The David Pakman Show - 10/20/22: UK PM Out After 43 Days, Judge Says Trump Lied Under Oath

Episode Date: October 20, 2022

-- On the Show: -- Mike Rinder, former senior executive of the Church of Scientology and the Sea Organization, and author of the new book, "A Billion Years: My Escape from a Life in the Highest Ranks of Scientology," joins David to discuss his book, his time in Scientology leadership, and much more. Get the book: https://amzn.to/3yVy7ka -- UK Prime Minister Liz Truss resigns after just 43 days in office, making her tenure the shortest in British history -- Oklahoma Republican Governor Kevin Stitt is confronted by his opponent, Democratic challenger Joy Hofmeister, about the reality that violent crime rates are higher in Oklahoma and Oklahoma City than in New York and New York City, respectively -- Failed former Vice President Mike Pence indicates he may support someone other than Donald Trump in 2024 -- A new report claims that prosecutors believe they have the evidence to charge failed former President Donald Trump after the Mar-a-Lago raid -- A judge says that Donald Trump lied under oath with regard to 2020 Georgia voter fraud claims -- Randy Kaufman, Republican candidate for college district board in Maricopa County, Arizona, is arrested for masturbating in his truck near a preschool -- Georgia Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker says that laughing at his fake police badge is disrespectful to all members of law enforcement and the military -- Voicemail caller asks about whether voters should be "shamed" -- On the Bonus Show: President Biden releasing 15 million barrels from strategic petroleum reserve, Madison Cawthorn to stand trial for bringing gun to airport, woman charged with sending bee swarm at police, much more... 🌿 Sunset Lake CBD: Get 20% OFF using code PAKMAN at https://sunsetlakecbd.com ❄️ ChiliSleep by SleepMe: Get 25% OFF your bed-cooling system at https://chilisleep.com/pakman ⚠️ Use code PAKMAN for a free supply of BlueChew at https://go.bluechew.com/david-pakman 🔊 Try Blinkist for FREE and get 25% off at http://www.blinkist.com/pakman 💪 Athletic Greens is offering FREE year-supply of Vitamin D at https://athleticgreens.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 -- Subscribe to Pakman Finance: https://www.youtube.com/pakmanfinance -- 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

. So yesterday on the world famous and award winning bonus show, producer Pat and I talked about the reality that British Prime Minister Liz Truss's days may be numbered, even though it had only been like six weeks since she came to power. And indeed, we woke up this morning in the United States to the news that British Prime Minister Liz Truss has resigned after only forty three days in office. Truss is a member of the Conservative Party, also known as the Tory Party. And you started to get the sense that maybe this wasn't going to be particularly long

lived when the idea of cutting taxes on the rich was first presented at a particularly inopportune time, given what was going on in the British economy and then very quickly abandoned. It already sort of wasn't looking particularly good. And then now, indeed, CNBC reporting UK Prime Minister Liz Truss resigns after failed budget and market turmoil. That's putting it lightly, writing that on September 23rd, Truss's finance minister, Minister Kwesi Kwarteng, announced a so-called mini budget,

which began a turbulent period for U.K. bond markets, which balked at the debt funded tax cuts he put forward. Most of the policies were reversed three weeks later by the second finance minister, Jeremy Hunt. That's already a bad start. And indeed, now the resignation comes amid financial market turmoil and a revolt within the Conservative Party, as is often the case in politics. Defiant until the very end. Just a day earlier. Check out this video. Listen to this audio defiant saying I am not a quitter. And of course, we know what happened just hours later. This is yesterday. Speaker 4 I am a fighter and not a.

Speaker 5 I have acted in the national interest to make sure that we have economic stability. Speaker 6 Order, order. Order. I'm going to hear the Prime Minister. I suggest that all Members need to hear the answer. Prime Minister. . Mr Speaker, I am a fighter

and not a fighter. We have delivered on the energy price guarantee. We have. We've delivered on the energy price guarantee. We have delivered on the energy price guarantee. We've delivered on national insurance. We are going to deliver to stop the militant trade unions disrupting our railways. The honorable gentleman has no idea.

And of course, ultimately, what she delivered was a resignation announcement this morning, very early U.S. time, morning time in the UK. Let's take a look at that. How quickly political fates can, of course, reverse. Given the situation, I can't. A much a much more sober sounding Liz Truss this morning. Not deliver the mandate on which I was elected by the Conservative Party. I have therefore spoken to His Majesty the King to notify him that I am resigning as leader of the Conservative Party. Wow. This morning I met the chairman of the 1922 committee, Sir Graham Brady.

We've agreed that there will be a leadership election to be completed within the next week. This will ensure that we remain on a path to deliver our fiscal plans and maintain our country's economic stability and national security. A bit late for that, actually. I will remain as prime minister until a successor has been chosen. Thank you. Yeah. So very, very clear and definitive resignation there. This makes Liz trust the shortest prime minister, shortest lived prime minister in the history of the U.K. The previous shortest died rather than quit. So this is really quite significant.

