The David Pakman Show - 10/11/23: Israel/Hamas update, more George Santos indictment, Fox turns on RFK Jr

Episode Date: October 11, 2023

-- On the Show: -- Steven Levitsky, Professor of Government at Harvard University and author of the book "Tyranny of the Minority: Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point," joins David to discuss democracy, his book, and much more. Get the book: https://amzn.to/3RUdFuf -- Hamas has reportedly murdered more than 40 babies, including beheading some, in the attack on Israel -- Hamas is holding American citizens hostage, and President Joe Biden issues a statement -- Fox News propagandist Sean Hannity ambushes Robert F. Kennedy Jr on the basis of his new independent candidacy for President, which might hurt Donald Trump's candidacy -- The Daily Wire's Matt Walsh appears confused about how sexual orientation works in his latest homophobic statement -- Republican Congressman George Santos runs away from reporters asking about his latest criminal indictments -- Failed former President Donald Trump endorses Kari Lake for Senate in a video that is mostly about Trump himself -- Court documents show that Donald Trump knew his triplex was not 30,000 square feet despite claiming that it is -- Voicemail caller delivers overt antisemitism against David -- On the Bonus Show: Jared Kushner's Middle East actions under spotlight, White House and lawmakers weigh linking Ukraine and Israel aid, Gavin Newsom vetoes bill allowing Amsterdam-style cannabis cafes in California, much more... 🔊 Babbel: Get 55% off your subscription at https://babbel.com/pakman 🛡️ MonoDefense keeps you safe online! Get 30% off at https://monodefense.com/pakman 👨 Fix Your Lid: Get 25% off with code PAKMAN at https://fixyourlid.com 😁 Zippix Toothpicks: Code PAKMAN10 saves you 10% at https://zippixtoothpicks.com 💸 Qube Money: Try it for 2 months totally FREE at https://davidpakman.com/money 🖥️ UPLIFT Desk: Get 5% OFF with code PAKMAN at https://upliftdesk.com/pakman -- Become a Supporter: http://www.davidpakman.com/membership -- Subscribe on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/thedavidpakmanshow -- Subscribe to Pakman Live: https://www.youtube.com/pakmanlive -- Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/davidpakmanshow -- Like us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/davidpakmanshow -- Leave us a message at The David Pakman Show Voicemail Line (219)-2DAVIDP

. We start today with truly horrifying headlines from Israel and from the Gaza Strip. I did get actually disproportionately positive reaction yesterday to my assessment of what is going on there with the Hamas terrorist attack. Of course, some deranged reactions, which maybe we'll talk about later, but overwhelmingly a reaction that was, hey, it's a good thing that you're not jumping into any of these sort of extreme reactions that we are seeing. Unfortunately, the headlines coming out of the region are some of the most extreme that we have ever seen in terms of the reality. The the Jewish Chronicle. I mean, it's this is almost beyond

belief. It has been determined that Hamas terrorists murdered 40 babies, including beheadings. How what is there to say about such a headline? This is from a kibbutz reportedly with a population of just under 800, 40 babies murdered. Is that the entire infant population of that town, of that kibbutz? It's almost beyond words, really. We have a report from I-24. There's a lot of sort of presented without comment here, because what comment could anyone even make? David, it's hard to even explain exactly just the mass casualties that happened right here. In fact, the Israeli military says they still don't have a clear number.

But I'm talking to some of the soldiers and they say what they've witnessed as they've been walking through these different houses, these different communities, babies, their heads cut off. That's what they said, gunned down families completely gunned down in their beds. You can see some of these soldiers right now comforting each other. Many of them reserves who jumped into action, leaving their own families behind as well, not knowing the sheer horror that they were about to come to. They say they've never experienced anything like this. This is nothing that anyone could have even imagined when you're walking through here.

Baby cribs thrown to the side. And as usual, you have the usual folks saying these are just claims. There is no evidence of these claims. Of course, you can find the videos which we are not going to be playing here. And to be clear, no shortage of horrific reports from Gaza either. And reports of babies, toddlers rescued from rubble covered in soot and all of these things. There's the analysis of the Hamas terrorist act. And then there's the humanity and the reality of what it is to see a baby or a toddler of any kind under rubble or shot. Also reporting from I believe this is CNN's Nick Robertson about this. This is the saddest part of liberating and taking back control of this kibbutz, barely a mile, a kilometer from the border with Gaza. It's been a two day fight. There are bodies everywhere.

There were so many murdered members of this group, men, women, children, hands down, shot, executed, heads cut. The Israeli Defense Force are back in control. Speaker 1 Heads cut, as you can hear. And, you know, the unfortunate reality is that and this is where it becomes difficult to this is why sometimes I say, OK, we'll check in on this in two weeks because now you get the influx of people denying that this really happened. You know, it's like I-24 reports it. Oh, that's just some lady from Israel saying it. So we can't believe that. OK, well, we've got CNN. Well, CNN loves pushing this war.

