Transcript
A (0:00)
Foreign. What's up? What's up, everybody? Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem. I am Dave Smith. He is Robbie the Fire Bernstein. The power's still on, so that's good. It's quite a. We've been through quite a snowstorm. How about how much you get up there, Rob?
B (0:22)
I mean, I think about a foot. But I stayed indoor all day. I took some Adderall. I cleaned my apartment, I watched news footage. So I had a nice day.
A (0:30)
Very good, Very good. Yeah, I just actually, for the first time ever, I hired a guy to plow my driveway.
B (0:38)
That's not an easy plow job because you're kind of on an angle and steep.
A (0:42)
It is. It is a little bit weird, but, yeah, I did it. Got it. Got it real nice. So that's good. But yeah, and I think we're gonna get an episode of Legion of Skankson tonight, hopefully, if everybody can get that. Not at the stand, though. I think we're doing it at Lewis's house. But anyway, guys, by the way, me and Rob will be on the road pretty much for the rest of the year. Comic Dave sm.com We'll be out in Key west is our next stop, which will be better weather than we have here, hopefully. So, yeah, come hang out.
B (1:09)
It's worth the trip. It's fun down there.
A (1:11)
It is. It is always a good time when we go down there. And then we got a bunch more stuff coming up. Comic Dav Smith.com for all those ticket links. All right, so for today's episode, we got to get into a whole lot of what's. What's going on here. Major, major conversations about this latest shooting in Minnesota have been raging on. On social media and the news in general. And then I think just like kind of a broader conversation about Donald Trump's immigration agenda, mass deportations, all this stuff. Because I think, you know, Rob, it's like, look, we're in. We're in a storm. Like I always say on the show is like a bit of a storm. Just these moments where everybody is freaking out. And, And I really, I had a few posts on. On social media over the last 24 to 36 hours that got. I pissed off a whole lot of right wingers. You know, understandably, I really was trashing ice and I think I called them all a bunch of pussy cowards or something like that, which, you know, I stand by. But I just find this moment to be interesting. I think there's a lot going on that people are missing and so let's just. Let's just start it here. Let's say that. Because this is something me and you have talked about quite a bit on the show, essentially when Donald Trump first won the election in 2024. And, you know, in that period of time when, between, when he won the election, when he first came into office, one of the things me and you talked about was that, you know, the Joe Biden years had moved this country far to the right on immigration in a way that really was kind of inconceivable before. I mean, the American people never, like, supported the lax border policies of the Biden administration. But you got to a point, when Donald Trump is assuming the presidency for his second term, where super majorities of the American people supported mass deportations. And for. For anybody out there who is an immigration hawk, as I would consider myself to be, that's a big deal. It's. It's a big deal that you finally got to a place where, like, the majority and super majority of the American people support the idea that, like, yeah, you don't have a right to be here if you came here illegally. And as we talked about a bunch, Rob, this was always a very interesting question. I, I made the comparison to the civil rights movement a bunch of times where it's like, okay, so, so we got 30 to 50 million illegal immigrants here. The, you know, Donald Trump has a legit mandate to deport them. However, how do you do that? And how much violence is it going to take to do, you know, huge rounds of mass deportations? And will that number, you know, let's say it's 60% who say they support it. It's one thing to say you support it. It's another thing to support it if it's taken a real amount of ugly violence in order to do. But. So Donald Trump had this moment, and he had an incredible mandate. It's really the story of Donald Trump's immigration policy is just kind of like the story of Donald Trump's entire presidency. Really unbelievable opportunity, you know, but it was going to take some real skill in exactly how to wield this power, how to get the most juice, the most juice for your squeeze and what Donald Trump did. And a lot of people kind of forget this. But Donald Trump took this moment to do two major things. Now, the two things that Donald Trump did were, number one, he immediately jumped on an effort to deport legal residents who are criticizing Israel. So he immediately took this moment where people were pretty much on his side and went, let me do this in the most controversial way on the most controversial issue that will turn a whole lot of people off and doesn't move the needle one way or the other in terms of demographics. And then the second thing he did, Rob, if you remember this, was he announced, we won't be doing mass deportations. I mean, the way Donald Trump said it was something like, you know, in the Trumpian way, oh, we got great people and hospitality and farming. They've been here 10, 20 years. I mean, a.k.a. in other words, if you need the political translation to that, Donald Trump didn't just, like, pick farming and hospitality as the only things that matter. In other words, Rob, translation. Big business doesn't want this. It's a pretty big dynamic of why we've had the immigration policies we've had to begin with, by the way, I know when you see 10 million migrants pour over the borders in just a few years, you may go, this is out of control. Big business sees a lot of cheap labor and they like. So just to be clear, Donald Trump walked away from mass deportations almost a year ago. There is absolutely no plan to do mass deportations. No one is suggesting that Donald Trump's not doing that. And the reason I bring that up at the beginning here is that this seems to me to be almost the thing that so many people are missing in this conversation. I can't tell you how many people on the right I've seen who will go, like, yeah, I know it's messy, man, but it's like, it's either. It's either this or we don't save the republic. As. As if they're imagining that Donald Trump is in the middle of some effort that's going to end in the demographics of 1985 or something like that. But just to be clear, it should be noted, that's not what's happening. It's not what's happening at all. What we're doing is we're having this overwhelming performative show of force in these violent, you know, interactions in order to deport slightly more people than Joe Biden did in 2024. Like, I'm just saying, like, objectively, like, though, that is what's happening. And I. I don't know. So I just wanted to start with that because it does seem like so many people are missing that and thinking that in some way, you're like, well, this is just what has to be done in order to get all the illegals who. Who came in under Biden out or all the illegals, period, out, when objectively, that's Already been given up on Donald Trump's not pursuing that. So, anyway, any thoughts you have? I just think that's an important point.
