The David Pakman Show - 11/10/22: Everyone Abandons Trump, Georgia Runoff Scheduled

Episode Date: November 10, 2022

-- On the Show: -- Anand Giridharadas, journalist, commentator, and author of the new book "The Persuaders: At the Front Lines of the Fight for Hearts, Minds, and Democracy," joins David to discuss changing minds, persuasion, and much more in today's political climate of disinformation. Get the book: https://amzn.to/3Ek9OPD -- With neither candidate reaching 50% of the vote, the Georgia Senate election will go to a runoff between incumbent Democrat Raphael Warnock and Republican challenger Herschel Walker on December 6 -- Radical Trumpian Republican Congresswoman Lauren Boebert pleads the blood of Jesus in a desperate attempt at savings her re-election as votes are still being counted in her race against Democratic challenger Adam Frisch -- The Murdoch family appears to be abandoning failed former President Donald Trump, publishing a "Trumpy Dumpty" cover in the News Corporation-owned New York Post -- Pennsylvania ends up being Donald Trump's biggest and most acute humiliation -- Donald Trump's former Press Secretary, now a Fox News contributor, visibly panics and tells Donald Trump he should delay announcing his 2024 candidacy at least until the December 6 Georgia runoff is complete -- Donald Trump reportedly furious over his humiliating 2022 losses, is blaming his wife Melania Trump -- Donald Trump flips out within hours of the 2022 election results, already attacking Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in what could be the tone for the entire 2024 Republican primary -- Voicemail caller asks whether Georgia Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker even understands how runoff elections work -- On the Bonus Show: Democrats' 2022 strategy appears to have paid off, NY court decision to block Democratic gerrymandering may help Republicans, Brittney Griner begins transfer to Russian penal colony, much more... 🌳 Established Titles: Code PAKMAN for extra 10% OFF at https://establishedtitles.com/pakman 🌿 Sunset Lake CBD: Get 20% OFF using code PAKMAN at https://sunsetlakecbd.com 💪 Athletic Greens is offering FREE year-supply of Vitamin D at https://athleticgreens.com/pakman 👍 Get 20% off an Allform sofa or armchair at https://allform.com/pakman ⚠️ Use code PAKMAN for a free supply of BlueChew at https://go.bluechew.com/david-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 are starting today with the United States Senate. We still don't know who controls it. We still don't know who will control it. But there is going to be a runoff in the state of Georgia on December 6th between Raphael Warnock and challenger Herschel Walker. This may be the race that decides who controls the Senate. Let's set it up and tell you where we are right now. At this point in time, based on the seats that have been determined definitively, it is Democrats 48 and Republicans 49 in the Senate. Remember,

Democrats need only 50 for a majority because Kamala Harris, the vice president, would be the 51st vote, a tiebreaker in the event of any 50 50 deadlock. It is quite possible. It is possible that Democrats won't actually need Georgia. Why do I say that? Well, in Arizona, Mark Kelly, the incumbent Democrat, is five points ahead of Blake Masters, the horrible Republican challenger with 76 percent of the vote in. Is it possible Masters could still win there? It is.

Is it likely? No. This race, when it is hopefully called for Mark Kelly, will put Democrats at forty nine. You then have the state of Nevada in Nevada. The incumbent Cortez Masto is running one point eight points behind Adam Laxall. But experts who are looking county by county at what is outstanding in Nevada say this may end up being a defeat for Adam Laxalt because even though 84 percent of the vote is counted, the 16 percent that is left favors Cortez Masto. The question is, will it favor her enough for her to make up one point eight points? We don't know the answer. If indeed Cortez Masto pulls this out, That's 50. And the Georgia race becomes for 51, which would make Kamala Harris's tie breaking vote

unnecessary. But we can't count on that. It is totally plausible that control of the Senate will depend on a December 6 runoff in Georgia. Why is there a runoff? If you look at the results, Raphael Warnock won. Well, Georgia has what's called the 50 percent threshold rule. If no candidate gets to 50 percent, a runoff will be held between the top two candidates. And indeed, because there is a third party candidate in

Georgia, Oliver, who got a hair over two percent of the vote, although Raphael Warnock won by one point three points, nearly 50000 votes, there will be a runoff. This is the race in which we must now get involved. I don't know that I can make it down to Georgia in the next few weeks, but we are going to try to see what we can do at a distance. Can we do live streams, fundraising for Raphael Warnock and maybe get matching funds set up. Well, we'll take a look. Can we do some kind of live group mass phone banking or at least get people signed up to phone bank or something like that? We're going to see what can we do? This is a race of critical importance. There is a dramatic difference between Democrats losing the House

and Senate. Versus Democrats keeping the Senate, but losing the House. Yes, if Democrats losing the House and Senate versus Democrats keeping the Senate but losing the House. Yes, if Democrats lose the House, they'll probably try to file articles of impeachment against Joe Biden. They'll obstruct. They'll do a whole bunch of stuff. But in particular, when it comes to federal judges, potentially a Supreme Court justice over the next two years, we don't know. Control of the Senate is absolutely critical. So if you live in Georgia. Make sure that you're going to vote in this one. Your vote quite literally could decide who controls the Senate for the next two years and who controls the Senate at the time of the 2024 election could also impact that

presidential race. So we're going to have much more about this. But that is where we are. Herschel Walker right up there is one of the worst candidates I've ever seen, can barely speak, can barely explain his position on any issue. A complete and total hypocrite says he's against abortion in all cases, urged and paid for multiple women to have abortions, says we need you know, we need we need fathers involved in their kids lives is an absent father himself pulled out a fake badge during a debate,

has no qualifications whatsoever, has no business whatsoever being in the Senate. This is not only about control of the Senate. To some degree, this is also about reducing the level of humiliation of the United States globally. I get emails from people all over the world, Germany, UK, Ireland, Australia, saying, David, what is wrong with the United States? A guy like Walker should be laughed off any of these stages. In no other country would he even stand a chance. And I think generally speaking, those people are right.

