Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 431: David Pakman

Episode Date: September 3, 2018

    David Pakman  

This episode of Cognitive Dissonance is brought to you by our patrons. You fucking rock. Hey, Tom and Cecil. So I was listening to episode 430, and y'all were talking about Silent Sam and that statue that got yanked down in North Carolina. And I was thinking about how any time I've spoken to somebody from the South, and they're fucking bitching about losing all their history and whatnot, and they're fucking bitching about losing all their history and whatnot, the main complaint is that we shouldn't take down anything that honors slavery because you're ruining their history, and the children will be raised to never remember their glorious history.

All I ever think is, do you not have fucking Google? Because I remember learning most things about everything from the internet. But if you take down a fucking racist statue, you're suddenly going to lose the ability to just look up your own state's history? I don't know. It's some bullshit. Fuck racism. Glory hole, motherfuckers. Hey Cecil and Tom, I am calling to wish a warm hello to the glory hole. No, no, no, not you guys.

Juno's Glory Hole, which is a presumably unassuming Christian charity in Alaska. And its slogan is food, shelter, and compassion for those in need. You gotta go to their website and check out the t-shirts they sell. They're not phallic at all. But they named their unassuming food shelter after the mining term glory hole, which means a hole in a mine shaft where an ore body is mined upwards until it breaks through the surface into the open air. That makes just about as much fucking sense as naming your food shelter Glory Hole for, you know, its other definition. Well, anyway, I hope that everything

that has been said to people through the Glory Hole has been as fulfilling as the Lord would have wanted it to be. Glory Hole to you guys. Bye. Be advised that this show is not for children, the faint of heart, or the easily offended. The explicit tag is there for a reason. recording live from glory hole studios in chicago this is cognitive dissonance every episode we blast anyone who gets in our way we bring critical thinking skepticism and irreverence to any topic that makes the news makes it big or makes us mad it's skeptical it's political and there is no welcome at this episode. 430 next.

31. 31. The other 430-ish. I'm going to go with just like naming the tens now. I think because then I'm going to be right every time. We're in the 400-ish times. We're in the 430s. That's what I do with my age. I'm in the 40s. My wife in the 400-ish times. We're in the 430s. That's what I do with my age. Right.

I'm in the 40s. Like, my wife stopped counting at 34. So, that's it. Like, you know. 50 years ago? So, we are joined in this episode by David Pakman of The David Pakman Show. Not 100% sure how many power pellets he brought with him. I know Pakman jokes are probably very original.

I'm sure he's never heard of Pac-Man. Not a single time. Driving out here like, you know, Pac-Man jokes probably were not a staple of his fucking adolescent diet. So I should probably bring these back up in order to make sure that his sixth grade horror memories of middle school. I wore a blue shirt today, specifically.

But David Pac-Man, you are the host of the of David Pakman show, which is available on YouTube. It's a podcast. Um, it's also, uh, syndicated if I'm not mistaken on, uh, a number of different, uh, stations across the country. Welcome to the glory hole. Thank you. I appreciate it. And everything you said sounds true. It's probably the only thing we're going to talk about that sounds true today, because I think we want to talk to you a little bit today or a lot of it today about Donald Trump, particularly how great has he made America again? Right. Again, I'm going to say so great. I don't know. I'm kind of sick of it, actually. He's hired all the best people. So I guess that is true.

That's true. Let's start with some of the best people. Yeah, that Donald Trump, who remember he did promise that he was going to hire. He did. All the best people. The very best. I heard or read a story that it sounds to many like he's prepping to fire Attorney General Jeff Sessions, one of the best people who has recused himself from the Russia investigation.

So, David, I think that's a nice jumping off point. I'd like to get your thoughts on the current row between Trump and Attorney Sessions. And if you have any sense of whether he will, in fact, fire sessions, does it seem to you like he's prepping for that? What would the repercussions of that kind of thing be? Yeah, it seems like he may be laying the groundwork for firing sessions. He may be laying the groundwork or others might be laying the groundwork for firing Robert Mueller as well. And I mean, in a normal situation, I would say the repercussions would be presidential. It would end a presidency. Right. That would be what I would like to say.

But we know that that's just not the case. We know that. I mean, listen, if the N-word tapes come out, it's not going to do anything. Just not his. The people who voted for him voted for him, knowing that he had made horrible comments about Hispanic people and mocked a disabled reporter. So it's not going to make a difference. Now there's a new love child story, which may be out of embargo soon. And a doorman will be able to talk about the love child Trump has with his allegedly. Can we pause real quick? I don't know that I want to think about the idea of a love child with Donald Trump. An illegitimate bastard, maybe. But I have a question. Would his last name be Snow? Like, would it be, you know, what would his last name be if that's the case?

He'll guard the wall. But I think the point is, it's impossible to say at this point whether, you know, we thought we were at the limit hundreds of times over the last couple of years. And yet it just kind of goes on. So I don't know. I don't know if Sessions will stay or go. It does seem as though there are other people like Roger Stone, who are very quickly entering the crosshairs of Robert Mueller, who are trying to get Trump to get rid of Mueller. So Roger Stone, for example, recently put out there that Don Jr. will soon be getting indicted. Might be true, might not be. But the idea is to goad Trump into firing Mueller before that happens, which, of course, might not even work. So your guess, anyone's guess really

is as good as mine. Yeah, let's let's let's talk a little bit about that. So. Can anything take him down? Can anything do you think like because what what is baffling, I think, to anybody looking at this is how the fuck is this is still functioning presidency? And in fact, do you think that this is a functioning presidency? It's really not. And here's the thing. If your view of a non-functioning presidency is that fires ravage the entire country as opposed to just parts of it, which are being ravaged by fires and, you know, every nuclear power plant implodes and cash stopped, you know, U.S. dollars stop functioning as a currency. Like that's not the standard. Right. We need to consider the fact that a lot of these government agencies function independently.

Certain day to day things, you know, gas, gasoline delivery trucks are still going to be driving around no matter what it is that how crazy the president is. driving around no matter what it is that how crazy the president is. So when you consider what it is that could happen with a non-functioning presidency, we're 90 percent of the way there. Our longtime allies are now just talking around us when they talk about climate change. Trump's not there. It doesn't matter that Trump's not there. What would Trump's presence add to that? We have allies who are increasingly not sharing information with us because Donald Trump will sometimes just spill it in the Oval Office, like to a Russian spy recruiter, for example. So I think like if you apply. Why is that funny? Wait, why are we laughing about that? It's not funny. It's not. It's sad. Yeah. Yeah. My mighty heart is breaking. Like

if you apply a reasonable standard, this is close to as bad as it can be before the president is sort of forced out or realizes it's time for them to go. But it's been like that for how long though? Because this is- Since 2016. This has been like that for a while. I mean, he has done things

and it feels like every day he does something exponentially worse than the day before. And the previous day you're like, this has got to be the day, right? And then the next day something happens. You're like, but this has got to be the day, right? And it keeps going on and on and on. It gets worse and worse and worse. And I just, and we just feel like, it feels like we're just stalling and waiting. I don't even know what we're waiting for at this point. Yeah, I agree. Like, I want to know

genuinely, since I talked about this before the show, and I think this is a great segue, is this our best case scenario right now? What we have is essentially a lame duck presidency. Is this the best case scenario politically for the country? Yeah, it's a very reasonable question. And it's shockingly scary that that actually may be the case. This might actually be the least bad scenario, which is a sort of impotent Trump remaining for the remainder of this term. Because remember, if he gets impeached or if he's forced into resignation, which I have no idea if that is even remotely likely to happen. But more than likely, unless you implicate the vice president, Mike Pence becomes vice president and he will be significantly more ideologically conservative and dogmatic, not as scandal riddled as Trump. And he may accomplish significantly more than what Trump

