Dave Smith brings you the latest in politics! On this episode of Part Of The Problem, Dave discusses the ongoing investigation of the Signal chat leak, it's place compared to similar scandals in American history, and more.Support Our Sponsors:Go to get.stash.com/PROBLEM to see how you can receive $25 towards your first stock purchase and to view important disclosures.Paint Your Life - Text PROBLEM to 87204 to get 20% offTax Network USA - 1-800-958-1000 or go to TNUSA.COM/SMITHMy Patriot Supply - https://www.preparewithsmith.com/Part 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 events are Dave Smith and Rob touring for?
What's up? What's up, everybody? Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem. I am Dave Smith. I am rolling solo for this episode. And Rob and me, tomorrow morning, I'm jumping on a plane to Boston. So come on out. There are still limited tickets available. They're selling very quick.
If you want to come out, we got a show tomorrow night, then two shows Friday, two shows Saturday at laugh Boston comic Dave Smith.com. That is the website where you can grab all the ticket links and, and plus everything. I think we got dates on there like going through the rest of the year. So me and Rob are traveling quite a bit doing stand-up shows this year.
I will be, I'm about to enter a tornado of travel over the next few weeks, a few big podcasts and some stand-up shows. Stand-up, I'll be doing stand-up in Boston and Nashville. And then in between that, I got some other traveling too. So again, comicdavismith.com. Hope to see some of you guys out there on the road. Really looking forward to Boston
the show today i do i did notice i was the show today i do i did notice i was just looking at twitter uh as i was just looking at twitter uh as i was just looking at twitter uh as i was preparing for the show and I seem to have struck a nerve with some people based on some comments I made on the last podcast about emojis, and people are upset.
Chapter 2: Why does Dave Smith criticize emojis and holidays for men?
People who love their emojis really, really love them, but I'm sorry. They're for women and children, and I stand by it. I'm pretty old school. Or maybe I'm just old. But things that were not done in my time make me uncomfortable. And I don't care to adjust. And I don't think that's the role. I don't think that's what men are supposed to do. We're not supposed to adjust to the new time.
We're supposed to stay locked in our time. And I try my best to do that. By the way, I have a lot of strict views on this stuff. I've upset people with this before. In fact, it was David Cross who, I mean, he was mad because I humiliated him in that debate we did years ago, but he got very offended when I said that I don't think men should have holidays.
that I think like I was ripping on Father's Day. Father's Day is pointless. It shouldn't exist. Holidays are not for men. I don't think men should even celebrate their birthdays past a certain age. Like I think you like I did a thing. I had a thing for my 40th birthday and my wife kind of insisted she twisted my arm into doing it. But I had a party for my 40th birthday.
I think that may be as appropriate for men. you're like every decade you're 40th you're 50th you're 60th okay fine you could have a little party but like father's day first off father's day is never a thing it's never no dad has ever enjoyed father's day we don't care you're just buying us crap with our money
uh which is not that doesn't make sense it also doesn't it doesn't make sense to give a gift if you're spending it in the other person's money just let them get what they want for themselves also dads like when you're a grown man you don't I appreciate every day that I get to spend with my family, but I don't need it to be a day of celebration about me. Because just think about that.
A day of celebration. That's not for men. A day of celebration is for women and children. So anyway, I'm not backing off of my emoji position, and I will double down on this. I will die on this hill. I'll go all the way. Someone told me on Twitter I shouldn't die on this hill. You don't get to pick what hills I die on. I do. And it's this.
anti emoji it's not good for society when men are communicating with emojis that someone else said to me uh they go well how else are you supposed to convey emotion in a tweet Does that just prove my point right there? Yeah, you're not supposed to convey emotion. That's the whole point. Okay. Anyway, enough silliness. So for today's episode, I got it.
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Chapter 3: What is the Signal chat leak and why is it significant?
We're just going to talk more about the signal stuff because more has come out about it. And it's fascinating. And I just find it interesting to cover the fallout of all of this. Now, I'm not... As I said yesterday on the show, I'm not presenting this with like any type of like unified theory of, OK, here's what happened.
