The David Pakman Show - 10/17/23: Biden outraises Trump by almost 2x, judge gags Trump again

Episode Date: October 17, 2023

-- On the Show: -- Ken Burns, documentary filmmaker whose latest project "The American Buffalo," catalogs the animal's 10,000 history in the United States, and talks with David about his approach and method when producing documentaries -- A random 6-year-old boy has been murdered in Chicago because he is Muslim, and his mom was also injured -- Bloodthirsty Fox News host Jesse Watters gets shut down by a Navy Seal who explains to Jesse that his Palestinian deathwish for revenge is inappropriate -- President Joe Biden raises almost twice as much money as Donald Trump in the 3rd quarter of 2023 -- A New Hampshire woman absolutely crushes 2024 Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy at a town hall event -- Another judge, this time Tanya Chutkan, issues a gag order against Donald Trump -- A sweaty and slurring failed former President Donald Trump delivers a series of painful speeches in Adel and Clive, Iowa -- Donald Trump Jr struggles to speak after his father is gagged by a judge -- Voicemail caller has a fascinating voice -- On the Bonus Show: US government agrees to settlement with migrant families, Joe Biden joins Trump's Truth Social website, Mexican Sinaloa cartel tells members to stop making fentanyl under penalty of death, much more... 🔊 Babbel: Get 55% off your subscription at https://babbel.com/pakman 🖥️ UPLIFT Desk: Get 5% OFF with code PAKMAN at https://upliftdesk.com/pakman 👕 Laundry Sauce: Get 15% off with code PAKMAN at https://laundrysauce.com/pakman ☕ Beam melatonin hot cocoa: Get up to 40% OFF with code PAKMAN at https://shopbeam.com/pakman 🛌 Go to https://helixsleep.com/pakman & use code HELIXPARTNER20 for 20% OFF + 2 free pillows -- 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 a tragic and disturbing story of senseless violence, a hate crime. It is being considered a random six year old boy, random really in every way other than he was a Muslim boy in Chicago has been murdered by a man allegedly obsessed with the Hamas Israel conflict. The Associated Press reports Muslim boy killed and woman wounded in Illinois hate crime motivated by Israel Hamas war. An Illinois landlord accused of fatally stabbing a six year old Muslim boy and seriously wounding his mother has been charged with a hate crime after police and relatives said he singled out the victims because of their faith and as a response to the war between Israel and Hamas.

The article goes on to explain that authorities in cities and federally have been on high alert for violence driven by anti-Semitic or Islamophobic sentiments. FBI officials, Jewish and Muslim groups have reported an increase of hateful and threatening rhetoric. In the Chicago area case, officers found the 32 year old woman, the mother and the boy late Saturday morning in an area of Plainfield Township, 40 miles southwest of Chicago. Relatives and a Muslim civil liberties and advocacy group identified the slain boy as the wounded woman's son. The boy was pronounced dead at the hospital.

The woman had multiple stab wounds, is expected to survive. The autopsy on the child showed dozens of stabbings. The sheriff's statement says detectives were able to determine that both victims in this brutal attack were targeted by the suspect due to them being Muslim and the ongoing Middle Eastern conflict involving Hamas and the Israelis. The man suspected in the attack was found outside the home, sitting upright on the ground in the driveway with a cut on his forehead, charged with first degree murder, attempted first degree murder, two counts of hate crimes and aggravated battery with a deadly weapon. Joe Biden said that he is shocked and sickened and condemns the killing as any reasonable and

normal person would. There are often among some in my audience questions about the significance and the purpose of hate crimes and hate crime enhancements. Why is it that a crime is more serious if it is a so-called hate crime? Sometimes one of the criticisms of hate crime laws are that it is in a sense saying if you aren't targeted for a particular identity, then it's like less serious in some way. It devalues the attack on someone not targeted for their identity. I think that an example like this is really illustrative of what the whole point is. What are we talking about when we say a hate crime? When we say a hate crime, we are saying that it is actually an entire community that is, in a sense, being targeted. This was not a situation, as far as what we know,

where the individuals that were targeted, the boy that was killed and the woman that was injured, they weren't being targeted because of anything about themselves as individuals with regard to what they did, their relationship to the attacker or anything like that. They were targeted for reasons where other victims would have been just as good because they are Muslim, because of a religious identity. And so the reason why we can say without devaluing an attack on anybody, the reason we can say that there is an extra level of seriousness here is that it is, in a sense, an attack

on the entire Muslim community. And so the hate crime designation, these hate crime laws and enhancements do make sense when someone is targeted as as people have been in the United States for decades because they are gay, a gay bashing incident, regardless of the relationship between attacker and victim. It is, in a sense, an attack on all members of the LGBT community and I would argue on their allies as well. People like me. And so the victims, in a sense, those made to live in fear and terrorized by such an

attack go beyond just the individual victim themselves. So I don't have any problem with the hate crime legislation or enhancements. In some cases cases when the crime is so serious, it really doesn't make much of an operational difference when we're talking about something like murder. Absolutely disgusting incident, disgusting, senseless violence of the kind that achieves nothing. And it appears to be an individual who was extraordinarily radicalized by content that he was consuming. We'll learn where