may be able to do in the remainder of his term. So it actually may be the best scenario that a sort of scandal ridden farcical Trump remains. Well, let me, that's Jesus Christ. Can I, let me, let me ask you about that too, a little bit. Cause I have, I have some questions of what your thoughts are. So, you know, let's say for instance, that Trump, cause there's no forcing him to resign. Like, I think we can take that off the table. Like there's no way that guy would be forced to resign i i literally can't imagine a set of circumstances where he would cede the point right yeah where he's like okay you got me i think that's a guy who if he were put in handcuffs and a fucking orange jumpsuit would be like still the president till you make me i will be calling the handcuffs fake news yeah so like there's a level of self-denial there that is just so extraordinary i can't imagine so but let's say pence takes takes the reins there's no mandate with pence i mean there was barely a

mandate with trump there was a mandate only from sort sort of a hard line group of people that wanted to make America racist again or whatever the slogan is. But like Pence has none of that behind him. He's got no political force underneath him. Would he then just turn into a placeholder president, do you think? Yeah. And on the one hand, he has no mandate. But on the other hand, he also has no case that is building, building, building against him to justify obstruction or not letting him do things. Like right now, there are actually really good reasons for anybody who wants to, whether it's Democrats or whether it's sane Republicans, to say we're not going to do A, B or C because

this is a guy who may be a legitimate president, may have committed all sorts of crimes in achieving that presidency. If Pence takes over. Yeah, it's true. Like who? There's no big clamoring for Mike Pence. That includes from Mrs. Pence, by the way. It could have been anybody almost as Donald Trump's running. But there's no reason to justify total and complete obstruction, which is increasingly what, what hopefully we're going to start to see. Well, I mean, we, I think we're like, what's one thing I find interesting is like, we have, we've had this presidential power creep, you know, over the last three presidencies.

Right. And, um, so now the executive order is, is like the King's writ now, but then increasingly with Trump, you know, federal judges are like, you can't do that. Just again happened this week. Yeah. Where, you know, federal judges were like, yeah, you can't you can't make it easier to fire federal workers that unionize. Like we're not. Yeah. No, we're putting the no on it.

So there's a big fucking no stamp that keeps being put on his executive orders. a no stamp that keeps being put on his executive orders. Is there any sense from you that there will be a pushback against presidential power creep as a result of this fucking debacle? I'm looking for silver linings here. Yeah, no, no, definitely not. And if anything, it may go the other way. There was actually fast. No, wait a minute, David, David, I thought we were friends. We've been talking for nine minutes. I felt like we had a connection. Don't that hurts my heart space, buddy. I just see, I just don't see any way through which that, that, that, you know, in fact, the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court nomination, that is a Koch brother supported nomination. And it's part of their plan to actually remove checks and balances, to reduce the number of veto points that that can exist to prevent unchecked power.

So I think, if anything, assuming the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh, we're going to see Trump or not like this is beyond Trump. Now, this is part of the Republican plan for decades. Now we're going to see more unchecked power. But by the way, from the same party that claims that they want limited government. Well, they want to limit it to one person. So that's, I mean, we will limit the government to the new emperor that we appoint. Like if it's got a red tie, then that's the, that's, that's where we've limited it to. What do you think about, so recently there's been a couple of things

that have surfaced, especially after the Manafort convictions and then after the Cohen guilty plea. And there was recently his CEO came out as somebody who is sort of someone who might be cooperating and then also... He's got immunity, right?

And then also Trump's Packers sort of leaking at this point. Wait, did you say his Packer is leaking? The Packer. That's the guy's name, Packer, by the way. Trump's Packer is leaking? Well, you know, depends, I guess. So, yeah. No, but see, like, yeah, the guy's name is Packer.

That's amazing. Yeah, I know. Isn't it great? Trump's Packer is leaking. Like, I mean, it literally writes itself. But what do you have to think about the other people now that are sort of coming forward after the Cohen plea? I think they're coming forward not out of any moral duty, but out of a sense of self-preservation. And basically, at this point, it's if you believe that you're in the line of fire, you have to make a judgment call about, you know,

it's widely known that Trump will punish people who don't remain loyal to him. But is the punishment going to be worse if you end up sitting in prison or getting indicted by Robert Mueller or whatever it is that you're facing? So I think it is merely the realization from many people surrounding this guy that knowingly or unknowingly crimes were committed and that the cover up is just falling apart and they're doing what's best for them and their families, which would the Cohen thing was a big part of it. He said, I just need to do what's best for my family. And yeah, there's, they're fleeing like, you know, rats from a sinking ship at this point. Did you contribute to the Cohen tricks,

a Kickstarter that he had? I don't know if you heard about this. Oh God, he raised a ton of money. Cohen had a Kickstarter. Did you chip in a little there? You know, I did not. I admit I didn't. I thought he was like a millionaire. Like what is in a little there? You know, I did not. I admit I didn't do that. I thought he was like a millionaire. What is he kickstarting? I don't even understand that. I don't know, but he had to take a $130,000 home equity loan to pay off Stormy Daniels. That money came from a home equity

loan. I'm going to borrow money so that this porn... The fucking mafia boss-esque nature of all of this is so like crazily obvious. It's like all of a sudden it's 1949, you know, and like we're being run by Don Trump. But, you know, like it's crazy. He's gonna like walk around, like grab a peach out of the farm stand. What is happening? Well, it's funny too, because he just came out and said

that people who flip should, it should almost be illegal for people to flip. Don't tell on me. If you tell on people, it's hard to even parse what that means, right? Like, so flipping means you tell the truth to federal investigators, not doing it as illegal. A lot of these people are going to jail because they didn't tell the truth. And now Trump says telling the truth to investigators should be illegal. Okay. But yeah, to be fair though, he was, or rather his spokesperson was concerned that he wasn't allowed to tell even one lie. I mean, like you don't even get a freebie. Like I thought, and correct me,

David, because I think you're more, you're more well-versed than I am on these issues. But I, I had always thought that you got a one free call when you were arrested and one free lie. Yeah. And you don't have to declare just like,

like of a cop. If you ask a cop, like, are you a cop? They have to say yes. Right. Yeah. And they also can't sit on the side a cop? They have to say yes. Right? Yeah. And they also can't sit on the side of the highway with their lights off because that's...

Yeah, you have to know. Otherwise, it's entrapment when they set a trap. Did you think... Did you think... So when election night happened, that horrible, horrible night where we switched into an alternate universe.

And we've had to deal with this ever since. Did you think it was going to be this bad? Did you foresee it being this horrible from the very get-go? Yes. I mean, I thought that it was going to be even worse, honestly. I thought it was going to be more of the apocalyptic scenario that five minutes ago I said is no longer like a reasonable standard that we have kept going back and forth. Hillary Clinton wasn't purely ahead in Florida. At that point, I realized that it was not going to go any way other than Trump is the next president. And I was having, I mean, I quite literally was having waking nightmares about what it was going to be like. And, you know, it's never exactly the way you predict, like, no matter what scenario you anticipate being bad, like in life, it's often bad, but it's not bad in the exact way that you predict. And I think that's what we're seeing. I mean, at the time,

we didn't realize that it would be an administration basically crippled by not only incompetence, but also potentially dozens of people going to jail or prison and a presidency that in and of itself might be ending prematurely, I assumed it would merely be an international embarrassment. And it's been so much more than that. We have so much to look forward to. So I want to ask you about the Russian collusion issue. So I saw something the other day that like Facebook's chief security officer came out the other day and said, look, it's too late for the 2018 elections. We know the 2018 elections have, it's too late to put any safeguards that are meaningful in place in front of those elections. So we know our next set of elections will or has been influenced by Russian operatives.

