The David Pakman Show - 10/25/23: Mark Meadows flips on Trump, Michael Cohen testifies

Episode Date: October 25, 2023

-- On the Show: -- Greg Lukianoff, First Amendment attorney, President and CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, and co-author of "The Canceling of the American Mind: Cancel Culture Undermines Trust and Threatens Us All—But There Is a Solution," joins David to discuss speech, cancel culture, and much more. Get the book: https://amzn.to/45LUINm -- Another Republican "frontrunner" for Speaker of the House drops out within hours of "winning" the nomination -- Mark Meadows, former Chief-of-Staff to Donald Trump, is now cooperating with prosecutors and has been granted immunity -- Failed former President Donald Trump flips out as his own former lawyer, Michael Cohen, testifies against him in the New York civil fraud trial -- Now having clearly violated the terms of his bond, and the gag order on him, it is time to jail former President Donald Trump -- Donald Trump's lawyers try to stop one of his trials over COVID concerns, despite none of them actually being worried enough about it to wear masks in the courtroom -- Republican Congressman Mike Collins might try to impeach Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg over "identity politics" and "wokeism" -- 2024 Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley continues gaining in the polls, approaching Ron DeSantis -- A really deranged voicemail caller leaves a voicemail -- On the Bonus Show: Kyrsten Sinema says she doesn't care if she loses re-election, 41 states sue Facebook parent company Meta, bond markets being hit will impact average Americans, much more... 🔊 Babbel: Get 55% off your subscription at https://babbel.com/pakman 👍 Use code PAKMAN for 10% off the Füm Journey Pack at https://tryfum.com/PAKMAN 🩳 SHEATH Underwear: Code PAKMAN for 20% OFF at https://sheathunderwear.com/pakman 🍜 Use code PAKMAN5 for $5 off immi ramen noodles at https://immieats.com/pakman5 ☕ Beam melatonin hot cocoa: Get up to 40% OFF with code PAKMAN at https://shopbeam.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 -- 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

. I've often said on the show and sometimes I'll say this to people just in conversation off air that there are certain stories in the political world where it doesn't really make sense to cover the minute to minute. And sometimes it makes sense to zoom out a little and say, let's give it 24 hours and see where we are. Let's give it a few days and see where we are. And hilariously, the level of disarray in the Republican Party over the speakership since they kicked out their House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and have failed to select a new speaker. If you tune out for just a few hours, a front runner will rise

like a phoenix over the horizon and just as quickly disappear. And you are none the wiser. And the latest person to whom this happened is Tom Emmer. If you looked at an article from yesterday morning, you learned about Tom Emmer facing a tough road to the speaker's gavel on the floor, Republicans nominating him, although others immediately saying, I don't know that this guy actually has a path to victory. By yesterday afternoon, the headline on the Hill was Emmer bid collapses, extending extraordinary Republican speaker losing streak, indicating that it's the nomination survived four hours, the Republican conference selecting Tom Emmer. And then but within four hours, Emmer withdrew his name. And it's just all looking completely and totally disastrous. Obviously, the failed former President Donald Trump doing everything he can to position himself as someone who is strong and decisive and

influential in this entire speaker debate. It's increasingly hard to believe that that's the case. And of course, his initial endorsement of Jim Jordan went down in flames just disastrously, actually losing support rather than coalescing it with each subsequent vote until eventually Jim Jordan was told by Republican colleagues, it's just not happening. You're not going to be the speaker. Here is Donald Trump. This was either before or right after court yesterday. By the way, we will talk about the court appearance yesterday where Michael Cohen testified against Trump sitting right in front of Trump. It's unbelievable. But we'll get to that. Donald

Trump saying the following about Tom Emmer. I thought it was like he's finished. He's finished. He was not a supporter. He was a rhino. And it looks like he's finished, but we'll see. You never know. A soaking wet Donald Trump relegating Tom Emmer to simply a rhino. Now, of course, you might recall that Donald Trump did previously praise Tom Emmer. He put out on Truth Social back in August of 2022, quote, Tom Emmer is an outstanding representative of the people of Minnesota and Congress. Tom is working hard to grow the economy, secure the board. By the way, there's capital letters all over this thing. I'm just not even

going to make a big deal out of that. Secure the border, defend the Second Amendment and hold criminals accountable. He strongly advocates for our brave men and women in law enforcement. He supports our America first agenda. Tom is doing a great job as chairman of the NRDC, and he has my complete and total endorsement for reelection. Now he is merely a rhino, of course, because I guess he failed to win. So this is a Republican Party in complete and total disarray. I continue to believe that

Democrats should not bail out Republicans. I know that there are people in my audience and other people on the left who are saying, you know, at this point, this is actually just damaging. It's damaging to the country. It's damaging people. We need to have Democrats help Republicans select a speaker. I understand the concern for the American people and how a House of Representatives that is shuttered is not a good thing overall for the country. But if Republicans don't get bailed out by Democrats, it could get to a point where you end up with Democrat Hakeem Jeffries, a speaker of the House, which is what would be best for the United States of America. It's not the most likely scenario, but it's not an impossibility.

And so for now, I still see no reason what Republicans made this mess. It's their house to control. They have the majority. Why is it now the responsibility of Democrats to solve the problem? We, of course, care about what's best for the country. What's best for the country is not having any of these unqualified Republicans as speaker of the House. So I am still by some margin on the side of Democrats should not bail out Republicans. Let's give it another week and see if my mind has changed. Let's talk about Mark Meadows, the former chief of staff for Donald

Trump. He has now flipped on Donald Trump and has been granted immunity. This is absolutely stunning and a disastrous revelation for the failed former president. Why? For a while now, many of us and legal experts had been noticing. Why is Mark Meadows name missing from so many of these indictments? Meadows was right there. He knew what was going on. He was arguably involved by all reasonable assessments.