we'll learn where, but obsessed reportedly with the Hamas Israel conflict. Bloodthirsty Fox News host Jesse Waters wanted revenge against Palestinians. Generally, It seems like he doesn't distinguish between Hamas and just random Gazans and a Navy SEAL appearing on Fox News shuts him down and says, no, no, no. Revenge is not the point here. This is really interesting to see. Jesse Waters invited a Navy SEAL onto his program yesterday, and he was gleefully talking about revenge. We're going to get revenge on random Palestinians. And the Navy SEAL corrects him and says we need to rescue hostages and we need to take out Hamas revenge. That's not the way we operate here. Take a listen to this and trying to slit someone's throat who's hiding behind a corner. Jonathan, tell me what it's gonna be like for these guys

to go into this area and extract revenge. What will it be like to get that bloodthirsty revenge when we go in there? Yeah, that's not actually at all what should happen here. Well, first of all, they revenge should be the last thing on their mind. The tactics of taking out Hamas should be the the main focus. Oh, well, it's the first thing on Jesse's mind. Revenge is the first thing on his mind. Maybe the only thing on and also rescuing these hostages. But here's one. There you go.

Clip from decoding Fox News. Revenge should be the last thing they think about. There's a really broad conversation here. That's an important one to have. I don't know that it's necessarily for this show. I don't know that it's the main conversation, but but there's a lot here to talk about war and conflict can simultaneously be. Tragic in every single way with regard to the loss of life and violence that they bring and also can conform to certain guidelines like it's not about personal scores to be settled or extracting revenge.

And the Jesse Waters perspective on this is not only dangerous, but it's also completely counterproductive because when we approach a conflict, especially when we're looking at one that's as historically and politically charged as the Israeli Palestinian conflict, it's particularly critical to differentiate between the actions of a militant group and the civilian population. Now, there are shades of gray in the sense that Hamas as an organization has objectives and strategies. They have tactics they're willing to employ, including brutalizing and killing children and random civilians, et cetera, holding hostages and all of it. You then have Palestinians at large,

innocent civilians who should not bear the brunt of collective punishment. And then you have the reality that some portion of Gazans support and love what Hamas is doing, even though they aren't taking action themselves. And people like Jesse Waters believe that they should be on the side of being fair game as combatants, even though by all reasonable assessments, they are not. It's heartening to see this Navy SEAL with his background and experience instantly recognize how wrong Jesse is and emphasize this is about who actually did the thing. It's Hamas and then the hostages. And that's an approach that's much more in line with international humanitarian laws and principles. In a way, it's kind of crazy to say these are the rules of war.

But at the same time, if we say who cares about that, then we are actually going down a path to the Jesse Waters extracting revenge ideology. And good for the Navy SEAL for for putting that forward. And listen, there is no you know. I know that there are people in my audience who seek or believe that they have found the ultimate truth about the Israeli Palestinian conflict fully contextualized. They believe that they've included all of the relevant context and excluded all of the irrelevant context. We have a situation here of decades of grievances upon grievances, mistrust, trauma on both sides. And when you see someone like Jesse Waters promote violence and the idea of extracting revenge, it moves us away from the direction we need to go.

Hamas moves us away. Benjamin Netanyahu moves us away. There's lots of factors moving us away. And Jesse Waters, bloodthirsty desire to see revenge extracted only does more of that. Joe Biden raised almost three times as much money as Donald Trump in the third quarter of this year. We are close enough to this election that these are not merely curiosities. When we look at these numbers, take a look at this. The New York Times report says Biden campaign raises seventy one point three million, far outpacing Trump and the Republican field. These are insane numbers. OK, Biden's election reelection campaign raised seventy one point three million alongside the DNC and a joint fundraising committee during the three month period ending at the end of September. That eclipses what the Republican rivals have amassed.

But it does fall short of where Trump was in fundraising at this point four years ago. The campaign said that the three fundraising vehicles now have over 90 million dollars in cash on hand. They didn't disclose how it's divided up among those three fundraising elements. Now, at this point in 2020, Trump had raised well, really, 2019, Trump had raised one hundred and twenty five million dollars in combination with the RNC. It is more than what Obama had raised at this point in 2012, which was 70 million. But the critical part, the critical part of this is how much more money this is than Donald Trump has raised. Trump's campaign reported it raised forty five million thirty seven million cash on

hand. DeSantis raised 15. Nikki Haley raised 11. Tim Scott had 11 million of cash on hand. These are absolutely crazy numbers. Now, what's the counterpoint to this? Because what we are trying to do is ask, can we see these numbers as a proxy to enthusiasm? One of the difficulties is Joe Biden is the presumptive Democratic nominee and Trump is just one candidate. You can kind of argue against both of those statements, though. You do have Marianne Williamson and you had RFK running against Biden in the Democratic primary.

They aren't particularly credible. They're strong candidates, however. On the other hand, on the Republican side, the argument that Trump is only one of many candidates. If you look at the polling, Trump, by all stretches of the imagination, is the presumptive Republican nominee unless something changes. So this is late enough in the game that Trump's lead is presumably presumptive and Biden is raising almost as much money as all of the Republican candidates combined. This is arguably a reasonable sign about the enthusiasm behind reelecting Joe Biden. And I know people will hear that and say, David, I don't know anyone who's enthusiastic about reelecting Joe Biden.

