The David Pakman Show - 10/4/22: Herschel Walker Campaign Implodes, Mike Pillow Prays for Me

Episode Date: October 4, 2022

-- On the Show: -- Andrew Koppelman, Law Professor at Northwestern University, joins David to discuss his new book out today, "Burning Down the House: How Libertarian Philosophy Was Corrupted by Delusion and Greed." Get the book: https://amzn.to/3SWTCZp -- David explains what evidence would convince him that the 2020 Presidential election was indeed stolen from Donald Trump by Joe Biden -- Donald Trump's lawyer Christina Bobb has now hired a lawyer herself and indicates she is willing to cooperate with the Department of Justice criminal investigation of Donald Trump -- Republican Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker claims to be against abortion, but he has been accused of paying for a girlfriend's abortion in what has become a major campaign scandal -- Republican Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker appears on Fox News' Sean Hannity program to try to defend himself about the recent abortion allegations, but completely implodes -- Christian Walker, the son of Republican Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker, turns on his father on Twitter, calling him a liar and denouncing him -- In newly-released audio recordings, Donald Trump tells New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman that he did not watch the January 6 riots on TV, despite multiple witnesses claiming he did watch -- MyPillow CEO and founder Mike Lindell again appears on our Facebook page to tell David he is praying for him, seemingly having no memory of his viral appearance on The David Pakman Show -- Voicemail caller says that David is still a shill, but the best shill -- On the Bonus Show: Russian no longer has full control of "annexed" Ukrainian provinces, SCOTUS rejects gun rights challenge to bump stock ban, SEC charges Kim Kardashian for unlawfully touting crypto, much more... ⚠️ Use code PAKMAN for a free supply of BlueChew at https://go.bluechew.com/david-pakman 🥣 Try Splendid Spoon! Get $120 OFF at https://splendidspoon.com/pakman 🌳 Use code PAKMAN for 20% off HoldOn plant-based bags at https://holdonbags.com 👕 Rhone: Code PAKMAN saves you 20% at https://www.rhone.com/PAKMAN 👍 Code PAKMAN saves you 20% on Munk Pack: https://thld.co/munkpack_pakman_0922 👩‍❤️‍👨 Try the Paired App FREE for 7 days at https://paired.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

. All right. Let's start today with sort of an audience question. I think it's a good one. This is exactly the type of question I love to answer. A viewer who, I guess, goes by the name Smash wrote to me about the 2020 election and said, Dear David, you believe the 2020 election was not stolen and there is no evidence to the contrary. What would you accept as evidence? What would it take to convince you it was stolen?

Hope you can answer these questions. Thanks. This is a fair question because I would be a hypocrite and I don't want to be a hypocrite in front of all of you fine folks. If I demanded that sort of consideration from others, what evidence would change your mind and then refuse to answer or explain it myself? And remember, very often if the answer is there is no evidence that would change my mind, you're not really thinking. So what evidence would change my mind? The first thing

whenever you have a conversation like this and maybe this will be useful to some to some people when we say evidence, what are we even talking about? And so to be very clear, for me to be convinced that there was an orchestrated voter fraud or election fraud wherein Donald Trump was the real winner, but Joe Biden stole it, I would need evidence of some kind of systematic voter fraud. So the fact that we found a bunch of Republicans, you know, a dozen or so who either voted twice, there's the guy who's a junior and he voted for himself and for his dad, senior, who is no longer alive.

Or we find, you know, a Democrat that voted legally via absentee ballot and then died by Election Day. Like none of those things are proof of systematic fraud. And not only do they not rise mathematically to the theft of an election from Donald Trump, it's also just like a random person. OK, so that that's the first important thing. We are looking for evidence of systematic voter fraud here. And I would even go further as a systematic voter fraud that would have materially changed the results in at least one state, not even the entire thing, but at least one state. OK, there are two types of claims that the proponents of these conspiracy theories often make. The first type of claim is that sometimes the big lie people will make a claim that something happened and that thing

did happen, but it just isn't actually voter fraud, even at the individual level, never mind some kind of systematic voter or election fraud. So I'll give you an example. They say hundreds of thousands of people were registered in two places, or usually it's like at the state level, they'll say tens of thousands of people were registered in two places or usually it's like at the state level, they'll say tens of thousands of people were registered at two different addresses. That's not evidence of any kind of fraud. It's not a crime. It's really common that when people move, they remain registered at the old place. If they showed up and tried to vote at the old place, they would be allowed to. But they also might be registered at the new place. As long as you don't vote twice, there's no issue and there's no crime. So all of the allegations from the right about things that are true but aren't actually a problem, those I don't consider evidence of voter fraud because

they're quite literally not fraud. Another example is they say state legislatures changed voting rules without altering the state constitution. Well, that's true, but that's illegal. You might not like it. You might disagree. But under the public health emergency of covid in 2020, there were state legislatures that voted without altering the state constitution to expand absentee ballot or whatever.

It's not a crime. It's not illegal and it's not evidence of voter fraud. So that's one bucket. Things that happened but aren't actually evidence of voter fraud. Those don't change my mind. All right. Then we get to the claims of anomalies, anomalies, anomalies, your preference. OK, like, for example, hundreds of thousands of people didn't really vote, but there they

show up as having voted. There has been no proof of those claims. There just has been no proof of that. So if you can bring to me proof of some kind of a systematic requesting and submitting of absentee ballots by someone. And you've got to tell me who the someone is without the knowledge of the actual voter in more than this minute number of cases where it seems to be a paperwork error, then that I would consider that substantial if you were in and it can't be. We don't know who did it and we don't know who the people are.

