Robbie Bernstein (3:42)

I got some new sketches out, so if you don't already follow me on YouTube, Rob of the Fire, all one word and start emailing me with those porches. Rob. Newsroommail.com we're putting it together. It's nearly the season of porches, almost the season.

Dave Smith (3:54)

And the season of porches, it's like elections. It gets longer every year. Like every year the porch season goes a little. It used to just be a few weeks in summer. Now it's most of the year. Now it's, if there's not ice on your porch, Rob will come set up a comedy show there for you. And by the way, people, just unbelievable the feedback of Rob's porch tour. People love it. Great shows. Okay, so there's, there's a few things that I wanted to, to talk about today, and I think we'll probably start with, with Bricks, which was the, the clip that you sent Rob this. You know, sometimes with the stuff we cover, like, you know, when you're, when you're covering the news and you're always covering what's going on lately, it does, like, it's a weird thing. Like when you get lost in the day to day news, it's like there's this new event, but then they all forming into patterns and they could almost be categorized. Categorized and like, okay, throw it into this column. And this column is for me personally, one of the most infuriating. It's the column of people coming out way too late and telling the truth about COVID when it's like, I don't know, it's just particularly infuriating to me and I'm sure to you too, as somebody, Rob, who was telling the truth about COVID as it happened and kind of taking all the arrows that come with that. It's, it's, it's a, it's a special type of enraging when you see people who had the biggest platform and all of the credibility come out now in 2025, which by my mathematical reasoning is five years after we needed to hear this. But, but when they come out now and then, it's almost like they just try to blend into the crowd, you know what I mean? Like, it kind of feels like if you were like in a third world country and your dictator is horribly corrupt and you're outside and they're yelling like we want to end this corruption of this brutal dictator. This regime is put. And then you look next to you and it's the dictator and he's also yelling and he's also like, yeah, down with this guy. And you're like, wait, no, you are the guy. You don't get to be on our side now anyway. Kind of gives me feelings like that. So that's one, it's an entire category. We've probably done, you know, 100 different videos or different topics that have fallen into this category. But I'll just preface, it's another one of those.

Robbie Bernstein (6:33)

This one is so irritating because if you wanted to give a one minute summary of my position on the COVID vaccines, it's what you're about to hear from this lady and it's five years too late. And when you were saying it at the time you were being pulled down from the Internet. Now, there might be a little bit of variation in that. I also talked about, you know, the emergency authorities government was seizing. But in terms of just the vaccine, this is nearly exactly what I was saying five years ago in two sentences, except coming from one of the people that was responsible for everything. That was not this information five years ago.

Dave Smith (7:10)

And not that me or you are high profile enough that this woman, by the way, the woman we're talking about is Dr. Bricks. Deborah Bricks, I believe.

Robbie Bernstein (7:19)

I think it's Deborah.

Dave Smith (7:21)

Okay, yeah, whatever. God, even her name infuriates me. Just call it Deborah. Anyway, she was her title. She was like the head of Donald Trump's coronavirus response. She was on that. The COVID task force. She was burks. I'm sorry, maybe I'm saying it wrong. She was. She was on TV every single day with Fauci and her and Trump and, you know, like, they were the face of the COVID response. And you just wonder, right? Like I was saying, like, it's not that me and you are so high profile or something like that, but like, when you were saying, it's like the same thing with Cuomo, you know, when he comes out and says, like, oh, you know, ivermectin's not horse dewormer. It's. It's medicine and I'm on it right now and blah, blah, and. But. But he says it with no acknowledgement that he was demonizing people who said this at the time. And with no. He says it almost as if he just figured it out like the rest of us have it. Like, hey, Rob, you know, I just figured out we shouldn't have fought the war in Iraq. Yeah, I just came up with that. My own. Like this. You know what I mean? Like, there's. Anyway, what would this chick have said about you if just played a video clip of you saying this at the time when it really mattered? And you just know the answer, she would have demonized you in the most vicious way. Anyway, here's a clip she was on. You gotta say a Piers Morgan man. And I do, you know, look up. I know I have called it the Jerry Springer of political commentators before, I gotta say, and I say, this is someone who's a regular guest on the show. It is really amazing what he's built. It's very straight. It's just at a certain point you're like, oh, you get, like, you get the head of the coronavirus response on your panel, and then they're just arguing it out with other people. Anyway, it's pretty wild that he's able to book some of the people he books. But let's go to the clip and then we can respond.

C (9:23)

He made it very clear to every mom out there that his children were immunized about childhood vaccines. And what we've done wrong in public health is we didn't explain that Covid vaccines were nothing like the childhood vaccines and that the childhood vaccines, many of the diseases, you get it once you don't get it again. And this is getting the children to have that disease without getting the deadly consequences. That is not what the COVID vaccine was designed to do. It wasn't designed against infection. And if you look at the vaccine hesitancy rates, they've doubled since COVID So we have to start addressing these things. We can't just ignore.

Dave Smith (10:05)

And Deborah, let me ask you, let me ask you, Deborah, I mean, given that you were the face of COVID from the Trump presidency at the time, do you share this doctor who I was with, do you share the concerns about the longer term negative impact of some of the COVID vaccines?

C (10:23)

The messenger RMA vaccine should have been rolled out for the people that were at risk for severe disease, because that's what the vaccine was developed for. But when we say that we're following the science and the data, we need to follow the science and the data. And the science and the data said people primarily over 65 or people with significant comorbidities were at risk for severe disease. Those are the individuals that should have been immunized first. And we should have put our science behind our immunization schedule and protected those most at risk. It went into young people in hospitals before it went into our elderly and nursing homes. That is not following the science and the data. So I am all for following the science and the data, but it shouldn't just be a statement. It should be a reality. And when we don't match what we do in public health to the science and the data, that is when we get into trouble. And that's when we start to fracture trust with the American people.