He was involved. He was one of the closest people to Trump when all of these things were going on, documents and attempts to overturn the election, the Georgia fiasco. Mark Meadows was there for all of it. He is very conspicuously missing from some of these indictments. What is it that is going on? And he has now flipped. And this could not be worse news

for Donald Trump. ABC News reports ex chief of staff Mark Meadows granted immunity, tells special counsel he warned Trump about the 2020 claims. He has spoken to special counsel Jack Smith's team at least three times this year, including once before a federal grand jury, which came after Smith granted Meadows immunity to testify under oath, according to sources familiar with the matter. The sources say Meadows informed Smith's team that he repeatedly told Trump in the weeks after the 2020 election, the allegations of fraud were baseless, were baseless. That's a critical word.

According to the sources, Meadows also told the federal investigators Trump was being, quote, dishonest with the public when he said he won the election just hours after polls closed. But before final results were in, a source quoted Meadows as saying, obviously, we didn't win. Obviously we didn't win. Obviously, we didn't win. This is potentially very bad, very, very bad for Donald Trump. And Donald Trump is not taking this news well, taking to Truth Central Central and posting, quote, I don't think Mark Meadows would lie about the rigged and Stalin 2020 presidential election

merely for getting immunity against prosecution by deranged prosecutor Jack Smith. But when you really think about it, after being hounded like a dog for three years, told you'll be going to jail for the rest of your life. Your money and your family will be forever gone. And we're not at all interested in exposing those that did the rigging. If you say bad things about that terrible monster, Donald J. Trump, we won't put you in prison. You can keep your family and your wealth. And perhaps if you can make up some really horrible stuff, a out him, we may very well

erect a statue of you in the middle of our decaying and now very violent capital Washington, DC. Some people would make that deal, but they are weaklings and cowards and so bad for the future of our failing nation. I don't think that Mark Meadows is one of them, but who really knows? Make America great again. This is Trump saying if Meadows does this, if Meadows flips, if Meadows informs with what Trump claims are lies, but I doubt would be

lies after Mark Meadows has read the riot act and put under oath, doesn't seem to me he's just going to make stuff up, then he would be one of those weaklings and cowards that Donald Trump is referring to. Trump also posting to Troth Central, quote, Mark Meadows never told me that allegations of significant fraud about the rigged election were baseless. He certainly didn't say that in his book. So a couple of different things here. This is genuinely bad news for Donald Trump. Mark Meadows is a name that for a while now has been discussed as if anyone has the goods, it would be Mark Meadows. And his name being conspicuously missing from some of the indictments raises questions as to whether he has been granted immunity and has flipped or is negotiating that

possibility. We now know that at least with regard to one case, that is indeed what is going on. This also brings us to the potential circus fiasco that will be Trump's criminal trials. I believe the first one starts March 3rd or March 4th, something along those lines with the possibility that some of Trump's closest associates and former aides and even what Trump considers friends, although, you know, we still aren't really sure if Trump has friends. These trials have the potential to be absolutely explosive, historic, truly historic events, which I plan to cover to the extent that they are televised and we will see which of them are televised.

So Mark Meadows flipping on Trump granted immunity. Very bad news for Trump. Potentially good news for Mark Meadows if his goal is, of course, to stay out of prison. We will talk more about it. We're going to take a quick break. Make sure you're subscribed on YouTube after the break. Yes. Michael Cohen

testifying. And it is not a vape. I don't advertise vape stuff. There's no nicotine. There's no electronics. Fume is a small cylindrical wooden device that just delivers plant flavored air. It comes in a variety of flavors that people love. Crisp mint, maple pepper, white cranberry. They've got new flavors, sparkling grapefruit, orange, vanilla. Importantly, it just gives your hand something to do. It's a device that feels good in your hand or in your pocket. You can take it anywhere. And it satiates that hand to mouth fixation that if you're trying to break a bad habit, can be very useful. It's also fun to fidget with, which is important, too. It has an adjustable

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the show and a sort of version of my soundboard that I have here. And we will ban men. Right. We have a version of that soundboard available on the member section of the website and so many other great things. I invite you to sign up at join Pacman dot com. An explosive confrontation took place yesterday in Donald Trump's New York civil trial. Michael Cohen, Donald Trump's former lawyer, friend of the show, and a guy who, quite frankly,

just doesn't seem to be concerned anymore if he ever was with saying things to stay in people's good graces. Michael Cohen making it clear he's going to show up to this civil trial and he's going to testify and he's going to tell the truth as he sees it and as he knows it. And if anybody knows where the proverbial bodies are buried, and I hope it's only proverbial. I'm not saying Trump killed anybody. I'm just saying as far as I know, they are only proverbial bodies. If anybody else has other information, you let me know. It would be Michael Cohen who knows where those proverbial bodies are buried.

And when it comes to the playing fast and loose with the value of Trump's properties, if it's advantageous for them to be higher for the purposes of collateral, if it's advantageous for the values of properties to be lower for the purposes of avoiding taxation. It would be Michael Cohen who knows about that. An incredible series of reports. Here is one from Jose Pagliari, who was in the courtroom and says, as Cohen reminisces about the Trump org culture of deceit, Trump is fussing at the defense table. His attorneys keep patting him on the arm to calm down his muted outbursts. He's not loud, just annoyed Trump behaving like a kid at the defense table. And it is

really an extraordinarily damning testimony against Donald Trump. Key takeaways are summarized by CNN. And then we'll get to some video with Trump sitting feet away. Cohen described how he manipulated Trump's financial statements, reverse engineering them to hit an arbitrary net worth. Things quickly got heated when cross-examination began as Cohen sneered at the questions and loudly objected to one line of questioning. I absolutely love it. Let's take a look at some of the video from this event. Here is Michael Cohen entering the courtroom where he will testify. A tense atmosphere. Clearly, we knew this, that this would trigger All right. So there is Michael Cohen passing a gaggle of photographers and then entering the courtroom.

