The David Pakman Show - 1/10/23: Politics Gets Way More Stupid, A Look at the Newest Conspiracy Theory

Episode Date: January 10, 2023

-- On the Show: -- Dr. Eli Merritt, political historian at Vanderbilt University and editor of the recently released collection of essays entitled "The Curse of Demagogues: Lessons Learned from the Presidency of Donald J. Trump," joins David to discuss demagoguery, its toxic effect on democracy, and much more. Get the book: https://amzn.to/3ZhYWKG -- The new COVID conspiracy theory is the idea of people "dying suddenly," which we look at and debunk -- As Republicans take control of the House, the first wannabe-scandal hits Joe Biden, related to some documents misplaced while Biden was Vice President -- A Donald Trump indictment watch begins as the Georgia grand jury completes its work -- Fox News propagandist Tucker Carlson defends the Brazil rioters and baselessly claims the election in which President Lula defeated former President Jair Bolsonaro was "rigged" -- Donald Trump disgustingly suggests Republican wreck the economy over the next two years in order to help him win in 2024 -- The war between radical Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert gets even uglier -- Voicemail caller asks David what it would take for him to attend a NASCAR race -- On the Bonus Show: House Republicans adopt rules package, House Republicans pass repeal of IRS funding boost, Q-Anon's reaction to Brazil riots, much more... 💻 Get Private Internet Access for 83% OFF + 3 months free at https://www.piavpn.com/David 🌳 Use code PAKMAN for 20% off HoldOn plant-based bags at https://holdonbags.com 😁 Zippix Toothpicks: Code PAKMAN saves you 10% at https://zippixtoothpicks.com 💪 Athletic Greens is offering FREE year-supply of Vitamin D at https://athleticgreens.com/pakman 💻 Stay protected! Try Aura FREE for 2 weeks: https://aura.com/pakman -- Become a Supporter: http://www.davidpakman.com/membership -- Subscribe on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/thedavidpakmanshow -- Subscribe to Pakman Live: https://www.youtube.com/pakmanlive -- Subscribe to Pakman Finance: https://www.youtube.com/pakmanfinance -- Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/davidpakmanshow -- Like us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/davidpakmanshow -- Leave us a message at The David Pakman Show Voicemail Line (219)-2DAVIDP

Speaker 1 We're going to start today with died suddenly. What does that mean? Someone died suddenly has become the new code for the covid vaccine is killing people. Now, this has all come to an extremely stupid crescendo because of what happened with the collapse and cardiac arrest of NFL football player DeMar Hamlin on the field during an NFL game a little over a week ago. And as you know, if you've been watching this program because we've been we've been following it, I even got some voicemails about it that I played for you. The gist of the story is that DeMar Hamlin collapsed not because he got hit in a particular way, but because of the covid vaccine, the covid vaccine, which, by the way, nobody knew whether Damar Hamlin had actually received at the time that people started saying the vaccine is to blame. And this brings us to a bigger story that has been building. The died suddenly conspiracy theory

is the idea that people who have received the covid-19 vaccine are either dying at an unusual rate. The story is always otherwise healthy people are suddenly dying for unexplained reasons. That's one piece of it or experiencing health effects of different different kinds. Now, there is a lot that we could say about this and so many different things. There's even a film called Died Suddenly, which rehashes a lot of these same debunked claims. But a lot of this has to do with some really basic logical fallacies that I hope I've done an OK job of educating people about over the years on the show. And it also has to do with something called the base rate bias. So there's really two things going

on here. First of all, it's a fundamental issue of correlation versus causation. We sometimes call this post hoc ergo propter hoc, meaning it happened afterwards. Therefore, it happened because of or to put it another way, B happened after a therefore a must have caused B. And when you zoom out, you very quickly see how faulty this sort of thinking is. So let's start tight and then we'll zoom out. Let's start with the Mar Hamlin. Are there examples of cardiac arrest during sporting events among athletes? Yeah, there are. You know, in major sports, Detroit Lion Chuck Hughes had a fatal heart attack on the field in 1971. That's the only NFL player to die while playing. Danish soccer player Christian Erickson

suffered cardiac arrest during a tournament in 2021. Hockey Hall of Famer Chris Pronger's heart stopped when he was hit in the chest by a hockey puck. NHL player Jay Boomeester or Bowmeester, I'm not exactly sure on the pronunciation, collapsed on the bench after a cardiac episode. Mark Vivian Foy died during a 2003 semifinal match from an undiagnosed heart condition. That was a soccer death. All of these have not have not been claimed to have anything to do with vaccines. Most of them predate the covid vaccines. So the DeMar Hamlin situation is not unique, but that's not really the big story. The big story is you have to understand base rates. When you test a vaccine, as was done by Pfizer and Moderna before the covid vaccines were fully released to the public, a lot of these studies,

clinical trials had 40000 adults, for example, 40000 adults. And so someone who wants to think critically about this issue rather than fearmonger spread conspiracy theories would say, if you have a group of adults, if you take 18 plus 40,000 people distributed among ages, how many of them would you expect to die over a three month period aside from whether you're testing anything? And what I mean by that is if you take a group of 40000 people and you just follow them for three months, you would expect some to die if their ages are normally distributed. And it's a tough question to answer exactly for a vaccine test group, because it could depend on particular choices that are made for who's included or who's not, who's not included. But there's something called the crude death rate. That's

