Dave Smith (23:14)
So there's. You know, again, it's. So there's. You know, I think Tim almost, in a way here, I mean, he's right about what he's saying, but he could make the point, you know, even further. And it's like, it's not just that they ran an unpopular candidate. I mean, obviously, like, that's a huge component of this here. There. You know, Kamala Harris was just uniquely terrible as a candidate. And it seemed like, as is often the case, that the kind of Democratic establishment and the corporate media who are essentially indistinguishable from each other, they. Their. Their strategy seemed to be to. To deny reality. And it was almost in an attempt to convince you that the reality you're seeing didn't, in fact, exist. But so rather than, like, say, grapple with the fact early on, like, Kamala Harris is terribly unpopular and probably cannot beat Donald Trump. It was. She's a rock star. She's Barack Obama in 2007, you see, which was all just made up. And so, like, there's a huge component of that, but I think what's actually much bigger than that, and this is part of the reason why Biden was in trouble and Kamala Harris was in trouble, is that the. Every. Every position, every major position that the Democratic establishment has staked out over the last 10 years has just. Not only is it unpopular, it's. It's demonstrably false based on lies. It is. It's so bad that none of them will even say the thing they were saying at the time right now. Like, nobody. Kamala Harris wouldn't even run on what she was running on in 2020 because it was all so unpopular. You know, is like she, she'd have to run away from every position because just a couple years later, you can't even defend the thing you were saying back then. And this is true on every major issue. Like they were all saying Donald Trump was involved in a conspiracy with the Russians. No one even mentioned that in 2024 because it's all just been proven wrong. None of them will defend any of the shit they were saying about COVID None of that. You know, they're all, now they have to walk it all back. Well, maybe school closures were a little bit too long. Well, yeah, you know, like, none of them with a straight face repeat the bold claims they were just making. You know, like, let's, let's, let's go through the list of like all the people who were arguing that if you get the COVID vaccine, you can't get or transmit Covid. None of them are saying that anymore because it's so obviously been proven wrong that you just got to abandon that and move on to the next thing. None of them are saying Joe Biden sharp is attack anymore because it's, it's just abandoned because it's so obviously wrong. Nobody is saying that Ukraine can recapture all of its territory anymore. Nobody. Like there's just all of these things, they all fall apart. And you can only do that for so long before you lose everybody's trust. You know, at a different point in the interview, she was, she, she grills him on that, like, are there left wing comedians? And it's like, dude, there's so many goddamn left wing comedians, it's insane that the question ever gets asked. It's insane. Look, you just think about it like this. There are. Because this really does go to the question of who's the establishment. Like, there are multi billion dollar networks, okay? There's a bunch of late night comedians who have network TV shows. All of them are Trump haters. All of them have just been carrying water for the Democratic establishment for at least the last eight years. You know, Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel are, are pushing vaccine propaganda at the height of COVID and demonizing the unvaccinated and, you know, making it very clear that they're, they're all in on being anti Trump. So it's not like, look, if, if Joe Rogan and Tim Dillon are the establishment, well, why aren't the giant multibillion dollar corporations getting behind them in that same type of way? And don't get me wrong, there's been a little, they've been kind of slowly Like Netflix has started having real comedians back on, but also that, you know, a big part of it is because they just dominated in the market and eventually Netflix lost and was like, well, I guess we got to go to where the audience is. So the point is that the establishment is still behind all of those guys. It's just that their audiences aren't. Their audiences abandoned them because they're, they're just. I don't know, it's boring and they're liars and, and look, there's the, the what happened is. Right, it's not that again, these guys had every advantage. These were the guys who were given multi million dollar contracts from multi billion dollar transnational corporations. These are the guys who, who were given every. Then there's some other guys who, who just went over here to the Internet and just started talking into a camera and the viewers flooded over to those people who were over here. Now, I don't think that makes them the establishment, I think because again, if you phrase it this way, it's really, it's pretty anti Democratic when you think about it, because you're almost like arguing that there's a problem with the people having another option of who to go listen to. Look, a lot of, A lot of what it comes down to. And I think the reason why, because like I, I think almost if you're trying to be as charitable as possible, you could say like that this, this girl, the thing she's touching on is that. Okay, yeah, it's