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- [00:01]
Dave Smith
Hold that serve. There's no time for pickleball. Because you're gonna want to hear this. NOOM now has GLP1s. No way. Oh, yes way, Fred. Psychology and meds. That's how Noom helps you lose the weight and keep it off.
- [00:12]
Robbie the Fire Bernstein
That's really smart.
- [00:13]
Dave Smith
Oh, Danny. It's Noom smart. And they start at just 149 bucks, and they're shipped to your door in seven days. Holy smokes, that's fast. But not as fast as my service game. Hey, who's ready to get pickled? Get started with Noom GLP1 today. Not all customers will medically qualify for prescription medications. Compounded medications are not reviewed by the FDA for safety, efficacy, or quality. Hey, guys. Today's show is brought to you by Yokratom.com home of the $60 kilo. Of course, as you probably know, Yocratum.com has been sponsoring this show for many years. At this point, the company is run by great people and they really support what we do. So if you are over the age of 21 and you enjoy Kratom, make sure to get it from yocratum.com. all their stuff is lab tested, so you know it's quality, it's delivered right to your door, and it is the best price in the business. Six sixty dollars for a kilo. You're not gonna beat that. Yocratum.com. all right, let's start the show. What's up? What's up, everybody? Last episode of 2024, of course. I'm Dave Smith and I'm joined by Robbie the Fire Bernstein. How are you doing? Happy New Year, sir.
- [01:24]
Robbie the Fire Bernstein
Happy New Year's, Mr. Smith.
- [01:27]
Dave Smith
It's 2024. Is. Is going to be over in, well, a few hours. It is. Wow. What a year. What a year it's been. This is our. This has become a tradition on the show where on New Year's we do a year in review episode. And, you know, I'm not sure we can cover everything from this year because this has been a wild one. I think. I think it's safe to say that this was the craziest year that we've been covering this stuff me and you have been doing. So I started this podcast in, I believe it was in 2012 when I first started it, and I was fairly inconsistent with it at the beginning. And then I stopped for a little bit. Then I came back to doing it. I want to say, was it 2017 that you joined the podcast? I want to say.
- [02:28]
Robbie the Fire Bernstein
Sounds about right.
- [02:29]
Dave Smith
I want to say it was somewhere around there. I remember, I mean, I remember doing the, I remember doing a reaction episode to the 2016 election with Mike Brancatelli, who was in Rob's slot years before Rob came on. So it must have been the next year in 2017 when you came on. So we've been, we've, we've been at this together now for a while. It's been quite a while of me and you doing the show together and I just never, I remember after 2020 thinking like, well, this is the craziest year we've ever covered and nothing could ever top that. You know, like the year of lockdowns and riots and all of this crazy shit. It was just wild. And I was thinking about this earlier today and I don't know, Rob, I mean, you tell me. I think 2024 topped it in terms of like a crazy year. As crazy as Covid and lockdowns and all of that stuff was this year. Just as I'm almost like, as we're going back, like what are the big events to cover? You're like, wow, this one to me was the craziest year of politics to be covering and doing a show about it really was just truly wild. I don't know. What do you think, Rob? 2024 or.
- [03:41]
Robbie the Fire Bernstein
It sure is a lunar year of assassinations, presidents with dementia, stirring up wars. But if I had to pick one, I would go the primetime Covid year.
- [03:51]
Dave Smith
When they shut down, I guess, I guess in terms of one story, probably there's nothing as big as shutting down the country, but in terms of like every story. Well look, let's, we'll, we'll jump into it as, as we wrap up this year and I have a feeling 2025 is going to be a pretty interesting year too. Although in a different way it does. It, it feels to me Rob. And I'm not a kook. People who listen to show. I'm really not like. In terms of like, I'm not like. I mean I, I'm sure I would be considered a conspiracy theorist by some.
- [04:29]
Robbie the Fire Bernstein
People, but really I think just an anti Semite.
- [04:34]
Dave Smith
Well, that's clear. That's if my Twitter replies are any indication. I've been informed by many people that I'm a self hating Jew, but there something like I'm not. I don't get into kooky conspiracies anybody. Listen, if you're paying attention, you're a conspiracy theorist to some degree or if you're paying attention to being honest, you to some degree believe in conspiracies. But I don't get into, like, real kooky stuff, and I don't, like. I don't, like, talk a lot about spirituality or things like that. I will say there was a feeling, particularly from, like, November 5th on then the end of this year, but even a little bit before that, it did feel like, you know, when people talk about, like, the fourth turning or like it felt like there was, like, some new chapter that we entered where, like, almost like there it was a massive realignment politically, culturally. Like Donald Trump is about to be sworn in as president again, and there's not even that much hysteria about it. It seems like it's just kind of been accepted, and I don't know, it's just. It's. It's wild to me. And it was something that I got wrong, which I'm not known for doing, but something I got wrong this year was that I just. To me, it seemed like all of the signals, like, coming into 2024, I was like, look, all the signals are they're not going to allow this guy, Donald Trump, to win the presidency. Like, they'll do anything to steal it from him. And it certainly does seem like they tried just about everything and it failed.
- [06:16]
Robbie the Fire Bernstein
And Trump made peace with Netanyahu.
- [06:19]
Dave Smith
Well, yeah, something. Something happened. But anyway, that's just like. But kind of my. Almost like my biggest takeaway from the year is that it seems like we've just entered a new chapter where there's a whole different dynamic, and now, you know, we're getting ready to go into a second Trump term without the hysterical left, it seems.
- [06:40]
Robbie the Fire Bernstein
It looks like the Trump temper tantrum has come to an end. And on top of that, I believe, at least for now, it feels like we're done with the woke nonsense, which is particularly relevant for what I've come up with now from, I guess, year eight to year 12 in comedy or maybe even earlier, let's go year six or seven in comedy to year 11 or whatever the hell I am. I don't really keep track of these things, but there was definitely the woke landscape and having to, you know, pick, pick if you want to be completely outside of the mainstream and just do what you're going to do, which was kind of nice that I relegated myself to that early. But it does seem like the wheel is turning and that we're kind of done with that shit.