All right. Well, CNN or CBS is also on the ground and is able to report the same thing. Oh, everybody's lying. No babies were really killed. And so that's where it's that's where I start to check out and go, all right, guys, you know, have fun, have at it. We'll check back in in two weeks. But of course, when when you do that, then people aren't informed about what's going on. So this is what is being reported there. There are also horrors, realities in Gaza. No matter what the medieval reality of what Hamas did is. And that is indeed the case. Nobody can be happy about denying just innocent people electricity or water or food or any

of it. So we are going to continue following all aspects of this. And what what is there to even be done? And now the headlines start coming in about Israel plans to target a secretive Hamas commander. And there are reports of discussions of tactical nukes. Iranian officials are threatening greater disaster if Israel continues responding. Reports of rockets from Syria risk spilling over to Egypt. Reports of rockets from Lebanon. Everything questioned, everything denied by someone rallies celebrating elements of this campuses plotting days of resistance while so-called pro-Israeli

people also come out. I mean, it's all the mess we've known for a long time. And also we can accurately say that this was a terrorist attack by Hamas and those unwilling to say that. And there are many who are unwilling to say that only make the problem worse. Let's now talk about what Joe Biden had to say and reports about American hostages. Joe Biden spoke yesterday about what is happening in Israel and Gaza and the terrorist attack by Hamas. Joe Biden indicating that it is known that American citizens are among the hostages currently held by Hamas. We're going to continue to stand united, supporting the people of Israel who are suffering unspeakable losses

and opposing the hatred and violence of terrorism. My team has been in near constant communication with our Israeli partners and partners all across the region and the world from the moment this crisis began. We're surging additional military assistance, including ammunition and interceptors to replenish Iron Dome. We're going to make sure that Israel does not run out of these critical assets to defend its cities and its citizens. My administration has consulted closely with Congress throughout this crisis. And when Congress returns, we're going to ask them

to take urgent action to fund the national security requirements of our critical partners. This is not about party or politics. This is about the security of our world, the security of the United States of America. We now know that American citizens are among those being held by Hamas. I've directed my team to share intelligence and deploy additional experts from across the United States government to consult with and advise Israeli counterparts on hostage recovery recovery efforts. Most everybody I'm hearing from understands the from the American perspective, the obvious desire to get these hostages back.

Anecdotally, I'm hearing from a few people who say the U.S. should not be in any way involved in that because it is a partisan involvement. I don't really understand that reaction, to be perfectly honest. Here's one more statement, a piece of the statement from Joe Biden. You know, there are moments in this life. I mean, this literally when the pure, unadulterated evil is unleashed on this world. The people of Israel live through one such moment this weekend. The bloody hands of the terrorist organization Hamas, a group who stated purpose for being

is to kill Jews. This was an act of sheer evil. More than 1000 civilians slaughtered, not just killed, slaughtered in Israel. Among them, at least 14 American citizens killed. So 14 Americans believed killed and then some number held hostage. Now, some will take issue. You can have a diverse set of opinions about the broader conflict, but Joe Biden is right that the goal of Hamas is to kill Jews. You look at the covenant of the Islamic resistance movement considered sort of the charter of Hamas, which says Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it. That's in the charter.

Article seven says the day of judgment will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews, killing the Jews when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. And so to me, the better argument here is not denying what is indeed the charter of Hamas, but pointing out and reminding that much of the so-called support Hamas even has in Gaza is because the people it's sort of like everybody votes for Kim Jong Un in North Korea. Right. Or all the women in Saudi Arabia, Arabia love the headscarf. It's the same sort of thing and a reminder that there is there are actual genuinely innocent

people. I don't mean people that sort of like tacitly like what Hamas is doing, but kind of I'm talking about there are genuinely innocent people and their opportunity for progress is being hurt by Hamas. I spoke to so many people and saw on social media over the last few days, people who before this happened had the priority of, hey, what can we do immediately as first priority to improve the conditions in Gaza who now are saying, OK, now first priority comes. Israel must be defended. And all of a sudden the priority shifts because of what Hamas did.

And it is bad for innocent civilian Palestinians in Gaza. That should be the takeaway. What Hamas does is bad for the Palestinian people. And, you know, we'll continue to follow it and continue to see what ultimately happens with these hostages, American and otherwise. Hey, there is a major 180 happening on Fox News with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Fox News is partially responsible for the monster it created. And by that, I mean. The idea that they have supported the concept of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s presidential primary run against Joe Biden, it was good for Fox News. It makes the Democratic Party seem chaotic. It probably helps Trump to some degree.

But now that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has announced, hey, you know what? I'm no longer running as a Democrat. Now I'm running as an independent. And now that we see the polling and we see, wait a second, right now, RFK Jr. support is about half Democrats, half Republicans. He seems to be at his ceiling with Democrats from now on. RFK is likely to gain support from Republicans who might vote Trump. Fox is scared. Fox is scared of the monster they've created. And so Sean Hannity interviewed RFK Jr. last night and he completely ambush ambushes him, sandbags him because the new line for Republicans and right wing media is RFK might reelect Biden and hurt Trump because MAGA people are like, hey, anti-vax, but maybe

less nuts than Trump. That sounds interesting. Check out the different tone. Before it was Sean Hannity supporting RFK and saying the Democratic Party doesn't want you. Will you consider running independent? You're doing this. That's good. You're doing that.

