The David Pakman Show - 10/7/24: Elon does Trump, MAGAs simply won't answer

Episode Date: October 7, 2024

-- On the Show: -- A deep dive into the claim that social media platforms are biased against conservatives as evidenced by the supposedly higher rate of suspensions and bans for right wing users -- The New York Times appears to suddenly discover the reality of Donald Trump's cognitive decline -- Kamala Harris will be interviewed this week on 60 Minutes, The View, the Howard Stern Show, and by Stephen Colbert, but it will still not satisfy MAGA Trumpists -- Donald Trump holds a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, with Elon Musk, and it's simultaneously humiliating and terrifying -- Donald Trump's rally in Butler, Pennsylvania implodes before it even starts -- Donald Trump's crowd in Butler, Pennsylvania was legitimately massive, and any comfort in the inevitability of Kamala Harris' victory in November is extremely risky -- Republican Speaker of the House MAGA Mike Johnson refuses to answer whether Donald Trump lost the 2020 election -- A delusional Jill Stein, from the Green Party, suggests she might receive 15% of the vote in the coming presidential election -- David's forthcoming book, The Echo Machine, is now officially available for pre-order. Check it out at http://www.davidpakman.com/echo -- On the Bonus Show: Pat's Europe trip, right-wingers claim election interference, and much more... -- Become a Member: https://www.davidpakman.com/membership -- Become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/davidpakmanshow -- TDPS Subreddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/thedavidpakmanshow -- Pakman Discord: https://www.davidpakman.com/discord -- David on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/davidpakmanshow -- Leave a Voicemail: (219)-2DAVIDP

. Welcome to the show, everybody. We have a huge week ahead of us. All of a sudden, after years of obvious deterioration, the New York Times has suddenly discovered the reality of Donald Trump's cognitive decline just weeks before the 2024 presidential election. Well, good for them. They finally stumbled across this major multi-year story. They finally figured it out and decided, hey, we might want to report on this given that this guy might be within tens of thousands of votes of the presidency or might even be president again in a new piece titled Trump's speeches increasingly angry and rambling reignite the question of age. The New York Times sub headline reads with the passage of time, the 78 year old former president's speeches have grown darker, harsher, longer,

angrier, less focused, more profane and increasingly fixated on the past, according to a review of his public appearances over the years. Now, you'll notice because you, I'm sure, have been following the story as we have for years. You'll notice that when you read The New York Times article, there is nothing new or newsworthy. It's been happening for years. What's new is that The New York Times has decided, hey, there's days left until the election.

Maybe we'll talk about this. Criticism of Trump's mental fitness is obviously not new, but The New York Times has discovered Trump's cognitive decline only after Joe Biden was pressured out of the race and after spending much time talking about Joe Biden in this context. And now is the election is close. The New York Times suddenly chooses to highlight Donald Trump's age related issues. Is it a strategic move? I don't know. We'll talk about it. But even though The New York Times is covering it, they're covering it in arguably

a much softer way than they should be. The New York Times is presenting this Trump stuff as a recent phenomenon, sort of framing it in terms of age rather than acknowledging the longstanding behaviors that Trump's been exhibiting along these lines for years. And, you know, in some ways, the New York Times article isn't bad. Like, for example, it includes a data analysis which shows Trump's speeches have become longer, filled with more negative kind of black and white, all or nothing language. That's very interesting to include. The problem I have with The New York Times piece, other than being too little too late, is that their critique points out that such language is now present in Trump's speeches, but it ignores that it's been present for years. And so that's why the timing of this is raising some questions for me.

The New York Times article emphasizes the increased profanity and anger in Trump's speeches, sort of that his rhetorical style is getting darker and darker and it is getting darker. But critics like me and others have realized this has actually been going on. It's been dark since 2016. I mean, he came down the escalator, as he loves to say, and talked about Mexican rapists and murderers. And there's a good kind of companion piece to The New York Times article on NJ dot com for NJ for New Jersey and NJ dot com points out the language shift was obvious a long time ago. And really, this should have been covered by corporate media long ago. The other thing the article does just to kind of soften the audience's understanding of how

serious this is, is The New York Times includes voices from Trump's allies who just say he's absolutely fine. And this isn't very different than when Biden staffers were saying everything's good and critical reporting would say you can't really go by that because obviously that's what they say. That's what they would say when Biden was still in the race. the Trump cognitive decline story just wasn't really interesting to The New York Times. And to avoid just picking on The New York Times, it didn't seem like a super interesting story to corporate media in general. So, like, we're using The New York Times as a prism through which to talk about this

because they wrote an article. Good for them. But the truth is, I've been pointing out for 18, 24 months that the Trump brain stories are conspicuously missing from corporate media, save a couple little spits and spurts over the last few months. Even in the New York Times article, they're using much softer language. They call it Trump's cognitive change rather than cognitive decline. Change suggests he might be changing cognitively for the better. And we all know that that's very much not the case. And they are very cautious about saying something is definitively going on.