- [07:22]
Dave Smith
I think that quite possibly the two biggest results of 2024 are the death of wokeism and the corporate media. And those are, you know, look, you never know for sure with any of these things. And it's. You know, perhaps they both reemerge in some way. I don't think they will. I think they're kind of. I think they've both seen their heyday and are now in real trouble. But there's this.
- [07:56]
Robbie the Fire Bernstein
Be like grunge music. You'll still have some people holding on to it.
- [07:59]
Dave Smith
Yes, that's right. There'll still be some people today who swear to you that Nirvana is one of the greatest bands that ever existed. But then there'll be the broad consensus amongst adults. It's like, no, they are not. They're.
- [08:10]
Robbie the Fire Bernstein
They were certainly not the greatest. I don't want to shit on Nirvana.
- [08:13]
Dave Smith
I like Nirvana, but they had some good songs. I'm not even trash. I'm not trashing Nirvana. I'm just saying they're not what they were built up to be by their most hardcore fans. I'm sorry. I'm pissing a demographic off unnecessarily on this. I don't even have that strong opinions on.
- [08:27]
Robbie the Fire Bernstein
I don't think there's that many people holding on to Nirvana as number one.
- [08:32]
Dave Smith
Probably not that many, but there was a time when lots of people would have sworn that they were number one anyway.
- [08:40]
Robbie the Fire Bernstein
And I've heard Eddie Vedder pitch abortions too many times to think that guy's cool anymore.
- [08:45]
Dave Smith
Yeah, there you go. I will say so. The death of Wokeism and the death of the corporate media, or at least their being tremendously damaged this year. And of course, these. There's something about them where they kind of go hand in hand. And obviously, like the corporate media used Wokeism as a tool constantly. But it does seem to me that there is something where both of them needed to die in order for us to have a chance at anything. Now, that doesn't mean that all the problems are solved because they're gone. And it doesn't mean that there aren't bad alternatives that can also rise up. But they both had to die because you can't even start to have a conversation with those forces around. Like the. The kind of. At the core of Wokeism is in opposition to free speech. And one of the things, you know, this was like one of the. The points that early Jordan Peterson used to make. And early Jordan Peterson was great before he became political and went to the Daily Wire and all this stuff. But, like, when he was just a cultural thing.
- [10:04]
Robbie the Fire Bernstein
We have to protect the Jews. The Israel doesn't have enough.
- [10:08]
Dave Smith
Yeah, it's. Well, look, man, I mean, he's like, said it himself, get your act together.
- [10:12]
Robbie the Fire Bernstein
And give money to Jews.
- [10:14]
Dave Smith
Right, Right. Yeah. Well, he's. Look, he's made the point himself before, but sometimes being, like, being highly intelligent, particularly high verbal intelligence is a great quality, but it's also a dangerous one. And there's something dangerous about a person who has very high verbal intelligence because they can take a bad position and rationalize it very well, make very compelling arguments for very bad positions. And anyway, but one of the points that he made, which I always thought was very interesting, this is early Jordan Peterson, and of course he rose to fame for anybody who doesn't know that he was battling wokeism on college campuses and, well, in Toronto and then more generally just kind of got into, you know, I don't know, picking fights with, you know, trans activists and stuff like that. I shouldn't say picking fights, responding to their insanity, but one of the points that he would make at the beginning was, you know, there was this bill. It was a Bill C16, I believe. And it was about, like, it was compelled speech. Was his big beef with it, that it was essentially, it was a law that was like, mandating that you call people by their preferred pronouns or something like that. And he took a big stand against this. And he was like, listen, this is not a small deal. This is a huge deal. You cannot have compelled speech laws. And he. He started talking about freedom of speech. And I think I always had the attitude that. Which I still do, but I always had the attitude that freedom of speech was a good. In and of itself, that, like, I don't need, you know, in. In the same sense that, like, the Declaration of Independence just says, God wants people to be free. And it's like, there's no more explanation needed than that. Like. Like liberty isn't something that you should even have to debate. It's. It's your birthright. It's a natur. And same with freedom of speech. You have the right to say what you want to say, and that's a value in itself. Like. And what I mean by that is that it would be evil to stop somebody's ability to say what they want to say, regardless of whether it's a good point or whether it's true or whether it doesn't matter. You're a human being. You're not a slave. You're a free man. And you have the right to express yourself. And women, too. If. If women could do it a little less, we would all appreciate it. But whatever, you do have the right to do it. But the point that Jordan Peterson made, which I thought I remember at the time being like, oh yeah, there's really something to this, was that he was like, freedom of speech is also necessary for consequential, consequentialist reasons that you can't, you need to have freedom of speech so that we can figure things out. And then if I can't say whatever I want to say and then you can't respond to that and you, we can't synthesize and get to the best idea. Like we can't get there if we're. Anyway, my, my broader point is that what Wokeism would do is that they, what's known as woke, you know, these days is that they would lay down landmines all around any controversial opinion. So it's like there'd be these things where it's like, okay, whether it's trans kids or you know, tax policy or war or whatever it is, if there are all these landmines around and everybody feels like they can't speak their mind, then we can never get anywhere, you know. And so like wokeism almost has to die in order for us to even have a shot to start thinking through these ideas and talking about them. And then also with the corporate media, they just had to die. It's just like this state sponsored propaganda machine that's, that's, that's purpose is to ruin anybody who might be a threat to the regime's power. And so I will say that while look, America is still a mess in a lot of ways, we still have, we have two very dangerous proxy wars going on, more $35 trillion in debt. We have a very dumbed down culture and still very kind of hot racial and political and cultural divides in this country. The dollar is in bad shape. We've got a lot of issues. But I do leave 2024 feeling very optimistic. Like I think that coming into this year, if you had like, if I had gotten to see at the beginning everything that happened, it'd be like, whoa, this was really a remarkably revolutionary year in this country. And I do think we go into 2025 with like I would say the prospects for liberty, the prospects for prosperity are just to me at least look better than I could have imagined. Like I feel better about the future of the country than I have at least since, since the COVID insanity. I don't know what, how you feel.