But here's three people who say I got an absentee ballot, but I didn't ask for it. OK, there were places that just sent them out. That's not fraud either. OK, so if you can come to me with evidence that, listen, we have found an IP address from which one hundred thousand absentee ballots, ten thousand, twenty thousand something were requested en masse, sent somewhere, intercepted by someone who filled them all out and sent them all in. Oh, now we're talking about something. We do not have that proof of people voting in multiple locations that I would be interested

in, not just you're registered in two places, not illegal. Trump's daughter, Tiffany Trump, that applied to Tiffany Trump. It applied to Mark Meadows. That's not actually against the law. If you had actual forensic digital evidence of voting machines being used in a nefarious way, you know, you've got Mike Pillow talking about the machines and you've got all these claims about Dominion did this. No proof. Smartmatic did that. No proof. OK, if you present actual evidence that we can subject to a digital forensic specialist who can say, hey, you know what? Here's proof. Here is proof of the manipulation. Here's 10,000 people

who tried to vote for Trump and their votes were counted for Biden. That has not been presented. OK, felons voting in large numbers on purpose, mobilized by someone. Right. Like five felons voting illegally because they either didn't know they weren't allowed to vote or even deliberately. Right. That's not actually evidence of fraud at any real scale. It wouldn't make a difference in even a single state. And there's no evidence that it's coordinated by anybody in the election fraud sort of mode that these Republicans claim.

The other thing is you have to explain to me how the relationship between the population of a state, the known number of registered voters, the number of people that turned out and very importantly, remember, the people that voted presidential and down ballot. There is complete coherence between the presidential vote counts and the votes for Senate or House, et cetera. If there were some coordinated voter fraud of this kind, you would expect that if they just messed with the presidential voting alone, there would be this completely out of sync, these out of sync results between presidential and Senate or House or whatever. The margins are completely reasonable in all of these.

And the Republicans never like to explain, well, I won my election legally on the same ballot in which it was stolen from Trump. Oh, so the ballots, only some of the votes were fraudulent. But the down ballot stuff, it's completely incoherent. One of the important themes or ideas, I think, that's worth mentioning here is something that Dr. Stephen Novella writes about in his I forget the name of the book. It's like skeptics guide or something like that. It's called anomaly hunting. And very often you will hear actually the perfect example is the umbrella man from the JFK assassination. And Dr. Novella talks about

this in his book. After the assassination of JFK. Pictures turned up with a guy holding an umbrella on the grassy knoll or, you know, on the side of the parade route at which John F. Kennedy was killed. And you had people who started to say it was a sunny day. There's no reason someone would have an umbrella. And so they start to build up a picture that goes something like, what are the odds that we have a presidential parade and the president is assassinated and we're told this story of a lone gunman up in the window and there's a guy with a huge umbrella on a sunny day right alongside where JFK was killed. He must be involved because that's so anomalous. But as Dr. Steven Novella explains, the question should be a different one. The question should be because that does make it

sound nefarious in some way. But what if you reframe the question and you said, what are the odds that at a presidential parade? With so many attendees, you find someone who looks out of place for no particularly nefarious reason. When you ask it like that, a guy with an umbrella doesn't sound so sinister. And of course, we later found out that the guy with the umbrella, the umbrella was a political protest. I believe it was a political protest against maybe Robert Kennedy. I don't remember exactly. So you have to also understand that, you know, if I said to you, look at this thing that happened, that's a one in an eight million chance you would say, oh, my God, that's got to be something is going on there. Something is acting on that. One in eight million

things are so rare. New York City has eight million people. That means every single day there could be a one in eight million occurrence and it would be mathematically expected. And so a lot of this stuff that these people look for is sifting through data to find something that sounds unlikely. But the reality is that when you have however many million votes we had, one hundred and seventy million, one hundred and eighty million, more or less something you can find seeming anomalies and they don't really mean anything. OK, so hopefully that gives a sense of what I would accept as proof that the 2020 election was stolen.

A Donald Trump's lawyer, Christina Bob, is lawyering up and willing to cooperate with the Department of Justice. My how quickly things change when you are one of Donald Trump's lawyers. Remember, MAGA really means making attorneys get attorneys. Salon reports Trump attorney lawyers up and says she's willing to cooperate with DOJ in Mar-a-Lago case. At least one member of former President Trump's legal team has hired her own lawyer and allies are urging another to follow suit.

