Why Does Mainstream Media Suck So Much? - Dave Smith

busy few weeks for you yeah it has been I'm tired yeah what do you make of the media's performance this year what's your assessment of them um man it's like I the answer is obvious but I'm trying to find the words to to really I mean it's it's not you know I I view the the corporate media apparatus in not just the United States of America but in in most Western countries as essentially state Pro propaganda they might as well be State media there's essentially no difference their their job is to cover for powerful people and to spin the narrative that those powerful people wish for the plebs to believe so I think that's always been true like that's not there's nothing drastically different in in this last year as opposed to you know 50 years ago or something like that and if you look at the way you know the media lied the United States into Vietnam or something like that or you know this is always what they've been in the business of doing what's striking to me about the last year is how profoundly stupid the propaganda has become and kind of their inability to adjust to the new facts on the ground so you know something like just just for one example that which I guess I care about because he's a good friend of mine but so Tony henchcliffe when he speaks at the at the Nazi rally in Madison Square Garden if you are at all plugged into like social media or this world of Internet shows that we're a part of you just kind of know this this video has gone viral I mean there's you know you the video of Tony doing his insult comic routine is you'll see one clip on Twitter that's got 3 million another has 7 million another has 600,000 another has that now CN then at the same time is getting like 200,000 views on their their daytime show and this show is telling you that a speaker made a comment at a trump rally but everyone who's seen that is also seeing the actual thing like they can literally see that you're lying to me so like you got to step it up here guys you got to adjust and they just didn't adjust they and and the lies it's not it's not that they're lying that's nothing new but the lies like Joe Biden is sharp as attack and Camala Harris is a phenomenon of joy and you know like they were just so blatant that it you know it's like well of course nobody's going to be fooled by this or next to nobody so I think the best thing that's come of of this election and the Fallout since is that even the corporate media has finally had to admit that they're not the mainstream anymore and that to me has been really fascinating watching them they're like well I guess the real action is over here with Joe Rogan and with all these internet shows and not with us which which has been true for a while you could just look at the numbers it's it has been true but to see them finally have to Grapple with that has that has been glorious the best clicks that the mainstream media now get are commenting on what Independent Media is doing yeah and and and for good reason man like you know there there's been a lot of uh um discussion about this lately and you know I had uh um Sam Harris called me out uh you you've been making friends him and Chris Cuomo you've been making friends yes yes that's right yes my dear friends Chris Cuomo and Sam Harris and you know what he said was that you know he was like listen you know Joe Rogan has some comedian Dave Smith on to break down the history of Ukraine or the Israeli Palestinian conflict or something like that and I'm sorry but that's not that what are we looking at this guy like he's the next Henry Kissinger or something like that and to be clear I get his point like he's not entirely wrong sure it is kind of ridiculous that we don't have serious credible institutions and we don't you know like okay there's a fair point to that but if you're just being honest and not as Sam Harris is trying to rationalize away why he's not wrong for getting all of the major stories wrong over the last few years the the truth is that look convers like shows like this and shows like Joe Rogan's show and shows like a whole bunch of these these internet shows there's just what's going on is is just levels more intelligent and thoughtful and interesting than anything that's happening at CNN or ABC news or any it's like it is the dumbest I mean I just was listening um to uh I don't know if you saw this but there's a clip one of the I can't remember her name but she's one of the CNN ladies and um she's uh she's she's being interviewed about what went wrong in this election and I'm listening to it and it's just like the dumbest take like there's not one thoughtful moment there's not one thing where you go oh okay that and and I'm somebody personally who's like I really enjoy reading like brilliant left Wingers brilliant right Wingers you know Libertarians different all types of different views if you're thoughtful and interesting I think there's something that can be gained from their work I you know I am certainly not a left-winger but I think gome Chomsky is like like must read stuff like you're missing the game if you haven't read gome Chomsky you I promise you you will benefit from Reading him and like so I'm just saying if you're just objectively looking at this I'm sorry Tucker Carlson and Glenn Greenwald sitting down and having a discussion is is just light ears more intelligent and thoughtful than anything that you'll ever catch out of any of these corporate media outlets and so like for them to all look around like well this is ridiculous that we're relying on on Joe Rogan and Dave Smith like yeah okay it is but it's also for a reason well look it's the best that we've got you're right the the fact that the mainstream media is totally bereft of any honesty or useful or interesting Insight uh is not good and yeah is it a damning indictment of our media landscape that we have to turn to you and Rogan for like accurate analysis and and insight or at least something which is original or at least something which is said because you believe it as opposed to because it's what you think is socially acceptable or will tow the party line or will get the outcome that you want that's not to say that people don't have their own everybody is pushed by biases that they're conscious and unconscious of but yeah damning indictment indeed and yet who do you propose that we speak to it's the same conversation I have this all the time around masculinity people will happily Point their finger at a number of uh role models that are often held up for men uh and say we don't like them I'm like okay who' you suggest instead and there's no one so it's like right okay identifying a problem without proposing a solution seems uh unuseful and yes uh should we be turning to uh Dave Smith and Joe Rogan to be like the [ __ ] harbingers of Truth in 2024 I alas here we are yeah well that's that's exactly right you know and if uh if if the institutions had done a better job none of this would exist I mean if you think about this the Head Start that they had on all of us not to mention the fact that these are I mean even listen you know like I Joe Rogan has some money in the bank but he doesn't have anything like the resources that CNN has doesn't have a multi-billion dollar operation you know what I mean Joe Rogan's like a a few guys that's his whole operation and so the it should say something that he's not only caught them but has lapped them several times over and you know that's that's kind of unfortunately where we are and I I get your