the number of deaths per thousand people a year overall for in the U.S. The crude death rate is seven point eight, meaning over the course of a year, you would expect seven point eight deaths per hundred people of per thousand people for all different causes. Now, if we use that rate, we would estimate that over a three month period, you would expect between five and six deaths per hundred people. These are rough numbers. So if you've got a group of 40,000 people, you would expect to see about 235 of them die over a three month period. This is aside from testing anything, but that's just an estimate. And the other thing that's important to consider is that that number that I gave you, seven point eight, that's not just adults, that's everybody. That includes

younger people. The death rate for 18 plus, again, aside from testing, a vaccine would be higher than the death rate for the entire population because the risk of death increases with age. And when you do only 18 plus, you would have a higher expected death rate than for people of all ages, all the way down to newborn. So it's an estimate. The number of people you would expect to die in a group of 40,000 would vary. But the point of it is the fact that people died in the three months after getting a vaccine doesn't actually tell us anything. People die.

And in a group of 40,000 people will die. So then we get to this particular died suddenly conspiracy theory. Here they want to talk about young people are dying. Healthy young people are dying. Now, first of all, when we say healthy, in many cases, we don't actually know the full history. And what we mean by healthy can vary in a lot of different ways. So that is fallacious and lacks evidence at the top of the of the discussion. But here's the really important thing.

The crude death rate for those aged 18 to 34 is about three point three deaths per thousand people per year. That's just the average crude death rate in the United States. The CDC believes about 65 percent of those aged 18 to 24 got a full regimen of the covid vaccine. That means the two initial doses. Forget about boosters. That's not part of the data. But 65 percent of those 18 to 24 got the two doses. That means the two initial doses. Forget about boosters. That's not part of the data. But 65 percent of those 18 to 24 got the two doses. That means if we have about 32 million people aged 18 to 24, 65 percent of them are vaccinated, meaning 21 million people aged 18 to 24 received the full dose of vaccines. If you look at that crude death rate and you look at the number of people who have gotten vaccinated, you would expect 70,000 deaths among that group over the course of a year. Now, you will have endless circumstances. You will have motor vehicle accidents. You will have

cardiac episodes. You will have cancer. You will have all you will have covid-19 in some of you will have all those different things. The fact that some people aged 18 to 24 died in the period after which they got a vaccine tells you nothing. Five stories, 10 stories, 20 stories about a 21 year old who died seven months after getting a vaccine. And we don't exactly know the circumstances or we vaguely know, but it's a privacy issue. It doesn't tell us anything about the safety of vaccines. And what is missing from this analysis in most cases is this issue of the base rates. What are the base rates of death in all of these different categories? It's basic stats, it's basic research methods,

and it's basic common sense and logic. And that is not a surprise then that it is completely missing from the minds and the discussions of these conspiracy theorists. So don't fall for it. Don't fall for it. Understand these concepts, causation, correlation, base rates, critical stuff. When Republicans start to control things, politics gets very stupid in the United States. That's something we are very quickly learning. And we have a new scandal. Is that even the right word? A scandal involving classified documents and Joe Biden when he was vice president. Let me tell you what's going on and then let me tell you what these right wing clowns are saying. CNN reports classified documents from Joe Biden's time as vice president discovered in a private office. What exactly happened? Here's a CNN report explaining

it. These were documents the White House says that were found by the former president, by the current president's attorneys in November as they were closing out an office that the former vice president, Biden, of course, had set up an office with the University of Pennsylvania at the Penn Biden Center here in Washington. And they were closing out these offices when they found what they say were fewer than a dozen documents that were labeled as classified. Now, a number of these documents were also subject to the Presidential Records Act. And according to the White House, these were now turned over to the National Archives, which has asked the Justice Department to look into it. Now, we're told now, Jake, that the Attorney General Merrick Garland

has asked the U.S. Attorney in Chicago to conduct a review of these documents, which is a standard process that they would go through. This is akin to the process that happened after the National Archives asked the Justice Department to look into these classified materials that were recovered from Mar-a-Lago, from the former President Trump's residence. So it is a process that the Justice Department recently went through, obviously, with Donald Trump. Of course, the difference here is that according to the White House, it was the president's legal team that reached out to narrow to turned over these documents, as opposed to with Trump, who fought for months and months not to turn over documents that the archive said needed to be turned over. So that's one critical difference. But there are

actually a number of other critical differences. Misplacing and stealing documents are not, in fact, the same thing. Now, investigate everything. Investigate this. I don't know anyone on the left who's saying don't investigate. But misplacing and stealing documents are dramatically different things. It doesn't matter to a lot of these right wingers who are immediately saying things like, for example, what Marjorie Taylor Greene said last night on Fox News propagandist Tucker Carlson's program. Well, this is a huge story. It's very serious.

As a matter of fact, Joe Biden conceivably stole those documents. Conceivably is doing some heavy lifting in that statement. What people need to understand is the president of the United States is the only one that can declassify documents, not the vice president. For Joe Biden to steal documents and have possession of them, this is a serious investigation. And the communists at NARA can't hide it anymore. And now there's no communists at NARA. Garland and the Department of Justice, they have to be held accountable if they don't treat Joe Biden exactly the same way they're treating President Trump. Yeah, they should be treated the same way in that the facts should be evaluated by law enforcement.