We are in a place where we're clearly in a new Cold War that has a technological component to it with Russia that we're not acknowledging. And yet, like, there has not been evidence. There's been evidence of lots of other weird shit. But there has not been definitive evidence of Russian collusion with the Trump administration other than the meeting that he admitted to out loud and everything. There's been people who've been indicted by

Mueller, though, too. Right. But they've been the Russians who've been performing, but they've not been able to directly tie that line outside of the crazy fucking tweets that Trump himself tweeted about, like, my son met with the Russians. Which I don't understand how that's still. So I want to get your thoughts on, you know,

because again, the Cohen thing, the Manafort thing, these do not have anything to do with Russia. And I don't, I want to make sure that those are parsed separately. So I'd like to get your thoughts on Russia and their interference in the U.S. elections and then the collusion issue? This is a huge issue. And I think the important thing to understand when we hear that talking point from people like Sean Hannity and others that whatever Cohen and Manafort did, it has nothing to do with Russia. It's not necessarily true when it comes to Cohen. We're going to find out. There's now a $50,000 payment that was made to a tech company right around the time of the Hillary Clinton email

hacking. It was one that instead of submitting a formal invoice for Michael Cohen, literally wrote $50,000 on a piece of paper and handed it to somebody. So there's a lot of- Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I'm sorry. I thought I followed the news and I clearly have missed this story. Like buying a car, like I just like seriously, like buying a car and like writing down a number on a piece of paper and sliding it over your desk. Yeah. So normally the way that Cohen, I mean, there's, listen, I don't want to get off track. Well, maybe we'll go back to that, but we get off track. So you can go ahead. As far as Manafort goes, he is someone who had been working in a pro-Russia capacity for decades. He had both the access

motive when it comes to financial and ideological motive and ability to influence Republican policy towards Russia on the eve of the Republican National Convention, the Republican Party at Manafort's sort of pleading changed its policy towards Russia. The guy, I mean, so I think that he's very connected to Russia. I think the problem other than, I mean, the Trump Tower meeting is a given, right? I mean, we now know that Trump allegedly knew about it. Everybody knew that they were meeting with a Russian agent, someone representing the Kremlin. That's like very, very cut and dry.

So to say other than that obvious case of Russian collusion, we don't yet have evidence of Russian collusion. OK, but here's the really important thing. Collusion is not the crime, right? And this can be used either to make the case that there's more to look at or to say what the right has been saying, which is don't even pay attention to this because collusion is not a crime. Collusion is a sort of catch all umbrella term. And we're talking here about receiving things of value from foreign countries for the purposes of influencing elections. That's against the law.

We're talking about obstruction of justice when it came to figuring out what it was that took place, possible witness tampering, money laundering. So I don't know how useful it is merely to say there was or wasn't collusion. Let's look at the specific crimes that may have taken place and the intent to receive something of value from a foreign country, meaning the dirt on Hillary. Whether or not they got it, the intent to do it is still a crime. So if you're waiting for an indictment that says collusion, yeah, that's not going to happen because that's not the crime. But the idea that we just don't need to worry about this Russia thing, I certainly think is not based in evidence. So I watched one of your videos recently where you are discussing that Trump admitted

on Fox just the other day. And I don't even know what day it is because it's only been a week since this fucking madness has ramped up to a speed that I'm not sure I can even follow any longer. But he admitted to one of two crimes on Fox the other day. It depends on whether we believe him or don't believe him. Can you go over that for our listeners? Sure. So Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to a number of crimes. One of them, or a couple counts actually, are of campaign finance violations in the payment of hush money to mistresses of the candidate, which of course we presume to be Donald Trump, although that hasn't been spelled out. So that relates to the payments that were made

to Karen McDougal, former Playboy model and mistress of Trump's, and Stormy Daniels. So they received, Stormy Daniels, it was $130,000. I don't remember exactly what Karen McDougal received. I think she got $150,000. She got more, right? Could be, that could be. That's a little insulting, right? If you're Stormy Daniels,000. She got more, right? That could be. That's a little insulting,

right? If you're Stormy Daniels, you're like, wait, what? She needed to get a better lawyer, apparently, to negotiate. So if the money came from campaign donations made to the Trump campaign, that's an illegal use of campaign funds. Trump's denying that that's the case. Trump is saying that it was actually, the money didn't come from there, which directly means that he is the guy who ultimately paid for it, whether it was through a shell company or by paying off Michael Cohen's second mortgage or however it was that they did it. That means that Trump paid for that, meaning he had a debt to Michael Cohen. That payment or that debt, none of those show up anywhere in Trump's financial

disclosures. So it can't both be true that the money didn't come from the campaign and that it's perfectly fine for Trump not to have disclosed that he made the payment. So either it was an illegal campaign donation or Trump lied on his financial disclosures, both of which would be criminal. What seems evident is that we don't, for whatever reason, like we've just decided we don't care, right? Because it's out loud now. What we didn't care about is tax returns. What do we care about? And I'm asking that question for realsies. Like, why don't, like, isn't this it? Isn't like we have what, what I don't understand is like, we're, we're just like some guys, right? We're all just like some dudes and we're sitting around and it's like, well, we, now we know that there's evidence of collusion, right? We know that there

is evidence of collusion. We know the Trump tower meeting happened. That's, that's admitted on Twitter. It's out loud and everything in front of the whole world. And like, now we know that there's this, uh, you know, payment to the mistresses that he was a part of either one way or the other. It's deeply problematic. Like, when are we going to officially care? Are we going to officially, or do we just not give a shit? Like, what are the thing, like what has to happen? Cause like, I'm worried if we give him too much time, we're just going to go to war with North Korea or something. Yeah. I mean, so basically dog moment. The people on the left who are outraged by this stuff are not outraged enough to basically go out and do civil disobedience and be out in the streets until something happens.

Even if it's you force Trump to go and say, we got to put the National Guard out there to start repressing speech, which would be a scandal in and of itself. Right. So and I'm not blaming the left for that. People are busy. People have to make money. Wages have been stagnant for 40 years. So it's not a criticism. It's apparently not crazy enough for the left to go to that point. Then you've got the right, which is completely co-opted by the idea that if they go after Trump, that it's going to be, I guess, democratic victories for who knows how long. And for them, I mean, there were people at Trump rallies wearing shirts that said, I'd rather be Russian than a Democrat. And that's, I saw that. Yeah. That basically sums up the perspective, which is it doesn't

matter how bad this stuff is. We don't want to do anything that might put a Democrat in the White House or in power full stop. Do they not understand that like the other candidate doesn't win now? Like there seems to be a still like a like a what about ism with Hillary that's going on? Like, yeah, well, do people do you think there's a misunderstanding that like, well, if we if we unelect Trump, then the runner up gets the fucking crowd? Like, are you just like Miss America rules that people are working off of? That's partially coming from the top, because in every interview, like I mean, in that Fox News interview, you mentioned when Trump was asked about the payments, he was also, by the way, in that interview, he started giving reasons why it wouldn't be a good idea to impeach him, which is that's that's a red flag. When you when you start arguing for why it's really a bad idea to impeach him. Yeah, we'd all be broke. Yeah, we would all be poor and the stock market would crash.

In that interview, he talked about Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama when asked very specific questions about things he had done and things he would do. So part of the what about ism is coming from the top. But then there's there's this other issue, which is that there are people. So if you're a Trump supporter, you want to reject the idea that he may be anything other than a totally legitimate president because you worry about what happens. If Russia collusion was true, if Russia helped him win, then this guy may not actually be a legitimate president. But that's happening on the left also. There's a contingent of leftists who are worried, who didn't like Hillary,

who are worried that if Russia was part of the reason Trump won, does that somehow legitimize Hillary? Does that mean Hillary was a better candidate than I think she is? And I think that these issues have to be totally disaggregated. If crimes took place, then that's got to be dealt with aside from whatever implications you might feel about your candidate. What do you think about Trump's erosion of the sort of trust in the media in our in our country? What do you do? You think that this is sort of a a plan he's had since the beginning? Or is this something that, you know, he's just doing just to protect himself? Like, what do you and do you think that he has seriously eroded America's trust

in the media? He has seriously eroded trust. We know that from extensive public polling that's out there. Trump realized that the attacking the media thing was a useful approach when during the campaign, he would point to the media people at the back and talk about how they're terrible people. And he slowly but surely would get sort of fuel added to that fire by his followers. And that's how you ended up with fake news. That's how you ended up with him saying, maybe we need journalism licenses or we need to make it easier to sue media outlets. I think that it's really important not to glorify prior politicians who made terrible decisions. So I'm not saying George W. Bush was great in any way. I'm not saying that. But there was a clear line that George W. Bush wouldn't cross, which was that at no point did you get the feeling that he thought that the media as an institution had to be limited or suppressed.