Let's now talk about Lauren Boebert. Lauren Boebert is pleading the blood of Jesus to try to win her race. What the hell am I talking about? I don't even know. Let me reset the stage. There are there is a triumvirate of MAGA people. One of whom has already lost, I'm talking about Marjorie Taylor Greene, Madison Cawthorn, Lauren Bober. These three are sort of like emblematic. They are the prototypical whacked out MAGA candidates that don't have any business being in the House of Representatives. Marjorie Taylor Greene easily won reelection on Tuesday. However, Madison Cawthorn lost his Republican

primary months ago and is being removed after just one term. Lauren Boebert is number three, and indeed she may lose when we go and take a look at Colorado and we look at that third district. You will see that as of this moment, Adam Frisch, the Democratic challenger, is 64 votes ahead of Lauren Boebert. That is a razor thin margin. We don't yet know for sure who will win. But what we have been told is that the remaining ballots, that five percent of the vote that is outstanding favors Adam Frisch and that it is plausible, while certainly not a guarantee that Lauren Boebert would be defeated. Here is something really wacky, and I don't even know what this means. Lauren Boebert said that they are pleading the blood of Jesus to try to

win. This was at the end of her event on Tuesday night, at which point her confidence level was a little lower than it was at the start of the night. That's for sure. In the name of Jesus, I just thank you for these people. They are so precious. We plead the blood over our elections. Father God, I thank you. There's a hedge of protection.

I thank you, God, for everything that you are doing. I don't know what it means to plead the blood of Jesus. I genuinely don't know what that is. Is that a good thing or is it a bad thing? Jesus, it doesn't matter who is in office because you are king. Well, if it doesn't matter, then I don't even know why Boebert is running. But that's maybe a question for a different day. Is there something wrong with me that I'm enjoying seeing her potentially lose and just lose it in this way? Is that something that I should be

exploring in therapy that I'm taking such pleasure in her potential misfortune? Or is it logical, given how horrible and humiliating a person she is? Earlier in the night, she was much more confident. She said it was all trending in her direction. But judging from the applause, it's not even really clear the crowd believed it. But I am so optimistic. Yeah, it is absolutely trending in our favor. As Ben has told you, the New York Times is still saying Congresswoman Lauren Boebert is very likely to win.

Now, the truth is, the New York Times stopped updating those predictive tools that they had a few hours into the night, and it was really worth nothing at that point in time. I don't want to celebrate too early because Lauren Boebert may win. But if indeed some of the analysts who really know Colorado are right, who are looking county by county, if indeed she does lose, it will be a great thing in all likelihood. And again, when we look at the numbers, if we go back from Colorado and we go to the map right now, you need 218 seats to control the House of Representatives. Right now, Democrats have 191 and Republicans have 209. It is still definitely the most likely outcome that Republicans will control the House. But controlling it with

Lauren Boebert and Madison Cawthorn, both losing their first term after their first terms, is a much better scenario. And when we consider that triumvirate Green, Cawthorn, Boebert, removing two thirds of it is a beautiful thing. We're going to take a very quick break. We have a packed program for you today. The David Pakman Show David Pakman dot com. does really good work all over the world with reforestation organizations like One Tree Planted and Trees for the Future. So you'll have a great laugh whether you're Scottish or not. I'm not. But you're giving the gift of reforestation to fight climate change. If you use my link, you'll get 10 percent off and your plot of land will be right next to mine. You can see it on a map. Go to establish titles dot com

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because 24 has clearly started. You can sign up at join Pacman dot com. Let's now talk about 2024. I spoke last week with Angelo Carusone from Media Matters, and we talked about the escape hatch that right wing media and many Republicans have set up for themselves when it comes to Donald Trump and 2024. It looks as though the Murdoch family through news corporations, the New York Post is pulling the ripcord on the escape hatch, publishing a front page piece, Trump D dumpty depicting Donald Trump as a swollen headed Humpty Dumpty saying Don, who couldn't build the wall, had a great fall. Can all the GOP's men put the party back together again? This is a piece. It's an opinion piece in The New York Post by John Pedoretz. And John Pedoretz calls the

piece Here's How Donald Trump Sabotage the Republican Midterms or whoever picked the title called it that often it's not the writer and points out that Donald Trump has had three consecutive elections in which he has arguably been a drag, if not a downright disaster for the Republican Party. Think of it. Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016, riding on a number of different things that included, of course, James Comey opting to do a second press conference to talk about Hillary Clinton. For some reason, we still haven't figured

out and many other factors. Trump won in 2016. Genuinely, he really won Twenty eighteen didn't go nearly as well for Republicans as historically. Maybe it should have. Twenty twenty Trump straight up lost and they lost everything. They lost the House, the Senate and the and the White House in twenty twenty. And now in twenty twenty two, I know Trump is saying, oh, I'm two hundred and fifteen. I have two hundred endorsements. I got right and fifteen. I got wrong. But as I've told you before, it's very easy to run up the score when you're mostly endorsing incumbents and Republican nominees in safe red districts. But on the critical races that would make a difference, Michigan governor, Pennsylvania governor, Pennsylvania Senate, Georgia Senate. We have the list, right?

