Thoughts from the State of the Union

what's up what's up everybody welcome to a brand new episode of part of the problem i am dave smith i'm riding solo uh for this episode but if you're missing rob bernstein me and him will be together this weekend at the uh dojo of comedy right here in new jersey i love this club we had a lot of fun there last year so looking forward to uh to doing a full weekend there. That's this weekend. Grab tickets now. I'm assuming, I don't know. I heard we're going to get more snow. I don't know, but I'm assuming everything's going to happen. So come on out. I'll be there. You make sure you're there too. And then a bunch of stuff coming up, Pittsburgh, Boston, Rosemont, Chicago. Where was the other? I got a Connecticut one night in Stanford coming up soon. Comicdapesmith.com for all those ticket links. And then I should tell you, I'll be traveling for some big podcasts next month in March. So you'll be seeing me. You'll be seeing me doing some stuff. All right. Well, last night was Donald Trump's State of the Union address. It was his sixth State of the Union address as president, or I guess that's the only way to do one of those. All right. So I guess let's start by giving some thoughts on this. You know, whenever I talk about these things, there's always a few different angles to, um, to, to look at them from. And well, one of them is like, how I feel about the speech. Um, and one of them is just kind of the sober political analysis of it. Like, how did it, you know, like effectively, how did he do? And then I guess there's the more, you know, like subjective, just how did I feel about it? Like, like in, in a sense, like in, in one sense, there's like, how do I feel about the substance of what he's saying? And then there's just like, Did I like it or not? Let me start. I'll start just purely politically. Like if you're just trying to measure how effective this was in terms of what Donald Trump is trying to get done. I'd give him like a C, I guess, for it, maybe. Like I don't. It wasn't a disaster. I don't think he hurt himself any more than he has been hurt already. I don't think he helped himself any. I don't think he, I don't think he, you know, Donald Trump was two demographics, let's say, that he carried to win the election that he's just bleeding in now. Young people and independents. I don't think he changed any of their minds. I don't think that I, at the same time, there's a certain amount of people and we've already kind of tested what percentage that is, but there's a certain percentage of people that are going to support Trump no matter what, including some of your favorite political, you know, commentators, those guys are going to say it was great. You know what I mean? Like he didn't lose any of those guys, uh, any, like, if you're just looking at the moment we're in politically, There's nobody who Donald Trump didn't lose over, you know, signing the, you know, the record-breaking spending bill or launching a preemptive war on Iran or Venezuela or covering up the Epstein scandal. Or, like, there's no one who he didn't lose on all of that but then was lost by this speech. So he didn't really hurt himself. But I don't think he helped himself. And, you know, it's a big opportunity to have a State of the Union speech, especially I feel like in today's political landscape where there's always a new thing, a big thing every single day, every single week. The State of the Union still has a little bit of cachet. It's still one speech that everybody's going to listen to and everybody's going to clip up tomorrow and every dumb podcast like this one is going to be talking about the next day. And moments like that are an opportunity to be creative and maybe reset things or maybe present something in a compelling way. He, from my opinion, did none of that. maybe moving into more just like my subjective, how I feel about it. Although I do think this says something. So I'm not, I don't think I'm the only one who feels this way, but my personal feelings and more like my aesthetic feelings or my subjective feelings about the speech was that it was so fucking boring. Just it's unbelievable how brutal this thing was. You know, Donald Trump, for whatever reason, he insists on going longer than everybody else does. And he also has like more, which is always what the State of the Union is, but he has more just like applause lines. And I got to say the dynamic, it's always bad enough. it's always made the state of the unions very hard to enjoy, is that the constant standing ovations, which really is, I got to say, and this is not a comment on Trump uniquely, this is much broader than that, but it's like the state of the unions in general, there's something about the constant forced standing ovations that I do think says, it says something very bad about our society, because you would think if you're at least a somewhat serious society of adults and you have the commander-in-chief of the biggest military in the history of the world and the top executive of the biggest government in the history of the world and he's giving a yearly speech about what the state of our country is you would think that would be a time where you'd sit and listen to this guy And he would be making complex, compelling points. And instead, you know, it's just so dumbed down, so silly. Everything's a cliche slogan talking point. And then there's this like North Korea style political, like we all stand and show that we love the leader. Again, this isn't just Trump. This applies to Obama and Biden and Bush and Clinton and all of them. But the state of the unions have like morphed into this very like just dumbed down thing. And Trump's, I got to say, are like in many ways the worst because he goes for the longest. He does the most. Oh, this person who lost their legs in this thing is here today. Just so much of it. And look, I'm just, I don't know, I'm trying to be fair here. Like, I am what we used to call in the olden days a political junkie. Like, I'm a guy who's very, very interested in politics, much more so than the average person. Like, I'm in the top 1% of giving a shit about this stuff. I don't know if that I'm not saying that as a compliment to myself. I'm not bragging. I'm, you know, like, I don't know if I should care about all this, but, um, but, and even to me, it's just like, yo, this is so boring. Like it was painful to get through the almost two hours of the whole thing. And, um, you know, I, I don't know. It's just, uh, you know, there's for Donald Trump, who's supposed to be his kind of claim to fame, his calling card is that he's the showman, it just seems to me like, I don't know, there's a real lack of creativity. Like, you could have done, do something. Try. Try to do something interesting here. I don't know. Try to make a compelling pitch. Nothing like that. And I guess that part of it is that, you know, Donald Trump, while he is the best self-promoter ever, he was never a creative. That's never his thing. He's like, you repeat the line, you never flinch, you belittle everybody else while picking yourself up and picking up all of the people who pick you up. And so it's just that. He just does it the whole time. Okay. As far as like in terms of the actual substance, we'll get into some of that as we play some clips. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is, of course, Body Brain Coffee. You love it. I love it. I drink it all the time. I genuinely love it. It tastes great. And I feel great when I drink it. Of course, this is the company created by my brother, Luis J. Gomez. But this is genuinely an amazing product. It's not just a delicious cup of coffee. It also naturally helps you boost testosterone, which listen, if you're like me, if you're a guy in your 40s, in your 50s, you notice you start to feel you slow down a little bit, you don't have as much energy, you don't have as quick recovery. This is a great way to naturally boost testosterone. If you don't want to take a bunch of supplements, You don't want to do injections or something like that. Just have a great taste in a cup of coffee every morning. Plus, you're supporting Luis J. Gomez, who really is the guy who convinced me to start podcasting and start doing stand-up and all of that. So I love him like a brother. You should, too. We're going to blow this thing up. We're going to make sure he knows that it was our fans who did it. We're going to make Luis rich, but also have him always know that we are the ones who got him there. We're going to go to BodyBrainCoffee.com. Use the promo code DAVE20. That will get you 20% off your entire order. BodyBrainCoffee.com, promo code Dave20 for 20% off. All right, let's get back to the show. I did think that Donald Trump, he opened up fairly well. Like, I'd have to admit, and even as somebody who's, you know, obviously been very, very unhappy with Trump's administration, and basically every show I've been criticizing him because there's just no other option as far as I'm concerned at this point. But I did, you know, I watched the speech and you try your best to like, okay, let me approach this with an open mind. And I will say that I thought it was, he started off pretty immediately and hit, he touted their immigration success at the border and how they got the border under control. And the major, and of course he also brings that they got the economy under control. And this is, you know, we could kind of get into that. I think this is kind of just a losing message, although I don't know what other option he has at this point. What can you say other than, yeah, it's all tremendous. And let as many people who are going to believe that, believe it. But essentially the theme of the first couple minutes of the speech was what a mess Joe Biden left him. And it's hard to not, you know, at least go look, if he's bragging that like, dude, we had a wide open border where tens of millions of people were pouring through. And now that emergency is done. And what the hell was those four years of Joe Biden? It's hard to deny that, hey, there's a fair point to that. I thought it was a strong way to open. In fact, I thought like if I could have put myself, like let's say I was Donald Trump's speech writer and I worked for the administration. I mean, you know, in real life, if I worked for this administration, I would have resigned quite a while ago, certainly by last summer. But I don't. But like, imagine I worked there and I didn't have morals or something like that. So I didn't resign. I would have said that the first thing you talk about should be the border, but you should spend 20 minutes on it, not just like a mention. And then later in the speech, he came back to talking about all this. But I mean, I would have if I think literally and part of this is my perspective, but I think it's really the only thing he has that he can really point to and brag about. But at the same time, you kind of can't take that away from him. But all of those, the bottom line, right, is that you can blame all the Democrats for that. And you can say, look, you know, there's all these people who were, you can list off the real victims as he did with a couple later in the speech. But I would have kept that all in the opening chunk and really just hit them with that. Like, you know, these people are actually dead because you guys had this border policy, which no one, including your own voters, wanted. And you could have gone really into like, what a betrayal to a nation that is to open their borders against their will. I thought that would have been a strong thing that he could have milked more out of. But he did mention it. He gets some credit for it. Pretty shortly after that, he, well, he just, look, I'll say this. Before we play this next clip, which is the one we said we're going to start with Natalie. There's, I will say that Donald Trump's, to me at least his age was showing through this thing. It's hard to not recognize that like, yeah, he's a guy in that age group. He's 80 or whatever, and he's rambling on for two hours. But anyway, he does at a certain point kind of pivot to this like rah-rah America moment. So here, let's play this clip. Our country is winning again. In fact, we're winning so much that we really don't know what to do about it. People are asking me, please, please, please, Mr. President, we're winning too much. We can't take it anymore. We're not used to winning in our country. Until you came along, we're just always losing but now we're winning too much and i say no no no you're going to win again you're going to win big you're going to win bigger than ever and to prove that point to prove that point here with us tonight is a group of winners all right so he goes off on this whole thing it's uh i i don't know it doesn't to me it just doesn't quite feel like classic trump It feels like a kind of washed up version of it. And look, I don't know. Maybe it's just me and my perspective. Perhaps I'm a little colored by the fact that I'm pretty furious at this administration. but I don't know. I don't, I just don't think this message while you're, you know, you, you were a year ago, you gave a state of the union speech where you're, you know, you were enjoying your record high approval ratings, which by the way, we're like 50, 50. It's like the best Donald Trump ever did, at least according to the polls. Maybe he was in actuality a little better than that. In fact, I, I think he might've been, I suspect, but you have your record now you come back you're you're like 10 points down from there it's like there's your um your base is very divided you're on your way to getting creamed in the midterms and to just stand there and go we're winning so much and you're so tired of winning i don't know man. It just seems like a really out of touch message to me. He then pivots to what felt like an inappropriate amount of time talking about hockey and Olympics and sports. I don't know how else to say it. There was like 15 minutes or something like that of just going over the Olympics and the hockey team and the whole thing. I understand it's a story that some people care about, but I don't know. It's just, I just, I don't, you know, I will say again, if there's one thing I kind of expect Donald Trump to be good