Liz trusts 43 days. And prior to Liz trust, the shortest lived prime minister was George Canning, whose term lasted one hundred and nineteen days. You have to go back to the period April 12, 1827 to his death on August 8, 1827. Now, one perspective on all of this is that this is really less about Liz Truss and Boris Johnson than it is about the disconnect between the conservative party and the majority of the people in the United Kingdom. And the idea is that trust was essentially a scapegoat. And so you could kind of take it step by step. Well, the Tory party has been the Tory party for a long time. Of course, tax cuts for the rich. It's like Republicans in

that sense. No matter what you see, no matter what nail or screw or tile or piece of flooring you see, your only tool is a hammer. So you figure, well, I'll take the hammer to whatever it is, even if it doesn't make sense to start hammering a tile. And the Boris Johnson resignation was more about his particular bad acts than it was about policy. But then sort of seeing the writing on the wall and that this is really not the time economically for someone with this policy. The idea is, well, it was clear that whoever replaced Boris Johnson, Liz Truss or whoever else, Mr. Bean, right, it was going to be

if the policies were those of the Tory party, it was going to be a sort of sacrificial lamb. It was going to be a scapegoat, whatever, to go up there and say, yeah, we're still going to do the tax cuts. Obviously, we're not. That gets abandoned. They suffer and then they move on. And now whoever is next again, this is the idea. Whoever is next now won't suggest the tax cuts for the rich, which would be particularly

ill-timed right now. And maybe we'll be able to have a longer tenure. The other idea is all of this. This is just going to be a loop until eventually the Conservative Party is removed from power and that it's just a matter of time and it's just a number of scapegoats or sacrificial lambs between now and then. I don't know. But an extraordinary bit of global news there. Forty three days as prime minister. Imagine if we had this sort of process in the United States. That would really be something. Hey, I want to play a video for you that is really, really good because it brings out a conversation that is a necessary conversation to have. You know how Republicans love to say we have our violent blue states and violent blue cities, and it's so dangerous to be

in what they call Democrat cities. Of course, it's not true. And yesterday or this might be actually from the day before. Is this yesterday? I guess. Yeah, this is from yesterday. There was a debate yesterday wherein sitting Oklahoma Governor Kevin's tit is being challenged by Democratic challenger Joy Hoffmeister. And Stitt tries the typical stuff. Democrats are bad for crime and Democratic states are dangerous. And they love to scapegoat New York and New York City. And to her credit, Joy Hoffmeister points out, hey, you know what, Kevin? Violent crime is higher in Oklahoma than it is in New York. And she's completely correct. I'm

going to give you the data. This is not a matter of opinion. He simply says, no, that can't possibly be true. And there's something that the audience does that's very revealing about how these Republicans think and behave. Take a listen to this. So let's talk about the facts. The fact is the rates of violent crime are higher in Oklahoma under your watch than in New York and California. That's a fact. Well, we'll have that fact checked by the frontier superintendent. It's also a fact that medical marijuana. Do you believe we have higher crime than New York or California?

That's what she just said. Safety and security is my. So Kevin's tit says that doesn't sound right. You you people don't believe that. Right. And the crowd goes, no, no, no. This is the way they operate. It just doesn't sound like the very stuff we've been repeating.

So it can't possibly be true. Right. But it is very much true. These red state folks have no idea that they are being lied to and that blue cities and blue states are being scapegoated for no reason that has any connection to reality. They don't have any idea how violent their states are. If it doesn't sound right, it must not be wrong. And of course, the reason it doesn't sound right is because they're constantly lied to about it. But it is true. If you look at the rate, OK, the rate is crimes per population. Of course, a state with a dramatically higher population is likely to have more a higher number

of violent crimes because there's millions more people in a lot of these high population states. But what we care about is the rate. We care about the rate. It's sort of like if I say more people died of covid in Florida than in Wyoming. That doesn't really tell us much because Florida's population is so much larger. Similarly, if I say there are more crimes in New York City than in Savannah, it doesn't really tell us much because New York City has so many more people. If you look at the rates, Oklahoma was most recently ranked 15th highest in the country for rate of violent crime. And New York State was 26th. It is without question that Oklahoma has a higher rate of violent crime than New York

State. And in fact, this isn't really rare. If you look, this is public data. I don't claim to have any kind of monopoly on the data. If you look up top states by violent crime rate of the top 10 states, you've got seven very red states, one purple state, Nevada, and then you've got Washington, D.C. And then there's like one more purple state. I guess two purples. It's seven red states, two purple states in Washington, D.C., which isn't a state, but it's a territory. It's red states. It's red states with

the highest violent crime rates. Now you could say, well, David, sir, you're being deceptive. Forget about Oklahoma and New York state. What about Oklahoma City and New York City? Fine. Do make the same comparison in twenty twenty two so far. The Oklahoma violent crime rate is 40 and New York City is 28. That's this is a one to one hundred where a higher number means more violent crime. New York City's violent crime rate is significantly lower than the violent crime rate in Oklahoma City. And by the way, the property crime rate is also dramatically lower in New York City, 25 versus 60 in Oklahoma City. They don't care about the facts. Democrats run New York City. It must be more violent. Well, OK, not true. Now, I can't get off of this topic without mentioning one other important thing. This entire conversation is also

skewed because in general, cities have more violence because of more population density. Cities tend to be more Democratic and often in blue states. But red states also have cities and they're often significantly more violent. And the safest big cities are all in very, very blue states. But there's this base rate bias where Democrats tend to prefer to live in cities versus conservatives. And that's a systemic reality. Even still, the numbers are not what these Republicans claim them to be. So Kevin's tit laughing it off. Absolutely true. What Joy Hoffmeister said there, Mike Pence, a failed former vice president,