OK, they may not be enthusiastic about Joe Biden as an individual, but my expectation is especially if and when Donald Trump becomes the official Republican nominee, there is going to be major enthusiasm for making sure that it is Biden and not Trump. You can characterize it however you want. It's voting against Trump and not for Biden or whatever. I don't care what you call it. I believe that the selection of Trump as Republican nominee is going to fire up so many Democratic and potential Democratic voters that we could see turnout in 2024 like we've never seen before. If we all go out and vote,

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That's U.P.L.I.F.T. desk dot com slash Pacman. Then use the code Pacman for five percent off. The info is in the podcast notes. Our sponsor, Laundry Sauce, has created the world's best smelling laundry detergent in simple to use high performance pods that get the job done. I love the sense you've got your Australian sandalwood Egyptian rose. They've stripped away all the unnecessary ingredients and the artificial dyes, and they maximize the hardworking stain

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to fund themselves is bad. I concede that they are completely contrived awards that we created, but it is still an award winning show. And of course, the members only soundboard and so many other things. You can sign up in mere seconds with average tech skills. I believe it takes 45 seconds to get a membership. Tell me if I'm wrong at join Pacman dot com. Another judge has gagged Trump badly, choking him, and Trump immediately attacks the judge. Remember that the first gag order on Trump was from Judge Anger on. Trump is now gagging again, this time thanks to who? Thanks to Judge Chutkan. Judge Chutkan has issued a partial gag order. Trump does not have the right to say and do exactly what he

pleases, Judge Chutkan says, limiting what he can say about special counsel Jack Smith's federal prosecution into his alleged attempt to subvert the 2020 presidential election. This order restrict Trump's ability to publicly target court personnel, potential witnesses or the special counsel and his staff. The order did not impose restrictions on disparaging comments about Washington, D.C. Trump can say D.C. sucks. He's allowed to do that. And he's still allowed to make certain comments about the Justice Department at large.

The government said, don't let Trump trash D.C. and don't let Trump attack the government. The judge said, no, that he can do, but he can't go after court personnel, potential witnesses or the special counsel and his staff. Donald Trump giving multiple speeches yesterday in Iowa. We'll look at them in more detail later. But Trump wasted no time attacking the gag order at both of these speeches. Here's the first one in Clive, Iowa. A judge gave a gag order today. Gag order. Did you hear that on speech, which I believe is totally unconstitutional what she did. A judge gave a gag order. The judge doesn't like me too much. Her whole life is not liking me. These are attacks on the judge. This

is this is Trump attacking court personnel, arguably violating the gag order gag order. But she gave a gag order. You know what a gag order is? You can't speak badly about your opponent. But this is weaponry all being done because Joe Biden is losing the election and losing very, very badly to all of us. There's no evidence that any of that stuff is true. Trump then going from Clive, Iowa to again, I believe it's called Adele, Iowa, but maybe it's called AIDL and like AIDL vice. And Trump again bemoaning the gag order. But no, they put a gag order on me. And I'm not supposed to be talking about things that bad people do.

And so we'll be appealing very quickly. But, you know, people understand it. And normally, if you get indicted, if you're a politician, I've watched it for years. They get indicted and they walk to a microphone about four minutes later. Ladies and gentlemen, I will be leaving office to fight for my reputation and spend time with my family. I love my family so much, you know, that they're out there with me. I have a big platform so I can.

All right. So anyway, Trump immediately apparently violating the gag order, taking right away to his platform, Troth Central, engaging caps lock and posting, quote, will appeal the gag order ruling witch hunt and then also posting a terrible thing happened to democracy today. Gag order. Marjorie Taylor Greene also playing the First Amendment card with the gag order posting. I'm here at the federal courthouse in D.C. as a member of the Oversight Committee to see if Judge Chutkin is really going to destroy the First Amendment free speech rights of

former President Trump and leading candidate for president in twenty twenty four. Now a couple of different things. Unlike other elements that Trump said he would appeal in the past, you might remember when the when one judge set the trial date, Trump said he would appeal in the past. You might remember when the when one judge set the trial date, Trump said he would appeal it. There's really there's no process for that. There's no process for appealing a trial date. There is a process for appealing a gag order. So apparently he's going to be doing that. Now, let's address the First Amendment issue. The argument that Marjorie Trader Green and others are making is that by imposing a gag

order on Trump in this fashion, it is the government limiting what Trump can say. And therefore his freeze peach has been violated. His First Amendment rights have been violated. This is, of course, not true. Barring a criminal defendant from publicly criticizing court personnel, including prosecutor, judge, etc., is not unconstitutional cetera, is not unconstitutional. It is not unconstitutional. It is an incorrect legal analysis.

This guy, Mike Davis, also made it, saying, quote, Barring a criminal defendant from publicly criticizing the prosecutor and judge is clearly unconstitutional. Gagging a presidential candidate is what happens in third world Marxist hell holes. The D.C. Circuit must fix D.C. Obama Judge Tanya Chutkin's erroneous ruling. Courts can issue gag orders in certain circumstances. In particular, gag orders can be issued to protect the fairness of a trial, the rights of the defendant. It does not violate the First Amendment. Usually the orders prevent parties involved in the trial from speaking publicly

about elements of the case, including others involved in the trial, to ensure that you at least can get an unbiased jury. Now, whether you can get an unbiased jury in this case remains to be seen. But there is no violation of the First Amendment by issuing the gag order. In fact, if there's a criticism to be made of the judge or judges in general that have been dealing with Trump's criminal trials, it's that the gag orders have not come quickly enough, that they have not been broad enough, and that they have not been enforced seriously enough. Trump says he will appeal, we will see what the outcome is of that appeal. I am going to show you a video of a woman at Vivek Ramaswamy's New Hampshire town hall effectively ending his presidential campaign. I don't know that I have ever seen such a concise, brutal and pointed takedown of everything that a candidate stands for in 90 seconds.