Trump attorney Christina Bob and Trump attorney Evan Corcoran affirmed to the Justice Department that Trump did hand over all those classified records from Mar-a-Lago. But prosecutors say that that wasn't true. The response was incomplete after the FBI searched and found more documents. Bob, who, by the way, is also an anchor on right side broadcasting, if you can imagine the incestuous nature of what's going on there. Bob has since hired her own lawyer and made it known to Trump allies she is willing to cooperate and be interviewed by the Justice Department. Colleagues have also urged Corcoran to hire a criminal defense lawyer because of his response to the subpoena. According to the report,

he insists it's not necessary. Bob told The Washington Post when asked whether she was negotiating for a sit down interview with the DOJ. I'm sorry, I'm not allowed to talk about it. Now, remember Bob's relevance in this entire thing that is in this article where it says, quote, Bob signed a document affirming that Trump handed over all the documents that are responsive to the subpoena after a diligent search. Corcoran then met with DOJ officials and made a similar statement. They then found that that was not actually true. Now, another important aspect of this is that Bob helped push Trump's legal challenges after the election and has insisted that she believes the document she

signed was accurate. But she also told Right Side side broadcasting she's not actually acting as Trump's attorney while serving as a custodian of records. She's only doing the custodian of records thing. So listen, here's the bottom line on this. Even if you are a Trump supporter, how can you justify him taking the documents? What is your explanation for what he was planning to do with them? And why did he lie about them having been returned? Did he not know?

And you believe Christina Bob is the one who lied? Well, Christina Bob says she signed off on it because she believed the documents were returned. So who told her? Because if it's not Trump who said lie and say the documents were returned. And if Christina Bob was just doing what she was told, who came up with we are going to claim the documents were returned. The next part of it is are any of the explanations that anybody has given believable. Right. The documents were for Trump's library that he doesn't care about. The documents were for Trump to write his memoirs,

even though Trump doesn't write. The documents were for Trump to read, even though Trump doesn't care about. The documents were for Trump to write his memoirs, even though Trump doesn't write. The documents were for Trump to read, even though Trump doesn't read. The documents were declassified telepathically right before the FBI planted them. None of the stories make sense. And what we're learning is every single one of these people is in over their heads. Think about the number of red flags here and what it sounds like is that Christina Bob realized people are going down. This is a very serious criminal investigation. The FBI knows that we didn't really return the documents. My name is there saying the documents were returned and she is now trying to distance herself. But the theme is being Trump's lawyer really doesn't go well. It often doesn't go well financially, although Trump's newest lawyers are collecting money up front, which is smart of them to do. And it often doesn't go well criminally or in terms of your

legal career either. Christina Bob has lawyered up. Who will be next? Find me on Twitter at Deepakman and let me know. a fraction 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 notes and they'll give you an entire month's supply for free when you use promo code Pacman. The summer is over.

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Abortion is murder. Abortion is evil. Abortion is killing. And it appears as though Herschel Walker paid for a girlfriend of his to get an abortion. The last 24 hours have been a historic and historic implosion for Herschel Walker. And you are not going to believe what is going on. But the real question, as always, is are Republican voters so depraved that they won't even care? But we'll get to that in a moment. Herschel Walker is now being accused. And, you know, accused is sort of like it's only the word we use because it makes him such a hypocrite of paying for a girlfriend's abortion. The woman has receipts and a get well card that she says Herschel Walker sent to her. Here's the article about this from The Daily Beast and the headline.

The top points are a Herschel Walker says he wants to completely ban abortion. He says it's murder. He says there should be no exceptions for rape, incest or the life of the mother. A woman who asked not to be identified told that told The Daily Beast that when she and Walker conceived a child while dating in 2009, he urged her to get an abortion. The woman said she got an abortion and that Herschel Walker reimbursed her for it. She was able to support the claims with a five hundred seventy five dollar receipt from the abortion clinic, a get well card from Herschel Walker and a bank deposit receipt, including an image of a personal check from Walker for seven hundred dollars.

The reason for the difference, the abortion costs five twenty five, but the check is for seven hundred, she says, is because she ballparked the cost to Herschel Walker after looking up the cost online. The Daily Beast was able to independently corroborate details of the claim with a close friend who she told at the time who took care of her in the days after the procedure. The woman said Walker, who was not married at the time, told her, you know, it would be more convenient to terminate the pregnancy if you believe it's murder. Do you murder out of convenience, Herschel? He said it was not the right time for him to have a child. It was a feeling she shared. But what she didn't know was that Walker already had had an out of wedlock child with another woman earlier that

same year, asked if Walker expressed regret for the decision. She said, no, he didn't ask why she came forward. She points to Walker's hardline anti-abortion position. I just can't with the hypocrisy anymore. We all deserve better. So listen, I am not against Walker paying for an abortion, assuming he was not coercive. It sounds like he was urging the woman to have an abortion. But I'm primarily against the disgusting hypocrisy of these people. And Trump is the same Trump. I mean, listen, I I'm not aware of Trump paying for anybody's abortion and pressuring them to get one. It would not be at all a shock if Donald Trump has sometime pressured someone to get an abortion and paid for it. But that it's not something I can speak to right now.

But Trump's story about, oh, I'm so against abortion, so against abortion since being 68 years old and up until then, I was very much in favor of a woman's right to choose. This is one of the things that would doom Herschel Walker's campaign, if not for the sad fact that many of these Republicans don't read the news. And if they do, they will assume this story is a lie. And if they believe the story, they won't care. Here is a montage from Ron Philip Kowski of Herschel Walker, very powerfully against abortion. Speaker 4 for God. And God told me that she had not killed. Remember my guy? I'm a warrior for God, and God told me thou shalt not kill. Remember, my guy, I'm running against him, a woman can kill her baby.