point on the masculinity issue I think it's like the perfect uh comparison where okay you you may not like Andrew Tate or someone like that but I don't know for these young for for a a 20-year-old young man who's had nothing his entire life except has probably grown up without a father was probably thrown on you know Ridin or Aderall or something like that when he was a kid every every teacher has been a woman every uh um you know college professor or any influence in his life has had nothing to say except that masculinity is toxic and that somehow if you want to get up and run around like from from the first grade if you want to get up and run around that's worse than someone who wants to sit and listen and like I'll tell you as some I have a a son and a daughter and it is I mean I when my daughter was I remember when she was like a year and a half old and she would sit on my lap and she would stare into my eyes and we'd play like patty cake and she'd like touch my face because it's so sweet and my son from the time he was a year and a half old like if you tried to put him on your lap he was diving off head first you know to go Sprint into the wall and then fall down and then you know either either start crying crack up laughing or whichever one it's going to be but so it's like Oh Yeah from the very beginning we're instilling in these kids that masculinity is bad and femininity is good so of course they're going to look for somebody who could be a so again to your point it's like okay so if you don't like this guy will then provide something you know that usually right and this is true throughout history is that usually when I wouldn't say usually always when far right when when far right or far-left radical groups actually take over or get a strong foothold it's because the establishment has failed on every level and you could you picked the historical example that's always the case and if the establishment is doing a great job listen if we had peace and prosperity and you know what I mean like a healthy Society there's no way you would see the the far left and the far right gaining as much traction as they are today why do you think it is that it's all either the Bernie Sanders Wing or the right-wing populist Wing that has any traction amongst voters cuz the establishment has failed is it people unhappy with the current situation so throwing out the current order and trying to move as far away from what they see as moderate or reasonable or right now as is possible is that the sort of thesis here I mean I think so I think I think that's a a large part of it for sure and I think that you know certainly with like young kids on on the left um they're embracing socialism because they view that as the opposite of what we have right now and as far as like the kind of right-wing populist uh movement I don't even think you know it's been fairly incoherent in terms of theory it's not really clear and and I think we're going to see a lot more of that emerg now it's already kind of started to with like v ramaswami um and his kind of push against big government right-wing populism and more for like well no that's actually not the best theory guys let's not go in that direction but I think the the truth is that Donald Trump's drain the swamp message is really what resonated with voters that it's really like we know this whole thing is corrupt and we oppose that and that's enough to unify a lot of people that was enough to get me to vote for Donald Trump and I don't like a lot of things about Donald Trump but I'm I'm pretty unified in looking at Kamala Arison going I'm against that yeah 69% of Americans have absolutely no or very little trust in the corporate media 31% of Americans are [ __ ] as you cited not long ago uh what do you think happens moving forward with uh sort of Trust in Media are the are the media going to learn anything from this do you think that they're going to Pivot or change well I mean I don't think so and I I don't see how they can and I'm not like the best at predicting the future I've gotten things wrong uh in that regard but even just looking at like the post-mortems over the last few weeks none of them even the ones like there's kind of a split between within the corporate media between the real loons who are like no it was sexism and racism and that's all that we're going to say about this you know and then there's like the ones who are I guess I only have one foot off the cliff who are like well maybe you know there are certain things we could have done better maybe the transing the kids thing was a little bit too far or something like that but even with those guys that just none of them and in in some ways it's just because they're so strongly incentivized not to admit this even to themselves but none of them can really have an honest postmortem none of them can really go like oh I guess what happened is that we just consistently lie through through our teeth and we've gotten every single issue wrong every single one of them on the side of power like there's not one of all of the the issues you know if if you were to just say in the 21st century what has the corporate media gotten completely wrong and you could list off like these humongous that you know like from the war in Iraq to the financial recession you know um Co and you know Russia gate and all this stuff isn't it convenient that they always get it wrong on the side of the CIA it's so bizarre you know and none of them can admit that and none of them can admit that oh we were lying when we said this is a great economy actually we've totally gutted this economy and and rigged it against any honest workingclass person and I mean like you know it's like that was one of the major ones that was just unbelievable to watch them pretend this is a really great economy and when it's it's terrible for working people is the one of the worst economies the worst I think in my lifetime and so again it's just you look at them okay they have no ability to actually grapple with what got them here and why they've lost all their credibility and then on top of that you know and and this was a thing that I think a lot of people got wrong because I I even saw a lot of people who I kind of agree with in respect saying that Camala Harris made a huge mistake by not going on Joe Rogan's podcast when she was invited on but I think you've got it all wrong if you're looking at it like that that that was a wise move on Camala Harris part that there's no way that would have gone good for her there's no way it wouldn't have been a disaster for her because Camala Harris is not built to be able to speak openly and unguarded for three hours her whole thing is she's got to say talking points because otherwise you might find out that she has nothing she does she's not interested in any policy she doesn't have a deep thought on a single issue and so they've constru there's a new game in town now and what it's an amazing president that's been said over this last election where now you have to if you want to be president of the United States you have to go and sit for an unedited threeh hourong in-depth conversation and Trump had to do a bunch of them and it's just simply the the case that what the corporate media does what the progressive establishment Democrats do isn't built for that like it it it just can't be done there there is nobody if you're let's say if you're on the side of um transing the kids or whatever you don't do well in a long form conversation you rely on shutting down your opponent by calling them