So I want to try to be balanced. I'm glad The New York Times is talking about it rather than not at all. They are softening the story by not calling it decline, calling it change. They're softening the story by quoting Trump allies who say there's nothing to see here. They're mitigating the impact of the story by only starting to talk about it. What? Just under four weeks before the election, around four weeks, I guess, four weeks and a day before the presidential election. And they are drawing attention to it now when the political stakes have shifted dramatically. And there is, of course, a question for me as to whether this is calculated. I'm struggling to shake that feeling. But to the extent that anyone's willing to talk

about it, good for them. And it's better than nothing. That's for sure. We should not continue trying to please people who simply want to keep being angry. When Kamala Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee for for president of the United States, the MAGA crowd immediately started screaming, why isn't she doing interviews? She's so scared she's in hiding. They won't let her do an interview. She was supposedly being hidden from the from the media and from the public. And then Kamala Harris did her first major interview. It was with CNN's Dana Bash. What did the MAGA people say? They said, oh, it was just one interview. She should be doing many.

It was softball questions. She got everything wrong on policy. They weren't satisfied. And now Kamala Harris is going to be sitting down with 60 Minutes, The View, Stephen Colbert, and sitting down with David Pakman show viewer Howard Stern. That's all coming up over the next seven or so days. And you might be thinking, well, now, obviously, MAGA Trump ists are going to be satisfied, right? Kamala Harris is doing numerous interviews there. This is what they wanted.

They're going to be happy now. Right. And of course, you would be very wrong. I can assure you that after this week's interviews, the Trump MAGA right will say all of the interviews were softballs from Kamala Harris supporters. Kamala Harris looked bad. She didn't know anything. She didn't explain any of her policies.

And it will be important to remind these people, for example, that while Kamala Harris agreed to do the 60 Minutes interview, Trump agreed and then backed out of doing the 60 Minutes interview in terrified fashion because he would likely humiliate himself and his staffers don't want him going anywhere near Scott Pelley, who was the one who would have conducted that interview. It will be important to remind these people that it isn't that the questions are easier that Kamala gets compared to what Donald gets. It's that when Kamala Harris gets questions, she can answer them in complete sentences and isn't rambling aimlessly, as Donald Trump does every single time that he is asked questions in an interview.

It will be important to remind these people that Kamala Harris has the energy to do a bunch of major interviews in a week, long interviews, adversarial interviews, interviews in different parts of the country. And meanwhile, what Trump is able to do is sit down with a podcast here, a friendly YouTube channel, they're a live streamer over here. But the real conclusion that is important to come to now before we start evaluating these interviews that Kamala Harris will be doing is that no matter what you do to try to engage with a group that is built around perpetual outrage, you aren't going to be able to change their minds.

They want to stay angry. They want to stay offended. Nothing is going to satisfy them. And the critical part of this, a lot of this is like, OK, they want to be angry. Fine. Let them be angry. This is part of a bigger goal. And this is the critical aspect of this.

Now just twenty nine days, I think we are from the election. Trump fans are desperate. Trump is desperate. Trump's campaign is desperate to paint Kamala Harris as incompetent because they can't handle seeing someone who can string together a few coherent sentences and they have to paint her as incompetent to later be able to say, oh, she couldn't have possibly won. And therefore, we are now going to be challenging the results of the election. I'm going to deal with this in more detail later in the show, because they every time one of these MAGA people is asked, did Trump lose in 2020?

It's happened with J.D. Vance. It's happened with J.D. Mandel. It's happened with J.D. Mandel. It's happened with J.P. Mandel. It's happened with all of them. Right. We've endorsed J.P. right. J.D. Mandel. J.D. didn't answer the question during the recent debate. Corey Lewandowski was on TV. He didn't answer the question. They don't want to answer. Did Trump lose in 2020? And all of this, all of this is part of building a case to manufacture consent or at least indifference to try to steal the election. If Trump loses, notice that I'm not saying Trump will lose. If Trump loses, they want an environment in which people will say Kamala Harris was so

incompetent. She was so scared to do interviews. And when she did interviews, they were so terrible. She couldn't possibly have won. Here's 20 bucks to contest the election results. So all of it is about manufacturing consent at the end of the day. And later on in the show, we're going to dig into that in more detail. The preorder campaign for my forthcoming book, The Echo Machine, is now officially launched.

I have a book here. I have an actual copy of the book. It's a paperback proof. The book will be hardcover, but I've got it. We have a lot of exciting things going on. If you've already preordered the book, go to David Pakman dot com slash free book stuff to fill in your info, send in your receipt and make sure you'll get all of the free stuff. We will take a break. I'll tell you a little more about the book later on. The David Pakman Show David Pakman dot com slash Pacman.

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Save democracy. Twenty four. And for a few more days, you can use the coupon code Save Democracy 24. Donald Trump went back to the scene of his failed assassination attempt, Butler, Pennsylvania, and he brought Elon Musk out onto the stage in one of the cringiest political moments I have ever covered in my 74 years doing the David Pakman. I'm sorry, the 18 years doing the David Pakman show. Forgot how long it's been a completely bonkers moment. Trump brings Elon on stage. Elon jumps up and down like a little kid, praises what he is calling dark maga and kisses the ring of Donald Trump. There is a lot of cultural.

