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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. Birds are chirping. Robbie the Fire Bernstein is out in some nice location. Where are you?
- [00:19]
Robbie Bernstein
This is a beautiful Sandpoint, Idaho. We just wrapped up a great evening of porches and now I'm on to Reno Salt Lake City with you and wise guys Las Vegas. So come out, make me look good to the club.
- [00:31]
Dave Smith
That's right, come on out and see a great comedy show while you're at it. And of course, that's right, me and Rob this Friday and Saturday will be out in Salt Lake City. I'm looking forward to that. Comicdavesmith.com for those ticket links and our tour for the rest of the year and then the porch tour for the porch tour.com For Rob, the rest of Rob's solo run. All right, so the big story that what's going on since last we've spoken, spoke, Rob, is. Well, there was the, the Elon Musk fallout of the Elon Musk Donald Trump fallout and then as some have speculated might be related, although I'm not sure it is. But the, the LA riots, which is, what can you say? This is what la's, this is what LA does have really taken over the last couple of days. It is, there's, there's a lot to this, the like dynamics that are going on here. But on, it's just at the start of it, it should say it is. I was just reading this earlier today. It is the first time that the National Guard has been deployed to break up riots since the LA riots of the 90s. And this was pretty crazy to me. Rob is the first time that the National Guard has been deployed against the wishes of the state government. So like where it was opposed by the governor and the National Guard was forced on the state government since Selma in the civil rights movement. So there, this is, there is something historic about this. And so I guess maybe that's just the first place to start. I've got a bunch of thoughts on this. They are not exactly linear. So I, you know, I want to give you a chance to kind of give your take on this. But essentially, like, there's a lot of different things that are going on here. One of the major things is that as we've kind of covered this since Donald Trump got back into power, that the immigration enforcement, enforcement in terms of deportations, forget border security, which is kind of a separate issue. I mean, they're related, but it is a separate issue. Border security is easy and it's popular, and you're not going to get much pushback from the voting base over that. You know, people did not like Joe Biden's de facto open borders. They're quite pleased that the number of migrant crossings has gone way down. And they're, you know, there's, there's broad support for, for border security deportations. While there has been broad support in an abstract for deportations, me and you have been talking about for several months now, that this is an issue where there's the real potential for Donald Trump to fall into something here. Like there's, you know, if they're done in too brutal of a way, they can really turn people off work. Another dynamic kind of separate from that has been the, and this is really, I think, over the last year, one of the most interesting things in American politics is that the protests over Donald Trump have been essentially nonexistent. It was shocking to me, but the protest throughout the campaign, you know, Donald Trump was going and doing events in Manhattan and there was almost no protests about it. This is just very different than 2016 or 2020.
- [04:19]
Robbie Bernstein
Now don't have the budget.
- [04:22]
Dave Smith
Well, there's, you know, we can get into a lot of that, too. There was actually a piece in the New York Post this morning, I'm not sure if you saw it, about some of the groups that they've already linked to these protests. It turns out this is one of the things that a lot of Americans have woken up to over the last few years, is that mass protest movements seem to not be quite as organic as the way we like to think of them when we tell ourselves stories. I'm not sure exactly to what extent that's true in the past, but it's certainly very true in the recent past. Now you have a situation where for the first time since Donald Trump's been president in his second term, you're seeing protests on the streets. And what that ends up doing is it kind of like it conjures up this not so distant memory of the crazy riots that we saw during 2020, which were the longest sustained riots since the LA riots. And I did quite a, quite a bit more property damage than the original L A riots in the 90s. I think there's, I think all of these things are at work here, and especially when you're kind of going into the summer months to see like these, these protests turning into riots. I think there's a view from the Trump administration, which I think is, is largely fair and correct, that they did not do enough to put down the riots of 2020, and that ultimately that hurt Donald Trump in his reelection year. And so they are. They reacted much quicker this time around. And so I think all of these things are kind of at work. I also think that the. One of the. One of the elements that almost gets frustrated, forgotten when we talk about how the corporate media discredited themselves over the last five years or so, because there's so many other things that just race to your mind first. But it is. While we're talking about riots, it is important to mention that the corporate media and the Democratic establishment and much of the Republican establishment all went all in on support supporting the George Floyd Summer of love riots in 2020, and that that turned out to be enormously unpopular and that Donald Trump, by opposing them, actually was on the winning side of that issue. And ultimately, if you remember, Rob, Joe Biden had to come out and denounce the riots because it got to a point where even amongst Democrats, they were wildly unpopular. It turns out, like burning shit and terrorizing people isn't that popular for very long. So you do see more of an understanding of that. The riots also became a thing that became fodder to mock the corporate media, you know, with their fiery but mostly peaceful and, you know, images of reporters standing in front of a car that's on fire talking about how peaceful everybody is. They're not quite doing that or they're not laying it on as thick this time. So, yeah, go ahead.
- [07:41]
Robbie Bernstein
There was also the COVID element, from what I remember of that, no one was allowed out of their house. No one was allowed to congregate. But somehow rioting in the name of racism protected you from COVID which also just amplified the cartoonish behavior of the press as they both described the protests as being relatively peaceful while damage was being done to minority businesses. That was absurd. And then also the fact that after years of lockdowns and Covid people were being encouraged to now congregate outdoors for this one specific activity that I guess like sitting down in a restaurant, then you're suddenly protected from COVID All right.