Now, it's really important to understand this story. These documents were in a locked closet. Joe Biden's attorneys found them immediately contacted the National Archives. Remember, with Trump, it was throw all this crap in a box, take it to my house at Mar-a-Lago. Here you had documents that were misplaced. And as soon as they were found, rather than trying to hide and keep the documents, Biden's lawyers proactively reach out to the National Archives. Dramatic difference from what we saw with Trump. And then they were handed over to the archives the next day as opposed to fighting for months, lying and claiming that you turned them over.

You didn't being caught on tape, moving them between locations while still not turning them over. Barely comparable. I'm consistent, investigated. It's being investigated. I love that. Let's investigate this. And hey, you know what? If Joe Biden's house needs to have a search warrant served as a result, go ahead and do it. I'm not getting in the way. But of course, we know that the circumstances are completely different. Now, it doesn't matter to them, to people like Marjorie Taylor Greene, to whoever. It doesn't matter. They want to say, hey, this is the exact same thing Trump did and he's being treated differently. Actually, he's being treated the same. It's being investigated. It's the circumstances that are completely different. I hope you're all buckled in for

two years of this because this is what the next two years are going to be like. And it'll be Hunter Biden. Maybe they'll go back to Hillary and Benghazi. They might investigate Obama's tan suit. It's going to be that sort of stuff. And when Marjorie Taylor Greene is shifting into being seen as a sort of de facto spokesperson for the center of power of the Republican Party, you know it's going to get really stupid tomorrow. 6 p.m. Eastern is the next David Pakman show town hall. I hope you will join me. We will be streaming live. I will be taking questions and comments from everybody in the audience.

We will give priority to our website members and you can sign up at join Pacman dot com in order to get instant access to the bonus show. Oh, the bonus show where you want to make money. Yeah. Everybody else that makes money to fund themselves is bad. And you will get priority access to talking to me during the town hall. Thank your lucky stars every day. You're not Dave Pacman. Well, you did. Some people want to talk to me, Alex. OK, and we'll be talking to some of them tomorrow. We'll take a quick break and be back right after this. Every day we see more and more stories about what tech companies and ISPs are doing with your data. Facebook just settled a huge lawsuit alleging they gave millions of users data to a company helping the Trump campaign.

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The David Pakman show is, of course, made possible by people like you, Thank you. stream of the show every day, hours before anybody else gets the show and so many other great member benefits. We will also soon be announcing a member only town hall probably in the next few weeks. Stay tuned for that. You can sign up at join Pacman dot com and use the coupon code. Twenty four starts now to get a discount. The Donald Trump indictment watch has started as the Georgia grand jury is done. This is a really big deal. And quite literally any day, a Donald Trump indictment could be coming or maybe not at all. We just don't know. The Associated Press reports Georgia grand jury ends probe of Trump and 2020 election. The special grand jury in Atlanta that has been

investigating whether then President Donald Trump and his allies committed any crimes while trying to overturn his 2020 loss in Georgia has finished its work, bringing the case closer to possible criminal charges against Trump and others. Further down the decision whether to seek an indictment from a regular grand jury will be up to Fulton County District Attorney Fannie Willis. I thought it was Fannie. Someone told me it's Fannie. I hope I'm getting it right. Willis spokesperson Jeff DeSantis said the office has no comment on the completion of the panel's work. McBurney wrote in his order, the special grand jury recommended its report be made

public. He scheduled a hearing for January 24 to determine whether all or part of the report should be released and said the district attorney's office and news outlets would be given an opportunity to make arguments at that hearing. Since June, there have been dozens of witnesses and on and on and on. In conjunction, last month, the House committee investigating the January 6th, 2021 insurrection asserted in its final report that Trump criminally engaged in a multi-part conspiracy to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 presidential election and failed to act to stop his supporters from attacking the Capitol. The report concluded that investigation as well. This is a possible fork in the road. It's not really a fork. It's actually a coming together, whatever the opposite of a fork is of the Georgia investigation and the House investigation. And we could see no charges. We could see charges in Georgia,

but not federally, federally and not from Georgia. Or we could see charges from both. And it will be absolutely wacky if we see any of those combinations that involve charges. CNBC also reports Georgia grand jury probing Trump for 2020 election crimes, possible 2020 election crimes completes work. Trump also faces a federal criminal investigation into his attempt to overturn the 2020 election, which he lost. One interesting note from this article is where is that interesting note? Willis in January 2022 asked the chief judge of Fulton County to consider her request for impaneling a special purpose grand jury to investigate potential

criminal interference in 2020. A majority of the judges in the county approved the request. OK, so that's the critical line. Not every judge. So even even as to whether this grand jury should have been impaneled, there was not a unanimous decision from the judges that made that decision. And we should expect that similarly, there will be dramatically different perspectives on this at whatever the next step is. And it is we can't definitively say that that's a result of disagreements that are partisan in nature.

