Part Of The Problem - We All Need A New President

Episode Date: October 14, 2026

Dave Smith brings you the latest in politics! On this episode of Part Of The Problem, Dave and Robbie "the Fire" Bernstein discuss statements from Mike Johnson and Trump regarding high gas prices, the war with Ukraine and Russia, the new White House Press Secretary, and more.Support Our Sponsors:The Wellness Company - Prepare before an emergency. Get your Medical Emergency Kit at www.twc.health/problem anduse code PROBLEM to save $30, plus free shipping. U.S. residents only.Undrdog - Our listeners get up to 30% off their entire order at Undrdog.com. Superpower - Head to Superpower.com and use code PROBLEM at checkout for $20 off your membership. Unlock your new health intelligence. 100+ biomarkers. Every year. Detect early signs of 1,000+ conditions. #superpowerpod Sheath - https://sheathunderwear.com use promo code PROBLEMPart Of The Problem is available for early pre-release at https://partoftheproblem.com as well as an exclusive episode on Thursday!PORCH TOUR DATES HERE:https://www.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#libertarian See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What's up? What's up everybody? Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem. I am Dave Smith, and that must mean he is Robbie the Fire. Bernstein. How are you today, sir? I am well, Mr. Smith. How are you? Doing very, doing very well, very fine afternoon here. I'm having a ginger ale. Ooh, that's nice. Which I only drink like, I only drink like one or two a year. Like have a ginger ale, but it just, it hit me today. I like to pretend I'm healthy. So it's that kind of day. And that I don't drink soda, but then I have red bulls all the time and cookies. So I'm not really sure I've saved myself any sugar. I'm pretty sure that just makes soda.

I'm pretty few mix those together. It's just soda. That's all soda is is red bull and cookies. Well, yeah, I know you, uh, you need those red bull and cookies for fuel to get back out on the road. You got the, the portion, the portion goes on. Where are you next? We got Thursday, Milwaukee Friday outside of Chicago and Downer Grove, Illinois, then we're

doing a Fort Wayne, Indiana tickets moving on that one, because we haven't been in years. I mean, you're not, I'm there. Saturday and then Revino, Ohio, which is just outside of Cleveland on Sunday. So it's a stack Midwest road trip weekend. Hell yeah, dude. We'll come on out and see Rob. And then me and you will be in a few weeks. We'll be out in Maine, up in Portland, Maine up there for the weekend. Then we got out, we'll be out on the west coast in San Diego. So, uh, ComicDavsmith.com for those and porch tour.com for Rob's gigs. Um, okay. So, Rob, I wanted to talk about this today. I had to mention this.

I just found this so hilarious. And then I guess it could kind of get into some other topics that are maybe somewhat more important. But man, was this an interesting little example in how propaganda works? And also just quite frankly, the desperation that's out there at the moment. So I saw last night a couple people sent this to me. This was, well, I don't know, I want to say like 9, 10 p.m. last night, a few people, including some like, you know, famous people who, you know, you would all know. And they kind of sent this and went, yo, dude, what is this?

Because, you know, people see things on the internet, send it to me and ask me what I think about it. And I looked at it immediately and went, what, wait, what? I go, and I have text messages I could show you from last night, Rob. And this is literally just me sitting in my room and just getting texts, clicking on it and looking at the thing and going, no, obviously not. I wake up this morning, Rob, this is being shared by everyone. Now, what this was was a post that started from this fellow Green Beret, who I debated on Pierce Morgan a couple weeks ago,

who's trying to, I believe, trying to get another debate with me. We'll see what happens. He's got an unfortunate last name, Rob. I believe it's, I believe it's Tardo. I'll say. I was hoping for Hitler face. Listen, I don't, listen, we don't, we don't live in a, what is it? I'm sorry, Tardio, Tardio. Listen, Rob, we don't live in the most sophisticated of civilizations. and I will tell you if you take a look at the comment section of when I debated him on Pierce Morgan, it's people went pretty hard at that name. There were a lot of plays on that name. And quite frankly, Rob, we're above that on this program.

So we're not going to do any of that today. But how does he actually pronounce it? Quite cruel. Tardio. I don't know. I don't know. We never got to that part. But so this dude is just like an absolute propagandist.

I mean, he's just the worst of the worst. But I mean, he's kind of unknown. maybe not the worst of the worst, but we'll show you what he does here. So he is claiming that since Ukrainian attacks on Russian data centers, which have just taken place over the last few days, that there's evidence that Tucker Carlson is down, his views are down 71%. And Megan Kelly's and Colonel Douglas McGregor and Max Blumenthal,

and like several other people, he also names in this study, all of their views have cratered. Now, for people who don't know, the Ukraine launched these attacks on the 8th. I believe they continued through the 11th. So there's a few days of attacks. He's claiming that since those attacks, their views have tanked. Now, of course, overnight, I took one look at this and go, this is retarded. Obviously not true. overnight. I look at it. It's blown up, Rob. It's gone super viral. All of the worst people have fallen for this.

Every last one of them is sharing this and is celebrating. I mean, literally, I'll read, I'll rattle off a list of names because every one of them should be shamed to death for what, either, either you're too dumb to just be in this business or you're a lying propagandist, in which case you, you know, people should know that. But so let's rattle off the obvious names. Laura Lumer, Mark Levin, of course, what's his name, the congressman who got kicked out? He fell for it. Crenshaw? Dan Crenshaw. Of course, the Babylon B guy whose name I can never remember, James Lindsay, all of them, sharing this. Well, well, look at that.