- [08:17]
Dave Smith
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- [11:32]
Robbie Bernstein
I'm better off. I'll stay muted until I'm piping in.
- [11:35]
Dave Smith
Okay. All right, sounds good. All right, so look, I guess, you know, I'll say this. I saw that Alex. Oh, God. I still have not learned how to pronounce his last name. I really do feel bad now because that's on me. But Alex Norsta, I think, is how you say it was, who was my debate opponent at the soho forum the other day. I did appreciate this. He, he tweeted the other day, or it was earlier today or yesterday, he tweeted there is never any excuse for a riot. Which I did appreciate, especially because he's one of these open borders libertarians. And obviously I, I disagree with that and think it's kind of goofy, but I, I did think it was, that was a, it was good that he had that take. Of course, he followed it up by talking about how terrible the deportations and things like that are. But there is something very fundamentally. And I, I, you know, it, it kind of brings me back to the summer of 2020, when I remember I ruffled a lot of feathers amongst libertarians by being so harshly critical of the George Floyd riots. But I do think that that's the most important starting point with all of this. What Alex tweeted like that, that is the no matter where what your views are on anything else, and that including if you're a hardcore libertarian like me or Rob, there is no excuse for riots and we must all oppose riots. It's like, it seems like such a basic thing that you would never even need to say this if you're doing like a show about politics, like, if there couldn't be one starting point that we all agree on, you'd imagine it should be that. But I will say, particularly for libertarians, you know, sometimes right wingers, when they're being critical of libertarianism, they will say something to the effect of like, you know, order has to precede liberty. Like, order is kind of the foundation and then liberty is something you can have up on the top of it. I think the truth is that order has to precede everything. It has to proceed any type of civilization. And the, if the core of libertarianism is believing that like, at the top, the highest political goal ought to be liberty, and this is based on a belief in like private property rights and the non aggression principle. Well, okay, but what, what is a riot other than the biggest threat to property rights and the non aggression principle? It is that by definition you're talking about hurting people and destroying their property and that's what we're seeing here. And I really don't, you know, I think no matter where you stand on any issue, no matter how important it is, whether it's war or immigration or the economy or taxation or any of this stuff, you, you are not allowed to start setting cars on fire, to start assaulting people, to start taking over public areas. Like all of this stuff is, it is anti civilizational in by its nature. And I think that all, I think all serious people must oppose rioting and it's fundamentally unserious to do anything else than oppose it. And you know, I, I gotta say in this type of situation, I do understand why Donald Trump's instinct was to be like this has to be put down and we cannot allow this to continue. You know, there, there's no shortage of ways that you can legitimately express opposition to government policies in this country. Just essentially what a riot is, is, is an adult temper tantrum in a large group. And that cannot be one of the ways that's allowed. Like it's not, it's not acceptable for my 3 year old. So it's certainly not acceptable for adults to just start destroying things. So that, that, that would be my starting point. But then, Rob, take it and any thoughts on any of this that you have, go ahead.
- [15:58]
Robbie Bernstein
Well, I guess also on the riots, some are trying to say that Donald Trump provoked the riots in the way that he went about deporting people in, in California. And I think your top kind of side view of immigration, of, hey, the border, we needed to close the border. The border was closed. When it comes to deportation, I think we actually need to overhaul our immigration policy. Everyone go. Listen, I just did an incredible interview with David Stockman and also Mike Mishtok for Zero Hedge. They're brilliant economists and they gave a good breakdown of why immigrant labor is actually so important to our country. And Stockman has said, I think it's only 10,000 people are allowed to legally immigrate here and the actual demand for foreign workers significantly higher than that, which has created a lot of the chaos of a non government policy of something that a lot of businesses and people actually want. With all that being said, there's, I think there was too much illegal immigration over the Biden administration and there probably needs to be some level of deportations now and some of it will be heavy handed, but there needs to be something to correct and let people know, hey, even if there's A Democratic administration that's going to let you come in, you might not want to just come in, and you're not going to get a perfect enforcement of this policy. I don't know exactly who you deport, what's the nice way of deporting them, but there's some level of people that I do think it's reasonable for Donald Trump to be deporting, to have an agenda where you're claiming you're going after the criminals first. I think that's probably the best way to sell it and the best approach. But some people are going to get deported. So the idea that if you're going to go ahead and deport them, people are going to riot. And now you can't, you can't enact your government policy that you actually have a mandate to do, I don't think it's fair to say, well, the natural cause of enforcing this policy is going to be riots. So don't enforce the policy. And then once the riots are happening, firstly, I'm going to guess if you actually talk to law enforcement, they're happy that someone had their back. I'm going to guess that people who are not engaged in the riots are happy that there aren't going to be riots. And we're not just going to signal that, hey, go ahead and ride and burn down businesses. And then after the what happened with January6, I don't want to hear from liberal leaders of, oh, it's our call whether or not you're going to have National Guard because they failed on January 6th. From what I understand, there was an opportunity to have National Guard in the Capitol. They chose not to do so, and then that situation escalated to where people had to go to jail for no reason. So I don't, I don't really understand. If there's a riot and the president has access to the National Guard, that's not the military coming in and enforcing curfews in our cities and going into our homes. That does not seem to be a trampling of liberties or some sort of an escalation. It seems to be a very specific incident and a wise move.
