The David Pakman Show - 1/11/23: Instant Horror as GOP Controls House, Anti-Vax Spiked Again

Episode Date: January 11, 2023

-- On the Show: -- Republicans make clear that, now in control of the House of Representatives, they are happy to shut down the government and hurt the American people in order to score political points -- Republicans brag about diversity during a Sean Hannity Fox News event despite the room being filled with only white people, mostly men -- Looking back at the last time Republicans controlled the House of Representatives, from 2011-2019, reminds us why it's horrifying when they do control the House -- Donald Trump is interviewed by a friendly host on Real America's Voice, and still completely humiliates himself -- Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization's former CFO, is sentenced to Jail -- Diamond of the right-wing pro-Trump duo Diamond and Silk has died, believed to be of COVID, after a long period of anti-vaccine activism -- A confused woman at a Turning Point USA event falsely blames Donald Trump for "millions" of vaccine deaths -- Republican Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna revives a long debunked and embarrassing talking point that "taxation is theft" -- Radical Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene now wants to be taken seriously, and sadly, the corporate media may help her -- MyPillow CEO and Founder Mike Lindell appears to have turned on radical Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene over her vote in favor of Kevin McCarthy for Speaker of the House -- Voicemail caller Eric from Mass disgustingly claims that David is happy that Diamond died of COVID -- On the Bonus Show: John Bolton vows 2024 presidential run to stop Trump, Americans piling up credit card debt, Congresswoman Katie Porter is running for Senate, much more... 👩‍❤️‍👨 Try the Paired App FREE for 7 days and get 25% OFF at https://paired.com/pakman 🥄 Use code PAKMAN for $5 off Magic Spoon at https://magicspoon.com/pakman 😁 Zippix Toothpicks: Code PAKMAN saves you 10% at https://zippixtoothpicks.com 💻 Stay protected! Try Aura FREE for 2 weeks: https://aura.com/pakman 💪 Athletic Greens is offering FREE year-supply of Vitamin D at https://athleticgreens.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

I have no choice but to start today with the brazen and immoral, not just willingness, but desire to hurt Americans from the newly in control of the House of Representatives Republican Party because they believe it will help them in 2024. Yesterday, I told you about a post that the failed former President Donald Trump made to his social media platform, Truth Social. And to review that post, let's just put it up on the screen where Donald Trump said in all capital letters, quote, Republicans can get almost everything back that the old broken crow, Mitch McConnell and the real leader, China centric Coco Chow stupidly gave up to the

Democrats over the last two years by simply playing tough in the upcoming debt ceiling negotiations 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. Now, you sometimes have to read between the lines when Trump speaks because it's not even clear he knows what he's saying. In this case, he does know what he's saying. He is saying shut down the government over the debt ceiling, damage the country, which

will then show people how much they want Republicans in power and they will vote for us in 2024. Now, it was not just Donald Trump who became willing to say this over the last 24 hours. We have countless more examples now. And I'm going to look at a couple. First and foremost, last night, Sean Hannity, Fox News propaganda hosted some kind of a sort of town hall type event with the new speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy. And here is Sean Hannity suggesting to Kevin McCarthy, shut down the government, shut down the government when it comes down to the debt ceiling debate. Take a listen. By the way, what they did in the Senate, I believe as a conservative, that was a disgrace. Yeah, I think. And they knew you were coming into power and they knew they could. Why wouldn't they wait? wait if they waited then we'd have a stronger

hand exactly we wouldn't be increasing it and they increase the baseline where it just adds so much more to our children let's talk about a moment maybe it comes sooner maybe it comes later on the debt ceiling and you know how the argument will unfold it'll be republicans are shutting down government i've been around this game too long. Government never shuts down. Essential services will exist. Grandma, mom and dad, they're going to get their Social Security check. Medicare is not going to be shut down. The military is not going to be shut down. Now, there might be people that get furloughed, but odds are pretty high that when they get their free vacation, they will get back

pay. But that will be the argument. Yeah. So Hannity likes the idea here of the government shutdown. Now, the question will be it'll become a game of chicken. And that is Republicans are shutting down the government and they're not willing to raise the debt ceiling. And you're going to say what? Well, listen, it doesn't have to come to that. I've already spoken to the president. Let's sit down now. Yeah. So Hannity likes the idea. And he says they'll say it's bad for the country when the government when the government is shut down. But it's not really that bad for the country. Now, I disagree with that. And I'm going to explain that to you in a moment. Here's another example. New Republican Congresswoman

Anna Paulina Luna. She says she's also willing to support a shutdown of the government. I just stand by because it's going to be a wild week. Well, you know, some of your more moderate members within the Republican Party, as I'm sure you know, say that's a dangerous thing because it sets up almost a guaranteed government shutdown. And that because spending has been tied to renegotiating the debt limit or extending it, it's inevitable. Do you think it's inevitable that we'll be looking at a shutdown because of some of these measures that the speaker agreed to? I hope it doesn't get to that, but I'm willing to support one. And I do think that the speaker made the correct decision in ensuring that we do cut against some of this pork runway inflation and spending.

And so she's willing to support a government shutdown. Now, of course, there's two sides to this. The first side of it is that for many of these Republicans, the government being shut down is a feature, not a bug in the sense that, as I've told you many times before, many of these right wingers want government doing as little as possible. And so for them, when they say, oh, the government shut down, that's great. As much as we can take off of the list of things that government is doing, that's a good thing. Now, often they can't come out and publicly say that. But privately, many of them love government shutdown because they don't want the government doing stuff.