Listen to this incredible video. Incredible video. Speaker 4 Mr. Ramazanami, thank you. You've expressed some illogical and dangerous positions just about everything under the sun. But I will only bring up a few points today. Speaker 1 Okay. Just be respectful of everyone.

But we'll go pick your favorite ones. Thank you. Just a few years ago, we all saw firsthand the disastrous results when a ruthless capitalist, a scam artist, a showman, and a liar with no public service experience became the president of the United States. We did. And yet we are here again.

My fellow New Hampshire residents are being manipulated by showmen and Trump wannabes to win our votes. Oh, my God. Mr. Ramaswamy, you may be a millionaire, and you may know how to avoid paying taxes by incorporating companies in Bermuda. But let's talk about your lack of job qualifications. You're not qualified to become the principal of my children's school of only 1,000 students. You're not qualified to be the select board of my town with a population of 16,000 people. Wow. And you're definitely not qualified to run for the highest office of our nation to govern

330 million Americans. Spewing nonsensical, fast-talking, empty words, interspersed with name-dropping Thomas Jefferson and George Washington should not be misconstrued as knowledgeable. We Americans should stop thinking that rich men who fund their campaigns and manipulate us into thinking that they are smart or savvy are qualified for the presidency, to receive the codes to launch nuclear weapons, and to become the commander-in-chief of our military forces. Wow. Yes, it's coming. Mr. Ramaswamy, if we American voters... Thank you. It's coming. We'll let her finish. We'll give her a chance to finish. Thank you.

Mr. Ramaswamy. Answer the question mark, though. Yes. Thank you. Yeah, yeah. Thank you. Thank you. You will. Yeah, yeah. If we American voters keep supporting self-promoting showmen who treat the U.S. presidency or vice presidency as an entry level position, then we, the American people, are to blame for the destruction of our democratic institutions. Please your thoughts. Thank you. Speaker 1 Oh, man.

I mean, this is really good. It's an extraordinarily concise and brutal breakdown of what Vivek's Raswamy's campaign is. And I think there's another element to it as well, which is not only is his campaign, all of the things that she said, showman bragging about, you know, his ability to make money in business and putting forth whacked ideas about young people shouldn't vote until they're 25. The entire thing. Not only is it all of that, it's also an incoherent campaign in the sense that he just goes around saying how great Trump is. But yet you should vote for him.

And the Republican voters are not buying it. And you can see that by the fact that Vivek Ramaswamy has fallen into fourth place and the supposed surge that he was undertaking is completely and totally dead in the water. Fantastic. It's it's not even really a question. It's really more of a statement. And then please give me your thoughts. Really well summarized by that woman and going viral, understandably, because it is just

such a cohesive and total takedown of the farcical nature of many of these right wingers who now anybody can just show up and go, I'm qualified to be president. Now, when you see that Trump became president and he was completely unqualified to be president, it's not wrong to think, hey, if Trump could do it, so could I. But it's sort of a problem. And it's still OK to say without being elitist, it's still okay to say it would be better to define what makes someone qualified to be president. Not everybody in the country is qualified to be president, and that's okay. That doesn't mean they don't deserve to have good lives or health care or

whatever. But we have to be able to say not everybody's qualified to be president. And Vivek Ramaswamy certainly is not. People in my audience who sometimes struggle with sleep, you know, you've got those habit forming prescription medications, which sometimes have side effects. You've got your herbal remedies that often do nothing. That's why the go to can be melatonin, which is clinically proven to work and without the side effects and the grogginess. Our sponsor beam makes delicious nighttime hot cocoa drinks called dream with melatonin to help you get to sleep. Melatonin can also help correct circadian rhythm disturbances to get your schedule back on track. Like, for example, if you have jet lag beams, dream hot cocoa with melatonin comes in great tasting flavors like mint chocolate chip, chocolate peanut butter, sea salt, caramel or caramel. Come on. No sugar added, sweetened with monk fruit, only 15 calories per serving. My favorite is cinnamon cocoa. I'll just be up front.

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on. I really appreciate this opportunity. Thank you, David. It's my pleasure. So to start with the Buffalo, I mean, how do you how do you choose what projects you want to explore in the level of depth that you explore them in these these works that you do? What's interesting about this and in general, what's your philosophy for choosing what to work on? Yeah, the glib answer is that the projects choose me. You know, there's thousands of ideas that you have in your head when it drops down to

your heart or your gut. You know, you want to do it. I've been thinking about this. The story of the buffalo has been in my gut for more than 30 years. We've done films on the out west, you know, called The West, that featured the buffalo. We did Lewis and Clark that featured the buffalo. We did much more in our national parks. But we wanted to do a standalone biography because we knew it would be a way to rearrange people's molecules to understand the particular relationship this animal Buffalo figure, not just in the subsistence of native tribes, but in their folkways, their life ways and their spiritual, in some cases

their their creation stories. And that's a central thing. And we wanted to instead of just paying lip service to other points of view, we wanted to actually center and privilege the Native American viewpoint. If you ask 50 different documentarians what sort of characteristics make for the most compelling documentary stories, very often it's you pick the right person or the right historical event. And in this particular case, we're not talking about a person or a historical event. We're talking about an animal. What are the characteristics about this story that you think make it as interesting as a person or a historical event? Speaker 3 it's such a fantastic question. This is an amazing animal, a magnificent beast, the largest land