- [18:41]
Dave Smith
Yeah, I mean, look, I completely agree with you. And I also think that there's, you know, there's kind of something interesting to me in like, the, the pure theory of all of it. But, you know, a lot is made what ends up happening is that. So look, and it should be pointed out in this case that Donald Trump actually, you know, he took pretty swift action here, but he didn't invoke the Insurrection Act. He didn't. You know, they, they floated out some ideas like Hagsep said something about sending the Marines in or something like that. But really what, what has happened, at least so far, is the National Guard was sent in. They seem to mostly be protecting government buildings. And what's been going on, the violence that's been seen has been done by the lapd. So it isn't as if this was Donald Trump who, like all those videos where you saw the video of the, the reporter lady get hit with a rubber bullet or like some of the pepper spraying the crowd and stuff, that was all LAPD doing that. So, you know, that just worth pointing out. But I got also on that note.
- [19:46]
Robbie Bernstein
Okay, if you, if you can criticize the idea of having federal buildings, you can criticize the idea of having a National Guard. But if you have federal buildings and then you take the National Guard to protect your federal buildings, what offense has been done there? And then furthermore, when all of a sudden you have the media crying and you've got Newsom crying, hey, this situation was under control. We didn't need this here. I'm protecting my federal buildings. I don't think you have it under control. The criticism seems to just be trying to paint the picture that Donald Trump is fully authoritarian and he's going to, you know, be marching the army into cities and, you know, maybe we should just let California fail and be a failure USA in its own state, but in the meantime, it's still a part of the country. And I don't know, this just doesn't seem all that heavy handed.
- [20:30]
Dave Smith
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Masa chips are Beloved by tens of thousands of customers and have been endorsed by industry leading health and nutrition experts like Ben Greenfield and Gary Breca. Ready to give Massa a try? Go check them out@massachips.com Dave and use the promo code Dave for 25% off your first order. Once again, free. That's massachips.com Dave. M A S A chips.com Dave promo code Dave for 25% off YOUR first order. All right, let's get back into the show. Well, I, you know, I agree and that's why I, I gotta, I gotta say there's. Because, you know, for people who don't know, you know, I'm a, I'm a libertarian and I was at one point kind of like a theory bro who was like obsessed with libertarian theory. I'm more concerned these days with like what's actually going on in the world and what is going in consequentialism and in general, like what's going to lead to a better outcome. But just with this topic, there's so many interesting theory questions that come up. And so like you just touched on another one there which is kind of like the idea of states rights and the idea that generally speaking, I do feel favor states having more sovereignty and the central federal government having less. And even if it's issues that I don't completely agree with, I kind of like the idea of, you know, federalism and 50 laboratories of innovation and all that stuff. There is something kind of particularly uniquely different about immigration. And again, generally speaking, I'd be fine with saying states exercising more control over immigration. The issue becomes that we kind of, we basically have kind of like this system where there's an agreement between the 50 states that you're allowed to freely travel. There aren't going to be checkpoints between, you know, California and its neighbors. And so therefore if Texas and Arizona want to close their border and California wants to leave it wide open, just to use an example, that's, you know, to use an extreme to paint an example, well, that kind of isn't just a decision California is making for California because now that people are in the country, they can freely enter anywhere else in the country from there. And so it just makes the situation a bit more complicated. But to the other theory question that I was kind of getting at before, I do think that there's a tendency and I think that this is something that like left libertarians get completely wrong and I think more just like liberals and leftists tend to get wrong too. But when you see, you see so first off, Gavin Newsom can say it's under control. It's like, I don't know, dude, when cars are on fire in the middle of the road, I don't consider that under control. So I don't know what, like, I don't know that that needs any more than that as a refutation. But there is something like the left libertarians or the left liberals, they tend to see you go, okay, here is a group of people protesting, and they think of protesting as like a natural right or something like that, which I think is not exactly the correct frame, you know, the correct lens to view it through. It's more what, what libertarians and good right libertarians understand is that all rights are property rights. You have a right to protest on your property or on property you're invited onto. You don't have a right to come protest on my property if I do not want you here. Just like you don't have freedom of speech or freedom of travel or. These are all abstractions. Tangible natural rights are based on what you own, including owning yourself, including like the most basic rights of, like, you. You know, this isn't like whether you rent or own property. This is like what you, you own yourself, you own your possessions, things like that. And so when the left liberals will see a group of people protesting, they tend to go, well, that's their right there. These are the, you know, the, the voices of the unheard or whatever it is they tell themselves. And then when you see police, like shooting rubber bullets into a crowd, you go, well, that's authoritarianism. I mean, here you have a group of people protesting and they're being met with like the heavy hand of the law. Shouldn't we oppose that? We believe in liberty. We don't believe in this kind of authoritarian them. But there's much like, with the immigration question itself, there's kind of some more fundamental questions to be asked here. And one of them might be like, well, what exactly do you like? What is this right to protest? And what exactly do you have a right to do? Like, do I have a right to go onto the highway and for us to all link arms and just stop traffic? Can. Am I, do I have a right to do that? Because I don't like some government