Trump's record is not very good in 2022. And Rupert Murdoch and his family seem to be saying we're out. A couple of different things that are important to think about here. My concern with all of this, I don't really care. I don't care at all about the Murdoch family, News Corporation, Fox News, the internal deliberations of the Republican Party, Ronna McDaniel. I don't care about any of these people. I think they're all horrible. I think it's a misguided movement. My concern is what would be the most damaging scenario to themselves? How can they themselves damage themselves the most? Is it Trump announces on Tuesday that he's running for president and everybody gets out

of the way? Does that now lead to two years of further humiliation and another big loss in 2024? If that's the worst case scenario for Republicans, that's the one I want. hand, is a very snipey and and a sort of a lowbrow battle between Trump and DeSantis for the Republican Party for the next two years. The most damaging thing to Republicans, which will weaken them and make them crumble and erode such that they get crushed in 2024. That's my concern. Whatever is the worst thing for them is what I want to see happen right now. It seems as though the infighting is good for the

left and good for Democrats. And Trump is already attacking Ron DeSantis. We'll talk about that a little bit later. And there are many reasons to think that the Murdoch's now feeling free to pull the rip cord is a good thing. We're going to talk about this plenty more. We're linking to the piece by John Podoretz. I know it's The New York Post, but the whole point is it's interesting to see how even they now are portraying Trump. And specifically, I now want to talk about Pennsylvania.

There's a really good article in Slate by Jeremy Stahl called The Total Humiliation of Dr. Oz and Trump in Pennsylvania. And there's a couple of different perspectives about what took place in Pennsylvania. But a great starting point is this article by Jeremy Stahl. And Jeremy Stahl points out, most importantly, Fetterman beat New Jersey based crudite loving TV celebrity Dr. Mehmet Oz and Stahl correctly points out it wasn't a guarantee. Fetterman ran several points behind the winning Democratic gubernatorial candidate Josh Shapiro.

It's easy to imagine that a strong Republican candidate could have beaten Fetterman in a race that may well determine control in the Senate. Indeed, Republicans had a real opportunity to select that strong challenger, specifically the relatively moderate hedge fund manager and former Treasury Department official David McCormick, who finished second in the Republican primary by just nine hundred and fifty one votes. Stahl makes the case, and I believe he's right, that were it not for Trump's endorsement of Oz, McCormick would have won the primary.

And it is completely plausible that if McCormick wins the primary, he defeats Fetterman. It quite literally, if the Senate ends up 50 50 in favor of Democrats because of Kamala Harris is the tie breaking vote. You could accurately blame Trump for losing Republicans the Senate by jumping in and endorsing Oz rather than McCormick or staying out of it altogether. A couple of different things here. One of the aspects to this race that got very ugly was essentially the stroke shaming that

took place by many Republicans after John Fetterman suffered a stroke months ago and struggling with auditory processing, not stroke months ago and struggling with auditory processing, not cognitively, but struggling with auditory auditory processing. The Oz campaign put out some ads ridiculing Fetterman's health, although Oz personally said it wasn't me doing that, but it was still attached to the campaign at the debate. Even some of my viewers, never mind the Republicans, were kind of making fun of Fetterman for the way that he was speaking. And one of the crazy things is, you know, they were out there calling him and I apologize for these terms. They were saying he's a retard. People were saying he based on how he's speaking, he's a retard.

He's brain damaged, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. He won. OK, at some point when it came to Trump lost to Biden, who was in his basement, that's not believable. The flip side of it is how humiliating is it that Trump lost to a guy who didn't leave his basement? Right. Like if if anyone concedes that that's what Biden did, it makes it all the more embarrassing that Trump lost to that guy. Now, of course, they say he didn't really lose. It was fraud. Put that aside for a moment for all their criticisms of Fetterman, which include just making fun of the guy for a medical problem that he had.

Doesn't it make it all the more embarrassing to Oz that he couldn't beat the guy that they describe as a mentally retarded person? It should really make them think, wow, these candidates are terrible. Now they may ultimately start claiming fraud and some of them are anecdotally or whatever the case may be. But Crudite did not take Oz to victory. And to me, the really scary thing is that Oz didn't lose by more. When you look at what happened in Florida, DeSantis won by 19. That is brutal. The polling had DeSantis up like 11, which would be bad enough. And ultimately, DeSantis lost by like 19. And that is signaling the strength of the DeSantis wing of the party.

On the other hand, Oz lost. He didn't even lose by that much. And he should be glad about that. But Pennsylvania rapidly becoming the biggest humiliation for Trump and Republicans. And we're going to talk about the endorsement record a little bit later. Just remember, endorsing incumbents and Republican nominees in red districts is not a difficult way to run up your score for endorsements. When you have actual tough races where the primary winner might actually affect who wins in the case of McCormick versus versus Oz. It almost certainly did. Trump's record is a disaster. And this is why Rupert Murdoch and some others are pulling the ripcord and trying to get the hell out of here. Make sure that you are subscribed to the David Pakman show on YouTube or that you've liked our Facebook page or that you're following us on

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That's athletic greens dot com slash Pacman. The link is in the podcast notes. One of our sponsors is all form the easiest way to design your own custom sofa. I have one from all form. Unlike other companies, all form lets you choose the fabric, the size, the shape, color, even the color of the legs. I have not one, but two all form sofas. I've had them for years. They look good as new. Definitely the most comfortable furniture I own. And it gets even cooler because all form sofas are completely modular. You can buy a sofa and if you move, you can adapt it to the new space by adding on to it

or rearranging its elements. That is definitely not something you get from your typical sofa company. All form has everything from eight piece sectionals to love seats and armchairs. We'll be right back. It's great to have back on the program once again, Anand Girdhar Das, who is a journalist and commentator. The new book is The Persuaders at the Frontlines of the Fight for Hearts, Minds and Democracy. Really appreciate having you back on. Thank you for having me back. So intuitively, I have the sense that on political issues, it is now more difficult to persuade people even when the facts are on one side. And I think maybe the first place to start is it is that perception accurate?