We also heard from Donald Trump heading into court where he faced his former lawyer saying Cohen is simply a liar. And I apologize for the sort of shaky audio on this stuff. It's just what we're dealing with. He's a liar trying to get a better deal for himself. But it's not going to work. This case, by any means, this case would have been over a long time ago. We did nothing wrong.

And that's been proven. Thank you. All right. So Trump's saying he'll be back and saying even before Michael Cohen gave testimony that Cohen is simply a liar trying to get a better deal for himself. Donald Trump was asked, by the way, are you concerned about Jenna Ellis's plea deal? Remember that yet another. You've got Sidney Powell. You've got Kenneth

Cheese, bro. And then you now have Jenna Ellis taking a plea deal, sobbing in court with tears in her eyes, as these people like to say. Trump says, I don't know a thing about what Jenna Ellis is up to. Speaker 4 Speaker 3 There you go. So a glistening wet Trump says he doesn't know a damn thing about Jenna Ellis's plea deal. Here is Trump after the court appearance asked, what was it like to see Michael Cohen again? And Trump said, you know, just negative things about Michael Cohen.

How do you feel about Jenna Ellis taking a video? Speaker 4 We'll see how it ends up. So Trump saying that, of course, Cohen has a terrible record. I don't even know what that means. I mean, the black stains, the the black stains on Michael Cohen's record are all things done at the direction of Donald Trump and to serve Trump's interests. So to the extent that that Cohen's record is bad, it's really an indictment of Trump. And I have no reason to think Cohen's been anything but honest since this all started. We then also heard Michael Cohen asked how he felt about seeing Donald Trump again. Heck of a reunion is the answer there from Michael Cohen. And then also hearing from Michael Cohen outside

the courthouse where he made just a very short statement. Let me just turn around and say that this is not about Donald Trump versus Michael Cohen or Michael Cohen versus Donald Trump. This is about accountability, plain and simple. And we leave it up to Judge Angor on in order to make all the determinations on that. So I thank you all for coming. So listen, for all of the criticisms of Michael Cohen and the fact that he did do Trump's bidding for a very long time, it's very hard for me to find areas in which Michael Cohen has been dishonest or anything

but genuine since this entire legal fiasco started. And the critical point that we are going to talk more about today is that Donald Trump immediately attacked Michael Cohen after the testimony, which to me is a very clear violation of the gag order that has been put in place. And we're going to delve into this more deeply. But Trump flipping out on truth, social, essential and saying about Michael Cohen, quote, Michael Cohen was a complete and total disaster in the Biden inspired trial today. Lie after lie and getting caught each time. My great assets are worth more than is on my financial statements.

And it's not even close. The rigged trial doesn't even give me the right to a jury. But the people are watching and they are seeing what is going on here. A miscarriage of justice. The statute being used for this case gives me no rights and has never been used for this before. But the facts are all on my side. Witch hunt. I believe this is a violation

of the gag order that Trump already violated once. Let's talk about that next. We are getting to a point where it is becoming more and more difficult to understand why has Trump's bond not been revoked and why is Trump not sitting in jail in pretrial detention? And the latest episode in this, of course, is Donald Trump attacking Michael Cohen, yet again a witness providing testimony in one of the trials that Trump is involved in. This one is a civil defendant. Others are as a criminal defendant. This is not deny people due process and lock them up sort of

stuff. This is extremely specific. Donald Trump has had a number of gag orders placed upon him by judges because he attacks court personnel and he attacks witnesses and he attacks prosecutors and he attacks judges. And you're not allowed to do that. As we've talked about before, gag orders that are limited in scope. He can still lie and say he won the election and all of that stuff. These limited gag orders are not violations of the First Amendment. It is widely established by legal precedent. Donald Trump, after being placed under gag order, continues to attack witnesses and all sorts of people.

Any other person not in a position of power the way Trump is would have been jailed for violation of bond at this point in time. And it seems that the appropriate action would be for the same thing to happen to Donald Trump. He still gets due process. He gets to go to trial whenever the trial is. He can assert his innocence and he is entitled to being judged and sentenced only in accordance to what the law indicates. This is the same due process anybody gets when they are detained pretrial. Again, Donald Trump yesterday after testimony from witness Michael Cohen under oath on Truth Social attacking him, saying, quote, Michael Cohen was a complete and total disaster in the Biden inspired

trial today. Lie after lie and getting caught each time. And he went on from there. This is yet another attack on witnesses, which Trump has been told you're not allowed to do or we're going to to jail you and detain you. Think back to all of the examples and understand that a normal defendant, not a privileged elite like Donald Trump, but a normal defendant, if they did a fraction of this, would have bond revoked. Trump calling people involved in prosecuting him racist. He often focuses on this. Alvin Bragg, the racist Manhattan district attorney, Trump said on Truth Social. Letitia James, another witch hunt by a racist attorney general. Fannie Willis, a local racist Democrat district attorney. And many other examples. Trump goes after people involved

in the prosecutions based on their romances. Trump has cited many times without evidence that people involved in his cases are romantically connected to nefarious figures. He said about an aide to Judge and Goran, Senator Chuck Schumer's girlfriend is running the case against me. He was admonished for that. He said about Fannie Willis, she had an affair with the head of a gang or a gang member. I wasn't able to find any evidence that that's the truth. He also goes after the family members of people that are involved in these cases

saying about Alvin Bragg. He has a Trump hating wife and Trump hating friends saying about Judge Tanya Chutkin. Oh, I'm sure she'll be very fair. And then cites an article that says Chutkin's grandfather was a Marxist about remember one Merchan who was presiding over the hush money case. Quote, I have a Trump hating judge with a Trump hating wife and the daughter who worked for Kamala Harris about special counsel Jack Smith, a Trump hater, as well as his friends and family. He sometimes has likened people involved in these cases.