And his policies were a disaster, and he didn't like the things that media was saying about him, but you didn't get that direct attack on media as an institution. Even attacking individual media outlets is at least a little bit more reasonable, although I still don't think the president should do it, than saying the media is the enemy of the people. So I think it's had a huge effect. I think Trumpists are loving it and Trump's going to keep doing it because it's been working for him. Is there any way to sort of turn back the tide of this? Is there any way to turn, you know, that we can, that we can fix this in some way? Cause it really does feel like, um, there's a large portion of America that is

not going to listen to anything that a media outlet says because they, they don't trust the media as a source anymore. And now there's no way to sort of tell them what a fact is. The answer is kind of boring and it's something that the left is not that good at, which is you need to win at the state and local level. You need to win in order to influence the judges that are courts that aren't going to find against media outlets. So it's it's like a it's an uphill battle. But that's the insurance policy that media really needs. When you started out in politics, have you always been sort of left leaning or were you were you ever sort of centrist at all? you ever sort of centrist at all? No, I had, I think when I was in high school and I took some economics classes and they were like your standard neoclassical economics classes, I didn't realize that there were other views. So it was just sort of like, oh, all right, this is how economics

works. Sounds good. So I ended up kind of being a little more fiscally conservative. And then as I learned more about demand side economics and sort of like how economics actually works, not just what they write about in a textbook, I definitely move to the left on those issues as well. Why does economics, do you think, why does it have such a right-leaning bias to it? Well, if you imagine that people are completely rational and always make the best decision on the basis of all the known information, then it makes perfect sense. Unfortunately, that's a fantasy world. That's just not how the world works. Once you introduce the fact that people are complex and people are biased and influenced by different cognitive biases and understand that, you realize that it's great to understand how the world would work

if everybody was a perfectly rational actor. And that would sort of lead you to like conservative economics. As soon as you introduce any amount of actual critical thinking and think about how are people actually in the world, you realize that textbook economics doesn't really make any sense. And this is, by the way, coming from someone who has undergraduate and graduate degrees in economics. Yeah. From what you've described, it seems like a misapplication of theory versus practice, right? But it has to be willfully done at this point because there's so much we know in terms of how people really behave. Behavioral economics doesn't, and the study of that would

not seem to match how we're promoting financial economics, right? Definitely. And this is one of the massive problems that exists in economics departments on campuses all around the country, which is you really should be teaching alternative economic models and behavioral economics if If you're going to give somebody a serious economics education, just teaching supply and demand curves is how you end up with people thinking, let's just give rich people tax cuts and everything will be great. And obviously we know that doesn't work in the real world. So David, if people were going to

find your stuff on the internet, where would they look? The best place is davidpachman.com. Everything is there. Our videos are there. Our podcasts are there. Of course, we have this YouTube channel, which recently surpassed 500,000 subscribers, where we put all of our videos and people can find us on iTunes, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, Pandora, Spotify. It's almost too easy to find the show. I apologize for that. People keep coming across it. But our website is like the central hub for everything. Well, we'll put a link to a lot of these things on this week's show notes. David, thanks so much for joining us today. Very, very enlightening conversation.

Thank you. I really appreciate you having me. Ready to stick it in the glory hole? Get links to their Facebook, Twitter, and if you still use it, Google Plus account at their website, dissonancepod.com. If you need to be all discreet about it, contact them by email at dissonance.podcast at gmail.com. Or you can call and leave a ransom message at 740-74-DOUBT. That's 740-743-6828. Want to hear Cognitive Dissonance commercial free and gain access to exclusive content, including full patron-only shows? Head to patreon.com forward slash dissonance pod and become a patron to support the show

on a per episode basis. Love commercials? Not ready to become a patron? Give the guys a five-star review on iTunes or Stitcher. Or tell your buddies in the drunk tank about the show we want to send a big sloppy glory hole to all the patrons and people who rate us you fucking rock so i want to talk tom i want to stop for a second and so there's been a lot of talk about john mccain senator from arizona passed away this last week. He stopped taking medicine for his brain

ulcer cancer. I will say like my flipboard like was set, you know, I get notifications on it and it was like, John McCain has said he's not taking any more medicine for brain cancer than like 20 minutes later. I know, 20 minutes later. John McCain dead. It's like, well. That medicine wasn't doing much.

I just want to say like. Yeah, I Madison wasn't doing much. I just want to say like, yeah, I don't know. Okay. John McCain isn't going to take any more aspirin because he's dead now. I'm going to discontinue the treatments. Yeah. I know. Like as soon as they stopped giving it to him, all dead people discontinue treatment.

Is he still on chemo? I mean, he's embalmed. So... They just keep him in the machine for a while. I want to say, like,

on my Facebook feed, especially because he passed away, and a bunch of people on my Facebook feed are in two different camps. There's one side that is...

Wait, can I just... There's polarization of views on your Facebook feed? Yeah, on my Facebook feed. I just wanted to clarify that moment. So, one side is, fuck that guy. That guy never did anything for me. He's a fucking total douchebag. The other side is, hey, guys,

you know, RIP, that sort of thing. So, it's kind of this sort of casket half full, casket half empty sort of thing that they're doing. I don't know which is better. To be really honest, the casket is always full. I was going to say like with a glass of water, I know which the optimist side is.

With a casket, you're like, I don't know. We got halfsies. Can't be sure. Then that implies there's another half that didn't make it to the casket. Someone's weekend of burning his upper torso. Voting in Congress. Did we bring the whole guy in?

Jim, Jim. He's just sitting in a sports car. No lower half. Just putzing around down the road. Jim always takes the bottom half. I don't know why he takes that home. You don't take leftovers. All right. This is a funeral home.

There are no doggy bags. Jim, what happened to all the lube? So, so I wanted to talk about his actual political policies with you and sort of go over, you know, I'm not going to go in extensive because there's like, there's like 25 pages on Wikipedia that, you know, there's, he had an extensive career. So there's just so much to go over. So I, I highlighted things that might be important to us, like something we might talk about on the show and talk about his position. So you mentioned when we first came in today, you said, I remember when he came into the political

sort of, you know, as the president, as a presidential candidate, hopeful. Yeah, yeah. He had, you and I were a little like, okay, maybe this will be kind of cool because who knows where he's going to land. Because he was, he had been politically moderate for a long time. Right.

There was an idea that like, hey, if we have to have a Republican, this might be one that we could get behind where we could be like, all right, not everything, but not, you know, I don't hate everything. I don't love everything. But maybe there's going to be that moment where you get to be middle of the road. And I think you and I share the same frustration that like, I would like to be able to be more genuinely considerate of both candidates in terms of like, well,

what do they stand for? What are their views? But like the Republicans we've been presented with in the course of my voting lifetime have been so egregiously awful on social issues and economic issues that you just can't that I've been like, fucking, I can't do this. And I was really hopeful that McCain might represent somebody that I could say, look, I'm not there with you on everything. I'm not even there with you on some important things, but I am with some other issues that are important to me, you know? Yeah. And it didn't turn out that way. It didn't. And one of the things I will note from McCain running was a moment that is being played on repeat now

on Facebook. You can find it everywhere. There's tons of videos of this. And there's two different instances where people in town halls while he was running said, I don't like Obama. He's a Muslim, or I don't trust him. He's a terrorist. You know, they said some horrible shit. I remember that. And he took the mic back and his comment was, look, he's a good man. Right. We just disagree on some fundamental issues. But don't be afraid of him being your president, basically.

Like, don't be afraid if he gets in charge. Like, you don't need to do that. And politically now, that would not be the thing that someone would say. You don't think that Trump given the same opportunity. 10 years means a lot, Tom, in the specially in political discourse

in this country, because you look at that and you're just like, oh, we were wide idealists back then. Do they know that? Like you, I will say this about unabashedly about McCain, and I disagreed with him

on so many things, but he was always a man who approached politics with a level of civility and respect. Like,

he didn't do any of this bombastic, even when he was, even when you and I were, like, hard against him during the presidential campaign when he swung hard,

right, when he, like, appointed Sarah Palin as vice president. That is pretty negative, though. I mean, I will say, hard against him during the presidential campaign when he swung hard right when he like appointed uh sarah palin that is pretty negative though i mean i will say that's a massive negative but he wasn't he was still civil yeah and respectful he did not engage in the fear-based bombastic bullshit the fear-based stuff yeah for sure that that i think has really come to make politics right now so unpalatable to follow. Yeah. Well, I want to talk about a lot of these things. I'm going to really skim a lot of these

things that were his political policies to make sure that we could sort of get through most of them. He was against publicly funded health care and universal health care. He favored tax credits instead. He voted in favor of a proceeding with a motion to debate health care legislation, but subsequently voted against a bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act without a replacement, which, again, is sort of what he was running on in 2008. Right. Shifted a little bit in 2017, voted against the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, and then also voted against the repeal, twice against the repeal of the ACA. And I think his position, as I recall it, wasn't that he didn't want to repeal it. He didn't want to repeal it without a replacement.

