it. But maybe I'll have to follow up with them

and I can find out what the four, the four man squad current record is for more beers consumed at the porch. Dude, I remember doing stuff like that, like in my teens and 20s or it'd be like things like of but just getting beer drunk you know what i mean like having like 15 beers and it's just there's a i can't even think about this anymore like it's not even like getting that level of drunk it's just the amount of beer that you have to have like you have to fill your body with so much beer it's uh that's a young man's game in my opinion that was one guy tailgated a porch

i respected that too anyways i don't have to spend the tailgating a porch is an interesting move anyway okay yes i respect to the hell out of that i mean you're not really going to laugh in any jokes but if you want to be in the back with your little grill and cooking up your hot dogs and just watching the scene i respect it um well also i have uh i mean the shows are all sold out but i am getting uh excited for not this weekend but next weekend will be my uh my weekend at the mothership which is uh just always is like my favorite weekend of shows in the year. I mean, some of the other clubs, I will say this year, Denver Comedy Works gives it a run for its money.

Ooh, those are fun shows. But Comedy Mothership really is like just the best club in the country and really looking forward to that. So I hope to see some of the people out at those shows. And then me and Rob are on the road, a bunch of dates coming up for the rest of the year, ComicDavsmith.com for all of that stuff. Also, for those of you who are listening live, first of all, thank you for subscribing over

at part of the problem.com. If you listen to the show and you haven't yet subscribed, go on, check it out. You get the members-only episode every Thursday. We do four shows a week. Only three go out. One is just for the people who sign up. So make sure you sign up and go enjoy that. You also get to be in the live chat, and we definitely will take some questions today.

So if you have any questions for me or Rob or both of us, put them in the chat. Natalie will grab them and throw them in our chat, and then we'll get to some of that. So there's a few things that, you know, you had sent some topics over Rob and a few of them I thought were interesting to talk about. It's a little bit of a like a light day in terms of like I don't have that much to rant about. We kind of talked about some of the major, well, the major things with Israel and Ukraine yesterday. Um, but maybe we could, because it's kind of an interesting, uh, conversation, but so one of the things you sent over was Donald Trump, uh, bringing in the National Guard. And I think from what I was reading also just some other like random federal agents,

like there were DE, uh, DEA agents. And I think, I think I read ATF agents as well, um, just kind of, it's not exactly clear what he's having them do, like police work in D.C. evidently or what's what's your take on this oh well i i mean i'm agnostic on the move i'll speak to the move more itself i think there's uh something to be said for there's no we shouldn't have crime and homelessness in any of our cities and so there's something to be said for being the president living in washington dc and actually being a good manager there was this old line i once heard at a job you always know who the boss is by who's picking up the trash and there is some truth to that

because that's the person that actually cares at a business. Right. And so there is something to be said for being a good manager and just going, no, I'm cleaning this up. I'm not living in Washington, D.C., and having other nations show up here and having homelessness and crime in our city. That's, like, that's ridiculous. We're cleaning this up.

So there's something to be said for it. Like, you know, I don't really, I don't really fault him for wanting to clean up D.C. I think it's a good goal. I think none of our cities should have crime and homelessness. And maybe Trump figures out something. in D.C. and then he extends it to other areas. So, like, you know, I don't really fault the move. What I can criticize is, one, it's so Donald Trump that something just happens on the news. And he goes, all right. And it's ADD where he goes, we're going to address this. Big balls had to

beat up, got beat up. Like, we can't be having that. But the actual statistics are the crime is down in D.C. this year. And it's not, I think it's 69th in the nation for crime. That doesn't mean that D.C. should have crime and homelessness. But it does mean that it's not really. like uh you know what i mean it's not it's not lawlessness in dc it probably doesn't require this response there's also something to be said for is the president does the president have the authority to nationalize troops in this way and do we want you know a totalitarian president that just uh when he decides he wants something done he doesn't actually go through the lawful means i don't know the specifics on when the president can declare you know we're bringing the

national garden so i mean i i don't really like there's things that i really fault him for because I don't really even like the end goal of it, such as tariffs, and I don't really like more central planning. On this specific one, to want to have a show and force in D.C. to maybe motivate the cops to actually do their jobs so that they don't have to deal with, like, you know, other law enforcement agencies budding into their business. It kind of makes sense.

The specifics on it is I know he wants to clean up the homelessness. I know he's brought in the National Guard, and I think he's also making use of the FBI for it. Yeah, yeah. Well, it's interesting. I mean, there's just a lot there. I guess I would, and I think I agree with pretty much everything you said. I mean, I think there's something about, like, even to people who really like Donald Trump

or really like what Donald Trump represents to them. And I guess I would count me and you in that group. I mean, there were certainly aspects to what Donald Trump represents that me and you both really liked. And just things as simple as the fact that he was just kind of stood for being like, hey, the corporate media are a bunch of liars. They're the enemy of the people that Washington is profoundly corrupt. Our leadership is stupid. You know, like, there were just a lot of things. We've fought all these stupid wars we shouldn't fight.