a bigot and then having censorship and having the power and having the control you're you can't because there's just no defending it it's not like there there's not one single person out there who's a good defender of it it doesn't exist yeah the you may not have noticed this the other day was transgender day of remembrance uh not to be confused with trans day of visibility which is in March or trans day of action which is in June uh last week was the last day of transgender awareness week uh transparent day was earlier this month as well uh California legislature has declared August to be trans History Month uh pronouns day pronouns day is in October also in October is gender fluid visibility week uh non-binary people's day and non-binary Awareness Week both in July October designated as lgbtq History Month which was initially lesbian and gay history month and of course lgbtq pride month formerly gay and lesbian pride month is in June so I assume that you've been celebrating appropriately yes I I uh I don't eat until sundown on all of those days whatever whatever it is you're supposed to do I I can't believe you have all those memorized Chris look I they're on my calendar I that's I'm being a good contributing member of society but yeah this um this idea of sort of the media landscape and and it's changing uh it really did feel like you there was a couple of breakr moments when Independent Media went mainstream so the CNN horse Dormer thing with Joe uh the the onew punch of the nword video as well shortly after that uh and then uh a lot of the stuff around covid labik hypothesis vaccine skepticism stuff like that uh and then it kind of you know it came back down a little bit I think that sort of independent Crossing over into the mainstream we saw uh Mr huberman have his little uh eruption earlier this year uh and then the election has just thrust it so much I think into the Public's iist because so many people are invested in the outcome of the election so many clicks and so many eyeballs are bothered by it and it just Garners all of that attention so yeah you know it really wouldn't surprise me if within the next four years we get to the stage where there's more than 50% of the population maybe not more than 50 I I I I often overestimate how not normal the normies are and I fa flatten my face a significant portion of people say we don't want MSNBC or CNN to host the presidential debate we want it to happen on a piece of Independent Media we want [ __ ] Rogan and Glenn to do it or Douglas Murray and [ __ ] Chena I don't know like you know what I mean like we want that uh and it I feel like we're on a trajectory where that doesn't seem as ridiculous as it might have done only 5 years ago yeah well in a way what seems ridiculous now would be to have it on one of the networks I mean it just doesn't make any sense and I you know I I know so many like um yeah I I was going to say blue check journalists but that's not a thing anymore but if you remember back in the day on on Old Twitter that used to be a thing when it was the journalist with the blue check and that's how you knew they were like an official journalist but I remember all of them for years just like deriding uh Twitter and and podcast and it'd be like ah Twitter isn't real life and oh the podcast Bros are upset does that even really matter and I remember always looking at this and being like guys it's it's as much real life as the New York Times is real life why isn't in any it's a show what we're doing right now is a show there's two people there's cameras there's a microphone who cares whe whether it's on the Internet or it's on FX or something like that it's like the what matters is how many people are watching and there's just way more there's just no listen if Elon Musk and Joe Rogan decided they wanted to host the next Presidential uh debates we all know that that would get not more views than if Jake Tapper were to host it but like by orders of magnitude more viewers on it so why it's just the more you look at it on paper you're just kind of like oh yeah it would make no sense to go in that direction and all the sense in the world to go in this direction and all things being equal that's probably what you're going to get just to try and play a bit of Devil's Advocate for sort of the other the other direction is there because for all that I love and am a part uh and will happily contribute to the degeneracy of uh The Independent Media space uh there is a bit of me that thinks well I never went through formal media training I'm not held to any particular uh standards uh fairness unbiasness all the rest of the stuff even if the media has totally disregarded those etc etc etc um is there a place or is there a way a case to be made of how we could Salvage that other side of Defense the more sort of corporate Legacy Media thing because I I again I would benefit massively if everyone just [ __ ] discarded them and came over to our side but the is a bit of me that thinks well you know they they've split tested a lot of how media works for a long time they have the money behind them it just seems like they're pointing in the wrong direction and if we could just adjust the direction a bit uh maybe we could have two really fantastic worlds that that presented the public with information I I'm not against that in theory but I I do think that institutions in general you there's a line you can cross of being so corrupt and so evil that you essentially lose the right to exist you lose your legitimacy and so I think you know if in in 1990 someone was arguing that you know we just need to point the Soviet Union in the right direction and then you know what I mean because it's important it's important to have these these big institutions or something like that I think you would go like well no they've lost their right to exist and I I think the corporate media is well beyond that point and by and by the way I don't like uh from my perspective I I'm not flippantly making that comparison I think it's a well-earned comparison I mean the the corporate media has lied the American people into war after war after War over the last 25 years that is I mean millions of innocent people have been slaughtered over these conflicts which were they weren't mistakes or things they got wrong they were blatant lies and some people in the corporate media may have just been paring these lies and not known that these were lies but all all you got to look at right to understand because I love talking about this but all you got to look at is you go uh fourstar General Wesley Clark who's on tape on Democracy Now saying that in 2001 he saw the plans that were not only to go topple uh the government of Iraq but also Libya and Syria and I think um I forget the other I think Lebanon was in there and there's a whole list of countries ending in that we were going to go topple all of these governments and then years later well two years later when we went into to the war in Iraq they said oh it's weapons of mass destruction and he was in bed with uh with Osama Bin Laden and then when we went to toel Gaddafi they said he's about to go genocidal against his own people and then when we went to topal Assad they said oh he's going genocidal against his own people and there they make up the lies to justify the plan that was already the plan from well before any of this this nonsense was going on and as a result of those Wars if you add them all up it's in the millions of innocent people trillions of dollars wasted the whole region destabilized