He's likened them to being subhuman, essentially referring to Alvin Bragg as a Soros backed animal, referring to Fannie Willis as a rabid partisan, referring to Letitia James as a Soros backed animal, referring to Fannie Willis as a rabid partisan, referring to Letitia James as a monster. And he has also said that they are crazy people referring to Alvin Bragg as a degenerate psychopath, referring to Letitia James as a crazy radical leftist nut job, referring to her also as a Trump deranged lunatic and about special prosecutor Jack Smith. Trump has said he is deranged, a radical lunatic and a psycho. Anybody else would have had bond revoked and would be sitting in jail awaiting trial, but not Trump. It is arguably time to put him in jail. Will it happen? Almost certainly not. I want to mention just one other thing related to the Trump trials. The latest move from Trump's

lawyers is to try to stop his civil fraud trial over covid. And this is just so damn funny because Trump's never been concerned about covid. And also his lawyers, while arguing in court, we're all super concerned about covid in the court. None of them are wearing masks, which if they were actually concerned, they might be doing. Here's an article from Business Insider which says Trump's fraud trial began week four on Tuesday after skipping Monday due to a covid outbreak. An unmasked Trump watched as his unmasked lawyers asked that the trial be halted due to risk of infection.

The judge declined, saying, hey, and ninety five masks were available in the courtroom to anybody who wanted one, suggesting clearly you're not that concerned about covid because you're all here and none of you are wearing masks. Now, honestly, this is just absurd on its face. It's completely absurd on its face. It is truly a last ditch effort and it didn't work. And this is not going well for Donald Trump. Trump actually coming out of the courtroom or maybe coming into the courtroom, who knows

at this point and saying what they did about COVID is terrible. And then he just goes on to attack the judge. Speaker 4 We'll be out later. What they did with COVID in the courtroom was a disgrace and they should apologize. They should not have done it. And except for the bias of the judge, he could have held it off a little bit. But we're winning this case other than the fact I don't have a jury and I want a jury. I want a jury.

Speaker 1 And I want a jury. Speaker 2 And I want a jury. Speaker 1 And I want a jury. Speaker 2 And I want a jury. Speaker 1 And I want a jury. Speaker 1 And I want a jury. Speaker 2 And I want a jury. Speaker 1 And I want a jury.

Speaker 2 And I want a jury. Speaker 1 And I want a jury. Speaker 2 And I want a jury. Speaker 1 And're winning this case other than the fact that I don't have a jury and I want a jury. All right. And now he goes into some of his other greatest hits about why it's all so unfair. Consider that Trump couldn't even be bothered to stop campaigning when COVID was at his highest point, holding mass rallies and the entire thing. And now a trial has to stop because someone in the

court has covid. I do think that these are the kinds of people who will try anything they can think of to delay the trials, because if it works, then that's great. They're successful. If it works and then Trump ends up becoming president, Trump will try to use being president as a reason why the trials can't continue now. And so they're out of ideas. They're willing to try anything anybody thinks of. And this is the latest thing COVID we have to stop the trial. Good for Judge and Goran, who I guess I've been pronouncing his last name and Goran incorrectly. Apparently it's in Goran. Good for Judge and Goran for not going for this. I'm sure they'll ramen noodles, low maintenance,

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I appreciate it. Thanks for having me. So, you know, to start with, I have to say I I'm really interested in this topic of cancel culture to the extent that I believe it exists and speech and the issues I've seen you talk about on other shows that I reviewed kind of to prepare for our conversation. I'm really interested in this as someone who is very much on the left. I find that there are people on the left concerned about this and people on the right concerned about this. Their concern is often different. It's motivated by different things. Yeah. And and I find myself disagreeing sometimes with the nature of the concern. So can you lay this out as you see it in terms of feel free to tell us a little bit about your political background if you want,

if you think it's relevant and what's your perspective and how you have become concerned about this issue? Sure. I mean, I'm a I'm liberal myself and I'm definitely left of center. You know, I definitely feel like the political spectrum has moved a little bit. And yes, but still, you know, as someone who knows my social science, I know that my political youth very much still fit left of center. Um, but I've been working on campus for 22 years now, and I worked at the ACLU of Northern California. I, I, uh, did refugee law before that. I, and I, um, and I specialized in first amendment law. And so I was invited to be the first legal director of fire. And already by 2001, it was a lot easier to get in trouble for what you said on a college campus than I expected.

And even though and by the way, Stanford was sometimes could be a difficult place to have a serious argument. And so I've been doing this for 22 years and things started getting a lot worse around 2014. And the big shift was that students who had always been the best constituency for freedom of speech, at least during my entire career, started being the ones, you know, signing petitions to get professors fired for what they said, asking for new speech codes, all of this kind of stuff. Now, sometimes there's a little bit of like rhetorical jujitsu that happens on social media or people like, oh, you're just blaming students. And it's like, well, if they're demanding professors get fired, then sure. But it's important to keep in mind that a lot of cases, the people who are actually leading the charge are administrators, but they're working with students. And whereas they couldn't find

sympathetic students 10 years ago or 15 years ago, they can now find them. And when I try to convince skeptics of this problem, you know, I point out that of the, you know, 1000 attempts to get professors punished, you know, that we've seen since 2014, which, by the way, is a very large number. If you know your academic freedom history, you know, you're usually talking about major incidents involving a handful of firings. And we're talking about, you know, almost 200. I point out that one third of the punishments, you know, come from the right. They come from Turning Point USA. They come from Fox News. And but my joke, you know, I'm an old I'm an old First Amendment guy. I'm like an old liberal in the sense that I'm unapologetic about my free speech stance. And it's funny because like when

suddenly people start caring about the issue because they realize that a lot of liberals get in trouble. And actually, by the way, liberals get in trouble all the time, both from left and from the right at this point. But if that suddenly makes them care about it, I'm kind of like, I really wish you'd also care when people you hate get in trouble, too. So let's talk a little bit about I mean, let me just lay out my perspective on this and maybe that we could do this a bunch of different ways, but I'll lay out my perspective and you can tell me, you know, agree, disagree. What am I missing? I am concerned with so-called even if cancel culture is not the term everybody likes.