Is it true that there we are in an era where political beliefs are in a sense more like sticky or stubborn or difficult to change? Speaker 1 Yeah, well, I think another way to think about that is it is the is the fraction of people who are very difficult to persuade. Has that fraction of people grown? I think that's, in a way, what we mean when we have confused polarization for meaning that no one is persuadable anymore And what defines that group on each side, on the left and the right, is not how strong their opinions are, but how deeply held those strong opinions are, which is to say, you can imagine someone, we all know this person, who will huff and puff about a strong border, right? But you could imagine someone who huffs and puffs about a strong border, who has watched 80 documentaries about immigration policy and reads books about it and goes to, you know, militia men meetups where they talk about the border. That is not a persuadable voter. That is someone who not only has a strong opinion, but has a strongly held strong opinion.

You know, that person has talking points to rebut any objection you might make that person, you know, and that exists on the left. Also, there's people who, you know, have a strong stance on universal health care because they've really they thought it's part of a worldview. They've thought about it. They've bolstered it. It's part of their community consciousness. But then there are other people who vote alongside the strong border guy or the universal health care person who may have that opinion on the surface, but have much shallower roots of that opinion. They haven't watched a bunch of documentaries about border policy.

They have not read a bunch of documentaries about border policy. They have not read a bunch of books. They have what in, I think, the corporate world is sometimes called strong opinions lightly held, right? And persuadable voters are people who might have strong opinions, but also have them lightly held. They are, as Anant Shankar Osorio, one of the many brilliant persuaders I write about in the book, says these persuadable voters are people who can be toggled into a very progressive way of looking at the world or a very conservative way of looking at the world. imagery of people crossing, migrants crossing the border in caravans, those persuadable people can be toggled into, with the right messages, can be toggled into a very right-wing nationalist, fear-based, close the border. As you will remember a couple of years ago, when family separation was the dominant thing we were all seeing on the news every day.

A lot of those same moderate, persuadable voters were, if you remember, using the phrase, this is not who we are. Those same people who, under different circumstances, might have been toggled into a very right-wing understanding of the border, were in that moment with that set of facts, that set of stimuli toggled into a very progressive understanding of the border, where in that moment with that set of facts, that set of stimuli toggled into a very progressive understanding of the question. And so this book is about how you speak to those significant numbers of people in the middle who you don't need most of them, you don't need all of them. But if you can win many of them in a given moment, in a given election, on a given question, it can make the difference between very different futures.

When people often will call in and ask about persuasion, whether it's at a dinner table or whether it's in a national election, oftentimes the conversation is different. And we've talked with people who specialize in kind of changing beliefs at what we might call the retail level, which is you build a relationship with someone that you personally know. And there's often many conversations. And here's the average number of hours that it can take. And that that's sort of like one bucket. The other bucket is widely held beliefs for large numbers of people for the purposes of winning an election and how views can be shifted in those sort of situations. Can you talk a little bit about with

that second group, which is for the purposes of winning an election with views that might include Trump was actually the winner in 2020. It was stolen from him or, you know, Democrats want to do abortions when a baby is already six months out of the womb or whatever the case may be. What are the techniques that can be used in those sorts of situations? Well, the last the the actual examples you raise are in a way not examples of arguments, but examples of disinformation. Right. So there is a chapter in the book that is about persuasion in the context of disinformation, which in some ways is a separate, separate question from traditional, you know, traditional political persuasion.

So and just to be clear, it's different. Why? Because it's simply based on a misunderstanding of a fact rather than maybe conflicting morals or something like that. Exactly. Like if you and I are having an argument about whether, you know, a fetus is a person deserving of legal status and protection from homicide laws or not. Yeah. That's not an issue of you and I having different facts or senses of reality. Like the facts are broadly agreed. It's a, you know, whether a fetus is a person deserving of protection is a moral argument that depends on, you know, interpretation and that and a lot of politics, or just like is a 31% marginal top tax rate

or a 39% one going to enhance economic growth and broadly shared prosperity? Again, no one is, we're not, hopefully in a good version of that conversation, we're looking at a common set of facts and historical data and we're interpreting, these things are complicated, right? The examples you cited really are where we are now in many cases where it's like moon is made of green cheese territory and you know the world is run by a global pedophile ring run out of a pizza restaurant on connecticut avenue in washington dc kind of thing with q anon

43 million americans by the way now believe in the underlying fantasies of QAnon, which means 43 million Americans could be understood to be in a diffuse, dispersed, you know, virtual cult. Yeah. So the issue you raise is very important. And I spoke to two different experts for that chapter about what we do about this problem. How do you persuade in a context of people having really their own sense of reality that is non-reality? And the two, you know, one of them was a cult deprogrammer, a former cult victim herself who got out of the cult and then helps other people get out of cults one at a time. Right. And she's now thinking about what do you do when millions of people are being manipulated in cult-like ways by leaders like Donald Trump or disinformation.

