The David Pakman Show - 10/5/23: Jim Jordan runs for Speaker, Nikki surges past Vivek

Episode Date: October 5, 2023

-- On the Show: -- Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg joins David to discuss electric vehicles, renewable energy, public transit, his viral moments on Fox News and during Congressional hearings, and much more -- Radical Republican Congressman Jim Jordan, as well as Congressman Steve Scalise, announce that they are running for the newly-vacated position of Speaker of the House -- According to a rule already passed by House Republicans, Donald Trump is ineligible to be Speaker of the House on the basis of his criminal indictments -- 2024 Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley has now clearly surpassed Vivek Ramaswamy in new national polling, and has also passed Ron DeSantis in New Hampshire primary polling -- Donald Trump gets a softball interview from Raheem Kassam, and it still goes really poorly -- Failed former President Donald Trump once again whines about not having a jury in his New York fraud trial -- Donald Trump explodes on Truth Social, attacking everyone from Fox News to Joe Biden -- Voicemail caller talks about a variety of conspiracy theories that surfaced over the emergency alert system test -- On the Bonus Show: Nancy Pelosi says interim House Speaker asked her to vacate her office, mortgage rates highest since November 2000, Joe Biden is allowing the wall to be built in Texas, much more... 🔊 Babbel: Get 55% off your subscription at https://babbel.com/pakman 🚽 Hello TUSHY bidets: Get 40% off with code PAKMAN at https://hellotushy.com/pakman 💸 Qube Money: Try it for 2 months totally FREE at https://davidpakman.com/money 💪 Athletic Greens is offering FREE year-supply of Vitamin D at https://athleticgreens.com/pakman ☕ Beam melatonin hot cocoa: Get up to 40% OFF with code PAKMAN at https://shopbeam.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)-2DAVIDPSeptember 20, 2023

Speaker 1 Welcome to the show. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg will be joining me today for the interview segment, his mere presence, a major win in the battle of ideas for independent progressive media. More on that later. Let's talk about the race for Speaker of the House. Speaker of the House, a role recently vacated after eight Republicans joined Democrats to remove Kevin McCarthy from that role. We suspected that there would be no shortage of lunatics, extremists and radicals running for that seat. And indeed, that is the case. Jim Jordan, first and foremost,

joining the race for U.S. House Speaker Jim Jordan is an absolutely terrible person, an unflinching defender of the worst political instincts of Trump and Maga, a brown noser in the extreme, and also allegedly a guy who turned a blind eye to sexual misconduct. Remember that when it comes to Jim Jordan, there is the belief that when he was an assistant wrestling coach at Ohio State University, this was in the late 80s and early 90s. He was involved in this situation where the now deceased team doctor for the wrestling team, Dr. Richard Strauss, was believed based on a report to have sexually abused nearly 200 different male students. And the report that was issued at the time concluded that numerous university

personnel were aware of the complaints and concerns against Strauss, but did nothing, took no action, didn't tell anybody. And many of the wrestlers said Jim Jordan was one of those people. Jim Jordan had to have known about the abuse. It was pervasive. There were endless conversations about it. It was not happening in secret. It was in the locker room and elsewhere.

Jordan has denied knowing anything about it, an extraordinarily difficult claim to believe. So that's one guy, Jim Jordan, that guy who is running for Speaker of the House, also running for Speaker of the House is Steve Scalise. Steve Scalise is a marginally less extreme Republican than Jordan. And I say that even with some trepidation. So Steve Scalise has also announced that he is running and there's actually a good page. You can find a Wikipedia page called October 2023 Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Election. And it outlines not only what happened with the removal of Kevin McCarthy,

but it also explains that there is on the Democratic side, the presumptive nominee, Hakeem Jeffries, a prior guest on this show and all around good guy and someone that Democrats have rallied around, you know, without being in the majority, it's certainly very unlikely that Hakeem Jeffries will become speaker, although strange things have happened in politics. We will see over on the Republican side. The declared candidates are, as I mentioned, Jim Jordan, Steve Scalise and Kevin Hearn, who's the chair of the Republican Study Committee. There is a whole long list of potential candidates and then a list of people who have declined.

Notable declinations are Ken Buck, Matt Gates. McCarthy himself has said he's not going to run. And Elise Stefanik in the background of all of this is this question mark around. Are they serious when they talk about the failed former President Donald Trump as a potential speaker of the House, a temporary speaker of the House. I'm not going to play all of the clips for you again. But yesterday we had Sean Hannity, the well-known Fox News propagandist, saying sources are telling me that some Republicans want Trump. We had other Republicans, Greg Stubbe and I don't even remember who else, Marjorie Trader

Greene and others saying Trump Trump is the guy that we want. It doesn't seem to me as though they're actually serious about it. But interestingly, this is super interesting. Republicans actually passed a rule which bans Trump from being speaker of the House. And I want to talk about that next. So here's the deal with with Trump as potentially the speaker of the House replacing Kevin McCarthy, whether or not Republicans are serious about it. Matt Gaetz has sort of alluded to it in the past. Marjorie Taylor Greene says that's the only person she supports. Greg Stubbe, Sean Hannity, has been pushing it on Fox News, whether they are serious or

not. There actually is a rule that Republicans passed, which if they follow their own rules, right, if they follow their own rules would mean Trump can't actually be speaker. David, what are you talking about? Well, let me tell you, Newsweek has a very clear write up about it. Republicans already barred Trump from being speaker of the House. Let's talk about that. The article points out that a bunch of different Republicans, as I've told you, have been suggesting the possibility of Trump. But here is the critical element.