Something wrapped up in this moment, take a look, take a listen to be joined tonight by one of the people who is going to help us build this incredible future. And he is a truly incredible guy. And I don't say that that often. He's a great gentleman. He's done such an unbelievable job for North Carolina, for Georgia, for Alabama, for Florida, for Tennessee. His name is Elon Musk. He saved free speech. He created so many different great things. Where and where is he? Come on up here, Elon.

He created. Now, remember, these people hate electric cars. And what Elon is most known for, I would argue at this point, other than kind of losing his mind politically, is Tesla. And they hate electric vehicles. Trump claims that they're horrible and you can't go anywhere. First major American car company in generations and his rocket company is the only reason we can now send American astronauts into space. Imagine for a moment if Kamala Harris said, hey, I'm going to bring up a billionaire who

supports me, who gets government contracts. Imagine what the right would be saying and doing. Take over. Hi, everyone. As you can see, I'm not just MAGA, I'm Dark MAGA. Well, first of all, I want to say what an honor it is to be here. And, you know, the true test of someone's character is how they behave under fire. And we had one president who couldn't climb a flight of stairs and another who was fist pumping after getting shot. Fight, fight, fight. Blood coming down the face.

An absolutely electric speaker, as you can see. Now, America is the home of the brave. Right. Elon Musk making a number of different points during this, including making sure that people vote because and again, if if this if this isn't violence inciting language by their own standards, I don't know what is. Elon says if Trump doesn't win, there might not be any more election. And then make sure they actually do vote. If they don't.

This will be the last election. That's my prediction. Nothing's more important. Nothing's more important. Yeah. And Elon, of course, famously known for predictions about when Tesla's will finally have full self-driving, when they will be going to Mars and, you know, just notoriously reliable at predicting things. Elon Musk also saying this seems like satire that we need Trump to save the Constitution.

President Trump must win to preserve the Constitution. He must win to preserve the Constitution. He must win to preserve democracy in America. And of course, Trump famously has said he would suspend all or parts of the Constitution if he deemed it necessary. So there are some real that that's the that's the Elon part. Now we'll get to some other stuff from this rally. There are some real cultural differences in this country. There were MAGA people who thought Elon Musk running up on stage, jumping around like a little kid and saying he's dark MAGA was one of the coolest, most alpha things they've ever seen. On the other hand, much of the developed world and the American left side and said, Dear God,

this is the cringiest thing that I have ever seen. And it's just a reminder about the cultural differences that are currently at play. Trump thanking Elon and saying he's going to get us to NARS. I'm sorry, Mars. Right now, we're very close to having. We will lead the world in space exploration. Thank you, Ilan. We will lead the world in military and we will reach Mars before the end of my term. Ilan promised me he was going to do that. I don't know. Can you do that? Stand up. Can we do that? He wants to reach it. All right. And of course, it is conceivable that there would be some kind of uncrewed vessel that gets to Mars by January of twenty twenty nine. But Elon Musk's plans of doing it, I don't remember if Elon originally said it would be by this year or by twenty twenty eight. We are not on track for

that to happen. And then suddenly the Trump rallies are featuring an extended operatic commemoration of when Trump was shot at in Butler. This is really weird. At this time, it is six eleven, 12 weeks to the minute that the shooting began. I would like to ask everyone to join me in a moment of silence. Get a load of this. Just so people know, I have not digitally added the music. This is the live sound from the event. Speaker 1 Should I subject you to the whole two minutes? I'm not going to do it. You can go find it if you want to find it. But it is to quote George W. Bush speaking to Hillary Clinton after witnessing Donald

Trump's inauguration speech in 2017. That was some weird shit. Trump then going back to some of the classics, including talking about sex change operations for illegal aliens, both terms that are not really the terms we use. But Trump's using two once men playing in women's sports. Who wants sex change operations for illegal aliens? So the crowd does not want those things. And then finally, at the conclusion of this rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, Donald Trump honoring the sacred memory of the innocent firefighter tragically killed at that same

location when Trump was shot at weeks ago by doing the double jerk dancing while music played. A very solemn moment that I'm sure will bring some healing to the family of Corey compensatory. So a whacked out rally, whacked, just completely whacked. And if this guy wins in November, we are going to see a lot of this. I want to go now to some Fox News coverage of the Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. The rally was implosive and abortive before it even started. Starting at 6 a.m., Fox and Friends was in Butler, Pennsylvania. There are MAGA signs that say impeached, arrested, convicted and still standing. Pete Hegseth was there talking about how people have been waiting for nearly 24 hours to get into this atrocity.

Well, good morning and welcome to Fox and Friends. It is Saturday, October 5th, the year of our Lord, 2024. And I happen to not be in studio with my friends, Will and Rachel, this morning, because as you know, less than three months ago, right here in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13th, President Trump was nearly assassinated and yet stood up afterwards immediately and yelled, fight, fight, fight, rallying the faithful there and a country in that moment. He returns today to Butler, Pennsylvania for a rally in the exact same spot. Guys, it looks almost identical from what we could see when we were coming around the vantage point.