like if that's not enough to say yeah you've lost your legitimacy You've Lost Your Right to exist especially when your role was supposedly to inform the public and the role because again this is why I make the comparison to the Soviet Union in theory your role was to help the working class your role was to be the champion of the people and you've been the greatest enemy of the people well then I'm sorry there's no writing that ship the the correct answer is to abolish that institution well they're committing such sepu I think that people are losing faith in them you like think about the last five years or so uh I I find myself being very sort of non-c conspiratorial very like hopeful about institutions I still think universities got a strong place to play etc etc etc and for me right Canary in the coal mine who's got [ __ ] lungs of Steel to withstand this stuff I'm like yeah they suck like they absolutely suck and uh I I just it's been face plant after face plant after face plant and um yeah when it crosses over I've got this rule uh the parental clout gauge so uh a story hasn't reached real mainstream significance when it's on the front page of the New York Times when it's trending on Twitter it's when your dad messages you about it on Facebook Messenger like that's when it's really broken through uh like he sent me a message not long ago saying I see your friend Mr Rogan is in the news again I'm like holy [ __ ] like this is really really broken through another one a couple of 18 months ago uh that Andrew Tate spelled t AIT t uh that Andrew Tate's a nasty piece of work isn't he I'm like [ __ ] wow Tate you really you really reached global domination because you've managed to get my dad in the northeast of England um but yeah and I I would I would get the sense that even he is like yeah this doesn't really feel right that much anymore uh so yeah I maybe they're not going to learn and I don't know maybe suback and the Free Press and and live streams and all the rest of it maybe that's going to be the next sort of media landscape but I feel like there's a lot of stepping up to be done there in terms of sort of the volume uh another point that I'm sure you've heard talked about before I'd love to get your take on uh the boring stories that get covered you know there is still a place for like meteorological insights and and surveys on like really really boring stuff that the Press kind of still has a hold over and you hopefully they're not [ __ ] about with what's happening with the weather or whatever but maybe they are uh but with that like you know who's going to come in who's going to fill that hole who's going to fill that vacuum um so yeah there's a lot of uh a lot of changes to be made another uh trend that we've been seeing recently is exit this uh departure of journalists and users from X what do you think of this and the move to Blue Sky and sort of the social media landscape and how that's going to get partitioned yeah well I mean I think there's this um which I think you know if you if you think back to uh like around 2016 2017 when there you know when when whenever it was that like the uh you remember the the Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson and like the the kind of like owning college kids video first destroys yes you know it used to be like the um that Snoop uh dog song would come on in their classes and they'd be smoking um but back and and one of the things that I actually think for the time I think it was really necessary and kind of a a great thing I I think you got to move out of that realm of just owning 20y olds at a certain point but like uh but there was something about it where you would just see it was like a window for the rest of us who weren't at at universities to be like wow there has been this tremendous uh atrophy where no one no one's pushing back on any of these ideas and so they haven't strengthened them and then the first time they're confronted with someone pushing back on it like they literally have nothing they have nothing I like you know it it would be as simple as like some 19-year-old would be like you know I was born a man but I identify as a woman and like Ben Shapiro would be like how come you're not a Trey and they like you know like oh my God he owned her or him or whatever and there's just this this Dynamic where there's there's been a a tremendous weakening and that you know it's it's just like it's like anything else it's like if you haven't been to the gym in years and you're and you're weak and your muscles have have all gone through atrophy well the only answer is you got to start lifting heavy things again you got to pick up heavy stuff and put it back down and that's the way you'll recover and get stronger and so that's kind of like where we have to go going forward no matter who um uh no matter what side we're talking about um I'm sorry remind me of your question I kind of uh uh spaced on that where I had exit going to Blue Sky I'm sorry so anyway so just with all these people leaving it just it seems like that to me again it's like yeah after Elon Musk came in and bought Twitter and kind of was like no this isn't going to be a controlled environment you've seen that the a lot of these people they rely on that they rely on the fact that their their opposition is going to be censored or kicked off and they can't actually compete in the marketplace of ideas and so if those people want to remove themselves from the conversation fine but it's that's not going to change the dynamic I don't think I mean that's not going to change which shows have big audiences which accounts have big audiences and if if they want to go there you know I've saw what was it one of the the pollsters who got this elction C all wrong was like I'm leaving and going to Blue Sky it's like what to to go get things wrong by yourself okay have have fun you know yeah it's it's weird man because you if you just say the headline uh richest man in the world buys social media website and then endorses candidate and pushes him to 200 million people like just that headline is like [ __ ] like that I don't know that that that sounds like a lot but on the flip side of it so many people on the left were happy with the finger being pressed on the scale when it was going in the other direction and the question now is well okay is the sense that people have of Twitter becoming very right leaning and the suppression of people on the left and all the rest of it is that it or is this just a move back to balance and what you're doing is it's like going from cold water to lukewarm water that feels really hot because you were just so used to having this situation before and it's like well I don't know the the people that were getting suppressed or having their accounts deleted for misgendering people or misnaming people or all of that stuff restrictions all of the stuff that came out they they stuck about for the most part yeah it was gab and Truth social but everybody kind of still played in the pool and and it does feel a little bit like well I don't know if as soon as uh a loss occurs everyone's like Cartman like screw you guys I'm going home to Blue Sky or wherever else uh I don't know but I the fra uring and the fragmenting and this sort of um siloing of different groups in different social medias I wonder what that does because it's going to make your own Echo chamber and your own bias even worse the algorithm already does that your followers already do that uh you don't even have the offset now of outrage uh stuff that comes