The article reads, even if Trump had full Republican support in the House, Rule 26 of the Republican conference states a member of the Republican leadership shall step aside if indicted for a felony for which a sentence of two or more years imprisonment may be imposed. Now, what about the presumption of innocence? What about indictments only being accusations and not evidence? That all remains completely true in a court of law. And as I've told you before, political bodies or corporations can have different rules.

Political bodies and corporations or organizations of different kinds can say, while in a court of law, an indictment is merely an allegation based on sufficient evidence, presumably. But while allegations while indictments are only allegations in a court of law for the purposes of criminal guilt, we as a company, we as a political party, we as a House Republican conference can have other rules. And we can say if you are indicted of certain crimes, right indictments, I did everything right and they indicted of certain crimes, right? Indictments. I did everything right and they indicted me. We might say you can't do this or you can't do that. And indeed, these are conference rules voted on by all members in the November before each congressional session. Republicans voted on this rule. And indeed, Donald Trump has been indicted

for felonies which conceivably carry a greater than two year prison sentence by their own rules. Trump is not even eligible to be speaker of the House now. Oh, and the article points. I mean, I guess we should put it on the record. Trump has been indicted four times in six months facing charges in two federal cases, also indicted in Manhattan, also indicted in Georgia. Ninety one felony counts. Many carry sentences greater than two years imprisonment. So let's now take this in pieces. Do I think that if they otherwise genuinely wanted Trump to be speaker of the house, they would let this rule stop them? I believe the answer is no. They would find a way to change the rule, ignore the rule or claim that

Trump is not subject to the rule. They would say, well, that is written for members of the House who want to be speaker. The Trump situation is different. Also, we know about the indictments, the rule. The purpose of the rule is if you make someone speaker and then they get indicted, we can remove them. But with Trump, it's already baked in. Everybody knows if he were selected to be speaker, he would be selected knowing that these indictments are there and that they're political witch hunts and attacks and political interference and all this. So I think that they can defeat their own rule by saying that the point of the rule is different than the situation that applies to Trump. The Republican Party has proven they're willing to discard tradition. They're willing to discard simple rules. They're willing to ignore the law and due process

when it is convenient for them if it appeases the MAGA base. One of the biggest impediments to Trump being speaker. Is that being speaker probably requires more work than Trump did as president. You might remember that Trump did than Trump did as president. You might remember that Trump did very little work as president, particularly basically from the covid era on through his loss in November of 2020, coming down from the residence late, watching Fox News and doing almost no actual work. So to me, the biggest impediment for Trump, a speaker, is it might require him to do some actual work, something he very much doesn't want to do.

At the end of the day, what I want to know from you is. Do you think Republicans are serious when they talk about Trump, a speaker of the House? Is it something they say to appease the MAGA base? Is it some something they say to try to trigger anti Trump Republicans or Democrats or whoever? Or is it genuinely something that they actually seem interested in? Let me know in a comment. Remember to subscribe on YouTube. We are just the last week I told you we are 100000 subscribers away from two million. We are already down to being

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code four years for indictments to save massively off of the cost of a membership. Folks, I don't know how many are paying attention to this. The idea of Vivek Ramaswamy surging maybe into second place appears to be nothing more than an evaporated fantasy of times gone by. What am I talking about? Well, it is not even a surge that we are now seeing from Vivek Ramaswamy. He has now solidly fallen behind Nikki Haley into fourth place. This is very exciting in the term for the Republicans that believe Nikki Haley has what it takes to be the nominee. I don't know how many people think that. I know it's a few,

but the numbers are quite stunning. So let's look at them. First and foremost, what is the big picture of the 2024 Republican presidential nomination right now? Trump is leading by 44. Trump says he's leading by 60. He's not. But he is leading by 44. I believe this is an insurmountable lead. But I will make that case to you momentarily. Ron DeSantis, who at one point had 31 percent of the primary electorate, is now down to 13, 31, 13, 18. So basically he's lost close to two thirds support. OK, Nikki Haley has now gone from one percent to almost eight percent. Nikki Haley is the candidate that has grown her support on a percentage basis by more than any other candidate in this race. And meanwhile, the candidate that has suffered the most is Vivek Ramaswamy. If you look at Google Trends data, people searching this is how I do search searching

like this, searching Google for Vivek Ramaswamy peaked the day after the first Republican debate and has collapsed after the second Republican debate. Nobody was Googling Vivek Ramaswamy, confirming that his performance was one of the worst on that stage, as I evaluated it. And it is now the case that Vivek Ramaswamy is in danger of falling into fifth place if he isn't careful. And meanwhile, Nikki Haley is pulling away every single day. Nikki Haley's polling is improving. Now, what about this is national national? It's Trump 57. DeSantis 13. Nikki Haley almost eight. Vivek five. What about in any individual primary? Is there any individual primary in which Nikki Haley may be able to get a result that justifies staying in the race?