Robbie Bernstein (11:25)

I mean, I didn't.

Dave Smith (11:26)

It is. It's just amazing to watch, dude. It's amazing. It is the dictator getting out of his palace and joining the protesters, just being like, yeah, I know. This is. I remember being on this little show called the Joe Rogan Experience, where me and Joe literally said that. Well, I mean, really, he said it, which is what caused the storm, not me so much. But we were just talking about how, like, yeah, we don't really think that young, healthy kids need to take this vaccine. And I said, like, there's no way I'd give my kids this vaccine. And then Joe was like, yeah, like, if you're young and healthy, I would just recommend you be really healthy. Exercise. And literally the President of the United States of America ripped into us for having this conversation, said we were spreading dangerous misinformation. Fauci said it was dangerous misinformation. And now, quietly, years later, Four years later, the chick who was the face of the. The COVID response goes, oh, yeah, no, that's what following the science looks like. It's like, hey, well, where were you at the time? Like, we could have used your backup. It would have really been nice to be able to point to the head of the coronavirus response and be like, look, even she's saying, we're following the science here and you're not. And then it's just these years later. And by the way, Rob, one of the things that strikes me about that is there's nothing that she's saying here that's like new information has come out. She's saying at the time, this is what we all knew. Like, we knew that the MRNA was not designed to prevent infection. Really? Well, you didn't think it was necessary to speak up while the. That was the entire sales pitch of it, the entire sales pitch from Fauci and Biden and Rachel Maddow and the entire regime was that you will not get Covid. If you get this, that right, Rachel Meadows, it stops with you. And now you can't transmit it to the next person. This was their whole pitch. This was the pitch Fauci made as he went door to door trying to convince people in Baltimore to get the damn thing. It's just amazing to see. I'm sorry, this is like, not good enough. And there should have been. And I. I'll confess, I haven't seen the whole episode, but, like, how is there a follow up question to this, which is like, why didn't you say this at the time? Why wasn't. Why, you know, like, what? How can anyone in the scientific community even complain about anything that's going on now? If you guys. It wasn't incumbent on you to all stand up and say this at the time. If this was obviously what the science was, that, yeah, yeah, you know, it might make sense to get, like, the very, you know, severely at risk population vaccinated, but it doesn't make any sense to give this to kids. Then why wasn't the entire scientific community saying that? Because what were they saying? The entire scientific community in lockstep, was demonizing anybody who said that.

Robbie Bernstein (14:25)

So I didn't catch this the first time. The lady's pretty slick with her words. So some of the things that just catch me is at the time I was saying, hey, this isn't really a vaccine. They're just using the word vaccine as marketing purposes. And she still calls it a vaccine, but she augments it now to an MRNA vaccine to let you know.

Dave Smith (14:42)

Not a traditional vaccine. Yes.

Robbie Bernstein (14:44)

So that's the first one. Then the second one is. And she's already come out and said this since, but never studied for infection, not supposed to work for infections like you said. Then that's not new information. I didn't even catch this the first time watching it. But she's being slick by saying we should have given it to the elderly first. So she's not really walking back that we gave it to the young, but she's being a little bit slick in the way that she's describing it of that the young didn't really need it. The reason I, you know, this is old news. We've covered this a lot of times. It's just how flagrant it is coming from her. And as you're hearing the entire system yell about both that we can't end the Ukraine war because it makes America look weak and that's a mistake and we're just giving it to Putin, blah, blah, blah. Or that Doge is not actually unraveling any fraud in government whatsoever and that there's a danger of Elon Musk having sets of information and that this is actually the, you know, them trying to ruin our government and take away your entitlement programs. It's good to see the extent by which the entire apparatus will ideo and not to rely on the machine.

Dave Smith (15:45)