at, it's putting on a show. And the idea of just extending the state is the state of the union, making it the long, I believe I read that it was the longest state of the union that anyone's ever given. And then just filling it with so much fluff. It just, I don't know. It seemed to me like it just made the thing boring. And I think it kind of uh backfired on trump in some way let's go to um okay let's see sorry one second there's we got a few options here but i'd say um let's uh let's go to the um the the uh uh trump can't believe it as elizabeth warren stands up this was one of the few times he got elizabeth warren on uh on our feet Let's check that out. All Americans can profit from a rising stock market. Let's also ensure that members of Congress cannot corruptly profit from using insider information. They stood up for that, I can't believe. I can't believe it. Did Nancy Pelosi stand up if she here Doubt it Pass the Stop Insider Trading Act without delay I thought, look, I will say, you know, there were a few moments like this, and maybe that's what we'll kind of go over here in a few clips here. There were a few moments where I suppose I could see the argument to why this would be a smart way for Donald Trump to play it. This is it's red meat to his base to have these moments, these these kind of viral moments when, you know, you're oh, shit. He said to her face, he said Nancy Pelosi fucking, you know, is rich from insider trading or he called out Pocahontas or whatever. or they had the moment where he's yelling back and forth with Ilhan Omar. You know, and we'll get into some of these other things that I think were fairly like effective little Trump tactics in a second. I guess not the worst way to play it. If you're Donald Trump, the thing is your hands are a bit tied right now. You don't have that much that you can really point to. And so pointing to what a disaster the Biden administration was or how crazy the radical progressive Democrats are, you know, that is something that it's for for most, I'd say it's a it's an issue where the majority of the country will go, oh, yeah, there is some truth to that. The Donald Trump also has, again, as all presidents do, Donald Trump has moments where he proposes these kind of bills that certainly would be very, very popular, like the idea that whatever, even like obviously the devil's in the detail with any type of legislation but he has these moments like you just saw right there where he goes uh hey we're going to propose a bill that bans insider trading by congressmen now you're you can't become worth 200 million dollars from being a congresswoman for 30 years you know and you know he had other proposals well you know we pay the most in, our country pays the most in prescription drugs. I'm proposing a new bill that would have us pay the least in prescription drugs. And I'm calling on Congress to, you know, whatever, pass this legislation. And there's a few different things like that, right? Proposing things that almost everyone would agree with, like get rid of the corruption in Washington. don't have insane expensive healthcare, all of these things. And as he's promising all of them, you know, I started, at least this was the thing I was thinking about. I remember, as I'm sure many of you do, I remember in 2016, when Donald Trump was debating Hillary Clinton. And one of the most I think almost any political analyst, at least at this point, I was saying it at the time, But I think almost everybody now would agree that like it was a very powerful argument that Donald Trump had, whether you think it's fair or unfair, correct or incorrect. It was a very powerful argument that Donald Trump had when Hillary Clinton would start talking about how she was going to fix this or that. And he would go, you've been here for 30 years. Why didn't you do it already? Like you were like a partner in a presidency. you were a senator you were the secretary of state like you had a lot of political power and now you're coming to me with like i have an idea to fix everything and you know and that's a powerful thing to say it's a huge advantage that donald trump had in 2016 of being like hey i'm the outsider and by that what that means is that you know the catastrophic war in iraq the catastrophic war in Afghanistan, the disaster in Libya, the Great Recession, the, you know, whatever the debt was, 20-something trillion dollars of debt at the time, right? All of that, I have no responsibility for because I've just been over here building great big buildings and kicking ass and making money, you know? Like, I have nothing to do with this. And when you haven't been in government that whole time, it's a reasonable thing to say, you know, well, now let's see Hillary Clinton. Okay, Hillary Clinton, you voted for the war in Iraq. You were the architect of the war in Libya. You voted for the war in Afghanistan. You voted for almost all these spending bills that have bankrupted the country. You're heavily implicated in all of these disasters, and I'm implicated in none of them. If you had such a great plan, why wouldn't you have done it by now? That was a really powerful thing. And for the same reasons that that was a very powerful argument for the exact same reasons. It's really not very powerful anymore when Donald Trump says, hey, you know how we pay the most for prescription drugs? Well, I got an idea that we're going to pay the least. It's like, dude, this is your sixth state of the union, Mr. President. By the way, you both in your first term and in this term, you came into it with a Republican-controlled Congress. In this term, with a Republican-controlled Congress, a Republican-controlled Supreme Court, or a Republican-majority Supreme Court. And so it's almost like Trump's line could be used right back on him. You have this idea of how to make it. We pay the highest prescription costs in the world. You have an idea for how we could pay the lowest. Where's that been? And if you haven't implemented it now, what does any, you know what I'm saying? Like it just, at least to me, and I think there's probably a lot of people who feel this way on some level, whether consciously or subconsciously that you go, you just have some on some level he goes, but now thanks to my idea that I'm announcing here, we're going to be paying the lowest prescription drug costs. And you just go, no, no, we're not. None of that's real. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Cowboy Colostrum. Cowboy Colostrum offers the highest quality bovine colostrum available in the United States. Cowboy Colostrum is 100% made in America from 100% American grass fed cows. 