And the answer is yes. Now, I still think Trump will be the nominee, but I'm making the case that the Haley supporters are making. Nikki Haley has now surpassed Ron DeSantis in New Hampshire. Nick, this is from Politico. Haley beats DeSantis 19 to 10 in a new Suffolk University, Boston Globe USA Today poll released yesterday morning. Now they are both behind Trump. Importantly, Trump has forty nine percent. Then it's Haley 19 and DeSantis 10. But if you are trying to find a path, at least theoretical or hypothetical to not to the nomination, but simply to staying into this thing into March to Super Tuesday, you need to have at least a strong showing somewhere and a strong second place above DeSantis and everybody other than Trump in New Hampshire. Again, I'm

being as optimistic as I can on this thing is the best that Nikki Haley apparently could hope for right now. So that is also an extraordinarily interesting result. Now, if we look more generally at what's going on in general election polling, the latest general election poll from Survey USA of twenty three hundred likely voters has Biden and Trump even at forty three. Now, quick math, forty three times two, three times two is six. That's eighty six. That leaves 100 minus 86, zero cross out for that's 14 percent of the electorate. You like my math. They're not accounted for in that poll. And what that means is that it is way too early to say that the general election polling is anything approximating definitive. Now, let's

take a look at a different question, which is, David, it's October 5th of the year before the election. How accurately do polls today historically predict who will ultimately be the nominee? Well, let's just look at it. Last election in 2020 on October 5th, Biden was winning the Democratic primary, but barely. Elizabeth Warren was very close. Biden did ultimately become the nominee. If we go back to 2016, at this point, October 5, 2015, Hillary was winning the primary polling and did become the nominee. And at this exact same stage in the 2016 Republican primary, Trump was winning and did become the nominee.

Well, let's go back further. What about October 5th of 2011, where Mitt Romney ultimately became the nominee? Well, October 5th of 2011, Mitt Romney was also leading the polls and he became the nominee. But when you go beyond that, you see a different trend. In 2008, Rudy Giuliani at this point in time was winning, leading by by quite a bit. The Republican primary did not become the nominee. John McCain did. So that's an example.

In 2008, on the Democratic primary side, Hillary Clinton was winning at this stage of the primary. Barack Obama ultimately became the nominee. So that's the history of it. What we can say is it usually is indicative of who will be the nominee. So that's the history of it. What we can say is it usually is indicative of who will be the nominee who is leading in October on October 5th. But not always. The additional wrinkle here is one of the Republican candidates, Trump, happens to be a former president. And that is not a situation that we have modern polling data for. So my belief is that Trump is going to easily win this thing unless something I can't

even conceive of takes place. That's where I am right now. Open to hearing other views from people in the audience. We're going to look at one of the strangest interviews that Donald Trump has done. This got very little attention. Trump was interviewed by a British political activist who used to be the editor of Breitbart London. This guy's name is Rahim Kassam. And this is, as I like to say, when it's true, very bonkers stuff. I'm going to go through a few moments in this interview. And what's fascinating about this interview is that it's one of Trump's most softball

interviews and one of the ones that went the most horribly wrong. And yet it got extraordinarily little attention being published just a few days ago. So let's start with Trump on immigration, making just ridiculous claims about immigration. And for a movement that claims to care about facts over feelings. Rahim Kassam does nothing to rebut or even inquire where Trump is getting some of these claims from. Take a look at this. No, nobody has ever seen anything like this. And I think we could say worldwide. I think you could go to the you could go to a banana republic and pick the worst one and you're not going to see what we're witnessing now. No control whatsoever. Nobody has any idea where these people are coming from.

And we know they come from prisons. We know they come from mental institutions, insane as hell. We know they're terrorists. Nobody has ever seen anything like we're witnessing right now. It is a very sad thing for our country. It's poisoning the blood of our country. It's so bad. And people are coming in with disease. People. So basically, we have a combination here of xenophobic and racist dog whistle whistle stuff like it's poisoning the blood, the idea of dirty immigrants that are an infestation. This is the language. This is the language. This is the imagery.

These are the sort of metaphors and analogies that Republicans love to use. And of course, everything Trump is saying is at minimum unproven, maybe an actual lie. Mental institutions are not being emptied out into the United States. The idea of a terrorist pipeline into the country over the U.S. Mexican border is often mentioned. And in fact, it's mentioned so much that there are people who assume it must be true because I hear it all the time. But it is not actually something that has been demonstrated. And so Trump sort of combining dishonesty with xenophobia and the interviewer just kind of goes for it. The interviewer then sets Trump

up with another softball and says Fox News is hostile to you. And the topic of Rupert Murdoch stepping down comes up. Here's what Trump had to say about it. And he drops the globalist bomb. Remember, globalist, a longtime dog whistle, often for Jews conspiring to do things. Now Rupert Murdoch, as far as I know, is not Jewish, but Trump dropping a globalist bomb, which has now become quite frankly, globalist and deep state are conspiracy trigger words at this point in time. Most all towards you has been Fox, especially recently. Murdoch says he's out.

What do you think? Well, I wish him luck. We've done fine with Fox. We've done well with Fox over the years. Roger Ailes was a great guy and a friend of mine, somebody I respected a lot. He did a fantastic job. They picked their opponents. Perhaps it's the globalists. Who knows why we had the greatest economy in history. I'd love to get Trump to define globalists, by the way. It would be an interesting thing.