Mike Pence, was interviewed yesterday and he was asked if Trump is the nominee in 2024, will you vote for him? Now, remember. Trump ists are the people who were shouting, hang Mike Pence on January 6th. Trump is the guy who completely turned on Pence because Pence wasn't willing nor able, by the way, wasn't willing, as Trump says, to do the right thing, to try to steal an election for Trump that he didn't actually win. And here is what Mike Pence has to say when asked about this.

If Donald Trump is the Republican nominee for president in 2024, will you vote for him? Well, there might be somebody else I'd prefer more. Okay. You know, what I can tell you is I have every confidence that the Republican Party is going to sort out leadership. All my focus has been on the midterm elections, and it'll stay that way for the next 20 days. But after that, we'll be thinking about the future, ours and the nation's. And yeah. So first of all, he's sort of saying I might be running.

I mean, to some degree, what Mike Pence is saying is there might be someone on the ballot I prefer, like myself, when he says we're going to be thinking about our future and the nation's, he's saying, I'm going to be thinking about what I want to do in 2024. Regardless of that, there are two interpretations here and they can both be correct. On the one hand, it is very clear that Pence is off the Trump train and is trying to figure out the right way to get off without derailing his own political career. That's number one. On the other hand, his supporters were saying they wanted to hang you. And the strongest thing you're willing to say is there might be someone else who I would prefer more. So you can interpret this, however, strikes your fancy. Right. On the one hand,

maybe the strongest anti-Trump language we've heard from any of the major figures of the Republican Party for the last year and a half. On the other hand, his support Trump supporters wanted to hang this guy. And this is all that he's willing or able to muster up. It's all pretty sad, but an indication that the 2024 Republican primary may become very interesting very quickly right after the midterms that are now just 19 or 20 days away. Let me know what you think. Find me on Twitter at the Pacman. We'll take a quick break and be right back. One of our sponsors is Sunset Lake CBD. Get affordable, high quality CBD straight from the source. Sunset Lake CBD is a family owned hemp farm in Vermont growing premium CBD products for sleep and stress without breaking the bank. They ship directly to you from the farm, cutting out

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legal troubles of the failed former president and his associates. First and foremost, very interesting report from Bloomberg. Prosecutors believe that they have the evidence to charge Donald Trump on the basis of the investigation connected to the search warrant served at Mar-a-Lago. Let's take a look at this Bloomberg report. Trump prosecutors see evidence for obstruction charges. No decision on charges has been made by DOJ in records probe. That's an important detail. A bunch of tweets were floating around yesterday.

Sometimes I wonder, can people actually read news articles? As soon as this was published yesterday, all sorts of tweets started floating around. A decision has been made. Trump is getting charged. The the sub headline is no decision on charges has been made. Trump is getting charged. The the sub headline is no decision on charges has been made in that records probe. Timing, politics and debate over charges are among the considerations. And that's an area of significant concern that we should all be worried about. And we will get to it in a moment. Here's what Bloomberg writes.

A group of Justice Department prosecutors believe there is enough evidence to charge Trump with obstruction of justice. But the path to an actual indictment is far from clear. The team that's part of the classified records probe has not yet made a formal recommendation to Merrick Garland, who would ultimately approve or reject such a move, according to people familiar with the matter. It's also unlikely officials would bring only obstruction charges amid several other Trump investigations into potential crimes. Now, this is the part that I don't love. In addition, while some FBI agents oppose bringing such a politically charged case,

as Trump considers a 2024 presidential bid, others support action, said the people who asked for anonymity because this is not yet public. Agents, however, don't make final decisions. The Justice Department has publicly indicated obstruction is part of its probe into the mishandling of classified records, noting there was probable cause for the charge in the August five FBI search warrant application for Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate. No charges are likely to be filed or publicly revealed before the November eight elections and perhaps only after the Christmas

holiday, the people said. One other note here, Frank Figluzzi, former FBI assistant director for counterintelligence, said, quote, Of all the things Trump is being investigated for around the country, obstruction of justice is a slam dunk. And I think he's going to be indicted. I don't see why a charge of obstruction of justice couldn't be filed by the end of the year. So listen, charge him. It's time. OK, we've had enough of this. It's really simple. Consider I mean, forget about Georgia. Forget about SDNY. Just focusing on this case investigation alone. Did the did authorities know that Trump had these files and then they went to him and said, you've got to return these files? Yes, we they knew he had them and they asked for those files to be returned.

