Dave Smith and the Pedo Panic

Comedian and podcaster Dave Smith — August 19, 2025

Are we supposed to be deeply suspicious of the “Deep State,” or not? It was only last month that the FBI was flamboyantly accused of covering up the “Epstein Files” to protect prominent pedos. Perhaps most vehement in voicing this critique were the right-leaning social media and podcaster clique — sometimes oddly construed as the “MAGA Base,” despite recurrent confusion over what mass electoral constituency these “influencers” supposedly represent.

Dave Smith, a comedian podcaster who in November 2024 was corralling his followers to join him in voting for the Republican presidential nominee on anti-establishment grounds, took a slight U-Turn shortly thereafter and by July 2025 was castigating Donald J. Trump as a loathsome protector of pedos. “Listen guys, I’m a free American,” Smith declared at the historic Turning Point USA conference. “I supported Donald Trump in this last election. Yes, he did just actively cover up a giant child rapist ring, and I’m going to criticize him for that, OK?” Bursts of applause from the audience ensued. What were these people clapping for? Smith’s laudable willingness to criticize the politician he just got done supporting the re-election of, and then after less than six months in office, was already demanding to impeach? Does this reflect applause-worthy cogency of political thought? Smith now even says he has come to the realization that Trump is a personal well-wisher of “child rapists.” Was that just something that never happened to cross Dave’s mind last November?

I don’t know — I think if I had just gotten done passionately advocating the electoral victory of a certain politician, and then a short time later I started passionately denouncing that very same politician for harboring child rapists and launching criminal wars of aggression for Israel… I think I might be a little embarrassed. I’d probably want to re-evaluate what led me to this unfortunate conundrum. I certainly wouldn’t be eliciting applause from admirers for my political acumen and foresight. But then again, I’m not a “comedian.” And in fairness, there is something darkly humorous about the whole ordeal. “Oops, it appears I may have encouraged my followers to vote for an Israel-compromised child rape defender. I apologize for the inconvenience!”

On the August 19, 2025 edition of his podcast, Dave Smith duly delivered the take that everybody was waiting for. Because if there’s ever a time for a piping hot podcast take, it’s when a guy working for the Israeli government gets busted in Las Vegas for apparent child sex crimes — and is then allowed to “flee” back to the Holy Land, thereby escaping punishment. “And you have things like, you know, like the Epstein thing in the background,” Dave reminds us, because we know that was also “a big shady conspiracy” involving Israel. As such, Dave says, he is compelled to infer that an official position has been taken by the Israeli government: “You’re allowed to go rape American girls.”

Dave adds that while he considers himself “a pretty civilized person” these days, he could potentially see himself joining an angry mob of men — “grabbing their pitchforks and taking to the street” — over a controversy concerning Israel-backed pedos.

Then he does an ad-read for a product called “Parasite Cleanse.”

“MAHA is officially here,” says sales-pitch Dave, “and the Wellness Company is making hard-to-get medications digitally accessible so you can live your best life.” Notably, it appears Dave is continuing to read off commercial scripts that feature political slogans associated with President Donald J. Trump, whom Dave now accuses of covering up an industrial-scale child rape ring. Is this supposed to be part of some comedy routine, or have I missed the joke?

Can we just get rid of podcasts?

Anyhoo, back to the show. “Something about sexually abusing kids just really gets people,” Dave opines, ”like, on a visceral level.” Well, I can’t argue there. It’s indeed a good thing that no “kids” were sexually abused in connection with the government’s entrapment scheme in Nevada. If that had actually happened, it would have been bad. But yeah — everybody who’s sane obviously agrees that genuine sexual predation against genuine children is abominable, and if there’s genuine evidence of this happening, measures should be taken to stop it.

But seriously: if you’re any kind of civil libertarian, which I assume Dave Smith vaguely is, given his activities with the Libertarian Party — despite supporting the Republican Party nominee over the Libertarian Party nominee in the 2024 election — there should be a wealth of material for you to get exercised about in this ridiculous Nevada sting. Or alternatively, you can sit around explaining why people tend to dislike pedos, as if that’s a novel insight. Who do you think carried out this scheme? Anti-statist homesteaders adhering to the Non-Aggression Principle? No, it was carried out by the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and a smattering of state and local law enforcement agencies. (Are we still maligning the FBI as “Deep State,” or did that end on January 20, 2025?) Together, these agencies combined into a nifty little entrapment cabal with opaque structure, unclear command authority, and zero identifiable oversight — even as Congress generously supplies them with regular funding replenishments. Because after all, who needs oversight when we’re talking about PEDOS here!!!! And since there’s a pedo hiding behind every bush, and armies of child-sex traffickers are marching down the streets, best to just open up the taxpayer checkbook and not think about it too much.

Accordingly, if the Homeland-Securing results yielded by this extremely necessary Task Force consist of nailing 23-year-old recent UMass grads for using an adult-only hookup app — oblivious that it had been infiltrated by government agents manufacturing otherwise non-existent crimes — great! We’re really taking it to the “pedos,” and that’s super psychically satisfying. Kind of like how nailing some aimless and gullible 20-year-old “terrorist” in an absurd FBI entrapment plot once showed we were Winning the War on Terror. Or how confecting some performative narcotics bust so the President could theatrically dangle a scary-looking baggie in front of the TV cameras once showed we were Winning the War on Drugs — and, naturally, Protecting Our Children. Incidentally, these inter-government initiatives are all made possible by the public treasury, so participants are understandably eager to justify their salaries. Snag a few screaming headlines with your latest “child predator” swindle (in which no child was ever victimized, or even at risk of being victimized) and wait for the inevitable next round of Congressional subsidies to roll in.