But so anyway, you know, he here he complains about the lack of loyalty, strongest border in history. We cut taxes greater than Ronald Reagan. You know, our tax cut was bigger than the Reagan tax cut, which was also very big. We had we did things with regulations. That's why we had the best job numbers. Anyone with the best economy in history. But somehow there's just an edge there. You know, if you look at the anchors, you take a look at Sean Hannity. Laura has been great. They've all

been I mean, they've been good. Being good means you just don't question anything Trump says or does. That's what he means. This there's an overhang that you just feel there's something missing. Do you think you make sense to you? Yeah, it makes sense to this guy who's doing the interview. There is an edge of we don't unquestionably accept every single dumb thing that Trump says and does. The bouquet throwing from the interviewer to Trump continues where Rahim Kassam praises Trump for his extraordinarily clever nickname of Ron DeSantis, the sanctimonious. He loves it. He thinks it's just great name to sanctimonious because I think when you

first used it, a lot of people kind of didn't get it. They love it now. But it does reflect that. I mean, a lot of his online supporters, you see a lot of that sanctimony coming out in them. I mean, one of them last week said he thinks the founding fathers are in hell. I mean, I don't understand, you know, who could possibly even if you think it, why would you say that? Right.

Right. So how did you hone in on that about. Talk to me about your creative process. What do you use a mood board, a vision board? Do you open up a dictionary and just look at words that start with D or in this case, it's not even it's actually sanctimonious. What I want to know the creative process for that genius nickname, sir. Wrong. Well, just an ungrateful person. He was out of a political career. He left Congress. He campaigned. And without me, he campaigned and he was at nothing. He he had almost nothing. He had no money. He had no ratings. He had no polling, no nothing. Nothing. Trump loves telling the story. And of course, it's not really an accurate story. Trump

loves to say that the day he endorsed DeSantis, his polling spiked. I think his polling spiked three months later. So it's sort of a weird thing now to Trump's credit. The topic of the 2022 midterms came up and Trump actually offers a somewhat insightful analysis about how overplaying the abortion card hurt Republicans. This is maybe maybe Trump's most sane moment of any interview I can remember. And I don't endorse everybody, but we didn't do well on the Republicans didn't do well. I think I know why. Because they didn't know how to talk about abortion properly. If they knew how to talk about abortion properly because they're the radicals, we're not the radicals.

We did a great thing on that with Roe v. Wade. We gave all the power to the pro-life and something can be done now. They had no power whatsoever. Babies could be killed in the seventh, eighth and ninth month and even after birth. I mean, you saw the governor of Virginia, the right. So that's not true. The interviewer says, yes, that that's happening. Trump accurately points out that the abortion related rhetoric in the wake of Roe v. Wade being undone was not helpful to Republicans. That's true. The country is more in favor of abortion being legal in most cases today than it has been

at any time since Roe v. Wade was first passed in the 70s. Trump then saying everybody's just the left is pushing seven, eight, nine month and post birth abortions. It's not a thing. It doesn't exist. It's not going on. That's simply a lie. Trump also mentions in this interview that he's going to be writing an autobiography. Now, what's fascinating about this is Trump doesn't read nor write. It frustrates me sometimes that it feels like the left, your enemies get to write your legacy. Do you have any plans to do that yourself? An autobiography or something like that? I will when we're finished. We're having more response. Look, 2016 was something that nobody

had ever seen in political history. That's true. Do you know, in the country, you had 92 percent politicians and 8 percent generals. Yeah. So there you go. Trump planning to write an autobiography. I don't know if crayons will be a factor. I don't know. You know, it's all very, very hard to know exactly what that's going to be like. Trump then attacks Biden, saying he is the most corrupt president in history and suggests or believes apparently that he will be replaced by Gavin Newsom, that Democrats are ultimately going to replace Biden. This is something that many Republicans are now pushing. He is something wrong. If it's not him, who's it going to be? He's also the most corrupt

president in history, without question. I don't know. There'll be a fight. I don't think that Kamala gets it handed. You know, a lot of people are so afraid to go against her. I don't think it gets handed. I think all of a sudden everybody would start jumping in. She'd have to earn it.

It'd be very hard to earn. But I don't know. You know, the same five or six people that you report on and you show up. I don't see that. No, I don't see it. Trump is actually right here. Michelle Obama has said, I'm not running for president. A bunch of Republicans keep pushing it, but I don't think it's happening. And Trump is willing to admit it. Good for him. Gavin Newsom. Yeah, probably. Yeah, I think so. Yeah.

I'm also interested in. All right. And then this may be the most interesting moment in the entire interview, a rare human moment for Trump. You really rarely ever see this. He talks about how much he misses his his deceased brother and father. Is this the real Trump? Is there a real Trump under there? Take a look at them. Both passed away. One had a problem with alcohol. It taught me so much because he said, don't

drink and, you know, don't drink. At that time is a long time ago. Drugs were not a big factor, but alcohol was. And he was very insistent on, don't drink, don't smoke. He said, don't smoke. And that was another thing that he added in, but it had a big impact on me. But I had a father that I was very close to. My other brother, Robert, I was very close to,

passed away two years ago. A wonderful guy. He was so proud of me. He was so proud of the fact that I became president. He was amazing. You know, a lot of siblings, they're jealous. They don't, you know, I'm just as good as him or something. You know, you have that.

And maybe it's natural, maybe it's not natural, but you have it a lot, probably much more so than not. And he was great. He was a great supporter of mine. He thought it was so incredible. I couldn't believe it. And so we miss him. And I miss my father. You learn from people. My father was a great guy. He was very. Speaker 1 So I'll tell you, this might be the most human I've ever seen. Trump, it's the most softball of softball interviews. It still goes horribly wrong in that he spews endless lies about the border, about Biden, about abortion. I mean, he lies about everything.