That's all of a sudden it's an ambush because Hannity realizes this guy might end up making Trump lose next November. You're pretty liberal. You know, you call for curbing, logging, oil drilling, fracking. You wanted to eliminate it. You called it a victory for democracy. You want to curb U.S. fossil fuel extraction. Keep it in the ground.

You once tweeted you want to ban on fossil fuel. So this is Hannity basically going through the credentials of RFK as a leftist, which is bad from Hannity's perspective, sort of saying to people considering RFK instead of Trump, this guy's a far left clown extraction of ban on fracking. You called the NRA once a terror group. You supported over the years, Democrats, Gore, Kerry, Obama, Hillary. You praised Bernie Sanders multiple times. You support affirmative action. So why is this party of yours? Why didn't they even want to allow you to compete? Because that's as pretty liberal of a record as anybody I know. You have a litany of talking points from statements I've made over 40 years. Some of them are stale. Some of them I never said.

But you know, what is your question? Why the Democratic Party? Why I'm not running in the Democratic Party. You know, why did they kick you out of life? So the point here for Hannity is to tie RFK Jr. to as many left wing positions as he can so that he will siphon voters from Biden and not from Trump. They loved him. They promoted him. They praised him when he was a useful chaos agent to try to delegitimize Joe Biden's reelection campaign. Now that it's a

different situation, they no longer like him. Now he's a far left guy. And remember yesterday, I put this up for you. RNC research immediately when RFK said I'm running independent, putting out this statement, talking about how he's just another far left Democrat. He's a liberal who wants to ban fossil fuels, raise taxes and pass a Green New Deal. They are attacking. They are attacking. And we do have some polling data. There's a couple of interesting we don't it's not great data yet, but what we see so far,

there's a signal poll which has Trump and Biden basically tied with Kennedy at 12 and that leaves nine percent unsure. And then we also have a Reuters Ipsos poll, which has Biden and Trump Trump's ahead by two, has Kennedy at 14. And that leaves a whopping 22 percent unsure. What's fascinating is if you look at the Reuters Ipsos poll with and without Kennedy, it's almost the same. It's only a two point difference. And a huge part of the electorate hasn't yet made up their mind. That's trouble for Republicans because I don't see any real way that from here on out, RFK gains with Democrats. Democrats who were into RFK have been into him for a while. Most are not. And so from here on out, the risk is Republicans

go to RFK, which would be very bad for Trump. We'll watch the evolution of Fox's reporting on RFK now that he represents a risk to the eventual Republican nominee. Make sure you're subscribed on YouTube. We'll take a quick break and be right back. subscribe to the David Pakman show at David Pakman dot com. with your mono defense account, you can get a whole suite of easy to use tools for every device you own. It comes with Passwarden, which is their highly acclaimed password manager. You can create unique passwords for all accounts and you don't have to worry about remembering them. Comes with DNS firewall, which will proactively block suspicious traffic from malicious websites and services to protect you from malware, phishing, other online dangers. And you'll also get smart DNS. Smart DNS lets you change your geographic location so you can access websites and content not normally available

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embroiled in this topic in a different way. This is 2023. And here is Matt Walsh from The Daily Wire saying, if you're born gay, that means there are gay babies. That's crazy, isn't it? And as usual, we ask ourselves, is he pretending to be confused because it's useful or is he genuinely this dumb? Let's see if we can figure it out. Well, there is no argument, really. I mean, these people are just shameless, soulless, hypocritical con artists who will say whatever they need to say in any given situation.

So you can't really use their own arguments against them, as I've just done, because their arguments are not real arguments. Nothing they say means anything. But to the extent that we can use a word like argument, the argument from the other side is that sexual orientation is immutable and unchangeable. We already talked about this yesterday. And first of all, there was never any reason to believe that. Okay, this idea that, you know, born gay or whatever. We know that a person's sexual preferences and tastes can absolutely be affected by all manner of things, trauma, abuse, exposure to pornography from a young age. Many things can impact a person's sexual preferences. I mean, this is not really disputed by any serious person.

There is no gay gene, no matter how hard they look for one. And the idea that people are born gay has always been incoherent because, you know, if people are born gay, like born gay, you're gay from birth. Yeah. Right. That's what that would mean. And that means that there are what homosexual infants out there. Again, no sane person thinks that. Now, Again, it's shocking that we're doing this in 2023. And unlike a lot of the trans issues that Walsh is similarly obsessed with on a lot of the questions he's talking about here, there's actually decades of research. We have a ton of information. So to quickly I don't want to focus on the whole gay gene thing, but to put to just show you how much of a red herring that is,

there are lots of believed genetic realities that aren't attributed to one gene. So it's not clear whether there is or is not what we might call genetic homosexuality. But in the same way that autism has not been tied to a specific gene, just because you don't have a gene you can point to doesn't mean that we're not talking about something that is immutable or that is there from birth. But this isn't even really the issue when when it's said that someone is born gay or born straight, the suggestion is that sexual orientation is just an intrinsic part of who you are from birth. It's not a choice you make. Most heterosexuals I know did not have a period where at the time that they became aware of attraction said, oh, all right, now I'm six.

