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- [00:00]
Dave Smith
Foreign what's up? What's up everybody? Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem. I am Dave Smith. I am rolling solo for this episode and we got a bunch of stuff to talk about. So let me, let me just quickly get a few some business out of the way. So I, of course tomorrow me and Robbie the Fire Bernstein will be in Louisville, Kentucky. There is the show is damn near close to sold out. I think there might be like seven seats left right now. So if you're listening to this live, if you want to come out to the Louisville shows tomorrow night, make sure you go do that immediately. Comicdabesmith.com has the ticket link. It's the first link up there. And then there are still a few seats left but they're selling very quick in Fort Wayne, Indiana. So hope to see a bunch of you guys out there this weekend. Really looking forward to, to these shows. And then we've got I believe Key west is the next one coming up after that. And then there's alt Buffalo, Chicago, Boston. A bunch of dates are up on, on the site comicdavesmith.com the other thing is reminder, February 11th is fast approaching. I will be debating Josh Hammer, the senior editor at Newsweek over the U.S. israel relationship and its effects on U.S. policy. That'll be here in New Jersey at Princeton University. There still are some seats left for that last I heard, which was yesterday, but they were selling very fast. So both of those things, if you want to come to them, move quickly. And for the, for the debate in Princeton, I believe it is if you're not in the area, it is going to be live streamed and it's, I, I'm pretty sure I had a meeting about this yesterday, but I'm pretty sure they said that like you'll, the live stream will also be able to participate in the Oxford style debate. So like you'll get to vote before and after. So you're like involved. And I think you can also submit questions for the question and answer segment so you can like still participate even if you're not in the New Jersey area. Looking forward to all of those events. So yeah, hope to see some of you guys out there. Okay. Now I want to for today's episode, as we speak, Bobby Kennedy is going through his Senate confirmation hearing. So we're going to talk a bit about that. And then of course Tulsi Gabbard and Cash Patel are coming up next. So I thought maybe we'd preview those a little bit. This is, it's, it's very Interesting. For people like me who are kind of, you know, unhealthily obsessed with all of this stuff, it's, it's a particularly fascinating chapter in American history. There is, I, I guess maybe the first thing I would say. I, I have some clips from what's happened this morning in Bobby Kennedy's Senate confirmation hearings, which I thought were. Would be worth, you know, playing and, and discussing a little bit. I guess the, the thing I would say up top is it just can't be overstated how different this is than anything that's happened in politics in my lifetime. It's just nothing in modern American politics has ever been quite like this. We've never seen a Senate confirmation process of somebody to run the Health Department, who has basically been. I mean, he, he ran for president and has been an activist for many years before that. And his whole thing was championing, you know, being against the corruption in the Health Department. Someone like Tulsi Gabbard, whose entire political career has been about criticizing the, the corruption of the intelligence agencies, is now up for the job of being in charge of the intelligence agencies. This, this is not. There's no other comparison. There's. There's simply just nothing like this that's happened in my lifetime. And so that right away is very interesting. And the, the reaction to that, of course, is interesting. You know, I was on. I just recorded with. With Emily from. From Breaking Points. I was just recording with her a few minutes before we started this show, and one of the questions she asked me was cut, by the way, I think she's great. I always really enjoy talking to her, but one of the questions she asked me at one point was like, you know, t, we'll get to Tulsi in a little bit. But we were talking about her a lot, and she was saying, like, you know, this is really kind of unprecedented that she's getting so much pushback on her confirmation, and she may not even make it out of the Senate Intelligence Committee's confirmation, let alone even get to the Senate. And, and I was just like saying, like, well, that's not really the surprising. The, the thing that's unique about this isn't that she's getting this pushback. The thing that's unique about this is that she's even up for confirmation at all. And I think it's important to understand that. And a lot of this, it really gets to the heart of why I ended up ultimately supporting Donald Trump, and I think why, while a lot of. Of more dissident type of people ended up supporting Donald Trump, even people like me who didn't support him in 2016, didn't support him in 2020, and were very critical of his first administration. The reason why a lot of us ended up going, you know, in some ways kind of like crap, I think I got to support this guy this time, is because it's just a unique opportunity. And the only way we get here is if Donald Trump had won this election. And I think that, look, it's the reason why this never happened before. The reason why there was never somebody appointed to be the. The HHS director whose entire career was criticizing the corruption in the. Of U.S. health, and particularly in the U.S. health Department. The reason why this never happened before is because, first of all, it would have been unthinkable for any of the previous presidents, including Trump in his first term, to actually put people like this up, and there's just zero chance they ever could have been confirmed. I mean, there is no. There is. If you were to think of, you know, like, my entire lifetime, if you were to think of George H.W. bush or Bill Clinton or George W. Bush or Barack Obama or, like, obviously they never would have picked people like this, but then on top of that, there's just no way they would have been confirmed. They try. Imagine Bobby Kennedy trying to say the stuff he's saying now in the year 1999 or something like that, or 2000, or it just. It never would have resonated. They would have been. The Senate would have immediately rejected them. The, The. The only reason, like, the reason why Bobby Kennedy's message is resonating so much right now is largely because of COVID and because during COVID the biggest scientific institutions, not just in America, but worldwide, just completely discredited themselves and just nobody trusts them anymore. And, and the corruption was so apparent that when somebody came out and was pointing a finger with a lot of people, you can only. You can only have the entire scientific community. I mean, think about it like a moment when most people, most regular people, don't really pay attention to the scientific community that much. They don't really pay attention to the CDC or the NIH or the Health Department or any of this, the World Health Organization, any of. But there's this moment in time where