Chapter 1: What recent events in Iran are impacting global politics?
what's up what's up everybody welcome to a brand new episode of part of the problem we are back from philadelphia i am dave smith he is robbie the fire bernstein how you doing today rob i am well fun uh fun runner shows out in philadelphia a lot of fun the crowds were incredible um yeah there was uh uh staff was incredible I'll talk about management another day.
But it was a real fun weekend in Philadelphia. Of course, the last episode that we did out there at the hotel was a lot of fun. The response to it has been great. I've been really particularly enjoying that. And I don't plan on letting up on Dan Bongino anytime soon. I think this is a fight that we will be pursuing.
I know you saw today, we were both, you know, just mocking him ruthlessly on Twitter. And they announced the Dan Bongino show is starting up next month. So like, oh, great. Let's just keep the pressure on this guy. And it's not just, it is fun. And believe me, there's a petty aspect to this for me. I go, hey, he invoked my family.
Chapter 2: How does Dave Smith criticize Dan Bongino's political stance?
So now I have permission to be as vicious as possible. But it's also actually, I think, kind of important. I think very important that Dan Bongino is not allowed to return without answering one goddamn obvious question about Epstein and zero deep state arrests and all this stuff. Anyway.
Um, we should get into, uh, some of the stuff that's going on right now, because there's a lot, there's a lot that we haven't covered. This is one of those episodes, you know, like sometimes there's days where, where you're like, oh, we need one more story. And then sometimes there's episodes where it's like, all right, we're not possibly going to get to everything we want to talk about.
So there'll be stuff left over for tomorrow too. But I guess, well, I would start it by saying, by saying this, excuse me. So, you know, on our on our year in review show that we did, was it, you know, 12 or 14 days ago?
One of the things I think it was that what I said was my my biggest, you know, kind of theme of 2025 was like how Donald Trump started the year versus how Donald Trump ended the year. And we've we've talked a lot about this, you know, through the whole year. Going into 2026, it seems right now to me that this is the most unhinged, incoherent, and fundamentally...
juvenile and reckless that Donald Trump has ever been, ever. In his first term, in his time out of office, in his time since getting it off.
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Chapter 3: What are the implications of Trump's military budget requests?
You know, there were so many times over the last decade where there was this hysteria about what Donald Trump was doing. And much of it came from progressives who had lost touch with reality. You know, it was immediately, you know, immigration enforcement is Hitlerian, they would say.
Or, you know, like saying that you believe Vladimir Putin didn't interfere in the 2016 elections and that you're not sure the intelligence agencies are right is treason. It's treason for the president to question his own intelligence agents. You know, hysteria after hysteria. Obviously, all the stuff about January 6th. the impeachments, all this kind of like ridiculous opposition to Donald Trump.
But entering 2026, it almost seems like Donald Trump is working as hard as he can to convince everyone that he actually is an insane dictator, that he actually has completely like that he's had a break from reality and that like the 25th Amendment ought to be invoked or something like that. Donald Trump. Listen, I can't even keep track anymore, Rob.
Are we at $39 trillion in debt or are we just at $38.5 trillion in debt? And if it's not 39, it'll be 39 in a month. And then I think we'll hit 40 like a couple months after that because that's how quickly we go through money now. Now, Donald Trump, in this situation, Donald Trump now, when you really think about it,
Chapter 4: How does the U.S. respond to protests in Iran?
everybody this is one of the things that was interesting about beefing with dan bongino is even though i was getting by far the best of those exchanges there's a percentage of people who like still want to find a way to support dan bongino and like i said to one of them the other day and i go dude if i one year ago you all would have been pretending to agree with me about jeffrey epstein and the deep state
And now you're all like one year ago, they would have been bragging. No new wars. Donald Trump's the only one who's against the neocons. He's the only one who's going to keep us out of wars. And we're going to do America first things. And in the last week, Donald Trump has threatened the shit out of Iran, Venezuela, Colombia, Mexico, Greenland. Am I missing one?
There might have been one more in there. Now, by the way, Donald Trump, as always becomes his eternal defense, you can always say that Donald Trump says lots of retarded shit and doesn't do any of it. But as I mentioned to you, Rob, and I'm not saying this is the only possible reason why, but then he officially requested a $1.5 trillion war budget for next year.
dwarfing the budget that he asked for for this year, which was the highest military budget in human history. And so you actually, at a certain point, start to look at this and go like, is he serious? Does he actually think we can do like all of these things at once? But it's like you want to have the most reckless policy ever.
Chapter 5: What historical context is provided regarding regime change?