There were a lot of things that Donald Trump represented, this kind of dissident figure and somebody who, you know, know, whatever, was drain the swamp, even just take, it's like, fine, you could, you could be as hardcore a Trump supporter or as as hardcore a right winger as you like to be. But that quality of just like the erraticness of Donald Trump, that he'll just, this isn't part of like a grand strategy. This isn't something that he's been thinking through and, you know, like as is very well read and has a deep understanding. It's like you said, I mean, this is Donald Trump. He sees something on TV and decides impulsively we're going to do this and that I just find like it's just indefensible like it's not it has nothing to do with whether you're like a left wing or a

right winger whether you're pro war or anti war or you know whatever it's it's just like that is no way to lead like that's crazy this is just a crazy way to act um so I completely agree with you on that and then in terms of like you know the the substance of it I mean like There's a lot of, it's a major problem for the country, what's going on in cities across the country. And there are a few exceptions to this, but it's really a few. Almost every major city in America is dealing with these problems. And at least from my perspective, and I'm curious to get yours, Rob, because we're both, you know, we travel this country a lot. Me and you travel this country a lot more than the average person does, and so we go to cities all around.

But from my perception, and I think this is backed up by the numbers, is just that obviously there were trends in place already. There were problems in big city America already, but COVID really just destroyed big cities. And from at least the way I see it, I don't think they ever truly recovered. They are better than they were, like the worst of 2020 or 2021, but I don't think they've really recovered. There are some exceptions to this, but for the most part, I do think that you look at the crime, the absolute epidemic of homeless people on the streets. And because even like when you say, like, D.C. numbers are down, but they're down from when they peaked. You know what I mean?

they're not down from like pre i wouldn't i wouldn't yeah overall levels i think i just looked at a study from last year so yeah you're right well you know i know i know in new york city like crime went starkly up in 2020 and 2021 and then i think was still high in 22 and then it came down in 23 and 24 but not to pre-covid levels it was still higher than it had been before and that's i think that's true for a lot of big cities i double check me on that out there are people listening, but, um, so I do just, you know, like, it, it is a, it is a, a real profound problem that we have like, well, I don't know exactly the numbers, but I think it's in the millions of people living outside in this country. Um, and that's not like, you know,

that's not a leftist issue, you know, like a leftist might have one diagnosis of, of this or whatever, but I'm not making the like, you know, I'm not saying like some people have so much and some people have so little, so we should tax the people who have much and give it to the people who have little. But it is a fair point that I think any non-left winger can make also that just to be like, dude, we live in a society that's as rich and advanced as the United States of America in 2025. And we still got hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people who like live outside and their own squalor and filth and like it's a it's just profoundly disturbing and I don't think that um federalizing uh the the police action is the right move but it is like a

huge huge problem that seems to be largely unaddressed I mean like not unaddressed I mean I shouldn't say that because there's all types of rackets like out in California where this guy's making 600 grand a year and this guy's making 800 grand a year and they're in charge and they've got a 50 million dollar budget to spend on solving the homeless problem but they're not doing anything about it it's not being solved and people seem almost like not content but accepting of the fact that like yeah that's just part of l.A. now that's part of san francisco that's part of san diego that's just part of it there's blocks filled with homeless people and you know i don't know we've talked about this over the years but i just find it i find it to be it's a i guess the

thing that that that kind of in in rages me the most is that it's like that i just find it to be such an outrage that people tolerate that um particularly because i think it's so you know like there's there's children who are being raised in these cities and like i just think that's like profoundly damaging to have like you know that's part of the reason why i'm not in a city uh I don't, the idea of having like your three or four year old just witnessing this level of, of like humanity is, I think, really bad. But then, you know, additionally, there's, it's, I find it very strange that somehow anyone, anyone could spin allowing homeless encampments to take over cities as the humanitarian approach.

like as if it's wrong if you're saying no we got to yeah because like nobody i don't nobody's suggesting like round these people up and then like throw them in an al salvadorian prison or something like that like i'm assuming yes there'll be a facility or something that they're going to but you're like how is it the humane option to let some like these mentally ill drug addicts just live when they clearly you know like need help i don't know i just think it's like a crazy thing to just you know, that we've allowed as a country. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Prolon by El Nutra, the only patented fasting mimicking diet that combines the benefits of prolonged

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Just go to ProlonLife.com slash P-O-T-P for this special offer. that's P-R-O-L-O-N-L-I-F-E dot com slash P-O-T-P. All right, let's get back into the show. Yeah, it certainly sometimes has a flavor, and I think you've said this about maybe it was San Diego, which is otherwise a beautiful city, but it does have some weird feeling of just giving up. Like, we're just not going to address this.

We're just going to live with this, and this is just going to be the way it is. And, you know, I think it's more of a Tucker Carlson, thing to talk about the beautiful buildings and architecture. This is not really my field of focus, but maybe there is something to be said for nicer cities and that that inspires people more. It's really just not a big topic on my radar or something that I'm overly concerned with. If I was ranking issues, the Federal Reserve is probably number one. Whereas a close second, you know what I mean? So it's like, it's just not high on my topic list, but I certainly understand

having what I would just say is a better manager. I've worked the jobs with better worse managers, and sometimes a lot of what it comes down to is someone actually caring and just making sure everyone's doing what they're supposed to be doing, as opposed to just having a flavor of giving up. And yeah, there is a bit of a flavor in cities that otherwise are just filthy or have homeless or rampant crime that somebody at some point in time is just kind of giving up. Well, yeah, absolutely. I agree with you. Maybe I'll split the difference a little bit like um i it's also like it's not bumping the federal reserve or war or economics or anything like that out of like my priorities list but i do think tucker carlson is completely right