They still want their paychecks, by the way, but they don't want government doing stuff. But it is not true that when the government is shut down over the debt ceiling, it doesn't impact anything. Now, in a sense, yes, in the immediate, people continue to get Social Security checks. But when the government shuts down, essential government services stop being funded. That does include Social Security and Medicare. Now, in the immediate, people still get their checks, but it is not indefinitely true. And so the idea that it has no impact is, of course, a lie. It can also lead to a slowdown in the economy when the government shuts down. Government contracts, government purchases are put on hold. Government employees

are furloughed. Sometimes they get back pay. Sometimes they don't. It can cause job losses and financial difficulties for the government workers, but also for the private sector businesses that rely on government spending. Now, again, some of these Republicans love that. Some of these Republicans think we the government shouldn't do deals with private businesses. The government shouldn't be to be spending. The government shouldn't be doing. The government should be shut down. That's their default. That's very extreme. We're talking about those in the middle who say, well, I want the government open in principle, but it's not that bad if it's shut down. It really can be very, very bad. It raises the risk of a debt default, which can have more than dire consequences. A default can lead to an increase in interest rates, and that makes it more

expensive for the government to borrow money for individuals and businesses to borrow money as a result of that. All of these things, when they say there's no negative impact, what I think they're saying is if we contrive this deliberately, but it only lasts a little while, we will reopen after we've made our political point before things get too bad. But that's an extraordinarily cynical approach to how you do politics. And the truth is that a government shutdown is bad for the American people in all sorts of different ways. It's irresponsible. It's reckless. And they are willing to do it. They don't have principles, or at least the principles they have are very different than the ones they publicly state.

A real principle for the 2023 Republican Party or House Republicans, we could say, is let's do whatever we think is best for us politically over the next couple of years. That's a real principle. The principles they'll state are we're for small government conservatism and freedom and liberty and the Constitution and supporting law enforcement and every single one of those we've seen abandoned when they're no longer convenient. The real principle that they pledge allegiance to in an unwavering fashion is one they won't say out loud. We will do whatever it takes to try to make Democrats look bad and to try to help ourselves for our own

reelections and whatever the next election cycle is. They're making it very clear. They're saying it openly. And by the way, they're also now talking about diversity while in a room full of white people emblematic of what the Republican Party is. I want to talk about that next. Republicans are now bragging about diversity, quite literally in a room full of white people, mostly white men. This you just have to see it. And I want to talk about diversity in sort of a more serious way and actually take the question of diversity more seriously. Republicans have started to repeat lines like this is one of the most diverse Republican classes we've ever had. We have more women.

We have more this, that the other thing they thought they had more Jewish people because they were including George Santos. And that turns out that that was a lie. And during the event that they did yesterday with Fox News propagandist Sean Hannity, they talked about this issue of diversity a couple of times. I'm going to play a couple of clips for you. Here is Sean Hannity saying he loves seeing more diversity in the Republican Party. You know, Congresswoman, I know I've known you a long time. One of the things I'd like to see and I'm seeing is more diversity in the Republican

Party. To me, the Democratic Party is the party of coastal. OK, I think elites, coastal elites, yes. And then Elise Stefanik actually talks about it. And she does some of the types of bragging we've heard for the last few weeks from Republicans. Take a look around at these wonderful members. This is the most diverse class of Republicans ever elected in the history of the United States Congress. We have more women than were ever elected before. More Hispanic members ever elected before.

Now as you see the camera panning, it's basically all white men in the room for this very special Republican event. I guess I see three women in the background. Someone pointed out that there's one guy that maybe is Hispanic, but OK, you get the point. More African-American members in modern history. This shows that our party is growing. And I will tell you, the America first agenda is a growing big tent agenda. We've never done better than we do today among Hispanic voters. And President Trump and House Republicans were a huge part of doing that. OK, so there's a few things that we have to understand. First of all, when the initial when they talk about we're doing better than ever with a lot of these groups,

when you start with such disastrous numbers, you really only have up as the direction that you can go. So I wouldn't read too much into that. But what these Republicans very much expose is that for them, this issue of diversity is checking a box. It's perfunctory. It's contrived. It's just something that they can say so that they can argue, hey, we also have different types of people here like the Democrats do. It's not organic. It doesn't stem from policy. It comes from who can we fleece because the entire movement is a scam. We exposed that two weeks ago. You can check out the segment. Modern modern conservatism is a scam. But the reality is that these aren't just boxes that you check. The makeup of political constituencies is a direct reflection of the policies or the perceived

policies of those groups. And that's why this can very quickly become a fraught debate. First of all, it's not about we need the exact makeup in our elected officials of the population at large. You can never really achieve that because you can always say, hey, you know what? There's the population is 50.3 percent women. So we should have 50.3 percent women in the House of Representatives. OK, well, you could probably do that. OK, here's the racial demographics of the country. They should be exactly represented in the House of Representatives. OK, maybe you could do that. All right. Here's the percentage of the country that is immigrants. That should be exactly represented. Also, the percentage of people with a physical disability should be sexual oriented. It's extraordinarily difficult to have a perfect mirroring in our elected officials

of every demographic alignment in the general population. That's not what this is about. I don't believe that's what the left is actually talking about. The important thing to know is that voter demographics that support political groups vary based on a lot of different factors. It can depend on the candidates that are that are running and how they appeal to different groups of people. It could depend on what the most important issues are when national security and the economy maybe are the issues being emphasized. You're going to see a different demographic alignment than if the issues are, say, abortion and education, just for picking certain ones. But what we see is that overwhelmingly there is very little diversity in the Republican Party. Now, I know Trump does these events and he puts blacks for Trump on the stage behind him. And