- [15:29]
Robbie the Fire Bernstein
Rob, culturally and from a freedom of speech perspective and maybe putting the deep state a little bit on of its toes, except for the whole Israel war funding thing. All seems exciting. However, Trump, he's a low interest guy and he wants to spend as much as anyone's ever spent. And it seems like we're coming to the end of pretending like we're in a good economy here with. I don't want to get in too much trouble with Gene, but boosted job numbers. I'll just float it. I'll take, I'll take an angry email. I just, I wonder when the, I mean, the problem with screaming about the bill coming due on all the government spending and what it's done to prop up the markets and when some of these bubbles are going to burst, you become a broken record who seems to be wrong for over a decade. But I feel like that that problem continues to linger. And I don't think Donald Trump's any better on actual fiscal policy. So I think that's a problem coming into this next year. But a lot of the biggest stupidity of the woke culture, censoring the Internet, having an open border and a lot of the other shenanigans that we've had to, to deal with does seem to be going away.
- [16:41]
Dave Smith
Yeah, yeah, no, I think I agree with all of that. I think that's spot on. All right, so let's just get into it. Biggest stories of the year. I think I got to start with the number one. I just think the biggest story of the year is the Trump assassination attempt.
- [16:56]
Robbie the Fire Bernstein
And I think the analytics are behind you.
- [16:59]
Dave Smith
Yeah, well, I mean, look like Donald Trump, the man who has. You kind of can't overstate this. Right? Like, and that's why I like some to do these episodes sometimes. Because when we do the show three days a week, four days a week now, you know, you're, you're in the news cycle, you're talking about the latest thing. But it's good sometimes to try to zoom out and look at the big picture. As, as I regularly try to do Donald Trump in 2016, you just can't overstate how incredible what he pulled off was. Donald Trump is the however you feel about him. This 2016 was historic. He was the first president in the history of the United States of America who had zero political or military experience. The only one. There was no other. Every single president in the history, you know, you go look on, you know, they have like those rulers with all the presidents on the back of them. Every single one of them was either in the military at a very high level, like a general like Eisenhower or something like that, like a five star general, or they had a bunch of political experience. They all came from kind of like political royalty. Donald Trump's the only one. And in order to win in 2016, he had to defeat the two most powerful political families in modern American history. In my lifetime, no question about it. He took out the Bushes and the Clintons. It's just an unbelievable accomplishment. Okay, so he does that in 2016. He is. Then, after the year of 2020, he loses to Joe Biden. People can feel however they feel about that election, but the final result was that, you know, Joe Biden became president less than two months after that. You have January 6th. After January 6th, Donald Trump is finished. I mean, as finished as any political figure could be. He even had to come out and denounce January 6th and throw his own people under the bus and then admit that Joe Biden will be the president. He gets on a plane, doesn't show up to the inauguration. The first president in my lifetime to not even show up to the inauguration for the next one. Even amongst Trump voters, most of them are just tired and over it. And after the year that was 2020, just such a disaster. The guy whose big pitch was, you'll get so tired of winning. And in his last year was nothing but losing. Then he loses the election. Then there's this thing that, you know, they make out to be an insurrection. And. And he is done. He's done. Then on top of that, he's got the legal system weaponized against him. His home in Mar A Lago is raided. He's convicted of felonies. He is just. And he comes from that position. You got to come back. You got to throw in one more victory.
- [20:03]
Robbie the Fire Bernstein
And bad midterm elections, in which most of his picks did particularly bad, which. Which seemed like, hey, is this the end of the Donald Trump run? And does the Republican Party need to move on from him? Because he just cost us the midterms?
- [20:18]
Dave Smith
So. Right. So this got. Somehow is. That's a very Good point. That 2022 is a disaster for Donald Trump. So this guy comes back and wins this historic presidency is the greatest political comeback of all time. I mean, people are. Before this, people used to say Richard Nixon was the greatest political comeback. And just. It doesn't even compare. I mean, Trump's comeback is so much more impressive. You know, Nixon's like, oh, he lost to Kennedy, and then he came back and won like, oh, all right, whatever. That's nothing.
- [20:48]
Robbie the Fire Bernstein
But Nixon wasn't contending with the Democratic Party. That went full retard.