I think we all kind of know what we are alluding to when we say it. So I'll use the term cancel culture. I am concerned when cancel culture and limitations on speech take place on the left. I don't like when the left uses identity politics to silence people. I was very outspoken about the absurdity of Jewish women being told by the Women's March that they aren't oppressed or intersectional enough to be on the board. And I think these things are absolutely disastrous. When I see it, I call it out. When I see people's membership or lack thereof in a group used to say we don't need to pay attention to that. For example, if right now I'm getting David, because you're Jewish, you are inherently biased on what's happening in the Israeli Palestinian conflict.

So your views and the views of Jews need to be dismissed. Well, by definition, everybody then brings some bias. So I think that that's a problem. If I really am honest, I see the vast majority of this problem on the American political right. And I'll give you the areas where I see it. Yeah. The calls for media boycotts of shows, movies, et cetera, on the basis that they are so-called promoting progressivism or they even go further than that. Calls for academic censorship from the right against

professors who are teaching allegedly left wing stuff that they don't like attacks on corporations, boycotts on corporations because corporations take stances on issues like gun control, climate change, et cetera, social media censorship and arguing that certain views we saw this around COVID. We saw this in so many different either social media outlets should be forced to put certain views out there, even though at the end of the day, they're private corporations with terms of service. I see the majority of this on the political right. Am I missing something? Yes. The debt doesn't support

that at all. The and this is something that is frustrating for me, because like since there are threats from the right, it's very quick for people, you know, particularly on my side of the fence to, to point to the threats that are real on the right and many of which my organization fires taken to court and one by the way, um, that, uh, that allows us to kind of like focus on, on that problem and not look at the problem on our own side. But I, I will say without equivocation, the problem is worse on the left. OK, give me the data.

So so the data now, if you want, like if people are looking for reasons to to to be concerned about a liberalism on the right, those professor numbers are the ones they should be looking at, because those are coming from, like I said, Turning Point USA, Fox News, et cetera. And and one third of professors, that's that's a lot of the punishments going on on campus. That's hundreds of professors being punished. And that's something that we could really use more help on. I would also like to convince your listeners to help the people who are neither right or left because there's about eight or nine percent of those are neither right or left. And then 60 percent are actually from the left. So certainly a problem on campus is much more on the left than the right. When it comes to legislatures, the one law that has been passed that was a threat to curriculum in higher ed, one that was clearly unconstitutional, was the Stop Woke Act. And the Stop Woke Act is something

we went right into court as soon as we could find a plaintiff, challenged and won, by the way. So right now it's actually been defeated. They're trying to stop woke too, which we'll also try again. And I think it's going to be laughed out of court just like the last one. But there has been one and it's been defeated. So I think that there's too many convenient ways to keep the left from doing some really valuable self-reflection on some of this stuff and i think we're so calcified in our current culture war and what and the funny thing is when you were talking about boycotts and you were talking about all the corporate stuff i felt like i i was like i thought i was listening to one of the one of my fox news interviewers

because it was like they always talk about the left always doing this you know and so so it's one of those things where it's like yes there are very real threats from the right and we fight them. But but at the same time, I don't want people to use that as a way of saying, like, there's not a serious liberals problem on the left. And honestly, like I said, it's worse by all the data that we're that we're able to see when it comes to attitudes about freedom of speech, the polling, the right now, particularly among millennials, left-leaning millennials, the numbers are bad. And that generally people on the right have become more pro-free speech. Of course, to be clear, that's always sort of like a matter of political convenience for a lot of people, unfortunately. If they think they're the ones who are more likely to get censored, they tend to be more pro-free speech. And if you think you're more likely to be the people

making those calls, you tend to be more proof of proof free speech. And if you think you're more likely to be the people making those calls, you tend to be more pro censorship. So I think there's a bunch of stuff there where the devil really is in the details. I mean, first of all, it sounds like what you're saying is the case that this is and we don't just have to talk about where it's worse. It'd be we'll get to solutions in a moment, but at least to keep framing this. It sounds like you're saying the data that proves this is more of a problem on the left than the right is that when we look at attempted firings of professors. A third of them are from the right, 10 percent of them are from the middle and the other 57 percent, the other 50s, depending on the year, you said eight or nine. Yeah. And so basically, and then 57 to 60 percent is from the left. So from all the categories I mentioned,

you're looking just at the academic thing and saying by a 60 40 margin, it's more a problem on the left. That's not the strongest case. Oh, but David, it's worse than that. OK, people actually doing the firing in those third of cases are almost always themselves left leading. The the pressure comes from outside. And because universities have become so cowardly and bad on freedom of speech. OK, and since its super majority of administrators are actually in charge, this does not even those cases do not completely absolve the left. And when it comes to professors, one of the reasons why we have this data is

because it's what's knowable currently. Like we're actually looking into the different attacks on students. When we started initially looking into students, when it was a question of viewpoint, yeah, you were a ton more likely to get in trouble for something if you anchored the left than if you anchored the right, which is not surprising given the people who actually enforce the rules at universities are, and this is uncontroversial research at this point, um, are super majority left and same thing, same thing with professors. So if there's a free speech problem on college campuses, it is a left problem. Okay. Um, so from the data you gave me, it is somewhat more of a left problem than a right problem. I concede the audience can, they've

heard your side of it. They can look it up. Let's put the campus piece aside for a second. There are entire movements that are forms of cancel culture, speech suppression that are almost exclusively coming from the right. The entire social media company, covid vaccine, that entire thing was led almost exclusively by the right saying it is wrong for YouTube to enforce terms of service and remove anti-vax content, even though it is YouTube's right as a corporation to say we have terms of service as long as