And let's parlay that with three other reckless policies. And it's just just to make the odds of success that much slimmer. But of course, the big one right now, well, Venezuela is a big one, too. But at least the latest incoherent threats have been directed at Iran.
where there are are mass protests going on and i just find i want to focus a bit on on that because i just think like there's there's a lot that's very interesting that we can already kind of learn from from what's just developed over the last uh few days um but i want to get your thoughts on any of this stuff before we do that rob so what do you think uh
Well, first and foremost, I agree with you that, you know, for all the time that we spent defending Trump and telling everyone you guys are a bunch of lunatics and he's not a dictator. The environment I know we're going to get to Powell later in the show does feel like it's getting a little bit dicey and that he's really trying to become more of the authoritarian kind.
that we defended that he was not. And it does seem like a dangerous environment, uh, per the recklessness of the Iran threats. I was just picking up on, I think we're going to play this clip, the Donald Trump saying that they called to negotiate. And I'm like, are they negotiating stepping down? Or are we now going to be backing the Iranian regime, uh, against their own people?
I guess if they're willing to meet certain us demands, I found that to be quite interesting. And, uh, obviously I don't really understand what the game plan is going to be for Iran.
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Chapter 6: What are the contradictions in U.S. foreign policy towards Iran?
So I guess maybe they're thinking it's their best moment because the people are actually revolting. So we can back the revolt and, you know, I guess install a new dictator there that will be better for them and maybe flip that in 10, 20 years.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, we'll see. I mean, it seems like I don't know. This is I'm speculating a bit, but it almost seems to me like Donald Trump. And maybe it's a mix of the fact that the you know, the the the Trump people. Well, like me and you, but anybody else who like voted for him, but is really opposed to starting other stupid wars. maybe he's already gotten so much heat from them.
Like he's kind of already lost that part of his base. And then on the power structure side, the warfare state, maybe he's just concluded as impossible to roll back. And so I guess I'll just be Caesar. You know, like, I guess I guess if I can't be America first, I'll be America first by just conquering everybody.
And and I'll rationalize that we're bringing all of their resources back to us or something.
Chapter 7: How do recent ICE actions reflect broader immigration policies?
And that's how it is still America first. Or he's telling himself or they're convincing him that he can just do all of this stuff and that it really won't be. It's not a risk. It won't be a big deal or something like that. But it just seems like Donald Trump has like officially decided that that's the direction we're going in.
We're officially in the easy way or hard way stage of threatening everybody. And then I guess we get to find out. He walked back terrorists. He's walked back a lot of stuff. So I guess we'll have to see how committed he is to the hard way.
Yeah, no, look, it is always possible that Donald Trump will completely back down from the retarded shit he's saying, do none of it, and then expect credit for backing down. and then his supporters will go see because there are still by the way people who say they in the list of accomplishments for donald trump they put ended the 12-day war
They literally want you to give him credit for that, for ending the war. It's just like you can't even ā like what can you say to that? You can't make shit like that up.
Chapter 8: What philosophical arguments are made about government intervention?
Oh, yeah. I mean that is true I guess technically, but it's really all negated and then some by starting the 12-day war.
There is one more option on the table, which is just LARP with Donald Trump that he actually won and that all the things worked.
Yeah, well, that's true. That's the other way that it could go. Now, to your point, because it is kind of an interesting situation, what's going on in Iran right now. The truth is that we don't know a lot about it. We certainly do know there were huge protests. But then today, there were huge pro-regime protests, too. So it's kind of unclear exactly where the people are.
We talked about this on one of last week's shows. And And of course, it's unclear what type of clandestine backing these groups might have. We don't know that the uprisings have been backed by outside governments, particularly ours and Israel's, but it's very reasonable to suspect that that is likely the case. And we know that the goalposts have been moved now to like shooting the protesters.
We also know, I mean, look, there's I think the best source on this is like a Norwegian NGO that said that 192 people have died in the protests. But that's also... It's just first off, it's not clear that that number is accurate. It could be more or less.
It's also not clear how those people died, as Donald Trump himself admitted, that it's not, you know, people could have been trampled in some big mob or something like that. Also, we've seen images where like, you know, it's not just protests. I mean, there's fires and violence. And so we just you don't know the nature of what exactly happened there. But we do know.
that the red line has been moved from Iran can't be allowed to develop a nuke, to Iran can't be allowed to enrich 60% uranium, to Iran can't be allowed to have intercontinental ballistic missiles, and then as soon as all of those fall apart, it's, oh, they're shooting the protesters.
Mind you, not even an accusation that they're about to go genocidal, or that they're invading a neighboring country, or anything like that, just... If the regime shoots its own people, that's now a justification for war. And one of the things that's interesting here, right, is that people...
people, my critics love, I mean, their favorite thing to bring up, I think it's like they see it as the chink in my armor or something like that, is that, well, last summer, Dave was real angry warning that this could become a catastrophe, but it didn't become a catastrophe. Therefore, that's where you're weak because the lowest IQ, you know, like,
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