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I think there's something about that, that the more time Donald Trump's in here now, you've had all the time in the world to do this stuff and you haven't delivered. The bluster just doesn't work as well. And also now you are implicated in these five catastrophes. So it's, it's, that was just my thought as I'm watching it. Like this just doesn't, it doesn't have the power that, you know, in general, Donald Trump just doesn't have the cachet that he once did. Okay. So here, let's give, these were a couple of the moments that I'm sure are the ones that his people are going to celebrate the most. So let's get that back into that. All right. So let's go to the one, the chief nerd, great follow on Twitter, by the way, his video where surely we can agree no state can be allowed. Let's check this one out. Surely we can all agree no state can be allowed to rip children from their parents' arms and transition them to a new gender against the parents will who would believe that we've been talking about we must ban it and we must ban it immediately look nobody stands up these people are crazy i'm telling you they're crazy We're lucky we have a country. With people like this, Democrats are destroying our country, but we've stopped it just in the nick of time. look i mean it's it's it's hard to argue there's not some good politics in that and that donald trump takes this issue um which is i mean look like the democrats do and they got aware uh that they all lost their fucking minds over the last 15 years. But Donald Trump is able to get on the side here of an issue that probably 90 plus percent of people agree with at this point, that, you know, it's not even, it's not even like he's his starting point by being like, there's no such thing as trans people or nobody should transition or you should be mean to people who are trans or something like that. But just going like, you know, like some other adult can't aside that we're going to transition your kid without your knowledge. And, you know, now, of course, obviously the Democrats, it's this weird dance that they do where they don't want to clap for anything that Donald Trump says. But then of course the game is to just say something that's really popular and then they don't stand and then go, well, look, they're all sitting for this. I understand it's kind of dumb, but there is something powerful about pointing to all of them sitting down and going, especially since we know like a lot of them really did believe this at least, or they would have said, maybe they never believed it, but they would have promoted it a few years ago and they don't want to right now. But there is something, you know, undeniably powerful about that message and then going, look, man, these guys are out of their minds. Like that's how far gone they are. So I understand where that probably made some Trump people happy. it's not bad politics. Take an issue that's real popular. You cast them as the ones against it. And I don't know, I guess maybe it's just my perspective on this. But I do feel like there is a little bit of a, like, there's only so much mileage that you can get out of beating up on the crazy woke shit after we've all kind of rejected it as a country. You know, like, it's just, we live in an internet world where things are moving very fast these days. I understand not everyone does, but like, it is like a huge, huge percentage of the American people at this point who get their news and their information and their entertainment from the internet. And this was just like, this was like 27 things ago, you know, like Matt Walsh's, what is a woman documentary came out like many years ago at this point. And that are, that, that argument has been successfully won by many of us. And the, the woke insanity has been largely rejected. Now I understand like, if you got your kid and like a New York city or San Francisco school or something like that. I understand there might be pockets where it's still very much alive and well, but I guess personally, I have the feeling, I wonder how many other people have the feeling where it's like, there's only so much credit I can give you for this. You know, like this is just, oh, okay. It's kind of like, oh, you got nothing new to say. So you're going back to your last win. I do feel some degree of that, but regardless, I think that was a powerful moment for Trump. And then this, I think, is probably the best moment that Donald Trump had, which is this is the last one that I sent you from Colin Rugg, Natalie. I thought this might have been Donald Trump's best moment of the entire State of the Union. If you agree with this statement, then stand up and show your support. The first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens. Hold it down. so All right. So, I mean, you could see there how long the applause lasted for, but look, that is, that was a great moment for Donald Trump. Now, again, just to be clear here, I'm like separating these things into like just like analyzing how effective something was versus like my opinion on it right so like if you want like my opinion on it I think it's like a yeah I mean obviously I agree with the statement that he made it does almost feel to me a little bit like I thought like the America first thing was we're not supposed to fight any more stupid wars and now you're trying to make the America first thing just like whether you care about illegal, you know, illegal immigrants or U.S. citizens or whatever. But that's almost kind of less important in this moment. The thing is like, look, the Democrats, if you're going to, if you're going to play this game, which is like, we're going to sit on our hands the whole time, then you just open yourself up to him doing this to you. And, you know, it's not like they didn't never stand. There were a few different moments throughout the thing where they stood. They stood for the hockey team. They stood for getting, you know, Israeli hostages back. I think they stood for part of the like Iran war propaganda stuff that we're about to get to. But regardless, you're just like, if you're the Democrats there, it's like, you got to stand for that one. You guys, you're going to have to stand for that one. Like you just can't not. He made it so simple. He goes, stand up if you agree that your job is to prioritize U.S. citizens over people who illegally entered our country. And you're going to all sit there for that? God damn. Man, are the Democrats bad at politics. Because, like, I don't know. First of all, it is. If you actually feel that way, that is profoundly, you know, treacherous and awful and horrible. But, my God, then at least lie. at least pretend that's not how you feel. You know, this is such a bad moment. It's like this was Trump, in my opinion, this was his moment of the speech, and only because he forced the Democrats into such an unforced error. Like, this shit is so bad that it's like, this is the type of thing that, despite how bad Trump's doing, is like the Republicans' only hope to hang on to power, to do okay in the midterms, maybe win the presidency in 28, is if the Democrats are sitting here like, no, we care about illegal immigrants more than we care about US citizens. And, you know, there's just a there's, you know, you just have to stand for that one. It also you know if you going to be like I don know you going to be smart about this shit And I remember I said this So Donald Trump came and spoke at the Libertarian Party National Convention in 2024 in the summer of 2024. And I spoke before him at that event. And I and I was like, you