So let's pull up just the tweet first, Natalie, if you don't mind. Let's just see. So here's the tweet. Here's my following Ukrainian. strikes on Russian data centers, Tucker Carlson's views dropped 71 percent. Douglas McGregor's dropped 62 percent. Tucker Carlson Network dropped 34 percent. And by the way, which would be kind of already when you look at that, you go, why would Tucker's drop by 70, but the network only 34? Hey, let's scroll down a little bit here, Natalie. Hey, Rob, Rob, by the way, you see that Tucker

Carlson, just like how sloppy this propaganda is, Rob. Do you just, could you just eye that graph, the one all the way on the left there, Rob, that says 70%. Just eye the graph. Is it a 70% reduction, Rob? They didn't even make a graph. This is like, none of this is even real. That's like you're looking at maybe a 20-something percent. Like, in terms of that graph, a 70% drop should, like,

they didn't even get this to measure the numbers that they have as inputted there. Okay, here, you can close it now. Rob, it's, we could tear this apart for a second, but just to, be clear there. My first critique is they didn't even make a graph. Go ahead. Oh, no, no, I was going to just point out where the line should be. I'll let you continue. Yeah. Oh, well, I mean, look, so what they did here is, this is how dishonest this is, because of course, like, just think about the pure propaganda. When they say views, when they say Tucker and all these people, their views fell, I mean, first of all, I would point out that I think it's pretty misleading when you say that if you're not in fact talking about viewership, because that would, you know, you talk about people who have shows and you say views, if you talk about our show and you talk about views, people are typically talking about the number of views, the number of people watching our show.

What they're actually measuring here is the number of views on tweets, okay? And again, Natalie, if you could just pull this up again, just how unbelievable these people are. Like what fucking retards they are. Go, go, if you could just, sorry, go back to the other one. Oh, this is the time. I'm sorry, this is the one. Can you zoom in on the upper right hand corner so we can see the blue and red there what they're telling us that is? Sorry, if it's hard to make this big here.

Okay, yeah, damn, sorry. I'm just trying to look at that. Can you read it on yours? Actually, hold on. Maybe I can make this bigger on my ends. Hold on. You just keep it right there. Let me see.

No, but I think it's... Okay, so if you look at it, it says September 30th through October 6th. Is that it? Through October 6th. And then on the other one, it says 6th through 12th. They're not even an even amount of days, Rob, on both sides. They didn't even accurately account for the number of goddamn days. It makes absolutely no sense.

So, okay, we can put this down. So they literally, what they did was they took a few viral tweets that got more views and then compared them to tweets that got less views. You know what's happened with their viewership of their show? It's been completely unaffected by this. So the idea of like what they're trying to convince you here is that what, like, the audience for all these people wasn't real. And but when we destroyed these data centers,

it destroyed the illusion that they're very popular. It's just completely made up. Pure propaganda. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is the wellness company. You've probably seen the headlines coming out of Russia. Two laboratory workers in Siberia died after developing severe pneumonia and authorities launched monitoring and precautions amid concerns about possible mnemonic plague.

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emergency hits. Order your medical emergency kit today at twc.health slash problem. Make sure to use the promo code problem to save up to $30 plus free shipping. That's twc.health slash problem. promo code problem to save up to $30 plus free shipping. All right, let's get back into the show. Yeah. And not, yeah, not only is this just completely made up, but I remember when a Donald Trump won the election the first time. There was that whole thing about, I forget the name of the company, but he used on Facebook and the way that he was using Facebook. And there was absolutely no study if Hillary Clinton had done anything similar in terms of

usage of social media. I can tell you from, I mean, most specifically during the COVID times, but it does feel like most of my channels are fairly channel shadow banned all the time. I can't actually, I don't have evidence to suggest that other than that things don't get, always get, you know, tremendous views and things can sometimes seem flat. But I mean, I'd love to see an honest study across the board of, I mean, what are, what are Dan Bongino's numbers actually like? Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, I think you've said that on Twitter, you haven't noticed much growth over the past year, despite how much big stuff you've done.

It's, dude, it's insane. It's been very clearly turned off. My ability to grow has just been turned off, kind of across social media. But on Twitter, particularly in the new Elon Musk, I mean, I'm not really worried about getting kicked off or anything. And I haven't heard about that. There are some people who like, like, I know Fuentes is like allowed back on, but can't have the blue check mark. It's kind of just a very weird thing. Like, are you doing the free speech thing or not? That was the big thing you announced when you took it over. Again, I'll say this, forever, for me, over the last, you know, let's say like five to seven years as I've really like built this show and my career. It was just always every day you get a few new followers. Every time you post something

that goes viral, you'd get like a few hundred followers. When you do a big podcast, you get a few thousand followers, but you do a really big podcast. You do Rogan or something. You might get like 10, 20,000 new followers or something like that. Literally this entire year, I have not gained any followers, the only year in my entire career ever. It just, and it just got turned off. And it goes, it goes up. I gain a few and then it goes back down. And it goes up and then goes back down.

I've been hovering around 910,000 for the entire year. Again, like you said, Rob, I can't prove anything. I suppose I've just plateaued and new people follow me, but for as many follow me, an equal amount to always leave. Like, I guess it's possible. Seems like something with the algorithms going on where they used to a allow me to get new followers and now they don't. So I don't know. And so the point I'm getting at is this turned out to be 100% and completely fabricated. It's just not, just not a true story.

Now, let's say it's a theoretical that Russia actually had and was not working with Tucker, but appreciated that people were rejecting, you know, supporting Ukraine and that this war was a mistake. It's theoretically possible that a foreign actor would try and boost that information because it helps them militarily. That's theoretically possible. Even if you concluded that as 100%, like let's just say that this one turned out to be accurate. Right.