Yeah. By the way, on your topic also, because I don't know, I'll add one to you. Your point there, which is very, is very true. But this has slick. This, this chick is, is that she doesn't just. Okay, so when she says, oh well, we should have given it to the elderly first and not the young. She was responding to Pierce directly, asking her if she shares the concerns of other doctors that there could be long term negative health outcomes for people who took the thing. And so she pivots to. Well, you know, it's. Is this limited hangout like, okay, well let me give you a little bit, let me give you like a few crumbs here to avoid giving you the really big piece of meat, which is that, yeah, we rec. We insisted on something that has no positives and has very real negatives for an entire group of people. But then she'll just pivot to like, oh, well, we should have started with the old, you know, because it never really did anything for transmission. I'm just saying that's not. Yeah, no kidding. We're all past that conversation. As you said, Rob, we've had it a million times. On this show. Some of us aren't starting five years late on it. So we've had this conversation quite a bit. We're way past that. And you know, like, there does. I understand, by the way, that this is somewhat arbitrary, but there has to be kind of like some cutoff point of power of how much power you had and what you did with it, where, like, under a certain level, all right, we're not going to imprison half the country for freaking out about COVID but, like, I'm sorry, this is like how I felt. Look, if there's just like some. Some liberal person who was really bad on Covid but came around and now sees that me and you were right about it, like, okay, you know, welcome to the team, I guess. But that's like Chris Cuomo now. Sorry, dude. Like, I'm sorry. I remember who you are. You were the number one show on cnn, giving your brother puff piece interviews, faking your reemergence from your basement. I'm sorry, you can't. Like, that's too far gone. Like, no, Joseph Goebbels can't come over after the Nazis fall and be like, yeah, no, I've seen the light. Sorry, you're too guy now an average German citizen. Okay, you know, what are we gonna do? We can't punish everybody. But I gotta say, and I had a long post on X about this the other day, but particularly now in this moment, because if we don't get it in this moment, I don't think we're ever gonna get it. But there, There needs to be some prosecution for some of the crimes that were committed. Now, I particularly say this with Bobby Kennedy as the Secretary of HHS and with Tulsi Gabbard now as the Director of National Intelligence. I mean, if you just think about the crimes that have been committed, like, even just. I mean, I don't know exactly. But being in the position she was in, like, I don't know the legal statute, but being in the position that she was in and not saying anything about this, that is criminal. It's just like. Like, it's like. And a horrific crime against humanity at that. We think about the crimes committed just broadly speaking, right? In. In the health world and in the intelligence world, like in the health world, you have. I mean, they freaking made the virus. They. They funded the lab that created the virus. Now, exactly how, you know, how far does that rabbit hole go? Go? I don't know. You know, like, is it. Was it really for bioweapons purposes, was released out of the lab. I mean, these are just questions that we don't really have an answer to. But I'll work on the assumption that it's neither of those things. Okay, Work on the assumption that they were just. They were funding gain of function research because they thought it could help them cure more viruses down the road or something like that. Right, Whatever the legitimate purpose of gain of function research would be. Okay, so you funded this thing, created it had such substandard, like, conditions that the thing gets out. You then all lie through your teet as you're locking down the world in response to the thing that you made without ever admitting that you made it. Okay? And then after all of that, you come up with this vaccine and lie through your fucking teeth to get people to inject something into their body that they can't uninject, knowing damn well that it doesn't work the way you're selling it as knowingly lying about that and getting people to take this thing after you've gotten the government to shield these pharmaceutical companies from liability so that they can rake in tens of billions of doll in profits. I'm sorry, someone needs to be prosecuted for that. Like, there is a level where you're like, no, we can't just move on from this. You can't just come on Piers Morgan's show and get to go, yeah, we did it all wrong. Like, what? And then on. On the intelligence side, I mean, look, what can I even say about this? We, the country and everyone knows this is true. Right? The country has been lied into wars. They have instituted torture. They've lied to the President of the United States. They've tried to frame the President of the United States for treason when they didn't like what he might potentially do. And they've blatantly interfered in US Presidential elections. Someone's got to go to jail for that. I don't think this is too unreasonable to go, okay, so, like, what's this new Trump administration really made of? Of? We got these guys, Bobby Kennedy, Tulsi Gabbard. People who have are on record calling out these crimes for many years, who are now in charge of the Health Department and the intelligence agencies. I don't think it's too much to ask for that. Like, I want these crimes to be exposed. And when these crimes are exposed, the people, these are like the. Amongst the gravest crimes ever committed by the US Government against the American people. And the same government that I'm talking about here will throw you in a cage for decades if you were to bring a gun across state lines when you're not allowed to have it in the other state. They'll throw people in cages for decades over having the wrong plant or distributing the wrong plant. They'll throw people in jail for all types of minor infractions. That. This is why we have the biggest prison population in the world, both in terms of raw numbers and percentage of population, because our government will throw people in a cake. You break the law, you get thrown in jail. Like, okay, well, if we're going to do that, why exactly should these people who have committed the mo. The gravest crimes against humanity, why should they not be prosecuted for this? I'm sorry. This shit is just infuriating to me. 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Robbie Bernstein (23:41)

And there's that draconian rule. I'm not going to get this phrase right, but there's some line like, ignorance of the law isn't an excuse for violating it. Which is.

Dave Smith (23:49)

Loves to tell you that.

Robbie Bernstein (23:50)

Which is wild, that there can be laws that you're not even aware of, and now you're responsible for it. So in this case, I mean, if the law doesn't allow you to plead negligence, and not only. You're way past that because you were. You were claiming elite knowledge authority. I don't know, there's probably a better way to put that. But you were saying I'm the most knowledgeable, so everyone needs to listen to me. So for one, you shouldn't then be able to claim negligence later because you actually exerted elite knowledge authority and then you were actually just lying. So yeah, there's absolutely no excuse for being this lady and feeling comfortable just coming out on television and now flipping the script. And like you said, Goebbels just joining, you know, the allies and going, who? Why would anyone say that about Jews? That's terrible. You can't say such things.

Dave Smith (24:36)

We were totally wrong to do that, by the way. Like, that was crazy and we really shouldn't have done it that way. You know, it's, there's just not.

Robbie Bernstein (24:44)

Turns out it was short sighted and it might have actually harmed pharma profits as more of the country doesn't trust them and now the outsider that was criticized them has gotten the government post. Maybe the shortsightedness of two years of great profits wasn't worth ruining our entire industry by forcing everyone to get one of our things that wasn't that good.

Dave Smith (25:04)