know, I was out on the floor with everybody. I was out on the delegation floor and all that stuff. And and I was saying to everybody. I said in my speech, I said to everybody I could talk to and, you know, trying to use whatever influence I have in the Libertarian party. And I was like, guys, look, this is cool. The president's coming and speaking at our party's convention. Just here's what you have to do, right? Be cool. And by be cool, I don't even mean that doesn't mean you have to cheer for him. It doesn't even mean you can't boo him. Boo him if he says something that deserves to be booed. But don't just boo him when he walks out there or just boo through his speech. Because first of all, on one level, that just it makes you look like an asshole and kind of like a child. It's like, oh, what are you like? You're what you're now casting yourself as like the pink haired male feminist with a bullhorn shutting down Jordan Peterson speeches or something like that. I think I said something to that effect in my speech before Trump got up. And, you know, I was like, like, it's fine. This is what I was telling everyone. Like, I was like, dude, it's fine if we boo him, but let him say something that deserves to be booed and then let the story go. Donald Trump tried to say this bullshit, but libertarians booed him for that. But you don't want the story to just be like, oh, you weren't even willing to listen to him. And so anyway, I'm just saying with the Democrats, it's like if you're going to do this thing where it's like we want to demonstrate that we are not with this guy or we're against him. Okay, fine. But you got to like pick your spots. You can't just sit there as he asks for the most bait. Look, this America first thing that he's talking about, this is what's characterized the entire Donald Trump political moment of the last decade. and you guys just allowed him to get you on camera sitting on your hands while he asks if your loyalty is to america or not and it just again it just makes you look bad it's really just again the democrats are really just like classless and stupid and it seems more and more like they're just four classless and stupid people but the whole thing like yelling and getting kicked out this does nothing but make you look bad he is the president of the united states of america You're supposed to be elected representatives. You're all supposedly pretending to be public servants. Just be respectful. Stand up and clap when it's something you agree with. You come out much better. Because think if Donald Trump says that and then all the Democrats stand up and clap and you're like, yeah, what are you talking about? Of course, we all agree with America over them. The fact is they didn't. And I got to say, there's moments like this that really do hurt politicians down the line. You know, there's there's these these moments like you might think it's just a little, you know, kind of gimmick. But I remember watching it must have been in twenty nineteen. It was one of the one of the first Democratic primary debates. So this is we're getting ready for the twenty twenty election. But this is like before covid and everything hit. So we're just thinking twenty twenty is going to be we thought it was going to be an election year. And that would be the big thing about that year. ended up being one of the smallest things about that year. But so it was at one of the first debates. All the candidates are still up there. You got Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders, of course, and a few more who I who I can't remember. And so they're all on stage and in this primary. And this is also in 2019, if you can imagine. So this is like the height of wokeism and anti-Trump hysteria in the first administration. And, you know, before COVID, before the vaccine, before Ukraine, before that was where all the before Black Lives Matter of the summer of 2020, before all of that stuff where they were at was this like hate Donald Trump. His immigration agenda is terrible. Who can be more to the left to try to win the primary? And the moderator asks, you know, raise your hands if you believe that illegal immigrants should get health care paid for by the taxpayer. And they all raise their hands. And I remember immediately being like, you know, that is going to be an albatross around the entire party's neck. And it was. It was a huge thing. They kept getting brought up over and over again. It was really just like a really stupid unforced error that none of them had the had the wherewithal to go. This might hurt a little bit in the primary, but this will really help long term. So like in the similar sense, a lot of times people in the state of the union and the opposition party are trying to go, hey, what's the most anti-Trump posture I can take here to show that I'm the strongest resistance? resistance without thinking like, dude, long term. I mean, that's just it's a it's a the optics are really bad. Let's just say the optics of being said, can you just stand up if you prioritize US citizens and sitting there throughout the whole thing? Yeah, the optics of that are bad. That is a that's a classic Donald Trump PR marketing dub. Can't argue. I really can't argue anything else on that one. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Knickknack. Knickknack is a fully dissolvable nicotine lozenge, a lip brick, if you will, made with just six premium ingredients clearly listed on the back. So you know exactly what's in it. 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Okay, let's see here. All right. there's one more i wanted to hit before we go into the uh the around stuff um okay yeah let's hit the uh the uh frank luntz uh tweet and started with this was a misstep that's frank lutz talking though and you can always ignore him because he's wrong about stuff but let's see uh let's watch the clip now the same people in this chamber who voted for those disasters suddenly used the word affordability a word they just used it somebody gave it to them knowing full well that they caused and created the increased prices that all of our citizens had to endure you caused that problem you caused that problem They knew their statements were a lie. They knew it. They knew their statements were a dirty, rotten lie. Their policies created the high prices. Our policies are rapidly ending them. We are doing really well. Those prices are plummeting downward. The price of eggs is down 60 percent, Madam Secretary. Thank you. The cost of chicken, butter, fruit, hotels, automobiles, rent is lower today than when I took office by a lot. And even beef, which was very high, is starting to come down significantly. Just hold on a little while. We're getting it down. All right. Well, I hate to ever agree with Frank Luntz, but I thought that was a really bad moment for Donald Trump. And I thought it was interesting. Like, when I saw him, when I was watching it last night live, as he got into that, you're kind of like, oh, all right. Well, this is, hey, what do you got here? because this is the issue actually that Americans care about. And if you saw in almost all of the