Without a replacement. Because he recognized, you know, the value that it had to so many millions of Americans. Like, you can't just leave them high and fucking dry. But he would, but if he had a plan, he would have. Yeah, yeah. Like, if there was a plan to let him off easy, he probably would have done something. So, he was against network neutrality,

unless evidence of abuse exists, is what he said. God, it's so stupid. Which is stupid. He said, when you control the, in 2007, he said, when you control the pipe, you should be able to profit from your investment. By the way, McCain received $890,000 in campaign contributions over his career from

companies opposed to net neutrality. Yeah, let's wait and make sure that there's a problem, and then solve it after people are already injured. Yeah, whatever you do, don't introduce something that people can abuse and try to legislate around that.

Maybe foresee a few problems ahead of time. No, don't do that. Wait until there's an actual problem. Like, Jesus. Well, companies don't have any record of abusing consumers. So that's nice. Certainly like Verizon would never throttle data to firefighters, for example. Come on. don't be ridiculous

I mean like there's not any history of that happening constantly because there's literally a financial requirement to do it whenever possible no kidding he was for Native American affairs and there's a bunch of things in here that he sort of introduced and and pushed forward

there was a lot of you know he wanted to make he was a big supporter of Native Americans. And that came through in a lot of the policies and the bills he introduced. He had a lot, I didn't list them all because there's a huge foreign policy portion of the Wikipedia article that talks about this. And he had a lot of hawkish policies.

Like his policies were very hawkish. It's not that there aren't a lot of Democrats with hawkish policies too, but I disagreed with a lot of these hawkish policies. We'll get into a couple specifically with Iraq, but you know, there were a lot of hawkish policies. Did you find that surprising or not surprising given his, his war record? You know, I don't find he's, we're going to talk about later, but I don't find the torture thing surprising, but I do kind of find the, the, the hawkish policies. And, you know, talk about Israel, like he was very pro And, you know, talk about Israel. Like, he was very pro-Israel.

Right. You know, those sorts of things. Whatever Israel wanted to do, he basically supported it. Yeah, I'm of two minds on that. I always wonder if, like, if fighting in a war means that you have to sort of believe in the value of armed conflict. Otherwise, that portion of your life would then be meaningless, right? And I can see it the other way too, like coming out of that and being like, man, that sucked and nobody should have to do that.

But I can see the psychological angle from both sides. I'm just curious. Yeah. In 2007, he said he would immediately close Guantanamo Bay and move all prisoners to Fort Leavenworth and basically expedite their judicial proceedings in their cases.

And he voted against restoring habeas corpus to Tatanese in 2007. Those two policies seem at odds with each other, right? They do, don't they? Yeah. How are you going to expedite judicial proceedings if they don't have judicial rights? I don't know. There's a lot of this stuff. And we talked about this before we started recording.

It seems like, you know, it's, you know, you look at some of these policies and they seem like they fly in the face of the other one. And I understand that, that voting on legislation isn't easy. There's a lot of things that are involved in these things so that it might not, it's probably not just a bill that says, let's do the habeas corpus thing. It's habeas corpus. And we'd like to have this land in Montana do this thing. And you know what I mean? Like there's always, it's always smashed together. So it's hard to decide that was that the main deciding factor in that bill? I don't know, but there's a lot of stuff that feels like it just sort of flies in the face of the other thing that he did. Yeah. And I think that's why like over his career, he's often been referred to as a maverick. Yeah.

And it's like, we talked earlier, like, I wonder if he was to as a maverick. Yeah. And it's like, we talked earlier, like, I wonder if he was less of a maverick and more of somebody who just read the wind very carefully. And if that's the case, then that to me says you weren't voting on your principles. You were voting on what was politically, you know,

gainful. You know, can I ask you about that? Like, is his job to vote on his principles or is his job to represent the principles of his constituency? It depends. I mean, I guess it depends on how he runs and how he sells it to the people.

Because if he sells, I'm voting for what I think is right and the people vote him in, then I think that if he said that out loud, then you vote on what you think is right. But if you're saying, I represent you and this is what I want, I'm going to vote for you. And if you're selling that, then I think you need to follow that. Because I is what I want. I'm going to vote for you. And if you're selling that, then I think you need to follow that. Because I always wonder about that. And I think there's different political views that are equally valid about that. But I always wonder, if I as a candidate, do I represent you in the sense that I show up and I am there to be representative of that constituency? Or does the constituency choose somebody and say, this person most represents us?

I think that's how you sell it. There's an order of operations that I think is interesting in terms of how we look at a candidate and how we look at what a candidate's responsibilities are. Yeah, and I think it's how they sell it. I think it's how they sell it to you. So if they're standing in front of you saying, I'm going to go there and vote my conscience, they're saying me.

They're saying me. My conscience is now representative of your collective conscience. I'm saying if you think I'm a good principled person, you will send me to Congress and I will vote how I think as a good principled person. But if you say, I'm going to vote for you, I'm out there fighting for you. Well, then you've got to listen to your constituencies and you've got to sort of have your finger on the pulse of what they think. So I don't know. Which do you want? Do you want in a candidate? Because I know which one I want.

I just think that the bureaucracy of the second one seems a little difficult. Yeah. I think it's hard to engage a whole group of people like that. My feeling is one is lying. Yeah.

And one can be honest. Like you could elect me and say, Tom, you are, oh God, I hope this never happens. You are most like us. Go represent us. You, but I don't think I could say like, I am here and I'm this sort of conduit or blank slate through which the constituencies greater ideas pass through. Yeah.

That would be, that's fucking government by ultimate committee. And that'd be just a fucking nightmare. You get it wrong every time. And there's no real, there's no real way to get that group of people. I don't think to, to, you know,

really pull them and really figure out what they want and have your finger on the pulse constantly. But, and you know, no matter what, no matter where you come from, there's going to be Democrats and Republicans where you, you are.

So are you listening to the Democrats too? Probably not. You know what I mean? Like run matter where you come from, there's going to be Democrats and Republicans where you are. So are you listening to the Democrats too? Probably not. You know what I mean? You're like, run out the door, like, hold on, I gotta ask the guys what they think.

I gotta tell them. Hey, everybody! What do I vote on this day? Yeah. In 2007, voted against waterboarding, basically said waterboarding was, should,

it was, it's not a complicated procedure, it's torture. And he also supported the 2000 invasion of Iraq, 2003 invasion of Iraq. But in his book later said, the principal reason for invading Iraq that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction was wrong. The war with its cost in lives and treasure and security can't be judged as anything other than a mistake, a very serious one, and I have to accept my share of the blame for it.

Fucking kudos for that, right? I mean, admittedly, that's somebody who's saying, I fucked up. Yeah. I'll own that shit. I still, you know what's amazing is that we live in a world where we went to war with a country on accident. Yeah. Not on accident. But we went to war with a country on accident? Yeah. Not on accident, but we went

to war with a country on false pretext. A total handful. Absolutely. And like that somehow is not even a scandal. Yeah. We all just like, oh, that's a whoopsie war. We got into another whoopsie doodle war. All I need to do is write a chapter in my book saying whoopsie

doodle. Right. Totally exonerated. Yeah. There's a,000 dead civilians. And you're just like, yeah, but I said I was really sorry. I'm really sorry. And I will pay to have a guy go into each tombstone and write whoopsie doodle. So I'm just constantly amazed that that's not a bigger deal. Where you're not just like, all of you are fired indefinitely. Yeah.