we're not saying, hey, black people aren't allowed to post or whatever. What YouTube was doing was just enforcing terms of service. You had right wingers saying Twitter should not be allowed to remove our anti-vax information. To me, these are all forms of attempting to limit the speech of these private platforms to say, hey, we have terms of service and we're not doing anything illegal. We can decide what's allowed on our platform. Yeah, this is very interesting. I've watched this actually happen on the left. The the increasing sort of favoritism for powerful corporations to make these decisions themselves. That's too easy a way to write it off, though. I don't I don't think that that's what it is. I think it's simply saying Republicans aren't holding themselves to their own standards with this stuff. And neither, neither a Democrats that like in California, like excellent lost it, launched

a lawsuit, uh, um, w due to social media regulations they have in California that are, that are incredibly onerous and actually pressure them to, you know, clamp down and hate speech. So, so I kind of want to introduce Florida, Texas to California to actually point out that both sides are actually trying to make social media do their bidding. They just have different ideas of what their bidding is. And one thing I really want to caution you on is that misinformation, disinformation is a exception to freedom of speech so wide it puts in the hands of power, limitless power, to censor people they dislike. And I think that a lot of what actually—and we talk about some of the cancel culture cases that came out of COVID, for example. And a lot of those cases are people who weren't, by the way, on the right, but who ended up being right about things like school closures, like losing their careers because they were like, you know, like Jennifer say at Levi's jeans, her original point, you know, was that this is going to hurt disadvantaged kids the most closing the schools. Um, and it's going to hurt students for, for years to come. And she was

forced out of Levi's and she was right. Um, and basically like there there's, there's large agreement that essentially the lockdowns were harmful to kids. Speaker 1 Last thing from the categories you mentioned was on attitudes towards speech. It is true that when you look at Pew, Cato, Gallup and a couple of others I looked at by depends which poll between an eight and 20 point margin, those who identify as being on the right are more likely to be supportive of free speech in more cases than those on the left. Do we agree on the numbers, depending on the poll, eight to 20 percentage points? Is that fair? Depending on the poll, depending on the point, just so we're kind of in agreement is the degree

to which this is the case. Yeah. I'm not claiming it's a massive gap. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a gap. There's a gap. I think my concern is that very often and Scott Galloway actually recently had a really good commentary on this. Very often some of the people who are pushing free speech for free speech is sake are just wanting to be able to say racist and xenophobic things with no consequences. And they're entitled to do it. Listen, I respect that. They're completely entitled to do it. Listen, I respect that they're completely

entitled to do it. I am not hugely I don't find it the most admirable cause to be focused on free speech for free speech's sake. When what you really want to do is say horrible things with no consequences, even if it's the right to do it. I'm laughing right now because please. And I respect you to be. But I hear these arguments so often it's hard for me to take them all that seriously because we're right now. Right now, what's happening with regards to pro-Palestinian speech and pro on campus is people are saying, well, this is consequence culture, guys. The students that we're going after the the the blacklist that we're creating a pro Hamas, pro Palestinian speech, that's

just consequence culture. And meanwhile, what's actually happened because it's so difficult, like basically like my side cannot admit that it's wrong on anything it feels like. And it drives me literally not sometimes. I admit it all the time. You know, I mean, oh, but but but let's say so. For example, kind of like the blacklists, you who said pro-homosexual speech for various jobs. The first thing that people do on Twitter and on social media is like, well, the free speech advocates, the cancel culture people are silent on this.

And meanwhile, I'd already talked about it a million times. Like I've been on national TV talking about I don't like blacklists. This is – that we should notlist. This is that we should that we should not doing this. This is this is cancel culture, but not actually saying maybe actually the sort of like quick dismissal of of cancel culture as being consequence culture wasn't that great of an idea. Because to me, all saying that something is consequence culture is is usually that they haven't looked into the particular cases in many cases because you can't really look at the cases that we have in the book and say these are all justified and that essentially it's just it's a pat way of trying not to engage as much. That's why I don't like the I feel like the it basically it literally begs the question and like in the sense that in the actual original sense of that term, it is the premise to be

true. I guess I'm just not really sure when it comes to what I'm pointing out, which is just on a completely factual basis, the gap in terms of support for free speech between left and right is relatively modest at you, as you admit. And there is a contingent of the right that when asked the question, do you support free speech? They don't want consequences socially nor from an employment standpoint of saying horrible things about either racial minorities or sexual orientation minorities or whatever. And I don't find I'm talking only about that contingent. I'm with you on 90 percent of this. That contingent, I don't find a particularly a particularly admirable

reason to say I'm for free speech. It's not super interesting to me. Yeah, I think that's that's too easy of an out because like when you when you look at the cases that we talk about in the book, you know, a lot of cases, these are things where you have a hard time even figuring out how someone was offended by it in the first place. OK, I don't deny that. That's fine.

And as far as those those examples go, I think they should be looked at. Let's talk a little bit about solutions. Sure. What sorts of solutions are the types of things that you believe would be most effective? I think we have a I think we have an opportunity to figure out cheaper, more rigorous ways to do a lot of education. I think that right now, I think the extent to which and we to do a lot of education. Um, I think that right now, I think the extent to which, um, and we have focused a lot about this in the final

couple of chapters about how much, um, and I really want to appeal to make sure that the people on the left get this message that, um, uh, that the, there's a book by Evan Mandry called poison Ivy that I think everyone should read. And it talks about how much elite colleges, uh, in particular recreate class privilege that essentially like the for every, you know, one kid who grew up working class like me who goes to Stanford, a thousand rich kids, you know, get to stay in the upper classes. And I think that there that I think there's sometimes a reflexive defense of higher education without actually thinking about how we could do something that would be more equitable, that would be less expensive, that would be something that you could actually do without going into debt. And we're trusting in these

mega corporations far, far more than we should. So I think that some of the different ways, you know, I think even, what's his name? Sal Khan, you know, from Khan Academy is even working on on a way to, you know, show that you're an autodidact, you know, in and get, you know, get a degree that way. So I think that actually we need it's a time where we need a lot of experimentation for cheaper, better solutions. So is that now that's that's interesting when it comes specifically to the issue of education. But what about what about more broadly to the cultural attitudes, to the ways in which a lot of these instances of speech being adjudicated in different ways?