- [20:53]
Dave Smith
Yeah, well, that's also. That's also true. Although he was contending with the deep state. But that's, that's another. That's a whole nother show for another day. But so in the middle of this process, as Donald Trump is coming back, or not even the middle so much as kind of the end of it, he is nearly assassinated on national television. I mean, this, this was something that. It was the biggest moment of the year. It was the. And I'm talking about the first assassination attempt, obviously, there was the second one, too, and all of them are very shady, which we talked about before. But when I'm reviewing the year, I'm talking about the first one where he's actually, you know, if you watch the trajectory of the bullet, like they've done all these cool things online, it's about to blow his freaking brains out until he just happens to turn his head and it nicks him in the ear. An unbelievable moment. That really did, I think, I just think it changed the landscape of everything in this country. You know, Tucker Carlson spoke at the Republican National Convention, which was only, what was it, a couple weeks after Donald Trump assassination attempt. It was very, it was very soon after. And the thing he said there was. He goes, the first thing, we got to recognize that we live in a new world. This is a whole new world now. After that, I do think, like, it was. There was. It was shocking to see. It was. There's a lot of crazy things have been happening in this country in the last 20 years, and then particularly in the last 10 years, and then particularly in the Last four years. But political assassinations on that level felt like something that happened in the 60s. That's not something you really deal with anymore. But it was, in many ways, it. It felt to me, it was kind of similar to the way I felt on 9 11, where, you know, I'm showing my age here now. But I was 18, 9 11. So I was old enough to, like, think about this. And I remember, you know, coming out of the 90s and being a kid of the 80s and the 90s, when 911 happened, it almost felt like this reminder that history is real and that we're also humans and that we're also a part of this. It almost, it felt like before 911 that something like that, this is what you'd read in a textbook happened in 1941. You know what I mean? But, like, this couldn't happen now to America. And then when it happens, you're like, oh, we're actually, we're actually part of history. You know, we're not like sitting above it, looking back at the rest of it, like, this is. We're participants in this. And, you know, to think that, like, in the 1960s, you had high profile assassinations of beloved American leaders. I mean, you had, obviously the biggest one being Jack Kennedy getting his brains blown out on national television. Um, you had Martin Luther King and Malcolm X and Bobby Kennedy. I mean, they're like really influential leaders who were all taken out, you know, and that. That always seemed, in modern America just seemed like something that can't happen. And when Donald Trump got shot, you were kind of like, oh, that's like a real possibility that's on the table that somebody could be assassinated. And I do think in many ways, it shook up America. It made us understand how real the game that we're playing is. And the other factor that was so interesting about it, and I remember us joking about this at the time, and I was joking about this on stage that night. When Donald Trump got shot, I was at the comedy mothership. I'll be back there in. In August, by the way. But the. It kind of called the bluff of the Democrats because all of them had to come out and wish him a speedy recovery and denounce political violence. And it was like, oh, so he's not Hitler? So then your whole thing does not actually make sense because you don't wish Hitler a speedy recovery and you don't denounce people for using violence against Adolf Hitler. If democracy is really on the line, then you should actually be happy. You should be upset that the guy missed. That's the only logical conclusion. And so it just had this, like, double whammy effect of kind of rattling the country and then exposing the Democrats in the corporate media for the liars that they are. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Monetary Metals, an amazing company. I love these guys so much. They are revolutionizing the precious metals space. For many years, people have owned gold and silver as a hedge against inflation and a way to kind of remove yourself from the fiat currency that we all live under. But monetary Metals were the first ones to allow you to grow your wealth in precious metals. 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- [26:22]
Robbie the Fire Bernstein
All checks out. I don't. I don't much to add to that. That. All that. That, that. That lines up.
- [26:29]
Dave Smith
All right, so now the other.
- [26:30]
Robbie the Fire Bernstein
It also just made him look. It just made him look super fucking cool. I mean, that's kind of part of. For sure, and part of what just rallied people more to the Trump cause. I think that there were two big variables, but one was they did see that the deep state was working against him, and they started to see that so much of the reaction to Donald Trump was actually just a media temper tantrum and everyone actually treating him unfairly. And I've called Trump like the racist old lady being harassed in the street. That while she's being harassed in the street, you're gonna take the old lady's side and go, why is this person being harassed? And then if you leave the racist old lady alone to say racist comments, you're like, my God, that's a racist old lady. And so I feel like Trump benefits the more he's being attacked, because he's not perfect, but the more you attack him, you just kind of show, well, you're not giving the guy a fair chance. Which it's hilarious to look at Trump and see him as the underdog. That's not getting a fair chance. But that's what they did. And so I think, in part, people did realize this system's being unfair. They let Trump be the underdog. I think that that won him a lot of support. I don't think any of the court cases helped him. I helped them. I think it helped put him in the news and had people going, hey, I don't think that this is the way the system should be working. And then also for. I've said this before on the show, for all the talk of the dignity of the office and that that was the complaint with Trump. I think people did look at Kamal and say, that's just too stupid to represent me.
- [28:00]
Dave Smith
I mean, 100%. 100% with all of that. Yeah. I mean, I think that the, as we said before, I think when they rated Mar? A Lago is when he won the nomination, and there was a real shot that he wasn't going to be the Republican nominee. Yeah, he still might have been, but I think that's what really won it for him. Okay, now, the other, the other biggest story right after the Trump assassination has got to be that the sitting President of the United States of America dropped out of his reelection campaign after the most. After. Okay, let me rephrase that. There was a coup against the sitting President of the United States. Now, I will say, by the way, you know, I was watching earlier today, Noam from the comedy sellers I had Scott Horton on. And I was watching. Yeah, it's. It wasn't very good, but I was watching it. No, I mean, Scott did great, but it's just, you know, anyway, whatever. I like Gnome, but I just did not think he handled that interview particularly well. But there they were arguing about the Maidan revolution, and he was taking issue with me and Scott calling it a coup. And, you know, Scott's just sitting there and he's like, all right, well, call it whatever you want to. Here's what happened. The US through the National Endowment for Democracy and through USAID and all this, poured tens of millions, Maybe even over $100 million into a protest movement, then brokered this deal. And he's going through the whole thing is like. So I don't know, what do you want to call that? So I understand when I say Biden was couped, maybe you're going to argue with me about whether coup is the correct word or not, or was it a coup d'etat or a coup d'whatever or what. But the point is that, like the, you know, the point in Maidan is that the west backed a movement that overthrew a democratically elected president of Ukraine to put in the people they wanted to get the deal they wanted done. Call that whatever you want. Call it a fuck shit job, like whatever you want to call it, that's what it was. And whatever you want to call this with Joe Biden, like, it is not how the system works or how it's supposed to work. And it is crazy that, look, there's. There's a primary process and there's a 25th amendment. The Democrats decided to abandon the primary process. The corporate media decided to pretend he wasn't senile. And they all decided up until this day not to invoke the 25th Amendment. So instead they just had all of the big donors and all of the high profile Democrats force him against his will, out of the race. And then he drops out in the shot. Shadiest of fashions. The shadiest of fashions. A letter, like, not even a, not even an address to the nation, a letter that's not even White House stationary. Just utterly bizarre. And, but, but this story being, I'll say second to the assassination attempts or maybe, maybe third to Trump winning on election day and the assassination attempts. But this is right up there as the biggest story of the year. And, and I'm not even sure which aspect of it because there's lots of different parts of it. But I'll say for, I guess the first part, even before the coup or whatever you want to call it, was just the, the what, what I think is even more so than that, even more so than the way they remove Joe Biden. What I think will have a bigger lasting impact was just the, the corporate media pretending there was nothing wrong with Joe Biden. And then that debate performance, like nothing could have come together more perfectly to just totally destroy whatever remaining credibility. The institutions like CNN and MSNBC and ABC News and stuff like this, whatever little bit of credibility they had left was just utterly destroyed. And by the way, I mean it just, it cannot be overstated. We have a clip here. I saw this. I'm not sure if this is the same one. You said that Trump had tweeted out one of these, but the one I have is from, I believe it was End Wokeness. Who is that? Right? I think it was.