Did Donald Trump return them? The answer is no. We know that because they found files when they executed the search warrant at Trump's Mar-a-Lago. Do we now know that Donald Trump was aware that they had files directed staff to move them, directed a lawyer to lie and claim that they had been given back? I mean, all of these obstructive acts. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. So is it time for an indictment? Of course it is. Of course. Of course it is. Now, what I'm not thrilled about is this discussion about FBI agents do or don't want the charges levied because it

could impact the midterms. So they're going to wait until later. But then it could impact Trump if he decides to run in 2024 or whatever. Listen, if there are charges that follow logically from the evidence, not charging Trump because it might have a political impact is just a political a decision as saying, let's charge him in order to make it have a political impact. The apolitical thing to do here is that those in law enforcement look at the evidence. They compare the evidence to the law and they decide, is there sufficient evidence that a law was broken such that we are going to levy charges? You don't calculate the timing based on political effect or whatever else. Think back to the 2016 election, by the way, where then FBI Director James Comey did one

press conference about Hillary Clinton's emails. And then as far as we knew, that was it. There weren't going to be charges coming, et cetera, et cetera. And then right before the 2016 election, for some reason that we still don't really understand, James Comey does another press conference about Hillary's emails. And we now believe we can't say any one thing led to Trump winning and Hillary losing. But it was certainly another little factor that served as a reminder of, oh, yeah, that thing, even though obviously no charges are coming, that may have pushed some people away from Hillary Clinton and to Donald Trump.

If there was any politically oriented, politically motivated timing for the FBI doing something, it would be that here we have enough probable cause for the search warrant to be executed. We now have, colloquially speaking, as laypeople, all of the elements that make up obstruction by Donald Trump, knowingly directing people to lie and hide documents, all these different things. And at this point, this idea of, well, we don't we don't necessarily want to charge him because it might affect a future run for president he hasn't even announced. Well, opting not to charge for that very reason is also a politically motivated decision. And it's absolutely pathetic. It is just as politically

charged not to charge someone because it might hurt their chances at winning an elected office as it is to say, well, let's deliberately charge him now if the evidence is there and the investigation has been completed and it points to this person likely committed this crime, then you just have to levy charges. And that's it. We will see if it happens. It's not going to happen before the November election. It's abundantly clear at this point in time.

But if and when it happens, when will it be? Another legal problem for Donald Trump that I want to briefly talk about and then we're going to move on to other things. A federal judge has found that Donald Trump lied under oath about voter fraud in Georgia while trying to overturn the 2020 election results. Now we're switching gears before we were talking about the federal investigation that is connected to the search warrant at Mar-a-Lago. That's the last story. This is a different situation now. Business Insider summarizes the statement by the judge. A federal judge Wednesday said Trump lied under oath about voter fraud claims in the 2020 election.

Not a big shock. Trump, quote, knew that the specific numbers of voter fraud were wrong, but touted them both in court and to the public. This is per Judge David Carter. Carter made the determination in a ruling ordering a Republican lawyer to turn over his communications to the January 6th committee. This goes back to December 4th of 2020. And I know many of you remember this. Many of you don't. Many of you have chosen to forget it. And I understand. I understand why. On December 4th, 2020, Trump's legal team filed a lawsuit in Georgia state court alleging that Fulton County miscounted thousands of votes. They also contested the state court's proceedings in federal court. This was one of dozens of complaints that Trump and

lawyers filed in various courts. Later that month, Carter wrote in his ruling Eastman. This is Trump's lawyer Eastman said in an email that although Trump had, quote, signed a verification for the state court filing on December one, he had since been made aware that some of the allegations and evidence proffered by the experts has been inaccurate. For him to sign a new certification with that knowledge and incorporation by reference would not be accurate. He added the emails show that Trump knew that the specific numbers of voter fraud were wrong, but continued to tout those numbers both in court and to the public.

This is also not the first time that this has been suggested. So it's abundantly clear that in every single one of these cases, you have claims that are made that normal people who look at data and evidence doubt. But we ask ourselves, are they making these claims out of ignorance or are they making these claims knowing they are false claims in order to deceive others? And we don't necessarily know right away. But then slowly but surely, we come to learn that these claims are made knowing that they are lying in the Mar-a-Lago DOJ situation. Did Trump believe that they really had given back all the documents? I don't know. Maybe we later find out Trump knew they had not given back all the

documents because there is a report that he had an employee move documents at Mar-a-Lago. Oh, OK. So he was lying. He was lying deliberately to deceive, arguably an obstructive act. Same thing here. OK. At the beginning of December, Trump signs off on we believe these are the numbers of fraudulent, phony, invalid votes from Georgia. Maybe Trump believed it at that point in time. We then get testimony and statements under oath that actually later on, when Trump continued to sign off on this stuff, Trump had been advised that what he was claiming and signing off on was not actually the truth. Unfortunately, Georgia state law says that the punishment here is up to one year in jail

and up to a one thousand dollar fine or both. This is 2020 Georgia Code Title 16 Cr Crimes and Offenses, Chapter 10, Offenses Against Public Administration, Article four, perjury and related offenses. And it says punished by a fine of not more than a thousand dollars or by imprisonment, not less than one, not more than 10 years or both. But the particulars of this likely point to no more than one year in prison, one year in jail. Rather, you know, there is this question is whether as to whether the American justice system should really assess fines as a function of income, because one of the realities that we have in the justice system in the United States with such drastically different financial circumstances for people are that the same five thousand dollar fine can be a completely unpayable