I'm now going to choose. Do I want to be attracted to boys or do I want to be attracted to girls? I don't know of any heterosexual person that had that moment. And so why would it be any different with someone who is gay or who is a lesbian or who is bisexual, whether you're a gay 12 month old or a heterosexual 12 month old, it doesn't manifest until later in life. So, you know, most people describe knowing they were attracted to this or that later. Sometimes it's five or six, sometimes it's seven or eight or as you get closer and closer to puberty. So when we say born gay, we're not saying

there are gay 12 months old month olds attracted to whoever same sex babies or whatever the case may be. Now, he must know that. Right. Or is he is it that he assumes his followers are too stupid to know the difference or that he doesn't actually know that handedness might be an analogy. Some people are naturally right handed or left handed or ambidextrous. It's a predisposition that is believed to be there from birth. But often you don't know until 18 months, 24 months, et cetera. My daughter's eating everything with her left hand, fork, spoon, whatever you hand her a crayon always goes to the right hand. There's some predisposition there. It's been there since birth. everything with her left hand, fork, spoon, whatever you hand her a crayon always goes to the right hand.

There's some predisposition there. It's been there since birth. When will we see the full expression of her handedness? I don't know, probably somewhere between three and nine more months or something along those lines. Now, then he talks about abuse. This is another common thing. The idea that trauma or abuse.

Can make someone gay or straight or whatever. And the whole point of this is the homophobic idea that when you are damaged by abuse, you become gay and it's a defect. This is the homophobic idea that they love to push. There's this idea of the influence on actual sexual orientation, the best science we have right now is that trauma and abuse don't cause someone to be gay, lesbian, bisexual or something else. It's the idea that if you've experienced trauma or abuse, you might grapple with your sexual orientation or your identity in a different way because of societal or internalized feelings

that can be exacerbated by trauma. And that might make it difficult for people to come to terms with their sexual orientation, etc. But this idea that you have an incident of abuse and it makes you gay because it broke something has been pretty widely debunked. And remember, most LGBT people have experienced no particular trauma or abuse. And most people who have experienced trauma or abuse are heterosexual in line with the majority of the population. So I genuinely I thought at this point everybody kind of knew this stuff and we had moved on to disinformation about trans people and away from from homosexuality.

But I guess Matt Walsh still has profit to be made along these lines. George Santos has a new criminal indictment, new criminal indictment. U.S. Congressman Santos faces more campaign finance charges. He was hit yesterday with allegations of inflating campaign fundraising numbers, charging campaign contributor credit cards without their consent. This is a 23 count superseding indictment filed in federal court in New York, and he is charged with all sorts, all sorts of different crimes, including false reports, reports of loans, all sorts of different things.

Now, Santos, who's 35 years old, already pleaded not guilty to a 13 count indictment. And then here we have further charges, further charges. He will be back in court on October 27th. So if we have like kind of a contest here, Trump is still leading with ninety one felonies. But Santos might be leading with felonies per month. I think we'd have to run the numbers there. And remember, of course, that Santos has strong conservative principles and et cetera. He really could go to prison for this.

It seems far more likely that Santos actually ends up serving real prison time here than Trump. When Santos was confronted with this by a reporter, he said, I have no idea. I haven't heard of it. And he tried to get away from reporters. So you resign. What you guys are talking about. No, I will not excuse me.

So that was will you resign? And he says, what are you talking about? No, I will not. They said that you stole people's identities. Did you steal people's identities? Did you commit identity theft? I have no comment. I was in conference like everyone else without my phone. So I have nothing to talk about. I need to take a look. Did you commit? Why are you talking with the priest? I did not.

No. Are you okay, sir? I guess some guy fell. I don't even know. Did you charge your credit card? Are you using their credit cards to reward yourself? That's the allegation. I don't look at it. Why should you be able to vote? Why should you be able to vote? All right.

And then going into his office there, he didn't deny the identity theft that that seems for sure. So it's not going well for George Santos. My main priority is that this guy not get reelected in 2024. That's prior. And obviously, if he committed crimes for which he should spend time in prison, the justice system will adjudicate that. But the primary thing is this guy's got to be kicked out of Congress.

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spending from one big pot, not knowing where you are. The average cube user saves four hundred and forty dollars a month by eliminating mindless spending. You can try the cube premium or family plan free for two months at David Pakman dot com slash money. The link is in the podcast notes. Today, we're going to be speaking with Stephen Levitsky, professor of government and director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies and also co-author with Daniels, a blot of tyranny of the minority. Why American democracy reached the breaking point?

I really appreciate your time and having you on. And there's so many historical things we could talk about and present day things that we could talk about related to this topic. Maybe just to start and to contextualize the book a bit. What do you believe makes American democracy arguably fragile and maybe in an unprecedented way right now? A couple of things. First of all, I should point out that this nearly every social science theory that we have tells us that American democracy shouldn't be fragile. There are kind of two rock solid facts that social scientists have uncovered about

democracies. First of all, rich democracies never die. No democracy with a per capita GDP of more than about $17,000 in today's dollars has ever broken down. So the United States is four times wealthier than that. And secondly, old democracies never die. No democracy over the age of 50 has ever broken down. Even if we date the birth of U.S. democracy in 1965 with the Voting Rights Act, the U.S. is over 50. So it shouldn't be in trouble.