He lies so reflexively that he probably doesn't even realize that he's repeating the same same lies over and over and over again. But kind of an interesting moment, I will say Trump talking about missing family members. I don't really know what to make of it. A very strange interview, one that got very little attention, but glad for the opportunity to take a look at it. We're going to take the quickest of breaks. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg joins me next. How about that? Staying properly nourished is just so important to feeling your best every day. Our sponsor, AG1, makes it so simple. Just a single scoop of AG1 a day. You get 75 high quality vitamins and probiotics from whole food sources. You're covered for the day.

Half of Americans are deficient in vitamins A and C and magnesium. Not everybody has time to perfectly plan every meal. And I don't know that any of us want to be spending a whole bunch of money on endless different vitamins and supplements. AG1 just simplifies it and it's more cost effective. I take a single scoop of AG1 in the morning before my coffee tastes great with water, but you can mix it quite frankly into anything you want with that one scoop. I'm covered for the day getting everything I want. It's easy and it's a simple routine that works. Well, this is great. Today we welcome to the program Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, former presidential candidate.

Many in my audience will remember him from that and also former mayor of South Bend, Indiana. So great to have you on. I really appreciate your time. Thanks for having me. I want to jump into something substantive and meaty right away rather than wasting time. So listen, I drive a Tesla. I see Elon Musk saying crazy things on the platform formerly known as Twitter.

I want to move off and move on to something different. The limitation that I and others experience is the charging network and the practicality of not having superchargers available. Talk to me a little bit about the trajectory and path towards equalizing what is now probably the biggest advantage for Tesla. Yeah, there's no way we're going to have tomorrow's EV fleet working on today's charging network. The president's vision is 500,000 chargers around the country. We think that's what it's going to take to really have the kind of support that we need. And that's everything from having chargers spread out along long distances.

And our standard is at least every 50 miles, you ought to be able to count on coming to a charger. But also in communities, in areas, especially think about multifamily dwellings where maybe it's not a high income area where it pencils out for a private company to make a profit putting in a charger. We need to buy down the difference there, too. So that's what we're doing with the funding in the infrastructure law. We've got $7.5 billion going into that. Now, alongside that, the privately owned and fully privately funded chargers are going to

be part of that. I thought it was a good step when Tesla agreed to open its supercharger network using adapters to some other cars. We're still in a period where there are different connector standards, but you can work through that by making sure there are different connectors on chargers. And then I think the most important thing that's being missed in a lot of the dialogue and debate about chargers is that most drivers, most of the time, will do most of their charging at home or at work. Again, it's not available to everybody. But ironically, it's especially true in more rural areas and suburban areas that maybe politically haven't been considered to be the early adopters of EVs. But that's where it'll be easiest because you have

more people living in single family homes, more likely to have garages. And in that sense, charging a car will have more in common with charging your phone for many drivers than it does with filling up a gas car. So every time I talk about this, a portion of the audience says, this is really great, David, and it all sounds lovely and chargers everywhere, etc. But in the discussion about electric vehicles, aren't we missing the discussion about public transit? Now, putting aside for a moment that many cities have moved to electric buses and we are seeing improvements, we do have this fundamental structural issue in the United States where we have elected officials from all over the country, including very rural areas,

areas where the few cities that there are are very far apart, who don't see what's in it for them or their constituents and their reelection to support spending on improving public transit. What is the approach in a country laid out the way the United States to do something? I mean, listen, I don't know that we're ever going to be. I was in Spain. The train system is quite remarkable. Italy, France, China. I don't know that that is a reasonable goal maybe in the next 30 years. I don't know. But how do you broach the political problem to improve the public transit system? Yeah, it's a great point. As proud as we are of the EV work we're doing, I actually think the most significant climate

impacts of our infrastructure legislation may come from the transit side. We've got the biggest investment in public transit in U.S. history federally, the biggest investment in passenger rail since Amtrak was created. And that's going to be critically important. And I do think it's important to get out there that transit is not just about a place like Manhattan. It's not just about subways. Small communities, mid-sized communities can benefit hugely if their transit system is capable of meeting people's everyday needs. And actually, whole new things have become possible in recent years, thanks to things like micro mobility, thanks to things like the ability to do the first or last mile,

e-bikes, things like that, that kind of fit into a bigger picture of mobility than we had when a lot of these transit systems and their hub and spoke models were set up in the first place. So we have to do both at once, right? We have to reduce the environmental impact of existing modes of travel from aviation to driving a car, and we have to create more good options for more Americans to take more of their trips using transit. And I think it's less about pushing people into it and more about improving the options. That means reliability. That means frequency. That means look and feel.

It means the reality and the perception of safety in public transit. We're working all of that. And again, the good news is we have funding to do it. So the other piece that you mentioned is trains and catching up to our peer countries in that regard. And in my view, at risk of sounding nationalistic, is if a Spanish citizen or a Chinese citizen can count on high-speed rail, an American citizen ought to have the same options or better.

Obviously, that's not true right now. And no, we can't overnight build a high-speed rail network that's nationwide. But we can take some of the funds in the president's infrastructure package and use them to help deliver high-speed rail on American soil. And I think if we have it, even in just a handful of geographies in the U.S., seeing is believing and it will pave the way, so to speak, for more people to expect and demand it as an option alongside air travel, alongside vehicle travel to get to where you need to be in this country. So you talked about design, experience, feel, all of these different things.