true that like, you know, Sarah Silverman or, you know, I don't know any, you know, comedian who's been in movies over the last, you know, it, it's true that whatever Sarah Silverman or what's his name. Who am I thinking of? The, like the, the su. Seth Rogan. Right. Okay. So like, yeah, those guys all hate Donald Trump, but you know, no one's really, it's not really resonating with anyone. Like they don't really have juice like that. Like, they might be famous Hollywood people, but they don't have like the, the same type of like energy behind them that Rogan or Theo Vaughn or one of these gu. And like there is some truth to that. But again, it's not because the establishment is behind the other guys and not behind them. It's quite demonstrably obviously the case that it's the opposite. The establishment is still totally behind those guys. I mean, they, the establishment tried to cancel Joe Rogan and you know, they failed, but they tried. So what's really happening is, you Might ask yourself, it's like, why is it that all of the never trump liberal comedians lost all of their street cred? Why is it that, like, they don't. They don't connect to their audience like that? And even in some examples where maybe they do connect to their audience, like, the audience might still think their last movie was funny or something like that, they just, they're not interested in their political endorsements. They're not interested in, like, the ideas that these people believe in. Much like, look, Taylor Swift, I think, was a great example of that. I mean, look, she. This chick had the most successful tour in the history of tours, endorsed Kamala Harris, and it did nothing to move the needle because I think even her own audience, which still might really love Taylor Swift, just kind of tune that out. They're like, yeah, whatever. We're not really looking for your political advice. Thanks. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is blackout Coffee. As you guys know, you've probably known for many years, I am a coffee enthusiast, a bit of a coffee snobby. You gotta check out blackout coffee. This stuff is absolutely delicious. It's roasted right here in the United States of America. And it's made by people who believe in liberty, believe in the Constitution and personal responsibility. They do all of the roasting, packing, and shipping in house. There's no middlemen and no compromises. And they have over 25,000 five star reviews for a reason. Because it's really excellent coffee. I have personally been drinking the cold brew nonstop. It's excellent. Love this stuff. Highly recommend it. Go check it out for yourself. Blackout coffee.com problem. That is the website. Go there right now and make sure to use the promo code problem. You will get 20 off your first order. Again, blackout coffee.com problem. Promo code problem for 20 off your first order. All right, let's get back into the show. Now, why is that now, specifically in the conversation with comedians? I think that, like, my, my feeling on it is that I think comedians are kind of like, they're expected to be gangsters in some sense. Now, comedians are expected to say the hilarious thing even when it offends people. They're kind of expected to not. They're expected to not bow down when pressures put on them. And I think there's almost no way you, you could. There's no way that you could maintain the respect of your audience after something like that. And what I think what we saw over between several different things, but it was really, it was the rise of Wokeism. It was Donald Trump getting elected, and it was Covid. And then there were other little stories after that that kind of all fell in line. But something in those years happened where it exposed the. The level of cowardice that a lot of these comedians had. And. And a lot of it is because, you know, a lot of people wanted to be successful more than they really believed in what they were saying. That's always been. It's like a. A fatal flaw in human beings in general. You have. You could have a really great politician say, and I don't mean like a skilled politician, I mean, like a really good person who wanted to get into politics. And maybe they have some issues that they really believe in, but maybe they want to be president more than they believe in those issues. Like, their major motivation is like, I want to have this power. And we all know that's going to ruin that person, because at some point, you're. Your principles and the desire for power are going to come into conflict. And if you desire the value for power more, you're going to end up compromising your principles in order to get that. Same thing with a lot of comedians. A lot of them cared more about being famous, more about being successful than about the craft. And when that happens, if those things come into conflict, you're going to go. You're going to take the easy path. We saw this a ton. I mean, there was. There were. There was so much that needed to be mocked and made fun of in Wokeism that so many comedians just refused to touch. Even as the most ridiculous thing is happening all around you, you refuse to make fun of it because you just don't want to get in trouble. And then when. When Trump got elected, it was like they just kind. A lot of them just developed what's known as Trump derangement syndrome. A lot of them, like, kind of shut down the funny aspect of what they were doing because they just