To then not do a comparative study of like, well, what's the Israel influence on social media and how much of a boost is the right wing getting from media networks that their pay does not actually justify what their viewership should be? I mean, the idea to like just look at that in a bubble and go, oh, look, this, only these guys are cheating for a false signal to make them look like they bigger than they are.

How about every single payday on CNN and Fox News? Well, look, I mean, they're not interested in doing any of that. But there's something, I just find something interesting about, well, I guess there's a reason why all of these guys got got on this obvious bullshit. Like you, even if you were, I don't know, Rob, I'm just, I'm sorry. This is not, this is, I'm being fair about this. me and you would never, we would never bring something like this to the show because you're one, you're like one kick of the tires away from it and the whole thing falling apart. And I would never,

anytime, dude, if I ever got something that confirmed my bias that was just like too good to be true. You know what I'm saying? Rob, like, you just found out a thing like, whatever, just take this, whatever. There's Israeli, there was a fire in an Israeli computer factory, and Ben Shapiro's views have plummeted by 70 something percent over the last three days. Like as soon as you saw that, and you might get excited like, oh, dude, what? Like, this is, you know, this is something that would really confirm, not confirm our bias, but like stroke our bias, our egos.

this would be a nice thing, you know what I mean? You'd go, dude, I got to look at the, I better be damn sure about these numbers before I fucking share them. Because what a claim to make. Really? Really? Do I really believe that Ben Shapiro's audience is just made up? No, I don't.

I think he's falling. I think he went from being like, like Ben Shapiro went from being like maybe the biggest conservative on the internet to just being one of the guys in the mix. You know what I mean? But like, I still think he's one of the guys in the mix. I would. So again. you're telling me like people actually jumped on the story that what are you saying here?

You're claiming that you think 70% of Tucker's audience was just made up or something. And, you know, the reason why people would jump on something like that, it kind of, it reminds me, Rob, a little bit of it's, it's like almost like a Russia gate for the Israel lobby. You know, you remember how comforting Russia Gate was to liberals? You know, I'm talking about like regular liberals who don't think about politics that much. But what they know is that like a woman's right to abortion is under attack and Donald Trump's sexist and, you know, whatever. For someone like that, Russiagate was so comforting because they had to think they're like, wait a minute, what happened here? What is this country I live in?

Hillary Clinton lost. You're telling me people like the grabbing by the pussy guy and all this shit. You know, like it's a very complicated thing. And then they go, oh, no, here's this answer. here's the answer for why you lost. You didn't. None of that was real. It was all cheating.

It was Russia. You know, and you're like, okay, now I can put all those complicated questions away. And so it's just, I don't know, I guess I found something interesting about people just loving the idea somehow that none of it was real, Rob. They didn't really lose the argument. And Tucker Carlson wasn't really kicking their shit in. And like all these people were, but unfortunately, guys, I'm sorry. It's here, Natalie, let's just do a real raw test. I did Tucker Carlson's show on October 7th, on the night of October 7th, Rob.

These attacks happened on the morning of October 8th. Okay? The show literally has just been there. Can you just, Natalie, can you use YouTube, Dave Smith, Tucker Carlson? I want to just compare this to my other shows on Tucker Carlson. There's just some raw data here. Let's see if there's any trend. comparing something that's a little more comparable, like when I do the show,

compared to the other times that I did the show, right? It's not just comparing random tweets to random tweets. I don't know. Okay, so if we just on YouTube, okay, so this is the one, sorry, Massad World Truman's, that's not this one. Okay, 1.4 million from six months ago and 1.4 million from five days ago. I'd say this one's doing substantially better. Got the same number of views in a matter of days.

In a matter of, by the way, those same days, the days under question, these are the five days that that thing's been getting the views it's been getting. You can look at Spotify the same. It's just like they have absolutely no evidence whatsoever that any of this has even impacted any of these people. That's just it. It's just a matter of like they found some accounts that had a violation of. viral post or two a couple days before and they're just pretending.

Anyway, it's just to see, I mean, look, what difference does it make it at this point? But look at all those people who just are sharing straight up propaganda, none of them will acknowledge it or apologize for it. None of them will go, oh, I got this wrong. And to speak to just how inexcusable it is, the internet makes it pretty easy to fact-check these things. you would send that moment and right away i was like man is this a real thing i press crock and it gives me the deaf and i just went is this true and instantly came back no it's a false comparison blah blah blah

and the idea that you're mark levin with the staff and before you jump on a story not only you not doing literally 30 seconds of fact checking which the internet will do which i'm not saying you can just rely on the fact check but sometimes you can read and be like oh yeah that kind of that makes sense or you might be like no that still sounds off and then you got to do more work that's where a little bit of instinct and years of experience can help you out. But the idea that a story like that would come across your desk and you don't ask a producer, hey, can you dig in and fact check this? And you don't even think to AI check it. And you just, I think Mark Levine just labeled it, this is true. I'm pretty sure that's what he said. And just, did he read it? Yeah. If you could

look that up, Natalie, I'm pretty sure I saw Laura Lumer. You're right. He said, you're right. Those were his only words. Wow. Immediately after Laura Lumer tweets, wow, immediately after Ukraine blew up Russian data centers yesterday and today, Tucker Kertarlson's views dropped 71%. I told you. And Mark Levin simply tweeted, you're right. Hey, Mark, no, she's fucking not. I mean, again, this is, Rob, this side.