I'm curious what your view is or as a representative of the of the Biden administration, what the view is on the role of the private sector in public transit. And the context of this is that for all of my many criticisms of Tesla and Elon Musk, they did put pressure on the legacy manufacturers to much more quickly start bringing these electric vehicles to market rather than to slow play it and necessarily suck every dollar out of internal combustion engines. So is there a role in I don't know if it's the Hyperloop or whatever other example, but what do you think the role of private industry should be in public transit? Well, I think that any time a new technology comes along or a new approach

comes along, that can really transform transit in a way that's beneficial. And sometimes that comes with some healthy pressure to keep up. Whether that's something like a Hyperloop concept or it has to do with what I consider to be the most disruptive transportation technology the last 15 years, which is actually not a vehicle, it's the smartphone. There are lots of things that have come along that do change the possibilities for transit. And I'm especially interested in things that can, in some small to middle density communities, really replace the need for a kind of hub and spoke system with very few riders that can cost, you know, $5, $10, $15 per passenger per ride in terms of the system, with something that is still part of transit,

but a little more nimble, a little more adaptable, a little more likely to be on demand. I've seen places like Kansas City working with technology to introduce that. And I think in the near term, that's very exciting. It may be that the transit will look different and operate differently in all but the biggest, densest cities that are of a scale to support a subway. And we should lean into that and support it. When it comes to electric generally, so this is vehicles, but also personal vehicles, but buses, et cetera. I'm curious whether in terms of the conversations you're having with people, you currently see electric as a bridge fuel source or technology, maybe to hydrogen or something else, or whether

you actually see it as a potential endpoint for a longer period of time? So I think a slight but valid simplification here is the bigger the vehicle, the more you're going to see a diversity of fuel and propulsion sources for the future. Now, there's a light duty vehicle car. I really think that EVs are going to be the way that these things work for the next century. Again, the advantages of many people being able to easily charge them at home or at work, it's what Chaston and I do. We have a plug-in hybrid electric minivan. Never thought I'd be a minivan person. Then we had twins and life changed.

We just plug it. We don't even have, we should probably get one. We don't even have one of those level two chargers. We just literally plug it into the wall. And I think a lot of Americans don't realize that's already possible for many of them. So it's hard to beat that. And the other advantage of electric is it actually gets less carbon intensive over time because the generation mix of this country is growing in terms of renewable energy.

So however much cleaner it is than gas today, that actually improves even with the same car year after year. But as you get into some of the heavier-duty vehicles, as you get into semis, buses, look, we see a lot of really great zero-emission vehicles right now that are electric. But I do think it's in that field that you're going to see other zero-emission technologies demonstrating their competitiveness and potentially really duking it out over the decades to come with electric technology to see what's best. So I want to talk about the decades to come in the context of jobs. Transportation is also one of the biggest job sectors in the United States. I recently saw,

I don't know if you heard or saw this. It looked like a union rally, but it was at a nonunion shop with nonunion people holding signs that said union members for Trump. You know about this event I'm talking about. We know. So you notice. So there was an interview done of a guy who who knows who he was, because at this point it's unclear who anybody was at that event. But what he said was that one of the concerns among auto workers working in internal

combustion engines is that electric vehicles kill jobs because the engines are so simple, they require far fewer workers. Now, in the research I've done, the long term of this is quite the opposite, that between battery technology, grid upgrades, pressure on more renewable sources for the electricity used to charge the cars. There's five or six different areas where jobs are actually going to be created by the move to EVs. What is the data or the perspective on this that that you're seeing as someone who's embroiled in it daily?

Yeah, we do see a lot of evidence that this will open whole new frontiers in manufacturing jobs. Yes, manufacturing the vehicles themselves and their supply chains, but also manufacturing chargers, which need to be made in America per the rules that President Biden made sure we laid out. We have strong Buy America policies on pretty much anything that is funded with taxpayer dollars. You mentioned batteries. That's part of why the UAW is fighting so hard right now. They see the battery side as a very important part of this picture and want to make sure there's good pay and working conditions there. The other thing that I think is really important strategically is even if all of that weren't certain to come, it doesn't

mean that there's an option of just trapping people in the old technologies forever. Remember, these EVs, these new technologies, they're not just better for the environment. They're better for the consumer. People are switching to them. Their share of sales has tripled. And as costs come down, it'll probably grow even more quickly because they're cheaper to fuel, cheaper to maintain, last longer, and perform better. So if, you know, I always think about one of the companies, one of the bygone companies of my hometown, South Bend,

which is famous for producing Studebaker cars, but also used to be famous for producing a kind of a pocket watch called South Bend Watch. The very brand name was a byword for quality in the 1920s. They wound up making some of the very best pocket watches of the early wristwatch age, but they didn't figure out wristwatches would be a thing in time. They went out of business

right around the time of the Great Depression. The surest way to destroy the American auto industry and American auto jobs would be to pretend that technologies of the 50s, 60s, and 70s are gonna keep us going into the 2030s and 2040s. It's just not an option. In the few minutes we have left, I want to shift gears a little bit. And I'm sensitive to the fact that you're here as secretary of transportation and not in any connection with a campaign. I want to talk a little bit about two of the people that I think

are striking the best tone in general when it comes to talking about these issues, whether it's part of a campaign or not, we'll just make it general. Are you and Gavin Newsom in terms of recognizing the bad faith with which many on the right are currently approaching issues of transportation, issues of climate, issues of economics, etc. You seem remarkably well prepared to handle the attack sandbaggings from whether it's Fox News or whether it was the other day over your flight records or the difference between it's now fall versus climate change, you know, all these different moments. How much how precisely this is a tactical question. Do you and your staff anticipate