mammal in North America. The events are many and they intersect with all sorts of aspects of American history and culture, good, bad, and indifferent. It is populated with lots of characters, Native American and white American and European, who figure prominently in the story, but we've centered it around the buffalo. So it isn't biology. There is essentially a natural history of the animal. It is ethnography. It is history. It is tragedy at the highest level. And that's what you look for in a story. I mean, I think we tend to today in a media culture, make everything binary. It's good or bad. It's young or old. It's straight, whatever it might be. In fact, what we understand from our own lives

is that everything is complicated. And that's what the neon sign in my editing room says. And so there's undertow, there's contradiction. And there's also progress. People grow in this film. T.R. doesn't grow far enough for me, but he goes from being just a killer of Buffalo and sort of pleased, sort of accepting that they'll go extinct doesn't grow far enough for me, but he goes from being just a killer of, of Buffalo and, and, and

sort of pleased, you know, sort of accepting that they'll go extinct because it'll handle the Indian problem and therefore make white civilization a better thing, right? There's other people who are into eugenics who are helping to save the Buffalo for all the wrong reasons, the nationalistic, the white supremacy. And then there are individuals who are, you know, like Charlie Goodnight in the panhandle of Texas, who is, you know, an Indian fighter and an Indian killer and a buffalo killer who sort of gets convinced by his wife to start a little herd in addition to his cattle. And then he befriends his old warrior friends and, I mean, old warrior enemies, and then makes this huge leap. And his

buffalo are helping to seed some of the stocks in the various reserves when Americans finally wake up and realize that they've spent the last century trying to eliminate the two symbols, which now have come to embody America, the native American and the buffalo, which are the two sides of the buffalo head nickel that came out in 1913. It's an it's a remarkable turnaround, but it's also kind of weird to begin to romanticize and fetishize something that you've just spent a century or more trying to get rid of. You mentioned the near extinction, and there are so many of these stories in the sort of modern climate change world in which we live.

And we talk about the background level of extinction and number of species, all these different things. When it comes to the buffalo, if I have my numbers right, beginning of the 19th century, roughly 30 million buffalo, end of the 19th century, fewer than a thousand buffalo. Are those the right numbers? And what is the story of that decline? Yeah. So, so you basically hit it, you know, we don't really know maybe pre-Columbian, uh, there's 60, maybe 70. We just have no way of knowing, uh, by the beginning of the 19th century, which is when Lewis and Clark begins exploring the great plains, the Buffalo have been shrunk to the great plains. They were in the east, fully in the east. And there are probably 30 or 35 million. By the mid-1880s, they can't find any. And there's less than a thousand in lottery and zoos or in private collections, maybe, you know, a couple hundred in Yellowstone, but under severe pressure from poachers. What happened was market, you know, whenever you commodify an animal, it's gone. And the, the, the, the slaughter of the Buffalo represents the largest killing destruction of

wildlife in the history of the world. Our, our on-camera scholar, Dan Flores says it's, it's spectacular. It's not just Buffalo, it's passenger pigeon is nearly beaver. It's elk. It's, it's all of this sort of stuff. But the near extinction of the buffalo is the symbol of the greatest wanton slaughter of wildlife in the history of the planet, and that's on us. And then all of a sudden, some people, for a variety of reasons and motives, as I suggested, begin to kind of claw it back from that. And I do agree that in some ways, this unbelievable tragedy in which the market pressures to create the, get the leather skins for the belts that ran the machines of the

industrial revolution after the second world war, they just go out there, the hide hunters by the thousands and kill them by the millions and leave 800 pounds of meat in the head and the horns where the native peoples were using everything from the tail to the snout, making their clothing, their moccasins, their tools, their weapons, in addition to their sustenance. And as I said, at the center of their spiritual lives as well and spiritual practices as well. So you're leaving these carcasses to rot by the millions on the thing. And then finally, somebody decides there's money to be made in a nascent chemical industry, uh, with the bone.

So they get imported and more, more money is made that. And so it is the economic pressure and the slaughter and the waste and the trauma I would suggest of separating a people who had a 600 generation, 10,000, 12,000 years relationship with this animal to nothing, where they had nothing. They were starving, literally, literally starving. And it became not official policy, but it was spoken and articulated at every level of government and in the army and in business and among individuals that if you killed the buffalo, you got a twofer, as our Native American scholar Jermaine White puts it. And the twofer is you kill the buffalo. You also kill the Indian and make them easy control and put to put on reservations to

take their land. Speaker 1 I'd love to maybe in a in a bit get into some of the specific techniques that you use in these projects, but maybe to start a little more generally with your approach. This is, of course, a story that, like many of the ones you work on, could be told from a number of different perspectives where the story start and ends could differ depending on what one's approach and the sort of message that once one wants to get across. When you lay out a series, are you first starting to think about where you want to start and end in the story you want to tell? Or will you start with a vignette that's maybe in the middle and then use that to inform how you want to lay out

the entire series? Like, how do you think about that, especially when there's so much material, interviews, archival footage, et cetera? So I'm speaking to you from New Hampshire. We make maple syrup. It takes 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of maple syrup. We do a lot of collecting. We don't decide in advance. Some people have a set research, a set writing that creates a script that informs the shooting

and the editing done. Right. Ever stop researching. We never stop researching. We never stop writing. History is basically and then and then and then. So we knew that we were going to take it 10,000, 12,000 years in the past, bring it up. We knew that since the significant slaughter occurs in the 19th century that we would focus on that. But then we would extend into the 20th century and the efforts to save. And we did say this is a parable of de-extinction. There is climate change