in apart from I guess maybe things from other platforms put across onto yours but then when you see the replies of that everybody agrees with me so I wonder whether the uh myopia on both sides is going to increase more given that people are going to cross-pollinate uh the misunderstanding that everybody has of everybody else's views also going to increase more because you never get to see a reasonable take you never have a discussion that brings that that uh volume down although maybe you weren't having that before in any case I don't know no I mean it's a I agree with all of what you're saying and you know just to the to the first part there you know I sure I I could see looking at on paper and going hey the richest man in the world bought this plat form he throws his his capital and his influence behind a political candidate and I could understand people having an aversion to that but the truth is that that is just the way of politics whether you like that or not I mean over well over a hundred years so what was it 1912 when wooder Wilson R for president um he was funded by the big bankers and then he got in there and sign the Federal Reserve Act into law it's like the most blatant example of like the they're going to give you money to win this race and then you're going to get in there and give them control over the nation's credit Supply which still is the craziest freaking thing in the world that is just kind of accepted now as that's just how Modern Nation States operate I guess but that private banking interests get to print out of thin air money they get to create money and then lend it to the big banks at next to no interest so that they can take that money and lend it out at interest to the American people or the the British people or whatever government we all have central banks um it's like the the most blatant scam in the world and and this goes on all the time and so if Elon Musk was doing that so that Donald Trump could pass policy X that would give Elon Musk billions more dollars I would certainly be opposed to that it's a little bit different if he's just doing it because he believes in the candidate and by the way I mean you know if you're talking about giving Donald Trump a whole bunch of money in order to get a policy that you want I think Mariam Maiden would be the one to look at not Elon Musk and obviously uh George now Alex Soros or do the same thing for for Democrats so yeah I mean that's the game um For Better or For Worse but and mostly for worse but to your point I really do like in in deep in my soul I totally feel the same way as you and I feel like everybody should be on these platforms together cuz we got to share a country so we might as well all be having this argument together the thing of it is is that it's not like we were having that that that wasn't the dynamic but if anybody from say the I mean look I you know I debated Chris Cuomo I'd debate anybody else from the corporate media if they want to do if they want to come engage in this conversation in a good faith manner okay let's do it and it's not just me I know I speak for you when I say that and lots of other people that we'd be like more than happy to have so if they want to do it that's fine but also in any type of relationship like there has to be standards and just unifying for the sake of unifying is never a positive in human intersocial you know relationships and like it it's uh if if your wife was like if you hit me I'm leaving you and you hit her like that's a reasonable standard for her to have and like be like no sorry you have to not do that in order for us to be together and so my thing is kind of like after like all the years of censorship and all of the years of like covid tyranny and all of this other stuff it's like okay hey if you want to come be a part of this conversation where I'm arguing that you got all of that wrong and it was evil what you did then fine come prove me wrong but if you don't want to do that and you'd rather leave fine but the standard is going to be that neither side gets censored at least that's how I'd like to see it I've never been and I don't know anybody anyone who was like a Critic of the covid insanity who was saying that the people pushing lockdowns should be censored or that the people who were pushing the vaccine should be censored all of them were saying let's have this debate so I do see an asymmetry here where there's one side that's quite happy to have the debate and the other side that relies on censorship so if that side now has lost the ability to censor and their response to that is like well I'm leaving like the husband the husband being like well if I can't hit you then I'm leaving well like well okay then well then okay the door's right there you know I don't know what to say yeah this uh MSNBC story with lake and Riley have you been tracking this I I saw that Rogan tweeted out the uh the headline of it but I have not read the uh the article B basically that the the fact that this person was a illegal immigrant it's he was an immigrant in the headline of the story uh all of the pressure and all of the attention is placed on how he never stood a chance and how unfair it was that he was prosecuted and persecuted in the manner that he was a person who killed somebody else not only somebody else but an American citizen not only killed somebody else who was American citizen but did it as an illegal immigrant and all of this stuff has just been buried Buried buried uh New York Times with that fro Loops fact check thing about RFK it's like the difference between the American version and the Canadian version It's not that different except for the red for and the yellow 3 and the BHT lining inside of the bag and uh this [ __ ] uh The View with this Dragon believer thing about Rogan so for all of my Whimsical British sentimentality about you know Dave maybe they're not too far gone maybe we can't I'm like guys I'm I [ __ ] this is I can't burden I can't bear this burden anymore I cannot shoulder this weight uh just continual nothing learned nothing [ __ ] learned at all and um you know what it feels like it feels it feels boomy it feels like someone who just does not have their finger on the pulse of what is going on and that's where I'm like are you this [ __ ] dull this this uninformed about everything CU your only job is to be informed yeah and uh apparently so which makes me think that it has to be a complicity it has to be uh something Ree of cowardice or coordination or or uh compliance as opposed to ignorance I'm like you you can't be this stupid well and also I mean I think a lot of it is just being stuck in your ways you know that old saying you can't teach an old dog new tricks like there's a lot of wisdom to that I don't know about you like I feel it the older I get I mean I remember being like 20 and it's almost like everything is a possibility you don't even know who you're going to become as a person but the older you get get you're kind of like yeah I know I know who I am and we're not changing that at this point like sorry we're far we're far past that I mean I could Tinker around the edges a little bit but you know and I mean the New York Times what was that I could I saw someone actually I first saw it because someone posted like just a screenshot of the text and I read it and then I was like I got to go pull up this article there's no way there's just no way that this was actually the go but he got that wrong like they literally say he got that wrong and then the next sentence is how he got it right