Whoa. That's what he said. He's also said if a baby survived an abortion, he voted to deny that baby medical care. And how extreme can that be? Wow. And he's a pastor, and I said thou shalt not kill. He's seen to be relish on a woman killing her baby, and he's a pastor. And I said, thou shall not kill. You know, he's seen to be relish on a woman killing her baby. He's a pastor. So that's the reason.

Most abortions after 15 weeks. What's your stance on that? You know, I believe in life. I'm a Christian. I believe in life. And I, and it is strange that my opponent and no one is talking about that. He seemed to be really excited about a woman killing her baby. What is his term? It's not right to have the doctor and the patient and the government in the same room. And I said, do you not realize that there's a baby in that room too? And I'm not going to apologize for it. And I think it should be in the States.

But if I had to vote right now, it would be yes. It's strange because I say I'm a Christian. Right now, You say you're a Christian. And they said, Herschel, what do you think of? They asked me all these questions. I'm like, did I not say I'm a Christian? That means you're supposed to be pro-life. Anyway, you guys get the picture. So let's see what this does to the polling of Herschel Walker. The good news is that after Herschel Walker was very, very, very slimly leading Raphael Warnock, the last three polls and four of the last five have Raphael Warnock back ahead. But it is very tight. It's within the margin of error.

We're talking about under a one point spread. So let's give this a week and see if this is finally the nail in the coffin that we've been hoping for for Herschel Walker's campaign, a guy who has no business whatsoever being in the Senate. But it gets even better, my friends. After this news came out, Herschel Walker went on the Sean Hannity program and then it got really crazy. So in order to try to defend himself, Republican Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker went on Sean Hannity's Fox News program last night. And this is all about this explosive story wherein, although for months and months and months, Herschel Walker has been saying, I'm pro-life, no exceptions for

rape, incest or health of the mother. Never, never, never, ever, ever an abortion. It's a murder. And now we have learned that Herschel Walker allegedly paid for a woman's abortion after urging her to get one when she became pregnant during their relationship some years ago. So Sean Hannity goes into rescue mode. And as you know, Sean Hannity has tried to rescue Trump in these interviews and it hasn't gone particularly well. Here's Sean Hannity tries to help Herschel Walker and it goes really, really poorly. Now, the funny thing about the interview is it's almost impossible to even tell whether Herschel Walker is denying the story because he's so incoherent. But if you I'm kind

of kidding, like if you listen carefully, he does deny it here. He's asked by Sean Hannity, do you know the woman in question? And he says, I have no idea. He has no idea whether he knows her. And then he goes to talk about the border. It's beyond parody. Start with the Daily Beast, Herschel. I mean, serious accusations that in 2009 that you paid for an abortion. First question, do you know the woman that is making this allegation? I have no idea, but it is a flat out lie. He has no idea whether he knows her. And now you know how important this seat is. This seat is very important that they'll do anything to win this seat lie, because they want to make it by everything else except what the true problems that we have in this country is.

This inflation, the border wide open crime. They don't want to talk about that. So they're making up lies now because they need this Georgia seat. So I encourage anyone out there. Let's not let them take this seat. Go go and vote. Yeah, that's this is the entire story really is about the fact that Democrats want the border wide open.

And this is how they're going to achieve it. Herschel Walker then asked about whether he sent the money and he says, I send money to a lot of people. I just like to help people. Then he says he doesn't really know anything about it. And then a picture of the signed card pops up on the screen. Every minute element of this rescue interview attempt just going wrong for Herschel Walker. Because right now for them to come out with total lies, I think that's not right.

So they're claiming that on September 12th of 2009 that the woman has a receipt for an abortion. They're claiming that five days later on September 17th, you sent a $700 check and that you sent it in a get well card. The get well card, it looks like it's included with your signature on in the article. Have you seen it? And is that your signature? I haven't seen it. It's on the screen. Now, maybe he can't see the screen. You know, I can tell you, I send out so many get well, send out so much of anything. But I can tell you right now he sends out so much of anything.

Before we continue, I love how Hannity is is like listing all the evidence begrudgingly. Yeah, he's like, listen, Herschel, they've got the bank transfer receipts and they've got the get well card and it looks like it's your handwriting. And they also have the receipt from the abortion and they have pictures of you on dates with the woman. And they have you in an audio recording urging her to get an abortion. This stuff isn't true, is it, Herschel? It can't possibly be true. I never asked anyone to get an abortion. I never paid for an abortion. And it's a lie. And I'm going to continue to fight. You know, I tell you, that's what they want. They want this seat. But right now they've energized me even more

and they're not going to take the seat. So they better work even harder because they've jeopardized my kids. They've jeopardized my family. They think they can threaten me. They think they can scare me right now that all that done is energize me more that I'm going to fight and win this seat for the great people of joy. All right. So anyway, not exactly great alibis here from Herschel Walker, but a wild, wild story and just completely failing. I mean, listen, if you found that convincing, let me know. It's not seeming particularly convincing to me, but let me know if you found it convincing. And this is only one of two Herschel Walker scandals in the last 24 hours. Republican Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker's son has now brutally turned on him and is denouncing Herschel Walker on the same day that a woman has come forward and said pro-life Herschel Walker impregnated me,

urged me to get an abortion and then paid for the abortion. We already talked about that. Here is Christian Walker, a sort of known influencer. In fact, the I guess he's called the legitimate son of Herschel Walker. I don't really like that term because you're not illegitimate just because your dad doesn't want anything to do with you. But anyway, he's called the legitimate son of Herschel Walker, and he has had enough of Herschel Walker. He's had enough of his own dad, even though Herschel Walker is a mega nut and Christian Walker is a mega nut.