it's all very stage managed, for lack of a better term. But roughly speaking, somewhere between 89 and 93 percent of black voters vote for Democrats. Ninety three percent voted for Joe Biden based on exit polls. Seventy eight percent of LGBT voters voted for Biden. Seventy one percent of Jewish Americans identify as or lean towards Democratic candidates. Sixty six percent of Hispanic or Latino voters voted for Biden. Sixty six percent of Asian-American voters voted for Biden. Sixty two percent of naturalized citizens, people like me, voted for Joe Biden. 60 percent of those 18 to 29 voted for Joe Biden. Fifty nine percent of disabled voters voted for Joe Biden. Fifty five percent of women. OK, you're getting closer and closer to 50 50. Diversity isn't something you do to get it on record. Ready to go. Hey, we got some Jewish folks like George Santos. Oh,

he's not Jewish. All right. Cross him off the list. But we've still got more Latino voters than we've had before. It's a reflection of policy. It's a reflection of policy. The way the Republican Party goes about it is let's just see if we can find people who check certain boxes and convince them to vote for us rather than let's develop a policy platform that will naturally attract different groups of voters. They're sort of going like top down rather than building from the bottom up. And it's not clear whether that will work as a long term political strategy. Their numbers have improved slightly over the last couple of election cycles with some

of these groups, but with others, they continue to be a disaster. The way the Republican Party sees this issue is just like a product. What kind of a product can we build by adding people who check different demographic boxes? And as a result, they're really not doing well with just about any of these groups. The irony, of course, is as the room as the camera pans, it's all white people and mostly white men, which is really in contrast to the words about diversity that are coming out of their mouths. You know, the last time that Republicans controlled the House was 2011 to 2019. And I think it's important to remind ourselves the things that the House of Representatives focused on and did during the time

that Republicans last controlled the House, because yesterday I did the segment for you about things are very quickly getting very stupid in the House now that Republicans control the House of Representatives. And many of you wrote to me and I could tell that there was sort of a lack of awareness of what things were like during that period that Republicans previously controlled the House. There was a total lack of doing anything helpful to the American people during that period of time. And forget about lack of helpful.

Think about the damage that was actually done by Republicans controlling the House for that period of time. Republicans in the House, when they controlled it, voted roughly 50 times to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Now, you could depending on how you want to slice and dice it in the ways in which they controlled it, voted roughly 50 times to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Now, you could depending on how you want to slice and dice it in the ways in which they did it, the number might be higher than 50 or lower, roughly 50 times in some way, shape or form. Republicans voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act. That was one way that they spent resources when they last controlled the House. Had they succeeded, it would have resulted in millions

of people losing health care, including people with preexisting conditions. Now, thankfully, the repeal effort failed. But the fact that Republicans were willing to strip people of their health care should be concerning to all of us. You might remember also at the beginning of Donald Trump's term in 2017, they proposed that other health care plan, which would have led to tens of millions of Americans losing health care coverage. Thankfully, that didn't become law, but that was a priority for a formerly Republican controlled House. Republicans, when they last controlled the House, systematically rolled back environmental regulations. They withdrew from the Paris climate agreement. They quite literally took actions that worsened the prospects for homo sapiens on planet

Earth. They gutted the EPA's budget, making it harder for the EPA to protect air, to protect water. But they were in control. These are the things they did. They were a disaster on immigration, including separation of families at the border, caging of children. Although they could have moved forward on doing something more permanent with DACA, they didn't, even though they control the House and they could have taken some of the credit. And then, of course, on taxes, we can't forget the attempted tax bills Republicans tried to pass but failed to pass and also what they did pass, including in 2017 under Donald Trump, exploding the deficit, large portion of the benefits going to the top one percent. That's the record of Republicans last time they controlled

the House. And there's sometimes enlightened centrists, as I call them, who love to say, well, divided government is good. It's good when one party controls the Senate and the other the House so that nobody gets too much power. It's it's meaningless pablum. It's just something people say to sound like they are thinking critically and moderate and whatever else. When Republicans get control of a legislative body, they do horrible things. Now, when Democrats control have control, they often fail to accomplish things as well. But there's really no comparison here.

And so when we think back to that period of time, it really serves as a disturbing preview gives you and your partner questions, quizzes, games to have fun, to stay connected, to deepen your conversations and get to know each other better. What's great about it is you don't even have to be in the same room, especially with the baby right now. My girlfriend and I are quite busy and paired really helped us to stay connected. You get a daily question to answer. You can't see your partner's answer until you answer yourself. And there are questions about everything, relationship, life, intimacy, other things. And all of the exercises were developed by academic psychologists and expert relationship therapists as well. Questions like what makes you feel lucky in your relationship? Great when you want to remember and

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all of your money. No questions asked. Simply go to Magic Spoon dot com slash Pacman. You can create a custom bundle and use the code Pacman for five dollars off. That's magic spoon dot com slash Pacman coupon code Pacman for five dollars off. The info is in the podcast notes. I'm going to admit to you, I'm almost a little bit starting to think about maybe feeling kind of bad for the failed former president, Donald Trump. Look at the people that are interviewing

him lately. Look at the sorts of appearances he's doing where he can't even be bothered to put a camera in front of his face. He's quite literally just phoning it in. And even with the friendliest interviewers, just making a complete and total fool of himself, low energy interviews where Trump just tells a lot of the same lies he's told for a while. But you can tell even his heart's not even really in the lies. And the themes are delusion and the rewriting of history, confusion in many cases, as well as weaponized narcissism. Trump appeared yesterday calling in, of course, on real America's voice. And it's just bizarre that he's still trying to get away with these same tired lies. The host is completely friendly and Trump still can't figure out a way

to seem like a normal person. Here is Trump weighing in on the investigation into him. Trump says they should drop the investigation into what I did with all those classified documents because of the 12 documents that were left behind by Joe Biden somewhere that his lawyers immediately found and contacted the presidential, the N.A.R.A. National Archives. Listen to this. And you, of course, have been facing this situation with the special prosecutor. How does this change the equation with what you've been doing with the Justice Department to get this matter? And remember, the question is, how does the Biden thing change your situation? The answer is not at all.