Dude, think about how crazy this is. you know, it's like it's almost like their goal is just to drive us mad. When me and, I'm not, I don't think you saw this or we talked about this, when me and Matt Tardo over there were debating on Pierce Morgan, you know, the thing he said to me, his big line was, I'm a green beret and you're a comedian. He said it like three times during the thing. And you're like, yes, that's true. You're a green beret and I'm a comedian. I don't share garbage like that, and you do, because you're full of shit and I'm not. I don't know.

Like, how- He should change his first-in-to-max. How many years that we've been through this? Yeah. By the way, if I share a fucking graph that says 70% reduction, I'll make sure the bar isn't like this much smaller than the one next to him because that's not what a fucking 70% reduction is. You couldn't even eye it over once, Mr. I'm a green beret and you're a comedian. You couldn't eye that over once and just go like, hey,

70% is like most of something. Jesus. And then the whole time, Rob, what is their knock? Their whole knock on Tucker and Candace and all of them is that they're conspiracy theorists, right? Rob, they're connecting dots. They're asking questions. They're putting the blame on Israel and asking questions about Charlie Kirk and all this. You are the biggest fucking quack conspiracists out there.

Look at you guys. What was your conspiracy here? Rob, I mean, this is not to pretend something that you know a thing or two about this, me and you are both in this field. If you're alleging that like 70% of Tucker's audience or engagement or any of that is like completely fake, you're alleging a gigantic fraud. If you're alleging that about Tucker and Candace and Megan and McGregor and Blumenthal and all these people, you're talking about Rob like a gigantic fraud. You're alleging that about Tucker and Candace and Megan and McGregor and Blumenthal and all these people, you're talking about Rob like a lot. multi-million dollar fraud. People are making ad revenue. People are getting paid. It's like you have absolutely no evidence. You jumped on a gigantic conspiracy over nothing. None of you motherfuckers even have enough methodology to look at the bars.

Shut your mouth about Candace Owens and any of the podcast she's done. All of you guys. How many of them? How many of the exact same people who would mock conspiracy theories? Just jumped on this. Is this not a giant conspiracy theory that turned out to be completely false and never had any basis to it? Well, apparently they're just making shit up. That does seem to be what the territory that we're in.

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include a real gold bar in every hundred orders, which is pretty cool. These guys have flipped the fast fashion industry on its head, and I'm all for it. For a limited time only, our listeners can get 30% off, with underdog.com. There's no E in there, remember. It's U.N.D.R.D.O.g.com for up to 30% off. All right. Let's get back into the show. Well, good transition, actually. Yes, that's true. There's a lot of that. There's a lot of that going on. Where do you want to transition to? I'll let you pick because I want to get to as much of this stuff as we can. But I guess. Let's get into the Republican pitch for how for oil prices. All right. Let's do it because, of course, what this is, I guess the part of the transition there

is that the topic that Tardo is lying about is these Ukrainian attacks on diesel refineries. There has been between the war in Iran and the, of course, ongoing war in Europe. Eastern Europe that is also becoming more and more of an issue. There's been a lot of talk about this. I don't know. The Trump administration was bragging about a huge supposed win that they've got by getting the levels of oil coming out of the Middle East way up from what they had been at the worst of the double blockade.

Here is some comments talking about this. Obviously, this is an issue for the midterms, Rob. Let's go to the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson. There's lots of answers to that. The first thing is if the idea, we're all frustrated. Everybody's frustrated about fuel prices, obviously, but that's not related to policies. It's not related to the Republicans in office.

It's related to the- case, though, to a voter who knows Republicans are running the House and the Senate of the White House. Yes, but if I give them a couple of pure facts and they understand it easily, this is related to the street of prom moves. It is not yet resolved it. Now, there's lots of answers. All right, let's, dude.

you just can't believe it and he would go listen dude this isn't a matter of policy and if i could just have a few seconds i could explain it this is about the straight that the iranians closed after we launched a war against them it's a policy that was an act of god trump launched a war what are you going to do what i think i don't know dad i think you're being a conspiracy theorist right now and you're connecting dots between uh donald trump's decision to launch a a war that didn't need to be launched. The obvious intelligence that the strait would be closed, Donald Trump not having ability to reopen the straits. The straits being closed, meaning that there would be a crunch on oil and that the prices would go up. But if you connect all those dots to,

this was a policy decision to have this war, and it would influence our gas prices, of which Donald Trump has even said, hey, I understand gas prices are higher, but it's worth it because otherwise Iran would have a nuclear bomb and they would nuke you. But if you connect those dots to that they are up because of a policy decision, I guess that's just conspiracy theory. Yeah. I mean, I'm pretty linear dots. That's the pitch for the midterms. It really is unbelievable. Of course, there's also, you know, as the, you know, the first topic was referring to. The only real part, by the way, of that entire

claim at the beginning was that Ukraine has been attacking Russia. That much is true. We should talk a bit about the war in Ukraine. Oh, did you freeze up there, Rob? Or is that me? No, I'm still here, but we do have a couple other great clips of

Donald Trump pitching where oil is actually had in the country. Oh, yes. Yes. You know what? Let's do that. You're absolutely right. Let's do the Trump clips first. Let's go to one of the first try. It doesn't matter what order, but let's go to one of the Trump clips here because that's right. I forgot. I'm sorry, Rob. The president, of course, had some thoughts that I'm sure will reassure voters. And more oil is coming through the straight today than it was before the war. Do you believe that one? Refiners and retailers need to start dropping their prices right now. We want, we're getting on so much oil. And by the way, today, Russia. agreed to send us millions and millions of barrels of oil. And it's diesel. That's what we really need.