That's right. And look like it's just so funny because it's always in some weird way, this is always. And I remember people like Buck Sexton was one of the guys who, I remember making this point. He was great, he's like a former CIA guy, but he was great on Russiagate the whole time. Like, the whole time he was like, this is complete bullshit. It. And they're, Donald Trump's getting framed by the FBI and the CIA. And then I remember hearing him at one point where he goes, you know, the worst part of Russiagate is that now trust in the FBI and the CIA has been totally eroded for at least a generation. And I was like, no, that's the best part of it. That's the only good thing that came out of this. And likewise, it's just so bizarre to see. He's like, oh, and now vaccine hesitancy has doubled. And I think the takeaway of that is supposed to be that it's like, oh, and that's bad because vaccines save lives. But I'm just looking at it like, no, I think it's good. Yeah. When, when we found out you would lie through your teeth to us. We don't trust you anymore. Correct. That is a, that is a natural and healthy response to someone lying to you over and over again. That's the correct response is to not trust that person anymore. That is not like it is an un. If you, and this is true just in your personal life, if there is somebody who lies to you over and over again and you still give them trust, that is you're up. That is not the correct response. The correct response is to not trust them anymore. So, yes, the American people, we don't believe you. We don't believe you about any of it. And that doesn't mean that we're going to, you know, we want to jump to sloppy conclusions. But it does mean that like all of you guys need to go, you all need to go out of the way. You know, like there's what, I can't remember exactly the example, but I think there's just been so many examples like this. But you would think that, like, if, if you wanted to maintain trust in the system, this kind of vague, abstract thing that a lot of people claim is really, really important. I don't agree with them. But regardless, maybe it, let's say they're right. Okay, well then when the Mueller report came out and indicated that there was no evidence of a conspiracy between Donald Trump and the Russians, after this, after this multi year long tens of millions of dollars spent on this investigation, if we had seen the next day mass resignations at the FBI and in the corporate media, that would have done a lot to maintain trust in the system. To go like, look, you guys got it spectacularly wrong. But when they did, so many of these journalists, you know, Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O'Donnell and Joy Reed, they all went, well, we can't be newsmen anymore. You know, obviously, like we got, we went all in on this big story and it was completely wrong. So we gotta, I gotta go find some other career, you know, because I, I can't be trusted with this information anymore. I can't be trusted as like an.

Robbie Bernstein (28:20)

Arbiter of anymore quarterback with an entire season of fumbles.

Dave Smith (28:25)

Yeah. And then you're like, okay, so I guess you're not going to start next year, right? Like what? I don't know. This is just. If you actually wanted to maintain trust in any of these institutions, then you should be the one demanding at the very least, I mean, I'm talking about prosecution, but at the very least, mass resignations, mass firings, something like that. It's just, it's unbelievable. Unbelievable. It's unbelievable that these people are even able to. It's also, it's unbelievable that they're able to, like she could say what she says on Piers Morgan and not be like, oh, I'm, I can't even say this out loud because I'm admitting what, how criminal. And when I say criminal in this sense with her, I don't even know. Maybe there's not a legal Statute. But I just mean criminal in the. In the. In the higher sense of. Of the word. You know what I mean? Like, there's just something illegal about this.

Robbie Bernstein (29:18)

I'm sure it's not criminal because it's got the old fauci. I was just making recommendations. Sure, I was the head authority, and I took the authority and I got on television. But me, I never said the things I was saying. That was the cdc. That was that guy. That was that guy. You know, I'm sure she's got the same plausible deniability of, I was just making recommendations.

Dave Smith (29:41)

No, I. I agree with you. What I mean is more like, like, if you were. Like, if you and a group of people were, like, on a desert island that had never been inhabited by people before, so there is no government. There is no law. There's nothing. And you. You murder somebody, like, there may not be courts or laws or anything, but on a moral level, you did something just as evil as if you murdered someone in Connecticut or New York City or. You know what I mean? That's like. Like. And so I'm just saying, like, on. Like, on a moral level, like, that is a crime. This is criminal, what you did to people. So ruin people's lives. And then, by the way, you know, it's great that, you know, of course, I think she's not as attached to the vaccine regime as she was to the lockdown regime. So now she'll come out and blast them. But let's do lockdowns next. Let's go through that again. You know what I mean? Like, let's go through what you actually were a part of. Was that a good idea? I mean, if we only should have vaccinated the people highly at risk, maybe we only should have quarantined the people highly at risk. Maybe quarantining children wasn't a good idea, just like vaccinating them wasn't a good idea. God. And then on top of all of it, it's also that, like, I'm. Like, this has dramatically changed. But also, like, even. Do you. I mean, if you remember, I'm sure you do. Well, because we played it on the show, and it was a pretty, you know, like, monumental cultural moment moment. But when Jon Stewart went on the Colbert Report and had that whole thing about how obviously it came from the lab, and it's just. It's such an easy idea to mock that it didn't come from the lab at the time. I remember all of us were like. We're like, oh, well, okay, about time they started talking about this, but then we were also kind of like, oh, he actually said it. Like, someone actually said it on a network show. And. Which is kind of crazy. And. And saying what she just said right now was the type of thing, as you pointed out, Rob, that me and you were saying all the time. And it came. It came with such a price tag to say that, like, you were at risk of losing your channel, of being, like, viciously smeared. Like, there were real costs associated with saying this. And now, years later, you know, again, it's just. The only thing I could think of is it's like Cuomo. It's like Cuomo. Where. And I'm sitting there watching the whole thing and it's like, dude. So Joe Rogan was two years ago under the biggest cancellation attempt in cancel culture history for saying exactly what you're saying right now. And then you just get to say it with this casual air of like, I'm just throwing something out there with complete comfortability, knowing that nothing bad will happen to you for saying it. This is just, you know, if you really do care about, like, unifying the country or moving forward or regaining trust, I'll tell you, I think there's only really one way to do it, and that's that some of these people at the top have to be prosecuted. That is. That is the answer. All right. Speaking of the corporate media dealing with. Or people from the old regime kind of dealing with the. The latest developments, this was amazing little moment. Every now and then you get these amazing moments where establishment type people kind of let the truth slip out. And on. On msnbc, they had Mara Gay Mar. Mar. She's a writer for the New York Times and she. This is the Tom Elliott tweet. Natalie. Tom Elliott, great follow on Twitter. If you don't follow him, make sure to do so. But I thought this was a great moment that just, you know, if you want to understand why we are where we are as a country, this one really kind of gives it away. Here is Ms. Gray talking about the role of journalists.