Well, I think it totally changes it. I mean, he's again, he's under this federal act. That's very tough. And I'm under I I was perfect under the Presidential Records Act. We were negotiating with NARA. Now, you know, NARA is a far left group of people. That's not true. I don't know if you know or if you've ever heard. They've red flagged, essentially red flagged the Constitution of the United States, the dangerous document. This is what we're dealing with. These are people that, you know, look, they have some real difficulties. So listen, first of all, if you are accused of murder and then someone else gets accused of murder, they don't stop investigating you. They investigate both of you. And maybe of the two people accused of murder, one person did the thing and the other didn't. The fact that Trump is being investigated for taking at his direction tons of documents down to Mar-a-Lago, trying to avoid returning them, hiding them, moving them on and on and on. The fact that Trump is accused of that has no connection

whatsoever to the fact that a few documents were found by Biden's lawyers. They immediately called the National Archives and said, we've got to get these back to you. Investigate Biden for that. I'm fine with that, as I've said yesterday. But number one, it has no connection to anything that Trump is accused of doing. And number two, look at the differences in how they handled it. As we talked about yesterday, Trump then weighing in on the new speaker and Trump, I guess, tries to make the case that he deserves the credit for Kevin McCarthy being speaker. It came down to crunch time. You know, you had 20 people that were pretty hard line and they happened to be very good friends of mine. Almost all of them. I would say all of them. Right. And I would make them calls. I mean,

because I didn't like what was happening, John. It was starting to look a little bit chaotic. It was starting to look a little bit not good, you think. And what happened is I started calling them and I started getting people to agree with me and coming on board. Right. And as you know, Matt Gaetz is a very good guy and he's, you know, he's a strong guy. And I called him a big, strong guy. And he was crying when I spoke to him. And I mean, it was just about over where they were going to leave.

And I think that if they left, think of it. If they left and you had two and a half, three days in between, I don't know that anything would have ever you might have ended up with a Democrat, to be honest with you. Trump wants us to believe that were it not for him, not only would McCarthy not be speaker, maybe Hakeem Jeffries would be the speaker. Know that this thing ever would have gotten done. Your moderates would have left other people. It would have been a disaster. Right. And that's when Matt ran up to the front of the room and he said, I'm changing my vote, I'm changing my vote. And he's a great guy. Yeah. Now, understand that after Trump issued a not quite full throated endorsement of Kevin McCarthy for House Speaker,

it took like 12 more rounds of voting before McCarthy ultimately became the speaker. And if we learned anything from the speaker vote, it's not how much power Trump still has. It's how diminished his power actually is. Trump then, of course, weighed in on one of his favorite topics, COVID and favorite insofar as he loves to claim he did great on handling COVID when he was president. He did not do great doing it. And then we got hit with COVID and we had to help the people with COVID. You know, if we would have done that, this country would have I don't think it would have existed. You know, it was, we did a great job with COVID. I've always felt that, you know, people give me a lot of credit on foreign policy and the economy and things. No, they don't. But they don't like doing it on

COVID. I think I did among the best jobs on COVID because all of a sudden something came in that nobody had any idea what it was. Speaker 1 Right. Speaker 2 We knew it was killing a lot of people. And, you know, I closed it to China. Speaker 1 So now covid was serious in retrospect. Remember, 15 cases will soon be zero. Don't be afraid of it. It's fine now. Oh, it was terrible. And I really handled it well. Speaker 1 A lot of people didn't want me to do that. Almost nobody wanted that was that saved a lot of lives. But, you know, the COVID

thing, obviously, we had to go guns a blazing with with the money and we had no choice. Otherwise, you know, we had to remember 15 cases will soon be zero. What about injecting bleach? Don't don't don't be afraid of it. The shutdowns are worse than the disease on and on and on. And the truth is, the proof is in the outcome. World leaders who handled covid well were all easily, easily reelected. And there is no doubt that Trump would have been reelected if he from the beginning had said this is really serious and we're going to do the best job by being the most aggressive here. Let's all wear our masks. We're going to offer you MAGA masks that you can buy. Let's all do all these things. Instead,

they went after an 80 year old doctor. That's that's the approach that they ended up taking. OK, last thing. Trump wants Hannity to write so that Hannity can get the Pulitzer and I guess bring back some prestige to an award Trump believes is no longer prestigious. Speaker 1 Yeah, to get the Pulitzer Prize for Russia, Russia, Russia reporting. And you know, the prize reads to the effect on your great and brilliant reporting on Russia. Well, they got it wrong. It was the exact opposite.

You should get the Pulitzer Prize. Yeah. Sean Hannity should start writing a little bit and get the Pulitzer Prize. You guys and Sarah. Yes, there was a group of people that got it right, right from the beginning. And, you know, I'm suing Pulitzer now because I'm saying you got to take the Pulitzer. I'm suing Pulitzer now, you know, completely deranged and delusional. And I mean, listen, how about just do the George Santos claim that you got the Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Peace Prize and whatever else, a Purple Heart and you lived in the belly of a whale.