Thank you. And we're doing all of this and ensuring that Iran, again, we're doing all of this, and Iran is in deep trouble. Yeah. All right. So this is the big, this was the big announcement. that Donald Trump made a few days ago, and then, of course, this is also part of the, the, what's led to the tensions with, um, the recent tensions with Zelensky.

I don't know, Rob. I mean, it's hard. I'm curious to get your, your thoughts on this. I guess there's a lot of different ways to think about this, but isn't it just so crazy that it's like, even when people try to spin you like the 40 chess shit about any of these moves, it's always so obvious if you just follow it long enough that it's like no it's just that incoherent and that makeshift and that just desperate and and reckless and yes after all these years of fighting with russia that's our big ace in the whole is we could just do business with russia

alleviate things a little bit that way do you remember in the middle of this war when they just started doing business with iran before donald trump stopped when they just said a little bit they were like oh shit oil's getting all fucked up hey let's trade with iran let's By the way, they're having a real legal problem right now, Rob. I don't know if you've followed that because he signed this dumb Lindsay Graham Act. So now it's like a real question to the legality of whether she can even like do business and get a little bit of this diesel. Of course, there's a whole other angle which you might want to hit that. I don't think the deal even actually means anything or moves the needle substantially at all.

But just the fact that you're like, dude, so we got to launch these wars. I mean, dude, in the case of the war in Ukraine, it's like somewhere north of a million people have died in this thing. But like it's okay to just do business with Russia in the middle of it too, if that'll, you know, I mean, right before the midterm, it's okay to do a little bit of business with them. Jesus, I don't know. You go ahead. Well, I think that speaks to we should do midterms every week because apparently when votes are on the line, they'll actually. go, oh, you know, it's better than having wars is trading and having any prices. Hey, for this one week, we have to actually represent you the American public because we understand that these wars

don't actually help you in any way. And they're not in your strategic interest. And so for this one week, we'll go with the libertarian viewpoint of, hey, why not trading get along? Hey, let's allow markets to work in prices to be reduced. Ain't that nice? Yeah. And, Okay, so also just to take on some of the claims that Donald Trump made there, and we skipped the other video where basically just lied about gas prices. He said it was like $2 a gallon or something. Maybe we'll come back to that. But it was really odd. Last week, they were claiming that essentially oil was back to pre-war levels that a lot had been diverted through Saudi Arabia and they were getting boats through.

Now, that doesn't help the diesel situation. But in terms of like, you know, I guess the stuff you're putting into your cars or whatever, it was back to normal levels. So the part they weren't telling you was it was costing about $54 million a boat to get through compared to paying Iran a $2 million toll. So that's questionable whether or not that's a win. I think that translates to it off the top of my head. It was like $0.64 cents a gallon or something like that at the pump. But I kept reading the storyline. I was like, is this true?

And in the backdrop of that, you had that the Houthis are ramping up in Saudi Arabia. And I was just wondering, why is it that Iran isn't striking boats and that this many boats are apparently getting through with military. terror escort on the Oman side. And, you know, in classic Donald Trump fashion, this is somehow last week's news. I think there's been more strikes on the Hermuz this past week than there's been since like the beginning of the war. And the oil volume is back down. And then in terms of this diesel thing, which obviously undermines, listen, I'm not for

the Ukraine war. I think we got them stuck in a mess and we've been getting them killed ever since. And Zelensky's got to just let Russia keep what it's taken and, you know, and have have peace. But we are clearly undermining three years or four years of U.S. policy of trying to weaken Russia, of screaming at the other countries that we're still trading with Russia and buying natural gas, India most specifically. Yes. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Yes. You're exactly right. And now I think the absolute upside from what I've heard is about nine days worth of diesel. I mean, Donald Trump is so desperate to, I guess, somewhat normalized diesel prices coming into the

midterms that he's willing to undermine the entire, I mean a foolish policy, but undermine what's been the policy for the last four years to try and get nine days worth of diesel in the country. Yes. It's not the fact that all of that was great. It's not the fact that it's not the right policy even if it's only nine days. Like whatever, make a deal with Russia on diesel. In fact, yes, make lots more deals with the, but like it's the fact that it just reveals, oh, you always could have done this. We never had to do any of this. I'm sorry if they're such a big bad wolf. If they're Adolf Hitler and they're going to conquer all of Europe, then no, you starve them out, right? You don't make it, you don't do business with them. In fact, wasn't that a goddamn crime

during the Second World War? Weren't people arrested? They were doing business with Adolf Hitler. It's not an option. Oh, it is an option. Okay. Well, then that kind of proves something. Let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show. Have you ever been watching the part of the problem podcast and thought to yourself, man, I have got to wear the same underwear as Dave. I've just got to get in whatever boxer briefs he's wearing. I know you have. You all do. Well, if you want to, you now can at sheath.com. Sheath underwear, the underwear of legends, longtime sponsor of this program. So if you love the show, you really should support them. And I will tell you, I stand by this product. They are an amazing pair of boxer briefs.

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But seriously, the underwear is very good. Sheath.com, promo code problem for 20% off. All right. Let's get back into the show. Okay. I think everything you said about the, I think essentially that was all it. I think you were right about all that. That's what I've gathered to.

from all the reading I've done. It's like, yeah, he was bragging so much about getting the levels up last week. It's not what he said. He said more than before the war. That wasn't being reported. It was still less, but it was getting close to pre-war levels. But again, Rob, you're like, Jesus Christ, if this is the first thing approaching a win that Donald Trump has pulled, it's like, dude, you got to look at the fact that you've probably spent hundreds of billions of dollars to get back to what we had before the war. And of course, as you said, you got to factor in those crisis and, you know, to that. And look, man, I mean, yeah, the Houthis are in the war now.