- [32:24]
Robbie the Fire Bernstein
I sent you a tweeted, a New York Post article that had a link to a Truth Social. And the Truth Social was about a two minute clip of just everyone vouching for how sharp Joe Biden is in meetings.
- [32:37]
Dave Smith
Well, let's. Oh, you know what I think it was, by the way, I should, I guess the. Because I'm looking here now and End Wokeness says amazing job to at D Gray, Texas 45. So maybe that's the account that actually made the video, by the way. And Wokeness is a great account. Great follow on Twitter at End Wokeness. Anyway, let's play, let's play this version of it because it's a fun one. I mean they're all great. But anyway, just, let's play this. Just to remember that this was this year, this was earlier this year. It's unbelievable. Does the President have the stamina, physically and mentally, do you think, to continue on even after 2024?
- [33:12]
C
Don, you're asking me this question. Oh my gosh, he's the President of the United States. You know, he. I can't even up with it.
- [33:20]
Dave Smith
The most difficult part about a meeting with President Biden is preparing for it because he is sharp, intensely probing and detail oriented and focused.
- [33:32]
C
I can testify because I've been working very closely with this president for the past two years. I've been knowing him for 30 years. And I'm telling you, this guy's tough, he's smart, he's on his game. Joe Biden has vision, he has knowledge, he has a strategic thinker.
- [33:47]
Dave Smith
The President is focused, he's detail oriented. He's always thinking about the big picture, is engaging, he is capable. He has an incredible record as President.
- [33:58]
C
And I'm often with him on foreign trips. He's at the top of his game. So he has a vision, he has knowledge, he has judgment, he has a strategic thinking. I met with the President, I don't know, five or six weeks ago, but he seemed fine to me. I have complete confidence in the President. I have watched him expertly guide meetings.
- [34:20]
Dave Smith
Of staff and cabinet members. I could not have more confidence from the President. I would just tell you that I meet frequently with the President and every single time I meet with him, he is just fine.
- [34:34]
C
But he is again, knowledgeable, wise, incredibly.
- [34:39]
Dave Smith
Sharp, incredibly probing, incredible command of the details.
- [34:44]
C
He is sharp. He is on top of things.
- [34:47]
Dave Smith
There is nothing to these challenges, these suggestions that somehow he's not sharp and he's not capable.
- [34:53]
C
We see Joe Biden up close, we know how attuned he is to the issue. And you're going to see how smart he is and the experience he has. I say his age is an asset.
- [35:05]
Dave Smith
He's wise.
- [35:06]
C
Yes, he's wise. He has wisdom, he has experience.
- [35:09]
Dave Smith
And his experience because of his age and his wisdom has been invaluable to this country. A lot of countries, people who've been in office a longer period of time are praised for their wisdom. I have seen a lot of 72 year olds not as capable as this 80 year old.
- [35:28]
C
It is hard for us to keep up with this President.
- [35:31]
Dave Smith
His mental acuity is great. It's fine. It's as good as it's been over the years I've been. He's fine. All this right wing propaganda that his mental acuity has declined is wrong.
- [35:42]
C
And this kind of sense that he's not ready for this job is just a bucket of BS that's so deep your boots will get stuck in.
- [35:51]
Dave Smith
All right, It's, I mean, it really is always just invaluable to take a stroll down memory lane and just remember because it's even. I will say it's like even for me and I'm me and, and even, you know, I live in this world much more than I would ever expect the average person to or desire the average person to. But it's like even as I watch it back, I'M like, oh, these fuckers, Are you kidding? You know, and it does. I know I probably bring this up too much, but there's something kind of weird about, you know, the fact that Sam Harris called me out. But, you know, like, it doesn't it go back to that thing? It's like, it's like, oh, we're listening to comedians. You know, it's like Dave Smith, like, she's the authority on this. And she's like, yeah, I know, right? But the one advantage that we have that these guys don't is that we are not fucking liars. Like, every person on there is lying through their fucking teeth. It's so unbelievable, you can't even believe they. They'd have the gall to make up such an outright lie. Like, you could really just say this and, and attempt to sell it and sound like you really mean it. First of all, half the people up there, Nancy Pelosi hates Joe Biden's guts. Listen to the way she talks about him now, that he sabotaged the whole thing. But we are think about, I mean, guys, anyone who's ever seen a video of Joe Biden already knows where Joe Biden is at. This idea that. I've said this before, but I don't know, I'm kind of fond of it as a, an analogy, but it's. It would be on the level of me telling you, like, listen, Rob, I've met privately with Chris Christie and the guy is shredded. He's ripped, he's in really good shape. I don't know what are you falling into this right wing conspiracy that he's an obese man? Dude, that's. Yeah, you've seen a couple clips here or there that make it look like he's obese, but go sit down with that. Go do sit ups with this guy, man. You just cannot keep up. I mean, that's the biggest struggle of going to work out with Chris Christie is I'm just like, will I be able to keep up with him? Like, we're gonna run laps and, you know, I. Obviously he's gonna lap me a few times, but, like, if I could just keep it within a few laps, like it's on the level of that. What the fuck are you talking about? That is a senile man. We have seen him. And then of course, this all culminated in the debate performance that was. I mean, geez, what can you say? You know, I remember saying I was on Piers Morgan, I guess the, like the day after the debate or maybe a couple of days after the debate. And I remember I said, and you know how it is on that show. It's like a panel, so you get a little time, and that goes the next guy to the next guy to the next guy, and then back to you. But I remember I said at one point that I went. It was the. It was the worst debate performance in the history of televised presidential debates. And then it, like, went to the next person, the next person, the next person. And then when it came back to me, we were on a different topic. And I remember thinking to myself, being like, oh, that's. That's so understated. You know what I mean? Like, I should have said something more than that, because, yeah, it. It clearly is the worst performance in the history of televised presidential debates. But there's not even a close second. There's just nothing that's even comparable. I mean, like, if you look back at the debates where people say, oh, this person did a really bad job, had a really bad debate, there were. It was one of the, you know, Obama versus Romney, one of them. They said Obama had a really off night, and Nixon versus Jack Kennedy. They say Kennedy did really good with the television audience. But it was from the moment Joe Biden started speaking. I remember watching the debate. I was watching it with my wife in our. In our bedroom, and I'm laying in bed, and I, you know, like, had a snack, and I'm put on the debate. And the first words that Joe Biden spoke, you went, oh, my God. They didn't give him whatever cocktail they needed to give him or it's not working or whatever. But you. I mean, literally, the first. It was the first sentence that he spoke, and you were like, this is it. He's ruining. This is the moment we've all been waiting for. And this was. I, you know, I had a bit about this. I don't know if it made my last special or not, but I was doing a bit about this in my act that I was like, that's the exciting thing about Joe Biden is that every time he speaks, you're like, this might be the end. That, like, he might collapse so bad here that there's no recovering from it. And we