Christian Walker tweeting yesterday, quote, Every family member of Herschel Walker asked him not to run for office because we all knew some of his past. Every single one. He decided to give us the middle finger and air out all of his dirty laundry in public while simultaneously lying about it. Continuing, I know my mom and I would really appreciate if my father, Herschel Walker, stopped lying and making a mockery of us. You're not a family man when you left us to bang a bunch of women, threatened to kill us and had us move over six times in six months running from your violence. I don't care about someone who has a bad past and takes accountability. But how dare you lie and act as though you're some moral Christian upright man? You've lived a life of destroying other people's lives. How dare you?

That's Herschel Walker's son. And this is not about getting in the middle of what is an obvious family problem. This is about the disgusting dishonesty and hypocrisy of Herschel Walker framing himself to the Republican MAGA nuts of Georgia as the Christian guy, as the moral guy, as the pro-life guy, whatever, and being the complete and total opposite. The only question that remains and I don't have the answer to this. It's a question. It's a predictive question. We will see in November is we know what happened after the Trump access Hollywood tape. Nothing. He was elected president of the United States. Are the Georgia Republican voters going to look away again

because they just really don't like Democrats like Raphael Warnock? Or is this going to doom Herschel Walker's campaign? Let me know what you think. And all of these clips we've played, we will have on our Instagram, which you can find at David Pakman show. Plastic is everywhere we look and not enough is being done about it. One hundred billion plastic bags are used and thrown away every year. But you can help make a change. Our sponsor, Hold On, makes trash and kitchen bags that are heavy duty, plant based, non-toxic and 100 percent

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Pacman saves you 20 percent. The link is in the podcast notes. Today I'm going to be speaking with Andrew Koppelman, who is a law professor at Northwestern University and also author of the book out today, Burning Down the House, How Libertarian Philosophy Was Corrupted by Delusion and Greed. It's not just the delusion. It's also the greed, which I think is important. Really great having you on.

I appreciate it. It's a coalition. It's a coalition. Very happy to be here. So OK. I mean, I think maybe the way to start talking about this is I, as a progressive on the left, I err on the side of small L libertarianism when given the choice between authoritarianism and libertarianism.

Unless there's a really good, compelling reason to get a government or some authority involved, I say stay out of it. And of course, there are so many exceptions to this. That's like my general idea. But when we talk about libertarian philosophy in the way you talk about in the book, you're not really talking about what I'm talking about, which is a small L libertarian leaning. Is that right? Yeah, I think that's right. I think that the common ground between us is the idea

that the point of government, what we should be aiming at in government, is giving everybody the means to decide for themselves how they're going to live their lives. And now that is a very new idea in human history. For most of human history, the point of the state was the greater glory of King Sargon or the triumph of the true religion or the triumph of the master race or something other than the flourishing of the individual. So really, the argument between you and me and the libertarians is an argument about strategy. How does one go about building a world in which people are free to live as they like?

And what's distinctive about the libertarians is very strong view that the way to assure that is to cripple the state, to limit the power of the state. If only the state were radically limited, only protected our persons and property and did nothing else, we would be freer. When you talk about the delusion part, it would be great to hear a little bit about what you mean. You know, I've experienced conversations with libertarians that devolve into, you know, strange conversations about everybody makes their own road and puts tolls on it or you.

I'm sure you've heard in popular media the way that these conversations often go. What is the delusion part that you're talking about? Well, the delusion is the idea that in order to live the lives that we want, that we can do without the kind of big, powerful state that we have had, certainly in the United States, in the last 100 years. Because there are quite a lot of things that keep us from living our lives the way that we want, which do not consist of either the government or other people encroaching on our property. I mean, one good example is COVID. COVID didn't violate anybody's rights. But the reason why we were able to beat

it back is because government raised an awful lot of money with taxation. Libertarians hate taxation. Big government gave a lot of money to private investors who would not have invested the money themselves in developing a vaccine. And it was a partnership between government and the private sector that made it possible for us to go back to something approaching normal life. Without that, I think that we would still be hunkered down in our houses, fearful of death every time we're in a room with a group of strangers. Yeah, that that's really interesting. You know, oftentimes the word coercive comes up in conversations with with libertarians

and you know, whether it's applied to taxes or business regulations or the IRS at the end of the day, if you just refuse to pay your taxes, eventually someone arrests you and you could potentially, you know, this concept of coercion. It seems to me that if you step back a little bit from politics and just think about anthropology and so many other fields of study, there's this idea that once you get to a group larger than one hundred and fifty, often is the number that's mentioned, one hundred fifty humans, you sort of need to have some decisions made from the top in order to be able to grow as a society beyond that. And so even if there is a little bit of coercion, don't we need a little coercion in order to be