about that stuff and i do think it's really important and i'll tell you i never ever really thought about this i've talked to tucker actually about this um but i've i've never off air uh but i never thought about this until i moved uh into my my house that i live in now um because it's real it's just i grew up in new york city um and where i live is uh it's beautiful i mean like you've been here a bunch of times rob it's like it's especially i mean like in the summertime it's just beautiful we're on a mountain in the country and it's like every all around you are like beautiful trees and you know birds and it's you know i i don't know it's just like it's and i when i moved here i

started just kind of noticing, like I was conscious of like, oh, I think that's kind of cool that I'm like raising my kids surrounded by beauty, you know, like I just think there's something important. And the more I've lived here, I've just like, I've taken notice of the effect that it has on me. And I think it's a very, it's a very like positive effect when you're around like beautiful surroundings. And cities can be beautiful. I mean, I think New York City is a beautiful city in many ways. But I really do think that there's a, you know, there's like a, there's a damaging effect. There's a damaging effect to living like a slob and like your space is just like, you know,

trashed every day. There's a damaging effect to your city looking like trashed. So they're being spray paint everywhere and homeless people on the streets. And there's something that's not good for your soul about that. And, you know, when you were addressing my, what I was saying about San Francisco. Diego back, I think it was the first time we went out there a few years ago. I do think there's a connection between kind of like the attacks on masculinity and that dynamic, the giving up that I'm talking about. And I think that, by the way, and I do not, I'm not pretending to

completely understand this because I really don't. And there are probably people who have much much, much deeper understanding of this than me. But have you read about Robb? Like, there is real science behind, like, testosterone and, like, sperm counts have plummeted amongst young men. Like, the generation of young men are, like, do not have as much testosterone as previous generations of men. And you can see it.

You can see it all over them. I mean, I swear to God, I think, like, I think, like, 80% of the left-right divide amongst men is driven by testosterone like when you when you see um you rub you ever see like a left wing you know YouTuber or you know political commentator type person it's when do you ever see one of them who looks like oh that guy's like high in testosterone that's like a man you know it's always like this like you can see the get you're like oh all the feminine men are lefties and like it's just and there is something and of course this I'm not at all saying that the drop in testosterone is because of what's being taught on

college campuses. I'm just saying they coincide, like they've both been happening. And when you have this kind of, you know, for years, very systemic, to borrow a leftist term, very systemic kind of demonizing of masculinity, even going as far as calling it toxic, toxic masculinity and all this stuff, there is something where, as everybody on some level knows, there are times in for for a society to be healthy or even survive there's there are times where you need that like hardcore masculinity and it does seem like that like that's one of the things but I just can't you know it was shocking to me like and maybe this is it's partly because I'm getting

older and like I own property and have children and stuff now but you start like walking around San Diego it's like this beautiful city I mean it is just it's a strikingly beautiful like the you're right on the water it's in california it's just everything's beautiful they have great restaurants and hotels and culture and like all and then there's just like a block of people shitting right next to these you know and you're like how how are the men here putting up with this like who allows you go like no i'm sorry like we built this thing we will protect it now like that's what men do at their best build stuff and defend it like that's the whole point and so it is just like i just found it like i don't know like it's shocking to me that you've

gotten to this point like you know whatever narratives you know i know you're reading you're reading your pap you count and rob but like whatever narratives there are that world war two or whatever exact the fact is that like what i forget the exact numbers but something like a million men in America voluntarily enlisted after Pearl Harbor. He was like, we got attack, okay, we're going, well, let's go, well, we just got attacked, okay, let's go protect our country. You know, like, and again, debates about the necessity of World War II aside, I'm just saying, like, having, having that is important.

Like, that's every household you have to, like, the man of the house has to kind of in his own mind be prepared for like, hey, if someone were to try to break in here and do harm to my family, I'm prepared to go attempt to stop them. And it just seemed like, I don't know, like a profound betrayal of that basic, like, masculine role that you just sit there. Like, how do you even like look at your chick in the face when you kind of walk down that street? I can't prove it, but I'm just going to say it's.

socialism and liability laws because if you decided with three of your friends that there was some homeless guy and he was shitting in front of your business and so you picked him up and drove him outside of town and said I don't want to see you in front of my business anymore in a prior time period that might have cleaned up that mess and if you did that now you probably make the local paper and possibly be in a lot of trouble yeah yeah well there's I mean that's a huge aspect of it for sure but look I mean this is and no floors Well, that's right. That's exactly right. And look, what is the difference? It's a public property issue. It's not a private property issue. None of these issues are happening on private property. I mean, to the extent that there are issues on private property, it's all, you know, the issue is always the government. And I mean, I'm not saying that to be like, I'm not trying to fit this back into my ideology or something like that. I'm just saying very objectively, like, if you look at the problems with like shoplifting and robberies, and why everybody's got a, you know, like every pharmacy has to have everything behind glass and stuff like that in cities across the country.