And then I spoke to a cognitive scientist who works a lot on COVID and, I mean, climate and then now COVID disinformation and tried to figure out how do you deal with that. And what both of them said from their different vantage points that really surprised me was that essentially we may need to treat disinformation as endemic in the age of the internet, that there's not going to be a, I mean, literally a disinformation artist owns Twitter right now. So the idea of, the idea of shutting off this spigot feels, I think, to both of them a little fanciful. And what they suggest, sticking with the kind of public health endemic analogy if this is endemic if disinformation is going to be in the air The answer is to inoculate people against it. Don't worry. This is not like an actual shot But a public health approach to disinformation is what they suggest, which is essentially an educational shift, where basically

the way things like sex ed were once taught to people in their homes, if at all, or people figured it out behind the barn or whatever. Now, sex ed came to be thought of as something that was crucial to any child's development. The state, the society has an obligation to have everybody have a common minimum understanding of their own bodies and sexuality and where babies come from. And child's development. The state, the society has an obligation to have everybody have a common minimum understanding of their own bodies and sexuality and where babies come from and so on and so forth. Well, I think being able to detect and kind of interdict these common tactics of cult manipulation and disinformation may become viewed as a core part of an education. Today, you know, critical thinking is what? Like, here's a passage of a book, you know, what are the

three main ideas and which one you did? That's not no, no, no. That's quite lacking. That definition of critical thinking was, you know, not adequate, I think, to, you know, 15 year olds being up against Rupert Murdoch. And we need to fortify them and to detect how and when they are being conned. Speaker 1 Because you mentioned cults and we've we've also interviewed experts on cults and getting people

out of cults, former cult members, et cetera. Obviously, the inoculation ahead of time, preventing people from getting sucked in in the first place. Absolutely a great thing. Important thing. Reality is a lot of people are already sucked in. What methods of persuasion have you seen be most effective at getting someone out of a cult? So the interesting thing here that I learned again from both Diane Ben Scudder and the and John Cook, the scientist, is that what we are tend what we tend to do instinctually when we encounter those people is ask backwards, almost designed to not work and drive them further into the arms of the con. What we often do is make them feel stupid. We often try to rebut their points, point by point, haggle on reality, present data. A lot of us are

on the other side in the reality-based community are like interested in data and evidence. And we kind of lead with that. And we don't understand what's necessarily going on there. And so what both Diane and John educated me on is basically they view a someone who has been, who has succumbed already, as you say, uh, as someone who there's kind of two warring forces within them, that person, and one of them has is badly beating the other. The first force is the desire to have the world make facile sense. We all have that desire. Every single one of us has that desire. Yep. Cults and disinformation prey on that desire. Right. The world is complicated. Globalization is complicated.

Covid is complicated. Globalization is complicated. COVID is complicated. QAnon comes in. It's actually very simple, right? It's appealing, and it hooks certain people. The second desire that is also in every human heart is the desire to be no one's fool, the desire to be no one's dupe, the desire not to be a mark for powerful, manipulative people. And what has happened in people who've succumbed to disinformation is that force number one has really outgunned force number two in them. Force number two is kind of lying latent. And so the thing that works is not factual rebuttal or evidence or making them feel dumb, but helping them see that they may be being used by powerful people who are manipulating them for the benefit of those powerful people and not their benefit, helping them see the ways in which

they've been tricked. To be clear, this is not going to work all the time. It may not work most of the time, but it has shown some results. Diane Ben Skoda wrote about her own experience being in the Moonies. And, you know, these these deprogrammers came and tried to her mother organized it, tried to come and get her out. And they were telling her the beliefs about Christ are not true. Here's the truth about this. Here's the truth. None of it worked. What worked on her, she was sitting in this room and they start telling her about brainwashing techniques in Mao's revolutionary China. And what was interesting is she didn't have emotional defense mechanisms around Mao's revolutionary China. Right. Right. It was not coming at her straight.

It was like exotic a world away. Right. And so maybe she listened a little more easily than she might have if it had been straight up. Here's why what you're saying about Jesus is not true. And she started hearing the list of Mao's brainwashing techniques. And she just recognized them. She just and she started she's she's kind of described, I think, the world like crashing pieces of glass all around her as a sensation. She felt just and and she kept muttering herself like, what if this was all a lie? And so, again, I don't want to I don't want to overstate how easy this is. Right. It doesn't always go that well.

But but that I think that's the dynamic you are aiming for, planting a seed of doubt. And I would say lastly, this comes up again and again in the book, not just on disinformation. Persuasion often involves trying to displace what is in people's heads, not trying to replace what is in others heads and certainly not being perceived as having an agenda of replacing what is in their heads, simply trying to displace to make people have questions again. So displace rather than replace makes me want to talk about the group of canvassers you spoke to in Arizona and how they were focused on changing people's minds on on immigration. What were they doing? This was a, you know, of all the, of all the different people I studied and, you know, uh, try the different types of persuaders I wrote about

from these scientists, educators, to activists, to organizers, uh, these canvassers in Arizona filled me with so much hope. Uh, they were engaged in this experiment called deep canvassing that grew out of the stinging defeat of gay marriage in California in 2008 on the night that Barack Obama got elected. Right. Yeah. And otherwise, an otherwise kind of glorious night in American history that was, you know, that overshadowed this really awful defeat by referendum in California. In other words, most people's neighbors were against. The view of gay people as full human beings. Right. That was a they didn't know that. They didn't know that that was the majority view. The vote lost L.A. County. Right. Gay marriage lost L.A. County.

