#871 - Dave Smith - Why Does Mainstream Media Suck So Much?

28:55Well, 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 No matter what side we're talking about. I'm sorry remind me of your question. I kind of a Space on that where I had to go 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 gonna be a controlled environment.

29:26You've seen that a lot of these people they rely on that. They rely on the fact that 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 they want to go there, you know, I've said, what was it? One of the pollsters who got this election all wrong. I was like, I'm leaving and going to blue sky.

30:01It's like, what? To go get things wrong by yourself? Okay. Have fun. You know? Yeah, it's weird, man, because if you just say the headline, 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, fuck, like that. And 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, I don't know, the people that were getting suppressed or having their accounts deleted for misgendering people or mis -naming people, or all of that stuff, restrictions, all of the stuff that came out, they stuck about for the most part.

31:09Yeah, if there was gab and truth social, but everybody kind of still played in the pool and it does feel a little bit like, well, I don't know. If as soon as a Lossicas, everyone's like, the Cartman like, screw you guys I'm going home to Blue Sky or wherever else. I don't know, but the fracturing and the fragmenting in this sort of siloing of different groups in different social medias, I wonder what that does because it's going to make your own echo chamber in your own bias even worse. The algorithm already does that. Your follow's already do that. You don't even have the offset now of outrage stuff that comes in.

31:50Apart from, I guess, maybe things from other platforms put a cross onto yours. But then when you see the replies of that, everybody agrees with me. So I wonder whether the myopia on both sides is going to increase more, given that people are going to cross -pollinate 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 volume down, although maybe you weren't having that before in any case. I don't know. No, I mean, I agree with all of what you're saying. And just to the first part there, You know, I, sure, I, I could see looking it on paper and going, hey, the richest man in the world bought this platform 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.

32:40I mean over well over a hundred years. So what was it 1912 when Woodrow Wilson ran for president He was funded by the big bankers And then he got in there and signed the Federal Reserve Act into law. And it's like the most blatant example of like 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.

33:17They 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. It's like the most blatant scam in the world 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 Mary Amadelson would be the one to look at not Elon Musk.

34:03And so obviously George now, Alex Soros, do the same thing for Democrats. So yeah, I mean, that's the game for better or for worse, but and mostly for worse. But to your point, I really do like in deep in my soul, I totally feel the same way as you. And I feel like everybody should be on these platforms together, because 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 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 wanna do it.

34:44If they wanna 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 wanna do it, that's fine. But they're 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 inter -social, you know, relationships. And like, it's a... 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.

35:26And 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 are pushing the vaccine should be censored, all of them were saying, let's have this debate.

36:13So 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, okay, then, well, then okay, the door's right there. You know, I don't know what to say. Yeah. This MSNBC story with Laken Riley, have you been tracking this? I saw that Rogan tweeted out the headline of it, but I have not read the article. Basically, the fact that this person was an illegal immigrant, he was an immigrant in the headline of the story.

36:56All 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 very, very, very, very New York Times with that fruit 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 40 and the yellow 3 and the BHT lining inside of the bag.

37:31And this fucking 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 Maybe we can, I'm like, guys, I'm a fucking, this is, I can't burden, I can't bear this burden anymore, I can't shoulder this weight. Just continual. Nothing learned, nothing fucking learned at all. And you know what it feels like? It feels, it feels boomery. 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 fucking dull? This uninformed about everything, because your only job is to be informed.

38:20Apparently, which makes me think that it has to be a complicity. It has to be some degree of cowardice or coordination or compliance as opposed to ignorance. I'm like, 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 that 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 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 and I mean the New York Times was what was that I could I saw someone actually I first saw because someone posted like just a screenshot of the text and I read it and then I was like, I gotta go pull up this article, there's no way.

39:20There's just no way that this was actually the go, but he got that wrong. They would always say he got that wrong and then the next sentence is how he got it right. It's just unbelievable, but I think so many of these guys, it's just like this is what they've been doing forever and this is what I was saying before, it's really stunning, but the inability to grapple with this new situation and that the facts on the ground have changed and you're just going to pretend that it's the same old world and particularly when the disparity in audience is so large. You know, like it's like, oh. You're not even winning.