And I'm live here this morning at the front of the line, which began forming at 11 a.m. yesterday. So in just a few moments, we're going to talk some of the folks that have braved the chilly weather. It's only 50, but it feels like 20. Think for a moment. Close your eyes and think for a moment of what has to be happening in your life that you hear that Trump's doing a rally on Saturday afternoon and on Friday morning, you say, I'm going to get in line and be here overnight. Just think about what's happening in your life. And, you know,

if you're guessing, oh, I wonder what these folks are like. Here is Pete Hegseth interviewing one of the overnight campers. Oh, boy. I don't even really know how to introduce them. Ma'am, you got here nice and early. What did you get here? Last night we stayed. We drove from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. We've been to multiple Pennsylvania rallies, but this is the most MAGA.

So we had to be here today. Why? I mean, you're wearing the shirt, the iconic image. He yelled, fight, fight, fight to support. What's it like to be back here? Be here. Well, this is going to be the most epic. There's going to be a whole line of people here.

Elon, everybody's coming to support President Trump. A miracle happened here and everybody has to come and see it. A miracle happened here and everybody has to come and see it. A miracle happened here. God redirected a bullet so that it would not hit Trump and instead killed an innocent firefighter standing behind Trump. It was a miracle when God did that. And so we are here just to honor that, I guess. Pete Hegseth also interviewing Maga Barbara Maga Barbara. And well, again, really tough to introduce these. So

I will let her speak for herself. Barbara, Barbara, how are you doing? I'm doing great. Hi, how are you? You came from about two hours away, about two hours away, got up at about three o'clock in the morning. My very first Trump rally. I'm super excited. I'm so happy to be here. I got out of my car because they were stopped. I got out of my truck, my husband's truck, and I ran up here so I can get in line

because I don't want to miss anything. So my poor husband said, are you leaving me? I said, I am. For Trump, I am. And real quick, why did it mean so much for you to be here today at this rally? Because I'm such a big supporter. We have so many great supporters here in the Pittsburgh area. People think that, you know, it's all Democrat here. No, it's not.

In my county, where I live in Washington County, it used to be all Democrat. Now it's more. It's like 60 percent Republican now. And I live right next door to the town of Schaller Roy, which has been in the news lately with all the influx of immigrants. And I have immigrants living right next door to me. So I know what it's like. Yeah. Apparently it's very tough for Barbara. It's very tough for Barbara to have immigrants living next door. Really? You really feel for her, don't you? So we saw what Trump did at the rally with Elon. We saw the sorts of folks that are showing up in the middle of the night or driving through the night or camping out to go to one of these rallies. And for anyone who thinks that all of this points to a definite Trump loss,

it doesn't. And that's what I want to talk about next. There are people increasingly writing to me and they are mad at me. Why are they mad? Yes, some of them are mad about my hair. Yes, some of them are mad about my clothes. Yes, some of them are mad about how far apart my eyes are. But those aren't the people I'm talking about today. I'm hearing from people who are mad at me because they say I'm not being optimistic enough about Kamala's chances. I am playing it as if Trump might win and I should be more optimistic. As I have said many times, I tell it like I see it. And right now, it looks like Trump will do better in November than he did four years ago. And I have to show you this video. Trump's crowd in Butler, Pennsylvania yesterday

or the day before yesterday rather was legitimately massive. OK, legitimately massive. We have video here. I guess it's drone video or something showing the crowd. I know we joke a lot about the size of Trump's crowds and his hands and his everything. This is a massive, massive crowd. Now, crowd size alone does not predict who's going to win. But Pennsylvania could be a critical state. and the willingness of a massive number of people to show up has to count for something. And so for anybody who's like, oh, no, no, no, Kamala Harris is going to win these swing states.

It's no big deal. This video is from hours before the rally that I'm showing you. Look at this line. Now, I would never stand in line for these atrocities with the direct sunlight. There were reports that people were looking for shade hiding by diesel generators connected to some of the food vendors. That was the only place they could find shade sucking in the fumes from the diesel generators, the fetid porta potties. I wouldn't go there no matter what. But the fact that this number of people is willing to do it and to go is a reminder that if you haven't signed up to phone bank at minimum for Pennsylvania, now would be a really

good time. I'm just going to tell you where things are pointing right now. Biden won Arizona. Trump's winning Arizona, according to the RealClearPolitics average. Kamala Harris is winning Wisconsin and Michigan, but by less than one point. That's not comfort when I I don't feel comfort when I see Harris winning by a fraction of a point in Wisconsin and Michigan. Pennsylvania is tied, according to RealClearPolitics.

Trump is winning Georgia per RealClearPolitics and 538. That's a state that Trump lost in 2020. He's winning Georgia per real clear politics and 538. That's a state that Trump lost in 2020. He's winning Georgia right now. So let's cool it on the David. You should just be more optimistic. I'm realistic. If the election were held today, the most likely outcome is Harris wins. But by a smaller margin electorally than Biden won in 2020. We've got a month to go.