bankruptcy inducing fine for many in society and then such an insignificant fine for others in society that it does nothing whatsoever to actually punish a bad act. And so there are countries that do this with speeding tickets, for example. We've talked about it before. I believe Norway might be one of those countries, but I don't remember completely offhand. But there is a real question as to whether fines should be assessed based on ability to pay with some upper and lower limits. Certainly, I think that reasonable people could agree to that. So not a

particularly auspicious day yesterday for Donald Trump from a legal standpoint. But when we continue to ask the question, well, but then so what? What's coming? Is anything coming? I think we all are in the position of saying we don't really know. of the cost. And they're giving my audience an entire month supply for free. So if you think you could benefit from an extra boost of confidence, all you have to do is take a short quiz on their website. A licensed doctor approves your prescription. The medication comes straight to your home within days in a discreet package. No driving around to the doctor's office or the pharmacy. No waiting around. No awkward conversations with your doctor. All of Bluetooth's tablets are made in the USA. The entire process is just a few clicks. Go to Bluetooth dot com. The link is in the podcast

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at Blinkist dot com slash David Pakman. That's B-L-I-N-K-I-S-T dot com slash David Pakman to get Blinkist free for seven days and 25 percent off a subscription. The link is in the podcast notes. It's great to welcome back to the program today, Mike Rinder, former senior executive of the Church of Scientology and the C organization, also author of the new book, A Billion Years, My Escape from a Life in the Highest Ranks of Scientology. Mike, great to have you on again, as always. Thanks, David. It's wonderful to be back.

So, I mean, in the interests of treading some new ground right up front, since the last time you've been here, you know, a lot of things have happened in the world that don't relate directly to Scientology. I think there's this feeling among some that the Church of Scientology right now is somewhat diminished both in notoriety and maybe in strength because it's not really in the news as much as it once was. Is that a fair assessment or do you disagree with that? Oh, no, I think that's a very fair assessment, David. I think that Scientology has been dwindling as to its overall numbers and its influence, primarily due to the internet, also due to a lot of media coverage. You know, information is the enemy of high control organizations and groups

and cults. And information is available to anybody that has a computer or a phone and can Google. And, you know, these days, nobody buys a pair of shoes without Googling. Are these the best ones? Yeah. So it's very difficult for Scientology to get new people in. And so their numbers are diminishing, but I become more active and involved in order to save their particular cult from extinction. So probably Scientology is still raking in, you know, millions and millions a week, but that is an unsustainable model because eventually those people run dry and you have to have new people coming in and that is not happening. And, you know, you add to that the problems that have come up. You know, there's been this political race for the mayor's office in Los Angeles, which has turned into a mudslinging contest on who can get on Scientology the biggest.

And the Danny Masterson trial now started. A lot of things are looking pretty dark in the world of Scientology right about now. In terms of the numbers, you know, I in Lawrence Wright's book Going Clear, Wright writes that internal claims often allude to millions of members. I've read numbers as small as 30000 globally, which which I don't even know. It sounds very low, but maybe it is that low. What's your sense of the membership at this point? Well, my estimate at this point is around twenty five thousand. Oh, wow. That's the lowest I've heard anyone even state. Well, there's a few others like who have that similar opinion.

Aaron Smith, Levin and Chris Shelton and Jeffrey Hawkins, Jefferson Hawkins, all of whom are former Sea Org people, you know, high level executives in Scientology who had access in one way or another to information about membership. Scientology inflates their membership figures by claiming that anybody who has ever purchased a Scientology or Dianetics book therefore becomes a member because we have their name and address from when they purchased the book. And over 50 years, there's been millions of people who purchased them. So ergo, there are millions of Scientologists. But if you look and see things like Scientology claims to have 15,000 members in the Tampa Bay area or in Clearwater. You know, the numbers vary.

But when Mark Bunker, who was a very avowed opponent of Scientology, ran for city council, the Clearwater City Council, he won with 5,000 votes. So they couldn't round up enough votes to prevent Mark Bunker in their, you know, enclave of the highest concentration of Scientologists anywhere in the world. So that pretty much put paid to any claim that they have millions of members. They, they never have had millions. They may have had one hundred thousand or a couple of hundred thousand back in the 70s or the 80s. But today, no way you you escaped in 2007, if I recall correctly, which is roughly like 15, getting closer to 16 years ago. Do you think that you were still on the radar of the church? Are you being tracked? How closely do they? I mean, like, will people from the church see this interview, for example,

that we're doing right now? Absolutely. David, you'll probably get a letter from a lawyer before you manage to put this up on anything. Oh, boy. But but well, it didn't happen with the last one. Hopefully, hopefully not this time. Yeah. But now my book is out. So they're going a little crazy. Yeah. They're they're paying for Google ads to any search of my name shows up with a Scientology Google ad. Putting up new smear videos and smear sites and sending legal threat letters and, you know, all the usual shenanigans that Scientology gets up to. I'm certainly not gone off their radar. In fact, I came like right back into the center of it the day my book was released. One of the things I think is interesting about your story and for people who want the details of how you ultimately kind of changed