able to to live as a modern society? Speaker 1 Well, I think that it's a mistake to think of it in terms of size. The question is not a little coercion or a lot of coercion, but the right amount of coercion. So one example that I think that libertarian philosophers, who are who I engage with primarily in the book, because libertarianism is political philosophy, I think, well, if there's a minimal thing for the state to do, it's to keep people from harming other people. Well, one way in which we can harm other people is by pollution. You and I can agree to have me make a product that you buy, and it makes me better off and makes you better off. And that's the great thing about markets. But if in the course of manufacturing, the thing that you want to buy, I poison all the children in a three mile radius of my factory, then now I'm not adding value to the world. Now you and I are conspiring to hurt a bunch of innocent people. Well, so how do you fix that? You're not going to fix it with private

lawsuits because it's hard for each of the victims to prove that they've been harmed. The only way to do it is with regulation that limits what you can put in the air. And if you want to have that kind of regulation, you need a government with a huge staff of scientists to try to figure out which chemicals are harmful and which aren't. You cannot fix this problem without big government. You talk in the book, as you mentioned, about figures like Robert Nozick. You talk about Hayek. We hear a lot about Ayn Rand and the Koch brothers and all of these different players that are often loosely described as as libertarians of some sort

of flavor. Modern libertarianism has been influenced the most by who of these characters or others that you engage with in the book. Well, the common sense libertarianism that an awful lot of people hold, the sort of common sense, minimal state idea really owes the most to Murray Rothbard, who is the most important political philosopher you never heard of. He's the one who shaped the early Libertarian Party. He's the one who persuaded Charles Koch to start funding libertarian causes. He's the one who met young Robert Nozick when he was a graduate student and got him interested in this stuff. He also mentored Randy Barnett,

who was the mastermind of the legal challenge to Obamacare. And so I think he's the most important of the lot. And I talk about all of these people in the book, which basically describes the way in which libertarian thought has evolved over time. And he was fundamentally an anarchist. But, you know, one way of taking his line of thought is to, which I guess people who are not willing to go all the way to anarchism have gone, is to say, well, whatever else we do, let's minimize the power of the state and the authority of the state. And while that's still not the official line of the Republican Party, it has enormous influence there. Trump didn't talk in broadly libertarian terms, but you look at what actually got passed when the Republicans had both houses and the presidency. They did a big tax cut for

the rich. They nearly took health care away from 20 million people. And they gutted administrative agencies like the EPA, which goes to the thing I said at the beginning about a coalition. Libertarianism draws two different kinds of people. One is philosophers like Nozick, who have a story to tell about what a just state is. And the other part of the coalition is business people who'd like to be able to hurt people without being bothered by the police. Yeah. I mean, I'm curious in terms of the modern Republican Party, because you're sort of mentioning a little bit about the rhetoric versus the things that were passed under Trump in those those couple of years in the modern Republican Party, kind of in the MAGA direction that that that it has gone.

It seems nationalism is a big thing. It seems as though authoritarianism, when it is convenient to you, it has become an increasingly big feature. Is there any real traditional libertarianism that is still kind of left or prominent in the modern Republican Party? Well, the libertarianism that remains prominent is a desire to constrain the state. The formula of the Republican Party for a long time has been to talk populist while doing big favors for rich supporters. And so you see that in what continues to be the target

of the Republicans, the modern administrative state. The administrative state is really inconvenient for business. So you tell people, you tell ordinary working people that, you know, I'm going to protect you from these arrogant government bureaucrats who don't respect you. And then you limit the capacity of the bureaucrats to deliver clean water and safe workplaces and clean air. And so the consequence is that then you tell your ordinary working person, look, I saved you from the bureaucrats. And as a consequence, that ordinary working person does not live long enough to meet his grandchildren.

Yeah. I mean, I guess the desire to limit the power of the state seems to be only in ways that those on what's perceived to be the left want to have the state involved. Right. Because in many other ways, in terms of clamping down on media outlets that you disagree with or when it comes to a lot of these social issues, abortion and gay marriage and the right to fire someone for their perceived sexual orientation in those cases, they seem

OK actually using the power of the state. And what we saw under the first Trump administration, we'll see if there's a second Trump administration, but they already learned that they could get away with scooping up peaceful protesters and shoving them into vans and taking them to an undisclosed location. That doesn't seem especially libertarian. On the other hand, as I said, the libertarianism today is a coalition between business people who want to make a lot of money and these principled libertarians. And it is the business people who I think are the prevalent part of the coalition. And I should say I'm not

casting any aspersions on business people. The ordinary business person in a well-regulated state can feel pretty confident that if he's making money, he's doing good for the world because somebody is buying his product. And if he were injuring innocent third parties, somebody from the government would come and tell him that and tell him to stop. And the fact that nobody tells him to stop means that he can feel like he's done a good thing in the world with his business. You will not be able to be confident of that under Trump. Trump wants you to make money whether you hurt people or not.

Last thing I wanted to touch on during the pandemic, there were a lot of, again, self-described libertarians who were saying, you know, the vaccines, that's a problem. Masks, a problem. What's happening in schools, a problem, a problem. What businesses are having to do for this initial period of a few months that, quite frankly, ended pretty quickly. All of these things are a problem. What would a sort of more sensible but still libertarian approach be to those issues that we saw during the pandemic? Well, it's pretty simple. The the liberal response, which I think is the right one, is if government is proposing to restrict somebody's liberty, it's got to have a pretty

good reason. Sometimes the reasons are no good. And sometimes the story about arrogant government bureaucrats is correct. The Centers for Disease Control came up with a test that didn't work and wouldn't let anybody else develop one. It was a scandal. But on the other hand, a lot of these restrictions, certainly the massive promotion of vaccines with tax money and the requirement that health care workers get vaccinated. Yeah, it promotes people's liberty. It keeps them alive. In fact, we have been speaking about some of the things in Andrew Koppelman's new book out today, Burning Down the House, How libertarian philosophy was corrupted by delusion and greed. We're linking to the book and I really appreciate your time today.