Yeah. You know, like if we invaded Germany on accident. Right? You're laughing differently. Because like. Nine! Right? But it's like, because we invaded a non-Western European country on accident.

It's true. We can all look around and laugh. Oh, man. Yeah, right. Whatever. Mistakes happen. Am I right? The boats just show up in Manchester,

England. They're like running around the streets. Take it over. I guess we shouldn't decide whether we go to war by who wins a game of flippy cup again. The dartboard method is right up. Oh God. Um,

in 2000, now we're going back a little bit. He sharply criticized leaders of the religious, religious right as agents Oh, God. In 2000, now we're going back a little bit, he sharply criticized leaders of the religious right as agents of intolerance. He basically singled out Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell as corrupting influences on religion and politics.

But in 2007, he said, I have to say in all candor that since the nation was founded primarily on Christian principles, personally, I prefer someone who has a grounding in my faith. And he clarified it later on saying, you know, basically, look, here's the thing. I kind of agree with that.

He did go back a little bit with that to say he'd vote for a Muslim if they thought they were the best candidate. But then again, later said, again, went back on that later on. So he, again, back and forth, right? Against the religious right in some ways, but then also saying it's a Christian nation, which is a religious right position. And then saying, well, I'd vote for a Muslim. And then later on going back again. So a lot of wishy-washy stuff when it comes to faith. And it's like, if you look at the timing, it's what was politically expedient at the time.

I think so. Like in 2000, it was like, yeah, well, my candidate is using. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Or my opponent rather. He was always for campaign finance reform. And so he did there throughout his career.

You can look, there's a ton of campaign finance reform stuff throughout his career. Kind of, you know, in the middle of the road with the environment, they gave him a stance. The National Environmental Scorecard gave him four out of seven environmental resolutions during his second session of the 109 Congress.

And the four resolutions dealt with issues of offshore drilling, an Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, low-income energy assistance, and environmental funding. He did not like renewable energy, voted against federal funds for it. He opposed the tax credits in 2001 and 2006. How backwards is that going to seem in 10 years? I know, right? Right? In like, in 10 or 15 years,

you'd be like, wait a minute, you voted against using sunlight for electricity? You voted against that. Like in 10 or 15 years when we're all like, that's fucking stupid, man. Like what? Like you didn't want to help us out with the free energy process that we get. Like it's fucking free

renewable energy. And he's like, but nothing's on fire from a coal plant. He also flipped a lot on nuclear. Like you went back and forth on nuclear power, initially opposing it and then going for it. Where did he end up? Do you know?

I think he was against renewable energy and I thought he was more for energy independence of the United States. Do you remember Sarah Palin, Drill Baby Drill? Oh, I remember. I think that can sort of tell you where he wound up. I'm glad we don't use solar energy to gain energy independence we would have to import our sunlight from other other areas you

got and and you know the middle east has a lot of sun they do they get most of it yeah and then so then we would just have to make all these deals with them and let them put the sun pipelines that we would have and they just have like like oh my god it's a sun spill they have that big sun pipeline and it's just one of those big fiber optics shooting the sun. It's just an enormous laser beam slicing everything in half. Um, he was anti-choice and that's just,

you can look through all of his record. Um, believe life began at the moment of conception. Embryo should be fully afforded human rights. You fucking idiots. What a fucking clown car that is.

He voted against abortion 115 out of 119 times in the Senate. The other four times. Those were sick days. Yeah, the other times they were pumping his brain full of chemicals to keep him alive. Yeah, and he also voted against sex education and federal funding of birth control. That's insane.

That's insane. And he also voted against legislation requiring insurance plans cover prescription drugs that also cover birth control. So, like, fucking anti-choices you can get. That dude is just like, yeah. How many choices do I get? You get no choices. Dude, just like, yeah. How many choices do I get? You get no choices. Just like, basically every woman should be pregnant. Once the sperm is in you, there's three people in this room.

That's it. That's how this is. We're actually counting the sperm in you as two. So, yeah. In support of the Patriot Act and voted to reauthorize the Patriot Act and extend their wire tap provision.

So it was anti-privacy. Yeah, anti-privacy. Announced in 2005 that he supported the inclusion of intelligent design teaching in schools. He said that I think there has to be, this is a quote, I think there has to be all points of view presented. All of them. But they have got to be thoroughly presented. Yeah, absolutely.

Thoroughly present that intelligent design. So biology class will be nothing but a series of alternatives that have been presented over the course of ages on ambiogenesis. And what you're going to have to do is you're going to have to, in order to tell it, you have to tell it to one person. They have to whisper it in the ear of the person next to them.

And the last person writes it down. And that's how we record it. Life began as purple monkey dishwasher. Okay. Wait, I think I may have... There might be a transcription error. He was for gun rights, but also was also pushed back a little.

So his record on gun rights was a little... There's a couple of things that I included here that talk about being pro-gun, but there was also some anti-gun stuff in there too. Not super anti-gun. Right. Not like crazy, like let's ban all the guns, but like, you know, a few things like,

hey, let's make background checks a little harder to get. Maybe we shouldn't have like fully automatic hand grenade shooters or whatever. Maybe when you graduate kindergarten, you shouldn't get a bazooka, you know? Yeah. McCain had promoted the legalization and

eventually the granting of citizenship to the estimated 12 to 20 million illegal immigrants in the United States. This was a long time ago during Reagan that he voted for that. And then in 2007, he conceded to Bill O'Reilly

that passage of amnesty will permanently change the ethnic makeup of the country. And he supported a path to citizenship for estimated 12 to 20 million immigrants in the coordination of the 13-year waiting program. He had a 2007, he voted in favor of declaring English as the official language of the United States government. English as the official language of the United States government. And he was one of the few people to sort of go after Trump about DACA when Trump was talking, basically saying we should deport the people for DACA. He says it's not conscionable to deport the dreamers is what he had to say. So he flipped a little back and forth. He didn't like the border wall. He was opposed, basically opposed to a lot of the shit that Trump wanted to do. He was just opposed to Trump. Yeah. I think like they did not, there was no love lost between those two.

Right. But he did have some positives on immigration, but also some negatives. Again, it's sort of a middle of the road, which seems very McCain-like. But I, you know, I will say like, I think the stances he took were the more important stances. Like if the, if the anti thing is, you know, like English is the official language of the United States, okay, if you're going to grant amnesty and ultimately citizenship to 12 to 20 million

people, then one has an effect on 12 to 20 million people, and the other one is already de facto how the country is set up. And if they have to, they'll just download Duolingo. Right. 2004, he voted against the federal is anyway. And yeah, and if they have to, they'll just download Duolingo. Right. They'll be good.

2004, he voted against the federal marriage amendment arguing that each state should be able to choose if they want same-sex marriage. He supported and failed 2006 Arizona initiative to ban same-sex marriage.

2006, he voted against the federal marriage amendment reiterating the issues that should be left up to the states, although in the state he was in, he wanted to ban it. So I don't know if that tells you about his pro-gay. Well, that's why he wanted to leave it up to the states, because he knew that many of the states would say no.

That's why states' rights people want states' rights over federal rights, because there's a recognition that, like, if it's left up to the states, that a good half of the states are going to say, like, yeah, no abortions here

and no same-sex marriage. You know, like, that's why. Yeah, that's exactly it. Or, you know, no, maybe there's abortions here, but there's no abortions for the five states around us. So, you know,

so they can get part of their way. You know what I mean? I'll get my way part of the time, you know, and I'll cut down some abortions, not all of them. If you were to give states rights the go-ahead on things like abortions

and same-sex marriage, the entire southeast of the United States. Yeah. 2008, he told the New York Times, this is a quote, I think that we've proven, proven, that both parents are important to the success of a family. So no, I don't believe in

gay adoption. There would be two parents. I don't understand. You didn't say a man and a woman parents. You said both parents. Right. You know, he later clarifies saying he does not support a federal ban on adoption by gay parents, but he has a stance that seems to suggest that. It seems like he doesn't like it. Right. He has a personal view versus

a policy. Yeah. When Trump was going after the transgender people in the military, one of the things he said was, he said, yet another example of why major policy announcements should be made via Twitter. But but he said, quote, there is no reason to force service members who are able to fight, train and deploy to leave the military regardless of their gender identity. So he did. He did focus on that. And on the last thing I want to talk about in 2008, he told Brett Havel of ABC News, quote, It's indisputable that autism is among the, on the rise amongst children. The question is what's causing it?