Tiny changes. A one point swing in Wisconsin and Michigan means Trump is president of the United States. So don't come to me with that. I need to pretend like Harris has got this sort of stuff. We have a real opportunity. We should be optimistic that if we all get out and vote, Harris will win. We don't yet know if that's going to happen. It depends on us. Let's see if we can make it a reality. There are two

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for free blades after adding them to your cart. The info is in the podcast notes. Support our show by checking out our sponsor, Brain FM Focus Music. They're giving you free access to their app for a whole month at Brain dotfm slash pacman. Once you try Brain.fm, you'll quickly understand why this has become my go-to music app. When I just want to focus on work, in addition to music for focusing on work, they have modes specially designed for sleep, relaxation, meditation, all created by musicians working with neuroscientists. Thank you. In the past, I've tried Spotify or YouTube. I end up distracted or can't find exactly what would be most useful for me. So at a certain point, I figured silence must be the solution. Until I discovered this.

Brain FM is personalized. Depending on your brain type, even has a special ADHD mode that provides extra stimulation to brains that need it the most. So if you want to improve your focus or relax, give Brain FM a try for 30 days totally free. The David Pakman Show David Pakman dot com. Trump supporters and right wingers love to claim that they are being censored online by biased social media platforms. They are such victims. So I feel so bad for them. They often say, hey, look, I got suspended for my opinion about covid or Trump or whatever. And they argued that this is systemic and systematic left wing bias against conservatives. By the way, what's conservative about covid conspiracies? I don't know.

It's bias against conservatives. And so today we are going to explore this and figure out, is there really systematic left wing bias of this kind online? And it turns out that we have a new paper that looked at exactly this question. The paper was published in Nature and it finds that it is true. It is true. Listen carefully now. Right wingers do get suspended more at a higher rate online, but not because of political bias.

The right wingers are getting suspended more because they are sharing misinformation at way higher rates than left wingers. They are spreading fake news at way higher rates than left wingers. That's why they're getting suspended. They are violating the stated and publicly known terms and conditions of these platforms without a doubt. So let's dig into it. First and foremost, right wingers are way more likely to consume and share information from low quality sources. Low quality includes blog spam, rewriting type sites. Overt fake news sites, satire sites as if it's real news and more. And despite their claims and beliefs about the fake news media, much of which they got from Trump,

they are often completely unable to distinguish reliable from unreliable news satire from serious reporting. In this first image that we're putting up on the screen, you see that Trump hashtags in red are way more likely to include articles from low quality news sites compared to Biden hashtags. And if you say, well, according to whom this is both as rated to fact check by fact checkers on the left side of your screen, but also as rated by politically balanced lay people. The study said, you know, there will be those who say the fact checkers are themselves biased. So let's just find politically balanced lay people and say to them, rate the quality of these new sites. And in both cases, whether it's the professional fact checkers or the lay people, it is the

Trump hashtags often associated with the low quality conspiracy, fake news and otherwise unreliable websites. This study in nature written by researchers from MIT Sloan School of Management, University of Oxford, Cornell University and Yale really digs into the true explanations for the more frequent suspensions of right wing users online. They deserve it because of what they are posting. The first thing the study did is look at Twitter and it looked specifically at Twitter suspensions after the 2020 election. They identified 100000 Twitter users who shared content alongside election hashtags from the 100000 Twitter users.

They took a random sampling of 900, half of whom used a vote Biden Harris hashtag, half of whom used the Trump 2020 hashtag. They looked at the data, they looked at what these 9,000 users posted, and they found that the pro Trump accounts were 4.4 times more likely to have been suspended than those who use Biden hashtags. Well, it must be bias, right? If the Trump supporters are suspended more often than the Biden supporters, it must be bias, right? Wrong. It turns out that the pro Trump Twitter users were way more likely to be sharing news from

hyperpartisan fake news and conspiracy websites that violated Twitter's own terms of service. That's why they were getting suspended. Now, if we zoom out from Twitter a little bit, although this is really acute on Twitter, this is arguably the worst on Twitter. It happens to be the case on every platform. The correlation between right wing users and sharing low quality information is highest on Twitter, but it's also a correlation on Facebook. It's a correlation on other platforms as well. Again, looking at both

the ratings of the professional fact checkers and the politically balanced lay people, right wingers are way more likely on all platforms to share fake news, disinformation and nonsense conspiracy theories. So let's now go to some of the takeaways. When we hear right wingers get suspended more often, the first question should be, is that true? The second question is, are they being suspended because of political bias or are the right wingers doing something that rightly gets them suspended? And it appears to be that second option. Right wingers and right wing users claim bias, but platforms are just enforcing their policies on misinformation, spreading false claims about

covid-19 and the 2020 election violates or violated at the time that the study looked at the data, the terms of service of many of these platforms, right wingers were overwhelmingly the ones spreading disinformation about the 2020 election. They were over overwhelmingly the ones spreading disinformation about COVID-19 Twitter, Facebook, other platforms have policies around this and users, regardless of politics are suspended when they violate the rules. Many right wing users continue to claim that the 2020 U.S. presidential was stolen or rigged to this day, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. And the false claims about election fraud and vote tampering violate some platform policies.