policy? Do I have a right to say we are going to now quasi kidnap these people who are on the middle of the highway and stop them in their tracks and majorly inconvenience, you know, hundreds of thousands of people, perhaps do enormous damage to the economy? Is that correct? Now, sir, I would argue. No, you do not. You do not have that right. This is a public highway, and in this case in la, it was in public streets. I don't think you have a right to just take that over for the cause that you believe in. Like, I don't think that's correct. And this is not like, it's much different. It's almost as if people will treat it like if the cr. If. If the cops, like, shoot rubber bullets into a crowd of people, that if it hits some person, that person there was just like an innocent bystander who happened to get hit. But this is not the same as, like, dropping a bomb on a city where the property rights are kind of very clear. Like, that was that person's home. This. And even, like, say, like, in the case of, like, Israel, Gaza, they'll say, oh, we told them to flee. But even in half those times, you're like, yeah, but they're trapped in, like, a tiny little strip of land that's very densely populated. And, you know, like, there's the area that you say is safe. They get shot up when they go there, and they don't have the resources to move around. It's very different to tell people they have to flee their own homes than to tell someone, you got to leave the middle of the highway. You don't have a right to be here right now. And to me, as flawed as it is, as flawed as anything that the government ever does is, which is. Includes all of it. You know, it's like, this is the problem of government in general. But if the cops are coming and saying, okay, there's a group that's become violent, they are assaulting people, they are terrorizing people, they are lighting cars on fire, they're looting, they're doing, like, all this violent shit, and they're in the middle of public property, and the cops come to him and say, you have to leave, and you stay there. It seems to me like you're not some innocent bystander anymore. You are choosing to participate in a riot. And you may not even be like, you know, you may not be actively rioting yourself, but I don't know, it seems pretty reasonable to me that if the whole thing has devolved into a riot and you're told that you have to leave and you refuse to, you've basically, at this point now kind of accepted a duel. From my perspective, like, I. I don't know. I. I'm just saying, like, what is it that is supposed to be done in that situation? Is Is the correct answer that the, the police and the National Guard and the state government and the federal government are just, well, they're outside and so they have a right to destroy anything they want to. That doesn't seem to me to be a reasonable conclusion and it doesn't seem to me to be too unreasonable that like you're told you have to leave, you don't have a right to be doing this right now. And ultimately we're going to enforce that. I, I just don't really have a problem with that. And I think the left liberals and, and left libertarians, I think they get this issue all wrong. It's not the case that you just have a right to go take over public property and do whatever you want to do there. I don't know. Any thoughts on any of that, Rob?
- [29:52]
Robbie Bernstein
Well, I guess the only concern, I don't, I don't disagree with you, but I have this cartoonish concern of essentially a very peaceful protest that law enforcement declares being a riot even though that there is no rioting. And then they're allowed to forcibly remove or you know, be violent towards that crowd because, you know, I've just seen the way the government lies to me and I can see a Tom Homan being on the news and going, no, that was a riot and the media is lying to you. It was not a peaceful protest. And then having a very heavy handed, you know, approach towards peaceful protesters. But I do agree with you, but I mean, I guess I do agree with you that once it is blatantly riot conditions if you're just hanging out around the riders but you're not the actual rioter, it's pretty hard for law enforcement to be able to make that distinction. And the fact that you're with, you're a part of the crowd does mean that you're kind of actively giving cover for the people that are doing the riding. And so, you know, so I agree with you that kind of, once it's right conditions, you know, police should have the ability to, I guess, squash that.
- [30:59]
Dave Smith
Yeah, I mean, look, you brought up a very fair point there. It's just that, like that, that's one error. And then on the other side, you could imagine, imagine, Rob, a scenario where there are riots and the media is telling you no, they're completely peaceful protests. What are you talking about? And I think that, you know, look, there is something, there's something that riots provoke. That is, which I'm probably guilty of right now in this conversation. It's, it's, there's something Very like deeply instinctual and hardwired into our DNA for riots to like, evoke emotions. They, they evoke a very excited emotion out of the people partaking in them. And they, they evoke fear and they really, I mean, they get people, you know, look, look, even with like, say like January 6th, as you use that as an example before, there's a reason why the, the corporate media and the Democrats jumped on that and there's a reason why it was effective propaganda, at least for a while until more information started coming out. But there is something. They took that and they, they go, look at this riot, look at this video of people breaking windows or wrestling with police or. This is chaos, you know, and there's something very deeply rooted in humans to not want chaos. Nobody wants that, you know, and, and, and of course, the same thing was done on the right about the, the riots in 2020 now that obviously we could sit here and analyze this and go, you know, the rides in 2020 resulted in like dozens of murders and hundreds of assaults and billions of dollars in property damage. So like they were a little bit worse than January 6th or something like that. But the bottom line to me is that riots are never justified, never justifiable. There's, you know. Well, look, I guess I should say with the caveat riots against governments could be justified is it's never a wise strategy unless you have more overwhelming force than that government, or almost never a wise strategy. But riots on private property are just simply never justified or never justifiable. And so, you know, again, you're left, you're left in a, in a bad situation with nothing but bad options. But it does seem to me that the worst of the bad options