It's always because they're not allowed to have armed security. They're not allowed to physically stop people from doing it. And the government who has monopolized the law enforcement, the crime and punishment wing of society are not enforcing law. Like they're not arresting them. They're not, you know what I mean? They're letting them up. was in California. I think it was like $900 or less, and you got like a summons. So they just like give them a ticket and then they rip it up and they go back to it. So like, but this is this is one

of the things that I was really trying to beat into the head of libertarians over the last few years. And it's why I got into so many of these debates about public property. But it is something that libertarians have to grapple with that when you have kind of this state monopolization, monopolized but this this state owned and maintained property and then you have all types of like horrible things happening under it on it it is not um it's it just something that's a little bit trickier for libertarians to talk about because it's not as simple as saying oh we want the government to get out of the business of doing this which ultimately sure we probably do but in the meantime it sure would be better if they don't let old ladies get punched

in the head on the street, you know? Like it's, and, um, and I think one of the things that's, that's interesting and kind of tragic about Trump, you know, uh, this kind of releasing, uh, of the National Guard, um, is that, you know, people, people demand authoritarian solutions for these problems. And when you create these problems, uh, this is part of the reason why governments grow so big is that governments cause problems. And then there's tremendous demand for, a big government solution to that problem. Then that causes problems. Then you need a new government

solution. I mean, you can watch this in real time. You could watch like if you're my age, it's not that hard to see like, oh, Obama campaigned on overhauling the health insurance system. Then he did that. Then four years later, they're having a Medicare for all debate because it's like, oh, this caused all these problems. Now we need an even bigger government overhaul to come solve all those problems and everything just gets worse and worse um but you know it when you when you have high crime in high crime rates in cities when you have mass uh you know like um homelessness and um instability uh people are going to demand you know strong man right wing shit that's that's the simplest you know most obvious answer to most people is like

fucking make this illegal and start cracking some skulls to get it to stop but the the answer that's actually best for curing the problem without causing many many more is to just have the government stop fucking up the situation to begin with it is amazing like how much who was it to me I was talking with some right where you know it might have been with charlie kirk actually I think was at him and this is on a when we were just talking backstage at the event that he was like we started getting into like the uh you know like the cities that have legalized weed and this stuff and crime and homeless does and uh and i was like i think i said or he said but i was like hey what percentage of this do you think would be uh solved if we simple had simply had like the second

amendment enforced like concealed carry you know uh castle doctrine all that stuff if we just had that in all these blue cities how much of the problem and he's like probably like 80 90 percent of it would be solved and you're like okay all right so then there you know we're together on policy here like what there's a pretty obvious correct policy that you don't have to go to these like authoritarian alternatives you could just be like oh we're going to stop prosecuting people for protecting their property this would clean up a huge huge portion of it and then look I mean the homeless thing is a little bit tougher um you know the the way um um The way that America used to deal with this problem was they institutionalized people.

It was like, when you were crazy like that, they would just force you into some, you know, insane asylum. And there were lots of abuses of that. There was a reason why that got shut down. There were lots of abuses, both politically and in terms of just the actual, like, facilities. But I got to say, to me, this seems worse. it seems worse to just let like even forget the fact that it ruins the cities and makes them unlivable and that there's decent people who like are doing the right thing and trying to raise kids that is like kind of my number one priority but even forgetting that just for the people themselves it seems like it seems like the cruelest and most inhumane thing is to like just let schizophrenic drug addicts who clearly need assisted living you know what i'm saying like like i'm just saying like don't get me wrong there's a part of the homeless class that are like like like people who caught like a few bad breaks and fell behind and things like that.

But, you know, like a much bigger portion of it is literally schizophrenic drug addicts who are incapable of living on their own and need serious help. And it doesn't seem like the humane thing is to just say like, well, let's let them. Let's let them live on Fourth Street covered in their own shit and piss. Like I don't know. It's just wild to me that that anyone ever accepts that as a, a place to end on you know there's really nice areas in this country with like beachfront properties or even public beaches that you cannot park your car in those areas without a permit i don't know i could

be out in california next to the nicest beach in the entire world that's you know a public beach and i can't access it because there's nowhere to park my car i kind of feel like there's enough public land in this country that we could be making available places for those that are homeless that don't want to abide by any decorum of society that, you know, they, like, how do you remove someone's right to exist and there's just enough public land? But the idea that it needs to be on second avenue, I don't know. Like at some point, areas are just kind of wealthy enough or for enough other people that there maybe should be a public decorum standard, which is just not, you know, not being a risk or a nuisance to other people. Like, I don't know. Well, yes, no, I think, I think

that's right and and one and ironically or perhaps it's not ironic or there's some irony in it because ironically you know like despite what young naive leftists think it's like as always these progressive policies end up really creating like really um stratifying is that the word i'm but they really create like this kind of cast almost based system there's you know it's like where you see in a in places like California where it's like the most progressive you know like state in the union and they have the I mean go check the numbers on this but the disparity between the rich and poor within California's got to be the biggest in the country they have more poor people than any other state in the country and I think maybe New York because of Wall Street is

higher, but up there with the most amount of rich people. And it's like what ends up happening with all of this stuff, it's very easy to see is that in places like New York City, you know, which like I know people, I know like, I know like professionals who are making like half a million dollars a year, you know, in New York City, all of them, all of them just stop taking. in the subways and the buses since COVID. They all Uber around now. Because it's just like, yeah, it's just too, it's a little too dicey.