And we have to go back and forth. There's a strong evidence that indicates that it has to do with preservative in vaccines. So he didn't understand science or technology. I mean, I think that's true, right?

But with the net neutrality thing, I think that's obviously a shill to the corporations. He thought it was a big truck or whatever. Yeah. You've got a truck full of internet?

How many gigs can you put in my truck? So, Tom, casket half full, casket half empty. Where do you sit? I think you could do worse than John McCain. If you've got a Republican, I think you can do worse than John McCain. Absolutely can. I do think that he is a guy like any other career politician who spent 40 years or so in politics. That's a guy who read the wind and did what he needed to do to get

elected. There were times when I was like, yeah, good John McCain. There are times when he opposed major policies that the government and his party put forward. And I have to say, there's a part of me that's like, you know, how many guys really

do that as vocally? I don't always agree, but I like that at least he was willing to take a fucking stance now and again. Especially on important shit like Guantanamo Bay and torture. Immigration. I mean, he wanted a path to citizenship and amnesty for $12 to $20 million. He called the Dreamer

deporting the Dreamers unconscionable. He did not parse his language when he disagreed with something. Even when he was criticizing his own party. And that I admired about him. I really did. So I'm going to go cask for John McCain

overall for a Republican. Cask half full. I'm going to say casket four out of seven, just like his environmental policies. You know, I think it's, it's very easy to fall on one side. I hate the guy to fall on the other side. I love the guy, or at least we respect, we should respect the guy. I think it's okay to have a view of John McCain that is somewhere between sainthood and Satan,

right? It's okay to have that view. It's okay to have a nuanced view of a guy with a 40-year political career and not just be like, hey guys, stop posting John McCain, RIP, he was a jerkface, you know what I mean? There's a way to

have a nuanced opinion about John McCain even though I pretty much disagree with most of the things he did. But can we talk about that for a second? Because you and I have had conversations around this general topic before, like disagreeing with an important, with somebody on an important subject does not automatically mean that that person is a fucking monster. Right.

Right. Somebody like people are, are, are varied in the stances that they take. People change their minds on things. Absolutely. We are a multifaceted fucking creature, and this expectation of perfection will never be achieved. And it will certainly never be achieved in somebody that you're looking to in a leadership role who is subject to the whims of a constituency in order to put them in place. There are times, we just have to accept, I think, that the nature of politics means that there are times

people are going to vote against something that's a small evil in their mind in order to achieve something that's a greater good. There's a pragmatism here that if we pretend our principles trump every pragmatic event, you're never going to have people who accomplish shit. It's hard to get shit done in Washington. We see it time and time again.

The hardline ideologues on both sides can't get anything done. What's interesting, too, is that there seems to be a movement, especially I'm seeing it more so on the left than I am anywhere else, of you don't agree with me. Therefore, I want you out of my life forever. You just get thrown away. You get thrown away forever. You disagree on one thing and someone's like, oh, get out of here. I don't ever want to hear from you again. And you're just like, you know, it's okay to disagree on stuff. Disagreement is okay. It's okay to have a nuanced view of certain things on occasion.

That's not damaging. That's helpful to us to try to push ourselves. There's been times you and I have come into the studio, disagreed on something, talked about it, and found a middle ground between the two extremes that we had coming into the studio. Two very different stances. We didn't walk out hating each other. We said, oh, you know what? I can kind of see your point of view. And you said, oh, I can kind of see your point of view instead of just being like, well, great. I never want to talk to you. Can you imagine? Yeah. I mean, I don't have to, man. I can see it. I can see it all the time. So let me ask this, like, are there issues where we should draw a hard line? I think there are. I think you and I agree. There are some issues, right? Where I think you draw a hard line.

You say, if you cross this. But I think that like not every principle has to be a line in the sand. Yeah. Right? And I think that's where we're going with this. Like there has to be some issues where you say like,

look, I am strongly on one side. I know where I sit on this side, but I will not draw a line in the sand that means You're garbage If you're on the other side of this line Like Those throw away people Like when you're willing to like throw somebody away

Man there's a handful of things that you can't be wrong about Right There are a handful of things you cannot get wrong And then there's a lot more So like we have to have lines in the sand Right there are some lines that you don't... Absolutely, yeah. There's some you just don't compromise on.

Right. But those need to be really well thought out. Yeah. And those need to be like fewer rather than greater. Yeah. You are watching the beginning and the birth of the new world order. And you want to call me crazy? Go to hell. Call me crazy all you want. Okay. So this is a story about a YouTube conspiracy theorist. His name is Lionel Lebron.

Are you sure it's not LeBron? It might be. LeBron, like LeBron James. I don't know. Did President Trump call him stupid? Did you see that? I did. I did. Yeah. Yeah. We have a racist in chief. Did you see the polls, by the way, that came out that said, like, Trump supporters were polled and, like, if he used the N-word, like the Omarosa tape suggests that he may have,

the supporters don't care. Yeah. Of course. They're just like, like like if there was ever any need for proof that like, if the president is throwing around the Edmund, they're just like, oh my God, we know.

That's why we hired him. We're going to check and make sure like that the Grand Dragon, oh, did the Grand Dragon say a bad word to that black guy? We know. That's why we elected him Grand Dragon. That's so true and sad. You know what's

crazy is like, it's this stuff. It's all this stuff. If he says the N-word, they don't care. If he meets with this guy who thinks that top Democrats are part of a pedophile cult, he's like, whatever. And again, this is fueling that nutter

group of people, the Liz Croakins of the world, you know, who are holding up eight fingers. Surfing is dangerous, man. I will say somehow. Yeah. Fucking thoughts and prayers to Liz Croakins.

You know, thoughts and prayers. That's a dick move. I love prayers. That's a dick move. I love it. That is a dick move. No, but, you know, like it's the Liz Crokens of the world. We were like,

they're so insane that any of this, you know that they are sucking this down. That's why Trump did it. They're just like, oh my God. You know that's why Trump does this, right? I mean, like it's gotta be. Either that or he just, but he also has proven

that he has no way to vet individuals either. Right. So like, I have to think that like, if I'm Trump, I'm going to look at these Q people and be like, yeah, these guys are all mine.

Like I want all the, I get all the Q people and they're loud. Right. They're big squeaky wheels. And he doesn't even have to, because the Q people are fucking read into everything. People, he doesn't have to openly come out and do anything in support of the Q people.

Oh, that's all he has to do is do something that suggests support. Oh, my gosh. It's so easy for him. So this is this is a fucking slam dunk to solidify the fucking crazy base of kooks. Yeah. Like like if you think that the fucking Democrats run a pedophile cult, they can't get anything done. They would be found out in an hour. I know.

They can't get, like, just think about how incompetent the Democrats are. They can't even get on the same page. And then all one person has to do is leak that shit to the media. I mean, the Democrats are like the least competent group of people ever. I want to talk for a second because, you know, shifting gears a little bit from this and we don't have a story for it, but I want to talk a little bit about the primaries that just happened.

Did you see the person who won the primary down in Florida? Yeah. And you see the comment that his opponent made? His comment. You know, monkey this up. Here's the thing, Tom.

I don't know how often you use that in regular parlance, but I say monkey this thing up all the time. I just, oh gosh, I can't. this thing up all the time. Do you? Oh, gosh, I can't. I say it all the time to black people. I constantly say it. Who says monkey this up?

Who says that? Who says that? Seriously, man. Who says that? Nobody says it, number one. I mean, like, I get it, right? Seriously, man. Who says that? Nobody says it, number one. I mean, like, like I get it, right? I get it.

Look, we don't want Florida to have any black marks on its record. And if we do, we want to make sure we can stand our ground. You know, it's funny because like,

like I saw that and I know there are people who are like immediately like that's a racist dog whistle, you know, yada, yada, yada. And when he's saying it, you hear what he has to say. The sentence before that, he said articulate. So he made reference to an articulate black man. Which is an insult.