your mind about the Church of Scientology and ultimately left. We go into that in detail in our first interview. One of the interesting conversations we're having now is generally about the deprogramming, as the term sometimes is, of people who are in a cult. It might not come as a shock to you that many in my audience believe that Trumpism is a cult and they see the people at the Trump rallies with with impossible stories and contradictory beliefs and an inability to ever kind of puncture the bubble in which they exist. And the question is, OK, so like what can be done to accelerate or help people along in in that process. What have you learned in your experience about what can be done from outside the cult to help people in it see the truth or something closer to the truth? Well, from my experience, it's very people to do is use the words of L. Ron Hubbard as the entrance point to get them to look.

You know, Hubbard said a lot of things, many of which are contradictory. And on one hand, he said, you know, do everything that I say and read and follow it exactly. On the other hand, he said, believe what, you know, what is true for you and look, don't listen. And, you know, think for yourself, all of which are very contradictory to the actual teachings of Scientology. But if you quote those things to a Scientologist and say, look, Hubbard says you've got to think for yourself. Hubbard says you've got to look. Don't listen. Hubbard says what's real for you is what's real for you, not what someone tells you is real.

So don't you have an obligation to follow what Hubbard says and actually look at information outside of that bubble? That has limited success. Yeah. I don't know, David, anything that actually is a guaranteed silver bullet. There's no garlic for this vampire that works 100% of the time. It just is sort of the one thing I do know that doesn't work is to tell them they're stupid. Right. Tell them that they're that they're completely ignorant and stupid and that they just are fools because that plays into their own stereotype, that the rest of the world are the ones who don't know what's really going on. The other thing that outside, not as applied specifically to Scientology,

but that's often mentioned by critical thinking folks and skeptics and this type of thing, is that just like bashing people over the head with facts also isn't very effective. So like, as applied to Scientology, that would be like explaining the scientific impossibility of some of the origin story that's told or whatever. Is your experience also that talking about the impossibility of that is not effective? Yes. Oh, that that that is useless. You can't approach someone who has beliefs and try and undermine their beliefs. The only thing that I have seen that works is the demonstration of the acts in the real world that are contradictory to those beliefs. Like, if you take someone and say, you can't believe that there is a virgin birth, then you're going to have a real hard time with most Christians convincing them that there is no such thing as a virgin birth because they believe that that is the case. and the church covered it up, it's a much harder thing to overcome that and just go,

well, I don't really care because I believe in the Bible. So you got to kind of find the things that are demonstrable in the real world that are, but even that doesn't work most of the time. I mean, the justifications and explanations as to why things are the way they are or how they're rationalized can be pretty, pretty out there. I mean, I see these people and, you know, I watch your channel and a bunch of other stuff. And I see people that, you know, JFK Jr. is alive and well and like, you know, yeah. Like what? So one of the one of the things that's commonly told by people who were sucked into organized crime is that the way that they ended up all the way in started relatively innocuously.

So it might start with, hey, can you just run this envelope across town for me? And there's this kind of process through which you're before you know it, you're much further in than maybe you ever would have imagined yourself to be. Similarly, you know, to take Trump ism. There's a lot of folks who in twenty seventeen, if you said, hey, you know, to take Trumpism, there's a lot of folks who in 2017, if you said, hey, you know, by 2020, this guy is going to be suggesting injecting bleach to treat, you know, a disease that you haven't even heard about yet. A lot of people would have said that will never happen. There's no way. But slowly we get there. We get there drawing on a hurricane map with a

Sharpie and it gets more and more and more insane. Do you find that that takes place with the recruitment of Scientologists? Speaker 3 Oh, absolutely. I mean, David, that's what my book is about. My book is about my immersion into the the world of Scientology to the point where I was as dedicated and as convinced that Scientology was the only route, the only salvation for all of mankind as anybody could be. I mean, I became the international spokesperson of Scientology. I was like the head of the dirty tricks department that dealt with the enemies of Scientology. I was 100% convinced, not that I was doing bad,

but that I was doing good, that I was saving the world, that I was saving every man, woman, and child on planet Earth, and that this was the most important thing that could possibly be done. And I I hope that anybody who reads the book will understand the parallels between my experiences in Scientology and what they see with other people who act insane. What were some of the small asks that they start with?

Well, it really started for me when I was a child and my parents got involved and they started saying to me, look, the solution to this problem is contained in what Ron Hubbard says is the answer to this problem. Do what Ron says. And your worldview becomes L. Ron Hubbard solved every problem of every person on earth and all of mankind and laid it all out for us. And if we're too stupid or too lazy to find out what all those answers are and apply them, then more fool us. We need to be dedicated because he has come up with the answers for everything. And as soon as you start down that path, that there is one person who has got the answers to everything, you then go into some of the answers and those answers become themselves the next step in that immersion process. You know, there are a lot of them in Scientology. A big one, a huge one is

that you have to be responsible for your own condition. And this is a platitude that Hubbard came up with that has some applicability and validity to it. But when you take it to the extreme that it's taken to in the Hubbard circumstance, it means in Scientology, if you get run over by a car, it's your responsibility. You are responsible for the condition that you got yourself into. Right. And that means that at some previous time, you ran over someone else with a car. Right. In order to feel the need to be punished and punish yourself by getting run over by a car. Right.