So they, so in other words, my point is just like the people who are in the top, say, 2%, they can, they always just opt out of the government system. Now, okay, they don't, they can't completely opt out of like walking down the street, but, you know, they can opt out of taking the subways and taking the buses and sending their kids to public schools and all these things and it's just everybody else who's stuck with it you know it's like it's everybody else in the working class who doesn't have the option to stop taking the bus just because the city decided that we're not going to you know throw um but you know violent you know psychopaths off the bus or something like that um and you know i could tell you because i've spoken to

a bunch of uh new yorkers that was uh in a way that's that's people's biggest concern about mom donnie's got like his make the buses free plan. And you're like, okay, but what does that do? What does it do to make them free? It means that there's going to be no policing of homeless people just using it. And that, okay, who does that make life worse for?

There is an irony that these like the socialists as always end up being the biggest enemy of the working class. In fact, I think if you looked at the 20th and 21st century, I don't think there's been a worse enemy of the working class than

socialists. All right. Here, I'll read a few of these questions. What do Dave and Rob think about Fuentes' drama crying about Candice and Tucker calling him out

plus Milo drama piling onto it all? Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I don't really know if I have any deep thoughts on the issue. Obviously, you know, I've talked about this a little bit. I think I talked about this on the Ron Paul's birthday podcast.

You know, Candace and Tucker are my guys. And they've just been great to me. I think their voices are enormously important. And so I'm biased, you know, in this. I will concede, look, they went at Nick on their show. And I do think in this, in this world, whatever it is, that kind of makes a fair game for him to fire back. I would say, more broadly speaking, I just, you know, I think it's just enormously, like, I can't overstate how important I think Tucker and Candace's voice are right now. Like, we're kind of living through a moment where the non-interventionist foreign policy is winning out in the right wing in a way that for people like me who were like I was a Ron Paul guy in 2008 you know and the idea that we would just be dominating the right

wing the way we are right now and I mean in terms of the people obviously not in terms of the you know the rulers but it was just it was inconceivable you know like it's truly amazing and Tucker being like the biggest right-wing political commentator in the country right now is like an enormous part of that kandis owns millions of followers to a conservative you know who were all subscribed to a conservative person's point of view and now just she's relentlessly hearing like an anti-war message from her so i think that all that stuff is very uh i think they're very valuable in the same time nick foentes is the you know he's the blood sport king and so when you go at him of course this is how he's going to respond to that uh so i don't know i don't really know if i have much

more deep thoughts on it than that um i think everybody involved is going to be fine and we'll continue on and still have big audiences so i don't know any thoughts rob uh i mean work it in work the joke in somehow i pay close to zero attention to to the to the to these squabbles or, uh, even to these individuals, but I, I just, I don't get a next whole thing. I mean, aside from being a gay Mexican, I just, I don't get it that like, uh, so you're, like, I don't know, you're a Christian who wants to rule over me and people like me shouldn't be allowed to exist and what's the gray area of how you police that or what my rights are

supposed to be if you're running society. I don't know. I just don't like the idea of anyone who instead there's no. It does sound, it does sound pretty good. when you say it like that i'm i'm in the special group and so people in my special group are supposed to rule over the other people who weren't born into the special group so yeah what are you a jew yeah exactly um well listen i get i get your point it's just cry baby shit so these other people are i listen i think moment and now you're real i'm trying because you think that you're supposed to be the anti-israel voice and i mean it's because israel's in the news now so people are criticizing it more than they were then and you're not really criticizing israel you're criticizing

from i don't pay that much attention but he's criticizing jews and that we're not more christian white nationalist i think and that the society isn't doing enough for like uh white male achievement for white males to the lord over other individuals so it's he's not even an israel topic guy he's a christian we're supposed to rule over you guy and so that then israel's a subtopic of that and his to me his major complaint is why are all these other people being more platformed on the Israel issue. They only talk about it now that it's more in the news. And so the news people are talking about the biggest issue while it's relevant. So I don't really get his complaint other than radio drama and everyone's supposed to worship me because I'm, I was here

first and I'm in the chosen group. Well, look, if I'm trying to be charitable to him, I will say in this one, you know, Tucker and Candace, well, Tucker and Candice went at him. And so I just think like when you go at him like that, it kind of does, it gives him permission to respond. He has a, he has a right, Nick Fuentes has a right, Nick Fuentes has a right to defend himself, uh, just like the state of Israel. Um, but I will, um, you know, I try, you know, in general, and I'm not saying that like I'm, I'm better than anyone else. I've been caught up in internet drama and stuff, but it's hard. I try to stay out of it. And I, uh, I just don't have enough time and energy for like, you know, some of the more like gossipy stuff. And it's

always saying like Milo jumping in on it and stuff. It's just like, yeah, I mean, okay, it is just not my lane. That's not really what I'm interested in doing. I'm much more interested in like, you know, getting back to the policy. Let's get back to the idea. Like, who's making what argument exactly? And let, you know, that's just the what interests me and what I think is important in this. So anyway, that's about the, the thoughts on. that. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is monetary metals, a phenomenal company run by great people. If you're tired of paying storage fees and exorbitant premiums for your physical gold, all while it just sits there collecting