There it is. There it is. Beautiful. Thanks, Andrew. Thank you. This was great. One of our longtime sponsors is Monk Pack, offering low sugar, plant based, keto friendly bars. I love these. They are the perfect snack for anyone trying to eat better or cutting back on sugar and carbs without sacrificing taste. Monk Pack offers granola bars and nut and seed bars, each with only one gram of sugar or less, two to three net carbs and 150 calories or less.

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That's P.A.I.R.E.D. Dot com slash Pacman for a free trial. The info is in the podcast notes. So the failed former President Donald Trump has been caught in another lie, thanks to some newly released audio tapes from related to Maggie Haberman's forthcoming book. These are audio recordings of interviews that Maggie Haberman from The New York Times did for this book that is forthcoming. And in this first clip that we're going to look at, Donald Trump tells Maggie Haberman he didn't watch the Trump riots on January 6th, 2021 on TV.

He wasn't watching it as it unfolded. He eventually heard about it from other people and much later turned on the TV just for a moment. Now, of course, we know that this is a lie. Multiple Trump aides testified before Congress under oath that Donald Trump was watching the entire thing. And of course, it's logical that he was. He went to the Capitol, gave this wacky speech. People immediately started walking to the Capitol. He wanted to go to the Capitol. He was instead brought to the White House and he sat there watching TV the entire day. But needless to say, he tries to lie here and say, no, no, I wasn't that interesting. No, someone had to tell me about it. I was busy doing what he hadn't been doing work for months at that point. But what were you doing when when how did you find out that

that there were people storming the Capitol? I had heard that afterwards and actually on the late side, very late, very late. I was I was having meetings. I was also with Mark Meadows and others. By the way, the mention of Mark Meadows makes it even less believable because we know from the testimony of multiple other witnesses that Mark Meadows was 110 percent engaged with the riots, begging Trump to do something and in touch with Cassidy, how do you know all these? The mention of Meadows makes this even less believable. It was already not believable. I was not watching television. I know the television. You weren't. OK, I didn't usually have that the television on. I'd have it on if there was something.

And of course, that's where Trump goes too far. Trump had the TV on all the time. In fact, he would sometimes have it on during meetings and it would distract him. I then later turned it on and I saw what was happening. I also had confidence that the Capitol, who didn't want these 10,000 people. The Capitol Police, you mean. That they'd be able to control this thing. And you don't realize that, you know, they did lose control.

So what Trump says there, it just wasn't true. On two fronts, that there were aides around him at that time who have testified to the House Select Committee that he indeed was watching television during that period. He would have seen the Capitol falling to his supporters. And also the Capitol Police were clearly overwhelmed by the Trump supporters. Yeah. So it's all lies. And we've we've talked about it. There's widespread reporting. Reuters Trump watched January 6th Capitol riot unfold on TV, ignored pleas to call for peace. The entire day afternoon was Trump watching it and then initially thinking that it

was great. And then later, people urging him to do something about it. Trump starting to become upset that the rioters were coming off a so low brow, they didn't exactly seem like high class people was a concern for Trump as that was going on. And we know that it was all lie after lie after lie. Now there's one other clip here. This is pretty interesting. Now in the context of the Mar-a-Lago raid, Donald Trump was asked about by Maggie Haberman in these recordings about taking stuff from the White House. And it's all just kind of

weird. The language is weird again. Nation that you had with Donald Trump, where you brought up the correspondence he had with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, the New York Times released audio of this that we have audio of this conversation. So let's listen. Did you leave the White House with anything in particular? Are there any memento documents you took with you? Anything of nothing of great urgency? OK, I have great things. Are you know, the letters, the Kim Jong Un letters and many of them.

You were able to take those with you. Look at what's happening. Wow. Those are the love letters. I think that has the I think that's in the archives, but most of it is in the archive. But the Kim Jong Un was incredible. I have incredible letters with other leaders. OK, so at least they're Donald Trump not admitting that a whole bunch of different stuff was taken and it was at his house. Of course, that interview was from that interview was was from

about a year ago. And so that is something that is particularly interesting at this point in time. Wild stuff. But even in private conversations, Trump lies because Trump lies all the time. And we know that. All right. This I think you're going to love. Mike Pillow is back and now he's praying for me. And he seems to have no memory that we did a beautiful, extensive interview on the program just like, I don't know, a year ago or something like that. So let's kind of go back to the beginning. Some of you may remember there's this guy, Mike Lindell. He's the CEO and founder of my pillow. He showed up with national kind of presence at the beginning of the pandemic. Donald Trump brought him to the White House and he said, oh, we're going to make masks.