Evidently, they've hit Saudi Arabia pretty solidly. You have, you know, just the dynamics of this war now being intertwined with the war in Ukraine. You have a lot of players involved in this. It's a pretty dangerous game to be playing. And going into the midterms to do a deal like this, as you pointed out, It's purely, you know, like purely performative and just like a band-aid over a real serious wound. This is not, this is the type of thing that'll move markets for a couple days and make a big show and something to say at a campaign speech. But it's not really doing anything to solve the problem.

I forget the exact numbers, but it's something, it really is a drop in a bucket, like 74,000 barrels compared to like 3 million that. are produced in America. It's like really not moving the needle. Okay. More broadly speaking, dude, about the war in Ukraine, I will say, this is probably, to some degree, a failure of mine. I just haven't talked about Ukraine enough over the last year. I don't know. I mean, I talked about it so much for so many years. And I guess maybe there's part of it was just like a big part of it is we're not, from what I understand, and we're not really funding it, nor are we pitching it. So there were years where the claim was we have to spend our money over there.

And there was the storyline of we're winning it. There was the storyline of Putin's trying to take over all of Europe. We were defending it going, guys, this is going to be an absolute mess. You're flirting with a bigger wire or even nuclear war. But since Trump flirted with the mineral deal or the mining deal, he's basically, from what I understand, walked away from Ukraine. I don't think we're spending a lot of money over it. Well, so it's it seemed it's not exactly right.

I mean, I think, well, I think essentially what I agree with you on is, well, basically, like, it was kind of like, look, dude, like when, of course, our guy Scott Horton wrote the book provoked. And we, you know, like, at the very beginning of the thing, I mean, we were talking about this on, on the show from years before Putin invaded in 22. And so like when the war first happened, there was a lot to say about, you know, how, you know, how, you know. the U.S. and NATO caused the whole thing and provoked the whole thing. And then how it could have ended so many times. And then they prolonged the whole thing. They totally created this. And Vladimir Putin, you know, also obviously created it.

But it was almost like Rob, like we won the argument. It was a very popular war. We were arguing against it. Then the people agreed with us. Then the candidate running on ending it on day one, won. Then they didn't pass any more funding packages in Congress. So it was kind of like, and Nick, quite full. frankly, if I could admit this, which is kind of fucked up maybe, but also I just got a little bored

with it. It was like, it was, it was like a meat grinding stalemate where people are just slowly dying. Like, it's a kind of said everything I have to say about the thing. And, you know, then, then just a lot was going on between Gaza and then Iran and Trump's election and there's a lot other shit going on. And, uh, but look, it should have been mentioned more this year that this is another major one of Trump's failures. And the, the major. reason why it's a failure rub it's not just yeah they did essentially transfer essentially to europe like all the funding now europe's doing the funding packages and not us but if you really look into it dude it's all types of like logistical support from the u.s intelligence agencies the pentagon like they could

not be conducting this war without us we're still so essentially what happened right was that donald trump went in there he said i could end this thing in day in one day um there was reason for him to be so confident. You know, part of that was Donald Trump bluster. It never would have happened if I were there. I'd ended in one day. Part of that was that, there was always a deal that had been sitting there the whole time, right? If you remember, right, the one that Boris Johnson squashed to begin with. That Vladimir Putin had offered such a reasonable deal

at that point that the Ukrainians would love to take now. And Trump tried to get again. That was like, hey, we'll give you the Donbass, we'll promise they never join, fucking NATO, blah, blah, blah, all this. you end the war by the time Donald Trump gets in there he offers that and Vladimir Putin says no it's like no it's not good enough man he goes you know what I got the Donbass right now you're not giving me anything you're not offering me anything by offering me the Donbass you're going to tell me they'll never join NATO until the next president you know Vladimir Putin's already been on the job 20 years he's thinking he might be on it 20 more he's thinking I got to deal with a lot more

presidents past Donald Trump he goes you could say that but I don't believe you so the deal doesn't work out right away. Donald Trump then, he gets frustrated with Zelensky, he has that meeting in the Oval Office where he snaps at him, all this, right? But even already in that period of time, Rob, and I don't know exactly what happened, just like with all these wars. I don't know exactly how Donald Trump goes from saying good things on the campaign trail to be in the worst president ever, but all the Hawks get in his ears, they start going, Cesar, the reason why Putin won't accept your offer. It's not because everyone before you was an idiot for getting you into this. situation to begin with do the opposite of what they did it's you have to negotiate from a place of

strength we have to build up zolensky so that we have something to threaten Putin with and then something to offer him that will take back this is really where you started but before the uh oval office incident this is where you started seeing the um the stuff about the mineral deals the stuff about all of this well maybe we ingrain ourselves even more in ukraine maybe the u.s essentially is permanently in ukraine or or maybe we come to this deal. And Vladimir Putin was just way past even trying to go. So essentially, they just kept the war going.

They've kept it going this whole time. And, you know, all the same people, certainly the ones in Europe, they want to keep it going for the same reason, just to keep grinding out Vladimir Putin. This is good for them. This essentially worked, you know? It gave them a long, years-long war really degraded Russia. So anyway, that's the situation there.

Then the most recent thing, Rob, right, is that now the reason why Trump is furious is because he, well, here, let's let's let him say it in his own words. Here's Donald Trump explaining to you why he's furious at Zelensky now. And here's how it relates to the war in Iran and the whole diesel crisis. Here's, here's the president. I look at it differently. Zelensky could have settled this war many times, many, many, many times. And he chooses not to. very difficult.