it's just unb but I think so many of these guys it's just like this is what they've been doing forever and there's this is what I was saying before it's it's really it's stunning but the inability to Grapple with this new situation and that the facts on the ground have changed and you are just going to pretend that it's the same old world and and particularly when when the the disparity in audience is so large you know like it's it's like you're not even winning you're still doing this thing and you're not even winning yeah like let's say let's say you do a show and it gets like two million you know views an episode and I do a show and it gets like 2,000 views an episode and you're going to lie about me you're going to say Hey you know Dave believes all these things that I don't really believe well okay morality of that aside that's a fairly effective strategy because a lot of people are just going to hear from you and they're not going to hear when I respond to you but if I've got 2 million and you've got 2,000 and your strategy is to lie about me well well that's a really stupid strategy because so many more people are going to hear the truth and the the few who hear you are going to know that you're lying and so it's just like that it's it's it's right in front of you where you're like what do you think are are you still act and and you know I I remember in my lifetime when that was the case when they had a monopoly on information and they could just lie about people if they wanted to remove them they could just tell you this guy's a racist don't don't listen to him anymore I mean look the uh Rogan enwood video uh was my favorite example of that because what the media tries to do and this is one of my least favorite sort of parts of the internet is to take uh an indiscretion uh which may be an error or may be actually uh something that they commissioned to do that they meant to say uh and say first off this is what they meant to say so there's no such thing as misspeaking uh secondly after that they say this is not one small isolated perspective or error this is indicative of an entire ideology this is the tip of the iceberg and below it is just bigotry and sewage and transphobia and racism and white supremacy and whatever whatever slime they want to throw at you but the difference with the Rogan position was the media was saying this is the tip of the iceberg um Millions hundreds of millions of people were saying I've seen the whole Iceberg I've watched 500 a, multip thousands of hours of this guy and I I don't think that you're right and that the ability to take a single uh indiscretion error Vector from somebody who is speaking a lot like inevitably there's going to be errors that come out uh and saying not only did they mean to say it but and this is indic it proves that they're the transphobe bigot xenophobe racist whatever that we always knew that they were it's like it's such a tired [ __ ] Playbook and it really balls me and on top of that it makes me concerned it makes me tread more carefully because I think oh God like what if what if this minor misspeak what if the way that I put this particular sentence together is constructed incorrectly and then construed in a manner that somebody else can you I'm like this is not it's not [ __ ] cool no 100% man and and just like so to your point about having seen the entire Iceberg I think that's so spoton and particularly with something like uh The Joe Rogan Experience where the guy has you know I feel like because I've done Joe's podcast so many times at this point I feel like his I think his listeners have that relationship with me because it's just when you go there it's it's a you know you talk for three hours and people really it's not like doing a a Nightly News show where you come on and there's this energy of like I'm performing the news now you know hello everybody and welcome to the Nightly News at ABC and our top story you know it's it's not like that it's not scripted it's a conversation you people are going to hear the things that I want to rant about that I want to talk about you're also going to see me in a situation where where Joe just throws something at me that I I wasn't expecting and you'll see how my mind works and how I think about things how I take in new information and all and you sat there for three hours and really got to know and I've done the show like a bunch of times but Joe's done every single one of them like the fans who are fans of Joe Rogan they listen to him for 9 hours a week in their like they know him you know I I get people all the time cuz because we're good friends and they'll be like oh what's Joe Rogan like and you're like you know what Joe Rogan's like what do you that's what Joe Rogan's like by the way for anybody I've how much time you've spent with him but that's what he's like he's like exactly what you know he's exactly the same there's no act being put on and so when people millions and millions and millions of people who have consumed like hundreds and hundreds of hours of his cont you're going to say like oh we got to cancel this guy like you might as well be telling me I got to cancel my wife or something like that like what no I knew all all the stuff you're talking about I already knew and I knew everything else about it too so it's just not going to happen like this just is not it's not possible for you to like get in between that very authentic relationship that he has with his his audience I think what else that does and it can be whichever uh media form you like you know even substack to some degree the sort of frictionless that people are able to publish regular blogs on whether it's personal Reflections or stuff from science uh the uh you know daily Vlogs I love the fact that a lot of uh Vlog editing now seems to be moving down from the whole limic hijack thing Sam suck and his like 45 minute chest and back workout video which is essentially unedited right there's no fluff there's no there's no nothing there's no curation um I think what all of this does is it throws into very harsh light the much more curated much more perverted molested world of the person who Joe Rogan's a dragon believer and you're like [ __ ] what dude like you're so either malignant or out of touch those are the only two uh options and both of those mean that I shouldn't listen to you yeah and this this has always been one of the worst things about you know which you kind of touched on just now but one of the worst things about political correctness or like wokeism as it's called now is that it does like when you set up this system where there's like a there's like third rails everywhere that you're not allowed to touch and if you touch them you're supposed to be ruined now and that is supposed to Define everything about you that is you know it's that might work for really dumb people but for anybody who's at all intellectually curious it's like you you need people who get things wrong sometimes and some of the most interesting thinkers who I've always loved reading you know they get certain things very wrong but that same person might get something else right in a way that you're like wow I never thought about it like that before there's a lot of uh figures like this who are kind of like you know very provocative thinkers who might say four things and one of them you you kind of agree with the second one you think is dead wrong the third one you think is wildly offensive and the fourth one you think is brilliant and you've never thought of things in that way before