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you start getting paid to store your gold with monetary metals. Go check them out for sure. Monetary dash metals.com. All right, let's get back into the show. Next question is, want to hear your thoughts on Tulsi Gabbard showing up to the Ron Paul barbecue. Well, I actually, you know, it weirdly, it made me really sad uh it really had an effect on me i was like when i first saw i saw she was going to be there um like a day before the event and i i texted scott horton about it and i was like is tulsie gabbert coming and he was like that yeah she's supposed to be and um and i was like dude that's so crazy because like you know i've been pretty hard on old tulsi uh you know i've

called her the colin powell of trump's administration and, you know, and, and, you know, look, I'm, I'm angry at her about a lot of this stuff. But so anyway, so I see her, I saw her, so we, we first get there. No, I guess it was after, I'd been in for, I went outside and I called home, like, I called my wife, checking in on the kids and stuff. And then I just started walking back in, and I was, like, looking at my phone. And then just as I look up, I just looked up and locked eyes with Tulsi Gabbard. and she had like, she had like security all around her.

I don't know if it was Secret Service or whatever, but she had security all around her. And she literally, she parted her security and just walked up to me and gave me a hug. And it was a very weird moment. She had like a very somber look on her face. Like there was no,

we didn't smile at each other. She just saw me, came over with like a serious look, gave me a hug, walked back at like her security. It was like checking me out. But then she hugged me. So it was like,

I guess they were like, okay, I guess he's cool. And then she walks back there and then they like locked down the her portion of the building. And like she went in and she gave her speech. And then I think she saw Ron Paul, but I didn't see her again after that. But literally so I got I had to go do a podcast. So it was like I saw her. She went in. They locked down the building.

I went into the podcast studio. And then I just sat there and I was like sad. I felt bad. I felt kind of guilty. Like I felt like, oh, I was. you know um i didn't like was i like being nice to her face but then talking shit behind her back like should i have just said up there at the same time i'm not going to say anything at ron paul's birthday party i'm not going to make it weird with anyone and then you're kind of it was just kind of like

almost a bummer because you're like i mean i guess at least it's kind of cool that the director of national intelligence is coming to a ron paul event and who the hell else if if we got tolsey out of there who would come in there someone worse than her i'm sure so you're like i guess it's good, but man, is it just, you know, I'll never forgive her for saying, saying that Iran is weeks away from a nuclear weapon right after Israel bombed Iran, totally contradicting your own annual threat assessment was, you know, as to me, that's about, it's just, it's about as horrible a crime as a DNI couldn't commit. Because really, Tulsi Gabbard's job is she's the boss of all intelligence agencies. But she's not, I mean, okay, in theory, at least, that doesn't mean

you're dictating policy. Like, even, you know, the Russiagate stuff, she unearthed some really good stuff there. She sends it over to the Justice Department because it's Pam Bondi's decision what to do with that. And she can make recommendations to the president, but it's hit, you know, but that is essentially the most important thing is that when, like, she sold the lie, She rubber-stammed the lie to spark a war. Now, the war will see, you know, didn't end up turning into a catastrophe so far, but that's a crazy thing for Tulsi Gabbard to be there to just put her stamp on. Like, yes, as the DNI, I'm on record, I back up that there is intelligence for this.

But it's just not true, and she knows it's not true. She, like, lied us into a war. So anyway, that was my experience with it. I don't know. What are my feelings on it? I guess kind of what I said. I guess it's better that it's Tulsi and she's at least talking to Ron Paul than it not being her. I don't know.

Okay. Here, let's jump to one more here. Dave have always been more interested in the foreign policy aspects of libertarianism, but the Ron Paul talk as of late has gotten me into Austrian. School of Economics. Where do you recommend someone get started getting caught up to speed with that specifically?

Hmm. All right. Well, Paul introduced you. Start with End the Fed. And the Fed is a phenomenal book. Yeah, that's a great one. You could go read that. If you're looking, you know, if you're looking for like podcasts, Bob Murphy has a great podcast.

Mises.org is like a phenomenal. resource. Like every article Murray Rothbard ever wrote is up there. And Ludwig von Mises is, you know, is the goat. I mean, so any of his stuff.

But I would, if you're looking for books and the Fed is a great one to start with, Bob Murphy's choice, which is like a distillation of human action by Ludwig von Mises is excellent. And then, you know, I think, well, maybe not

strictly Austrian, or not an Austrian, but Thomas Soles' basic economics is a phenomenal book. The American Great Depression by Murray Rothbard's phenomenal book. And then, you know, if you want to get more deep and serious into it, there's human action by Ludwig von Mises and Man Economy and State by Murray Rothbard, both incredible. And then I always do, even though it's a simple and fun read, but economics in one life, and by Henry Haslett is a great that's a great one to start with too because it's just uh i think it's like there's it's it's a it's a red pill of a book like once you see like you kind of can't unsee it once you see it and it's just like a very good it's a very good

like prism by which to look to to understand economics um okay let's do do another question and then maybe you can pick the next topic, Rob. Question for Dave. Would you then say that prison is better than homelessness? Conditions in asylums have historically been worse than prisms, to be honest. And then some details of those. Yeah. Seems to me that homelessness is bad, but that is far worse.