they demand that everybody pay attention to this. You know, I liked Candace Owens, did one debate on Piers Morgan show about Israel, and I loved the way she put this, but she goes. She goes, you know, a lot of us never really paid attention to Israel. And then after October 7, the demand was that we pay attention to it and then we started paying attention to it. And a lot of you people who were demanding we paid attention to work to it now sure wish we hadn't. And I think that was that real. It was really profound in its simplicity. I think that's what happened during COVID A lot of people start, it was demanded of them that they start paying attention to science in a way that they never had before. And most people, myself included, had never done deep dives on virology and you know, like never really thought about mmr, not mmr, excuse me, RNA vaccines. You know, this was kind of hoist upon us. And then in this moment where you demanded that we all pay attention to it, as we started paying attention to it, we noticed that you guys were all lying every goddamn time your mouth moved. And you know, this, you know, like really basic lies that you just can't, you can't get around them. They come out 15 days to flatten the curve was not 15 days, it was quite a bit longer than that. This all, you know, all the mass compliance, the outdoor masking and people were pushing outdoor mask. It's the most anti scientific policy ever. Makes absolutely no sense. This is the, there was and this was confirmed in a big New York Times piece and several other major peer reviewed studies. But they are, it is not, there is not one proof in case of COVID being transmitted from outdoor casual interactions. Not one. Like it's just, it doesn't happen yet. You're supposed, you were supposed to wear a mask everywhere. It was totally anti scientific. And then of course the stuff with the vaccine where they just lied through their teeth and just said, hey, there's this vaccine, it's a cure, it's 100% effective, it's safe. If you get it, you, you can't be vaccine injured, you can't get Covid and you can't transmit Covid. And then everybody, you know who got the thing got covet after it. I mean that's enough that you can't even hide it from normies who don't pay attention that much. And so then when Bobby Kennedy came along and said hey, you know how they were cooking the books on that vaccine? They were doing that on a lot of the other vaccines. This message just resonated. So the, the point is this message never could have resonated in, in any previous era. And the Senate would have just rejected somebody like this because they're, they're there to protect powerful interests. We live in a little bit of a different moment. Right now. And now it's not just that the, it's not just that this message is resonating. But now you've got a new president in there who's been burned by the system in a, you know, about as serious a way as you can be and, or about ever in every way that you can be. And now the Senate is in a little bit of an interesting position because they are still political creatures and there is always, there's always a small d. Democratic influence on government. No matter what type of system of government you have, you know, in, in some sense, we always live in a democracy. And what, what I mean by that is, I'm sure some of you have heard me explain this before, but what I mean is that let's say you're in a country with, under a dictatorship, okay? This is not a democracy. This is an authoritarian dictatorship where the dictator rules with an iron fist. And let's say that there are some protests. Let's say there's a huge protest movement. There are 500,000 angry civilians outside the dictator's palace demanding policy X. You know, it's not going to be too long until that dictator goes, I've thought about it and I'm instituting policy X. Now I don't mean that when I talk about this democratic spirit. I don't mean that you hold regular elections necessarily. It's just that the, the bottom line is that there's way more of us than there are of them. And this is the game of ruling. They're aware of that. This, by the way, is why the most powerful people in our society are constantly pushing issues that divide the American people. This is really at the heart of where there's the obsession with trans bathrooms and stuff like this. Abortion issues like this, issues that are, that are white hot culture war issues that divide the population are constantly pumped out through from every single power center, everyone. The reason is this is what they call divide and conquer, right? You, you have to divide people if you're going to rule over them because there's so many more of them than there are of you. And if they ever get united and realize that, hey, somebody's ruling over us and they're screwing us over, then they might come for you. Then really, at the end of the day, there's only, you know, there's only so many billionaires, there's only so many rulers, there's a lot more. But of the people who are ruled in this country, there's hundreds of millions of us. And so the Senate is in this position where the, the people have kind of spoken and now they have to try to find a way to protect powerful interests while not pissing off the masses, which is a much more dangerous proposition for them. And I mean, you know, we were talking about on the last show, the immigration data or the immigration polling data, which is just like, it's unbelievable. It's unbelievable how far the Biden administration pushed this country to the right on immigration. And it's not just immigration, but when it comes to like probably maybe like four or five big issues. Immigration, foreign wars, woke ideology and overall government corruption. The American people have spoken, you know, like, it's just overwhelming. They're against this corruption. And to me, this is what Bobby Kennedy now finds himself in this situation of representing all of that. You know, one of the things I was talking to Emily about earlier today is that to some degree we live in kind of a post ideological world right now. No, I don't, I don't mean that entirely. And I, I certainly think that there, I'm not, I'm not saying that like ideology doesn't matter. I still am in my heart of hearts. I'm a theory guy. I mean, I, I, I believe in like libertarian philosophy. So I'm not saying none of that matters. It's just that in many ways the real divide right now is not left or, and vers right or even authoritarian versus libertarian. In many ways, the divide right now is just corruption versus honesty. It's, it's kind of as simple as that. You know, people wonder sometimes. It's like, look like, obviously for people who know, Bobby Kennedy was on the podcast twice. They were two of our biggest episodes we've ever done. And the first time, it was just like a love fest. I just loved everything he was saying and we just had a great time. The second time we really got into a pretty heated argument over Israel. And you know, I don't know, it's, it's. Things got a little bit uncomfortable there for a minute with us. Although I think our relationship is actually pretty good now. And I've, we, we've texted back and forth several like, nice things since that happened and