wanted to fall in line and. And send the message to everyone that they're like a good little soldier. And then, of course, through Covid, they just, like, completely disgraced themselves. And to the point that when Jon Stewart went on Stephen Colbert's show and made the most obvious joke, don't get me wrong, it was hilarious. There's the most obvious joke about how this thing clearly came from the lab. At the time, you can see how uncomfortable Stephen Colbert is, and he's trying to talk over him. And at the time, it did really feel like a dangerous thing. Like, you were like, yo, is he really saying this. I mean, you'll get kicked off YouTube for saying this, but Jon Stewart's saying it on TV right now. Okay, but think about that. That was only a couple years ago, and now everyone knows he was right. And the expectation is that we're supposed to forget that Stephen Colbert was such a. Through all of that time, we're supposed to forget that. You know, it's like you just don't. That's just not going to happen. And look, even someone like Jon Stewart, at least when compared to those other ones, still has more street credit than any of those guys do. Because, you know, on some level, you got to go, ah, he kind of is a real one. He kind of is a real one. You know, Bill Maher also still maintained some degree of street cred because at least he didn't become a total throughout all these years. At least he'd still say a thing or two against the mob. By the way, Jon Stewart and Bill Maher, who are still, you know, I don't know what the, what the ratings on the, the Daily show are these days, but I have seen, I think, like, some of his video clips are still doing great numbers online. Bill Maher still has good ratings on his show, and it's still a relevant show. Bill Maher and Jon Stewart are, I mean, throw Stephen Colbert in there, the most consequential political comedians of the last 20 years. And so isn't it, like, it's kind of interesting. I remember one time when he was trashing the legion of skanks before he. He walked it back and did kind of apologize. So I give him credit for that. But I remember Anthony Jeselnik was talking about how Ann Coulter used to come hang out at the Comedy Cellar. And Ann Coulter was like, friends with a. I think she was friends with Shroud Small, and she might have been friends with Gnome, who owned the comedy club. So she would, like, come hang out sometimes. She was a comedy fan and, and Jeselnik was talking about how furious he'd be when he walked in. And Ann Coulter was at the table in the back and he's like, why are we even being friendly with her? Like, fuck her. She's the worst. You know, this awful conservative lady. And I remember thinking to myself that it really, it kind of demonstrated this kind of privilege, if you will, to borrow a word from the left that, you know, I think a lot of people, maybe, if you've never, if you've never been like a liberal who lived in a real red area or a conservative who lived In a real blue area. Maybe it's, it's hard for you to see as somebody who's like a radical libertarian who's from New York City and has done comedy for 20 years in the New York City area, that's just something that, you know, you, you get confronted with a lot more. But when someone. The thing that was kind of revealing to me about Jezel Neck's comments is it's like, oh, you don't even, you don't even recognize your own privilege here. Privilege. And I'm using it kind of tongue in cheek. But I mean that you don't recognize that. You just take it for granted that you should never be around somebody who disagrees with you because everybody else who would be at that back table are all fucking liberals or left wingers, 100% of them or 99% of them. So you're almost like miffed that there was this one time when there was a conservative around it. You know, from the perspective of like a libertarian in New York City, you're like, geez, one person, one time. I mean that's every, every time I go anywhere, everyone there disagrees with me politically. But like, okay, whatever. It's, that's not the end all be all in life. But so it is like, so you're going to imagine your perspective being that like there you have, you have Bill Maher and Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel and just all, and all the A list Hollywood people like all of them all in for the Democrats. Always like, that's just always the state of things. And then for the first time there's like a group of five comedians who have audiences who are like, you know, I'm open to the other side. Maybe the Democrats aren't the party to vote for. Maybe we should consider voting for this party. And you're furious about this change. It's like, okay, but that, then understand your issue is that you expected to have a monopoly on the entire thing. And, and that's just not going to be the case. And I think that hopefully one of the lessons that's kind of taken from all of this because we're never going to be, you know, we're never going to be a society that doesn't have liberals and leftists in it. I also, by the way, I think there's a, like a needed role for liberals and leftists in society. You know, you don't, you want to limit how much power they have. But there, there is like we're going to have the other like both Halves of America, speaking broadly, like the left half of America and the right half of America, they all have to out of their head. The idea that you're going to