It's a war that should have never been started. If I were president, if the election weren't rigged, I would have been president, and that war would have never started. But he could have settled many times, and he chose not to. We said you can do whatever you want to Russia. Don't hit the refineries because that's a world problem that's caused. And he wants to make problems for the world. He wants to make problems for our farmers, our ranchers,

with diesel fuel, because Russia supplies a large portion of the diesel fuel throughout the world. And we told him, do whatever you want, but don't hit the diesel fuel, because there's a big problem. And what does he do? He goes and hits the diesel fuel. He can do whatever he wants,

but he can't do that because we have a world's problem. And the problem is caused by the lack of refineries for diesel fuel. So what does he do? He goes and hits refiners. And I said to him, do what you want, don't hit refineries. There's plenty of targets. Don't hit refra fin it. And he went out and he hit.

And he's not going to affect our farmers. And he's not going to affect our ranchers. And he's not going to affect the rest of the world. So he better damn well stop. I agree with you. And you know what I suggest? I suggest they get a new leader who can make a deal. Because he could have made many deals that for some reason he never does.

And let me go a step further. If I were president, You wouldn't have ever had that war. That war would have never started. There was no reason that that war with Ukraine and Russia started. It started due to incompetence. It should have never started. You wouldn't have lost it.

Okay. You can pull it up. It gets pretty repetitive after there. Wanted to get to the point where he calls for a new president. There's something, Rob, I'm curious your thoughts on this. There's something to me just about saying if I were president that just, it's like he's using the talking point from the campaign, but it just doesn't. You just can't start a sentence with that when you are president.

It's a weak way to start a sentence. If I were president, it never would have happened. Well, you are president now. So fucking solve it. Doesn't work as well. I'm sorry, this is ADD, but can you just pull up that video for one more second, Natalie? Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Got me already. No, no, you don't have to play it. Dude, it looks like he's seeing, it looks like he's seeing Ben Shapiro's eyebrow guy and turning into the lorrex. dude, Lorex is a good pull on that. Thank you, Natalie, for pulling that back up. It's good you did that. He wouldn't be right for weeks if he didn't.

Go ahead, Rob. Yeah, well, I mean, they haven't had elections in Ukraine for a long time, and I certainly think Zelensky probably has gotten in the way of getting a deal done. And so, you know, this is probably good policy. But the timing clearly is interesting and just how desperate Donald Trump, Trump is to avoid the repercussions of his, you know, it's another war that didn't need to happen. And could any other president wouldn't have done? It's the Iran war, the one that we're currently in. That's the bigger mess mess for us. So yeah, if I were president, that war never would have

happened. We can all say that now, Rob. If I were president, that word never would have happened. Uh, Kamala Harris could be saying that right now. So you're probably right that the Ukraine war did not need to happen. Biden was a real idiot where he kept saying, uh, we were a few to say that NATO will, that Ukraine won't join NATO. The war absolutely was avoidable. But there's another war that was avoidable. It's the Iran one. And that's the one that you got us into. And it's the bigger mess right now. So, you know, it just kind of falls on deaf ears to be complaining about the other wars when you got, when you got the worst war on your hands. It's, yeah, man, I look, like with all this stuff. What a mess. What a mess of a situation to be in,

going into midterms. And, you know, Donald Trump can sit there and kind of cast himself as the defender of the farmers and the workers and he will not let Zelensky do this. Meanwhile, Zelensky is doing it. Also, I mean, I got to say it's hard, it's really, really hard to not notice kind of like the contrast between the way Zelensky is treated and the way Netanyahu is treated. you know and look I'm not trying to to boil this down to a simpler answer than it is obviously there's lots of layers and lots of reasons to why the relationship between Israel and the

U.S. is just much more intimate and close-knit than the relationship between Ukraine and the U.S. You know, you just don't have the same type of devotion from every, you know, leader. But, you know, it's like this type of thing, like, we don't want you to bomb them. Oh, then you go bomb them. We are funding your effort. We have your back. And yet you're still pulling us into this thing we don't want. Like, we've had direct examples of that happen with Netanyahu.

And it's just hard not to notice that the way Donald Trump dressed down Zelensky in the Oval Office, the way he just flippantly calls for a new leader. That's a pretty big deal for the United States to call for a new leader in one of its sock puppet states. You would never, you would just never. Even after, I mean, dude, do you remember, Rob, I know I've brought it up a few times because all the Hawks were celebrating when he forbade. Is that forbidden? He said that Netanyahu was forbidden from bombing southern Lebanon. Remember?

Menonio's been bombing southern Lebanon. nonsense. And what does Trump say? Oh, Trump says, he calls on the president of Israel to give him a pardon. I mean, he's he is not calling for new leadership there. You know, it's just, I don't know, I'm not saying that alone proves anything, but it does kind of, I don't know, man, if somebody, you know, if somebody came into your house and like put a drink on a table without a coaster and you flipped out at them and then somebody else at the same party does the exact same thing and you don't say anything to them it does kind of leave you going like hey what's up with that why were you so free to do it here and yet so restrained to do it as you said in this much more relevant relationship you know

say what you will about ukraine in the situation with russia there it's not um it was NATO and the West that created the situation. It was Putin who invaded. You know, Ukraine can only be blamed so much for dragging us into anything, whereas like Israel has clearly dragged us into a conflict that was theirs and not ours. And yet we get none of this. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is superpower. People are always talking about getting healthier, making New Year's resolutions or plans for the summer to get in shape. If you really want to do something for your health, check out

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promo code problem at checkout for an additional $20 off your membership. All right. Let's get back into the show. Rob, you know the secrets. Go ahead. I got nothing to add on that, but I agree. All right. You want to introduce me to the new press secretary lady?