And so, yes, some of those users get suspended. Many conservative accounts shouldn't even say conservative. Many right wing reactionary accounts have been suspended for sharing debunked theories about covid vaccines causing mass deaths or altering your DNA or implanting a microchip. They've also gotten suspended for promoting false cures like ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, injecting bleach, whatever. It's all been scientifically disproven. It violates the terms of service. That's why they're getting suspended, not because they want lower tax rates or they identify nominally as being conservative. Climate change. Right wing users

are more more likely to post climate change denial and misinformation, claiming there is no such thing. It's a hoax or whatever the case may be. Oftentimes those posts rely on false or misleading data. A lot of it violates the T's and C's on these platforms. So they get suspended. Another common topic among right wingers is spreading really disgusting stuff about LGBTQ plus people. For example, claims about grooming by LGBT teachers, uh, or lies about gender affirming care. This stuff violates the policies of many of these platforms. Remember

the fiasco with the Olympics recently and the Algerian boxer who just is a woman was born a woman, always identified as a woman is a woman saying, Oh, this was someone who transitioned was born male. None of it was true. None of it was true. It violated policies and some of them got suspended. QAnon stuff, Q and on conspiracy theories propagated largely by right wing users, claims about secret cabals of elites engaging in child trafficking and satanic rituals, drinking the blood of children. This was significant around the 2020 election. Most platforms did not allow QAnon content. The right wingers posting the QAnon content would get suspended. So understanding that there is a deeper

reality here as well. Right wing users often engage with hyper partisan content, not just because they're falling for it to a greater degree. They are, but also because the algorithms of the platforms favor engagement, the more sensationalist and acutely misleading content is more engaging because of the shock value. This means people repost and spread it more often. And that also leads to more enforcement actions. It's sort of like a vicious circle where they are victims of their own drive to the salacious content in a way. And then in the suspensions themselves, they are driving more propaganda by saying we're getting suspended because of the bias of the platforms, which is also not true.

And then they play the victim. The right wingers love playing the victim when they get suspended. They fail to mention I've been posting nonsense conspiracies for six months and they finally got me. Now, they won't tell you that their victim complex is then used to rile up the base and to keep the whole thing going. Ironically, right wing media often promotes the idea that corporate media is biased. But when social media holds them accountable for posting nonsense, they go, oh, now we're the victims.

So what are the takeaways here? Number one, what you're hearing about the bias is not true. Number two, don't fall for it. Don't let them spread the lies. Don't retweet the stuff. Right wing users are more frequently suspended because of their behavior, not their politics. That's the reality. Right wing accounts are more likely to share disinformation. Engagement with low quality content drives the higher suspension rates. And because the right wing users are consuming and

sharing more of this trash, they are more vulnerable to getting suspended for violating the policies. They aren't the victims of Facebook banning them. If they're victims at all, they're victims of the right wing disinformation merchants who have tricked them into believing this stuff. So the victim complex furthers the spread of the disinformation. The disinformation leads to suspensions, which furthers the claims of being victimized. Ultimately, these are suspensions that they are themselves responsible for. The party of personal responsibility wants to blame everybody but themselves. It's the platforms that are biased.

It's Democrats in Congress telling Twitter to suspend me. It's left wing users reporting my content when in reality, all that's going on is they are spreading content that violates terms and conditions. My advice would be learn some media literacy, learn to distinguish satirical news, fake news and real news and stop posting this stuff. As soon as you do, you'll stop getting suspended. Did you know there is only one VPN fully optimized for streaming 4K video and downloading large files? That's our sponsor, Private Internet Access. A VPN hides your IP address, allows you

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MD Hearing has sold over one point five million hearing aids and offer a forty five day risk free trial with a 100 percent money back guarantee. You can buy with confidence, get the hearing you deserve. Go to shop MDman dot com. you'll get a free charging case. The link is in the podcast notes. Being asked simple questions about history is now being called relitigating elections by MAGA Mike Johnson. This is the latest chapter in the book that MAGA Trumpists are writing in which the question, did Trump win or lose the 2020 election, is considered a gotcha question, is considered an attack question, did Trump win or lose the 2020 election is considered a gotcha question, is considered an attack question, is considered some kind of game that corporate media is playing.

We already saw J.D. Vance not answer this question during last week's VP debate. We saw Corey Lewandowski not answer this question in the aftermath of J.D. Vance not answering the question. And here is George Stephanopoulos yesterday on ABC's This Week asking the question, did Joe Biden win? Did Trump lose? And listen to the acrobatics that MAGA Mike Johnson throws out. It's very clear you're not going to condemn the basis suggestion the Democrats are behind the assassination attempt on Donald Trump. I want to ask you another question. There's so many. Please, anything.