But remember, this idea that judges merely take the law and the facts and put them together and outcomes one and only one answer. We regularly see disagreements. And with something as partisan and politically oriented as this, we all know there's going to be partisanship involved. Now, if Donald Trump is indicted, it would create all sorts of chaos in the American political landscape. Number one, he's a current candidate for the presidential nomination for his party. And the first question is, what would be the implications and the consequences for his campaign for Donald Trump to be criminally indicted? Would he have have to step down? And what does it mean that he would have to? Would he have to legally? Would he have to because of public opinion? What what would that

do to the Republican ticket? What would it do to run to Santa's chances or would it further open the door for someone other than Trump and DeSantis? We just don't know. But it would be very chaotic. Secondly, public reaction. We have said many times before that Trump is basically right when he says I could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose any support, or at least he was right in 2016. Maybe that was also true in 2020. Is that also going to be true in 2024? Not totally clear to me. At the same time, there are certainly followers of Trump who will see the indictment as a political attack or at least as a politically motivated attack. It might

engage them further. It might unite in some way Republicans in favor of Donald Trump. I just don't know. It's unpredictable. And then finally, what would an indictment of Trump mean for the future of the country? And what I mean by that is there is this tradition convention. It feels weird to use that term, but there is a precedent and the tradition of the DOJ not indicting sitting or former presidents. And we have not seen criminal charges against a former president. And so what would the impact of that be on the country in the future if such an indictment were to take place? So it would be chaos. It would be chaos politically. It would be chaos legally. And it could be chaos constitutionally. And it may all happen within a few weeks or not at all

or not at all. I am still not convinced that charges are coming, although I believe they are obviously warranted. And I know most of you feel the same way. Tucker Carlson is defending rioters in Brazil and baselessly claiming that the Brazilian election was, quote, rigged. I don't think this will come as a shock to many of you. Fox News propagandist Tucker Carlson, who has taken very strange positions on Russia's invasion of Ukraine, who has taken very strange positions on everything from free speech to terrorism over the years, you know, he says flat out the election in Brazil was rigged. And then he uses that to justify and defend the rioting that we are seeing in the Trump riots,

Brazil version that we talked about yesterday. Let's listen. Thanks to what was very clearly a rigged election. A convicted criminal called Lula da Silva is now the president of the most important country in South America. Millions of people in Brazil understand exactly what happened. They know that their democracy has been hijacked, possibly forever. But there's not much they can do about that. Lula may be a criminal. In fact, he is. But he has the full support of both the Biden administration and the Chinese government. Well he won. That's an important detail. He won.

So yesterday in frustration, a group of Brazilian protesters swarmed their legislature. Watch thanks to what was very. So then he then he shows the video. Tucker Carlson then goes on to say that what happened in Brazil is being likened to January 6th, but that that is very much not the case. Let's take a listen to this. You may actually have seen some of that video in the United States over the last couple of days, and you saw it because it has political uses. What's happened in Brazil is being likened to January 6th. And of course, populist leaders in this country are being blamed for it. Oh, it was Trump and Steve Bannon who did it. That's not true. But even if it were true,

it would be just the tail end of the story. It would be the result of something that happened before. So the obvious question is, why are protesters in Brazil so angry? Right. Well, they're angry because the new Lula government has eliminated their most basic civil liberties. Lula is working to turn Brazil into a Chinese style dictatorship, and he's doing it very quickly with maximum aggression. What? Now, our media don't want to talk about that because it's not true. Fused to why? Well, for reasons that should make you very nervous. Speaker 1 Yeah. Listen, I'm it's it's incredible when the right becomes so extreme and unhinged that I end up doing the

strangest things on the show. And what I mean by that is I'm no fan of Lula politically in the sense that, of course, if I was in Brazil and my choices were Lula and Bolsonaro, I vote Lula. But I've told you Lula is in the mold of this sort of populist rhetoric, kind of corrupt in the vein of some other South American leaders where he's better than Bolsonaro. But it's not like I go, wow, this is someone I really, really think is an absolutely fantastic person. But if I'm on the side of the rule of law, there is no option here but to defend the legal basis for Lula's win here but to defend the legal basis

for Lula's win period, to defend the legal basis for Lula being the president and to unanimously and and categorically condemn what is happening in Brazil and a similar attempt to what we saw in the United States, because at the end of the day, Tucker says, well, it's different. It's different in that the mass arrests of the rioters seem to have started more quickly. That's that's good. It's different in that it's happening after the inauguration rather than before that. That's true. It's different in that the guy they're writing on the behalf of Bolsonaro is in Orlando in a hospital after going to KFC in a Publix. That's different than what Trump was up to on the day of the Trump

riots. But it is the same in the sense that people are destroying property and being violent and trying to overwhelm police because they want a candidate that lost to be the president. That's the exact same thing. Brazil counted all of its votes in hours just the way MAGA wants the United States to do. They did it in Brazil, but still they say it was fraudulent. Brazil's military found no fraud in the election. And then they say, well, they but they didn't rule out the fraud. Well, what exactly do you mean by that? They didn't rule it, but they didn't find any. Oh, no, no, no. But that that's that's weird language. It is indeed the same thing in terms of its motivations. And at this point, should we even be surprised that we are seeing Tucker defend the rioters? I say no. We'll have these clips on our Instagram, which you can find by searching Instagram for David Pakman show. And please make sure you are

subscribed to the YouTube channel at youtube.com slash the David Pakman show. Zypex brings you a convenient alternative to smoking and vaping and the vape clouds, the ashtrays, the thing in your lip that people can see. I've seen that around. This is an easier and less messy way to curb the cravings. And you can use Zypex just about anywhere. Zypex is available in six flavors with two or three milligrams strength. The nicotine and the flavor are long lasting and Zypix has helped countless people kick the bad habits and they are bad habits. Zypix toothpicks are FDA registered. Their customer service is second to none. It is one of the most cost effective alternatives. Also check out their B12 and caffeine toothpicks. See for yourself why so