all knew that. I remember, you know, I have to go back and tweet, but I tweeted something about this the day of the debate, before the debate, that I was like, this might be it. This might be the one where Joe Biden just completely collapses and can't recover from it. And then it was very clear to everyone from the very opening of it, that it was in fact, that it was not a bad debate performance. It was a senile old man who had no business being out in public. He, he didn't look like somebody. Again, Rob, right, like you can't overstate this. The guy who we saw at the debate and the guy we've seen every day since, that, that every day that he's been visible, which hasn't been that much, the question wouldn't be is he sharp in private meetings? Does he, is this guy capable of being President of the United States of America? The question would be, does this guy need assisted living or not? Can he live on his own or does he need a full time nurse with him? That's the question you'd be asking about Joe Biden. That's just a fact. That's just where we're at with him. That's the debatable question. Can this guy live outside of a nursing home or does he need round the clock 24 hour supervision? And they're going to sit there with a straight face and tell you it's right wing propaganda and that this guy is sharp as attack. Just, man, if it wasn't for so many other crazy things this year, that should be the number one story of the year. But you know, Donald Trump almost got his brains blown out. So it falls down to like number two or number three.
- [42:01]
Robbie the Fire Bernstein
It was fun. How long that was just sitting out in the open. That if you watch politics on a regular basis, you saw these moments of him wandering off stage like there were all these things that the normies just weren't aware of. And I used to say it to people in casual conversation of, you know, that guy has demand. No, no, what are you talking about? Like people, when you said that, that was, you might as well have said, hey, aliens are actually running the White House. It was total conspiracy nonsense and he could not have failed harder on the biggest stage in that a lot of people who even just casually follow politics, they'll tune in. It's a little bit like the Super Bowl. You know, you cannot watch a game all season, but people watch the Super Bowl. People will not watch politics for four years, but they'll tune in for the debate. And so if you needed to get your shit together for an hour and a half and just come off, okay, that was the, an hour and a half to do it. And yeah, from the first stutter step that he took, it was, oh, they, they, the drugs aren't working or he didn't take him just as he said and he Couldn't have failed better. But I mean, we still need an investigation of the COVID up that existed for his dementia and who's actually been making decisions 100%.
- [43:13]
Dave Smith
100%. It is, it's wild that that guy was, is allowed to be president still and all the way since that debate. I mean it's just so, so crazy. And I think that was one of the, you know, there's, you know, what you're talking about when there'd be the, you know, talking to normies and they'd be like, what are you talking about? He's senile. It's almost like. Yeah, because the thing is that for most people, I think, I think it's the majority, certainly for large portions of the population, they have to be given permission in order to believe something. It's just the way it is. They have to be told that you're allowed to feel this way. And then if they're told that, then they'll go, oh yeah, okay, I see it now. You know, but in the same way that everyone, you know, you think about the war in Ukraine breaks out and everyone has a Ukraine flag in their Twitter bio, you know, Black Lives Matter protests happen. Everyone's got that black fist in their Facebook profile. It's like these people, the people who put the Ukraine flag in their bio right away. What percentage of them, you think know anything about the history of Ukraine? What percentage of them know anything about the history of this conflict? Like if I just sat down and just asked them basic questions, not even like what your opinion is, just like, what, what happened here? What date was this? When did the Soviet Union fall? When did the NATO expansion happen? When did the maid on revolution happen? When did the, you know, like ask him any. Does they know nothing about it? All they know is that I've been told this is the thing now. And so now I'm gonna do this. It's just for better, for worse. It's the way people in modern society, at least in this one, the way they work. And so they needed to be given that permission. But the issue is that once they were given that permission, it was over, you know, and there was just no. And there really is something where I think even to just like normies it. Once you admit that the guy's too senile to run for president, it's going to be really hard to explain to them why he's not too senile to be president. You know, it's not as if there was something. It'd be one thing if, you know, like he Got diagnosed with some degenerative disease and they were like, in two years this is gonna be really bad. And that's why he has to drop out. You know, like, he's fine now, but in two years, this, three years, it might be really, really bad, so he can't sign up for another four years. But that's not what happened. What happened is you couldn't get through this debate tonight. You are not like, how could you possibly argue that somebody who can't handle a 90 minute debate can handle being commander in chief of the most powerful military in the history of the world, which is involved in two white hot proxy wars right now? If anybody has an answer to that, if anybody can answer that argument to me, I'd love to hear, I would love to hear anybody attempt to make the case that you can be incapable of debating Donald Trump yet capable of being commander in chief in argument for that simply does not exist. It's just too absurd of a proposition. And so that again, was another thing that really just exposed the whole game, exposed the whole racket for, for what it is. So, yeah, that was a huge story, a wild one to live through and to cover and talk about with all you fine people. It's. Man, luckily for me, the world has always has handed us a lot of shit to talk about. But that was a wild one and one that I think will, the damage that it's done to the corporate media and the Democratic establishment is just, it's immeasurable right now. Okay, let's, unless you have anything else, let's move on because there's a couple other things that I think need to be hit. Obviously there's, there's, we only have an hour show here, so I, we won't hit every, you know, big story of the year, but I did. Yeah, I mean, I guess since we haven't talked about it yet, we really should talk about, just for a few minutes. Israel, Palestine. You know, this latest war started technically in October of last year, but it's been going on every single day this year. And so really the, the bulk of it has been in 2024. I think that while in many ways, in terms of, I'll say this, and I think this is very in line with the prediction that you made, Rob, late last year, very, very early, I believe it was in October. I'm almost certain when you made the prediction where you said, you basically said Israel is just not going to be able to get away with this PR game. Like they're not going to be able to sell this. There's too much. There's too many videos. There's too many. Like, it's just too easy to see what's going on there. And I would say that after now having had this, you know, again, I hesitate to even call it a war, because. War. War, to me, kind of, maybe I'm wrong. I could look up, like, the actual technical definitions here, but war, to me seems to imply that there's a government here and a government here and a military here and a military here, and these two militaries are having a conflict. That's not what's going on in Gaza. There is no government in Gaza. There's no state in Gaza. There's no military in Gaza. And it's not as if.