Is there a framework to solve the problem as you've identified? Not a single one, which is the reason why I don't love the subtitle, because it makes it sounds like I think there's a solution. I think that there are many things we could be doing to make it better. But the most fundamental one, honestly, is a little bit of the, a little bit of the, just, just the idea that everyone's entitled to their opinion, even if you think it's repugnant, um, would be something that I wish we had that as a societal cliche that we took seriously still, because it doesn't feel like we're doing that way. And, and we do call that out by the way, on the right and the left, basically

being kind of like, well, if that's your opinion, then I'm better off not knowing it. It's like, honestly, if that's someone's opinion, it's even if it's horrifying, it's usually better to know it than not. Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, my approach with the platforming of disgusting people over the last however many years on the show has been I want to know what their opinion is and then I want to evaluate whether it's getting enough attention to be worthy of refuting it versus ignoring it. And it's just a choice that we can make as individuals. Yeah.

And I think that's entirely fair. Like the you know, the way I talk about it, my overall theory on freedom of speech is something I call the pure informational theory of free speech. And as I always say, it's like, listen, and one of the reason why I caution people against going too hard on misinformation, disinformation. Lizard people who live under the Denver airport do not control the world. But if your uncle, girlfriend, boyfriend, partner thinks they do, that is incredibly valuable information. And if a large part of society thinks they do, you better be able to study it.

And here I'm thinking in part of things like QAnon. Obviously not true, but worth knowing how many people believe this stuff. Oh, man. Yeah, 100 percent. 100 percent. The book is the canceling of the American mind. Cancel culture undermines trust and threatens us all. But there is a solution, even though it's not a solution.

As Greg pointed out, it's a it's a bunch. We've been speaking with Greg Lucchinoff, First Amendment attorney and co-author of the book. Really appreciate your time and insights today. Thank you, David. That was fun. If you're familiar with me and my show, you know that I don't promote crazy supplements, drinkable silver, wacky stuff that right wing shows do. I don't offer miracle cures or anything like that. I promote products that are backed by science and that makes sense at the end of the day. That's what our sponsor AG1 is. It's really simple. Instead of taking dozens of different vitamins, potentially spending hundreds of dollars on them. What I do is before my morning cappuccino, I have a scoop of AG1 in water. Simple. I get the entire day's worth of vitamins, minerals,

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You'll get five free travel packs of AG one and a year's supply of vitamin D for free. That's drink. A is an atom. G is in green. The number one dot com slash Pacman to get five free travel packs of AG one and a free year supply of vitamin D. The link is in the podcast notes. Well, the impeachment of Joe Biden seems to be failing completely, going absolutely nowhere, as we talked about yesterday. But the new one is that some Republicans are now itching to impeach Pete Buttigieg, the secretary of transportation. This doesn't really make any sense. And yet and yet here is Republican Congressman Mike

Collins on Fox Business saying we may now need to look at impeaching Pete Buttigieg. Why? As if they need a reason. Apparently the reasons are identity politics and woke ism. These are the reasons why now an impeachment of Pete Buttigieg is on the table. It makes no sense. But let's take a look at what Mike Collins said. Where you have a president that actually put someone in place of the Department of

Transportation who was instilled there on identity politics. OK, so what you have to really understand what they're saying. Mike Collins is saying. And Stuart Varney is agreeing that the reason Pete Buttigieg is secretary of transportation is because he's gay. That's what they mean by identity politics. Pete Buttigieg is a white guy, so that that wouldn't be it. Pete Buttigieg is male, so it wouldn't be over selecting women for the sake of selecting women. What Mike Collins is saying is that Pete Buttigieg is secretary of transportation because he's

gay and as a result, maybe he should be impeached due to the fact that he actually knew what the job and tell them and how to do the job. So so is it impeachment on the table, Congressman? Well, if he doesn't resign, everything's on the table because you can tell after two and a half years of a culture of locusts in this department. You see the results of it. There you go. Locusts and identity politics have placed Pete Buttigieg as secretary of transportation. It's only because he's gay that he's there and he doesn't know what's going on.

Hilariously, Pete Buttigieg strikes me and we interviewed him a few weeks ago as one of the most knowledgeable secretaries of transportation in decades. And if you want to talk about unqualified secretaries, you can't ignore what happened under Donald Trump. And it's not what about ISM. It's if there's a standard for qualification and we don't have a problem with what Trump did, how on earth are we going to say that there's a

problem with Buttigieg? Betsy DeVos, a secretary of education who wants to destroy public education. Ben Carson, a secretary of housing and urban development, something that as a doctor, he knows absolutely nothing about. In fact, it seems that Ben Carson's appointment was identity politics. Trump hearing the word urban and thinking, oh, Ben Carson's black. Let's make him that secretary. If anybody can be blamed for using identity politics for selecting secretaries, it would be Donald Trump. But they want to impede Pete Buttigieg now genuinely deranged people.

I mean, listen, why stop it? Impeaching Pete Buttigieg. Maybe there's some crime they could accuse him of and demand some kind of criminal investigation. But remember, when they tell you what they're going to do, excuse me, choking when they when they tell you what they're going to do, believe them. They're telling tell you what they're going to do. Believe them. They're telling us exactly what they're going to do. Trump is saying he's going to direct the Justice Department to prosecute his political opponents.