This isn't something like like Russiagate, where, you know, after, you know, covering it for a long period of time and then a lot of information came out and there's just been there's been. declassified information. There was the Mueller report. There was the Durham report that investigated the investigation.
So there's a lot there where you could be like, okay, here's the cohesive narrative, okay? Hillary Clinton went to this British spy who went to this Russian spy who compiled this dossier of pure lies and garbage. They knew it was pure lies and garbage. Then, you know what I mean? After Donald Trump wins the election, the FBI and the CIA use it to launch this big investigation into Donald Trump.
Okay. We don't have anything like that here yet. What we do have is, okay, you have a scandal. As I said yesterday on the show, the major scandal here is not what's being covered. You know, I was thinking about this last night, but there were two examples that just pop into my head that kind of remind me of this signal thing. And the two examples were, number one was Benghazi,
Chapter 4: How do past scandals like Benghazi relate to the Signal chat leak?
and number two was the uh f the eu victoria newland phone call that leaked so real quickly for anybody who doesn't know uh the story benghazi if you were paying attention to the news back then um this was in in barack obama's first term this was like one of his scandals um Fox News talked about it all the time. Mitt Romney brought it up a lot when he was running against Obama in 2012.
And essentially what was amazing about it for anybody who followed it was that they made the whole scandal that this U.S. embassy in Benghazi was overrun. And I mean, Hillary Clinton testified for hours. I think she did like a six hour congressional testimony on this. And it was just constant. You know, the parameters of the conversation were like so narrowed.
It was, you know, this is really back when, you know, CNN and MSNBC and Fox News really controlled a lot more of the narrative. In fact, this is again, I might be dating myself here, but Fox News was so big at one point.
and so like involved in this conversation that if you i'm somebody who certainly experienced this and people around my age with around my politics probably did too but if you back in the obama days were like critical of liberals at all The first things people would say back to you was like, oh, what are you watching too much Fox News? That was always just like the assumption.
It was like, oh, if you're if you're not a liberal, well, then obviously you watch Fox News. And then I would tell people like, no, I hate Fox News, too. And that would they would not understand that. And it was in this in a similar sense to like, if you, you know, if you were saying 9-11 was an inside job or something like that, people would have been like, oh, what are you watching Alex Jones?
It was just like thought of as the way Alex Jones owned the conspiracy world. Fox News owned the I'm not a liberal world. And today that's totally different. That's just today. If you were critical of liberals, people are probably assuming that you're listening to podcasts or that you're, there's an influencer, you know, like maybe they'd, they'd assume you're like, I don't know.
I don't even know who the person would be, but because it could be so many people, it could be, anyone from Ben Shapiro to Andrew Tate to whoever. It's a different world, much more decentralized. Back then, they really controlled the narrative. And so the whole conversation was over how Obama was so weak that he couldn't protect this ambassador.
Obama was so weak that he couldn't protect this embassy. And the Republicans were tough and strong, and they were going to get to the bottom of what happened. And through this whole thing, almost nobody raises the question, Why was our CIA embedded in Libya? What was going on here? And the actual story was that Obama had decided, along with NATO,
to overthrow the qaddafi regime in libya which that in itself would you would have thought even by this time i mean what are we talking like 2011 here even by this time this is you know eight years after we overthrew saddam hussein in in iraq and eight years after or nine i'm sorry not ten years
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Chapter 5: Is Donald Trump being sabotaged from within his administration?
And so here you have, you know, Victoria Nuland, who is the wife of Robert Kagan. These are like real deal, like true neocons, okay? Orchestrating a regime change, deciding who's going to go in the new government and who's not going to go in the new government. And also... Pretty clearly alluding to the whole operation that's going on. I mean, they open it up.
The terminology that they use is very spy-like stuff. You know, they're like, we got to glue this thing. We got to stick it. We got to, she goes, we need a midwife this thing at one point, they say. Anyway, so through this whole thing, she even at one point says, because this is under the Obama administration, at one point she even says that she goes, I talked to Joe Biden, to the vice president.
