Dave Smith brings you the latest in politics! On this episode of Part Of The Problem, Dave discusses his experience debating the American-Israeli relationship at Princeton, Trump and Pete Hegseth's statements about Ukraine, Tulsi Gabbard's senate confirmation, and more.Support Our Sponsors:Sheath - https://sheathunderwear.com use promo code PROBLEM20Prolon - https://prolonlife.com/potpPart Of The Problem is available for early pre-release at https://partoftheproblem.com as well as an exclusive episode on Thursday!Get your tickets to Porch Tour here:https://porchtour.comFind Run Your Mouth here:YouTube - http://youtube.com/@RunYourMouthiTunes - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/run-your-mouth-podcast/id1211469807Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/4ka50RAKTxFTxbtyPP8AHmFollow the show on social media:X:http://x.com/ComicDaveSmithhttp://x.com/RobbieTheFireInstagram:http://instagram.com/theproblemdavesmithhttp://instagram.com/robbiethefire#libertarianSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Chapter 1: What is Dave Smith's take on his recent debate at Princeton?
And I mean, look, I'm not trying to be a dick or anything like this to Josh, but it was also just, I think it was a pretty one-sided debate. I mean, he's...
a nice enough guy and i do appreciate that he was like um respectful and he was very cool after the debate and stuff like that but there i don't know i just thought there were a few things about it that i i kind of found interesting and it's just a little bit
it's a little bit surreal um as a lot of things that i do in my career are uh it's it's all kind of strange to me still uh but you know like going i'm literally a college dropout going to an ivy league school to debate the senior editor of newsweek about like one of the most important issues in the world and it's i don't know i mean maybe this is just
Chapter 2: Why does Dave Smith criticize the traditional college system?
It felt to me like just being there, but then also winning by such a landslide was such an indictment of college in general. What are you people doing here? You're all wasting your time. I don't mean to attack all of the people who just hosted me and were very nice to me the other day, but it really is something where you're just like, I mean, I know college makes sense for some people,
And certainly there are some professions, you know, if you're going to be a surgeon, you're going to need to go to college for quite a long time. And it's a very important thing to have surgeons. So I'm not suggesting we don't have that. But it's just kind of like you're like anything in this area of just like.
you know anything about like educating yourself on a topic it's just totally it's very strange because i'm going to princeton i've never been to princeton university before and you know it's it's a beautiful campus and they have these very old buildings like the building we were in uh i mean it i don't know when it was built but it was pre pre-war is understating it it was an old old building and a beautiful building um but it's just like i'm in this really old building
And you're sitting there going like, yeah, isn't this whole thing just so outdated? Like when colleges, when universities were first being built, I'm curious, and Natalie, could you look up what year was Princeton University built? So I'm just kind of curious about that. But around the time when this university is being built, right, you'd have to think that a huge part
of the attraction would be that like oh well we have uh so 1746 wow that's actually much older than i thought that's why these buildings are so old it's all making sense now um so so princeton was built before the united states of america i did not know that okay so we were colonies when princeton was built okay um
So, but just, I mean, look, I'm not like an expert in this or anything, but obviously, as you just found out, I didn't even know when the university was created. But you would think that a big part of like why you would have a university would be like, okay, well, look, we have all the great books here.
right like we have like a library with all of these great books like good luck finding this collection somewhere else and then you'd be like okay and we have these professors who have read all the books and written a bunch of books and these people who really understand these issues and they can help teach you so now you have like all the great you know all the great uh literary works and then you have really smart people who can teach them to you and stuff like that and so like at the time that made sense but like if at the time like in in 1746
If you had been like, oh, well, everybody has access to all of these books. You can just, you can push a little button on a machine that fits in your pocket and it'll be right in your door in 24 hours. Or, you know, you can just use that machine in your pocket to go read the book or whatever.
And in terms of like great professors, it goes like, oh yeah, there's every single great lecture that you could ever have thought of is right here on your phone. And like, like if that existed, it just seems like you'd be like, oh, well then we don't need to build Princeton. You know, like or at least you would have needed a much smaller version of it or something like that.
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Chapter 3: How does Dave Smith approach debates and what is his debate strategy?
to do debates um at least like like i don't know exactly what the number is that i'm supposed to do every year but i think i i have to at least do like five or six of these a year um and but i think i probably do more than that but it i guess because it just seems to me
like if i i in in my strange career you know i go on like some of the biggest shows in the world so if i'm on joe rogan's show or i'm on tucker carlson's show or or uh patrick bett david or you know candace owens or you know whoever like the really big shows are these are shows that are much, much, much bigger than anything on television in these spaces.
And so I go on all these shows and I'm always like, well, look, it's like this. And then I lay out my case, you know, and it's like, oh, okay. So, but if I'm going to go on those big shows and say, hey, look, this is the way it is, then I feel like there's a little bit of an obligation on me to present these ideas against somebody who's going like, no, it's not like that at all.
And see where the ideas, you know, whose ideas come out on top. So I've always kind of felt like a little bit of an obligation to do this. And I get, you know, at the end of these things, I tend to get like a lot of...
Uh, you know, like a lot of nice stuff is said about me and I've, you know, then, you know, people on social media and in the comment section and stuff like that, which by the way, is one of the only, I am not big on reading comment sections except for debates. The debates, I always go through the comment section.
Cause I just, uh, I, you know, I kind of, I'm interested, the whole point of a debate
is really to persuade the audience i mean you you hope with the person you're debating that obviously you're never gonna like completely change someone's mind like a debate like it's not like if a if a libertarian and a leftist debate never once in the history of the world has one side been like you know what i am no longer a leftist because you just made such compelling arguments that i like that's not gonna happen but i think if you have an honest debate uh opponent
you'd hope that you could at least like get a little nugget in there that might stick with them. And then they're like, okay, I do have to think about that a little bit more. But really the point is to persuade the audience. And so I am always kind of interested. to be like, OK, when I'm battling somebody who's taking like a diametrically opposed view to me, what did the audience like?