special elections where Democrats have won, and as we've covered on the show quite a lot, in the big elections that back in November they won the governor of New Jersey and the mayor of New York and, what was it, Virginia, I think the governor there, took over, all of them ran on unaffordability. You know, like this is the big issue. And so when Donald Trump starts jumping into that, let's talk about that. You're like, okay, this is where you got to have a compelling pitch. And the, I really, I mean, it's not the, I guess, the worst politics in the world. We all remember the worst years of price inflation were under Joe Biden. So he goes, this is your fault. This is your fault. It's not my fault. It's your fault. I mean, there's perhaps a little bit of juice that you can get out of that, like a little bit of juice out of saying, look, remember how bad it was with these guys. But when he's saying, as you'll notice, as he's going, it was your policies. He never tells you what policies. He never says what created the inflation. And there's a reason for that. Because obviously, like it would implicate him very heavily if he did that. And then we go, oh, you're doing the same thing. And so Donald Trump here puts himself in what I just look sometimes in politics, like just in life in general. But this is very easy to read in politics. Sometimes you just see when someone's putting themselves into like a certain framing of a position and you go, dude, that's the losing framing. And there is something inherently about when Donald Trump starts going, they brought the prices up, but the prices are plummeting now. We're getting them way down now. It's your fault, and they're coming way down. Okay, there's two things you do when you do that. You essentially tell everybody that who really cares about the unaffordability crisis, like, yo, why the fuck are prices so goddamn high? and everything's so unaffordable. You're telling them that prices are coming way down when they're not feeling that because that's not true. And then the guy who is in charge, you're like, hey, if your number one concern, as is the case for tens of millions of Americans, if your number one concern is that the price of everything these days is so expensive that you really can't afford to live a decent middle-class life. And then you're like, okay, so what's the guy at the top saying? And you go, oh, he's saying it's their fault and also everything's great. That is a losing message. In fact, that's a message that's guaranteed for you to lose. And it is kind of interesting to watch, but how much Donald Trump, as we've talked about on the show as well, how much Donald Trump has now been forced into the exact same defenses that Joe Biden was using for his economy. Like down to the fact that they go, no, the economy is really great. You guys are just under the impression that it's a bad economy. The problem is we haven't explained it to you. And you still, for some reason, think it's a really bad economy. Oh, look, record high stock markets. The same thing Joe Biden used to do down to the thing where they pick five different categories of foods and say the price of this or that. Do you remember, if you remember in the height of Joe Biden's like price inflation, there was, we used to make fun of it on the show where they'd be like, hot dog buns are down 30%. And you're like, yeah, but overall groceries are up 20%. So like, okay, yeah, you found one thing, but what are you gonna do? Like, you know, people who used to be paying like $150, $200 to fill up a cart are now paying, you know what I mean, like $270 to fill up that cart. You sit there and tell them the price of something is down, but they're like, dude, I know what my budget is. I know what I used to spend. And the fact is that prices are up and you can pick your few that you like that are down, but that's just not, I don't know. the message, particularly once you're entering into your sixth year as president, the message that it's all those guys' fault is just, I think, not nearly enough. And then to say that you're actually bringing the prices down, that's not a winning message. I thought that was very weak. Okay. So moving into the stuff that I was most interested in for this speech, because I think it's the most immediate catastrophe. You know, I said on our last episode when I was previewing this, I was like, well, you know, Donald Trump has quite a task here, which is, you know, there's this wildly unpopular war, which is, which it seems like he's made the decision we're about to fight. That is clearly on behalf of a foreign country that is not very popular right now. The the war is opposed by super majorities of the American people. And yet it looks like he's about to go ahead and do it. And so, Hey, this is where he's going to have to sell that war. And, you know, I don't know. I, we can play it and look at how he did on this. But if you ask me, I think he failed miserably. He it's, it's just like, there's pure war propaganda in here, just pure Hasbro bullshit, straight up lies. And I got to say, I'm poisoning the well a little here before we play the clip, but I thought it was just, maybe I'm biased from my perspective, but a thoroughly unconvincing case that he made. You know, you're going to tell me that like where there's been really no propaganda campaign that's laid down for the war. And this is the propaganda campaign we got. All right. This is the Dave Benner one. But yeah, here, let's let's play this clip. With the protests, they've killed at least it looks like 32,000 protests, 32,000 protesters in their own country. They shot him and hung him. we stopped them from hanging a lot of them with the threat of serious violence but this is okay let's pause it right there some terrible people okay so donald trump is going to start with what really is like a whopper um 32 000 uh people have been killed in a round now Now, just to be clear here, because we've talked about this a bit on the show, there is no evidence has been presented at all to indicate anything like these numbers. In fact, I mean, I remember while I was reading what was in the Wall Street Journal, they had the CIA had put the number, I think it's 6,000, they were claiming. And my feeling was like that number was probably exaggerated. If that's what the CIA is claiming, it's probably less than that. There was the I blanking on the name of the the the NGO that what was it You know let see if I could find it Cause I think I had the article up recently I was just reading it yesterday Um but uh yeah I don know if I gonna be able to find it, but it was the one it's the NED funded, uh, American based NGO. Um, that's always like the most hawkish. And I think they had revised the numbers up to 6,500 is what they were claiming. Um, look, the thing with the Iran, uh, protests is look, the people who are claiming that Iran killed 32,000 people, I've, I've seen people claiming 60, 70. I saw some people claiming over a hundred thousand people were killed. There were a bunch of the Zayo bots on Twitter were claiming that more people, this was their claim that more people have been