You know what we would think of as a reasonably decent place to be gay in the United States. Gay marriage lost LA County in 2008. And so these gay rights activists in the LA LGBT Center and others were just in a funk. And, you know, one of them described walking around the grocery store and you're like standing in the produce aisle being like, like, does this person next to me want to exterminate me? Like, does this person think I'm not a person? Like, who? You know, it's not Mitch McConnell, like, 2,000 miles away. It's not people in the Central Valley. Like, I am surrounded by people who do not think I'm a human being.

And it, you know, again, this is not for the faint of heart, and it's not for most people, but a certain subset of these gay activists in L.A. in that time were like, I want to go to knock on people's doors and find out why they hate me. Again, you may be listening to this thinking, who the hell would want to do that? Yeah. And like, totally great to stay at home and not do that. But these people wanted to go do that. They wanted to know they actually had questions, right? They didn't they couldn't understand why people couldn't understand them. And so they went. And what started kind of informally helter skelter talking to people, listening, has since developed into a method that is remarkable that I witnessed at its kind of, you know, maturity in Arizona, where these canvassers go door to door. They don't do

30 second conversations about have you found your polling place or do you have a flyer? They spend 30 to 40 minutes lovingly, patiently, strategically talking people through their views, their deepest prejudices, as well as values that might conflict with their prejudices. They don't, again, displace, not replace. They don't come in there and say, well, you say this about immigrants being lazy, but do you know, in fact, David, that 25% of immigrants work 900 hours a week? That's not what they do, right? What they look for is, so you said immigrants are lazy. Do you know any immigrants personally? Oh, well, yes, my gardener, Manuel. Is Manuel lazy?

No, Manuel works harder than most people I know. And is he the only one in his family who's like that? Or no, actually, his kids are so hardworking. They're in college, but they're also working two jobs. And at some point, you just say to them, how is the thing you said at the beginning sitting with you as you now tell me about Manuel? And you just let it, you create the little silence there for them, right? And people, you know, this may sound either believable to you, if you're listening to this, or not believable. But not everyone has probably thought about these issues as much as you and I might have, and people listening to

a podcast about these issues might have. People stand there in the door and they're like, it's true. A lot of the immigrants I know are actually the opposite of lazy. Huh, I wonder why I always go around thinking they're lazy. Right? That happens, that's real. It's true that people will say a thing about trans people.

And then I saw this powerful video of one of these canvases, a black woman in California talking about her own trans niece and basically like ragging on her own trans niece. And then the canvasser is like, have you ever been discriminated against or treated badly because of things you couldn't control? Interestingly, as a black woman in America, she did not connect it to being black. She did not connect to being a woman. She connected it to being like moving from another city and working

in that job in la and everyone in her job in la being like you should you should go back to where you came from yeah that's all that was just like not from being around there and she was like that sucked i just went to work every day and i just sucked to like i i can't help that i lived in another city right and then he's he's like and how did that feel to be just seen and treated that way? And you see this, you see it like a wave crash on this woman's face. Like, oh, I am to my niece what those people were to me. Right. You know?

And so I think this work of deep canvassing, like so much of the work of persuasion, depends on a kind of faith that many people, if not most, can change, can move. Think what they think in part because of what they've seen, what they have not seen, where they've been, where they've not been. And that exposure and conversation and listening and empathy can get us there. This is not an argument to go around knocking on dangerous doors and, you know, hoping to be respected if you're a marginalized person. This is a book about some people who choose to do this work out of their own volition because they believe that people can change. The book is The Persuaders at the Frontlines of the Fight for Hearts, Minds and

Democracy. We've been speaking with the book's author, Anand Giridhar Das. Always great having you on and really great, great, great book. Very much enjoyed it. And we're going to link to it and encourage our audience to pick it up. Well, thank you so much for having me. doctor's office or the pharmacy. No waiting around. No awkward conversations with your doctor. All of Blue Chew's tablets are made in the USA. The entire process is just a few clicks. Go to Blue Chew dot com. The link is in the podcast notes and they'll give you an entire month's supply for free when you use promo code Pacman. That's P.A.K.M.A.N. All you do is pay five dollars for shipping. Our sponsor, Aura, is the all in one solution that I now use to keep accounts safe. Aura scans the dark web for your personal info, emails, passwords, social security numbers, immediately alerts you if anything is found, helps you fix the problem. You also get alerts about suspicious credit inquiries.

Aura automatically requests the removal of your information from search engines and data broker sites and or protects all of your devices from malware with its state of the art antivirus. And also helps you manage what your kids can do on their devices with very simple, easy to use parental device controls. You can try or a free for two weeks at or a dot com slash Pacman. Your log in credentials might already be floating around. It takes only a few seconds on Aura to figure that out. We are watching the real time panic and collapse of aspects of the Republican Party, in particular, much of the Trumpian wing of the Republican Party. Donald Trump's former press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany,

in reaction to the disastrous midterm results for Republicans, particularly MAGA Republicans and some of the critical Trump endorsed people on Fox News said Trump should not announce that he is running for president on Tuesday. Kayleigh McEnany is telling Trump cancel the announcement, at least postpone it because of what happened on Tuesday and the fact that Republicans now need to figure out how do you win in Georgia? McEnany also even saying Trump shouldn't even campaign for Herschel Walker. It should be Ron DeSantis, a very different Kayleigh McEnany than the one that prayed at the altar of Trump when, of course, she was paid for him as it as it makes sense to do. Listen to this. And that could go straight through the state of Georgia. Does that include Trump?