D (33:44)

There is a pretty good legal case that Elon Musk should not even have access to be carrying out this purge that he is. And secondly, I would say that we have zero transparency really into how this is being done. Really. I think the message that the American people need to be hearing more is like, all of this is being done just slashing and burning to essentially prepare the country for Donald Trump's tax cuts to the wealthy. And there's gotta be a way to pay for that, and what's gonna happen is that everyday Americans in their everyday lives are paying for it already. We're seeing it in, you know, government services that are going to suffer already. We've been seeing that. The FAA is really not up to the mark at the moment. They're being gutted. Medicaid, Medicare, every part of the government that touches Americans lives is about to be impacted. And it's not clear yet that there's a broad realization of this outside of Washington D.C. but it's coming. And I think that's one of the questions that I have just as a journalist right now is do everyday Americans in the rest of the country understand that this is going to impact their lives in ways they can't even imagine yet? That's part of our job, is to explain that this is not just about government workers in Washington. This is about the irs. This is about people's tax returns. This is about people's Social Security. Nothing is secure right now. And the government is not being remade to be efficient. This is an effort to destroy it. And I think that is the core message that Democrats need to be explaining every day in great detail. This is not an effort to make things more efficient. Every American understands there's ways to make government more efficient. Nobody is against that. But this is not an effort to do that. This is an effort to destroy the government so that it's easier for oligarchs and the Heritage foundation to do whatever they wish.

Dave Smith (35:52)

Oh yes. Let me tell you something. I wish you were right. God, do I. Can you imagine, Rob, this isn't just an effort to make the government more efficient. Everybody supports that. We all support that. This is an effort to destroy the government. Ah, I wish, I wish. But isn't it? First of all, there's just so much here. The freak out about Doge is just like, it's, it's got to be up there as one of the most revealing freakouts like it. This has always been in some weird, I think, unintended, kind of inspector Gadgety type of way. It's always been one of Donald Trump's superpowers is that he just like, he gets the media class so furious that they reveal themselves. But the Doge thing has been his masterpiece. I mean, the response to this, for her to actually say, and look, you could spin this in terms of like what she meant, but she actually says it's our job, it's our job to make people realize that cuts in government and tax cuts are really bad and that big government is really Good. It. Essentially, that's what she's saying. It's her job. It's our job to explain to the American people, Rob. Because, you see, the thing is, Doge is kind of popular with the American people. They kind of like this idea of draining the swamp and. And getting. Yeah, because who doesn't like the idea of getting rid of fraud and abuse? You know what I mean? But so people kind of like that. So it's our job to explain to them that. No, no, no, no, no. This is actually really terrible. It's really bad. Because if you cut down on the size of government, you might get oligarchy. That's because that's what the oligarchs want. Is that right? Isn't that always what every powerful person who really runs the government, which is, by the way, what an oligarch is. But all those people, they really want the government to have no power at all. That's always what they've wanted. It's just fascinating to me. I don't know. Any thoughts, Rob?

Robbie Bernstein (37:54)

Well, the things that really jumped out at me was first, her complaint about the transparency of how Elon Musk is doing the slashing.

Dave Smith (38:02)

Yeah.

Robbie Bernstein (38:03)

She doesn't seem to be concerned with the transparency of how the money's being spent. If anything, he's bringing transparency to fraud and abuse. But you don't seem to be concerned with government just having $4 trillion going to unknown places that just imagine.

Dave Smith (38:17)

I'm sorry, I mean, it's such a good point, dude. It's just such a good point. And I just think it can't. I'm sorry, keep in mind that where you were going with that. But it just can't be stressed how good a point that is. Is that might be the best point that has been made on this show in several episodes. The idea of anybody's complaint with Doge being a lack of transparency. And by the way, I'm all for Doge being as transparent as possible. I'd like to know every goddamn thing they find, every program they plan on recommending to cut. I'm all for transparency, but if you have an issue with a lack of transparency, okay, where have you been in the last 10, 20, however many years you've been doing this? Where have you been on the CIA, on the Federal Reserve, on the FBI, on. On just all of these government programs? Where have you been on that? This. Don't give me this bullshit about how you care about transparency. Half of our government, the part with teeth, operates in the shadows in complete secrecy. The fuck out of here. Your issue is transparency. I'm sorry, keep going. But you're so spot on about that.

Robbie Bernstein (39:23)

So. And we're also, we're still at the start of this one. So I don't want to, I don't want to jump too far ahead and endorse too much of Doge, because we'll see how it plays out. And if continue to spot fraud, great. And if this seems to be some sort of a data collection scheme by Elon Musk, then bad. But we'll see. It feels to me like at the moment I'm watching the makings of another Russia collusion story where they're very specifically saying that they're not looking for people's entitlement programs, they're looking for fraud and abuse. They're coming out with stories of finding fraud and abuse. And then you get these people on the news that are going, no, they have no interest in fraud and abuse. They're really going to get rid of your entitlement program. And like you were pointing out, they're literally telling you, hey, and we're engaged in propaganda. Cuz it's our job not to report the information, but to reeducate the American public that there's risk here that they can't even fathom, nor am I able to articulate. But just everyone trust us that what's happening here is not what they're telling you and we need to put an end to it. Even if it looks helpful. It's amazing to me and I hope, same as Deborah Burks, this lady should be held responsible. Because if you're working at the New York Times and it turns out that they're actually just cleaning up fraud and abuse and you're telling people we need to put an end to it because they're coming for your entitlement programs. That's a pretty bold lie.