he, he reached out to me after I debated Chris Cuomo and told me that he thought I did a, a great job on that and I really appreciated that and I've reached out to him several times including I, I shot him a text today just giving him like a give him hell, we're behind you type text. Haven't. He didn't respond, but he was pretty busy today. So I'll, I'll let that one slide. But you know, one of the things that I think e. Even though obviously me and Bobby have major foreign policy disagreements. Well, when it comes to Israel, not really when it comes, I'm, I'm right there with him when it comes to the Ukraine stuff. But it's not, first off, he's at the health department, so it's not, it was kind of nice in a way. I could just go back to loving the guy because he's not, you know, making foreign policy decisions. He's making decisions on the issue that he's great on. But I think that the real appeal of Bobby Kennedy and the reason why so many like MAGA people are getting behind him and why so many libertarians are getting behind him, it's not that, you know, because people will point out sometimes they'll say like, but he's a liberal. I mean, he's an old school Democrat. So why would conservative Republicans like him? Why would libertarians like him? Why do you guys all support a guy who doesn't even have your same ideology? And, and the thing that they're missing is that we live in a post ideological world in a lot of ways. It's not about the fact that we have the same ideology. It's not about whether, you know, he might believe that. The answer is more regulation over certain areas, whereas I believe the answer is less regulation. It's a matter of the fact that he, it's that he's not part of the corrupt swamp. That's the whole point. And the reason why so many MAGA people and so many libertarians are behind Bobby Kennedy is because you look at a guy like Bobby, this is the most impressive thing about the guy. And he's an impressive guy. Like just objectively speaking, he's an impressive guy. He's a guy in his 60s who can do more pull ups than most guys in their 20s. You know, that's. However you spit, that's objectively impressive. The guy is, has a wealth of knowledge on a wide range of issues. It's impressive. But the thing that's most impressive about Bobby Kennedy is that he's a Kennedy. He's a part of American royalty, or as close as you can get to it, certainly American political royalty. And then he's married to like a beloved famous Hollywood actress. And so the point is this guy had it made. He's got. Now listen, I'm not trying to downplay, obviously there's, he's, you know, he's had personal tragedies in his life. The guy's father and uncle were both murdered as young men, and his family's just had a lot of tragedy in it. So I'm not trying to, like, downplay that. I'm just saying that, relatively speaking, the guy had a good life guaranteed to him. I mean, he's in at every fancy cocktail party. He's beloved by the powerful. He's like, got it made in the shade. And then he chooses to take a stand, that's going to get him completely alienated in that world. Now people can, you know, and especially the people who are, like, just obsessed with theory. I get this from libertarians sometimes, but he's not a real libertarian. You know, it's like, okay, what have you ever sacrificed that's on the level of what Bobby sacrificed in order to fight for something that you believe in? You know, that is impressive. And I think that's what draws a lot of us to him. And look, whether you believe in more regulation or less regulation or whatever, who can just deny the ungodly amount of corruption that's at the center of our health industry in America? It's unbelievable. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is my Patriot Supply. Guys, the last few years have seen a lot of instability. And though a lot of people are optimistic about the new administration coming in, the truth is nobody can protect you from every foreseeable emergency. And that's why I always like to make sure that I have my family protected with a four week emergency food kit from my Patriot supply. Their four week emergency food kit gives you the nutrition you need to stay strong in a crisis. With 2000 calories per day and 100% of your daily value of 12 essential vitamins and minerals, this kit keeps you going when every meal matters. And right now, they're offering $50 off their four week food kit. So go to preparewithsmith.com to get your four week food kit today. All right, let's get back into the show. Okay, all that being said, people are freaking out about Bobby Kennedy. The former Vice president, Mike Pence has been working relentlessly on this campaign of trying to make sure he's not confirmed. It's been wild to see. Let's check in. We got a a few clips here lined up. Let's just start playing some of them so we could get a little bit of a taste for what's been going on today on the Senate floor.
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Senator
Because you keep citing the Trump administration and you're just going to follow what they say is that what you're doing, you're just a rubber stamp for the in this position. So anybody. So it doesn't matter that you're before us. It could be anybody coming before us, as long as they're a rubber stamp for this administration and disregard regarding your beliefs and what you think. I guess my question to you is if it really is fundamental to what you believe, how do you live with that? How do you address those issues as you're moving forward, knowing that it's going to harm Americans? Yeah.
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Bobby Kennedy
You want me to answer the question?
- [22:27]
Senator
No, I'm asking you.
- [22:29]
Bobby Kennedy
Okay. President Trump has asked me and the chronic disease epidemic and make America healthy again.
- [22:38]
Senator
The only reason why you're at HHS is that the only reason why then you're at the HHS to address that one issue.
- [22:44]
Bobby Kennedy
President Trump has asked me because I'm in a unique position to end that. And that is what I'm doing. And if we don't solve that problem, Senator, all other disputes we have about who's paying and whether it's insurance companies, whether it's providers, whether it's HMOs, whether it's patients or families, all of those are moving deck chairs around on the Titanic, our ship is sinking. Our 60% increase in Medicaid over the past four years is the biggest budget line now, and it's growing faster than any other. And no other nation in the world has what we have here. No other nation has a chronic disease. We have the highest chronic disease burden of any country in the world. During COVID we had 16% of the COVID deaths in a country. We only have 4.2% of the world's population. We had a higher death count than any country in the world. And when CDC was asked why, they said it's because Americans are the sickest people on Earth. The average person who died from COVID American had 3.8 chronic diseases. This is an existential threat economically, to our military or health, to our sense of well being. And it is a priority for President Trump. And that's why he asked me run the agency. And if I'm privileged be confirmed, that's exactly what I'll do.