Well, you have the opportunity to condemn it if you want. You have that opportunity, but we can move on now. I do want to ask you a question that Senator Vance did not answer at this week's debate. Can you say unequivocally that Joe Biden won the 2020 election and Donald Trump lost? See, this is the game that is always played by mainstream media. It's not a game just because you call it a game doesn't make it a game with leading Republicans. It's it's a gotcha game. You want us to litigate things that happened four years ago when we're talking about the future. We're not going to talk about what happened in 2020.

We're going to talk about 2024 and how we're going to solve the problems for the American people. Saying Trump lost isn't litigating. Saying Obama won in 2012 isn't litigating. Saying Bush won in 2004 isn't litigating. It's reality. Saying the Earth is spherical isn't litigating saying Bush won in 2004 isn't litigating its reality, saying the earth is spherical isn't litigating. It's just the way the world is.

It's not a game. It's not a gotcha. But Maga Mike just won't answer. I think this thing, this this game that's played all the time, I'm not going to engage in it. We're not talking about that. Joe Biden has been the president for almost four years. Everybody needs to get over this and move forward. That's what we need to talk about. What happens on November 5 and the days after that.

So like Senator Vance, you cannot say unequivocally that Joe Biden won the 2020 election and Donald Trump lost? George, I'm the Speaker of the House. I work with the president of the United States all the time. Joe Biden has been the president of the House. I work with the president of the United States all the time. Joe Biden has been the president for four years. There's not a. Speaker 1 This is another game, you know, for all the games. Maga Mike Johnson says this is the game that corporate media likes to play. The game they play is they won't answer who won and lost. They will go. Joe Biden is the president. I work with him every day. I went to the Oval Office. Biden was there.

Trump wasn't. Biden's the president. That's the game where they won't say whether Biden is rightfully there because he won or he's there because he stole it. Question about this. OK, it's already been done and decided. And this is a gotcha game that's played and I'm not playing it. I want to talk about the future.

Let's talk about policies. Ask me anything you want on any challenging issue. Let's put that out there for the American people. That's what they need to hear. Well, it's President Trump who every single day, former President Trump at just about every rally is saying that the election was rigged, that he won and that Joe Biden lost. I'm just saying if you accept that or not. George, I'm not going to play the game. Ask me any question on any issue that's facing the country. Ask me any issue. Ask me about any issue other than a basic factual question about the winner of an election. One of the biggest issues that we face. How about another hurricane headed toward the country? How about Israel being fired upon by Iran? How about

the rising crime rates that have everybody alarmed? All right. You get the point. This should be asked of every one of these Republicans. You know what? I had this period during the lead up to the twenty twenty two midterms where I would have Trump supporting MAGA candidates on. And the first question I would say to them is, hey, just just as a gut check, who is

currently president of the United States? Because some of them were actually even crazier than than not answering who won. just just as a gut check, who is currently president of the United States, because some of them were actually even crazier than than not answering who won. Some of them actually believe Trump was still the president. This should just be a gut check, sanity check first question. And MAGA Mike Johnson is once again performing for an audience of one. And that one person is Donald Trump. Acknowledging the winner of an election in the world of MAGA is now considered a gotcha question and a game. That's how backwards their connection to reality is. If they simply said, yeah, Trump lost, Trump lost. The question goes away because it would be boring

if they just said, yeah, we're going to we're going to take it back this time. I believe Trump will win in November, but he lost in 2020. The question's over because the answers would be so boring. The question keeps getting asked because they won't acknowledge reality. However, however, it is important to know the trap that they are trying to set. And I alluded to this at the top of the show. This is the trap of preparing people to go along with yet another attempt at trying to overturn or invalidate an election. That's what we need to be ready for. Yes, they are clowns. They won't answer the simple question. But part of it is if they can continue sowing doubt to their most, you know, fever and

I know it's not a real word to their most fervent supporters that 2020 was stolen. They maybe can manufacture a little more consent for what they might try to do in November if Trump loses once again. I have to really just be frank with you guys. I am so sick and tired of Jill Stein. She now is going on shows and saying she might get 15 percent of the vote. And she knows this because there were positive comments about her on a YouTube channel. I feel like an idiot saying it. Here is Jill Stein explaining it. She says, I went on The Breakfast Club. I looked at the YouTube comments and there

were very nice messages there. So I could get five, 10 or even 15 percent of the and, you know, every vote for our campaign is a shot across the bow of the empire telling them that we wouldn't she like her followers to believe that here and we're growing. And, you know, if we wind up with five, 10, even 15 percent of the vote, you know, and that really depends on whether the word gets out. I don't know if you have read the commentary on the Breakfast Club interview, but, you know, we were basically being ambushed by, you know, by Democratic Party attack dogs, as we often are, and it completely backfired on them, as it usually does. And to read the comments, you'll see,

and there are, you know, maybe 20,000 comments now on the main posting. People are saying, I wasn't going to vote for before. I wasn't going to vote at all because there was nothing to vote for. But now, you know, I've been persuaded that I'm going to register green and vote green. So, you know, our particular demographic is people who are not voting. In 2020, that was one out of every three voters voters eligible voters, that is, who didn't vote. So don't they deserve a vote as well? Completely delusional.