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at Vanderbilt University and also editor of the recently released collection of essays, The Curse of Demagogues Lessons Learned from the Presidency of Donald J. Trump. It's really great to have you on. I appreciate your time. It's good to be here, David. So I think one place to start would be one of the big discussions that's now happening in the aftermath of the Trump presidency. And you know, we're still waiting to know whether there will be criminal charges or not. And that may be part of this conversation. Did we learn that the checks and balances and safeguards put in place by the founders

were not strong enough if we had a president interested and willing to do the things Trump did? Or is that too bold a statement to make right now? Well, I think we learned that lesson and something else. The the checks and balances that were put in place by the founders back over 200 years ago, as you know, with the Electoral College and the powers of impeachment and conviction and disbarment from future office. Yes. For very long, the electoral college has not worked.

And so the real truth is soon after the Constitutional Convention 1787, ratification 1788, political parties became the dominant instruments of our politics. And also they became the dominant instrument of checks and balances against demagogues and authoritarians making it to the presidency. So many things, I believe, failed in the years 2015 until continuing today. But the most significant failure of checks and balances, the most significant failure of gatekeepers against demagogues who become authoritarians is clearly the political parties. Our political parties are woefully weak today.

And we can talk more about sort of the origins of that. But they became relatively emasculated starting in the early 1970s when all checks and balances at the nominating conventions were removed. Let's talk a little bit more about that. You know, I I have not found anyone who disagrees with me that Donald Trump could not have won a Democratic primary. Now, the reasons why people might disagree with my reason is a little bit crude, which is even though I'm neither a Republican nor a Democrat, I don't believe Democrats would have fallen for what Trump was offering, whereas the Republican electorate, by definition, did fall for it in that they

made him the nominee in 2016. Is that a fair is that one of the differences right now between the parties in terms of the constituents? And then are the differences between the constituents greater than the differences between the party structures? I would say it seems very clear right now at this point in our history that the Democratic Party is the party of the constitutional rule of law. It is the party of ethical leadership. No party is perfect and the entirety of the political figures,

politicians in any party are not ethical. But I think it's a hard question to ask. Democrats would never elect Trump. But I think the most important thing to clarify here is that we have descended somewhat into what I like to refer to as a demagogic culture. And I would not ever remove the possibility that as the culture and the politics become more and more fierce, that some liberal leaning demagogue might come along who has similar tendencies and angers and frustrations and a personality as fierce as Trump's. And if we get into this black and white thinking, we think the other side is evil. I do believe Democrats are also susceptible to demagogues.

That's why what we do in one party is something we should do in other parties. And again, I think the most important area of intervention, the most flexible point of intervention is the presidential nominating system. A lot of people don't know that very little law governs, certainly not the Constitution, governs political parties and the nominating conventions. So it's just a matter of the parties deciding to make changes. And they

could do some inter-party compacts to guarantee that each of them will veto the emergence of individuals who clearly do not support the Constitution, will not solemnly swear to uphold free and fair elections and the peaceful transfer of power and other things. When we talk about me today, I think the Democratic Party feels quite safe. I really do. I agree with you there. But it would feel like hubris to predict over the next 10 or 15 or 20 years if we don't

clean some things up that they could become susceptible to demagogues. I. Oh, I agree. All of my assessments are as of today. And you know, when when we hear people say when Trump would say at the State of the Union, the US will never be a socialist country, it's sort of like never is a long time. You know, maybe not. I don't think next year there's not too many socialists right now in positions of power. But I think never.

We want to be careful with never. If we go back to 2016 a little bit, there's a lot of blame that is often placed for how Trump how everybody failed to stop Trump. And sometimes it's, you know, James Comey doing that extra press conference to talk about Hillary's emails. That was totally unnecessary. That was the difference maker because it was so close or the media giving free publicity to Trump is what allowed him to keep accreting two, three, 4% every time another primary candidate dropped out. That was the reason or Democrats selecting a poor candidate in Hillary Clinton is what's to blame. Now, when it's so close, it's very hard to say one thing is to blame because any one of those things could make a difference. But given that, how do we assess the lack of

ability to have stopped Trump in 2016? I think that responsibility goes around everywhere to our basic education system, to the structure of our news media, as you're saying. And, you know, events like James Comey's release of the emails or his judgment about that are very significant. direction to go is for political parties to block the emergence of demagogues and authoritarians entirely from entering the general election. If I'm not mistaken, all of your questions related to the general election. And so there are certainly there are reforms that can help to prevent a demagogue or authoritarian within the general election from succeeding. But they become for their base, you know, religious figures and addictive figures. So the most important thing that can be done, if there were two things I would recommend, it would be first and foremost that the political parties do their job and return to the party

having the power and the platform having the power and the candidate having to adjust to the platform, which I think should begin in both parties to have statements that surround the Constitution and the oath of office, for example. The other thing where we woefully fail is in the process of impeachment, conviction and disbarment from future office. The fact that after January 6, after four to five years of witnessing Trump's bigoted speech and damage to our nation, that 43 senators voted not to convict him either shows they do not understand democracy, they do not understand demagogues, they do not understand that democracies can fail, or that they succumbed to the cowardice