is to say, well, they started rioting and therefore we can't lay a finger on them. That just to me doesn't seem reasonable. And then the other thing I would mention, because this is, again, it's kind of taken me back to five years ago, but one of the things that I think it's, it, it's almost like sometimes people get too hyper focused on politics. I know I'm one to talk, but sometimes people get so hyperfocused on politics that they, they kind of cast aside human psychology and it's almost like everything should just be treated at face value, like this is a political statement and nothing more. And I remember I was listening to Cornel west who, you know, like, you know, I'm sure I would disagree with Cornell west on quite a number of topics, but he's like, amongst lefties he's kind of one of the lefties that I like a bit. You know, he's like, he's kind of good on the stuff you expect a lefty to be good on. And he's, you know, he's, he's not a coward. And I appreciate that. Anyway, I'd probably very largely agree with Cornell west about Israel's destruction of Gaza, for example. We'd probably really agree about the Iraq war and, you know, there'd be issues that we would agree on. But I remember seeing an interview with him after, you remember when the guy lit himself on fire for, to stand up for the Palestinians or something like that. And he gave this whole interview afterward and he was talking about how the guy was a hero and that he just believed in the cause of the Palestinians so much and that he saw all this human suffering and so he had to make a statement or something. And I remember just listening to that and being like, oh, dude, no, you've got this all wrong. This was a crazy person with severe mental health issues, okay? That's who, that's who sets themselves on fire and then sits there burning up for a while. It's not, it's not just like, oh, he believed in the cause more than other people did. You know what I'm saying? Like, you're missing the whole thing if you think that's the case. And likewise, I think it has often been treated as a given that when people are rioting, they are rioting over the stated political grievance that this maybe a protest started as. But like, all you have to do is go watch some videos of riots and just think about human psychology and, and group think and things like that before you're just dissuaded of any of those notions. It's not true. Like, the, the George Floyd riots had nothing to do with George Floyd. Nothing. Now I'm not saying that the people protesting with picket signs earlier that day had nothing to do with George Floyd. There, there's a. It's still not quite as much of a one to one connection as some might try to make it, but there is something to that. But like by nightfall, when every single night the George Floyd protests are turning into a bunch of teenagers looting a Nike store, those teenagers are not looting the Nike store because they are concerned with police brutality. The two things are not even related. It's pure opportunism. It's excitement and thrilling and, and a social activity. And it is a, like a social status thing where young men can let off steam and demonstrate their Fearlessness. And they can, you know, get. Attain resources, you know, like, get the new pair of Nikes. Like, these are the type of things that are going on. And you see it again just in some of the videos I've been watching of these riots. It's like, okay, I'm sorry, that part has nothing to do with immigration, simply has nothing to do with it. It is just not about that, you know, and that you see all the pundits on the news trying to be like, this is the fear that the Trump administration has put it. Like, those people don't look very afraid to me. These don't look like people who are afraid of the law. They look like people who are setting a car on fire because it's going to make a really loud boom. That's what I'm seeing, you know, and so I just think, like, as much as this is like the most basic, simple point, it's almost something that 99% of the coverage of this is completely missing. You know, like, it's like, no, dude, this is a scene. This is an event. Now. This is. And trying to, trying to analyze these things politically makes about as much sense as like, trying to politically analyze a really violent mosh pit at a concert and go, what do you think this is? Is this a comment on fiscal policy? Like, no, it's not. This is a comment on young people wanting to go wild. You know, it's like a thing to do, a place to hang where there's a little bit of danger and a rush and you know you're going to break some stuff and maybe leave with a new pair of Nikes. Like, that's what we're witnessing. Not political. It's. It's human on a different level. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Cornbreads Hemp CBD gummies. 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- [40:11]
Robbie Bernstein
On that note, there's this great book. I recommend it to everyone. It's a real thin pamphlet. It's called A Crowd, and it's one of, like, the earliest works on propaganda. And he's got a piece in there where essentially he talks about how in riots, people will do things that they would never personally do. That there's some sort of an energy to the crowd. So, like, for example, I would never be so violent as to stomp on some guy's head. But if in the course of a riot, seven people are kicking a cop who got pulled down, you might catch yourself doing that because you're kind of bought up into the energy of what's going on. And you've got kind of almost. You're almost like in the crowd hypnosis, where you're not making your free. I mean, you still have free will, but there's a capturing of the energy of a crowd. So while I agree with what you're saying, there is a little bit of, like, the moral excuse of, oh, we're going to protest George Floyd. And then that gets amplified, too. And that gives us permission to now break into this Nike store where I think you're mostly right, where it's young individuals who are like, this is a thrill. But sometimes if you give people, like, a little bit of a moral excuse for why they can go engage in these activities, the people that would like to engage in those activities will hop on it. So, believe me, there was no librarian yesterday who decided, oh, I'm so upset about these deportations, that they went and they lit a car on fire. There's a guy who spent his entire life wanting to light his car on fire, and he finally got his excuse of like, oh, and this is. Is now for a cause. But that element does. The element of it being somewhat for a cause is. And things escalating that enough people care about it that you have the COVID to do it. It's still. It still is a bit of a rude ingredient.