We argue there are two things going on. It's sort of a cocktail of two factors that are explosive. One is the radicalization of the Republican Party. The Republican Party, it's very, very unusual for parties that are 150 years old that have been competing in elections peacefully for well over a century, radicalized to the point where they're no longer committed to democratic rules of the game. But that unfortunately has happened in recent years. And secondly, a set of excessively counter-majoritarian institutions that allow partisan minorities to systematically thwart and even

at times govern over electoral majorities. And the combination of those two things, the a radicalized minority party and institutions that protect and empower that minority party is a particularly difficult combination. I want to talk about the term tyranny of the minority a little bit. I was it just so happened that recently I read one of Nassim Taleb's books in which he talks about an asymmetry that exists where in a maybe counterintuitive way, the minority controls the majority. He gives some kind of innocuous examples, like, for example, why is it that non GMO

has become such a thing when a statistically small percentage of people care about it? And it's because there's this asymmetry where if you want non GMO, you only eat the non GMO food. If you don't care about that, you'll also eat the non GMO food. Same thing applies to like why are soft drinks all kosher when only a third of one percent of the country keeps kosher? Well, because if you don't care about kosher, you'll have those very same drinks and it can kind of give us an idea of how a minority can end up becoming tyrannical for lack of

a better term, when it comes to this shift in the Republican Party that you're talking about. Are we seeing. A minority view within that party dominate for some reason, or is this actually becoming the predominant perspective on democracy and elections and so many other things within the party? That is a great question. First of all, I mean, you're absolutely right that there are many, many, many aspects of

our society, of our economy, of our culture, where small numbers, where the preferences of small numbers of people prevail. We're not making claims about that. There are lots of reasons for that. It may be inevitable. It may not be. We're simply looking at political institutions and the effects of political institutions. And the reason we use tyranny in the title, which is overstated, is to speak to the idea of tyranny of the majority, obviously, which was a concern of a number of political philosophers, including former President John Adams, and which it is believed that our Constitution was sort of founded, and it's only partly true, but founded in light of the fear of

tyranny of the majority. And the argument is that perversely, paradoxically, institutions founded with a fear of tyranny of the majority are actually empowering a partisan minority. We can get into that. But your question about the Republicans, I think it's fair to, you know, the data are both mixed and changing. So one can't make a really definitive statement. But I think it's fair to, you know, the data are both mixed and changing. So one can't make a really definitive statement. But I think it is probably fair to say that a minority of the Republican Party is controlling the fate of the party. It is a more ideologically committed minority.

It is an activist minority. And most importantly, it is a primary winning plurality. It's enough to win primaries. And that's what prevails. I have very mixed views of primaries. I like primaries. I vote in primaries. I recognize that they're more democratic than what we had before. But primaries are very double edged. Primaries have the potential to select for more extreme candidates that are favored by relatively small groups within parties. It's only a very small minority of Democrats and Republicans that vote in primaries. And this hasn't always

been the case, but in recent years, it's definitely been the case that the more sort of ethno-nationalist, radicalized, anti-system wing of the Republican Party, what we call MAGA, are much more likely to vote in primaries. And so a MAGA position, which is not a majority of the country, which may not be a majority in the Republican Party, is definitely enough to win primaries. And that's what counts. Can you talk a little bit about what you see as the role of populist rhetoric in this? And to contextualize this, as we talked about before we started the interview, I'm from Argentina and I followed Latin American politics relatively closely and have seen how populist rhetoric, which really is a rhetoric rather than a set of policy ideas.

You can use populist rhetoric and then say what Tucker Carlson says, which is protect yourself from brown people and BLM who will take your house. You can use populist rhetoric and have what might be considered more left wing ideas. But that rhetoric has been used in many parts of Latin America. It was heavily present in Trump's 2016 run. What is the role of that in getting us to where we are today? I agree. A pretty big role.

As you as you point out, it's very important to note that populism is a strategy. It's a rhetoric. It's not a set of policies. It's not an ideology. It can take left wing forms. It can take right wing forms. It can often take ambiguous forms in the case of Bukele in El Salvador. Right. In Latin America, it's more often, not always, but more often taking a more left wing form. In the West, in the industrialized West, it tends to take a more ethno-nationalist

right wing form. But what popul. But what populism has in common is it's an appeal against the entire elite. It's an anti-elite appeal. It tells voters that the entire political elite, all the parties, all the main politicians, the whole establishment is corrupt, is not thinking about you, the voter, is maybe conspiring against you, the people, towards some noxious end. And that, again, that can take a right-wing form, it can take a left-wing form. In the West, in recent years, it's generally taken a form of an appeal to the overstated a little bit, the average white guy, that the elite, and that includes everything from Harvard professors to journalists to Wall Street, including the political parties, the elite is conspiring to take the country away

from you. And that's a very powerful rhetoric, given the amount of social and cultural change that we've experienced in this country. A lot of MAGA voters feel like the country they grew up in is being taken away from them. And that's what populists are telling them. That's what Tucker Carlson tells them. That's what Trump tells them. So, yes, this is a populist appeal.