Dave Smith (40:37)

Yeah, 100%. And look, I mean this, this says so much about how we got to where we are now. You know, like the, the idea that you're sitting, look, if what journalism is, and there are still, by the way, some people who do have it, none of them on msnbc, but there are still some people who do journalism. But journalism would be like if you were to say our job is this. Our job is to inform you of what Doge is doing, inform you about what they've uncovered and you know, present their argument for why this is fraud and should be cut, and then present the other argument for why it's dangerous to cut this stuff. Or you could say, hey, look, there are people who argue that it's illegal for Doge to have this information. Other people argue it is legal. That's journal journalism. To give you the information so that you can then decide what you think, whose side you're on or who you or or on what aspects are on this side or that side. To say that our job is to make you come to a conclusion about that. Our job is to make it so that you understand that cutting the government is bad and growing the government is good and cutting taxes is bad and increasing taxes is good. And also I'm going to do it with like just ridiculous hyperbole that nobody could really argue is the case and then make you emotional, you know, say they're destroying government. The goal isn't efficiency, it's the destruction of the government. Sorry, that's not journalism, that's propaganda. And evil propaganda at that. Because of course tax cuts are great and shrinking the size of government is great. It's, it's inherently in the individual's interest. It's in the American people's interest, obviously is so obvious. It's, it's just a priori true that it's all things being equal, it's in your interest to pay less in taxes. Right? Like that's the money from taxes comes out of your paycheck. So obviously the starting point isn't neutral. The starting point would be, as everybody knows, like if you, if you have no other information and the only piece of information you get is hey, your taxes are going down. Most workers reaction to that is, is great because that's the starting point is that's a good thing. So anyway, I'm sorry, go ahead.

Robbie Bernstein (42:58)

I also, I just can't stand boogeyman logic of it was what was going on with the, during the Election Project 2025 and if it's enacted, well then what. What exactly is the risk? Or in sir, in this case with the IRS audit, it happens to be, from what I understand, there's one person on the Doge team that has security clearance that will then be able to I guess review the IRS and do some sort of it. And all the complaints are about, well, the big data. The big data. The big data has already been collected. It's already in government hands. So now it's another person with government security clearance that's going to review it. I think in my interest to see what the IRS is up to. Can you explain to me what the risk is here? I'm open to the storyline, but when it's just boogeyman logic of. It was a complaint about data collection. Well, then why aren't we complaining about government data collection? And why aren't you writing newspaper articles about the relationship between AT&T and all these other companies, companies that sell big data to the government? Or what about all the data that they harvest offshore? Remember what happened with Tucker Carlson when it became clear that they were wiretapping him? So if the complaints about big government data collection, where are all those news stories? Why is it suddenly when there's one person assigned by the government with security clearance that's going to review what they're doing, that the data collection is a problem? I just can't. Games.

Dave Smith (44:15)

No, it's funny. And by the way, this is perhaps to some degree showing our age because we do use these terms sometimes, even though they're. It's even like. I'll say, like, I've. I've referred for many years to dvr. When you record something as taping it, it's like, oh, let's make sure we tape that. You know what? I could, but it's just like this relic of the 90s, you know what I mean? Like tape. What does tape have to do with it? People still call these shows podcasts. No one's had an ipod in many years. But even as you said, said, like wiretapping Tucker, you're just to be clear, right, you're just doing the same thing. You're using one of these old. It's actually so much creepier than that because there's no wire involved. You know what I mean? It's not even like in the. The olden days. It'd be like, oh, they like, plugged into your phone. It's. No, they just take all of your life. You take everything you have from your goddamn phone. They just take all your metadata. And yes, they 100 did that to Tucker. But look, with all these things, just like I said, like, oh, like you care about. You care about transparency, but you don't care that, like, well, look, Elon Musk. And. And here's. Okay, sorry. I just got a lot of thoughts in my head, so let me try to get them out one at a time. But so even to your point, I completely agree with you. And you go, look, we will see where this Doge thing goes. Like, this is not exactly what would have been me or your first choice. Like, our first choice probably would have just been drastic cuts in government spending. Like, let Congress abolish all the departments that they created. Abolish epa, Abolish the department of education, Abolish the nsa, abolish the atf. Like, all this can just go. It's all just garbage and all pure corruption. That's the fraud, waste and abuse, the whole thing. Okay, we didn't get that. And so we're getting this other thing and we're like, all right, well, let's see what they can do. And I'm with you. Let's see, let's. Let's see how all of this goes. But at the very least, you go. They have, in a way that you can, you know, they have inserted into the national conversation this issue of how government wastes your money. Like nobody else, no one else in my life has ever made this as big of a cultural phenomenon where everybody's focused and keenly aware of this. And there were people who tried the great Ron Paul. I think there were people in the Tea Party movement who were trying to do this, but none of them ever succeeded to this level of public, public consciousness. So, okay, we'll see. But let me listen. If you, you're telling me you, you care about secrecy, but you didn't have an issue with anyway, so one of the things, I don't know if you've seen this, but this is the new meme that they're talking about is Fort Knox. I. I retweeted someone who had. It was really hilarious. But they did. They go, when Doge shows up at Fort Knox, and then it's. They just cut to the scene from Dumb and Dumb Summer when he opens the Breeze Cave briefcase. That's what everyone at Fort Knox is going to be. Very funny. But so, like, I don't know, are you concerned with secrecy? Wouldn't you be, like, how come we don't get to see what's in Fort Knox? Isn't this the people's gold? Don't the Americans own this? How do we not have a right to know whether there's anything even there anymore? How do we not have a right to see the books of the Federal Reserve? How do we not have a right. Think about the amount. There's, there's like, millions of classified documents. We still, I mean, Donald Trump approved the release, but, like, we still haven't gotten, like, the Kennedy papers out yet. You know what I mean? So, like, don't give me this. That you care about transparency. And then, you know, Rob on. It's like you care about privacy. That's your, your big issue. Okay, where were you on Snowden, like, when you found out that the government and by the way, not elected Representatives, the nsa. Okay, not. Not anybody who anyone democratically voted for, but the career bureaucrats and spies at the nsa. When you found out that they were collecting all Americans bulk data, all their, their metadata, I should say they were doing bulk collections of everyone's metadata. Where were you on that? Okay, so then stop lying. I don't know what else to say. But if you didn't care about that, don't tell me you care so much about. You know, it's like, it's like the, the war hawks who promote every single war, but then say they're appalled about Vladimir Putin because they don't want to see innocent people dying. It's like now. Sorry, we already know innocent people dying isn't what's moving your policy. Eight positions. This show is sponsored by Better Help. Guys. As I told you many times, I have benefited personally from therapy in the past, and I know many people who have as well. So if you are thinking about maybe getting started, if you're on the fence, give Better Help a try. It's entirely online. It's designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. You just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist and you can switch therapists at any time for no additional charge. So go check them out. Visit them@better help.com problem and you'll get 10% off your first month. Once again, that's B E T T e r h lp.com problem for 10% off your first month betterhelp.com problem all right, let's get back into the show. I do. You know what? Let's go. Let's go to the Rachel Maddow one is more on the. On the freak out from the corporate media about Doge. This one's. This one's great.