Just claim that you did this stuff. But very, very strange. Trump deflated Trump, confused Trump, disoriented, but as narcissistic as ever, even in his rewriting of history, maybe at some point soon he'll show his face in one of these interviews. That would be an interesting thing to see. But for a guy who criticized Joe Biden for campaigning from his basement, Trump's barely left his house since he announced he was running in twenty twenty four back in November. Very strange stuff. Donald Trump's former CFO is going to jail. We're talking about Allen Weisselberg. He has indeed been sentenced. And this is starting to get closer and closer and closer to the inner circle of the Trump

world. CNBC reports former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg sent to jail for five months in the tax fraud case. Former Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg was sentenced to five months in jail after pleading guilty to multiple tax crimes related to former President Trump's businesses. Weisselberg was expected to begin serving his jail term in New York City's notorious Rikers Island facility following a sentencing hearing. Weisselberg and several of Trump's business entities were charged in what prosecutors called a systematic scheme to defraud state and federal tax authorities

spanning more than 15 years. The article goes on to say that the 75 year old was handcuffed and let out of a Manhattan courtroom shortly after two thirty Eastern with a very brief sentencing hearing before the state judge, Juan Merchant. He will be immediately transported to Rikers Island. Now, some of you are saying, David, sir, I'm crying because Weisselberg isn't being shipped up to one of those swankier federal facilities. My understanding is that because his sentence is shorter, I believe under a year, although

fact check me on that, he goes to jail rather than prison. And based on the location, it's Rikers, which is not exactly a place you want to spend too, too much time if you can avoid it. Now, of course, the questions continue to be Georgia grand jury is done and we will soon know whether Trump is getting indicted there. January 6th committee is done. That was in the last Congress. Now it's Republicans control the House. January 6th committee is done. January 6th committee of the previous Congress made a criminal referral of

Trump and others to the Department of Justice. We are waiting there to see whether Merrick Garland will, as some like to say, have the testicular fortitude to charge Donald Trump. And then third, we've got things happening in New York and those relate to Trump's business in great part and other things. And there remains a sort of general question mark as to whether there may be charges there. So we may end up with no charges against Trump. We may end up with charges from one of these areas. New York, Georgia, federal charges could be two and it could be three if it's three. And I don't think that that's particularly likely. What does it do for Trump's campaign? And is Trump actually looking

to bail on the campaign anyway, given how disastrously it's going? Questions we will hopefully soon answer all of the clips I've've played here you can find on our Instagram at David Pakman show. And please, please, please make sure that you are subscribed to the YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash the David Pakman show. You know, there's this thing called the bystander effect. People walk by someone's being brutally beaten on the street. No one calls the police because they assume someone else is going to call real story from history. Don't allow the bystander effect of someone else will subscribe and help them get to two million subscribers on YouTube. Don't fall for that. Be the person. It costs nothing. It's just a click. And you get us one step closer to an incredible milestone. Two million YouTube subscribers.

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And our sponsor aura is the app that protects you from scammers by alerting you anytime your info like email passwords, 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, Thank you. make sure they're doing homework instead of binging on YouTube. You can try or a free for 14 days at aura.com slash Pacman. Use the free trial to see if your email password are already out there. You may be surprised. That's a U R a.com slash Pacman to try or a free for 14 days. The link is in the podcast notes. So many of you wrote to me about anti-vaccine diamond of diamond and silk fame dying of covid. And everything we know right now does suggest

she did die of covid, although there are still remaining questions over this. Diamond and Silk were this duo of Trump supporters who became sort of well known because Trump promoted them and would sometimes invite them on stage. They were vehemently anti vaccine. They also were confused about a lot of different issues, including the price of mangoes, as many of you know. But that's a completely different story. The belief right now is indeed that the death was the result of covid. They were very aggressively anti vaccine, which we

will talk about. AP reports Diamond of the pro Trump duo Diamond and Silk dead at 51. Lynette Hardaway, an ardent supporter of President Donald Trump and half of the duo Diamond and Silk has died. Hardaway, known by the moniker Diamond, carved out a unique role, I'll say, as a black woman who loudly backed Trump. Her promotion of covid falsities eventually got her dropped from Fox News, but she landed on another right wing cable platform. The pair's verified Twitter account asked people to, quote, please pray for Diamond in a November tweet, but did not elaborate on the circumstances. Newsweek reports was Lynette Hardaway's cause

of death, covid, what we know, what we don't. On Monday evening, the duo's Twitter page confirmed Hardaway had died, but asked for privacy and gave no information on the manner of death. The article goes on to say some social media users claimed Hardaway died from covid, but it has not been confirmed by the family or her group page. Many of these claims are made on the basis of a report from the website Blavity, which now appears to be unavailable. Daily Beast reporter Will Summer highlighted the tweet. I'm seeing claims that Diamond of Diamond and Silk, a covid vaccine hater, died of covid and was hospitalized for it. But the truth is her cause of death isn't clear yet. And the November claims that she had covid

came from a blavity article that appears to have been deleted. MAGA supporter Diamond of Diamond and Silk has been hospitalized due to covid was reported in November. But that is based on that underlying report, which now is unclear as to its truth. What we do know is that Donald Trump put out a statement about the death of Diamond saying, quote, really bad news for Republicans and frankly, all Americans are beautiful. Diamond of Diamond and Silk has just passed away at her home in the state she loves so much, North Carolina. Silk was with her all the way and at her passing. There was no better team anywhere or at any time. Diamond's death was totally unexpected. Probably her big and precious heart just plain gave out. Rest in peace, our magnificent diamond. You will greatly you will be greatly missed. Trump speculating about the cause of death as well. And as a reminder, here