Did the audience think that I made a more compelling argument than this guy did? Or if they didn't, what was the thing that they didn't think? And then that kind of helps me to think of like, oh, well, maybe there's a better way I could put this or maybe I have to rethink that.
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Chapter 4: Why does Dave Smith challenge prominent figures like Ben Shapiro?
And they, in fact, started manufacturing a bunch of the most outrageous propaganda about how Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction under the Sharon government. So, again, he's... He was like trying to, but there's just not really an argument there.
And perhaps if somebody hadn't, you know, like if I hadn't read John Mearsheimer or something like that, maybe I wouldn't know all of that, but I've done my homework and I'm just on the right side of the debate. And so it's just, I don't know. It's like, if you... If we were doing a debate that was like, and the resolution was like slavery is immoral.
And I was on the affirmative and someone else took the negative and I just won the debate. I don't think you'd be like, oh my God, David's just such an amazing debater. You'd just be like, no, he's clearly just right about this. Like this isn't, it's not a comment really on who's better at this or worse at this. It's just a comment on, there's just, the argument is so irrefutable.
At least that's my perspective on it. Obviously, everybody's allowed to have their own perspective. You can go watch the debate and tell me what you thought. I'm curious to hear. I'll check in the chat if anybody had any comments on that. Dave is spitting facts right now, and you guys are goofing in the chat.
there you go thank you i i appreciate that um but anyway it was it was interesting you know i i think that you know and like like i said i've i've been very critical of say people like ben shapiro um who i think you know, he's made supporting Israel the center of his entire identity and his entire political worldview, and he's never debated a competent critic of Israel.
I just find that to be, like, outrageous. Like, I'm not saying... Obviously, there's, like... the expectation isn't that you're going to debate everyone. And believe me, I get that all the time with, you know, somebody with like 200 Twitter followers who I've never heard of, who's like, you're afraid to debate me on this. And you're like, yeah, okay.
Well, you know, time is a scarce resource and I can't devote it to everybody. So I got to, you know, choose a more high profile debate at this point in my career. Um, but yeah,
think it's very reasonable for me to say there's a responsibility on you to debate someone i mean the the list of like capable critics of israel is is you know maybe we could use some more people but there's a lot and and like pick one of them
None of us would, you know, like it's not like if if if Ben Shapiro announced that he was debating Norman Finkelstein, it's not like you would hear me or Scott Horton being like, no, you have to debate me. We'd be like, great. OK, yes, go do that. It's I just think it's like I do think there's something cowardly about. Like. only debating 17 year olds or 19 year olds at college universities.
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Chapter 5: What are the benefits of Sheath underwear according to Dave Smith?
Go check them out at sheath underwear dot com and make sure you use the promo code problem 20 because that'll get you 20 percent off your entire order. sheathunderwear.com, promo code PROBLEM20 for 20% off. All right, let's get back into the show. What is it here in the comment? Kurt calling the Liberty attack a conspiracy theory is ridiculous. Even Israel admits it happened.
They just lie and say it's an accident. Yeah, I mean, you know... Maybe like if there's no other takeaway from the last few years of American politics, it's like even more so, you know, like if someone calls you like you're a bigot or you're a transphobe or you're a racist or whatever, it's just like, okay, that's not an argument. It's just not an argument. And that should just be dismissed. Okay.
What else you got? You know? And same with conspiracy theorists. You know, just just I mean, by the way, if it was if the USS Liberty is a conspiracy theory, like, yeah, it is a conspiracy theory, I guess. It was one that was shared by the secretary of state at the time. It's one that's shared by a whole bunch of eyewitnesses to the event. So what does that mean?
Yes, it's been a conspiracy to keep this a secret. OK, I mean, like, I just don't I find it bizarre. that anybody, especially someone as intelligent as Charlie Kirk, to just, like, after the last few years, to say, well, that's a conspiracy. Like, okay, the question is what happened, not whether it's a conspiracy or not. And there are lots of conspiracies that are real.
And I think Charlie would, like, acknowledge that, but I don't know. Okay, let me see. Douglas Murray. Good name, dude. it was Murray. It's crazy how he bragged about the one-to-one civilian to combat and ratio that can't be proven. Even if I could, that's a lot of civilians to be comfortable killing. Yeah.
That was, you know, there were a few moments in the debate and that, you know, it's like it's always the case with these debates where it's something I made my peace with. I think Gene Epstein actually helped me understand this because so like I mentioned, Gene Epstein runs the Soho Forum debate. So Gene Epstein has done a ton of debates himself. He's one of the best debaters.
he's like really one of the absolute best debaters. If you've never seen Gene Epstein, there was a Bhaskar Sankaria or something like that. He's like a democratic socialist guy and they debated like free market capitalism versus democratic socialism or something like that. I forget the exact resolution, but I mean, it is to this day, one of the best debate performances I've ever seen.
Gene was just spectacular. He gets, he gets a little worked up and angry in the debate, but I actually, I love that type of stuff, but it was just like phenomenal. So good. Um, and then he had, um, I'm blanking on the professor's name. Wolf, I think is his last name. He's like one of the more famous Richard. Well, he's, he's one of the more like famous, um, like Marxist professors.
And again, Gene just tore him to shreds. So Gene's like a very experienced debater. And he's also a brilliant economist who's just, you know, very smart and well-read and really has his arguments down. And he also, he runs a debate series. So he's just like immersed in that world. And I remember he told me after my first debate, that was the one where I debated Nick Sarwak at a Soho forum.
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