- [24:18]
Dave Smith
So I thought, I thought this one was an interesting clip for a few reasons. I mean, obviously you have the grandstanding senator. You have her as badgering Bobby. And then at a certain point, you know, he's like, do you want me to answer the question? And she's like, I'm asking you the question. You know, it's all just ridiculous. But look, I mean, like, his answer there, he just knocked it out of the park. Now, remember talking about a lot of this stuff when, you know, during COVID that it was like, I forget the exact numbers, but it was, I guess he just said 3.8 comorbidities for the average COVID death. It was, I believe it was 78% of the people hospitalized with COVID were obese. And like, it was. There's no question that he is right about. And as he mentioned, even the CDC admitted this themselves, that the reason why Americans were so disproportionately hit hard with COVID was because we're so sick, we're such a sick society. And, you know, you'd think maybe that would come up, maybe that would be like an issue to think about. Why? Because as, as people know, you know, Covid was pretty mild. You know, speaking statistically here, obviously there are exceptions, but Covid was pretty mild and really didn't lead to too many negative outcomes for healthy people. You know, everybody, you know, just about who's healthy got Covid, you know, and almost all of them, if you're thinking about them in your head right now, they're almost all fine. Now, who was really bad when they got Covid? Well, it's really old people, right? But it's not because they're old. It's because old people are really sick. It has nothing to do with your age. It's just that your immune system is not in great shape by the time you get old. That's unfortunately part of life. But this is why America makes up 16% of the world's COVID deaths when we're only 4 something percent, like 4% of the population. It's because we're such a sick society. And how on earth does this never come up until Bobby Kennedy brings it up, he's like the only person in politics who ever forced this issue. It's so goddamn heroic and paradigm shifting. Like, it's, it's unbelievable, you know, when it's also just when you listen to the, you know, the way they kind of try to attack him with this, this, this, this line of like, oh, so you're just a rubber stamp for Donald Trump? Because he had said that I serve at the pleasure of, of the President, which is typically what people appointed by the President would say. It's not. Nothing very strange about that. But this idea that it's like, oh, so it doesn't even matter if it's you or someone else. It's just Donald Trump, basically, you're just like a blind. Who would. It doesn't even matter if it's against your own convictions. I mean, who's buying this? Like, who's buying. Listen, I'm not sitting here trying to knock Donald Trump. I'm, I, I voted for him in this last election, and I'm, I'm hoping he does a really great job as, as every American should be right now. Let's hope he does good things for the country. But who really believes that Donald Trump is the one leading Bobby's pursuit of cleaning up the Health Department? Really, It's Donald Trump who's been influencing Bobby Kennedy to talk about how we lead the world in chronic illness. Did you ever hear Donald Trump ever talking about that before Bobby Kennedy came on board with his team? Did you ever hear Donald Trump. You know, come on, this is obviously Bobby's pet issue that he, it either he persuaded Donald Trump that this is an issue worth pursuing, or, you know, he was a third party who was getting millions of votes, and Donald Trump realized he could take that into his coalition and. Or a mix of both of those two things, which is probably my guess that it's a mix of both of those two things. But this, this line that, like, somehow it's really just what, like Bobby Kennedy at the Health Department is somehow just going to be a pawn of Donald Trump. Who's buying that? It's just too ridiculous. Who's buying. Yes. Donald Trump was, was pouring through the studies on the effects of vaccinated on vaccines on young children's development. Right? We all believe that, right? Donald Trump's just sitting down reading medical studies at night. No, he's not. He's watching shows. Donald Trump's watching Hannity while Bobby Kennedy pours over the data. Let's get real. I mean, come on. For all the, for all the knocks these people have had on Trump for so many years, but now we're supposed to believe that he's what, the, the health nut expert? Yes, Donald Trump. In between sucking down Big Macs, Donald Trump was really worried about the nation's health. And then Bobby Kennedy is just a pawn there to be used. Too. Too absurd. All right, let's go to the, let's go to the next clip. All of these things cannot be true.
- [29:11]
Bernie Sanders
So are you lying to Congress today when you say you are pro vaccine, or did you lie on all those podcasts?
- [29:20]
Bobby Kennedy
As you know, because it's been repeatedly debunked. That statement that I made on the Lex Friedman podcast was a fragment of the Statement, I said, there are no vaccines that are safe and effective. And I was going to continue, for every person, every medicine has people who are sensitive to them, including vaccines.
- [29:40]
Dave Smith
Right?
- [29:41]
Bobby Kennedy
So he interrupted me at that point. I've corrected it many times, including on national tv. You know about this, Senator Wyden. So bringing this up right now is dishonest, all of these things.