39:57You're still doing this thing and you're not even winning. Yeah, like let's say you do a show and it gets like two million views in episode and I do a show and it gets like 2000 views in episode. And you're gonna lie about me. You're gonna say, hey, you know, Dave believes all these things that I don't really believe. Well, okay, the morality of that aside, that's a fairly effective strategy because a lot of people are just gonna hear from you and they're not gonna hear when I respond to you. But if I've got two million and you've got two thousand and your strategy is to lie about me, well, that's a really stupid strategy because so many more people are gonna hear the truth and the few who hear you are gonna know that you're lying.

40:35And so it's just like that. It's right in front of you where you're like, what do you think? Are you still acting? And 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 listen to him anymore. Well, I mean, look, the Rogan Enwood video 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 an indiscretion which may be an error or maybe actually something that they commissioned to do that they meant to say.

41:15And say, first off, this is what they meant to say. So there's no such thing as mispeaking. Secondly, after that, they say, this is not one small isolated perspective or an 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 and millions, hundreds of millions of people were saying, I've seen the whole iceberg. I've watched 500, 1000, multiple thousands of hours of this guy, and I don't think that you're right.

42:01And that the ability to take a single indiscretion error vector from somebody who is speaking a lot, like inevitably there's going to be errors that come out, and saying, not only did they mean to say it, but this is in, it proves that they're the transphobic, xenophobic or a racist, whatever, that we always knew that they were. It's like, it's such a tired fucking playbook, and it really blows me. And on top of that, it makes me concerned. It makes me tread more carefully, because I think, oh God, like what if this minor mispeak, what if the way that I put this particular sentence together is constructed incorrectly and then construed in a manner that somebody else can, I'm like, this is not, it's not fucking cool.

42:48No, 100 % man. And just like, so to your point about having seen in the entire iceberg. I think that's so spot on. And particularly with something like 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 nightly news show where you come on and And there's this energy of like, I'm performing the news now. Hello everybody and welcome to the Nightly News at ABC in our top story.

43:28You know, it's not like that. It's not scripted. It's a conversation. People are going to hear the things that I want around about, that I want to talk about. You're also going to see me in a situation where Joe just throws something at me that 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 set there for three hours and really got to know it. 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 nine hours a week in their head.

43:59Like they know him. You know, I get people all the time, 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. Very, what, I've done a 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 content. You're gonna 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?

44:34No, I knew all all this 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 audience. I think what else that does, and it can be whichever media form you like, even substack to some degree, the sort of frictionlessness that people are able to publish, regular blogs on whether it's personal reflections or stuff from science, the daily vlogs. I love the fact that a lot of vlog editing now seems to be moving down from the whole limbic hijack thing.

45:14Sam Suleik in 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. 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 he like fucking what? Dude like you're so either the malignant or out of touch. Those are the only two options. And both of those mean that I shouldn't listen to you. Yeah, and this has always been one of the worst things about, which you kind of touched on just now.

45:58But 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 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 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.

46:47There's a lot of figures like this who are kind of like, you know, very provocative thinkers who might say four things. And one of them, 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'd try to make me be like well I'm a little bit concerned about talking about this topic because people might think I'm a bad person and in fact Part of the reason why those types of people are so important is because when it really hits the fan and there's like totalitarianism is on the rise and everybody's falling in line.

47:47Well, 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 not the conformist 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 listen at least, that's part of what makes it so fun and interesting. What you mentioned, Libertarianism, a couple of times there as a card carrying member, what do you make of the place of the Libertarian party and that sort of position at the moment?

48:32because 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 the less right that would be that would be useful. Well, yeah, I mean, I think that the way I look at it is that I think... So, I mean, I'm a libertarian, forget the party. I'm a libertarian in terms of my world view, because I think that the greatest struggle in the history of humanity is between tyranny and liberty, and I think that liberty is the key to a moral and prosperous society, and that governments are agents of aggression, and that they bring nothing but destruction, especially when they're out of control and not reined 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 entire system is rigged against third parties.

49:37And so there's, you know, the prospects of like the libertarian party out taking over the Republican party or something like that is not happening anytime soon. I did think that Angela McCartle, who's the the chair of the party did a phenomenal job this year in really kind of re -imagining the role of this third party that is pro -liberty and was able to get a bunch of, uh, that 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 And what and what the world needs is liberty, but particularly, you know, in the United States of America, which is what I know the most about.

50:26I mean, even in Donald Trump's, you know, like this drain the swamp, clean out Washington of corruption. Well, I think the libertarians have a lot to add here in an understanding that the essence of the corruption in Washington, DC is that the government is so big. Now, 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 top $7 trillion this year, is the biggest, most powerful organization in the history of the world. And they get their money through the threat of force. I mean, it's not like it's a big company that just has a product that everyone wants to buy.