- [48:47]
Robbie the Fire Bernstein
And there's no hospitals left to bomb.
- [48:49]
Dave Smith
Well, that's. There's. And then at this point, there's not too many hospitals. There's. It's not as if Hamas militants are engaging with the idf. And that's what's going on. What's going on is a captive people who have been occupied since 1967 are being slaughtered. That's what's happening. I would say that kind of my bigger takeaway on where the, the what. What is the result of all of this is that you kind of have almost. If you look at this in two different ways, like, politically speaking, Israel is winning. No question about that. Israel is getting more funding than they've ever gotten before, and they're the largest recipient of foreign aid from America in our history by far. They're getting more funding than they've ever gotten before. They're. They're getting more logistical, intelligence support, all of these things. They're destroying Gaza. In that sense. They're. They're winning. You know, they've. They had this very successful covert, you know, special ops attack on Hezbollah. They got their, their regime change in Syria that they've been after since at least 1996. They've, they've, you know, in many ways, politically speaking, they are winning. Culturally, they have lost so badly that it is. It would have been like if you had. If you were predicting in September of 2023 that the reputation of Israel would take such damage in the next year and a half. It would have been. You would have sounded nuts. They would be like, there's no way this is about to happen. But Israel, I do believe, has been exposed in a way that I don't think they're ever going to recover from. And interestingly enough, you know, all of the people who are so concerned with anti Semitism and the fate of. Of Jewish people. And the ones who say that Jews are in such a precarious position and antisemitism is such a big threat and another holocaust is around the corner don't ever seem to recognize that this policy that Bibi Netanyahu has embarked on has actually put Israel in jeopardy in a way that I think would have been impossible for any other outside force to do, as there were always people who weren't very big fans of Israel. But the. The way that they. The conversation about Israel has just dramatically changed from what it ever would have been. In the. In the popular consciousness, Israel was like, oh, this was like a homeland for the Jews, the biggest victims of the 20th century. And then they got their own little homeland here. And this is like, come on, leave these nice Jewish boys alone. And now the conversation is constantly about, like, how can you justify doing this to the Palestinian people? This has been a real. You know, what's. What's the term, watershed moment or something like that. But this is really. I think. I think essentially what I'm saying is that your prediction came more true than. Than probably even you could have imagined, and that they've just totally lost the PR front.
- [52:11]
Robbie the Fire Bernstein
Yeah. By the way, I mean, there's a bad joke, but there was footage last week of Israel. I mean, it was reported, took out the last hospital in Gaza, so. Which, you know, I don't even know what goes on there now. If someone's having a problem, I don't know, because this stuff is not for the scattered images you get on Twitter. You don't get great reporting past that, you know, quite. Give us the numbers of civilian casualties, and I guess what people are going through. It's amazing. Every time you see an image, it looks like it's the Hollywood set for a single World War II scene that you would film. You know what I mean? It doesn't. It's like. It seems like you can get a picture of any one block and just everything's bombed out. It's. I don't know. It seems what's happened over there is pretty terrible, and I wonder if we'll ever get the full picture of it.
- [53:08]
Dave Smith
Yeah, well, I mean, now we're two.
- [53:10]
Robbie the Fire Bernstein
Years in the running. It's just ongoing.