- [29:53]
Dave Smith
I. I thought that was pretty great. You know, it's. There's always something about, like, the nerve of these senators to call anyone else a liar. And, and again, I, I just love that Bobby. Bobby's a little bit, you know, more of a gentleman than I am. You know, like, I just, I couldn't imagine even being called, like, I couldn't imagine being called a liar by a politician and not just immediately, you know, responding with something like, like, senator, did you just call me a liar? You're a senator. You're by definition a liar. That's what you people do. And then going through all the lies that they've told. But look, I've just. I mean, this is just stuff that it. I like that he said, I've. Correct. I've made this clear on national television. And you know, that, like, you know this. There's no way you're looking into Bobby Kennedy at this level. Like, you're getting ready for the Senate confirmation hearings about him and you're concerned about his view on vaccines and like, you haven't been able to find the numerous times that he's discussed this. And like, I, I remember getting the same thing during COVID during the craze of the COVID vaccine when, you know, and I was somebody who had never really, you know, done a lot of research on vaccines before. But, you know, I was hosting a show three days a week during all of COVID And so I dove really deep and read a lot about the COVID vaccine. And I'd be like, oh, they are totally lying to you about this. Like, it's not just like, oh, they were getting it wrong or they made a bet and that bet turned out to be wrong. It's like they were making claims about the vaccine that the trial data in no way backed up. Like the claim that you can't transmit Covid once you've had the vaccine. There was absolutely nothing, nothing in any of the clinical trials that that would even lead you to assume that, let alone conclusively prove it. In fact, it wasn't even tested. And so I would point that out and then people response would be like, oh, Dave's an anti vaxxer. Now, you know, like, anti. I'm just pointing out one specific lie. And so Bobby, you know, has just made this point over and over and over again that his issue isn't with vaccines. He's not against vaccines. He's saying there should be good studies, double blind studies done on all of them so we have better information about them. The problem is no one can really argue with that. And so they have to just say, you know, you hate vaccines, right? It's like you hate America. It's all the same thing. Just like you have this irrational, blanket hatred for something when he's making a much more specific claim. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Sheath Underwear, the underwear of Legends, longtime sponsor of the Part of the Problem podcast. They are one of our most loyal sponsors, and I gotta say, I love them for that. And it's also just an incredible product. I mean, I really do wear sheath underwear every single day. It's the most comfortable pair of boxer briefs you're ever gonna buy. So if you want to support this show and get yourself the best pair of boxer briefs you've ever owned in the process, well, the only place you can do that is@sheathunderwear.com and use the promo code problem20 to get 20 off your order. They ship anywhere in the world. Sheathunderwear.com promo code problem20 for 20 off your order. All right, let's get back into the show. All right, let's go to. Let's go to the next one.
- [33:24]
Bobby Kennedy
Make sure that America's away. But I don't want to take. Take food away from anybody. If you like a cheeseburger, a McDonald's cheeseburger, Diet Coke, which my boss loves, you should be able to get them. If you want to eat Hostess Twinkies, you should be able to do that. But you should know what the impacts are on your family and on your health. Make sure that America.
- [33:49]
Dave Smith
Okay, so this. This one I found to be very interesting because I actually, this was kind of clarifying in a way for me about what Bobby Kennedy's position here really is. And I gotta say, I think to take it back to being a theory, bro, you know, even though I made that point about being post ideological, which I only mean, you know, partially, but that to me was like, pretty damn libertarian, what Bobby Kennedy said there, and that that's essentially how I feel about this stuff, you know, I think. So, like, like I said to take it back to theory a little bit, right? I Don't believe in any type of, like, government prohibitions on, on ingredients or things like that. But I do think you get to a point where, like, look, even the most free market libertarian type person or something, you. If you had, let's say you had a store, you own a store, and you're selling sugar. Let's say you're selling a big bag of sugar and you market sugar, but instead of putting sugar in it, you put rat poison in it. All right, well, that's a crime. I mean, that's attempted murder. At least maybe murder. If someone ends up consuming it and dying. Like, you can't do that. And that ought to be. That ought to be illegal. And so in a sense, it's kind of like, you know, I'm almost like setting up a reducto absurdum. But so, okay, if you take it to that extreme, obviously that would be. And, and so I don't know exactly what the correct answer is in the middle here, but there is no question that, like, look, we, we live in a society where, when. And this is something, you know, Nicole Shanahan, who was Bobby's running mate, and she's a friend and has been on the podcast a couple times, I really enjoyed our conversations as she made this point the last time she was on the show, or maybe the first time one of the times she was on the show, she made this point where she was like, you know, for people our age, and I believe me and her are about the same age, you know, we were almost like the first generation that grew up with the stuff in supermarkets that we have today. But our parents didn't know anything about it. You know, they just didn't know. And I'm. I'm not even blaming them. Like, there was a true ignorance about it. And, you know, if. When in my grandmother's day, if you were eating bread, like, if you bought bread from the grocery store, you were eating bread. That's what it was. It was bread. And then by the time I was a kid, if you were buying bread at the grocery store, I do think that most of our parents thought they were buying bread now. Okay, the ingredients were on the back. You know, I'm not trying to make an argument that, like, there's no buyer beware or anything like that, but when you think about it more broadly, yeah, they were kind of defrauded. I mean, like, when my grandmother bought bread, it would have been like, whatever, flour, wheat, yeast, you know, and like, like two other ingredients, whatever the freaking ingredients in bread are. But by the Time I was a kid, if you were buying a loaf of bread at the store, you were buying poison. And, and now, and this is the point Nicole Shanahan was making. Now we're like the first generation who actually realized that, and we're raising kids in this environment. And I will tell you that, you know, going to the grocery store, which, you know, okay, I don't do too much of, but I have been a few times, and my wife talks about this all the time. It's like they freaking, dude. Like, if, when you, if you just go down, like the breakfast cereal aisle, they are so dirty. I mean, they literally sell at a premium, the space that meets the kids eyes. So like, the lower shelves will have, like, they charge more money to get that spot at the grocery store. And then they have the most, like, colorful, you know, like, boxes. It's all like, you know, the stuff we all grew up on, like Froot Loops with a toucan and like all these bright red and blue and these. It's all like, designed to sell to children. And it's poison, you know, okay, maybe it's not exactly my example of, of sugar being swapped out for rat poison, but it's something approaching that. It's a really weird challenge when you're raising little kids and like 80% of the supermarket's poison. Now Bobby here is saying, like, okay, I'm not saying we should ban any of that stuff, but shouldn't they have to kind of label it? Shouldn't. Shouldn't, you know, that shouldn't, like the, the, the starting point be that like, you have to disclose that this is poison, particularly if we know scientifically that it is. Because who the hell, like, nobody is just like buying their kids cigarettes when they're five, but people are buying Froot Loops for their kids. And I'm, by the way, I'm not sure what's worse. I'm not sure anybody's actually sure what's worse. You know, the, the. We in this country fought like a war on tobacco. And this was a big thing. It really started when I was a kid. But it wasn't just that, like. And I mean, the government did this. You know, the government hauled the big tobacco executives in front of Congress. They, they did a. Try to break up the companies. They put all types of taxes on cigarettes, drove the prices through the roof. State governments, one by one by one, until it was all of them, I think, banned smoking and bars in public places. It's banned on airplanes. It's banned in airports. I mean, there's all types of restrictions that were put on cigarettes. And the justification was that they're really unhealthy, they're really bad for you. And no question about that. Cigarettes are bad for you. You know, they. There's no question. But I'll tell you, as somebody who travels around the country, you know, I. I travel around and, okay, you know, it's. People don't smoke nearly as much as they used to. A lot of people vape now, which I do think is better than smoking, but whatever, the. The Zen pouches and things like that, certainly much better than smoking. But everywhere you go in this country, everywhere you go, there's a McDonald's and a burger King and an Arby's and a Wendy's and a kfc. And, you know, there's just. And everywhere you go, there's just obese people everywhere. And you're like, look, man, like, we did this whole thing in the name of health. And then. Yet look at all this. Look at this. And. And there, at the very least, no matter where you fall on this politically or what you think the legal answer to this should be, I don't. I can't for the life of me understand an argument for why we shouldn't be talking about this or this should not be, like, a major concern. And in fact, as Nicole and. And Bobby have pointed out many times, you're talking about our children being sick, like, throughout the whole country. What could be a bigger priority than that? The health of our children. What comes above that? From my perspective, nothing. All right, let's play the next clip. Therehere we go.