was their view about covid vaccines. Speaker 4 Yes, we don't need to look at the community. Right. But what we don't need to happen is what happened with Africa. When Bill Gates and them took that vaccine to Africa, trying to vaccinate, they felt like stuff can start right there in certain parts of Africa. That's what we don't need to. You're not going to make black people a guinea pig for this year right here. We're not going to be your experiment. Nope. Or your project. Right. Not black. Yes. Today, Billy, yes, the surgeon general

was talking too. As a matter of fact, he was trending today. Listen, tell us what we need to know. Yeah. But I always look at the underbelly of what's going on. That's the intuition in me. That's my intuitive

counterpart. Yes. Uh huh. What are you about to do here? Right. Because what you're not going to do, you're not going to start vaccinating black folks. Right. And we have to have a vaccination card just to go to work. So you're not going to do that. And what it does is it'll start with us first. Right. Anyway, I think you get the point. So listen, unclear if she died of covid. Today's voicemail is related to the death of Diamond. I take no pleasure in anyone's death, vaccinated or unvaccinated. I never have. Donald Trump Jr. and others claim people on the left want right wingers to die of covid or to die unvaccinated or vaccinated or whatever. That's

absolutely insane. There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that I take pleasure or hope for the death of any of these folks, whether it be Herman Cain or whoever else. If indeed it was a death from covid and she was unvaccinated, that is a tragedy. It's a tragedy of weaponized disinformation, although we know that against the new variants, the vaccine does not prevent transmission or infection. It does reduce the odds that you die. And it has likely saved tens of millions of people globally. And whatever the circumstances are of this death, although I found her political views disgusting and deplorable and contradictory to everything I stand for. I do not wish harm on anybody. And we will,

I believe, at some point find out the truth about the death of Diamond. I want to play a video for you of an attendee at a Turning Point USA event where a woman blames Donald Trump for millions of vaccine deaths. What? What? How? What is she talking about? She says I'm a DeSantis gal because Trump led to millions of vaccine deaths. Listen to this. Trump or DeSantis? Right. DeSantis all day. Why? Well, because I don't like vaccine salesmen and millions of people are being killed all across the world. And I blame Donald Trump for that. Right. Trump helped develop the vaccines, she believes anyway, and therefore Trump is responsible for the millions of vaccine deaths

around the world. You know, I think at this point in January of 2023, if you still believe the covid vaccines have killed millions of people, I doubt I can say anything to bring you back to reality. But this has been floating around for a long time. There's just no evidence that people are dying from the covid vaccine. It's important to understand that when these folks talk about the VAERS system, vaccine adverse event reporting system, VAERS, anybody can submit anything they want to the VAERS system. It's not a definitive source of information on vaccine safety. The submissions to VAERS include anything that happens after vaccination, whether it's related to the vaccine or not. you get a heart attack and die 10 months after getting vaccinated. It can end up in VAERS. And people like this woman will say that's a vaccine death. VAERS is a passive surveillance system. It relies on people like you or me or a health care

professional to voluntarily report events that take place. It doesn't capture all adverse events. It doesn't link adverse event events to the vaccine. It doesn't capture all adverse events. It doesn't link adverse event events to the vaccine. It doesn't do any of those things. I even on a live stream filled out such a report. I didn't hit submit because I don't want to be part of the fraud. But anybody can just go in and say, got the vaccine and died. It's not useful in figuring out whether people are dying from the vaccine. And when we ask the question, do we have out whether people are dying from the vaccine. And when we ask the question, do we have evidence that people are dying from the covid vaccine? The answer is no. You have a combination of lies and then just correlation that is not causation in any way.

Car accident nine months after the vaccine shows up in VAERS. What is that representative of the spirit of what we're trying to track? It is not. So unfortunately, this stuff is still around. It's continuing to circulate. I don't know that I can single handedly shut down the disinformation. But the interesting thing with this particular woman is DeSantis also said, go and get vaccinated. He later backed off and said, well, no mandates and not these people and that and consider that the other thing. But DeSantis was also out there saying people should get vaccinated. I don't think I can change her. I don't think I can change any of these people. But at some point, if we can, it's good to introduce a little bit of reality to some of these discussions. Did you know that half of Americans are deficient in vitamin A, vitamin C and magnesium?

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a smoothie or shake. It's simple. It's something easy you can do going into the new year, staying properly nourished. Athletic Greens is giving my audience a free year supply of vitamin D. I take that every day in winter. Plus, you'll get five free travel packs of AG1. Go to athleticgreens.com slash Pacman. That's athletic G-R-E-E-N-S dot com slash Pacman. The link is in the podcast notes. I want to revisit with you. Taxation is theft. It's the little brother to taxation is slavery that we sometimes hear from Republicans and right wingers. A new congresswoman, a Republican, of course, Anna Paulina Luna pulled out. Taxation is theft yesterday when being interviewed on Fox Business by Neil Cavuto.

Let's listen and then discuss the endless, bottomless absurdity of this silly claim that some Republicans like to make. I'm not going to say that I want to cut defense spending, but I will say that I think it's important that we are looking to make sure that we are getting the best deal, especially on some of this stuff that we're spending money on. So I think that we need to have those discussions. But more or less what I've heard in some of these negotiations is we're talking about programs that aren't going to the necessities that we, the American people need, i.e. protections. I'm talking about some of these woke ideology, these funded programs. And for example, these these salaries for these additional weaponized eighty seven thousand IRS agents, which you saw we tried to pass

yet the Senate and even the Biden White House is pushing back on. Sir, I say taxation is theft and I don't want any more IRS agents than you probably do. So wait, I'm going to restrict this segment to taxation. It's theft because it's interesting. OK, so first of all, Anna Paulina Luna's salary is paid by taxes. So if you really believe taxation is theft, then you should be refusing your salary. You should reject such an ill-gotten and stolen salary. If you actually believe that taxes are theft because you're being paid with stolen money sort of makes you an accessory to the theft. That's number one. She's not rejecting her salary that I'm aware of. But let's talk about taxation is theft. Taxation is theft.