Just to add one more thing, populism, as you noted, has been around for a long time. But it's a lot easier today. It's easier today because the establishment doesn't have the tools that it used to have to fight back. Because of primaries, because of social media, because of the decline of traditional media, it's much easier to be a populist today, to reach voters with a populist message than it was in the middle of the 20th century. We are in a more democratic moment today than we were in the middle of the 20th century when the establishment, when three television stations and leaders of two parties and a handful of interest groups could basically veto politicians.

We're in a much more democratic moment today, but it's a moment that leaves us much more vulnerable to populist appeals. Donald Trump could not have done what he did in 2016 back in the early part of the 20th century or the middle part of the 20th century, only the early 21st century. Speaker 3 In in my forthcoming book, which I've been researching and writing, I kind of chart a path that starts, as I tell it, with the Civil Rights Act and opposition to the Civil Rights Act from what are today's Republicans charting it through Reagan, 94 and Gingrich, et cetera, et cetera. That gets us to where we are today with the Republican Party

that you describe historically. What are the sort of circumstances that tend to be in place when political parties turn against democracy? Are there common characteristics? I think so, but it's been it's hard to say. We we started writing our book and Chapter four of Tyranny of the Minority takes on this very question. It sounds like it makes a somewhat similar answer to you, which is we take up the question, why would a mainstream conservative party that had been competing peacefully in elections for decades and decades and decades suddenly go off the rails? Maybe not so suddenly, but go off the rails. It turns out it's a really rare thing. It's hard to find parties that are born Democratic that compete for decades as established mainstream political parties and then radicalize and turn against democracy.

Maybe Chilean conservatives in the 60s and 70s. We point to the example of the Thai Democratic Party in the early 21st century. We had to go as far as Southeast Asia to find a good comparison. Another good comparison, I think, is the Democratic Party in the U.S. South in Reconstruction. The response to Reconstruction was a sort of violent and authoritarian turn. But there are not many cases of it. So it's hard to generalize. Our argument, or my argument is, political parties are likely to accept the results of elections played by democratic rules under two conditions. One, they believe they'll be able to compete again in the future.

And two, they believe that losing will not bring catastrophic consequences. When political parties or their constituents feel like either they're not going to be able to win again, or maybe more importantly, that losing will bring catastrophe, that losing poses an existential threat, that's when parties are likely to turn against democracy. And so our view is that the Republican transformation is kind of a two-step process. In the late 20th century, the party, the Republicans were a minority party in the New Deal era, looking for ways to build up a majority legitimately. It's what parties do. In the middle of the civil rights movement, they realized that the South and that, broadly speaking, racially conservative white voters were available. As the Democratic Party slowly embraced civil

rights, especially in 64, 65, the Republicans saw a constituency that they could appeal to. Goldwater did it. Nixon did it. Reagan did it. He added evangelical Christians to the coalition. So whereas racially conservative voters used to be evenly distributed between the two parties, maybe slightly more concentrated in the Democratic Party, over the course of the 1960s, 70s, 80s, and 90s, Republican leaders shepherded racially conservative whites, especially in the South, from the Democratic Party into the Republican fold. So by the turn of the century, most racially conservative whites are now located in the Republican Party, particularly in the South. The South goes overwhelmingly, the white South goes from being overwhelmingly Democratic to being overwhelmingly Republican. And then in

the 21st century, we start to feel the effects of immigration and the civil rights revolution. And so we begin to really feel the effects of America's very long, slow transition to multiracial democracy. That racially conservative base radicalizes. But because of the work the party did in the 20th century, it these guys are all concentrated in the Republican Party, mostly concentrated in the Republican Party. Enough again to win primaries. Trump is the first guy who really, really grasped that. I know we only have a few minutes left.

I want to introduce one other thing at the risk of it being too simplistic. To some degree, this has happened in the Republican Party as they have essentially lost the country on policy. Not completely. But what I mean by that is if you look at public opinion on abortion, gay marriage, the US's role around the world, climate change, taxation, using taxes to reduce the wealth gap to some degree. Increasingly, it's become more and more difficult for Republicans to win, particularly now, Taxation, using taxes to reduce the wealth gap to some degree.

Increasingly, it's become more and more difficult for Republicans to win, particularly national races on those issues. And so an extraordinarily simplistic assessment would be now they just try to steal the elections because people aren't actually voting for them because they haven't. I mean, OK, they talk more about they don't talk that much about gay marriage anymore. They seem to have sort of accepted they've lost that one. To what degree is losing on policy responsible for what we're seeing? Arguments have been made by scholars smarter than I, like Jacob Hacker and Paul Pearson, that there's a relationship between losing in policy and this sort of populist rhetoric as an alternative way to

win or to mobilize, broadly speaking, working class whites. Yes. I think there's pretty good evidence that the move to movement starting really accelerating after 2010 to restrict access to the ballot box is a product of that, as well as extreme gerrymandering in some states. But stealing elections, I think, is, I mean, that was in many respects an invention of Trump. It has since diffused, and it's very, very difficult to put that back in the ballot. But I don't think there are any other major politicians, at least at the national level in the United States, who would have done what Trump did in 2020, which is just outright reject and try to overturn the results of an election. So the Republicans