- [53:12]
Dave Smith
Yeah. I mean, this whole time, I mean, it's just so. And. And the more time goes on, especially seeing as how there is, like, if you. If you follow it at all, you know, like, even just a little bit, it's like almost everybody. Every major player, you know, Aside, I'm not even talking about politicians. I'm more talking about like intelligence and the war cabinet and stuff like that. They all admit that they can't get rid of Hamas. Now Hamas is popped back up and all just like we predicted, you know, that this type of action is only going to create more Hamas or Hamas like groups. And so when you realize that that mission is inachievable, it's kind of in some sense like Iraq or Afghanistan. It's like, well, once you realize you can't spread democracy there, well then what the hell are we doing? What is this? And it's just so indefensible, man. It's like the fact it still blows me away that people can even try. I mean, watching, you know, I've done over this year or I guess starting late in 2023, and then this year I've done a bunch of debates on this topic. And it never, like every time I'm always just like, I can't believe you want to see people on social media defending. It's like the pretzels that you have to twist yourself into to try to justify this shit is just like it, it, it's eye openening. It's eye opening because you, you realize you're like, oh, I kind of get it now. You kind of get how like throughout human history there have been all these atrocities and at every single turn there's somebody willing to rationalize it or justify it or tie themselves into knots, you know, doing mental gymnastics to, to, to find some justification. But the bottom line is like, you just can't do this to people, man. It's just so evil. You know, the one, the, I mean, I've seen so many images of, of dead kids over there and just like unspeakable suffering. The one thing that I remember always stuck with me was there was this interview of a doctor, he was an American who had just returned from Gaza. And he was talking about how, you know, this is, I guess when they had one or two hospitals still rob, back in the good old days. But he was talking about the anesthesia shortage. That was like a big issue there because, you know, they still have a full blockade around the country during this whole war and they're, you know, they let some humanitarian aid in and then there's this really unfortunate, like, coincidence where then they open machine gun fire on the people bringing in humanitarian aid. And we're supposed to believe this is all just an oopsie every single time, even though it's happened multiple times. But he's Talking about if there's an anesthesia shortage, you just like. And then starting to get into what the implications of that are, you know, and you've got Gaza there. There were 2 million people there at the beginning of this. I don't know. You know, I don't think anyone knows exactly how many are there now. But one of the things about Gaza that makes it such a difficult situation is that half the population are children. It's a million kids. You know, half the population was under 18 at least at the beginning of this conflict. And so you, you know, you imagine you're in a war zone and you don't have anesthesia. This means you're operating on children without anesthesia. Just, you know, this is stuff. It's like biblical levels of evil that you can't even imagine really exist in 2024, but it has existed every single day of this year. So, yeah, that's one of the darker things about this year. But it does feel like there's been a real cultural shift that I, again, I don't, I don't think they're going to be able to undo. All right, I guess we could leave it. We could leave it there. Just hitting the big ones. Trump's, I guess the Trump administration coming in. I guess the other thing we should just quickly mention is that Trump's. So far, the indications from Donald Trump's appointments and cabinet picks and things like that are essentially, I mean, if I'm reducing it down, a bunch of war hawks and a bunch of COVID dissidents, that's what we got out of Donald Trump. And so, you know, better than we would have gotten out of Kamala Harris, that's for sure. Still far from perfect, and a lot of, a lot of room for improvement. All right, before we wrap up, I do want to say, spent just a couple minutes on more of a personal note. This, this year has been an incredible year for me. It's been the, the best year of, of my career by far. And I just wanted to thank everybody who listens to this show. Obviously, we launched our, our new site, partoftheproblem.com and have our own subscription service now. So I'm just so incredibly grateful to everybody who listens and I'm particularly grateful to everybody who signed up and is supporting the show. We, we will continue to do what we do and, you know, be right about everything and hopefully be entertaining along the way. I do want to thank you, Rob, for another year of being the best goddamn co host that I could have in this I want to thank Natalie for, for coming on and being the producer. And she's done a great job, despite how cruel the live chat is to her at times, blaming her for every goddamn thing. If it snows, Natalie's getting ripped up in that live chat for making it snow. But you've really done a great job, Natalie. Of course you've done a great job. As always, Rob, I want to thank everybody with a big platform who, who platformed me this year, of course, first and foremost, the legend, the. The great one, Joe Rogan, Tucker Carlson was just unbelievable for me this year, like, really gave me a boost. And having. Having those two guys, particularly, you know, like, having the biggest guys in media really not just have me on multiple times, but to really, like, give me, you know, like their support and endorsement has been, you know, enormously helpful to me in my career. But everybody with big shows, Candace Owens had me on a couple of times this year. Of course, Patrick Bet David, you know, debating Chris Cuomo this year was perhaps the highlight of my career and was just an incredible thing to get to do. And then him having me on his, his election night show as well was, Was huge. So very grateful to all of those guys and all the other. I. I know there'll be people I'm forgetting. I really do apologize for that, but Tim Pool, I, I did that show, I think, a couple times this year, and always a great time doing that. Pierce Morgan, I got to give him thanks. He's had me on a whole bunch of times. And that show just does incredible numbers. So it's been great for me. You know, I, I'm kind of blown away about that. My, My career is. Is a bit surreal to me. All of this is. You know, I was always just like, I was just a kid in the Ron Paul army who got in front of a microphone and started talking about this shit. And me and Rob, we were just. We were stand up. When me and Rob met, we were standup comedians at the absolute bottom together. I mean, the bottom we were at that LOL comedy club that's hanging out, you know, sharing a free beer or something like that. But it's really cool that we've been able to build this thing up. And it's. I just, I'm. It's. For whatever reason, maybe at some point this will change and I'll just get accustomed to all this and take it for granted, but I really don't. I really don't. At least as of right now. I think it's so cool that we can Go do shows all around the country and around the world, and we got fans who come out to them. I'm really grateful for all of you guys. Thank you for listening. And I promise you, going into 2025, I will, you know, if you guys keep supporting, I will continue to put everything I have into this show and, and make it what I think is really, you know, if I do say so, my myself, I think a really valuable show in this space and I think, I think we do a good job of, of getting a perspective out there that is needed in this country. So again, thanks to Rob, thanks to Natalie, thanks to all of our fans, thanks to all the people who platformed me. Come check us out on the road in 2025. Comicdavesmith.com Me and Rob are traveling all over the country doing comedy clubs in, in a city near you. So come on out. The live shows are really, really fun. People love them. So come on out and, and meet us and hang out and grab a drink and all that good stuff. Thank you for another great, great year. Anything. If there's anything else you want to say, Rob, you can jump in here. You want to thank your cat or anything like that, go ahead.
- [62:17]
Robbie the Fire Bernstein
Those were fine and elegant words. Thank you everyone for a lovely year. And check out run your mouth going live later this evening. I'm a comedy special still out there and you know, subscribe, rate, review, masturbate in my honor and have a great year, everybody.
- [62:32]
Dave Smith
All right, Happy new Year, gang. Catch you next time. Peace.