The David Pakman Show - 11/14/23: Inflation was ZERO last month, Fox defends Trump Nazi comment

Episode Date: November 14, 2023

-- On the Show: -- New inflation numbers show zero inflation last month, lowering year-over-year inflation to 3.2% -- In the wake of the Clarence Thomas ethics fiascos, the Supreme Court adopts a code of ethics with no mechanism for enforcement -- Failed Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake is confronted by former David Pakman Show guest Republican Tim Miller -- Jacob Chansley, a Trump rioter also known as the "Q-Anon Shaman," is running for Congress -- Fox News host John Roberts defends Donald Trump's Nazi-like "vermin" comments by playing the "both sides" game -- Donald Trump's allies have a list of dangerous loyalists for a planned fascist power grab if Trump becomes President again -- Donald Trump Jr testifies again in the Trump civil fraud trial in New York, a decision that could backfire badly -- Shocking Donald Trump audio from interviews with ABC's Jonathan Karl reveals some disturbing beliefs -- Donald Trump's lawyer presents faulty evidence in court that appears to prove the entire case against Trump -- Voicemail caller wonders why there is no Democratic primary given that Joe BIden's polls are "so low" -- On the Bonus Show: SCOTUS rejects appeal of prisoner kept in solitary confinement for 3 years, Thanksgiving shutdown sets up nightmare travel scenario, latest COVID variant is "highly contagious," much more... 🔊 Babbel: Get 55% off your subscription at https://babbel.com/pakman ✉️ StartMail: Get 50% OFF a year subscription at https://startmail.com/pakman 😮 DealDash: Use code PAKMAN for 100 free bids at https://dealdash.com/pakman 🛌 Go to https://helixsleep.com/pakman & use code HELIXPARTNER25 for 25% OFF + 2 free pillows 💻 Get Private Internet Access for 83% OFF + 4 months free at https://www.piavpn.com/David 🛡️ Incogni: The first 100 people to use code PAKMAN will get 60% off at http://incogni.com/pakman -- Become a Supporter: http://www.davidpakman.com/membership -- Subscribe on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/thedavidpakmanshow -- Subscribe to Pakman Live: https://www.youtube.com/pakmanlive -- Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/davidpakmanshow -- Like us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/davidpakmanshow -- Leave us a message at The David Pakman Show Voicemail Line (219)-2DAVIDP

The stock market today bursting on the news of significantly lower inflation. Now, I know this is going to be highly triggering to certain people in the audience who will write in and say, but David, haven't you seen the price of eggs? But of course, we don't measure inflation by the price of eggs that one person sees in one grocery store. And these are remarkable numbers. Zero inflation last month, lowering year over year inflation to three point two percent, the lowest year over year inflation number in about two years and starting to get down, starting to get down to that rule of thumb, two to 3% inflation that is believed to be healthy and expected and desired in a standard classical understanding of macro

economics, which has its limits. But I will explain. Let's do three things in this segment. Hopefully these are useful. I'll tell you what the news is. I will tell you why a little bit of inflation is considered desirable. And then we will talk about the consumer price index or maybe we'll do the consumer price index first. So here is Yahoo Finance consumer prices unchanged in October. Core inflation rises at the slowest pace

since September of 2021, more than two years ago. Consumer price index consumer prices were unchanged from the prior month in October as a drop in oil prices dragged down headline inflation, while core inflation rose at the slowest annual pace since September of 2021. The CPI showed prices rose zero percent over the last month and three point two percent over the prior year. That's a deceleration from prices up zero point four percent in September and three point seven percent in the year ending in last September. Now, let me explain to you how this works. There are so many people confused about zero last month, but year over year, 3 percent. What's going on? I've actually been working on trying to figure out

a chapter for my forthcoming book about the constant confusion that exists over many of these metrics, the unemployment rate and people like, no, no, no, it can't be right. Well, you don't even understand what is being measured. The debt deficit. Oh, I don't know which is which. A lot of people don't know the way it works with inflation is we have two numbers. We have what was inflation last month. And then if you add last month's inflation data to the previous 11 months, what is inflation been over the last year? So the way it works is as follows. After September. In October, we learned that September inflation was zero point four percent. If you then look at the one year period, September of twenty two to September of twenty three, with the addition of September zero point four number, we came to a 12 month inflation number

of three point seven percent. So what did we do today? And I'm so sorry for the people that understand this, but so many people don't that I think this is this is useful with today's data. We learned that in the calendar month of October, inflation was zero. We then look at rather than September to September inflation. We look at October to October. What we've done in our one year calculation is we've dropped September of 22. We've moved forward a month and we've added October of 23. That 12 month period has seen inflation at 3.2 percent. The zero number from October averaged into the last 12 months drops us from 3.7 to 3.2 percent. Now, sadly, I will get many comments from people saying, David, zero inflation. Have you seen gas prices? Have you seen what raspberries cost? OK, this misses how these things are calculated. The same metrics that many of you

were satisfied with when they said inflation was high. You now say can't be trusted because inflation is getting relatively low. But this has been measured the same way for decades and decades. You look at a basket of consumer goods and services, transportation, food, medical care, et cetera. You weigh them. You would just for things like, you know, imagine, for example, that a lot of grocery prices went up, but they also represented far larger. You know, imagine avocados got 50 percent bigger, but the price went up 50 percent. Well, that's not really a price increase on a weighted average. You figure all those things out. Maybe computers got more expensive, but they're more powerful. So computing power might have remained the same. You average it all out, you weigh it,

and then you get a number. It's been done the same way for decades. And this is what that data shows. Now, some always write in and say, David, why is two or three percent inflation good? And I know I've explained this before, but it's good. You know, we have a lot of new viewers. It's good to understand these things. The reason a little bit of inflation is good is as follows. A ton of inflation is bad because things become unaffordable for people. People stop buying things. Businesses lose revenue. They have to lay people off, etc. So a super high inflation spiral where wages don't keep up with prices is bad for reasons that are usually intuitive. The counter to this is, well, wouldn't it be great if prices went down?