I think he needs to put on pause. Absolutely. Look, he'll make that decision. He'll make his own decision. But does he go to advising any contender? DeSantis, Trump, whomever? No one announces twenty twenty four until we get through December six. Do you see the former president a need for him to go to Georgia? I think we've got to make strategic calculations. Governor DeSantis, I think he should be welcome to the state. Given what happened last night, you've got to look you got to look at the realities on the ground and Herschel Walker. We've got to win the Senate. That's it, guys. Got to win the Senate. All right. We'll move on. Now, understand. Yes, to some degree, announcing that you're

running for president when it's not even clear who won the Senate is a bad look for anyone. That is absolutely true. And that's not specific to Trump. But there's a bigger story here, which is it appears as though Trump would not even be useful to Herschel Walker in Georgia. It's not clear to me. In fact, let me put it a different way. It is clear to me that if Trump does a rally for Herschel Walker, I don't think it helps Herschel Walker at all at this point in time in Georgia. And we're going to be doing everything we can to activate to get that get that seat held by Raphael Warnock. But will Walker tell Trump to stay away?

That would be interesting to see. Will Ron DeSantis go? Because remember, Ron DeSantis won by 19. He overperformed the polls, almost two X winning by 19 instead of I think it was 11, which was the polls projection. And he's in the neighboring state of Florida. He's way more popular at this point. The betting markets. In fact, let's let's check what the betting where the betting markets are right now. As of yesterday, they looked quite good for for Ron DeSantis, Republican nominee. As of this point in time. It's actually tightened up a little bit. It's now tightened up to DeSantis and Trump basically leaving everybody else behind.

The betting markets now feel that this is basically DeSantis versus Trump. So it's not clear that Trump would help. Trump may actually hurt. This is a race that Republicans need. And Kayleigh McEnany is saying Trump shouldn't even announce on Tuesday there, although the event on Tuesday has not been canceled. There are rumblings that it is not just Kayleigh McEnany telling Trump to hold off on announcing that he is running. And if Trump indeed decides not to go forward with that on Tuesday, I think it will be very quietly announced and then rescheduled for some future point. I also have viewers writing to me saying, David, I'm not convinced Trump's really going

to run. Trump announced the November 15th thing before seeing the results of the election. Now that he has seen them, he might not run. Now, if Trump were normal, that might be plausible as the epitome of the ultimate narcissist. I don't know that the results will actually dissuade Trump. We're going to wait and see. New report from Maggie Haberman of The New York Times is that Donald Trump is furious over his humiliating losses on Tuesday, is tantruming like a child and blaming everyone around him, even his wife, Melania. Check out these tweets from The New York Times is Maggie Haberman,

quote, Trump is indeed furious this morning, particularly about Mehmet Oz, and is blaming everyone who advised him to back Oz, including his wife, describing it as not her best decision, according to people close to him. Now, there is truth to the fact, as I said earlier, that if Trump had gone with David McCormick rather than Mehmet Oz in the Pennsylvania Republican primary, McCormick probably would have won. He only lost by 951 votes. He probably would have won. I do think Trump's endorsement gained Oz a little over 900 votes. That's totally plausible. Had McCormick won. You might have had a completely different situation in Pennsylvania because there were Republicans who said, Oz, this guy's a clown. He's not even from Pennsylvania. This

doesn't make any sense. Now, Trump saying Melania was one of the people that told him to do that. That's pretty interesting. Maggie Haberman continuing, quote, There are people pushing Trump to reschedule his announcement next week, and several Republicans have texted asking whether he will. But it's risky and would be acknowledging he's wounded by yesterday. Something that some advisers insist is not the case. This is the point about narcissism that I made a narcissist. You know, we many of us who don't have these personality tendencies, we sometimes trick ourselves into believing, you know what, this guy who can't ever just admit, you know what I got, I got outrun. I straight up lost once it's verified and and validated that Joe Biden won and Biden's inaugurated,

Trump's not going to have any choice but to say, you know what, I lost and we were wrong. It's two years later and Trump is still saying it was stolen. In my personal life, I've had situations with oftentimes it's with pathological liars who sometimes are also extreme narcissists. We're in my head. I go, wow, at this point, they're not going to be able to keep up the lie anymore. They're going to have to just say, you know what, I made that up. And they never do. They find a way around it. And the way that this applies to Trump is we all see Tudor Dixon, Mehmet Oz, Doug Mastriano. We don't know yet about Carrie Lake. You know, we're still counting on. It wasn't a good night for Trump's critical contested endorsements. He has no choice at this point to just say, wow, I really messed up, right? No, he's blaming his wife. He's potentially going

forward with this completely harebrained announcement on Tuesday. All right. Last tweet from Maggie Haberman, quote, Worth remembering, Trump is a grown man who endorsed Oz over the objection of some of the people closest to him and instead went beyond just endorsing and attacked Dave McCormick from the stage at a rally. Yeah, it's important to remember we're dealing with a nearly 80 year old man. It's my wife's fault. That's what he's going with. It's completely pathetic and ridiculous. Now, the question is, does he heed the calls to delay the announcement? Donald Trump wasted almost no time in attacking Ron DeSantis after DeSantis is big win in the state of Florida. And Trump is also going after the media over an election disaster that he brought on himself. There's a good article in The New York Times called Trump Under Fire from Within Republican