Well, I mean, I guess if yes, if they're like, like I don't know I just I don't know I guess if there's really bad conditions I just have a different like framing in my mind for this which is and I mean there's a degree of socialism to this have an area in which these people are allowed to be in areas that they're not allowed to be and if they're going to be in some areas they got to behave by a certain decorum and if they're not able to abide by that decorum they're not allowed to be there they're not forced into a prison but you know like that that's the area that's relegated for them and then if they want to come into the other areas not by abide by the decorum they can be brought back to those and i'm not even talking about necessarily a prison as much as maybe it's kind of like uh i don't know big warehouses and you can set up your tent in there and you're free to live at any time but if you go into the city and decide to take off your shirt and spit on people then you're brought back there and then i don't know maybe do you start having crimes for those types of things that you're actually

relegated to periods of time that you have but it's just like there doesn't really need to be a force element as much as just a as a laws for kind of how you can operate and they're all ones that we would abide by. Hey I don't know. Maybe there's a period of time that you're allowed to walk around with shit in your

pants for because you shat your pants and if you're over the five hour time clock of not wanting to address that then you're not allowed to be in a downtown area. It's not the craziest rule ever. But yeah, I mean I

I do on the street corner. You can't yell at me. I don't know. It's just like decorum laws or something. Well, this is, look, this is kind of the essence of what property is all about, right? Is that like you have to have like

somebody who's allowed to exclusively use something or somebody who's allowed to dictate the terms of what's allowed on this property. And, you know, to your, you know, to your point earlier, when you said, I forget, who did you say, said it,

that you always know who the boss is, because they're the ones cleaning up. He's taking out the trasher. By who's taking out the trash? And there's some wisdom to that. Yes, but another way to say that is like who the property owner is, you know? And that's kind of the essence of the point there, right? Is that like nobody treats somebody else's property as good as you treat your own property.

It's just like the way human beings work. and when you own something you're incentivized to take care of the thing like i don't do i'm not going to do something you know if you're um i remember i was renting a house before i bought this one and they had all types of water damage um in like there was one area of the house where there was like real uh problem with water damage and uh that we had a leak the leak got stopped but there was still some some water damage there and i remember the landlord was like this old guy I told him about it. And he was like, well, is it bothering you?

And I was like, no. And he was like, all right, then don't worry about it. And now, that was because he was old or whatever and didn't feel like dealing with it. So I'm not saying you always take care of your property. But when I was a renter, I was happy to just, I don't care. Okay. It's like, this is going to be some big problem in 10 years. It's not going to be my problem.

I would never do that with the house I own because I know it's going to be my big problem in 10 years or if I try to sell the place or whatever. And then with government, you have this tragedy of the commons where everybody equally owns or doesn't own the property. And so it creates the situation where, like, there's no one, we have in all of these other, in private property, you have the property owner who gets to dictate and is incentivized to maintain the thing. With government property, you just have none of that. And so I think what you're saying is like, well, somebody's got to institute some reasonable rules. and like no it is it is not like none of us feel that we have the right to sleep on public streets none of us think we have the right to take off our clothes and get onto a bus and start scaring people and that oh nobody else ought to have that right either and if you do that there have to be

some type of consequences for it that's all i think very very common sense uh common sense stuff uh all right rob we got we got a few minutes left uh in the show And I told you you get to pick the next topic. So what are you thinking? I would get into Navidia chips. I think it's interesting. Oh, sure. So give your thoughts on that.

Well, so essentially, you know, Donald Trump very excited. He worked out a deal with Navidia. And I believe it was one other company that they are now allowed to sell to China, but they got to pay 15% basically to Donald Trump. And there's a lot of very interesting aspects to this. Firstly, is I'm not really sure what it accomplishes because if the argument is that we can't be sending these items to China because it's a national security issue. So I don't know why Donald Trump getting 15% of the profits helps.

I also don't know where that money then goes to. There's a legality of whether or not you're allowed to have an export tax. And then there's even the, if we, if we think it's a national security issue for the United States to remain ahead in the AI race is taking 15% of profits away from the company that's making these technologies and handing it over to the government, going to actually give us a better foothold in that race. So, and it's similar to what happened with the Japan plan where Japan promised, I forget the number, it was $300 billion to some, you know,

in payments back to Donald Trump for working out the trade deal. But like, where does that money go to? I don't know, maybe Donald Trump invested into cleaning up DC and we're all like, this is amazing. Look at the, but you know what I mean? It just seems like more central planning and more resources for, Donald Trump taken away from the free market. So, you know, it was kind of like showcased as, look, this is, this is incredibly worked out a deal and the government's going to get 15% of this

money now. But I don't really see where the win is. It doesn't, I don't understand if there were security concerns how Donald Trump getting 15% gets around that. And I understand how that's better for markets to hand money from Navidia over like that's money that would have gone to R&D or back to the investors. I'm not an investor in Navidia, nor am I saying that that's a good company i'm just saying is like a conceptual i don't understand what this deal accomplishes i one of the strangest things to me is watching um republicans celebrate the increased revenue to the federal government as if it's just a bizarre thing it reminds me of um when that's not to pick on him for no reason but when i when i was debating uh bobby kennedy on israel um and he said at one point