were clearly playing dirty because they were having trouble winning. Interestingly, though, I mean, our institutions give them a crutch, right? The Republicans can win and exercise a lot of national power with 46, 47 percent of the national vote. The Electoral College, the Senate, the Supreme Court, which is a product of, at least indirectly, the Electoral College and the Senate, all give the Republican Party an enormous amount of power, even though they rarely win national majorities anymore. So even though Republicans have been tempted to play dirty because they can't win, they're actually able to win without winning, at least to a degree. They can they can double down on unpopular policies, be a 47 percent party and still win elections. Right. And we didn't even get to Electoral College, but we'll save that for a different conversation. The book is Tyranny of the Minority. Why American democracy reached the

breaking point. We've been speaking with one of the book's author, of the Minority. Why American democracy reached the breaking point. We've been speaking with one of the book's authors, Stephen Levitsky. Really appreciate your time and insights today. Thanks for having me, David. If you sit all day long while you work and you've never tried a desk that can transition between sitting and standing, it really is a game changer. I've had an uplift desk for a while. I use it every day

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as her various lawsuits and audits and investigations and whatever were done, she would get her seat as the rightful governor of Arizona. Obviously, that was never going to happen, but she was able to grift a whole bunch of money on the basis that it would. And now she has indeed announced she's running for Senate. She is immediately losing to Democratic Congressman Ruben Gallego, who's been a guest on this program, and I believe is the right choice in that election. Donald Trump had the.

Pleasure, the privilege of endorsing Carrie Lake. Here is Trump's endorsement video of Carrie Lake. The endorsement video is about two minutes long. It's almost all about Trump. This is how Trump endorses someone else by talking mostly about himself. Take a listen to this. Arizona. I love Arizona. It's great to be with you tonight and with your next United States Senator Carrie Lake. I wish I could be there with everyone, but I'm busy on the campaign trail and fighting off all of the bad people.

Right. Running for president. We're doing really well. We're leading every poll by a lot. We are running for president. I like that. In fact, record numbers. And when I'm back in the White House, I need strong fighters like Carrie in the Senate. She is a fighter. She's strong and she's good.

She's got a great heart, by the way. For four incredible years, my administration brought historic peace and prosperity. So notice how he slipped in the endorsement there. Kerry's got a great heart. OK. To America and in three awful years, Crooked Joe Biden has sent our nation on a tragedy to hell. He's the worst president we've ever had. He's the most corrupt president we've ever had. And he's the most incompetent president we've ever had. I'm running to reverse this decline and I'm winning because every day more and more Americans are waking up to what an utter disaster

the Democrats are for America in twenty twenty four. I will return to the White House and get our country back on track to undo the damage that Biden did. Remember, this is his endorsement of Carrie Lake that they played at her event. This was played on a big screen. This was going to be Trump is endorsing me. Check this out. He just talks about himself and the radical Democrats have done. Republicans must win and we must win very, very big. It's much harder for them to cheat if we do it like we should. If we swap them, we're going to swap them. Well, we get enough votes. They can't cheat because they can't cheat that badly. I will need a majority in the House and in the Senate. We have to have a big, strong majority to help me push our America. So now he's back to talking about Kerry Lake's race, but only in so far as it's useful to him

to have Republicans in the Senate. The first agenda through and to push it through really fast. That starts right here tonight by helping Carrie Lake win in Arizona. And she will win, too. She's an amazing woman. All right. So you get the point. Actually, let's hear a little bit more about what he says. She's an amazing woman by everybody.

Carrie is one of the toughest fighters in our movement, and I am proud to give her my complete and total endorsement for the United States Senate. She is very special with people like Kerry fighting for Arizona in the Senate with me in the White House. We will make America great again. There you go. All right. So in terms of the polling, we'll look at that. And this would be a really great race to get involved in and starting to think about 2024. The Hill reports. Gallego leads Lake and Cinema in an Arizona poll. This is a Democratic leaning poll. So we'll we'll get, I think, less partisan polling soon. But PPP finds 41 for Gallego, 36 for Lake and only 15 for cinema.

Now, cinema, if if cinema realizes she's dead in the water. She may bail and then it becomes a question of where does cinema support go? Recent estimates were that it's about 50 50 between Diego and Lake Cinema's support, that is. So that'll be the interesting question. We're going to watch that extraordinarily closely. But Carrie Lake is back in apparently realizing they're not going to anoint her governor of Arizona.

She'll be free to be senator if indeed she's able to win the next one. My prediction is Carrie Lake does not win that race. Court documents show that Donald Trump lied. What a surprise. Donald Trump claimed in documents that his triplex, some people call it a triplex apartment, was 30,000 square feet when in reality it was only a fraction of that. Take a look at this. Vanity Fair reports. Court documents show Trump knew his Manhattan triplex isn't actually 30000 feet.