Oh, I have not seen. I saw like five seconds of this. I can't believe it's real. You sent the video. You set this up, Rob. Well, why, well, let's, why don't we play a little bit of it? it and then we can we can give the breakdown all right let's hear from her i am so honored to work for president trump and the american people as the new white house press secretary

i want to thank president trump he has placed all right so here was my takeaway you know in the movie tropic thunder there was this thing of you can't go full retard I feel like Donald Trump went full hot chick here. Like the other hot chicks were like cute but had mouths on them and you're like, oh, this is like TV attractive but can talk. He went beauty pageant contestant where they gave the people to him and he was like, well, she's the odd is give her the job and she's literally just reading off the piece of paper. I mean, I don't know if this sounds mean, but you're literally like as soon as you almost

just want to start scanning the room for dudes and you're like, so who's, who's, you're like, I mean, come on. Like, who's, those dicks just sucks together? I know it's one of you guys. I mean, at this point, it's like they literally, they put up a chick who you're like embarrassed,

you dated 10 years ago. Like, it's like, so you'd be like, oh, God, no, not. This is what adults who have concerns over serious issue of policy, this is who we're supposed to come to to be reassured that we totes apps got it,

I'm sorry. What are we doing? What is this world doing to be bad? Can we play a little bit more of her? Actually, I want to see a little bit of what she's got. I have wanted to work for him for a very long time. I'm looking forward to working with each of you as well, especially as we are in the middle of the midterm blitz with energy and excitement. Oh, my God. Rob, pause it, pause it, oh my God,

she's reading like she's reading to a kindergarten class, Rob. I told you it's beauty pageant. She smiles after every line like. Like she struggles to read. Like she struggles. She's reading. She's reading like,

I'm so excited to be here for the job, and I'm really looking forward to working with all of you guys, but she has to read that. She can't like memorize that part of it. Like even like cheat a little bit while you're coming up and read those first few sentences. and kind of have that going so you can do it like smooth. So she has to go, I am very excited about the job and looking forward to working with

all of you. Like, oh, my God, this is how bad she is. This woman's going to do. This might be worse than Biden's black lady than his black lesbo, than his history setting. This woman's set, Bimbo history. This is a whole different history setting. This might be worse. I'm listen, I'm saying I haven't seen anything else.

If she's this bad at reading, oh man, she might be worse than Kerr Jean Chierre when it comes to like answering tough questions. This might get real fun. Well, she already had a bad blunder where she referred to Donald Trump as her husband. And then, and then, yeah, it's like it's the last question of the thing. And it was like an honest stumble. It might also be a first day nerves, but she is reading off the piece of paper. I said it's like beauty pageant or bat mitzvah energy of reading a speech. But she's also doing the hot chick thing where after every line she gets right,

she looks up and smiles because she's impressed with herself. I got to study her a little bit more. Yeah, yeah. Okay, let's play this a little bit more. I got to study this chick. Mid terms. Thanks to President Trump. Just look no further than last night in Youngstown.

Ohio, where President Trump delivered another blockbuster rally out on the trail. The arena was overflowing with enthusiasm as thousands came out to support President Trump, as well as special guest Jake Paul and football legend John Gruden. The president also announced the Department of War has officially selected Cleveland, Ohio, as the new home for the U.S. Navy 7th. Trump said, don't worry, you're hot, just smile at them. Doesn't matter what you say. Just get up there.

Make sure you do your makeup and smile. She really does. It's just what you said. She smiles. It's after she completes the sentence. She goes, nailed it. Totally read, totally read that one. Oh, geez, man.

Wow. Wow. Oh, what a, what a country we are. It is, it's scary that we still have two more years of Donald Trump to go down in flames. I just don't know how ridiculous this thing is going to get. Here, let's skip a skip to the timestamp that Rob had where it's whatever the getting to the questions.

Go ahead. Natalie, you might have to search the transcript for that, but just Trump. It will come up. But no, I didn't think to timestamp it. It was just like kind of a, it's fine. It wasn't that bad of a blunder, but for first day on the job, it's not great. She's very nervous, clearly. I think I saw a clip recently.

I feel like we might get a Donald Trump crash out for the next two years. I think it might get a fun in that way if he actually loses his cool and it's just real snappy with people. Yeah. I think, you know, the, he's not going to like this. You know, he's not going to like just the kind of being the butt of the joke and the way things are going. But man, yeah, it's just hard, hard to believe that he actually put this woman in the way.

in charge. Here, just move to her taking questions. Let me get a little taste of how she interacts with people when she's not reading off her script. Yeah, anywhere right there. Let's see what we got. To make things less tough for Republicans in the midterms. Well, Peter, I

get to do what I was doing on the outside already, which was hoping to amplify, multiply, and expand upon President Trump's incredible agenda for the American people. And what I hope to do in this position is to take that into an official capacity and only build on only amplify and only multiply to the extent possible

all of the wins he's making for Americans. For Americans to understand how much has changed in this brief period of- All right. All right. We can wrap up here. Well, it's going to be fun watching her defend this train wreck, Rob. This is the woman they got up there. I think we're going to get some fun moments out of her.

All right, we do got to wrap up there. PorchTor.com to come see Rob on the road. over the next couple weeks, comicdavsmith.com to come see us together for the rest of the year. And yeah, catch you guys tomorrow. Peace.