He's going to get on the phone to give him an attaboy, like the vice president will get on the phone to tell him we got your back. Good job. And then at one point she's bitching about the EU.
and how um the eu is just moving too slowly to you know whatever force yanukovych out and so at one point in her frustration she goes uh she was basically like you know what we'll do it without him we'll do this thing without the eu and you know what f the eu we'll do it ourselves And then somehow this gets leaked.
And then in the entire media, through the entire coverage of this, was that we had a diplomat on the phone with a representative in the State Department, and they said, F the EU. And that's really undiplomatic when you think about it. That became the whole conversation. But bury the context of any of it. The actual really interesting scandal there is that
There's some clear evidence here that the U.S. is involved in this overthrow of a democratically elected government in Ukraine, you know, which, okay, at the time, like the war hadn't broken out yet, but you could still see where that would be kind of scandalous, you know, but that does not.
And it's just, I just couldn't help but see these parallels as I'm reading the news coverage of this signal leak and what is it that they're jumping on? Like, it's so funny because I never would have even thought of this as being the thing, We read it yesterday on the show and it didn't even jump out to me as like even a scam.
But the thing is that this is what they're running with at CNN and stuff like that is that I guess Pete Hegseth and J.D. Vance were trash in Europe. And that Pete Hegseth called Europe pathetic. That really is some way to speak about our allies. So now you see what they're doing here, right? Like they always try to focus on one salacious detail so that you can drive all the outrage about that.
You can signal to all the Trump haters, hey, if you want to find a scandal here, we'll hear it. This is your thing to focus on. The thing to focus on is that the defense secretary called our European allies pathetic. Rather than the obvious scandal that's right in front of you, which is that America could never not be fighting a fucking war.
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Chapter 6: Who is Mike Waltz and why is he controversial?
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The other thing to mention here is that Mike Waltz, first of all, and I know a little bit of this stuff because I've heard stories behind the scenes. I mean, I just know enough about the guy to know he was terrible from the beginning. But he is like... totally just the worst on foreign policy, doesn't know what he's talking about.
He's the type of guy who would say something like, if Vladimir Putin succeeds in Ukraine, he's going to move on Poland next. Like, that's who you're dealing with here. Also, he worked for George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. I mean, I'm just saying, I don't think it's unreasonable at this point to be suspicious of people like that.
These are the guys who have been consistently undermining Donald Trump the whole time. In fact, what was his hold on? I'll pull it up right here. I have he was. Yeah, so he was a he was a special forces guy. Again, not saying that. Alone, you know, this credits you, but it raises an eyebrow.
He served the Bush administration as a defense policy director in the Pentagon and as the counterterrorism advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney. Okay. Now, so anyway, I just think essentially my point is here to suspect that the counterterrorism advisor to Dick Cheney is going to be loyal to Donald Trump is perhaps an unreasonable expectation.
It's perhaps reasonable to speculate that maybe that guy wouldn't be loyal to Donald Trump. And then my more important point, that's on Donald Trump. That's not, I have never been one, although I did support Donald Trump in this last election, I have never been one to make the bullshit excuses for him that I see so many of the Trump supporters making. Like, oh, he was tricked by his guy.
Like, oh, okay. Donald Trump got to choose who his national security advisor were. And there's plenty of great people he could have picked from. And he chose Dick Cheney's counterterrorism guy. I'm sorry. But that first of all, that already, even if none of this is true, even if Walsh just fucked up and he's not trying to sabotage the whole thing, like and there's no conspiracy here whatsoever.
It still really says something about Donald Trump's profound lack of judgment to have picked this guy. And it says something about all the people around Donald Trump.
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Chapter 7: Why is Dave Smith skeptical about the media's portrayal of the leak?
If you go... Again, if you look at his approval rating, it's been about the highest he's ever had, pretty consistently in that range. It's been about from 47% to 53%, kind of depending on what poll you look at. That in itself wouldn't seem so great. I mean, it's pretty good for... America today with how divided politically we are. That's about as popular as a president can get.