They're telling us what they're going to do. It's horrifying. We should believe them and we should make sure that these people don't end up in positions of power. I don't want to spend a ton of time on this, but there is something fascinating continuing to happen in the Republican primary, which is basically over. OK, I want to be clear. The Republican primary is essentially over. Donald Trump again today reaching a new high. He got to fifty nine percent on Monday. He's now at fifty nine point one percent. DeSantis continues failing. But here's the interesting thing. Nikki Haley continues to gain. Nikki Haley is now beyond eight percent support and approaching

nine percent support. These are not wildly stunning numbers that suggest she's imminently going to be the Republican nominee. But if you look at where Nikki Haley started and the dynamics of where this race were, remember, there was a point in time at which Vivek Ramaswamy was considered to be the insurgent who was just going to be in second place soon. He got to six, seven, almost eight percent. Ramaswamy has lost half of his support. He's now down to four point five. But meanwhile, and relatively quietly, Nikki Haley has gone from two and three and four percent to five to six to seven to eight and continues climbing within a month. Nikki Haley may be ahead of Ron DeSantis in second place. I don't believe that this really puts her in position to take down Trump, who is polling

almost eight times better than she is. But it has the potential if she can have a strong showing in an early primary state, maybe to at least give Republican voters something to think about. Nikki Haley, only four points behind Ron DeSantis. DeSantis is trending down and Nikki Haley is trending up. Meanwhile, some interesting elements from some other Republican primary polls that I think are worth looking at. Very interestingly, there is a Republican primary poll from Harris X, which actually has Haley at 22 percent. That's only one poll. But 22 percent is is way better than she's been polling. That's a head to head against Donald Trump, which again suggests that if she can get some of the field cleared and really take Trump on directly in some of these early primary states, maybe there's something there that would be interesting. A couple other polls here.

This is a if you take out Trump, there is a Harris X poll, which has DeSantis at thirty three and then Vivek and Nikki Haley sort of right around 14 and 12. Interestingly, removing Trump doesn't really change the order of anything else. That's indicative of the idea that Trump's support, if it were to be diminished, would not disproportionately help any one candidate. Sort of like an interesting internal dynamic. Important to remember, Nikki Haley is still really nuts. Here she was the other day on CNN saying that the Republican chaos in the speaker of the House race and the entire thing, it's actually all Biden's fault. Just lest anyone think Nikki Haley is a reasonable person. The House still doesn't have a speaker for the first time in American history.

This is nearly two weeks after Kevin McCarthy was stripped of his leadership. They still can't even pass a resolution condemning the Hamas attacks. Right. It's starting to look like there is not one House Republican who can get 217 votes. Republican Congressman Austin Scott said the chaos, quote, makes us look like a bunch of idiots, unquote. Is he right? Well, I'll tell you what's right is under the Biden administration, we've seen chaos with inflation and the fact that you can't blame that on Biden. You can't blame this on Biden. She is blaming it on Biden.

No, you can't. Well, you have to let me finish. We have seen chaos with inflation. We've seen chaos with the lack of transparency in education. We've seen chaos on the border. We've seen chaos with crime on the streets, and now we're seeing chaos around the world. What I'm saying is you can't fix Democrat chaos with Republican chaos. All of the chaos in general is the fault of Democrats. And then now all of a sudden you've

got Republicans trying to figure out who should be speaker of the House. And it's really not their fault. This is Nikki Haley. She is surging. We'll see what happens at the next debate. We'll see where her polling is a month from now. But certainly the vague surge is over. And now the question is, does Nikki Haley push into second place? This is one of the most disturbing voicemails I've ever received. All right. You can call the voicemail line at two one nine two David P. I'll just play it. OK. And then we'll discuss bagel fake men. OK. Calling me bagel.

I think that's anti-Semitic, right? I mean, is that what would you call a Catholic host bagel? I think not. You must be trust funding it up to tell us the economy is doing great. I have no trust fund, sir. I have no trust fund, sir. I have no trust fund. I'm trolling so many of your commies on the front. This is great.

You even go to the grocery store like I do. I go to the grocery store. Yes, sir. How is it? How much money do you get? We don't get any Soros money. No. I mean, is it is it because George Soros is Jewish and I'm Jewish that I must be funded

by George Soros? Is that the idea? Have that. I just loaded a bunch of people on train cars like your grandfather used to that smirk. We know the time you must live in isolated duty. You're not noticing anything. Now once you have your buddy Pete fill some holes, we know he loves the stuff. That's a homophobic comment about Pete Buttigieg.

So we have anti-Semitism, deranged general comments and homophobia. But we need our potholes fixed. I mean, 66 billion. You know, he's going to send some of that shit over to Palestine before he lays any asphalt down here. So again, man, stop saying show us like everything costs more portions are smaller. Yeah, we've talked about inflation. I mean, certainly it's nothing that's been hidden on this program.

There's less people to work in the same establishment. I think he means fewer people. Obviously, he didn't add any of them jobs. So again, they like fun from your standpoint. I invite you to go work eight hours with me. I'll pay you out of. I work more than eight hours a day. I don't know. I don't have time to add another eight hours to my work day. My work day is full. I don't pocket. I'll show you what retail work looks like in a high end ski resort. No more shilling like you're underweight. You're thin.

You can't. You know, I just had my physical. I'm actually the perfect weight. The doctor said I've never seen someone with a perfect weight the way I see you work out. I mean, you have a lot. You're not you really think you represent the working class of America? Maybe you show us what it looks like outside one day. So tell you, Tommy shows to keep coming at me. And I love to fold in faster than Jill's breakfast tacos.

This looks great. Thanks. Have a great day. You're not that bad of a person, but I don't think you believe that. It's just saying, all right, I'm not that bad of a person that that's certainly a ringing endorsement. That's seriously deranged. I mean, you know, it's not really worth saying anything else about it, but seriously deranged

stuff. These these people exist and they're allowed to vote and some of them do vote on the bonus show. We'll talk about Kyrsten Sinema's new declaration that she doesn't care if she loses reelection. Good, because she's probably going to lose. Secondly, 41 states have now sued Meta, the parent company of Facebook, claiming that Instagram and Facebook are addictive and they are harming kids. What is the crux of the lawsuit?

We will discuss. And thirdly, bond markets are being hit hard, which sounds sort of like a like a finance story. It is actually likely to impact all of us. We will discuss those stories and more on today's bonus show. Sign up at join Pacman dot com. I'll see you then.