D (50:01)

The government does all sorts of things for which we need experience, expertise, accumulated and institutional knowledge. A stable training base and a stable work environment in which professionals can oversee sensitive, complex, and life or death matters of a thousand different kinds. What we have now instead is this wreckage. If you voted for Donald Trump, this.

Dave Smith (50:32)

Is what you were voting for. All right, so there. Here it is, right? This is how their brand of journalism works. That when you talk about the government, you're talking about competence and wonderful people who just do everything. Right. Right? Like who, who on the left or the right actually thinks that this represents anything remotely resembling our current government? Or forget the current government. It was. It was fine under Joe Biden. Joe Biden. Just a legendary example of competence. Rob, isn't that what you would what? You would say, you know, here, let's go. Let's go to the next clip, too, because it. Just to, like, give you a flavor of how everybody's reacting. Let's go to the. Well, it's. It's another Tom Elliot tweet. The. The second to last one with an Applebaum. Yeah, there we go.

E (51:29)

Nor was it 50,000 in condoms, but anyway. But no, they. There have been, you know, clearly false statements about payments to Politico, about payments to Chelsea Clinton, about. About condoms from Gaza. There has also been an. A kind of smear campaign conducted against usaid, which has been the United States premier institution, both for distributing humanitarian aid around the world. Helping the poorest people on the planet has also been really important to the promotion of democracy in parts of the world that the US has cared about. It's been a really important tool of American foreign policy.

Dave Smith (52:11)

And.

E (52:11)

And musk has sometimes leaked things and sometimes revealed things that were well known. I mean, most of the information about USAID spending has been available on government websites forever. If you wanted to know something about it, you could have found out last year. But the goal of doing this seems to have been to traumatize the people who work for USAID and also to traumatize people who work for other government institutions. I mean, everybody saw what happened right at usaid. ID was, from one day to the next, destroyed. This is a congressionally created institution, and Congress had no voice in destroying it. And its members were smeared and its goals were distorted. And now everybody who works for any other part of the federal government knows that the same thing could happen to them. So the purpose of doing that right at the beginning, particularly something like foreign aid, which is maybe less well understood than it should be among most Americans. The purpose of doing that was to frighten other people and to make other people in other parts of the government aware that at any moment they could be the targets of that kind of campaign, too.

D (53:19)

Anne Applebaum, thank you so much. Appreciate it. You have this whole article in the Atlantic. Appreciate your time.

Dave Smith (53:26)