pathway of hyper partisanship. So I think both play the role. So those are the two most important places for intervention. We could make an effort to at least educate our politicians to understand these phenomena better. You know, the interesting thing about that is what you describe is what many Bernie Sanders supporters say happened in the 2020 primary, and they don't like it. And what I mean by that is there is a story that's told and there's degrees of truth to all of these things, of course, that despite the people wanting Bernie, the party

coordinated. I'm now searching into my memory, but it was, I believe, Pete Buttigieg and a couple other people getting out at the perfect time to get Biden South Carolina, with which he built momentum to eventually become the nominee. We all know the story. And a lot of people are angry because they say, no, the people should have the power, even if Bernie, whether Bernie was destined to win or lose in a general election, it should be the people, not the party that gets to decide. You're saying something quite different, which is actually the party needs to be the safeguard. I'm saying something completely different.

I do believe powerfully in representative government and representative government has always focused representative government with layers representative government has always focused, representative government with layers of democracy and layers of checks and balances, has always survived and functioned better than pure direct democracies. So yes, what I would actually like to see happen, and the reform I think would solve or get close to solving the problem of demagogues getting into the White House would be to let the parties pick the presidential nominees and let the people pick the president. That is, in fact, the way it was done for approximately 190 years in our country. And we switched that in the early 1970s. And I think we're living the consequences of making

that switch. So I would have the people be very involved in voting. The people would vote for the delegates. And hopefully by rank choice voting, that may be something you covered on your program. Indeed. Rank choice voting. And then the delegates would go the stepwise fashion to the way it used to be done as county conventions, state conventions and the national conventions. I think today they would just go straight to the national convention and there they do their work. Just like we elect delegates to the House of Representatives in this country, we elect them to go up there and candidates who are involved actually will fulfill the mission of the party platform and not take over the party the way Trump has done. Most countries in the world, in variations, do something like I've just described. Very few countries have direct primaries, and I do believe they will continue to be arrows in our sides and possibly fatal to our democracy,

meaning we will become a sham democracy, not meaning we're going to engage in ultimate civil war. But it's a sad thing for me to think will be a sham democracy. We're only a democracy in name and otherwise corrupt officials are engineering everything behind the scenes. To look forward a little bit, I'm curious about your assessment of what is currently happening within the Republican Party in the sense that we have these very unusual circumstances in which this demagogue Trump made a very early announcement that he's running in 2024.

He has barely left his home since making the announcement. It's unclear really what the case is that he's going to make for his next nomination. A guy who hasn't announced anything, Ron DeSantis, is actually leading Trump in some polling. The speakership fiasco from the last week has exposed it's no longer just pro and anti Trump, even within the Trump side. You've seen this division, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert on opposing sides of that division. Is something fundamentally changing here? Do you want to ask you to say more about that change? Something changing in the Republican Party for the better or worse? Is that what you're alluding to?

Well, better or worse is more of a value judgment. But is the dynamic of it's the people for and against Trump and it's that simple? Is that dynamic changing where you're actually getting even more fracturing, where the MAGA side is now dividing? Well, I think what what Trump has done is he has opened the mainstream of the Republican Party in the nation to some extent to what Nelson Rockefeller called back in the 1960s. This is his quotation, the lunatic fringe. So I think it's hard to predict the 20 Republicans who were so who were opposing Kevin McCarthy. Yeah. I just think evidence, a lot of qualities in general that are very destructive to representative government.

It is grandstanding. It is not thinking of the best interests of the nation. It's a little bit of this lunatic fringe coming in. So where things go, I am not certain. I do know that we continue to have within the Republican Party the forces of Mitt Romney, who have been somewhat profoundly weakened, I should say. Yeah. So I don't know where the future of it is. My real hope would be

that at some point that there will be a conservative party that splits off from this Republican Party and that the American people decide that this way of living through demagoguery and lies and fear mongering and hate mongering. It's not something they want to. We did that experiment. Now we want to move on from it. That's my hope. So but I do think Ron DeSantis, clearly there are criticisms of him.

He's not a demagogue. If you just look at him speak, you'll determine that the man does not have the rhetorical talents and destructive abilities of Trump. Some people worry he could become somewhat authoritarian. But I've looked carefully at what he's done in Florida. And there's some questions there. To my evaluation, DeSantis appears for the Constitution to be a much safer bet than Donald Trump. And Donald Trump, I think is something's happening for him. I think he's becoming somewhat deflated by what's happening. And so hopefully he will he could implode and and become more dangerous to our democracy, as we have seen with his comments about the Constitution. Yeah, but it's all quite unpredictable, as I'm sure you agree.

When we look in history, what sort of events have catalyzed realignments in parties where parties significantly shift? Well, I think it what what one discovers, I'm thinking of the beginning of the Republican Party in the 1850s. When you ask that, there is a sense that there is a national crisis that someone needs to address. And the Whig Party, for example, at that time was determined not to be willing to go in the direction that the Republican Party wanted at that time. It was clearly not an anti-slavery platform, but it was an anti-expansion of slavery platform.