the exact nature of the sort of sandbaggy questions you're going to get? You know, some of the stuff you can see it coming. But the truth is that there's always a surprise. I would just say House Republicans in particular, as they've demonstrated this week, are always full of surprises. I did not in a million years prepare for the idea that a sitting member of Congress would propose that the season's changing was the same thing as the climate changing. And then I saw another of his House colleagues double down on that a few days later. She basically said the same thing. I don't

have the imagination to see things like that coming. But what we do know is that there are certain patterns that hold, including a pattern of being incredibly skeptical or making a show of being skeptical of a new technology like EVs while seeming to be willing to make any excuse to use all of the instruments of the U.S. government to prop up oil and gas profits was the kind of subsidies that they support in the very same session as they'll turn around and say when it comes to something like EVs that there should never be a subsidy related to transportation. You can see some of those patterns unfold around you.

And we can also see that this isn't going to age well. I mean, I cannot imagine what it would be like to be one of these members, maybe one of the younger members of the Republican conference that I saw at that committee meeting, 20, 30 years from now, explaining to their grandchildren why they did everything they could to fight to keep us burning the maximum amount of fossil fuels for the longest time possible. I just can't imagine what it would be like. It's inconceivable. And yet there they are. And some of them, I think a lot about the fact that I'm gonna have to look my kids in the eye when they're old enough to ask some pretty tough questions about how we handled the moments in front of us in the 2020s and better have some good answers. And I think speaking, speaking of kids,

before I let you go, a father to father, any bedtime tips? Because my 16 month old is very shaky on the sleep. We are probably in very similar territory. Nobody's fully cracked the code on that. I find it changes every few days or weeks in terms of which one of the twins is a better sleeper or which one puts up more resistance at bedtime. I mean, some of the sweetest moments are actually when you're trying to put them to bed, but they don't make it easy, do they know it's less sweet at 315 a.m. is what I find in my experience. Mr. Secretary, we've been speaking with the secretary of transportation, Pete Buttigieg. Really appreciate your time and your insights today. Same here. Great speaking with you. Appreciate it. People in my audience who sometimes struggle with sleep, you know, you've got those habit

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cocoa. I'll just be up front. It's great to have before bed sometimes. It's hot, very flavorful, but not overly sweet. It's just a soothing way to wind down like an hour before going to bed for a limited time. You'll get up to 40% off when you go to shop beam dot com slash Pacman and use the code Pacman at checkout. That's shop B E A M dot com slash Pacman using code Pacman saves you up to 40%. The info is in the podcast notes. Donald Trump bailed out of his fraud trial in New York after lunch yesterday when they saw I guess they brought in McDonald's for lunch. It's all crazy what's going on anyway.

Trump again when leaving whines about not having a jury, even though they didn't request a jury. And it's all just so humiliating and embarrassing. Here is Trump showing up there. This was, I guess, at lunchtime and saying, why don't I get a jury? I want the jury, please. This trial is a total witch hunt. I should be entitled to a jury like everybody else is entitled to a jury.

I have no rights to have a jury. It's ridiculous. I have no rights to have a jury. All of the report, all of the reporting is that Trump did not actually request a jury through his lawyers. The question of Trump becoming speaker came up. Now forget for a second about the fact that Republican rules bar Trump from being speaker because he's been indicted on felonies for which he could serve more than two years in prison.

Putting that aside for a second, Trump does the a lot of people are saying things. Speaker, a lot of people have been calling me about speaker. All I can say is we'll do whatever is best for the country and for the Republican Party. We have some great, great people. A lot of people have asked me about it. I'm focused. We have some great, great people. A lot of people have asked me about it. I'm focused. You know, we're leading.

I don't know. I'm sure you don't read too much. The papers. But we're leading by like 50 points. The president. My focus is totally on that. If I can help. Listen, Trump's got wall to wall court dates for criminal trials.

A civil trial is trying to run a campaign, has no idea how the House even functions. And we're supposed to believe that he's going to be speaker of the House. I mean, it's just, you know, only a completely broken Republican Party would even consider the mere possibility of discussing Trump as speaker. But that's where we are. Trump wrongly claiming that he's stuck in court even though he'd rather be campaigning. Remember, Trump actually doesn't have to be there. He could be wherever he wants.

You saw it today with the kind of cash I have and the kind of success we've had. But I'm a private company. I was never going to reveal this kind of stuff. But now it comes out. It comes out because a corrupt attorney general sued me for fraud. I'm not going to reveal this kind of stuff. I'm going to reveal this kind of stuff. I'm going to reveal this kind of stuff.

I'm going to reveal this kind of stuff. I'm going to reveal this kind of stuff. was never going to reveal this kind of stuff. But now it comes out. It comes out because a corrupt attorney general sued me for fraud. And then they found out they had no case and they have no case. And today, if you read the New York Law Journal, they basically say they have no case against Trump. But I'm here, stuck here, and I can't come back. I'd rather be right now in Iowa. I'd rather be in New Hampshire, South Carolina or Ohio or a lot of other places. But I'm stuck here.