killed in, in these Iranian protests than in Gaza. And like immediately when you hear that, you would think you would think that would just like that would trigger enough of an eyebrow raise for someone to be like, maybe we shouldn't go with such an outlandish claim because like, you know, I don't know if you just like if you follow wars, which I've been doing for many years at this point now, you just kind of know like how much military action it takes before you get to numbers like that. And so you're like, yo, what are you alleging here? Are you alleging that the Ayatollah started carpet bombing Tehran? Like, how would you get your, the, the protests weren't going on for that long. You're saying you're, you're telling me Donald Trump that we got to 32,000 deaths. We got to like a war's number of deaths in, in a few days in maybe a week. So, okay. What you're alleging here is that, because if you go look through, um, in world war two, like in the worst massacres in World War II, the worst ones, like I forget the name, it was that huge massacre of Jews in Ukraine. I think the number was like around 30,000. And it's like one of the worst massacres in human history. And so like what they're alleging here is that one of the worst massacres in human history just happened in Iran a couple weeks ago. But the thing is, like, when all those huge massacres happen, what happens is there's evidence of that. And we've been provided with none. Like, you might know, like, what are we basing this off of? There's like the free press said that an anonymous source said it. Or you saw one picture where there was like a dozen body bags or something like that around. Now, look, it is there is no question, I think, that people have been killed over there in these protests. But if you actually read the reporting on it, it's also, and our own government has admitted that there were a bunch of military and police that were killed also, meaning these were violent riots and people died in them. But like that difference really matters here. It really matters. Like, wait, what numbers are we talking about and what was the manner in which they were executed? Because like, are you saying that like people were out there peacefully protesting and then the Iranian military came out and said, get on your knees and executed all of them? Or are you saying there were violent clashes and people died? And like, there's a big difference between these two. But for Donald Trump, as he's trying to sell a war to just get up in the State of the Union and just say 30,000 people have been executed. But it's this is George W. levels of fucking bullshit war propaganda, just trying to get whatever they can, just like desperately trying to get you to be like, oh, my God, some horrible thing is going on over there. Meanwhile, that's not what the war is about. They're not even really pretending that's what the war is about. They're just kind of adding it in as an extra, like also this, also get emotional about this. So maybe you support this war. Whereas like then they get into like, oh, the nukes and the intercontinental ballistic missiles and the proxy. Oh, yeah. In other words, Israel. That's what it's really about. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is CrowdHealth, which is an amazing company. They've been a sponsor on this show for many years, and I love having them on board. Well, let me ask you this. What if you could get health care for under $100 a month? 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Well, if you're ready to do 2026 on your terms, use the promo code POTP at joincrowdhealth.com and you'll get your first three months for just $80 a month. That's right. Just $80 a month for the first three months. Remember, CrowdHealth is not insurance. Opt out, take your power back. This is how we win. Visit joincrowdhealth.com and use the promo code POTP today. All right, let's get back into the show. Look, I mean, Donald Trump, even at the beginning of this You know, to start by saying, oh, there's this horrible thing where they've killed 30,000 people and they would have killed more if it wasn't for our threat. So he's already starting with a like. Like, I don't know, just how do you argue both of those things at the same time, both of the because of our power, they wouldn't have gone further, but they also went so goddamn incredibly far. like I'm bragging that my power I said to them don't you dare start shooting protesters and then they committed one of the biggest massacres in human history but it would have been worse if I hadn't kept him in check like Jesus Christ that's your argument okay there let's keep playing they've already developed missiles that can threaten Europe and our bases overseas and they're working to build missiles that will soon reach the United States of America. After midnight hammer, they were warned to make no future attempts to rebuild their weapons program, in particular, nuclear weapons. Yet they continue starting it all over. We wiped it out, and they want to start all over again, and are at this moment again pursuing their sinister ambitions. We are in negotiations with them. They want to make a deal, but we haven't heard those secret words. We will never have a nuclear weapon. My preference. Let's pause it right there. I mean, again, just like, sorry, man, I don't know the Trump loyalists out there. Sorry, have whatever problem you want with me. When people get up and they just fucking say Dick Cheney shit, I'm going to fucking call them out for that. This is total bullshit, total war propaganda, absolute nonsense. Just listen to the language even like here. And he goes, they're working on intercontinental ballistics that can very soon hit the United States of America. Like, well, in other words, they don't have missiles that can hit America. And the idea that there's any, like the idea that Iran from sitting in a rent, like, let's say they developed a few missiles that could hit, you know, Southern Florida or whatever. let's say they got that capability what then they just launched them and what do we do in the meantime first off we shoot down that missile and then we completely light up around like there's no the idea that they would just like we're going to commit national suicide to maybe ding part of your gigantic country with one missile it's just ridiculous and they put this is just oh the idea that Iran poses some threat to Europe or to the United States of America. I mean, who is buying that? Who is buying that? There's been an Ayatollah in charge of Iran since 1979, meaning before I was born, before most of you listening were born, or if you were born before that, you know, maybe four or five years or 10 years, but without almost all of your life, you've been living with this regime there. They pose no threat to you whatsoever. And then the second thing, I mean, look again, anyone following that, this is just a question of whether you follow this shit or you don't follow this. Donald Trump said that I just haven't heard those words that we promise we won't make nukes. The top of the Iranian government said that yesterday before this