going on right now. There will be large charismatic mammals, as the buffalo are called, that are going to be threatened with extinction. And we do have a model. It may not apply. One size will not fit all. We do have a model to do that. And we began to think that the two parts of our film were the first two acts of a three-act play. We've saved the buffalo. They're not in danger of going extinct at the moment. But there's only 350,000 out of what was, you know, tens and tens and tens of millions. And the question is, do we want them as a zoo,

a display animal, or do we want them to roam wild and free? Do we have the courage to create the habitats and to create the ecosystems large enough so that we can live out the meaning of FDR's Franklin Delano Roosevelt's favorite song, Oh, Give Me a Home, where the buffalo roam and the deer and the antelope play. And that's the activities of some NGOs, but also more than 80 Native American tribes that now have herds of their own and are beginning to rematriate the animals that they have to other tribes that may have been separated for even longer than the 100, 150 years since the trauma took place. And so, you know, it's a great story and, and it's one that's still being written. So for us as historical filmmakers, we knew we needed to

end in a kind of impressionistic recent past. Um, in fact, our film sort of ends the, you know, in a kind of structural way in the 1930s when the Buffalo is saved. But we range up to the present now and consider those questions of what that third act might be. And at the same time, we spend a lot of time. Now, as for a little vignette, I insisted that our prologue be about Lewis and Clark encountering millions. Then just 80 years later, less than 80 years later, another expedition coming into the exact same place to get buffalo to stuff for the Museum of Natural History in New York couldn't find one. And so it's between that American sort of post that we do the very short prologue, and then we throw it into the Native American relationship

with the buffalo and, you know, what kind of animal it is and what their ancestors were and what the Native Americans felt. And it's not they, because there's 300 nations in the United States and dozens and dozens of plain tribes that have different folkways. And sometimes they're linguistically different the way French and German are different. So you have to not say they they're the original Americans. A few questions on some of the techniques you use. I'm sure you've been asked about this a bunch of times, but this distinct. Technique you use known to many as the Ken Burns effect, archival photo, slowpan voiceover narration, many amateur documentarians will say the motivation is you don't have

video. You need to figure out some way to keep moving the story forward because you don't have video of the thing. So that's the way you do it. And instead of having the still image, you pan. What was the motivation for that technique? Well, I there's lots of motivations and one is really to wake the past up. A still photograph is a representation of a once moving moment. So you have to not only film it with an energetic exploring eye that has like a feature filmmaker, a master shot, a long shot, a medium shot, a close shot, a tilt, a pan, a reveal, a zoom out, inserts of details. But you're also listening to it. You know, is the buffalo snorting? Are they stampeding?

Is that is the rifle firing? Is the is the in another film of the cannon, you know, going off are the troops tramping? I mean, these are all the things you sort of ask yourself. And it's an attempt to wake the dead. It's an attempt to wake this up. And it's not just because you don't have moving pictures. That's that's the least of the problems. I'm making a film on the American Revolution. There are no photographs, period. Right. So you've got paintings and drawings and you're doing the same thing. We supplement in this case with lots of live cinematography. We went out where the Buffalo are now from the Southern to the Central to the Northern Plains to places that Native Americans are overseeing to Yellowstone National Park and other federal sites to private herds

that are in the Dakotas and in Montana and Wyoming. So we're, we're just going around and seeing them and they're standing in for that footage, but it by no means do we see it as a deficit. If you're a filmmaker, you've been, when you say yes to a film, you've said yes to a thousand problems. If you see a problem is pejorative, then don't get into filmmaking. But if you see it as just the necessary and inevitable friction that, say, a runner does every time they lift their foot up and put it down, then you're OK. You see it as something to overcome. And so it doesn't matter. Sometimes you don't have any witnesses who are still alive. And so you in this case, you talk to Native American people, scholars in many cases, as well as other scholars and part of a retired park ranger, the Kiowa poet M. Scott Momaday, other people who bring the story to life. And we also have first person voices reading the Native Americans and Americans who were engaged in this tragedy that then at the end offers us some hope. You've produced these wide ranging projects over a period of many decades, and the technology

that's available today is very different than what was available when you started. This has modern technology, by which I mean high speed Internet availability of smartphone footage everywhere, availability of archival footage that you can find from a laptop in a coffee shop rather than maybe having to travel. However you want to interpret it, things that are available now that were not available before. Has this really changed your process and or the way you produce these films? It has, of course, just as it has changed everybody's lives.

But we've resisted it. We've been really, really insistent that the tail of technology not wag the dog. The dog ought to wag the tail. So I was 10 years late in switching to digital editing. 10 years after that, that I gave up actually shooting film and accepted the fact that we were going to shoot digitally. There's lots of great advantages to it, but there's some disadvantages, the tyrannies of choice that sometimes occur when you can do it a thousand different ways. The thing that I do miss, David, in one way is I used to go to an archive and set up an easel with a piece of metal and magnets and two huge umbrella lights and,

and just film by hand these archives. It simplifies things because you can download, um, a low res thing with a watermark and you can work with that, but you know, you, and you can do moves within the programs that are in our digital editing things, but they're not the scene, uh, movements that we used to do by animating either by hand or with an animation stand. And so there are some trade-offs. It's hard for most people to notice them, but I've been very insistent that we direct this. And so they're still handmade. They're still old-fashionedly done. And yet we can take advantage of the idea that you can sit and get access or take a scanner and go to an archive, and one person can scan 10,000 images over a couple weeks, and I don't have to choose the 1,000 images of those and make all the different shots. Something's lost.