And obviously he's more popular than he ever was in his first term. So in that sense, it's a win. But really, it's when you kind of look at more numbers and you, you know, you dive into the context a little bit more. Like the right track, wrong track number is like, I think it's like right around 50% of Americans right now say we're on the right track. And it was in the 20s.
when Joe Biden was president. So again, just this 47 to 53% may not sound so good, but when you're comparing it to that, so the right track number may not be so great, but compared to where it was under Biden, it's great. Donald Trump's approval rating may not be so great until you find out that the Democrats have a 24% approval rating.
You know, the thing that seems to be uniting the American people right now is recognizing that the government's doing a pretty shitty job That's whether you're left or right. That's pretty universally recognized. But so Donald Trump's in a situation where I think he feels pretty politically strong. Obviously, he won every swing state, won the popular vote.
The things like Doge are popular with the American people. And so I think he doesn't want to admit. to a scandal. You know, if he were to fire the national security advisor, that's kind of an admission that like, oh, there was a big fuck up. And I think he'd rather pretend that no, there wasn't.
And I think they think because this reporter Goldberg has been so discredited and is such a liar, they can get away from this by just being like, screw that guy. You can't trust anything he says. Again, the problem is just like the signal chat was real. And this story appears to be real.
um i don't trust this goldberg guy at all but i'm also just looking at this story and it's like no you guys were you were conspiring about bombing yemen you ended up bombing yemen and everyone here is admitting it so what can you say here um anyway let's jump into this here is mike walds on laura ingram show on fox news
One of the principals who was on that signal chat, National Security Advisor Mike Walz. Advisor Walz, thank you for joining us tonight. The president expressed complete confidence in you today and his entire cabinet. But how did a Trump-hating editor of The Atlantic end up on your signal chat?
You know, Laura, I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but of all the people out there, somehow this guy who has lied about the president, who has lied to Gold Star families, lied to their attorneys and gone to Russia hoax, gone to just all kinds of lengths. to lie and smear the president of the United States, and he's the one that somehow gets on somebody's contact and then gets sucked into this group.
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Chapter 8: What is Mike Waltz's defense on the Laura Ingraham Show?
Not only did we take out people that the Biden team never could, that we took out headquarters, missile caches, and actually one of the leaders of the Houthi organization, we've since taken out several since. And And that's what they don't want to talk about. They don't want to talk about the success here. They don't want to talk about the hostages getting released.
They don't want to talk about the Black Sea ceasefire that we just put in place today as the president ends the largest land war in Europe or the border or the fact that Panama just kicked China out of the canal and success after success after success. All right, let's pause it again. It's embarrassing.
I mean, I don't know why this is just it's so pathetic and he's not even good at delivering this. I mean, he seems visibly nervous like the whole time that he's saying this. But this just like pathetic attempt to pivot back to the successes of the administration, which, you know, some of those being legit, some of them not so much. But, you know.
He's sitting there and he starts with like, oh, like this is a there's some type of conspiracy here. I mean, of all the people out there, this guy gets added to this group chat. And then Laura Ingram reasonably is like, yeah. So like someone on your team.
right that's the only way this would be a conspiracy someone here is working against the president and then he goes no no my team's perfect my team's perfect i mean look at all the success and what they don't want to talk about is how successful this strike which again just saved me the on how successful the strike was like what do they even mean by that there's are the houthis not a problem anymore
Are no more ships gonna be fired upon now? Or what do you mean? You mean when we dropped the bombs, it blew shit up? Like, yeah, okay. But everyone's distracting from what a success this was. Well, first of all, this story was out in, this was out for weeks before the Signal scandal dropped.
And yeah, like no one's really talking about what an amazing success it was because it's just not apparent that anything was achieved. Other than, you know, killing some kids. That seems to have been achieved. But, you know, like, OK, what else was it? But so now you're sitting here saying, well, what exactly is the conspiracy that you're alleging here?
Like somehow this journalist hacked his way into your signal chat. Clearly he was added to the chat. I don't think any like right. He's not claiming anything else. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Stash brand new sponsor. We're thrilled to have them on board. Saving and investing can feel impossible, but with Stash, it's not just a reality.
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