like he brought up the talking point that Israel uses the money to buy weapons from our weapons companies and so a lot of that money comes right back to the USA and I was like but but wait so now you're defending the military industrial complex that this is good because he's been so critical and he had made that exact point about Ukraine

that what a bullshit you know justification like that and uh but it's almost like that like now conservatives are out here being like ooh we brought in a little more revenue to the federal government, like as if that's the issue, the issue is that they don't get enough revenue. The revenue that goes into the federal government has been going up my entire life, and all they do is leverage that to borrow more against it and spend three times more than that. It's like what problem is going to be solved by revenue going in, and you really

already stole, you know, what is the most important point that you made first, which is that, you guys were saying this was a national security issue. If it's a national security issue, then what are you telling me here? We're sacrificing our national security for a little bit more revenue into the federal. Listen, man, all the justifications for all of this stuff, this Donald Trump ad hoc economic policy is just, it's, it's about as strong as the lefty socialist arguments are. All right, guys, let's take a moment to thank our sponsor for today's show, which is crowd health. What if you could get health care for under $100? you've heard me talk about crowd health a million times before i love this company but i want to tell

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All right. Let's get back into the show. Yeah, I guess the tariff revenue, it becomes like it's conceptual, whereas I guess, yes, if it offsets your income tax or if it actually reduces deficits, then I, I guess it, then I guess it's good, but speaking to your point, what are the chances that we don't just use that so that we can borrow more money? And does Donald Trump actually look like he's trying to reduce deficits? It doesn't, it doesn't seem like it. I mean, you might tell you that there's a tariff plan for more money, but I mean, it's just, it's one of those things.

Great if he does it, but I'll believe it when I see it. Yep. It's, you know, you kind of know he's always going to kind of do this, this thing. where he's on every side of an issue and says, we'll do it this way, then says, we'll do it this way, that makes extreme statements that drive the,

you know, the news of the day. And then he'll always, just negotiating. That's it. Yeah. He's 40 chess. He's always dropping a heavy anchor.

And so when he walks back or when he walks away from his 90 days, it's just, it's always negotiating. It's not that he's, it's not that he realized he was wrong. It's not that he didn't have the conviction. It's not that he's chickening out. There's always an excuse.

And even when it's, like incredibly obvious that the but like it like it's incoherent even why that would be the negotiating strategy you know what i mean but he'll still celebrate it at the end no matter what i mean this is donald trump he's still just the other day uh he was celebrating operation warp speed and what an amazing accomplishment this was it's like dude nobody believes this no one in your base believes this is it was a catastrophe the whole thing like is absolute just just a mess um and but he's still it doesn't matter so at the end of it he'll always celebrate it as a huge win some percentage of people will go along with that but i mean even you know things like even like with the the 12-day war

as it's being called now where you're like you're like dude they were at the negotiating table and then you just set an arbitrary deadline and then start ordered a war and then back to it like it's it's like all that none of this makes any sense why would that be the way to do it like it's and it's like this constantly where the you know it's just like

the much easier answer is just that he's impulsive and none of this really makes sense and that it's all incoherent this is a little bit of a it's a little bit like when Cheney was claiming well if we weren't doing what we're doing

there would be more terrorist attack so the statement making isn't you know you can't prove it but even the nevidia one it's because it's a large company and he was able to get the year of don't trump and explain why these exports are important so he was able to get an adjustment just for him i don't see the reporting on this i can't prove it to be true but i'm going to guess that these tariff policies are what are going to kill small businesses because the large companies are able to get Donald trump's ear they're able to get these carve outs and it just happened with apple as well and you might go yeah well apple promise that they were

going to get blank amount of jobs here. They're going to make this investment. But what about every small business that, like, doesn't get Donald Trump's ear to make these kind of adjustments and figure out how to make arrangements so that this can work for their business? And for everyone who's celebrating, oh, look, it's not driving up prices or this policy is working. It's like, nobody knows yet. The tariff delays keep happening. When we get to the deadlines, I don't think anybody knows what the actual impact is yet on prices. I mean, I would venture to guess anyone was making that claim is lying. I think it's. too soon to tell. But my guess is that even if it's not that destructive, we're not going to know

the actual impact on like, you know, the people that we all claim that we care about, which is the small businesses that can't lobby the government and having a business environment that allows for competition and for new players to end to the market and create new products and services. My guess is those are the people that are getting creamed. And look, in the most kind of fundamental sense, the major problems with the American economy are all completely unaddressed by Donald Trump. That's just a fact. That none of it, it's like the major problems being that the entire U.S. economy is rigged on behalf of the powerful, on behalf of Wall Street and giant corporations. It's all rigged in their favor through regulatory policy, through monetary policy,

through monetary policy, through fiscal policy, it's all rigged in favor of the powerful. And we're drowning under $37 trillion of debt. And, you know, all the fundamental problems are all completely unaddressed. Donald Trump is like not even pretending to tackle any of them. And this stuff, yeah, I mean, I think you're exactly right that. Look, I think the idea that government putting taxes on imports

is going to solve those problems for working class America is goofy and there's absolutely no reason to believe it's true. All right, we're going to wrap up on that. Thank you guys very much. Catch you tomorrow with a brand new episode. Peace.