Yeah, well, Rob, I. Maybe we gotta walk back some of the stuff we've been saying here. I never really took the time to appreciate how traumatized people federal government employees must be. Nah, hold on. Let me take a second to think about that. Oh, yeah, I don't care. That's great. If this is traumatizing, if you are traumatized by the fact that you may not be able to be a parasite on the American taxpayer anymore, I am a. Okay with that. A. Okay. Not a problem at all. Now, this is another angle, Rob, that there's. It's really fun because, I mean, so much of this stuff is just like it. It's so basic. But one of the other angles, which I'm sure you've heard that they're saying is just that it's like, oh, these are. These are jobs. You're cutting American jobs. Or these people are like, oh, now there's going to be all these people out of work. This will devastate communities if they all get fired from their jobs jobs. As if you're supposed to think that government employees being fired is somehow a negative for the economy is just too ridiculous. Like, it's literally on the level. Look, if you are being paid with taxpayer dollars, then you are in a parasitic relationship with the taxpayer. You are taking from them. You being fired means less has to be taken from them. That is not a negative. It is a positive. Likewise. So. Or like. So in other words, if, if you're like, if you take a household, let's say, okay, and let's say I work and my wife doesn't work and my kids don't work, so I'm the only one who's working in the house, and I'm bringing in money. And you go, you know, we're really tight for money. Like, we don't. Our bills are too high. What I'm making is too little. Now, if my wife were to go outside the house and get a job, okay, now we have two jobs, okay? So we have more money coming in. But a taxpayer, a government job would be more like, okay, so I'm the only one who works and I'm not bringing in enough money, okay? So what I'm doing is I'm going to hire my wife. She's going to work for me, and I'm also going to hire both of my kids, so they're going to work for me. So now, Rob, instead of one job, we have four jobs in this house. Isn't that that much better? This is great, right? I just went from one job to four jobs. It doesn't take a genius to recognize that, like, oh, no, that's not better at all. In fact, it's worse because you have to pay them. You just added three more expenses coming out of your paycheck. You didn't make your paycheck any bigger. So, no, it doesn't actually help to have more government jobs. It's all just none. Nonsense. And it's funny how that like one of the common themes through all of this shit and it's, it's funny now that it's, it's just really starting, like this is a big one that's starting to come out. And I really credit. Bobby Kennedy is the one who deserves the credit for, for mainstreaming this. Although it is something that maybe was not our, our major focus during COVID but it was definitely something we talked about a lot during COVID But that, you know, again, and the numbers aren't as fresh in my head, but it was something like 78% of the people hospitalized with COVID were OB. And then there's a huge correlation between obesity or diabetes and, and Covid complications. And then there was, there was a bunch of others too, where it's just like now they're all admitting it. That's like, oh, you know, the reason why America lost more people to Covid than most other countries did was not because we didn't socially distance while we were outside. And it wasn't because we didn't mask up. It wasn't because, because teenagers went to the beach or because we, you know, whatever is because we're a sick country. That seems to be like, really what led to it is that we. So while the entire media class and the entire government class is having this, this huge freak out about health, they're missing the major story which is that we're the sickest country in the world. And this, this happens over and over again. Like while, you know, there's, there's a freak out about say like who is a, a foreign asset, who's a Russian asset or who's a, you know, whatever, an Iranian asset or whatever it might be. It's like, oh, you're not looking at the real crisis, which is that we're in a permanent state of war. That's the real crisis that's actually threatening our republic. And like that. You know, if you listen to the corporate media, you would think that the crisis is that these guys are taking a shredder to government, right? Like what this, this pretend reporter lady just said. They're trying to destroy government. That's the real crisis here, Rob, right? Is that government is way too small. The real crisis is that government employees are scared they're not going to get their new, their new paycheck. Well, here is what the real crisis is. The last year for fiscal year 2024. And double check me on this number, but I'm pretty damn close to it. It was the interest on the debt was $1.2 trillion. That might be a little bit off. It was right around $1.2 trillion. That's just the interest on the national debt. Okay? And that number, number is going up. It's going up no matter what anybody does. So we have now entered the stage of a debt spiral where we are. You're, I don't know, Rob, you're old enough to remember. It used to be kind of a big deal when we first hit trillion dollar deficits. And you're like, wait a minute, hold on. Our deficits have gone from the hundreds of billions into over a trillion. Like we had a year where it was over a trillion dollars. We're adding over a trillion dollars to the national debt every year. Well, just to make this clear right now, and going forward, even if Congress balanced their budget, which is a pretty huge if, we're still running $1 trillion plus deficit, even if they balanced everything else, we're still in the hole. In other words, to truly have a balanced budget, we would now need more than a trillion dollars dollars of surplus just to break even. And while that's going on, they're freaking out about the prospects of theoretical cuts to government spending. Let that sink in for a little bit. That's where we're at. It's truly unbelievable. Any thoughts, Rob?

Robbie Bernstein (60:20)

I think this is going to be the new Russia collision story with just the level of lying that's, that's coming from the press, as you know. What's most interesting about that clip is she says that the political story is not true. So somebody's blatantly lying. Either had a newsletter that was $40,000 subscription that the US was paying and they were giving them. What was that? I forget the number. Was it 4 million a year? I forget the number. But either there was a number that the US Government was paying to Politico or not. So like, that one should be black and white. If you're a journalist. Do you have the receipts for why Elon Musk was just lying on that because it was reported by a number of news outlets, or are you literally just lying? Because if you're just on the news lying, shouldn't there be, I don't know, a defamation or something? How do you just get up and say that's not true? They are lying to you. Politico is not getting money from the United States government because then you're leaving here. I don't know how to research these things.

Dave Smith (61:13)

I know there's no, there's no like ever, like, further explanation. It's like, oh, you just make that claim and then you go like, well, here's what they're claiming was the payments, but it didn't actually go to political. It went to this. But they don't have anything like that. But I do think the broader point is just that it's like the idea that they'll try to somehow convince you that this is the crisis when you are like, you're talking about, like, the interest, the interest on your debt. Debt is bigger than the GDP of most nations. You know, imagine you're at a point where so imagine somebody comes in. Even, let's say, let's even say she's right about the politico thing right now. Someone comes in, you know, you're horribly in debt. You're. You're so in debt that you're. The interest on your credit card payment are more than most of your neighbor's entire household income, okay? So you owe more than most of your neighbor's entire household income just on interest payments in the debt. And you're still racking up charges. You haven't even stopped using the damn credit card so you can pay it down. You're still racking up charges. Your debt is still increasing. So the interest payments is just going to, to keep going through the roof. And then I come in and I go, rob, here's what we're going to do. I want to see your credit card statements. I'm going to go through everything in your credit card statements, and we're going to find the stuff that you just absolutely don't need to be spending money on, okay? And then you go, well, the big scandal here, the thing that threatens my household, is that I think this guy got it wrong when he said one of the line items was this or one of the line items was this that. Like, no, that's not the existential threat here. The existential threat is that you are in a debt crisis, okay? And you're not going to get out of it by spending your way out of it, because that's not how that works. All right? We do got to wrap it up there. Me and Rob will be out in Houston. Come out and check us out there. Don't forget, the members only monthly Zoom meeting will be this Saturday. Saturday comicdavesmith.com Robbie the fire.com catch you guys tomorrow with a brand new episode. Peace.