you know and like who wants to get rid of that person those are the best people like those are the ones who are really fun to like read through and kind of you know stretch your own brain by thinking about what they're thinking about and what you agree and what you don't agree and I hate and not just hate but I like very bitterly resent anyone who ever tries to make me live my life that way who try to make me be like well I'm a little bit concerned about talking about this topic cuz people might think I'm a bad person and in fact part of the reason why th those types of people are so important is because when when it really hits the fan and there's like totalitarianism is on the rise and everybody's falling in line well who is going to be who's going to have the personality type to stand up and be like no I'm against all of this it's it's not the the formist conventional thinker you know it's the people who are outside of the box and so yeah Joe definitely has some views that are outside of the box and he likes getting into conspiracies and he likes talking about like all this stuff but at the same time that's I think to most people who who listen at least that's part of what makes it so fun and interesting what you've mentioned uh libertarianism a couple of times there as a uh card carrying member what do you make of the what do you make of the play of the libertarian party and that sort of position uh at the moment because it seems to me like the right is going down and the left is going up so you've got sort of this split but I assume to you there is more down to be done and less right that would be that would be useful well yeah I mean I think that the the way I look at it is that I think so I mean I'm I'm a a Libertarian forget the party I'm a Libertarian in terms of my worldview because I I think that the um the greatest struggle in the history of humanity is between tyranny and Liberty and I think that Liberty is the is the key to a a moral and prosperous society and that governments are agents of aggression and that they bring uh they bring nothing but destruction especially when they're out of control and not reigned in as most current governments in the west are in terms of the party there's you know Third Party politics in the United States of America is the the entire system is rigged against third parties and so there's you know the the prospects of like the libertarian party out taking taking over the Republican party or something like that is not happening anytime soon I did think that uh Angela McCardell who's the chair of the party did a phenomenal job this year in really kind of reimagining the role of this third party that is pro Liberty and was able to get a a bunch of uh concessions maybe isn't the right word but assurances from Donald Trump before he won and hopefully he comes through on at least some of those but I think that I think that what you know I what the country needs is liberty and what and what the world needs his Liberty but particularly you know in the United States of America which is what I know the most about I mean even in Donald Trump's you know like uh this drain the swamp clean out Washington of corruption well I think the Libertarians have a lot to add here in in an understanding that the the essence of the corruption in Washington DC is that the government is so big that's really why it is so corrupt like definitionally that's why when you have a government that's spending I think we're going to top7 trillion do this year is the biggest most powerful Oran organization in the history of the world and they they get their money through the threat of force I mean this it's not like it's a big company that just has a product that everyone wants to buy they get their money because they say you pay us or we will throw you in jail and then they print the money which robs your value from you or they can borrow the money which is just a promise to tax you in the future well when you have that you have an organization that is extracting wealth from the American people and then handing them out to their political cronies and this is why there's more millionaires in the suburbs of Washington Washington DC than there is anywhere else in the world that's the corruption that's it right there and so the only answer to this is drastic Cuts in government spending which I will say with like the Doge stuff I know it's not like an official government department but it does make me excited that that is at least you know inserting that idea into the consciousness of the American people that like this is what draining the swamp actually looks like yeah it must be terrifying if you're one of these uh lots of skeletons in your closet middle management [ __ ] government bureaucrat people it must be like the Spectre of an autistic guy and an Indian guy bearing down upon you must be like oh my [ __ ] God yeah and especially like uh an autistic at an Indian genius like they're not even just random guys you're like oh man these guys are really good at getting stuff done too yeah I I think there's a lot of that and I think look I think this really explains why there was such a an insanely hostile attitude toward Donald Trump since 2016 and you know I know um uh Joe's played on his podcast a bunch of times but a bunch of people love to look at like Donald Trump on The View right before he had won the primar like he wasn't that guy he wasn't a guy who everyone had an allergy to and thought was the next Hitler it wasn't until he started saying drain the swamp and it actually looked like he was going to win and maybe even mean it and try to do it that all of a sudden you you had this hysteria come from DC and I think what you just said explains it perfectly like that he just terrified all of these people who on some level know that they're parasites and on some level know that they do not perform a useful service that they could voluntarily get money for we saw Elon do this at Twitter right he got rid of some absurd percentage and it was just him and like 20 Asian guys uh sleeping under the desk I remember that selfie when he first he first started uh taking over yeah I uh it'll be really interesting I've been thinking a lot I had this conversation with Shapiro a few months ago about um what a lot of the Wright has done for the last five years or so has been the sort of rebellious voice of righteous you know you you're able to push back against overreach and political correctness and victimhood ideology and identity politics so on and so forth and now that everything that you could want has happened you have the much more difficult task which is to actually [ __ ] deliver change you have to actually make something happen and you can't just complain from the sidelines about why is this not happening and so on and so forth and that was a huge part of the failure that Kamala had coming in it's like are you a change candidate or do you have legitimacy because you've already been in office well if you go after the record the record's [ __ ] dog [ __ ] and if you're a change candidate you need to throw your old boss under the bus so you don't it was very difficult it was a very difficult position for her to play and you heard this like what would you have done or what would you wish that Biden had done differently what would you have done differently and she gives this like Goring 45 minute roundabout of of of nothing uh but yeah I I really am interested if as it may be true the sort of wokeness will be retracted not just from the mocking it gets from the