- [41:28]
Bobby Kennedy
15% of American youth are now on Adderall or some other ADHD medication. Even higher percentages are on SSRIs and benzos. We are not just medicating our children, we're over medicating our entire population. Half the pharmaceutical drugs on Earth are now sold here. 70% of the profits from pharmaceutical companies are from the United States. Even though we only have 4.2% of the world's population. Not only that, but a recent study by Cochrane Collaboration founder Peter Ghosh found that pharmaceutical drugs are the third largest cause of death in our country, after heart attacks and cancers. Oh, they're not making us healthier. We need community health initiatives. We need access to treatment. We need exercise. We need better food. 15%.
- [42:27]
Dave Smith
Adderall, or, I mean, 100%. And again, this is something that just very rarely comes up in American politics. But Bobby is 100% right about this. I mean, it is. It is sickening. How over medicated as a society we are. And, and the fact that it's been done to children is just. Oh my God. I mean it's appalling. It's appalling. I mean, you know, again I, I encourage people to go like, do a little bit of research into the history of like a lot of these pharmaceutical drugs. But Adderall is a good one to start with. It's, it's unbelievable. You kind of like from the outside looking in and this is just unfortunately the way people are. And I shouldn't even say unfortunately. It's, it's, it's necessarily the way people are. We specialize. You know, you have the division of labor. You know, if you think of the most like, if you, if you try to think of like the most primitive form of economics, right, like the, the most primitive form of economics you could think of being like, like picture like a guy living in a cabin that he built himself in the woods and you know, he's, he's has to chop down trees in order to build a house. Now technically this is economics now, okay? Because you're, anytime that you're transforming natural goods into some type of product, then you're technically speaking you're in the realm of economics. So if you are chopping down a tree to build a cabin, this is an economic activity. You're transforming a natural good into an economic good, right? Like you're making this, you're transforming the tree into something that can give you shelter. But so if you imagine this like maybe there's a husband and their wife and maybe a couple like 13 year olds that you know, you'd start working as soon as you were able bodied and maybe you're like, you know, you have to build your own home, you have to make your own clothes, you have to make like this is the most primitive form of economics is you having to do everything. Okay? And as economies advance, what even in the most basic steps, right, like the, if you would think of like an advancement would be like, okay, so you, whatever, you chop down trees and, and you're, you're making like furniture, you're building a chair or something like that or a bed. And then your neighbor has a bunch of chickens and so he'll trade you a couple chickens and some eggs for a chair. Now that's when an economy starts. As soon as an economy starts progressing is when you start specializing. You have what is known as the division of labor. People start specializing in different areas and okay, and then as you, and as you could see Right. This is like economically advantageous because now maybe you're really good at making chairs and so you could just focus on what you're really good at. And that guy's really good at, you know, raising chickens so he can focus on what he's good at. And then you get the specialization here. And then when it gets all the way up, like if that's step one and step two, now you're at step 400,059, whatever. When you're all the way up, you, you get to a level of like a modern economy where somebody is specializing in, you know, post construction Southern American history in this decade. You know, they're not just doing history, they're doing this one very specific part of history, but they're a master at that. So the more you specialize, the more people can be masters of this little domain and then you can trade with everybody else and you essentially get the mastery of every domain. Right. So like right now as I'm recording to you, like I know the stuff that I'm talking about, but I don't know anything about how a microphone's made, how a computer's made, how a camera's made, how the Internet is maintained. Other people, other experts have figured all of that out and I don't have to worry about any of that. I can just do what I'm good at and then with the money I make from what I'm good at, I can purchase the knowledge of all these other people. That's essentially how an economy gets very advanced. What that relies on is that you just trust people in other industries. I don't need to know the details of how a camera is made. I just know that this one is pointed at me right now and it's working. That's all I need to know. So anyway, my point is just that when it comes to like these pharmaceutical drugs, I think most people just have the idea that like oh, scientists have figured out how to do this stuff. I'm just saying go look into it a little bit more. And it's really not like that at all. You know, is it always an interesting story to me is, is Viagra and if you're, if you're familiar with the history of Viagra, which is, I, I believe like there's other like substitutes that I think have like maybe even overtaken Viagra at this point. But Viagra was the most successful pharmaceutical drug for many years. I, I don't know if it still is, but for a period Viagra was the number one selling pharmaceutical drug in history, which says something about our priorities as a society. But so Viagra was on the. They, it