More often than not, a lot more is gained but we're we're prudent and we're careful because i think too often the bells and whistles of technology sometimes get in the way of the complicated ancient laws of storytelling i mean look everybody obeys the same laws even when they're consciously disobeying them and those those go back to Aristotle. You could say, you know, be his poetics, a beginning, a middle and end, a climax, a denouement, character, antagonist, protagonist, character development, and then, and then, and then. And I don't care if you're, you know, Quentin Tarantino and pulp fiction and fussing with the, that, or you're a novelist who doesn't use a chapter. you're still, the way we talk to one another is that, honey, how was your day? Does not begin. I back slowly down the driveway,

avoiding the garbage can at the curb. Unless somebody T's bones you, and that's what is exactly what you say. What you do is you edit human experience. So we gather as much material to go back to your earlier thing as possible. And then we just start working on it. And the material itself begins to speak to us. We don't ever talk to a talking head and say, look, can you get us from paragraph two to paragraph three on page six of episode two? Every time you see a talking head, it's a happy accident. It worked. We tried it here. Didn't work. We moved it here. It did work. And that's why you're seeing it there. It's not because somebody was, you know,

in a kind of paint by numbers, cookie cutter thing, you know, and I have colleagues who do that. They say that was terrific. Can you say it again a little bit shorter? Oh, that was great. But could you end the way you did the first time? Perfect. And moving on. Whatever we get in the question is whatever we get. And so that's why there is 39 gallons of sap. That's not bad stuff. It's all good stuff. The cutting room floor here does not have bad stuff. It has only good stuff. It is just what works, what fits, what keeps your attention, what draws you to the story. And these are worked on over many, many years. One of the reasons I've stayed in PBS is that I could be free of so many of the pressures of the marketplace, which would demand, you know, I could walk into a premium cable, uh, or a streaming service and get $30 million to do our, say our Vietnam film that came out in, in, in 2017, but they wouldn't give me the 10 and a

half years we spent working on it. Right. They say we want it in two years, you know, and that, and that film would not be the definitive film that we actually turned out and is still in usage and is still probably the, you know, the one stop aggregation of the latest scholarship on the Vietnam war that which is rare for a film to be able to say that six years after its broadcast. Part two of the American Buffalo premieres tonight on PBS. We've been speaking with documentary filmmaker Ken Burns. So appreciate your time and insights today. It's my pleasure.

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You get 100 nights to decide whether you like it. My audience gets a huge 20 percent discount off of all orders, plus two free pillows. Go to Helix sleep dot com slash Pacman and enter code Helix partner 20 at checkout. of the president. Failed former President Donald Trump gave two particularly difficult to watch speeches yesterday in Iowa, one in Clive, Iowa, and the other in Adele or Adel, Iowa, still working on that pronunciation. Something is very wrong here. And I don't know if it's the pressure of the criminal trials getting to Trump. I don't know if it's age related. I don't know what it is. But Trump,

very, very much struggling to speak, sweaty and slurring. Here he is once again. I mean, I don't think this needs any introduction. Listen to this. I withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal, crushed the murderous Iranian regime with sanctions and starved Thomas. And we took Hamas and Hezbollah and all. I don't know why instead of Hamas, it's Hamas with a slur. How much? It's very strange. And I am not qualified to explain what it is that is going on. Trump glitching badly, trying to take credit for bringing back Christmas. Used to be that was a wonderful thing. Today, you take heat. We'll turn that around. Just like I said years ago, we're going to turn Christmas around. Remember, the department stores weren't they refused to use the word Christmas. They wouldn't say Merry

Christmas. It's a happy new year. They'd have read that have everything. But I said, where's Christmas? And by the time we finished, they all had Christmas up there. While discussing the very serious topic of deaths in Israel, Trump gets distracted by a fly that is near his head and then is completely derailed in his speech. Who sympathize with this are sick. They're sick and they're evil and they're not going to be fixed. You're not going to make them into wonderful people one day. I didn't know you had flies in Iowa.

I hate flies. Now they all get in trouble for saying that cruelty to animals. You know, I said the other day I was at a place and there's a beautiful place, but they had like flies. And I said, get flypaper. They said, sir, they're not allowed to sell it anymore because, sir, there's a cruelty to animals. They actually said that. I don't know.

Can you get fly? But it used to be great. Right. But they said, you can't do that anymore, sir. It's cruelty. What the hell is going on with this country? I have actually have now a by the way, this is completely insane. But I now have one of these electrified.

It almost looks like a tennis racket. And in mosquito season, I'm just out there clearing a path. And it is wild what the thing can do. Really, really wild stuff. Trump, despite having denied many times that he ever calls military officials stupid here, he says there's some of the dumbest people he's met and the crowd actually cheers. Very interesting. Remember, they support the troops or whatever.

One of them said to me, Millie, he said, sir, be cheaper. We left everything. I said, where is this guy? Where does he come from? A brand new airplane costs one hundred and twenty eight million dollars. Right. Right. I said, you mean you think it's cheaper to leave it than to fill it up with a little a little fuel and fly it the hell out to even if you just fly it to Pakistan, then you bring it back home or you fly it back home.