In 2023, Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) proudly trumpeted obtaining $461,745 in federal funds for the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department to furnish its “Nevada Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force,” which has clearly utilized the money with great care and consideration, as evidenced by such expenditures as the creation of “Online Covert Employees,” who surely receive highly specialized training so they can learn how to set up phony accounts on hookup apps. “The Nevada Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force will use this funding to increase its proactive investigations and arrests,” says the document released by Masto’s office, describing the monies being doled out. If only it had been clarified that “proactive investigations” were not to be confused with proactively investigating real perpetrators of real child sex crimes, or helping real children at real risk of sexual predation — but instead concocting fake crimes against fake children on adult-only smartphone apps.

The government agents responsible for this brilliant public policy can take comfort in Anti-Establishment Comedy Podcasters such as Dave Smith paying no mind whatsoever to how these endeavors might infringe on civil liberties, expand the punitive powers of the state, stimulate groundless political hysteria, or intrude on the private affairs of law-abiding citizens. Of course, if an adult commits a bonafide sex offense against a bonafide child, that adult’s private affairs SHOULD be intruded on, because there’s an obvious public interest in protecting the child, which overrides the privacy rights of the offending adult. But again — that’s not what we’re talking about here! No children were harmed in this ridiculous Nevada scheme! No children were involved, at any stage! It was just a bunch of cops and Feds looking to ensnare a bunch of hapless guys who had the misfortune of logging on to a certain adult-only hookup app, whose Terms of Service expressly prohibit anyone under 18 from even using the app. But the government lives by a different Terms of Service. After all, they have grant money to justify. So citizens must live by the newly decreed terms, such as: if you thought you were signing up for an adult-only hookup app, government infiltrators could still be coming after you, on the grounds of combatting “pedophilia.” You will then be publicly humiliated, life derailed, and branded a child sex predator, even though there were literally no children involved at any point in this whole stupid charade — up to and including the adult entrapment agent who was allegedly “acting” as a 15-year-old. Law enforcement agencies generally can’t and don’t use actual minors as “decoys.” So because you opened up this adult-only app one evening, and interacted with another adult, you are now going to be publicly reviled as a “pedo.” And we all know how pedos are treated in prison! Great stuff, government.

Dave Smith says on his podcast that the Israeli guy busted in the entrapment scheme “showed up to meet what he believed was a 15-year-old girl.” But how does Dave know this? How does he know what Tom Alexandrovich “believed”? Did Dave interview the guy before hopping on the podcast? Because the arrest report says Alexandrovich told the FBI “he believed the girl was 18 years old,” as this “was the age listed on the Pure application.” So where exactly did Dave divine his own private understanding of Alexandrovich’s alleged “belief”? Maybe Dave just forgot to double-check, because he was so consumed by the “disgust response” that he says is “triggered” in him at the mere thought of PEDOS!!!! — and which causes him to want to join an angry mob with pitchforks. Perhaps another useful term for this phenomenon would be “mass hysteria,” whereby the actual facts at hand are simply irrelevant, because you’ve already boarded the one-way rollercoaster of blithering emotional incontinence, and have thus de-activated your critical faculties.

It’s a Pedo Panic world, and we’re all just living in it. One notable person currently living in this world is Donald J. Trump. Somebody posted my previous article on reddit; take a gander at the top comment:

“Why does America have a pedophile as president,” the commenter plaintively asks, as if we can all just take for granted that Donald J. Trump is a confirmed pedophile, and this is something any right-minded citizen would know has been conclusively proven. “It’s starting to look like protecting pedophiles is part of the USA’s purpose,” replies the second top-rated commenter, as if it should be obvious to all informed observers that recent events show the core “purpose” of the United States as a national entity is to “protect pedophiles.” Meanwhile, these commenters are reacting to a news story about a lavishly funded government program specifically designed to proactively prosecute pedos, thanks to a $147 million influx of grants handed down by the US Department of Justice between 2021 and 2024, for the purpose of countering “Internet Crimes Against Children” — on top of whatever other funding sources a given cohort of participating agencies can undoubtedly conjure to carry out their Task Force Tasks. This taxpayer-funded pedo targeting operation — so hot in pursuit of the pedos that non-existent children were dispatched to adult-only hookup apps — actually somehow proves that the US is fundamentally controlled by pedo interests. And the Executive Branch is personally run by a pedo. Alrighty then. Yeah, I know it’s just a dumb reddit comment, but it’s still hilarious that this particular subreddit, r/skeptic, describes itself as all about “combining knowledge of science, philosophy, and critical thinking with careful analysis to help identify flawed reasoning and deception.” It was apparently by following this process of rigorous reasoning that these redditors concluded the President is a pedo, and the entire Constitutional order of the United States is organized around shielding pedos. Dave Smith would seem to agree, albeit on more anti-establishment podcast grounds. And off they all go on their merry way, twirling to the sounds of the Pedo Panic.

Say it with me: Mass! Hysteria!

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