Now remember, Trump isn't stuck there and he actually left after lunch. There's he's actually not required to be there. I guess if he testifies, he has to be there, but he's not testifying for the time being. He doesn't have to be there. Trump's there for three reasons, I would say. Number one, to attempt to intimidate witnesses and the judge and prosecutors, which has not been working well at all. Number two, to try to spread lies about what's happening in the courtroom, to rally his base,

to fundraise, to grift, which to some degree is working. And the number three, he's probably there also to try to micromanage his lawyers who I mean, listen, I can't say whether it's working or not. But Trump reportedly passing notes to his lawyers angrily yesterday in court and whatever. Here's one last clip, just more complaining and whining from Trump. What I'm giving you is so wrong, you shouldn't even look at it, he said in the documents. I borrowed money on very under levered, borrowed money on. All right. So we don't need to listen to more of it. It's the same sort of complaining that we've heard from Trump.

He doesn't have to be there. He chose to be there. He left at lunch. And then the final element of this is Trump going online and then complaining about everything. All right. So after Trump bailed on his fraud trial, after having a bunch of McDonald's brought in, he left. He said he was stuck there, but then he left. So obviously he wasn't stuck there.

He took to Truth Social Central and he unleashed a tirade, the likes of which I don't remember ever seeing from Trump. Trump posting quote, I am running for president, have a 62 point lead over Republicans and I'm up on crooked Joe Biden, despite the Democrat Party's massive lawfare, weaponization and election interference efforts by four to 11 points, but we'll do whatever is necessary to help with the speaker of the House election process short term until the final selection of a great Republican speaker is made a speaker who will help a new but highly experienced president me make America great again. Trump continuing to troth.

I'm in a rat's nest of New York Democrat corruption. A reason so many companies are leaving New York, a racist attorney general thought filled a lawsuit whose facts and valuations are wrong, like 18 million for Mar-a-Lago when it is worth perhaps 100 times that amount and numerous other properties likewise. So now it's up to one point eight billion every day. Mar-a-Lago is worth like hundreds of millions more. It's fascinating that this case is a political sham that should never have been brought. I don't even get a jury. Therefore, a radical left judge who came up through the Democrat club system will decide it is not possible that he can be fair.

Every decision he makes has been a horror show. It is why I do the set asides with the media to explain the case and what is going on. Our corrupt, racist and incompetent A.G. Letitia Peekaboo James, considered the worst A.G. in the U.S., refused to bring this case under the respected commercial division where judges understand valuations and real estate. This Trump hating judge doesn't. The appellant division must intercede now. It's sort of like a sir, this is a Wendy's sort of moment. Trump continuing the ridiculous AG case against me in New York brought by the racist, incompetent peekaboo. James is being studied. Yeah, they're studying it really closely and

mocked all over the world. Companies are fleeing it and the highly political Trump hating judge are destroying the image and reputation, blah, blah, blah, on and on. And then lastly, Trump attacking on truth, social Fox News saying Fox has totally given up on Ron DeSanctimonious and is on their next journey pushing Nikki Birdbrain Haley, who stated loudly and often that President Trump was a great president and I would never run against him. Well, so much for that. Fox and Friends just put on a handpicked Haley acolyte who absolutely gushed bird brain. It was really something to be

hold so obvious and lame. Oh, well, we took out Ron, a far less talented person than originally believed on and on and on, et cetera, et cetera. Make America great again. This is not a man who is well. This is not a man who is well at all. And yet he continues to easily be winning the Republican primary. The big story here and the story that I believe historically in the future, looking back, will really be the big story was not that Trump continued ranting and raving and breaking every norm under the sun. That is a story. But that was the story in twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen, maybe till twenty twenty one.

Now the story is that the Republican Party seems unable or unwilling to get away from this guy. And that is what is stunning in the context of the twenty twenty four election. We have a voicemail number. That number is two one nine two. David P. Here's a caller asking about yesterday's emergency alert test. Take a listen. Hey, David, wondering if you've heard about any of the conspiracies around the emergency test that hit everyone's phone at 2.18 p.m. Eastern today. Because the reason I'm asking is a friend of mine called me minutes before it went off

and said a very informed person warned him that the government slash Joe Biden might be using this emergency test as an opportunity to either kill our phones with some kind of EMT or install some kind of malware on it. And I thought this was very interesting. He recommended that I turn my phone off and maybe even put aluminum foil around it to protect it from whatever the government might do. I've actually moved from tinfoil to parchment paper lately for cooking purposes anyway. So I'd consider that. So just wondering if you'd heard about that

and if you had or heard any other conspiracy theories, would love to hear about them myself. Yeah. The other one I heard was that the emergency alert system test would activate something that was injected into people from the COVID vaccine or something like that. You know, it's funny about the test. I heard about the conspiracies. They're really wacky. We recorded today's interview with the transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, yesterday, and

we recorded it during that test. And so everybody's devices went off during the interview, even though everything was silence, because I guess it was just pushed through even to silent phones. And so we paused for 10 seconds. We said, OK, are we good to continue? Yes. And that little bit got cut out from the interview. And it was essentially the biggest non event I could imagine. So I heard the conspiracies. They're not really worthy of too much discussion. What a bonus show that we have for you today. We'll talk about Nancy Pelosi getting kicked out of her office. We'll talk about

mortgage rates reaching record highs, what it means for the housing market and the economy. And Joe Biden is building the wall while allowing a part of it to be built. What is going on with Biden on the wall? This is so fascinating. It is going to trigger MAGA. But I have bigger concerns. All of those stories and more on today's bonus show. Sign up at join Pacman dot com. Get the full David Pakman show.