Every once in a while rears its ugly head, usually among libertarian circles, but sometimes among reactionary MAGA as well. Taxation is not theft in a number of different ways. First of all, nobody is forcing you to pay taxes in the sense that you have the option to work or not to work. Don't want to pay taxes. Don't work. Oh, but then how would I fund my life? Well, you have a choice. Secondly, if you believe that the taxation system in the United States is theft, you can try to go to a different country that might have a different system. What you might find is that the countries in which you can get away with paying no taxes aren't places you probably want to live. Now, you might say, well,

David, every every country has taxes. So, well, if your argument is the American government is stealing through taxes, you're free to try to go somewhere else if the immigration law will allow you and if the tax law is more favorable to you. Number three, you have decided to be here in the sense that you either immigrated here knowing that there are taxes in the United States or your parents immigrated here and then birthed you or your parents were born here and chose not to leave and birthed you here into the system where there is taxes. So you do have recourse. Your parents had born here and chose not to leave and birthed you here into the system where there is taxes. So you do have recourse. Your parents had recourse.

There are options here. And then number four, you can also lobby to get elected officials who agree that taxation is theft. And if they get elected, they can try to eliminate taxes. So it's not theft and it's not slavery. Now, the bigger picture, of course, is there is no way to have a civilized society without taxes. Anthropological research and other sociological research tells us that what usually they talk about 150, it's called

the Dunbar number. When you get to 150 people organizing 150 people, you need some centralization and some decisions that are made thinking of the group as a collective. If you don't, you have untenable situations that would prevent homo sapiens forever advancing to the point at which we are now. Ideas of every road can be private. And, you know, you build a road and then you just charge people to go on it. And every road is private or police is private and fire is these things. These things quite literally do not work once you get beyond groups of one hundred and fifty people. And so these folks are living in a complete and total fantasy world. Usually you don't hear straight up taxation. It's theft from elected officials in the House of Representatives. You hear it more from activists.

You hear it more from anti-tax groups or libertarian groups. But to straight up here, taxation is theft from someone in a position of power like this really shows us the degree of radicalization in the current Republican Congress. And it is very, very scary. As I've been telling you all week, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican congresswoman, now wants to be taken seriously. And unfortunately, it's looking increasingly like corporate media is going to help her.

There's a really good article in Salon by Amanda Marcotte, which makes a lot of the points that we've been making on the show this week about Marjorie Taylor Greene. And Amanda writes, quote, Marjorie Taylor Greene wants to be a mainstream Republican now. Sadly, the media will let it happen. Greene is walking the path laid by the Tea Party in which today's extremists become tomorrow's new GOP normal. This is a really good article and it points out a few different things. One of them is that there's no real daylight between the two factions. In other words, the two factions we're talking about are the pro Kevin McCarthy,

pro Trump people and the anti Kevin McCarthy, pro Trump people. Remember, as I told you yesterday and the day before, you used to have pro and anti Trump Republicans. The anti Trump Republicans are still there. But now the pro Trump Republicans have divided into two, the ones that wanted Kevin McCarthy to be speaker and the ones that did not. Amanda Marcotte writes in this article that there is a very good chance that corporate media is going to allow Marjorie Taylor Greene to rebrand herself in this way that she is trying to do. It's extraordinarily important that we not be fooled by this redemption tour of sorts that Marjorie Taylor Greene now is on.

Her perspective is now that Kevin McCarthy is speaker, I voted for the speaker. Republicans are in power. I can either go the way of being kind of one of these agitators like Lauren Boebert, who she's very much in a war with at this point in time, or I can be cozy with power. I can get back on committees. And that's very appealing to Marjorie Taylor Greene. She is clearly desperate for power. And part of this may even be starting to think about continuing to lobby to be Donald Trump's vice presidential running mate. The other thing and this is not about, oh, everyone's a fascist. That's not what I'm saying. But when we think about authoritarianism and fascist wannabes and dictator wannabes,

fascists will often do these rewriting of their own history realignments, these sort of redemption tours. If you allow them to do it, they will sort of mention some of my past views were either mistakes or jokes, which I regret. Marjorie Taylor Greene did that on Sunday where she said, I got sucked into some stuff on the Internet like it happens to everybody. And if you allow them, they will rewrite their own history. Marjorie Taylor Greene is desperate for power. She's desperate for credibility and recognition after being a joke removed from committees and essentially a laughingstock for two years. And she's probably angling for some position of higher power. It could be within Congress. It could be as Donald Trump's running mate. She wants to go

from Jewish space lasers to I'm normal. I fell for some stuff, but please forgive me. Now I'm really a mainstream Republican, just like Mitt Romney or something like that. Corporate media should not allow her to get away with that. And I have been careful when we talk about George W. Bush. And I say, listen, if you put up a video of George W. Bush and you put up a video of Trump, obviously, George W. Bush seems normal compared to Trump. But let's not allow his reputation to be rehabilitated when he did horrible things as president. And the media, corporate media should not allow Marjorie Taylor Greene to get away with what she is very obviously trying to do. Like Amanda Marcotte writes, I'm worried they will

let her get away with it. But let's hope it doesn't happen. One other note on Marjorie Taylor Greene, Mike Pillow. His real name is Mike Lindell. He's the CEO and founder of MyPillow. Mike Pillow seems to be turning on Marjorie Taylor Greene. And this is the continued rift within the pro Trump wing of the Republican Party. And Pillow is not happy with Marjorie Taylor Greene over her vote for Kevin McCarthy and says she was probably bribed with some kind of promise for something. Take a listen to this. You just think of this.