other side but even from the left they like look the [ __ ] first thing of being of doing government is to get in power we didn't manage to do that we need to change Tac a little bit and um if that means that there are fewer places for you know commentariat on the right to push back against for sort of the sort of news stories that create those myth of martydom flags that get planted in the ground I wonder I wonder what difference in the dynamic we're going to see uh over the next sort of four years because that rebellious nature speaking truth to power thing you don't really get to do that you're you are power you're [ __ ] in power make something happen yeah no question I mean it's a um it's very easy to criticize something and it's much harder to build something and particularly if you're talking about um you know draining the swamp if you're talking about uh cutting down on the corruption in Washington DC you're talking about taking on the most powerful entrenched interests in the history of the world who are very prepared to fight for what they have they're not going to give it up voluntarily and they're not going to give it up easily and you know you can already see a lot of this happening where you know say like Donald Trump might say on the campaign Trail oh we're going to deport all the illegal immigrants and even he just uh reaffirm the other day we'll use the military to deport all of them you're like okay that's very easy to say try implementing that because you are going to get resistance on every level and not just on like you know like local law enforcement in blue areas um but activists the media every story of some you know uh humanitarian catastrophe that happens along the way is going to be blown out of proportion some mistreatment of some poor migrant that's been evicted and separated from their child Etc ET which inevitably will happen if you were actually trying to deport every single illegal immigrant and so then whereas that might be great campaign rhetoric then you have to make a whole different calculation when you get in there which is like okay how do we actually accomplish this and and this was really the failure of Donald Trump in his first term is that he didn't have any idea he had absolutely no plan I mean like he may have had some ideas in his head about how we'll do this but I don't think he ever really understood How Deep The Swamp was or what they would come after him with it's like what they and they did it to him right away you know Donald Trump ran in 2016 on let's have Dayton with Russia this was a major theme in his 2016 campaign he was like you know Vladimir Putin's in Syria because he wants to hunt down ISIS because okay we also want to get Isis I don't care about overthrowing Bashar al- Assad let's get along with Russia Let's Make a Deal let's kill the terrorists together and then let's get out of the Middle East we don't need to be there at all he's like okay all right that sounds good that's a good campaign idea and and that would be a great policy if you could implement it but then you're framed as being a Russian spy well what are you going to do now and this is how they what are you going to do now you're going to go make a deal with Russia because that would have just been proof to the American people that you are in fact a Russian spy wait a minute the whole media is saying you're a a Russian spy and now you want to make a deal with Vladimir Putin so he couldn't do that so he had to back off of that you know and like there's just there's a lot of things like that that are it's much easier to be in my business than it is to be in Donald Trump's business and and in his business he actually has to figure out how you can manipulate this machine in a way that you can get things done that's no easy task I'm certainly not going to sit here and pretend that I have all the answers of how to do that I don't think the answer is giving Marco Rubio the state department but that's just me we'll see yeah yeah it's uh it's funny to think about I re I found it really fascinating that um even Trump was kind of a bit surprised when he got into office the first time and didn't have anything prepared you who were the staff that you're supposed to go through what's the process that you're supposed to do with this even if [ __ ] Hillary had got in at least she's got EV like you know the husband can be like hey you know this is kind of the way that it works um and then this was the whole I guess Justified argument behind project 2025 which is hey last time he got in and he had a blank piece of paper we're just trying to kind of play a a game plan even though I still don't know how much a part of that he was or wasn't uh but this time you know you've been in this world for coming up on a decade you've had on the ground experience last time you had all of the evidence that you've lost you have everything that you need and if it doesn't get delivered that will be uh big egg on face yeah for sure and and especially this time coming in after this guy has been so burned by this system in every way you can I mean with the exception of Jack Kennedy no American president has been more burned by the system um and so you got that now he also has not only a a much bigger Victory than in 2016 but he actually won the popular vote and there also has been this incredible cultural shift where it it seems to me that kind of the the shock troops on the ground meaning the people the kind of useful idiots the young leftists who would protest Donald Trump um the antifa and black block and all those types there just doesn't seem to be the same energy there like maybe they're just tired I think they've been distracted because they've been protesting the war in Gaza for for the last year and and I I think first of all I think their right to protest that I think it's an absolute outrage um but I think it's just very tough to when you've been protesting women and children being slaughtered all year it's very hard to turn around and now protest Tony hinchcliff cracking jokes at Madison Square Garden it's just kind of you know it's it's hard to get that energy going but because of that because you know in 2016 if Donald Trump had held a big event at Madison Square Garden there' have been tens of thousands of protesters outside there was nothing uh according to the Secret Service I think there was like a hundred who were there no one showed up to protest so don all what I'm saying is that Donald Trump is uniquely set up this time to be able to get these things done so if he can't get him done now that's that's a real shame I don't know maybe maybe the future will be even better but or even a better opportunity but at least in my lifetime I've never seen an opportunity like he has right now control of the Congress control of the Supreme Court winning the popular vote not the same resistance behind you let's let's drain some swamps pressure is on Dave Smith ladies and gentlemen Dave [ __ ] awesome man I really appreciate you I appreciate your work where should people go don't to keep up to date with all the things that you do oh uh part ofth problem.com is uh that's what my my uh podcast is and all my stuff is there and then I'm comic Dave Smith on Twitter and uh yeah I'm all over the place part of the problem is my podcast that's all thanks so much for having me Chris I really appreciate it appreciate you too cheers man thank you very much for tuning in if you enjoyed that episode there is something else you will absolutely love right here go on give it a tap