- [41:48]
Dave Smith
Yeah, no. So sure. I don't disagree with that. And I do think that that's a fair point. And that's also part of the reason why it's so dangerous to have a culture that hands these people this kind of, like, moral get out of Free jail, get out of jail free card, where it's like, oh, you're the good guy now. Unquestionably. And the fact is that even if you're on the right side of an issue, you don't get just like a blank check to do whatever you want with being on the right side of that issue. Like, you can still become the bad guy there. So I think that's a very fair point. That now what is political is what the response to all of this is going to be and what the impact this is going to have on, you know, the Trump administration, his ability to govern, his ability to get his agenda through. I. I will say, so far, from what I've seen there, there certainly are the voices who are going as goofy as they went in 2020. I've already seen a couple people post things about how the riots are the voice of the unheard type. All just so ridiculous. You know, it's only because people are marginalized and oppressed that they have to loot a Nike store. It's like, no, I don't actually think that's true, but. But it does seem more broadly speaking that there's much more hesitation to do that than there was in 2020. You know, there's been a huge cultural shift in the last five years, bigger than any cultural shift I've ever lived through in a five year period, for sure. And the, you know, if you remember, this is part of the thing that brought the Kamala Harris campaign down. Not the entirety of it, but this was a big factor in it, was that in 2020 there was just a different atmosphere. And Democrats really seemed to believe that like the woke was going to work like, that this would not come back to bite them. And so they were on record saying a these things like standing up for the right. I mean, literally there were pieces titled the case for Looting. Like people were writing pro looting columns in 2020. But anyway, what I was saying about the Kamala Harris campaign is that this is why Kamala Harris, in her 2020 presidential campaign, she got on the woke side of every goddamn issue. And this came back to bite her in, in 2024. But she was, oh, illegals should get health care. The, you know, we should decriminalize illegal bor. Gender reassignment surgery for prisoners. You know, all these things that they were able to hang her by, that she was on board. Because at the time it seemed like, oh, this is where we're going. We're going all in on woke. It seems to me like there is a hesitation from the, the establishment to kind of go that hard in on this. But I, I do think that the, the temptation is still there and that, and this is probably part of the reason why Donald Trump took the action that he took. I think that the, this is my guess again, I'm guessing to some degree here, but I do think that one of the things that held a lot of people back from supporting Donald Trump in 2020, and to a lesser extent, but still a very real one in 2024, was that people went, look, when that guy's in there, the left loses their fucking minds. And we don't really want to live in a country where half of it loses their minds. Like, that's not good for anybody. But now that Trump is back in, that might have been a good enough reason to not support Donald Trump, even though you recognize it's not entirely his fault, but still, you didn't want to survive. But now that he's back in there, I do think you're going to see this type of chaos is incredibly unpopular. And I think that the people who are being seen as siding with that or justifying that are going to lose the political argument ultimately. I think this is actually very good for the Trump administration politically because they are on the side of, you know, it almost in a way gives them a cop out. Like, it, it lets them get out of actually defending their immigration policies, and instead they can just go, you can't take over city blocks and burn cars. We can't allow you to do that. And that, to me, is a very winning political argument. It's a winning human argument. Who, how many, you know, like, who disagrees with that? It's. It's always like, okay, yeah, I understand you disagree with that when you're 19 and you don't own anything, like, okay. But what adult actually is like, okay with just burn it all down? It's always unbelievable when you see someone in a suit and tie on TV supporting burn it all down. Like, you're like, shut up. You wear a suit. You don't mean this. Nobody. The. Even those people, they'll only support it when they think it's a comfortable distance away from them. 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They're the best wings you'll ever taste for free. But this offer is for a limited time only. So go check them out at M O I N k b o x.com potp that's moinkbox.com potp all right, let's get back into the show. So anyway, I guess that I felt like that should be mentioned in there as well.
- [48:31]
Robbie Bernstein
I think that's a good point because if you remember, the pitch of Biden was a return to normalcy. And I think that there is a silent majority that just likes normal and not having chaos in the streets. And I think it's a hard sell right now to go that Donald Trump is provoking this by I mean ICE immigrate, ICE raids on factories. It's not unheard of in this country. It might not have been something that was happening over the last even eight years, but I remember there used to be because just made it was on my radar. But like roboticians used to be this major kosher meat corporation. I remember they once got in trouble for having too many Mexican workers and it was like a bit of a scandal at the time and I think there was like a raid on their meat processing plants. But I remember hearing those stories, it wasn't unheard of that ICE agents would show up to places with too many illegal workers and that they would get in trouble. And right now, Donald Trump does have a mandate. Listen, I don't, I don't necessarily agree with the deportation policy and I don't necessarily agree that there isn't room in this country for a lot more cheap migrant workers. I know that's not particularly popular even with our audience that thinks that this, our entire economy should be American jobs and more money in America and more made in America. But I think if you actually, I mean, I'd like to dig into this topic more I'd like to learn more about how farms are operating and the need for the immigrant labor. I know it's certainly true. Every hotel I'm in, it doesn't seem like most of the cleaning staff is American workers. The restaurants I've worked in, it's typically not all American workers in the kitchen. So I don't know how many industries really need this and to what extent. We just have a nonsense policy of pretending like we only need 10,000 new workers a year, even though we have an aging population. So, you know what I mean? There is, like a backdrop here of a nonsense policy that probably doesn't make sense for the country. And there's probably more of a demand for actual immigration through legal channels. But with all that said, what Biden did, sneaking people as many as he could over the border, was not good. It's not what the country wanted. We do need some level of deportations now to correct for that and to change the incentive structure of just sneaking in. And that comes with a better policy of who can come in here, maybe having more immigration, which I would be a fan of. But at the moment, moment the public wants deportations. We need deportations. You're going to have it. And ICE agents doing their job. I might not agree with every person they're deporting. People that have been working here for 10, 15 years, that have family and taxes.