Most of them can make that journey. Right. Sure. It's better to leave it there. I don't want to tell you what I had to go through with these people. Speaker 1 So anyway, not exactly super confident, apparently, in our military leadership. Maybe the most exciting moment of any of yesterday's speeches. Trump said he's willing to go to jail, which is great news because he may have to. But what they don't understand is that I am willing to go to jail if that's what it takes for our country to win and become a democracy again. Right. To which I say, sir, actions speak louder than words. Let's see if he actually does it. Let's see if he actually goes to. Let's see if he actually goes to

jail. It's pretty interesting to me. And then lastly, basically an illegal idea. Most of the speeches that Trump now gives tend to contain some probably illegal idea. Trump talks about deportations and he seems to be saying that he would like to see the possibility of deporting people just if they have like communist beliefs. It's hard to understand him as always. But I think that's what he's saying here. Take a look. Speaker 5 You support Hamas or any ideology that's having to do with that or any of the other really sick thoughts that go through people's minds, very dangerous thoughts. You're disqualified if you're a communist, a Marxist or a fascist, other than the people that are already here, of which many are in the Biden administration.

You're disqualified. I'd like to get them out, too. Maybe we'll work on that. in that night. In addition, we will aggressively deport resident aliens with jihadist sympathies. We have to go probably against the law and certainly as dangerous as Trump's promises to direct the Department of Justice to investigate, prosecute and jail his political enemies. This is not a man who is a fan of democracy. This is not a man who is going to bring the United States into a new heyday if he gets another shot at four years in the White House. We have to make sure that doesn't happen. Donald Trump Jr. also seemingly very unwell, struggling to speak even more than Donald Trump. Don Junior has what I guess they call a free speech show or a free speech platform. I have to tell you, I find the concept so stupid, so stupid in the sense that the idea of free speech for the sake of speech to me is not super exciting.

I don't want to deny anyone's speech. That has never been my position. I'm close to a free speech absolutist in the sense that if it's not illegal, let the marketplace decide whether speech is up or down voted metaphorically and proverbially. But there's this thing on the right about we are creating a free speech platform. I'm regaining my free speech, even though they rarely have ever actually lost their free speech. And then they see it as a virtue for its own sake just to say stupid things. And the prototypical example of that is Don Jr.'s show Triggered, which is one of the dumbest uses of the so-called free speech that he's regained that I can imagine. We don't know whether he uses uppers,

but he seems hopped up out of his gourd here. He rants about the price of hair curdlers and also hone ownership. Yes, I know that it sounds like a strange thing to say. Let's listen to this. Inflation is basically saying, yeah, the price of a hair curler, you know, maybe maybe has come down a little bit or at least the inflation on it has come down a bit. He seems so hopped up a hair curler. It I've seen hair curled like spoiled milk. And it is an ugly situation that I can assure you

his speech continuing to deteriorate as the show continues. The high interest rates combining the inflation has made a home ownership. Home ownership. Has anyone ever owned their own home? That's a question that is not going to be answered by the fake news media. Trump continuing and saying not that the ends justify the means, but that the means justify the tech. They'll put all the articles that are out there, you know, on page four hundred and seventy six after glowing CNN reports one after the other because they care about the objective. The means

justify the ends. It's clear our country is in crisis. Yes, that is absolutely true. That part I very much agree with. And then lastly, Judge Chutkan ruled yesterday that Trump isn't supposed to attack Jack Smith, the special prosecutor, nor the judge. So here is Junior standing in and doing it for Don. Jack Smith, a prosecutor with a history of political hit jobs and shadiness. My father has rightly called out Jack Smith for hiring Democrat donating prosecutors and leading a deranged case. That's fact. Look at how he's been overturned. Look at the radicals that they magically drew to be judges and otherwise today, an Obama appointed judge, Tanya Chokin issue. Did he say Tanya? Tanya Chokin.

A gag order that said my father can no longer criticize Jack Smith or his deputies. Think about that, folks. America in 2023. So, yeah, this show is nuts. And one of the things that I find really interesting about these shows is that they're so stupid and boring that it's hard to imagine who even would watch it. And listen, there are so many choices for things people can watch. I don't claim that my show is the most entertaining or informative or inside. I don't claim any particular accolade for this show, but we've built an audience and the numbers are are mostly public. I don't know who possibly would watch this John Jr. thing, but it's really hard to imagine him having a fan base of the sort that welcomes this

sort of drivel. So that's what he's up to, seemingly hopped up out of his gourd. And what honestly is happening behind the scenes? I don't know. We have a voicemail number. That number is two one nine two. David P. This voicemail caller, it's not so much what he says, but how he says it. One of the most interesting voices of any caller we've ever had.

Listen to this record with the Vets and Regulars of the United States of America. Watch your show with the pillow guy, Mike Lindell and another lying con man made out of the same cloth as Donald Trump. You did a good job. You did a good job on this guy. You made him look like what he is. Listen, I could listen to that guy all day. There's like a little bit of an Alex Jones element to it. Man's a loser, but it is even more sort of

gruff and wild. But I love it. Maybe my new favorite caller. We have a fantastic bonus show for you today. We'll talk about Joe Biden joining Truth Social to troll Trump. We will talk about the Mexican cartel saying stop making fentanyl. It's bad for us when stuff gets laced with fentanyl. And the US government has agreed to a settlement with some of the migrant families separated at the border. We'll tell you the scope and size of the settlement and the details. All of those stories and more are on today's bonus show, which you can find with pleasure at join Patman dot com.