vanquish the other side, like that they will be eliminated and never, you know what I mean, be a part of society again or something like that. This is just. It's not possible to do that and it's not going to happen. But you would hope that as a result of whatever this massive cultural shift that we're living through is that people would recognize that it's like, oh, yeah, there is a price tag associated with burning your credibility to the ground. Like, if you just lie and lie and lie over and over and over again, eventually you won't be trusted. And if you're a comedian and you just bitch out over and over and over again, your opinion will not be valued. Because that's kind of like, that's an expectation that people have from comedians, and I think rightfully so, that if, you know, if you're saying something, if you're mocking the absurdities of the powerful, you're not going to bite your tongue just because you're worried it might make you look bad. You know, Lenny Bruce went to jail and George Carlin went to jail so that they could do their act. And the whole lore of those guys is that they wouldn't stop doing their actual. It's like even under the threat of actual violence, the truth is that Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel and all these guys, they never had a threat of anything like that. The threat was like, what, someone might say some mean things about you, and then you just have to go cry into your piles of tens of millions of dollars and that was enough to make you ditch out. Well, then how would, how would you have that energy with, like, your base anymore? And anyway, I just think it's been. It's been pretty interesting to watch. And it's again, you see, it's just one more attempt of CNN trying to grapple with something, in a sense, trying to overcomplicate it, when it's really actually very, very simple. It's like you had all the advantages. You had the culture completely controlled. You had the flow of information completely controlled. There was a mix of two things that happened. Two fairly straightforward, simple things. Number one, the technology evolved to the point where there was a much lower barrier of entry. People could get in to, you know, the. If you got probably a few hundred bucks, you could put together a little studio. Certainly for a few thousand dollars, you can. There's, you could put your, your stuff out there in a way where you didn't need networks, you didn't need billion dollar Cor generations behind you. And then number, number two was that with all of that control and dominance you squandered your entire reputation and trust in you evaporated. And people were looking for somewhere else to go and they found it. That's pretty much the story. And that is very different than becoming the new establishment. It's more like becoming the new voice of the people. Something much closer to that. Okay, let me, let's for, for the rest of the show here. I guess I got a little bit of time left, but let me, you know, I was thinking, I, I alluded to this on the last podcast and then after the show I was like, I probably should actually play this clip on the show because it is worth responding to. So let's, let's play this clip. This is of course what I was referring to is the, it was Michael Knowles over at the Daily Wire. I find it very interesting that it seems, there seems to be such a split between the, and I mean this on the right amongst Trump supporters, among, amongst Trump's base, there is this huge split over foreign policy. And part of it is generational. The younger generation is really just less supportive of Israel, less support supportive of, of war in general, whereas the older Republican voters are, are still more typically the way they, you know, traditionally were. But I do find this to be a very interesting kind of dynamic where you've got guys who are at the Daily Wire, particularly Matt Walsh and Michael Knowles, who essentially, you know, they're, they're, you know, putting themselves in the America first flag kind of in the non interventionist camp. They still, of course, cannot be critical of Israel because they work at the Daily Wire and the Daily Wire is owned by people whose highest priority is Israel. And so they're kind of stuck in this, in this weird position, but they, they realize that they have to find a way to play to the, the younger audience who just is completely opposed to all of this stuff there. Now look, I don't want to get this wrong. I don't want to be misleading here because it's not as if it's not. I don't think it's like 80% of the Republican voters are critical of, of the wars and critical of Israel or at least our support of Israel. I don't know exactly what the percentage split is. I know there has been a lot of interesting polling on this where it's very clear that the younger generation is really moving away from, from believing that the US should be funding and arming Israel. But there, there's no question that there's, there's a big split and there is one side is backed by the establishment and the other side is the dissident group, the establishment, there's no question about that, wants to continue the war, the war machine, and wants to continue, you know, funding and arming Israel's destruction of Gaza and then helping them in their next steps as well. Anyway, this was the, the, the clip that I was referring to on yesterday's show. So let's play it and, and we'll respond a little bit.