Listen, if you look at the YouTube comments, Jill Stein might get 15 percent of the vote. If you look at the YouTube comments under my videos, I might be a Democratic Party insider getting paid secretly by China as well as George Soros. You know, this is not serious. This is not serious. Now, on the facts, Jill Stein will be lucky to get one point five percent of the vote. She's not getting five. She's not getting 10.

She's not getting 15. Right now, in a real clear politics average. Jill Stein is polling one point two. My bet. My bet is she gets less than that. I think it's going to end up being less. However, however, and this is the critical part, if Jill Stein gets that one and a half percent in Michigan, well, maybe Trump ends up winning Michigan. If Jill Stein gets that one and a half percent in Pennsylvania, maybe Trump ends up winning Pennsylvania, maybe Georgia. Jill Stein gets one point seven percent and makes it so that by a small margin, Trump wins Georgia rather than Kamala Harris. And it hands the election to Donald Trump. So if she wants to have an impact mathematically, this is not about opinions. This is not mathematically the biggest impact that Jill

Stein can hope to have in November is that she takes just enough of a slice of the electorate in critical battleground states that Trump wins them and becomes the next president of the electorate in critical battleground states that Trump wins them and becomes the next president of the United States. Wouldn't that be something to write home about? It's going to be a no for me, dog. That's where I'm landing. All right. Today is the official launch of the preorder campaign. Here's the book for my forthcoming book, The Echo Machine. I have in my hands, in my hands, an uncorrected paperback proof of the book. These will never be available for sale because the book is coming out in hardcover and then eventually it'll be out in like a trade paperback. But this is the uncorrected galley with publicity information on the back and so on and so forth.

I will be giving away five of these five of these. We will be giving these away through methods that I am not yet ready to announce. But the point is, we're going to give away five of these. We are now officially launching the preorder campaign. Now let me tell you where we are, where we're starting and where we want to be. This book was. A huge undertaking, it essentially was written by me getting up an hour earlier to just pop up, throw my laptop open and write before starting the rest of the day while doing the show. Uh, it is, I believe, I believe an extraordinary guidebook to how American politics broke,

what we can do to fix it and what fixing it would mean by looking at examples of politics working better for the people from all over the world with a bunch of media literacy and critical thinking kind of thrown in the mix. If Donald Trump wins this election, this will be an extraordinarily important book with regard to the defense that we're going to need to be playing. If Kamala Harris wins the election, it will be an important guidebook that will show us what do we want to pressure future President Kamala Harris to do such that the United States could become a little bit more

like the countries that have figured it out and have done things in a way that makes sense. We are going to be giving away. This is all you've got to preorder for this stuff. If you wait until the book comes out in March, you won't get this stuff. If you preorder, you will get a signed book plate. You will get a bunch of different stickers and a bunch of other stuff. So here's the two URLs you need to know. David Pakman dot com slash echo to order the echo machine. David Pakman dot com slash free book stuff. If you've already preordered the book anywhere and you want to sign up for all of the free stuff now, you may be saying, I don't like reading books. I like listening to books. Great. It's available on Audible. It's available on Apple audio books. It's available everywhere

that audio books are sold. You might say, you know, David, I don't really like physical books. I want an e-book. Great. It's available in Barnes and Noble Digital. It's available in Kindle, et cetera, et cetera. You might say, David, I don't want to buy it from Amazon nor Barnes and Noble. I want to support my local bookstore. Great. You can call any local bookstore and say, I'd like to preorder the Echo Machine by David Pakman from Beacon Press, and they will get it for you. You will get it just as soon as everybody else. There is a belief in the publishing world that unless you have the platform of corporate media or the backing of corporate media in some way or the legacy book reviewers or whatever, there is this belief that if you

have a platform like I do, an independent platform, you can't get a book like this into the New York Times bestseller list. So let me tell you where we are on that. So far, we're only now launching the preorder campaign officially. Up until now, one thousand nine hundred and five copies have been preordered. One thousand nine hundred and five. If we can get to twenty five hundred, we have a shot at breaking into the New York Times new nonfiction bestseller list when the book comes out. We have a shot if we can get to 5000 preorders.

We have a good chance of not only getting on The New York Times bestseller list, but not even being at the bottom. Maybe we can be towards the middle. And if we can get 10 to 15000 preorders, we are in contention for one, two, three on The New York Times bestseller list for nonfiction. And maybe, maybe, maybe we could be sort of to the top of that, which would be an insane achievement for a book that doesn't come from an author who's on CNN or MSNBC every day or the like. So I can't tell you how much I appreciate everybody who's already preordered the book. If you do preorder it and you just want to

let us know so we can kind of track, you can email your receipt or a screenshot of it to info at David Pakman dot com. But remember, David Pakman dot com slash echo or Amazon or Barnes and Noble or Audible or call your local bookstore and then make sure to go to David Pakman dot com slash free book stuff to get all of the freebies. I will see you on the bonus show. We've got an extraordinary week ahead and just a few weeks left until this election.