So a critical mass had been met there where they felt this sickness has gone on in our nation long enough and we cannot get traction in these other parties. And critically, back then, there was more flexibility in the system. Certainly there was not this entrenched money in politics and the political industrial complex that makes it so hard to form third parties now. That's a bit of a challenge. And it's very worrisome that third parties can be wonderful things. And again, you know, the Republican Party was a third party that rapidly grew and did well. So I think it's crisis. And so it could be that the current crisis of demagoguery and authoritarianism and corruption that we're beginning to witness now that could, in the hands of a Liz Cheney, for example, become a catalyst for starting a third party.

And I think it should be done, even if predictions are it can't succeed. We need to see people do the right thing and make efforts in spite of the fact that there's concern that we are a hopeless two party system. Yeah, I could not could not agree with you more on that. The collection of essays recently released is The Curse of Demagogues Lessons Learned from the Presidency of Donald J. Trump. We've been speaking with the editor, Dr. Eli Merritt from Vanderbilt University. Really appreciate your time today. Thank you so much.

Great to be with you, David. got aura, which really gives us significantly more peace of mind. And our sponsor aura is the app that protects you from scammers by alerting you anytime your info like email password, social security number are found in data breaches or also automatically requests removal of your info from search engines and it can reduce spam calls or alerts you quickly about suspicious credit inquiries. Like if someone tries to take a loan out in your name and or as password manager makes it easy to keep your account secure to begin with. Or also has parental controls for your kids devices. You can restrict apps or manage screen time, set focus time, make sure they're doing homework instead of binging on YouTube. You can the free for 14 days. The link is in the podcast notes. The failed former President Donald J.

Trump is now suggesting that Republicans work to wreck the economy for the next two years because that would be good for Trump in 2024. If you could imagine a more depraved anti-American idea to benefit oneself politically than this, I, quite frankly, can't think of it. I mean, if if you put a gun to my head, which many of these people would gladly do, I guess the worst scenario would be allow or even encourage a terrorist attack in order to place me as the person in charge to unite the country after the attack to increase my approval rating that if you say to me, can you think of something worse than let's wreck the economy? It would probably be that. Let's take a look at what Donald Trump posted

to his platform Truth Social yesterday. Truth Central. Very, very. There's a serious lack of truth here posted in all capital letters, as Donald Trump often does, saying, quote, Republicans can get almost everything back that the old broken crow, Mitch McConnell and the real leader, China centric Coco Chow. By the way, he's he's referring to Mitch McConnell's wife, Elaine Chao. That is his sort of racist, xenophobic nickname for her stupidly gave up to the Democrats over the last two years by simply playing tough in the upcoming debt ceiling negotiations. Trump is saying don't negotiate, allow the government to completely shut down, allow basic systems to fail,

which will wreck the economy. And then that'll help Republicans in 2024. That's what Trump is saying. You have to read between the lines here. And it's pretty easy to figure figure out what he's saying with the right negotiators like all of those involved the other night on both sides for Speaker. It will be a beautiful and joyous thing for the people of our country to watch make America great again. Trump thinks the American people would enjoy watching basic services go unfunded due to political maneuvering because it would be good TV. I mean, the depravity here is one level. But actually, I want to put that aside for a moment, put aside for a moment the immorality, the depravity, the lack of ethics of

this idea of ruin the economy so that then Trump can swoop in in 24 and say, look, you need to be back and I'll fix all of this right away. Put it aside for a second. I actually believe it's bad political strategy. The long term consequences of a damaged economy, I believe, outweigh the short term political gain. It takes a long time and a huge amount of resources to recover from an act of deliberately screwing up the economy for two years. And forget about would it be irreparable? Let's concede it's reparable. But you could be talking about years, quite frankly, if you were to say, let's unite and let's not do the debt ceiling if and when it comes to be necessary. If we need stimulus because

of some crisis, let's not do it. If we need funding for a natural disaster, let's not do it on and on and on and on. Right. I actually believe that the damage you do will reach far beyond the two year term that you think would basically be compartmentalized nicely to help you in 2024, because deliberately wrecking the American economy in order to win future elections. Of course, it's unethical. Of course, it lacks integrity. Of course, it's a total abandonment of the principles, their principles. Give me a break. It's an abandonment of the principles they claim to to to value. And of course, it harms society in the short run. But it's bad in the long run. And as a result, it's also not a good idea for the political for the Republican Party. Now, Trump views a wrecked economy as a key to his election

in twenty twenty four. He expects that Kevin McCarthy is going to honor some kind of commitment to wreck the economy to Trump. That would be insane if it is the case. And they need to be held accountable if they do that. Now, let's be honest, if if we if nothing else, I'm honest with all of you. If we are honest, even when Republicans don't say it or don't realize it, their actions have been disastrous for the economy for decades now. That's just the reality. Trickle down economics where you cut taxes for the rich to raise the tide for all boats doesn't work. Flat out doesn't work. We've had economists on we've looked at the data just doesn't work. And so Republicans would never say we're going to cut taxes on the rich to wreck the economy. No, they might even think it helps

the economy, but it doesn't. So the policy has been to wreck the economy. No, they might even think it helps the economy, but it doesn't. So the policy has been bad for the economy for a very long time. Reagan exploded spending while cutting taxes. It's been policy for a very long time. Bush started two wars, created the Department of Homeland Security and TSA while giving tax cuts to the rich. Come on. It's the same thing. Trump added trillions in debt while giving tax cuts to the rich. This has been what they've done for decades. But now Trump is just openly saying, let's screw it up. Let's screw it up. And then Americans will figure out how much they want Republicans in 2024. It's absolutely disgusting, almost as disgusting as the very ugly war between Lauren Boebert

and Marjorie Taylor Greene. Let's talk about that next. We have now for several weeks been covering. We could call it a rupture. We could call it a crack, a crevasse maybe between radical Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene and radical Republican Congresswoman Lauren Boebert or Boebert, as Ro Khanna likes to call her. The divide is deepening. Take a look at this. Unhinged is the word that Lauren Boebert is now using to describe Marjorie Taylor Greene. There is a good Associated Press article. Boebert's backers urge her to tone down the nasty rhetoric. But when you do a search for unhinged, you see