- [50:54]
Dave Smith
Yeah.
- [50:55]
Robbie Bernstein
Make them the last to deport, probably don't deport them at all. But at the end of the day, you're going to have some level of deportations. Donald Trump, it is legal for him to go ahead and deport these individuals. You can't point to them, the riots, and go, oh, he can't do that because there's going to be. Be riots. That's not. You can't have a government where you can go ahead and change policy. You know, I don't agree with the drug laws in this country, but if they decided to go take down drug manufacturers with large plants of pots in states where that's illegal or maybe even legal. Yeah, you can work on changing the policy, but you can't go ride and protest because they're doing what's legal.
- [51:28]
Dave Smith
Yeah, well, it's right, exactly. And, and, and look, it's kind of the same. It's the same logic that gets you to, like, oppose, like a horrible war or something like that. Like, it's like, look, no matter how horrible a policy is, and take, take drugs as a good example. I mean, it's essentially institutionalized slavery. You're fucking enslaving people for the crime of possessing or distributing a plant. But I don't get to go burn down my neighbor's car because I'm furious about that. It doesn't matter. I don't have a right to do that. And it's not, he doesn't just have to pay for that. It's the same thing of being like, oh, Hamas is so bad, so I get to drop a bomb on a baby. Like, no, it's not. That's, that's not civilized behavior. It's the antithesis of it. And yeah, so that's, you know, that, that's, I think, all a fair point. I, I also do think that you've, you know, however, look, it's a, it's a real problem to have to deport a lot of illegal immigrants. There's no clean way to do it, as you mentioned earlier. It's also not clean to just say, oh, you all get to stay here. Because that sends a message, that sends a message too, that it's like, oh, if you can get here, you get to stay, and that's good. That's going to have problems attached to it, too. There's negative externalities all around here with all of these different policies. And so, you know, it's, there's, there's no completely clean way to do any of this stuff. I, you know, it'll be interesting to see how this develops, I think also, you know, obviously, if things get worse, that that will, that will change the political realities of this. If this is put away quietly and, and, and doesn't turn into a big deal. I think that that helps Donald Trump very much because it makes it look like he took Swiss Swift indecisive action and this didn't escalate further. But already, obviously, the other dynamics involved in this too, are that this is California. Gavin Newsom is the governor there. And so this is for Donald Trump. I think, in a lot of ways, as is the case with politics in general, this is, people like to choose the theaters in which they fight. And for Donald Trump now to pick the fight over immigration against California, against Gavin Newsom, where he's on the side of immigration controls, of law and order, and Gavin Newsom, at least is, is in the eyes of many, put on the side of sanctuary states and chaos in the streets, it seems to me like that's a real winning side for Donald Trump to be on.
- [54:23]
Robbie Bernstein
I would, but it's early. I would argue that, I would argue that Gavin Newsom is on the side of, hey, it's all fine. What are you talking about? There's no homeless problem, there's no energy problem, there's no fire part problem. There's no jobs problem. We do the best job in California. No one's ever been happier. So good luck with that cell Gavin News some.
- [54:42]
Dave Smith
Yeah, and you know, there was one other thing I wanted to mention earlier, but it was, I, I was kind of thinking about this and I, I'd be curious to what like David Stockman's feelings on this would be, but I do, you know, we, we live in a statist world. The, the, you know, it's, it's interesting because the fight right now being between the US Federal government and the state of California's government are, you know, this is a fight between the biggest government that's ever existed and then the, and the biggest state government in the United States of America. These are big governments that make way more decisions and are involved in way more things than they ought to be. But you know, when, when you talk about kind of like this demand for labor and typically speaking what you are talking about is, you know, day laborers, factory positions, farming, you know, agricultural work, okay, so like you have immigration policy that is set by the government. It is not set by the market. Okay. Additionally to that, we have a lot of other policies that are set by the government. One of them is school and college. That is, okay, maybe not entirely set by the government, but largely set by the government. And I mean, even amongst, like, even within homeschooling in many states it's regulated by the government. Not all of them, but certainly government. You know, public schools are a huge force in schooling and college is essentially a government program, including the private colleges. It's all backed up by government loans and it's heavily regulated by the government. And then you have child labor laws which are imposed by the government. And I will say I, you know, it's a somewhat controversial take, I suppose, but I, I do think that child labor gets a bad rap. I know that you can read about some example of like, you know, a 12 year old in a factory in 1890 or something like that and like, oh my God, look how horrible it is that they were mistreated. Think that typically when people in the current day look back at that stuff, they look back at it completely stripped of any of the historical context. Like it's not, you know, like people think like that child labor was like a creation of the industrial revolution, you know what I mean? It's like, oh, they built these factories and Then all of a sudden these 12 year olds had to work these jobs. Like what do you think the 12 year olds were doing a hundred years before the Industrial revolution? What, just laying on a lazy boy recliner or something like that? Like it's like, oh, they were doing much more grueling, backbreaking agricultural work. The