This is the ultimate in victim blaming. And it is also the ultimate in no matter what bad thing may happen to you in Scientology, that Scientology may cause or do to you. It's your fault. It's not Scientology's fault. Right. Yeah. And of course, those are the types of arguments that are completely unfalsifiable.

There's absolutely no way to argue that that it's untrue. The book is a billion years. My escape from a life in the highest ranks of Scientology. We have been speaking with the book's author, Mike Rinder. Mike, really appreciate your time today. Thank you, David. It's great to see you again. makes it easy to make sure I'm getting the nutrients I want. I've been using it for almost a year now, and it's great. AG one by Athletic Greens is a delicious plant based blend of 75 high quality vitamins, minerals

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you will get a one year supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs. That's athletic greens dot com slash Pacman for a one year supply of vitamin D. The link is in the podcast notes. You know, we've become accustomed to sort of lurid anecdotes of all kinds being told at right wing rallies. Oh, this undocumented immigrant did this thing or that thing or the other thing and sort of used to the bizarre craven political advantage of many of these Republicans. They are now up against such an example themselves because of a guy that is being dubbed the MAGA masturbator. I I don't know what to tell you guys. A Republican Arizona candidate has been caught masturbating outside of a preschool. And the story is absolutely bonkers. HuffPost is reporting

Arizona Republican candidate arrested for allegedly masturbating in a truck near a preschool. It's in none other than the infamous Maricopa County, Arizona, where officials say it's too late to remove the alleged perpetrator, Randy Kaufman, from the ballot in the race for a college district board. Dozens of you emailing me about this. The story is roughly as follows, again, as reported by Huffington Post. Kaufman was arrested on October 4th, but suspended his campaign earlier this week following reports of his arrest. He was running for the governing board of the Maricopa County Community College District and was allegedly caught masturbating by the county's community college police. I effed up, Kaufman said to an officer during the arrest, according to the police report,

which is quite a document which you can find online and read. The report says the incident started when an officer approached Kaufman's parked vehicle and saw that he had his pants down. I'm not going to read it exactly as it is written, but basically the officer was able to ascertain by visual observation of the individual's genitalia that there was manipulation taking place. And it was all in view of a nearby bicyclist and a preschool where little kids were playing outside. When confronted, according to the officer, Kaufman apologized and said, I'm sorry,

I effed up. I'm really stressed, really, really stressed, and then said, are you going to put that in the report? Which indeed the officer did. Yikes. Don't you see how alarming that is? The officer responded. There are children nearby, people passing on bikes and in cars where they can look and see what you're doing. Notably, in a Facebook post from May, Kaufman said he wanted, quote, our children protected from the progressive left. Kaufman was charged with public indecency, but 12 News in Phoenix reported that Kaufman could also face a possible felony charge because of his proximity to the preschool.

So listen, what is the story here? Is the story that Republicans endorse this stuff? No it's not. And one of the things that Republicans have been insisting upon and we saw, I can't even name all of the people that did it. Carrie Lake has done it. Marjorie Taylor Green has done it. There's so many. They love to say the Democrats are the party of pedophilia and child abuse and all of these different things. And of course, they don't even have examples of it here. We have an actual MAGA Republican who is caught doing exactly what

they love to say. The left welcomes. And now they don't want to say it has anything to do with their party. I'm willing to concede that this is an individual actor. But what we can't continue allowing them to do is to insist without evidence that the left is the party of all this, you know, demonic cabal of pedophiles and this that the other thing without evidence when this is not the only story like it that we find about Republicans. I'm not. I don't think my audience is so gullible, nor do I disrespect my audience so much that now I'm going to say this behavior is endorsed by the Republican Party. But the point is, their story about the left or pedophiles and all this difference,

it's we've got to do something to not allow them to continue repeating that because it's the type of thing where you go, no, no, we're not. And they go, wow, that's exactly what the pedophiles would be doing. They would be denying it. There's got to be some way out of this nonsense. And there are too many of these stories about right wingers to go unnoticed at this point in time. One other little note on Herschel Walker. We continue talking about Herschel Walker, the Georgia Republican Senate candidate and his fake badge. I have sort of like good news and bad news, I guess. The good news at this point is that it's really pretty transparent that his badge is fake. This goes back to his debate with Raphael Warnock.

Raphael Warnock correctly accused Herschel Walker of lying about being a law enforcement officer, at which point Herschel Walker took out a badge during the debate. Now, it certainly could be a badge that was handed to him by some sheriff and he claims that it is, but it is meaningless. It confers no law enforcement power. Herschel Walker has not been and is not today any kind of law enforcement officer authorized to do anything at all. Well, Herschel Walker did another been and is not today any kind of law enforcement officer authorized to do anything at all. Well, Herschel Walker did another one of these campaign events yesterday. And at this one, he said that when you laugh at his badge, you're laughing at the military and you're laughing at law enforcement.