Party after the midterms. A longtime adviser said Republicans have followed Donald Trump off the side of a cliff. Trump flipped out on truth social, which he also calls truth central central. Yeah. As you know, Trump not only has gotten his own name wrong, he's gotten the name of his own social media platform wrong as well. Check out some of these posts on truth, quote, while in certain ways yesterday's election was somewhat disappointing from my personal standpoint, it was a very big victory. It's all about him. Two hundred and nineteen wins and 16 losses in the general. Who has ever done better than that? Remember, I don't know how many times I have to tell you this. I know Trump and the Republicans are refusing to accept it. He mostly endorsed incumbents. And Republican nominees in easy red districts where whoever is the Republican

nominee, they're going to win. You can run up the score very easily. The 16 losses are consequential. Control of the Senate hinges on those 16 losses. Control of the election systems by governors and secretaries of state in 2024 hinges on those losses. But Trump wants them to 219 and 16. OK, here's where it gets very ugly, very quickly. Trump in his next post saying, quote, Now that the election in Florida is over and everything went quite well, shouldn't it be said that in 2020 I got one point one million more votes in Florida than Ron DeSantis got this year? Five point seven million to four point six million.

Just asking. There is one interpretation of this truth. And it is that Trump is realizing. The energy is getting behind DeSantis. The strength of the Republican electorate is shifting like a storm coming in and changing the direction of the wind towards Ron DeSantis. And so he immediately needs to make the case. I'm stronger than DeSantis even in Florida. Now, if we want to take this

seriously, you have to remember turnout is lower in midterms and gubernatorial elections that coincide with a midterm rather than a general election tend to have lower turnout. Is there maybe something to the claim that Florida would prefer Trump over the DeSantis in a presidential race? Sure. I don't know. I'm not taking a position on that. I don't know if a primary in the Republican Party in Florida were held today, whether

it would be DeSantis or Trump. I don't know that. But this is already a full frontal attack on Ron DeSantis. Trump is reportedly seething about what's going on with Florida. He didn't even invite Ron DeSantis to his rally on Sunday, choosing instead only to have Marco Rubio there. He did mention, yeah, yeah, yeah, vote for Ron DeSantis. But it is very clear that Trump is furious with DeSantis. Another one of these troths, Trump then going after the media. Remember, it's

me, me, me, DeSantis, bad media, bad, typical narcissist. Trump says, quote, incredible how dishonest the fake news media is. The failing New York Times has gone crazy. So many of the people I capital E endorsed went on to victory on Tuesday night. Nobody was even close. And they literally make up a story refusing to write the facts and only quoting enemies and losers. Almost all of the people I endorsed won. Yet if you read the story from two Trump-hating writers who only do as they are told, you would not even recognize the truth. They truly are the enemy of the people. Again, remember, the articles recognize that when it came to the critical,

consequential races, Trump endorsed mostly people who lost. In the critical, would-make-a-difference races. And then Trump again restating, quote, 219 wins against 16 losses in the general election. And yet the fake news writes only unrecognizable junk. No wonder they are all doing so badly. This is an absurd framing. Look at all of the people Trump endorsed who lost. Oz Fetterman Dixon. John Gibbs lost.

Remember when I interviewed him, he was defeated. J.R. Majewski lost. Thank goodness. The 2018 midterms under Trump were not good for Republicans. The 2020 presidential was lost and then they lost everything. Disaster in 2022. So now what? Are Republicans ready to say bye bye to Donald Trump or are they going to try it again in 2024? Let me know what you think. We have a voicemail number and that number is two one nine two. David P. Here's a caller asking what is quite frankly a fair question about Herschel Walker's

runoff against Raphael Warnock in the state of Georgia. Listen to this. Hey, David, this is Jaffer from the Philly suburbs. Yeah. Very psyched about Tuesday's results, especially with Shapiro and Fetterman. Absolutely. I just wanted to call in to ask, do you think that Herschel Walker's staffers in preparation for the December 6th runoff are going to have to explain to Herschel Walker that a runoff can be something other than what he does when a girlfriend shows up with a positive pregnancy test. Some post-election levity. Take care, man. Yeah. So I get the joke.

I get the joke. In all seriousness, a few people wrote to me and said, David, do you genuinely think Herschel Walker understands the runoff? Like, do you think Herschel Walker understands? OK, you lost, but no one got 50 percent. So now there's a runoff and it's only you and Raphael Warnock. And that's why we're going to do more campaigning. Is that something that Herschel Walker understands? I think generally he understands it, even if the particulars sort of get, you know, are able to are able to evade him. We're going to get very involved in that race.

That's a critical race. Let me know what you think we should do as a show about Walker Warnock and we will make it happen. We have such a great bonus show for you today. We're going to talk about a strategy that Democrats employed on Tuesday and leading up to the election, which is elevate election denying Republicans. In other words, keep reminding voters they deny the results. They deny the results. They deny the results. We have exit polls now, which tell us a lot about whether that was an effective strategy. We're going to talk about a New York court's decision to block Democratic gerrymandering, which is potentially handing the Republican Party a lifeline in retaking the House. And we've talked about gerrymandering

many times before. We will talk about it again today. And lastly, women's basketball player Brittany Griner, who was arrested, charged and convicted in Russia. This is so horrible, is now being transferred to a Russian penal colony, according to her attorneys. It is horrifying what is going on. We will talk about it and we will talk about much more. How do you get access to the bonus show? Oh, the bonus show where you want to make money. Everybody else that makes money to fund themselves

is bad. It's super easy. You go to join Pacman dot com. That is all there is to it. You can use the coupon code 24 starts now. And I look forward to seeing many of you on today's bonus show. If not, we'll be back tomorrow with a brand new show.