was in clinical trials as a blood pressure medication. I believe it was blood pressure or something heart related. And it just didn't work. It just didn't work for lowering your blood pressure. But as they're doing these trials, they got a lot of feedback from people who were on it. And the people who were on it were like, you know, they're like, bye, bye, my heart's still not good, but I have a raging boner like I've never had in my life before. And then they went, okay, just prescribe it for that. This is real. You can go check this out. You can go do, verify this yourself. That's how the drug came to be. Like, this is, this is the level of science that we're talking about here, okay? And I don't know, man. Have any of you guys ever taken Adderall before? Yeah. Have you? Because it's, it is a powerful drug. And we give this out to 6 year olds, to 6 year old boys because they don't want to sit still all day because they're literally not made to do that. And so we drug them up. Just think about how insane this is. It's pure madness. And it's unbelievable that we only just now have the potential to have a director of health and human services who even cares, who even sees that as an issue. Now look at some of those numbers Bobby was just rattling off. But imagine 4%, 4 and a half percent of the world's population is responsible for 70% of the profits from pharmaceutical drugs. And it's. And, and we lead the world in chronic illness. It's not like we have this. And therefore we're way healthier. I mean, listen, these, these drugs that now we have like a generation of taking these powerful SSRI drugs for anxiety and depression. So is anxiety and depression cured? Oh, no, they're worse. They're worse than they were before we were drugging our country up. Now think about that. Think about the fact that like, listen, I'm no scientist and I'm no genius, but to me, if you have an illness and then you come up with the cure, you would think you would see the illness going down. Is that a reasonable expectation? But we don't see that we've become a completely drugged up society. By the way, in the same time period that we were fighting a war on drugs. We're throwing people in, in cages for decades, long sentences over drugs. And yet our society is completely drugged up legally with drugs that don't solve the problem is pure madness. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Lumen. I've told you guys about Lumen for a while now. It's an incredible product. Lumen is the world's first handheld metabolic coach. It's a device that measures your metabolism through your breath. And on the app, it lets you know if you're burning fat or carbs, and it gives you tailored guidance to improve your nutrition, workouts, sleep, and even stress management. If you guys have. Have looked into, like, the. The new diets that everybody's doing, this is what everybody's always talking about, like eating a certain diet so that you know when your metabolism is burning fat or burning carbs. But it's a lot of guesswork until Lumen came out. Now you can just breathe into your lumen and you know exactly what's going on with your metabolism, which is your body's engine. It's how your body turns the food you eat into the fuel that keeps you going. And because your metabolism is at the center of everything your body does, optimal metabolic health translates into a bunch of benefits. Easier weight management, improved energy levels, better fitness results, better sleeps, plus much more. And then Lumen isn't just going to tell you what your metabolism is doing, but on the app, it gives you recommendations to improve your metabolic health. So this is. This is the next step in improving your health. Go check them out right now@lumen me problem, and you're going to get 15 off your lumen. That's L, U, M E N.me/problem for 15 off your purchase. Thanks to Lumen for sponsoring the episode. Let's get back into it all right here. Let's. I do want to get to this, but I guess we're not gonna have time for the Tulsi preview today. I went. This. This took longer than I thought. Let's play the Bernie Sanders clip because I have to play this before. Before we wrap up.
- [52:27]
Bernie Sanders
Because I'm running out of time. I think the gist of what you are trying to say today is you're really pro vaccine. You want to ask questions. You have started a group called the Children's Health Defense. You're the originator right now, as I understand it, on their website, they are selling onesies. These are little things, clothing for babies. One of them is titled unfaxed Unafraid. Next one. And they're sold for 26 bucks apiece, by the way. Next one. Is no vax. No problem. Now you're coming before this committee and you say you're pro vaccine. Just want to ask some questions. And yet your organization is making money sending a child's product to parents for 26 bucks, which casts fundamental doubt on the usefulness of vaccines. Can you tell us now that you will, now that you are pro vaccine, that you're going to have your organization take these products off the market?
- [53:33]
Bobby Kennedy
Senator, I have no power over that organization. I'm not part of it. I resigned from the board.
- [53:38]
Bernie Sanders
That was just a few months ago. You founded that. You certainly have power. You can make that. Are you supportive of this?
- [53:45]
Bobby Kennedy
I've had nothing to do with.
- [53:47]
Bernie Sanders
Are you supportive of these onesies?
- [53:49]
Bobby Kennedy
I'm supportive of vaccines.
- [53:50]
Bernie Sanders
Are you supportive of these. This clothing, which is militantly anti vaccine?
- [53:56]
Bobby Kennedy
I am supportive of vaccines. I want good science and I want to protect.
- [54:02]
Bernie Sanders
But you will not tell the organization you founded not to continue selling that.