I want you to think of this. Look when Matt Gaetz put this out, okay? Was it the seventh or eighth vote? Now think of this. If you did it right out of the gate, you got to think of this as marketing, guys. If you did it right out of the gate, it's not going to fly you. I think right now it's happening just the way it's going to unfold here. Where does this end? It can only end with McCarthy giving in. It's not going to be the other way. I'm telling you that. I know these guys, if they have made promises to the grassroots, they've made promises to the people.

Matt Gaetz is not going to break his promise, and neither – I'm very surprised that the one – I won't name her name, but it's Marjorie Taylor Greene. She broke the promise. Oh, I let it slip out. The media can say Mike Lindell bashes Marjorie Taylor Greene. I just think that she I mean, it's her choice, but obviously she was promised something. Yeah. So listen, people get promised stuff all the time. Pillow is not wrong that there's all sorts of horse trading and promises and debt negotiation. 100 percent. That's the case. The message here, though, is when you've lost Mike Pillow, but you are pro Trump, that is a serious rift. And of course, the hope is that this degrades and destroys the Republican Party from within.

The most important aspect to this that I think it's important to refresh is that at no point were these 20 Republicans or the others were none of them at any point were primarily concerned with what is best for the American people. They were concerned with publicity. They were concerned with attention. Some of them were probably concerned with staying in Trump's good graces. They were concerned with all sorts of different things. What can I negotiate for myself? How can I seize power for myself? What was not on the list is what is best for the American people. It was not even a consideration. They turn on each other. They turn back their friends, their enemies. You look at Dan Crenshaw, you look at Matt Gaetz. Are they with

Trump? Are they not? They disagree here. They agree there, whatever. But never does it enter into the into the calculus. What is best for the American people here? And the proof continues to be presented in the reality that after they finally agreed on a speaker after 15 votes and Kevin McCarthy took the gavel and the whole thing, the first thing they went to was repealing the funding bill for the IRS, which, by the way, they don't understand. They're confused about and also has zero chance of even becoming a reality because the Senate's not going to repeal it. And if they try to, Joe Biden would veto it. It's going nowhere. It's just a waste of time. The idea of, hey, what did the American people need? What might be useful to the American people?

Why don't we look at health care and getting people health care? Why don't we look at education? Why don't we look at climate? Why don't we look at energy? Why don't we look at all these different? No, it's just what about repealing the IRS thing, which we don't even understand? They do not care about the American people. And much like, you know, we had these viral interviews and Luke Beasley would do some for us at Trump events. He would ask people, what do you like the most about what Trump did? And the answers were either something Trump didn't actually do or something Trump did that has absolutely no impact on their lives whatsoever or has a negative impact. Give it six months now of Republican control in the House. Give it a year and then we'll go out

and interview these very same people and say, what is the Republican House done? It will either be things they haven't done, things they did that are damaging, or the third one that you're going to see as well. They haven't been able to do anything because of Democrats in the Senate. That's going to be the explanation. We're ready for it. It's unfortunately very depressing. We have a voicemail number. That number is two one nine two. David P, you're welcome to call any time. Our anti-vaccine friend, I guess, Eric from Mass called in and he really assails my character in a horrible way, claiming that I'm happy that Diamond died. Take a listen. Hey, David, it's Eric from Mass. You might be psyched.

Diamond, the diamond and silk died. You're rooting for all your political opponents to die from COVID. Speaker 1 I have never rooted for anyone to die of COVID. Speaker 2 And Trump should be arrested just because people have different thoughts than you do. Speaker 1 I have never, ever said Trump should be arrested for any reason other than it appears he committed crimes. Unbelievable. I mean, I don't know where you get off on this.

I'd like you to do one thing. Do a video on any crime that Trump committed. But you can't because you can't find one that didn't do anything. But he must be a happy day for you, buddy. We have done extensive videos on that. We talk. And again, the framing, a crime that Trump committed. People are innocent until proven guilty. So if I went on the air and said Trump should be convicted of X crime, people would rightly write to me and say, well, but David, you're innocent until proven guilty. He's got to be charged. Then you need a trial. But of course,

there is significant evidence that Trump was criminally involved in the incitement of the riots and that Trump's actions trying to overturn the results in Georgia, even though Joe Biden won so that those votes would be those electoral votes would be given to Trump was also an extortive fraud. It is not up to me to determine that, though. It is up for it is up to the judicial system. And we will hopefully soon learn more about that. We've got a great bonus show for you today. Katie Porter is running for Senate. I think she's great. We're going to talk about it. Number two, John Bolton now says he will run in 2024 if it's what's necessary to prevent Donald Trump from being president again. Interesting guy that Bolton, not a huge fan of his, I have to tell you. And Americans are piling up credit card debt

at record rates, and it could prove very costly to the economy as well as to people's personal finances. We will talk about all of those stories and more on today's bonus show. Oh, the bonus show where you want to make money. Yeah. Everybody else that makes money to fund themselves is bad. In addition to that, tonight at 6 p.m. Eastern, 3 p.m. Pacific, we will have our first David Pakman show town hall of 2023. I really want you to be there. We will be streaming it live on YouTube, Twitch and Facebook. We will also be welcoming your calls. You it's really you at David Pakman dot com slash discord. Discord is how we take the calls. I look forward to speaking with you. You can also just watch even if you don't have a question for me, but it's going to be great.

And we will see you then. Otherwise, back here tomorrow.