Which is a way to say you talk real white, young man. That's what that means, man. I know. It doesn't mean anything else. Look, everybody's like, what? I just said he was articulate. What? What?

What does that mean? I just said he was a big, strong Negro. What does that mean? You know, like there's context behind these words. These words mean something. And they have a history, right? They have a long history. That's exactly it.

They have a history. A history of hurting other people. a history of oppressing other people. That kind of comment is the same as that as when Trump, like a week or so, I can't even remember, like a week ago, referred to the Hispanic ICE agent was like he speaks English perfectly. Yeah. And it's like, well, if he had called if it was me, if I was the ICE agent, he would not call me up on stage and be like, that guy speaks English perfectly. So there's a reason you're making that comment about that guy. I've been described in a lot of different ways, and it's never been as articulate. And it's not because I'm not articulate.

I'm quite articulate. I get paid for talking to people. It's a whole thing for me. But I'm never introduced as an articulate person. Yeah. Like it's a whole thing for me, but I'm never introduced as an articulate person. Yeah. Right. The assumption is if I'm running for fucking governor

that I am articulate. Well, the assumption is if you're black, that you're not too. Right. That's the assumption. That's the thing. It's only worth calling out

if it's exceptional. Yeah. Right. Yeah. It'd be like if he was like, well, and here's our other, and you know, he can swim.

Yeah. Did you guys know he can swim and he's got good credit? Yeah. Oh my God. on time oh who would have thought he's married to his person who had his child you know like like there's so many crappy shitty assumptions that you make right and and the fact is is i i heard this guy then the very that what i loved about his response to that was where he just was like yeah yeah, we're just going to rise above that shit. We're just going to rise above that. He can say

what he wants and do what he wants. I'm not interested. I love this guy. I watched a few videos about this guy. I love this guy. I want to move to Florida just to live in the penis of Illinois so I could vote for this guy's long black cock.

You want answers? I think I black cock. You want answers? I think I'm entitled. You want answers? I want the truth. You can't handle the truth. This is from Vanity Fair. Charged with fraud, Duncan Hunter throws his wife under the bus,

almost literally. So if she would have been less damaged, had been run over by his campaign, but man, this is like a guy who's like in good times and also in good times. Yeah, exactly. It's like,

well, how about we put a scapegoat clause in this marriage contract? Uh-huh. Right. So, uh, for those who didn't follow, Duncan Hunter is a Republican congressperson out of California

who just stole a lot of money. He just was like, I stole all my campaign money! And then when he got caught... But he got caught. The very best part of this, though, the day his shit gets announced is the same day as the Manafort thing comes in and the Cohen

flip. Oh, I know. So he was like, it didn't even happen. Yeah. Nobody even, this is the one news that nobody ever heard about because it's, it's like basically happened on nine 11. I love the idea that like somebody on nine 11 was like, well,

that would have been a big deal. Well, there's also somebody on nine 11 to be like, these are our wedding photos. How often have you like, I mean, I know it was like a Tuesday or whatever, but like it was,

I don't know what day a week, but it was like a weekday. I know that's somebody's anniversary, but it could be somebody's anniversary. People get married during the week. Yeah. All right. So he stole,

he just, just stole a lot of money. Like, this is what he did. He just stole like, like thousands and thousands of dollars. My favorite part of this is he had overdraft

fees that were $37,000. I'll tell you why I found out why that was. They were living well above their means and constantly overdrawing their bank account and they kept having to pay these fees and they were dipping in the campaign

money for it. They spent $250 on an airplane ticket for their pet. Like, on campaign money. Like, $14,000 for a family vacation to Italy. They probably paid for somebody's braces or something. The kid's braces.

And then this guy is just like, he's like's like yeah i just gave the receipts to her i had her do shit whatever yeah i he blames his wife saying well she handled all the finances what did i i don't know how anybody else runs their household yeah but there's no world where i don't know if i can afford a $14,000 vacation. It's so funny. His wife had a six-figure job from the campaign. That's what's so funny.

She was the accountant or whatever, and she was getting paid by the campaign like a six-figure salary. To steal money. To take money from me. This is a job I can do from home. Some of the things I'm just like, it's not that much money. I'm just like, the $32 Uber much money. I'm just like the $32 Uber ride.

I don't care about that. Who cares? Stop even looking at that shit. Cecil, never look at the $32 Uber ride I took off the show. Because you know what, man? I probably took a $32 Uber ride on the show. Yeah, like who cares about the little stuff? But it's the $14,000 vacation.

But it adds up, man. The amount of money that they wound up taking. So it doesn't say in the article what it all adds up to, but it says here, yeah, she was given a six figure salary to perform dubious responsibilities and access their credit cards. And it says like, yeah, she probably spent a significant amount of this money, but it's like, it's your fucking wife. Yeah. Like you can't plead ignorance. Like, well, I don't know.

I just thought we were going to Italy, even though there's no money in our checking account. I know, right? It's like, what? Like at a certain point, would you just be like, honey, where did all this money come from? You go to the ATM and it's like, no, no, no. You go to the ATM and it won't spit your card back out. It's just like, we're done here. It's like, I'm going to get 20 bucks for lunch.

I can't. You know, I'll get 20 bucks for Venice. I'm like, what? The fuck? But this is one of those things that like, it was totally missed and all that stuff. Yeah. And this, it came out too recently that this was one of the first guys

to support Trump, by the way. It was just really funny. All the best guys. I got all the best guys on my team. This has nothing to do. I don't know.

It's not a Trump story. It has nothing to do, but it's just funny that this Republican is just like, huh, how much money is in my bank account?

I guess I'll plead ignorance. I don't even know why you'd buy a seat for your pet. You can just put them in the overhead. You can just, yeah, they'll be fine. The best part is you get a new pet when you'd buy a seat for your pet. You can just put them in the overhead. You can just, yeah, they'll be fine.

The best part is you get a new pet. And then you put that one in the overhead and you buy a new one when you come home. Yeah. It's like a pillow pet, except for you just, you smother them with the pillow. That's how it,

that's how it works. So we'd like to thank our patrons. We'd like to thank all our patrons. We'd like to thank our most recent patrons, Byron, Bovril, Cheapskate Shit Patron, Jesus, Jonathan, Kristen, Stephen, and Chris. Thanks so much for your generous donations. We really do appreciate it.

We want to, we're not going to read any email this week. We wound up not getting a ton of email. So we're going to save the emails that we got for next time. We're also going to discontinue Call to Prayer until next Ramadan. So save your calls to prayer until

next Ramadan. So should they maybe fast on it? Send them prayer until next Ramadan. So should they maybe fast on it? Send them quickly. At Ramadan. Yeah, so we're looking forward to doing that. But we're going to reinstitute it. Hopefully, some member of our audience will remind us that such a thing is happening because I will never know when Ramadan happens.

Mark your Ramadanians. But we will start it up. Hopefully we'll start receiving the calls to prayer. We'll play them throughout Ramadan and then we'll stop. And that's when we're going to do it annually from now on during Ramadan. We want to thank David Packman for joining us today. David was

a very smart guy. A lot of fun to talk to. You can check out all his stuff at davidpackman.com. We'll put a link on this week's show notes for it. You can check out all his social media and all the YouTube and podcast stuff that he does. Really great guest and a lot of fun to talk to. So that's going to wrap it up for this week.

We're going to leave you like we always do with the Skeptic's Creed. Credulity is not a virtue. It's fortune cookie cutter, mommy issue, hypno-Babylon bullshit. Couched in scientician, double bubble,

toil and trouble, pseudo-quasi-alternative, acupunctuating, pressurized, stereogram, pyramidal, free energy, healing,

water, downward spiral, brain dead pan, sales pitch, late night info-docutainment leo pisces cancer cures detox reflex foot massage death and towers tarot cards psychic healing crystal balls bigfoot yeti aliens churches mosques and synagogues temples dragons giant worms at, dolphins, truthers, birthers, witches, wizards, vaccine nuts, shaman healers, evangelists, conspiracy, double speak, stigmata, nonsense.

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