The ex-president signed a document putting the square footage at 10996 square feet, despite later telling banks it was almost triple the size. More evidence of fraud. Of all the lies, New York Attorney General Letitia James has accused Trump of telling as part of an alleged scheme to overhaul, overvalue his assets for monetary gain. The most ridiculous one arguably concerns his penthouse at Trump Tower. Trump claimed in official bank statements the triplex is 30000 square feet. In reality, it is one third that size.

Clearly a very big difference. According to a document revealed by prosecutors Tuesday, Trump is fully aware of that. So it's, you know, no surprise. This is what's in the documents. Trump signed off on it. It's a discovery that shocks absolutely no one. We have more evidence that Trump lied again and lied on purpose and lied knowingly. Now this may shock you.

I also don't believe Trump is really six foot three and 215 pounds. And I believe Trump knows that he's not six foot three nor 215 pounds. So we have another one of these situations where the conspiracy around the fraud becomes clear. Trump knew he was lying about the size and thus on that size, the value of the apartment was based. His CFO apparently didn't think that this was a problem and a competent CFO would see that as a red flag right away and look at everything that's been declared on these applications for financing. But we now know that the CFO, Alan Weisselberg,

also appears to have been complicit in this fraud. And so what's going to be next? The facts don't care about your feelings. People coming out and saying, well, square footage is a matter of opinion. It felt like 30,000 square feet because of all of the gold plated gaudy stuff that was in the penthouse or something like that. And I actually this it's funny timing on this. As some of you know, I am working on my forthcoming nonfiction book for adults. This is not a kid's book for adults. Echo is the name of it.

And one of the chapters is on fact versus opinion. And I've distinguished before. One question is, what are the facts? Right. What? So the facts would be, is Trump's apartment 10,000 or 30,000 square feet? But the modern Republican Party and the MAGA right actually can't even get to a conversation about what are the facts because they don't even understand what are facts. And what I mean by that is there is now a

confusion or a distortion of what sort of statement qualifies as a fact. Chocolate ice cream is the best. That's a fact. Well, no, that's an opinion. Oh, well, here's a survey showing people like chocolate ice cream more than any other ice cream. So it's a fact. No, that's an appeal to popularity.

And it is still a statement of opinion. This is just an example. We have a situation right now where Republican elected officials are weaponizing their constituency's ignorance about what sorts of statements are facts versus opinion. I feel that the vaccine is dangerous. Oh, but we don't have evidence of that. No, but look at all these people who are worried about it. So therefore, it's dangerous. That's not the way facts actually work. So this is going to be a big topic in my forthcoming book, and we'll have plenty of time to talk about that. Let me finish writing the book first, please. But in all seriousness, progress update. I'm about 40,000 words in to what will be a roughly 75,000 page book. So we've passed

the 50 percent mark, which is really exciting. We have a voicemail number. That number is 2192 David P. All right. I'm going to play a voicemail for you. That's just straight up anti-Semitism. It's the continued claim that I won't talk about the Israeli Palestinian conflict because I'm a Zionist and I'm a bad person and I'm Jewish and all these different things. This is straight up anti-Semitism. Take a listen to this. Hey, David. So long time fan and. I really am at a point where I got to ask, why don't you ever cover Israeli, Palestinian issues, especially when things are a fever pitch? Well, the first thing is I cover it every single time and yet I still get these voicemails. What's the deal with that? Right now, you know, you just never really seem to show any care for it.

And it kind of seems like a bunch of bulls**t. You know, I mean, it's just like, you know, if you're going to be a f**king Zionist, you just f**king come out with it and say you support apartheid. But like, stop doing this like crypto de facto Zionist bullshit. Like it's. It's just it's disgusting. Like it really is. So yeah, like, dude, you. So personal attacks, ad hominem's lies, distortions, weaponization of insults.

You've really said it all, sir. You've really said it all. We have a really good bonus show for you today. We are going to talk about Jared Kushner's Middle East actions now under scrutiny after the terrorist attack in Israel. The White House and lawmakers are weighing linking funding for Ukraine and aid to Israel. Many people are not pleased with that. And California Governor Gavin Newsom has vetoed a bill allowing Amsterdam style cannabis cafes

in California. He's also vetoed a bill allowing psychedelic decriminalization of psychedelics. We will talk about all of it. You can like Newsom and disagree with some of his decisions, by the way. That's allowed. That's perfectly reasonable. All of those stories and more when producer Pat joins me on today's bonus show. Oh, the bonus show where you want to make money.

Everybody else that makes money to fund themselves is bad. Let's make some money on the bonus show. You can sign up at join Pacman dot com. You can use the coupon code four years for indictments to get a sizable discount off of the cost of a membership. It's really cheap either way. And we try to really stuff membership with a bunch of perks. So I will see you then. And otherwise, I will be back with a new show tomorrow. Beautiful Anonymous changes each week. It defies genres and expectations. For example,

our most recent episode, I talked to a woman who survived a murder attempt by her own son. But just the week before that, we just talked the whole time about Star Trek. We've had other recent episodes about sexting in languages that are not your first language or what it's like to get weight loss surgery. It's unpredictable. It's real. It's honest. It's raw. Get Beautiful Anonymous wherever you listen to podcasts.