51:07They 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, D .C. 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.

51:40I 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 lots of skeletons in your closet, middle management, bullshit, government, bureaucrat people, it must be like the specter of an autistic guy in an Indian guy bearing down upon you. Be like, oh my fucking God. Yeah, and especially like an autistic at an Indian genius, like they're not even just random guys.

52:23You're like, oh man, these guys are really good at getting stuff done too. Yeah, I think there's a lot of that. And I think, look, I think this really explains why there was such an insanely hostile attitude toward Donald Trump since 2016. And you know, I know 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 primaries. And 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 had this hysteria come from DC.

53:08And I think what you just said explains it perfectly like that he just terrified all of these people who on some level know that their 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 Sleeping into the test. I remember that selfie when he first he first started a taking over. Yeah, it'll be really interesting. I've been thinking a lot, I had this conversation with Shapiro a few months ago about what a lot of the right has done for the last five years or so has been the sort of rebellious voice of righteousness.

53:57You know, you're able to push back against overreach and political correctness and victimhood ideology and identity politics, and 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 fucking 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?

54:28Well, if you go after the record, the record's fucking dog shit. 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 very difficult position for her to play. And you heard this, like, what would you have done, what would you wish that Biden had done differently? What would you have done differently? And she give this, like, a four -ing 45 -minute roundabout of nothing. But yeah, 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.

55:01I like, look, the fucking first thing of being, of doing government is to get in power. We didn't manage to do that. We need to change tack a little bit. And if that means that there are fewer places for, you know, commentary on the right to push back against for sort of the sort of news stories that create those myth of martyrdom flags that get planted in the ground. I wonder, I wonder what difference in the dynamic we're going to see over the next sort of four years because that rebellious nature, speaking truths to power thing, you don't really get to do that. You are power. You're fucking in power.

55:36Make something happen. Yeah, no question. I mean, it's a, it's very easy to criticize something and it's much harder to build something. And particularly if you're talking about, you know, draining the swamp, if you're talking about 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.

56:18And even he just reaffirmed the other day. We'll use the military to deport all of them. You know, 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, but activists, the media, every story of some, you know, 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 that child, which inevitably will happen if you are actually trying to deport every single illegal immigrant.

56:59And 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 this was really the failure of Donald Trump in his first term, is that he didn't have any, 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, and they did it to him right away. You know, Donald Trump ran in 2016 on Let's Have Day Tant with Russia.

57:35This 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. He was 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 that would be a great policy if you could implement it. But then your framed as being a Russian spy. Well, what are you going to do now? And this is how they get what are you going to do now?

58:07You'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. Right, man, the whole media is saying you're a Russian spy and now you want to make could deal with Vladimir Putin. So we couldn't do that. So we had to back off of the, 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 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.

58:40I'm certainly not going to sit here and pretend that I have all the answers I've had to do that. I don't think the answer is giving Marco Rubio the the state department, but that's just me. We'll say. Yeah, it's funny to think about. I found it really fascinating that even Trump was kind of a bit surprised when he got into office the first time and didn't have anything prepared. You know, who are the staff that you're supposed to go through? What's the process that you're supposed to do with this? Even if fucking Hillary had got in, at least she's got ever, like, you know, the husband can be like, Hey, you know, this is kind of the way that it works.

59:12And 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 game plan, even though I still don't know how much part of that he was or wasn't. 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 a big egg on face. Yeah, for sure. And especially this time coming in after this guy has been so burned by this system, in every way you can.

59:58I mean, with the exception of Jack Kennedy, no American president has been more burned by the system. And so you got that. Now he also has not only 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 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, the Antifa and Black block and all those types. There just doesn't seem to be the same energy there. Maybe they're just tired. I think they've been distracted because they've been protesting the war in Gaza for the last year.

1:00:44And I think, first of all, I think they're right to protest that. I think it's an absolute outrage. 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 Henskiff cracking jokes in Madison Square Garden. It's just kind of, you know, 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'd have been tens of thousands of protesters outside. There was nothing. According to the Secret Service, I think there was like a hundred who were there.

1:01:17No one showed up to protest. So Donald, all 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 them 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, fucking awesome, man.

1:01:54I really appreciate I appreciate your work. Where should people go? Don't only keep up to date with all the things that you do. Oh, part of theproblem .com is that's what my podcast is and all my stuff is there. And then I'm a comic Dave Smith on Twitter and 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.