speech, they've said that the entire way through. It was like in your own annual threat assessment, the year that you launched a war against them. They've said up and down constantly that it's against their religious views to make nuclear weapons. Now, if you want to argue that you can't trust them, okay, fine. I mean, I'm not arguing you can always trust a mullah. But if your argument here is that I haven't heard those words, that's just a fucking lie. You're just lying to get your country into a war for Israel. It was really kind of up there with the most despicable things you can do. All right, let's keep playing. My preference is to solve this problem through diplomacy. But one thing is certain, I will never allow the world's number one sponsor of terror, which they are by far, to have a nuclear weapon. Can't let that happen. Okay, here, let's pause it for a second there. And I mean, look, like, I guess there's your most compelling piece of war propaganda. But again, what is it? It's the Iraq war propaganda all over again. you can't can't allow a state that has nukes to pass them off to terrorists who might want to hit america right but what's the fucking problem with it like what was the problem with saddam hussein where they go look saddam hussein's developing nuclear weapons and he was in on 9-11 and he's friends with bin laden and al-qaeda and so we can't let him develop a nuclear weapon because then he could hand a nuclear weapon off to al-qaeda and they could nuke kansas okay right this was Condoleezza's rice. We can't let, what was the line? We can't let the warning be in the form of a mushroom cloud, right? So, okay, the major flaw there was that number one, Saddam was not working on nuclear weapons. He didn't have nuclear weapons. He wasn't friends with Osama bin Laden, and he wasn't friends with Al Qaeda. That was the problem with the propaganda. He said it was all complete lies. Like just none of it was true. And well, what are the elements we have here with the ram oh yeah they don't have a nuclear weapon they're not trying to get a nuclear weapon as far as any of us know there's a greater likelihood i guess now they certainly weren't last summer after when you attacked them and as far as they're the number one sponsor of terrorism this is the age old this is the carl rove trick okay they sponsor terrorism but for real insiders and only the real experts like me and douglas murray know this type of information but the real experts know that there are shirts and skins over there. There are Sunnis and Shiites. And the Ayatollah is a Shiite. Iran is a majority Shiite country. And Al-Qaeda and ISIS are Sunnis. They are the ones who commit terrorist attacks in Europe and in the United States of America. They're the ones we're afraid of getting. Now, how is Iran's relationship with Al Qaeda and ISIS? Oh, yeah, they're mortal enemies that fight brutal wars against each other. So who are the terrorists who Iran has relationships with? Well, obviously, they have a very close relationship with Hezbollah. They've also done business with Hamas and with the Houthis. but none of those guys are attacking Europe or the United States of America. So whose problem is Hezbollah? Oh yeah, it's Israel's problem. That's the issue they have. So this stuff about the nuke that they don't have, they're going to give to the terrorists who aren't the terrorists who we have a beef with. Anyway, let's keep playing. And no nation should ever doubt America's resolve. We have the most powerful military on Earth. I rebuilt the military in my first term. We're going to continue to do so. Also, we just approved a trillion-dollar budget. We have no choice. We have to be strong. Because hopefully we will seldom have to use this great power that we built together. it's really called peace through strength and it's been very very effective all right you can pause it there and we can uh we can cut it off there that was the end of it um yeah peace through strength has been very effective you know peace through strength is ronald reagan's old slogan that was the idea was you have to have like a really, really strong military. And that way, you know, no one's going to fuck with you because you're really strong. And that way, if you give an order, you say, you better do this. I want you to do this, not that. They're going to do it because they know you're strong. You're not messing around. And that way you actually have less war. You know, this is the peace through strength argument that in fact, if you're in a weak position, then someone might attack you. And then you have to fight a war. If you're a weak situation, you tell someone to do something, they may not do it. And then the only thing to get them to do it is to fight a war. So actually, you know, being weak is the pro war position. You got to be really, really strong. This is the brilliant logic of peace through strength. We need bloated defense budgets, you know, like record setting. We're going to spend over a trillion dollars on defense, peace through strength. That's how you get peace, is to keep spending more and more on weapons of war. And as Donald Trump said, it's worked out really well. It's got an amazing track record. Since Peace Through Strength, since Ronald Reagan, we've been at war the entire time. Turns out what you get when you have record high military budgets is permanent militarism, not peace. It's so counterintuitive. But turns out when you give the military industrial complex everything they want, you actually get more war, which who could, I mean, we should have put our brightest minds to that and figured it out. Somehow we missed it. You know, look at the, at the end of the day here, Donald Trump had to sell this war. He failed spectacularly. He fell on his face. I mean, this is just look at the bottom line. You've never seen a president come up to a state of the union and simultaneously, it's like in the same way that he simultaneously goes, they committed one of the biggest massacres in human history, but also they didn't go any further because they were scared of me. Then he's also going to go, he's going to try to brag. Like, have you ever seen a president brag about completely obliterating an opponent? And then in the next breath say, now we got to go deal with that same opponent. First of all, I'd like to take credit for completely destroying nation X. Also, we got to go fight a war with Nation X. They're a big threat. Which one is it, man? Are they developing nukes and missiles that can hit America and Europe or are they defeated and obliterated? Anyway, the war propaganda is just always too easy to smash. Anyway, that's my thoughts on the State of the Union. Curious what you guys got, what you guys think of it. Leave a comment, like subscribe share sign up at part of the problem.com all that good stuff come see me out on the road I'll be out here not on the road for me at home in New Jersey this weekend Robbie the Fire Bernstein Chris Vega will be hanging out the whole weekend hope some of you guys come out there see you then comicdavesmith.com for tickets catch you next time peace Thank you.