- [54:08]
Dave Smith
Yeah, I mean, I don't know what to say, man. Bernie Sanders is such a fucking blowhard. I just can't. I mean, it's just so. That's unbelievable to me that he led the movement that he led and had and was such a force politically just very recently now, of course he did. I think he doesn't quite have the juice he used to have because he totally bitched out at the end of the day. And he took his. This mass movement that he had around what he called democratic socialism, which is really not democratic socialism, but whatever. I. I'm not sure he actually knows that. I've seen a few people point it out to him before, and he really. Bernie Sanders really doesn't know stuff, which is something that a lot of people, you know, never really understood. I don't know if you remember when he was on Bill Maher and he got asked what he thinks, you know, like where he stands on the debate between equality and equity, and he had no idea what they were talking about. Like, imagine being Bernie Sanders, the most famous leftist in America. You don't even know, like, the most basic leftist terminology. Anyway, he lost a little bit of juice because he took that huge movement that was against capitalism and tried to feed them to Hillary Clinton and then to Joe Biden, somewhat successfully, by the way. But I mean, listen, this just the way Bernie Sanders goes at you for. Oh, you. This organization is making money. Oh, look, they're selling these things for $26 a pop. Says multimillionaire Bernie Sanders with his three homes. Like, oh, yeah, he demonizes everyone else for Making money. But as soon and then as you've seen when he's pressed on it in interviews, then he gets so defensive. If you ever do the same thing to him, you ever do the same thing to him, he goes, yeah, I sold the book. And if you want to make money, you could sell a book. Now making money is okay as long as Bernie Sanders is doing that. The other thing is that like, first of all, I got a couple little kids, $26 for a onesie. As I. A very reasonable price. I don't know what to say. If you find a onesie for cheaper than 26 bucks, you found a pretty good deal. That's a, that's very, that's not like just, I mean he, I don't know why he went out of his way to mention the 26, but it's not a particularly high price for a onesie. It's like, yeah, that's about what a onesie would go for. The other thing is that like, as if this needs to be said, but like what people put on a onesie for their baby, it, it's not supposed to be like a textbook. Like they're, it's not, it's not like they're, they're like. Here is my argument. I have, I have my precise policy views that I want to explain to you. And I do that by putting them on a onesie. They're supposed to be cute and catchy. That's the idea. And listen, I don't know this, I don't know enough about this organization. Obviously Bernie Sanders doesn't know that much either, as he asked Bobby Kennedy if he would put a stop to this and then found out that Bobby Kennedy is no longer affiliated with the organization. I'm just saying, my guess from this is that that seems like they were probably onesies that they started selling during COVID And it was probably referring to the COVID vaccination, the one that said what did say, like no vaccine, no problem. That seemed to me to be a play on the vaccine passports. Remember when, for a whole. Remember when we instituted apartheid in America for a few months? Remember when we made everybody who wouldn't consume a pharmaceutical product second class citizens in their own cities when they couldn't go to sports games or restaurants or, or bookstores or whatever. Remember that period of time? Seems to me like they were playing off that. By the way, it would seem that Bernie Sanders maybe would care about that issue, seeing as how his whole thing is supposed to be caring about the marginalized. The marginalized and the people who don't have equal access or whatever. The. He's always rambling about. Oh, and. And his other leftist. I mean, it was disproportionately blacks and immigrants who didn't want to get the vaccine. So do you care about that? I mean, there are all these Democrats always talking about how having an ID to vote is racist because it disproportionately affects black people. Yet when it disproportionately affects black people to ban them from restaurants, that's not right. It's all just so ridiculous. But you see who Bernie Sanders really is here. You know, it's like when there's actually, like, as I got back to before, I'll. Here, I'll. I'll end the show on this. Tying it together. Okay, back to what I said at the beginning of the show, where it's not really about ideology, it's about, you know, the dynamic is much more like the corrupt versus the not corrupt, liars versus honesty. That's. That's the dynamic much more than it is left versus right. And when it really matters, okay, and it comes down to it, and somebody like Bobby Kennedy is a threat to power. And you see literally, quite literally here, the powerful coalescing around, keeping this threat to power out, right? The senators keeping out the dissident potential health department secretary. Where, when it matters, where's Bernie Sanders? He's on the side of power, being a fucking blowhard, giving this bullshit speech, trying to make Bobby Kennedy look bad. That's where Bernie Sanders falls down. When it matters. As always, as always, the guy larps as a representative of the people. And when it, whenever it comes down to it, when it really matters, he falls in line with power. Just like when he endorsed Hillary Clinton at the DNC in 2016. You know, he had this huge movement, this mass movement of people who hated big banks and hated the billionaire class rigging the system in their favor and hated the, the forever wars, and he got them to support Hillary Rodham Clinton, you know, the, the person who gives speeches for half a million dollars to big bankers and tells them in those speeches, don't worry about what I'm saying publicly. I say one thing publicly, but I say a different thing privately to you now in that moment when it really mattered. Look at what, look at what the Libertarian Party just did with Donald Trump. We got Ross Ulbricht freed because, look, we represented a voting bloc and he wanted to court us, and he knew this was a thing that we wanted. So we were able to get a concession out of him in, in exchange for our support. You know, like it or no, don't like it. That's politics. Bernie Sanders had tens of millions of Democratic voters in the Democratic primary. And then Hillary Clinton in the DNC cheated him, cheated him out of it. And this came out. The WikiLeaks dump had come out by the Democratic National Convention. They knew that Hillary Clinton and the DNC had cheated against Bernie Sanders. And he had so many chips. He could have sat there and said, like, well, I, you know what? I'm taking my voters and walking and we will cost you this election because we don't believe in people who, you know, we hate the big bankers and the wars and the powerful and all this. Or he could have at least extracted some serious concessions. I mean, if we could get Ross Ulbricht free, he could have gotten almost any damn policy promise he wanted to. And what did he do? He got none of that and just told all his supporters to go support Hillary Clinton. Button when it comes down to it, Bernie Sanders is not a dissident. He's always on the side of power. Screw that guy. All right, that's our show for today. The members only episode is not going to be tomorrow. We're going to try to get that done Friday because me and Rob will be traveling out to Louisville tomorrow. Looking forward to the shows. Comicdavesmith.com for all the the ticket links. Catch you guys soon. See you later. It.