That doesn't make any sense, Herschel. But here he is saying it. They laugh at my badge. I love my badge. When they laugh at my badge, they laugh at every military police officer in the country. How? Why? That doesn't make sense, Herschel. Because they're the one who gave me the badge because I support them. They support me. So what we got to do is tell them if they don't like our police, please go somewhere else. It's not that we don't like the police.

You are not a police officer. Think about this unhinged word salad. You're wrong. We're in this country. He seems completely disoriented. If you laugh at his fake badge, which confers no law enforcement authority whatsoever, you're laughing at our military and you're laughing at our law enforcement. And then he says, if you don't like our law enforcement, just leave.

Nobody's talking about how his fake badge connects to any particular view about the police. He is not a police officer. It has nothing to do with liking or disliking liking police officers. We're not even really laughing like we sort of are. I mean, it's cartoonish and funny in a way, but we're finding it sickening and very sad. But you know what? Truly the saddest part of all of this is it's embarrassing to even mention this. The race is even closer now than it was before the badge fiasco before the abortion and badge fiasco. Raphael Warnock was winning by nearly by nearly

four points. Warnock's lead is now smaller. It is now only about two and a half points. Think about what this says about in this particular case, Georgia voters that before the entire abortion fiasco started, it was roughly forty eight forty four Warnock ahead for a very brief moment. Walker dropped by like a point and the race has now tightened to where the difference between these two candidates, on the one hand, incumbent Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock, who understands policy, who understands process, who understands reality, is leading Herschel Walker by only two point four.

Walker doesn't understand anything. Pulled out a fake badge, claims to be a police officer, claims to be authorized to work with police if something happens, which doesn't even mean anything, claims to be pro-life with no exceptions, and yet paid for a woman's abortion and then urged her to have a second abortion, which she did not do. And it is two point four points. This says as much about the Georgia electorate as it does about the candidates. And our voicemail today has to do with exactly what I'm talking about here. Our voicemail number is two one nine two. David P. You can call any time and ask about anything. Here is a really interesting question that relates directly to what I was just saying about the voters of Georgia. Speaker 4

Hi, David, it's James. I just wanted to know, how do you feel about voter shaming? I know that, you know, a couple of things, Kyle and Mike Figueredo and a few other people. I think young Turks are generally against voter shaming. Like they don't criticize Trump voters because they voted for Trump, but they'll sometimes criticize people who voted for Trump because of the wall or because of, you know, the fact that he said banning, ban Muslims or, you know, Mexicans or rapists and all that. How do you feel about votership? Do you think it's productive? Do you think it's fair or do you think it's better to just stick to criticizing the politicians?

What do you know? Because I basically I want to find out the best way. OK, yes. Right. So what's so? So listen, there's two things going on here. All right. If you're asking me, do I think it's in bounds, so to speak, for on programs like mine to be very frank and candid and direct about the fact that there is a lot of dumb people in this country and many of them don't know what the hell is going on and they're just bamboozled by these politicians with obvious lies and they fall for it and they vote for them. And how do they even put their pants on in the morning? How do you balance a checkbook

if you are so ignorant about just basic things you're being lied to on? I have no problem as a commentary on this program saying stuff like that. And in fact, I've said there's really three main groups of Trump voters. There are people who just don't know what the hell is going on. They don't know. They don't know what Trump policies are. They just don't know anything. And they were kind of like tricked. They stumbled into voting for Trump. There's people who are what we might call like bad people. They do understand the Trump policy and they understand all of the things that happen as a result and all the people that Trump policy is terrible for. And they say, I like it and I'm going to vote for him anyway. And then you've got the third group, which is people who vote for Trump out of some selfish priority. Well, yeah,

I understand exactly who and what Trump is, but his tax plan would save me money. So I'm going to vote for him. Those are the main three groups of Trump voters. I've been totally upfront about that. So I have no issue about shows like mine doing that. On the other hand, I am aware that as a matter of pragmatics and effectively deprogramming people from, for example, Trumpism, if I were running a campaign. Right. And I was Trump's opponent. I don't think that shaming Trump voters would be the right way to win them over. Right. I would take an approach that would be something more like, listen, I understand that because we have so much work to do in this country to really make it what it could be. I understand the desire when something different pops up and Trump was different to find in that a reflection of your own desires about the reality that this could be a better

country. I understand that. But we tried it and it failed. And I can tell you exactly what would make this country better. And it's what I'm offering. And I welcome you to come to me no matter who you voted for last time around that framing, which is you're not shaming anybody. You're actually saying I get what was going on that made you say, I don't know, this is different. Maybe it's better. That is more effective than saying there's a lot of stupid people here. There are a lot of stupid people here. And for a program like mine, it's different than if you're running a national campaign. So that's my view on voter shaming. I hope I'm sort of explaining it clearly. We have a great bonus show for you today. Sign up at join Pacman dot com and I will see you on the boat.