Boebert saying the following. I have been asked to explain Marjorie Taylor Greene's beliefs on Jewish space lasers or why she showed up to a white supremacist conference. I'm just not going to go there, Boebert said over the phone as she rode in a car winding through the high canyons near her hometown of Silt before the speakership vote. She wants to say all these things and seem unhinged on Twitter. So be it. So be it. So then we hear from Marjorie Taylor Green and Marjorie Taylor Green says that Lauren Boebert's approach to selecting a speaker isn't serious. Take a listen. I think the American people, no matter how you vote, are sick and tired of drama. And this is nothing but drama. We're we're on multiple days now with multiple candidates from

this group. So I'm not sure how Lauren Boebert on one hand can demand so much out of Kevin McCarthy, then demand nothing out of someone else and be willing to vote for them to be speaker. That's not serious. I don't think that's leadership. And I really see it as more obstruction than progress. Yeah, this is absolutely fascinating. I know that many, many people, sadly, even in my audience, are using the sort of misogynistic term catfight to describe this. Oh, it's a catfight. Well, this is actually a really interesting political rift, and I'm going to tell you why. Before this rift, the Republican Party had MAGA and they had non MAGA. They had the pro-Trump Republican Party and the anti-Trump Republican Party. So you had very, very sort of neatly defined,

for the most part, on one side, Mitt Romney, Adam Kinzinger, Liz Cheney, the anti-Trump people. And then you had MAGA and Lauren Boebert was part of MAGA and Marjorie Taylor Greene was part of MAGA. What you are seeing now is an intra MAGA civil war. You still have Mitt Romney, right? And Mitt Romney is not part of this Boebert thing. And Mitt Romney is not part of this Marjorie Taylor Greene thing. Now, he's also in the Senate, so he doesn't vote for the speaker. And in that sense, he's also separate. But now you see a subsequent division happening within MAGA. And what's going on is that there are basically two bets that you can make. And Marjorie Taylor Greene is making one bet and Lauren Boebert is making a

different bet. And it could be entertaining in the short run, but very consequential in the long term for what happens with the Trump movement and whether there is a Trump movement going forward. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who was, you know, QAnon follower promoting violence, Jewish space lasers, all this different stuff. She has started to reorient herself as a voice of reason within the Republican Party. She is presumably going to get committee assignments back with Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House. She is now becoming part of the establishment MAGA side. She's still a Trump supporter, but she's probably realizing that Trump's power is diminishing to some degree. She wants to transform herself politically. She's making the bet of I'm going to ease up a little bit on MAGA. I support Trump, but I'm part of this other contingent. Lauren Boebert, on the other hand, is going full in with we are the

defectors. We know what's really good for the country. These people like Green and others, they might say they support the ultra MAGA wing. But when it came down to it, they acquiesced or maybe even they gleefully went over to feeling like we're now in power. We are now the the the big the big boys and girls or whatever you want to say. One of the really great things about Boebert targeting green is it's going to pull green back into the mud so she can't wipe herself off and say, I'm with McCarthy now. You know, I'm a you know, in the mafia, you might say I'm now a made man. You know, I'm in a different category at this point. He's a friend of ours rather than just a friend of mine.

You know, if you've read books about the mafia, some of those terms make sense. Marge wanted to sort of be the rat fleeing the sinking ship after the Trump riots failed on January 6th and the red wave failed to materialize. And then Republicans argued with these 20 or so of them resisting and resisting. She saw the opportunity to flee the sinking ship. But Bo Bear is trying to pull her back in and it's all good for the left in the sense that the more fractured this movement is, I believe the better it is for the Democratic Party. If you disagree with me, let me know. We have a voicemail number, which is two one nine two.

David P. You can call any time. Here's a caller who has a very specific question for me. David, my boy, what would it take you to go to a NASCAR race? OK, I have never been to a NASCAR race. I don't really care about NASCAR. I don't find it interesting, but I don't have any real opposition to going. I don't know if there are NASCAR races in like the northeast. I'm just not sure. Maybe up north, like in upstate New York. It's the type of thing I know upstate New York is pretty conservative and rural, maybe up there or not even upstate, like western New York, northwestern New York, maybe there. I would go to

an ask our race. It wouldn't really be for the racing. The racing seems quite boring, but it would be more as a sociocultural. I would go as an anthropologist, I think, is what I'm saying. All right. So if someone wants to take me, maybe we'll document it. We've got a great bonus show for you today. We're going to talk about the rules package passed by Republicans. We're going to talk about what's going on with IRS funding and Republicans. And we will talk about how QAnon is responding to the Brazil riots and more when producer Pat joins me. Sign up at join Pacman dot com. Get instant access.