factory was actually a step up from where they had been from before the Industrial revolution for all of human history, all of human history with almost no exceptions, perhaps like royalty or something like that. But the, the norm for humanity was as soon as you are able bodied, you start working. Because otherwise people starve. As soon as you hit puberty, you get married and start having babies. Like this is how human civilization worked. And so it's a, we kind of like Cherry Pick the 12 year old at a factory and then it's, it's a very statist like myth because then you look back and you go, oh my God, look how bad things were until the government came in and wrote a law. When the reality of it is not that at all. The reality is like no, look how bad all of life was until we produced our way out of that. Like until we created enough wealth where it was like, oh, we don't need everybody to start working as soon as they're able bodied. We don't need the 13 year olds to get married and start having kids because oh you're, everyone's not dropping dead, you know, like, oh, okay, you can wait a little bit. Anyway, I say all of this to just say that. Like, you know, I, I think I was, I was 12 when I got my first. Like, maybe not official, but I think my first job was I lived in an apartment building and the woman who owned it gave me $10 a month to take out all the trash. Like it was like a big thing of trash in the back for the entire building. And then I had to like lug it all to the front and put it on the corner and like, I just thought that was awesome. It was good for me. It was, you know, anyway, I guess my question is just like we have this whole society set up. This is not an organic function of the market at all. This is totally like top down imposed by the state that kids are not supposed to work, they're supposed to just do school, they're supposed to just be a good little Prussian soldier from age 5 to age 21 or something like that and that like all of. And, and therefore once you take that as a given, you're like okay, well we need this grueling work to be done. It can only be done by illegal immigrants. But like, I kind of think that's what kids are for. And I'm not saying like all of it necessarily, but I just, I don't, this is kind of like a controversial view, but I actually, like, I'm actually a very loving, kind of peaceful parent guy. But I think that particularly for like teenage boys, it's not bad to have a job in manual labor. It's not bad to do some grunt work. You can get paid a very low wage because it's not really about the money. For me, when I was 12, getting 10 bucks a month was huge. That was awesome. And like I just now, okay, this, this was 90s dollars, you understand, Rob? So it's a little bit more than, than $10. But I'm just, I'm just saying that like, I think this is another element to that, that piece that's kind of missing too, that I'm not even saying this with certainty. I'm just kind of saying like, maybe it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world if we had some of those jobs done by American teenagers. Maybe, maybe it's not the best way to organize a society to say, no, we're going to keep men as adolescents until they're 35. Like, maybe it would actually be better to have 14 and 15 year olds get their hands dirty, do it a gritty manual labor job and you know, then by the time they're 21, they've got some life experience, they're a little bit more of an adult, you know. Okay, yes, they haven't, you know, taken a course in feminist dance theory, but they have had, you know, like seven years of on job, you know, experience. Anyway. Any thoughts on that, Rob?
- [61:37]
Robbie Bernstein
Yeah, cue the headline, Dave Smith wants to put the six year olds to work.
- [61:44]
Dave Smith
Well, I'm very, I'm very lucky, Rob, that I don't have to worry about having controversial opinions.
- [61:49]
Robbie Bernstein
Yeah, well, I agree with you. I worked scattered manual labor jobs when I was in high school. I remember my roommate's senior year, got like a job in a deli like over the weekends and suddenly he just had some spending cash and was also, maybe he was making 10 or $11 an hour. But you know, I didn't do that. But I was also like, hey, that kind of rolls. So I agree, I, I listen, I don't know about the, I mean, maybe a 10 year old sweeping up wherever. Like I certainly could have worked more in my youth and the couple jobs that I had here or there on my summer vacations or moving jobs that people, I don't know. There's something nice as a young dude when you're working with your hands and actually working versus sitting in school. So I, yeah, I agree with you that there's probably more opportunities for that.
- [62:33]
Dave Smith
Yeah, I'm not even arguing. I'm not even making an argument here. I'm just kind of like saying I think it's a question that's worth asking. Put the kids to work is what I'm trying to say here. All right, listen, that's going to be our show for today. Enjoy yourself out there, Robby. I will meet you, you out in Salt Lake City on Friday. Hope to see some of you guys there. Really had a great time last time we were out there at the, at this club. So looking forward to being back. Wise Guys, Salt Lake City, Friday and Saturday. And where, where are your shows, Rob?
- [63:04]
Robbie Bernstein
Yes, Reno this Thursday. And then I'm with you Friday, Saturday, and then Sunday headlining Wise Guys Las Vegas. And then next weekend I've got a road trip which is Rochester, New York. Two gigs in Canada, one outside of Montreal and one near Albany. And then lastly, busy guy, run your mouth. Still cooking. But I got a new podcast over at Zero Hedge. Not quite sure how often or regular that's going to be, but I did incredible interviews with both Mishtalk and with David Stockman. Real deep economic stuff with guys that really know and understand it. So I think this audience would really appreciate those insights. And it's on the Zero Hedge channel. So go, go give that a follow. Give it a nice like and, you know, do the things.
- [63:42]
Dave Smith
Absolutely. And congratulations again on that new show. I will make sure to share it on. On social media. All right, guys, thank you very much for tuning in. Catch you tomorrow with a brand new episode. Peace.