We're going to make all these different things. And he believed Donald Trump was selected by God and is generally kind of a wacky guy. Then Mike Pillo, as we know him or just Pillo, was rocketed to fame, not necessarily stardom, but I guess fame notoriety maybe is a better word in fighting for the overturning of the 2020 presidential election in just about every state. He claims Trump won like California, you know, wacky, wacky stuff. And at a certain point, I interviewed him and the interview was super interesting. I mean, I don't know that we really were convinced that indeed Trump won, but it was interesting

to hear from Mike Pillow. And the interview did very well on our channel. A few weeks ago, the real Mike Pillow showed up on our Facebook page and started making all sorts of allegations and accusations against me. And we went back to him and we said, hey, listen, we'd love to have you back on the program. And so far it hasn't happened. Well, over the weekend, he showed up again in the comments of our YouTube channel. There was a post just like a funny little post about the bonus show. It's a picture of me with my baby daughter and I'm having one of my globally famous and much despised cappuccinos. And it's just fun. That's all

it is. And the real Mike Lindell verified account shows up and says, praying for you, David, you don't know me, but you sure enjoy attacking me. Would love to have you on my show. Well, permission granted, sir. I would love to be on the Mike Pillow show. We are trying to get him back on our program to get the latest updates about, you know, the machines and all of this different stuff. We're doing a class action lawsuit against all machines. Over 54 countries have now been taken by the machines. Exactly. I would love to have him back on.

He his his people don't seem to be allowing him to do it or at least not really telling him. I don't know. He seems eager, but they don't. And I would love to be on his program. And one of the funniest things is he seems to genuinely have no recollection of the fact that we do know each other. We have each other's numbers.

He's been on the program. We talked on the show. We talked off the show. I know he's a busy guy, but you would think with the amount of time he's spending on my Facebook page, he would have some memory of the fact that we did an interview and Haley actually pointed out to him, you've literally been a guest on his show within the last year. And that is absolutely true. So Pillow increasingly spending time on my Facebook page, which in a way I love and I'm flattered. And the funniest thing about this, this is like a little behind the scenes thing. Producer Pat not long ago was trying to get the interview booked with Pillow after he

made these comments. There is no doubt that it's the real Mike Pillow. OK, when you click, it goes to his verified page with one hundred and fifty thousand followers. This is Pillow's real Facebook account. His staff said to Pat, we very much doubt that he's been commenting on David's Facebook videos. They they don't seem to be willing to either accept it or look into it. But it's Pillow and he's welcome on the show. And I would love to be on his show.

One of the most interesting and depraved characters of this entire global nightmare that has been MAGA Trump ism. We have a voicemail number. That number is two one nine two. David P. Here's a caller saying, you know. You're still a shill, but you're the best shill. Hi, David, this is Brad from Bloomington, Indiana. Right. I just want to say I always thought of you as a shill for the past four years. Right. I got to say. I've nothing changed, but I think that you're

the best show out there. That's nice. You literally kill it every day. You're getting better at it. Sorry, I said the worst later. OK, so, you know, the funny thing about this is I think a lot of the people using the word shill don't really know what it means. Like for me, the idea of shill is you are some kind of an accomplice of someone who is doing something bad. And maybe you're even a useful idiot and that you don't realize that you're doing it or maybe you do. Yeah, I don't know all the shill stuff. It's either people think I'm a shill for the Democratic Party, despite not being a Democrat and saying so many times I don't care about the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party is almost just like a corporation whose priority is to perpetuate

its own existence. If the Democrats, the better candidate, I'll vote for the Democrat. I'll support support the Democrat. But I don't really care about the Democratic Party. Some say that I'm a shill for a socialism or communism. And of course, of course, I'm neither a socialist nor a communist. So that one doesn't really make a ton of sense. It's all very weird. But I don't even know if they know what it means to be a shill. But if you're going to be a shill, I'd rather be the best. And so I'll accept the compliment. I guess we have a fantastic bonus show for you today. The bonus show where you want to make money. Everybody else that makes money to fund themselves is bad. Yeah. Alex Jones is really wound up about

today's bonus show because Russia is no longer in full control of any of the four so-called annexed Ukrainian provinces. I don't think Alex Jones is happy about that. We're also going to talk about the Supreme Court rejecting a gun rights challenge to the banning of bump stocks. This is triggering a lot of the more guns in more places, folks, I guess I would say. And Kim, is it pronounced Kardashian? This is not someone I'm familiar with. She has been charged by the that's a joke, by the way. She has been charged by the SEC for unlawfully touting a cryptocurrency scam on her Instagram account. It is explosive and it is wild, wild stuff. All of these stories and more hyperbole and conjecture on today's bonus show. When I'm joined by producer Pat, get instant access to the bonus show. And I do mean instant by either signing up at join

Pacman dot com or becoming a patron at Patreon dot com slash David Pacman show. Both are options to immediately get you access to the bonus show. I hope to see you then. If you love chilling mysteries, unsolved cases, and a touch of mom-style humor, Moms & Mysteries is the podcast you've been searching for. Hey, guys. I'm Mandi. And I'm Melissa. Join us every Tuesday for Moms & Mysteries, your gateway to gripping, well-researched true crime stories.

Each week, we deep dive into a variety of mind-boggling cases as we shed light on everything from heists to whodunits. We're your go-to podcast for mysteries with a motherly touch. Subscribe now to Moms and Mysteries wherever you get your podcast.