And sure, it might be good for me as an individual if prices went down and stuff was super cheap. But the reason that at the macroeconomic level, a deflationary situation is not considered good is because it can cause a deflationary spiral in the following way. If you see prices going down, you might say to yourself, hey, I'm going to wait to buy stuff, not food because you need food, but I might wait to buy a car, a computer. I might wait to take a trip because if prices are going down, you expect that things will be cheaper in the future. So you might as well wait. That also is a reduction in economic activity. If businesses

have no one buying their stuff because everybody's waiting for prices to go down, they end up having to lay people off. People end up without money. Then they don't spend. It's a deflationary spiral. So two percent inflation in standard economics is considered good because it's enough of an increase that people are incentivized to keep participating in the marketplace, but not so much that it's outpacing wage growth and nobody can afford anything. In reality, growth comes partially from that two to three percent inflation. Now, you can look at this and say, David, that ignores the limited resources of the planet in the long term. It ignores all these different things.

And that's absolutely right. It does. It's a model. It's an economic model that explains to us why roughly two percent inflation is considered a good thing, an expected thing, a desired thing. We are getting close to that now down to three point two percent inflation. We are getting close to being in that two point oh to three point oh range. This is good news in a lot of different

ways. It might mean that the Fed is done raising rates. It might mean that mortgage rates are going to keep ticking down as much as they have been. So we're going to watch this closely. A lot of people who hate Joe Biden are furious. You don't even have to praise Joe Biden beyond just saying, hey, he didn't do anything so bad that it screwed this up. But inflation numbers significantly lower. The Supreme Court has adopted an ethics code. Why might they do that? Well, I think many of you know why. Clarence Thomas is one reason why. But the ethics code has no mechanism for enforcement. So it is apparently another one of these optics decisions.

The Associated Press reports Supreme Court says it is adopting a code of ethics, but it has no means of enforcement. This is the first code of ethics ever adopted by the Supreme Court in the face of sustained criticism over undisclosed trips and gifts from wealthy benefactors to some justices. But the code lacks a means of enforcement. Great. We have a code. We won't be enforcing it. Sounds good. The policy was agreed to by all nine justices. Big surprise. Does not appear to impose any significant new requirements and leaves compliance entirely to each justice. Well, I'm a justice. I have a code. I may not have abided by the code. What's my punishment? I decide that my punishment is

nothing. The justices said they have long adhered to ethics standards and suggested that criticism over the court over ethics was the product of misunderstanding rather than anybody actually doing anything wrong. Now, over the last year, we've learned about all sorts of apparent. Misdeeds ethically by Supreme Court justices. We have the undisclosed luxury trips and the wealthy benefactors of people like Clarence Thomas who got trips and real estate transactions funded by this Texas billionaire, Harlan Crow. We then found out in addition to that, that Justice Clarence Thomas failed

to repay a large portion of an RV loan that he got from a friend. His friend gave him the loan, but then repaid most of the loan himself. $267,000. A lot of this, as you can see, centers around Justice Clarence Thomas. But he's not the only one. Justice Samuel Alito also took a luxury fishing trip with a Republican billionaire who has had cases before the Supreme Court. Alito did not recuse himself from the cases.

He did also he also did not even disclose that he was the beneficiary of one of those trips as required by law. So should there be some sort of ethics code for the Supreme Court? Absolutely. Should there be some means of enforcement or some kind of consequence if you don't abide by it without a means for enforcement? It's all pretty damn meaningless, to be perfectly frank. And so this does reek of, hey, we're taking some heat. Here's something we're going to do. We're going to claim we've basically been doing it anyway, but we're formalizing it. And then if nobody abides by it or if we don't abide by it, there's really going to be no consequence anyway. There needs to be

broader reform to the Supreme Court. I've talked for a while about term limits and a schedule of nominations such that we know in advance how many justices will the next four year term allow for the president of the United States? With nine justices, you would simply have to figure out a rotation. Maybe it's 18 years, maybe it's 20 years, maybe it's 12 years. Different people can come to a different number so that we don't have this situation where we go, OK, wait, it's 2016 Trump versus Hillary. How many Supreme Court picks will the president get? Well, it might be one. How old are the justices? Have they expressed interest in retiring? How is their health? How is this all looking? Trump might get one. He might get two. He might get three. Well, turned out that it was on the higher end of the spectrum rather than the lower end. We could have a system where we know in advance in the next four year term, there will be one nomination. There will be two nominations,

whatever the case may be. And at least it would make it a little more concrete. It's not a maybe if Trump defeats Hillary, he gets two picks. This will swing the court from five, four to five, four the other way. Now it's practical and it's concrete. This is just one idea, one reform that should be made. But certainly an ethics code with teeth is 100 percent necessary. Am I wrong? Am I too cynical? Is there more to this ethics code? And I'm just not seeing it? Let me know in a comment. Let me know in an email. Think of your most personal emails. If you're using a free email provider, you should know that they're scanning every email you send and receive even after you delete it. They're usually using the data to build a picture of your life to show you ads,

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And it only takes a few clicks to migrate all of your emails and contacts over to start mail. Go to start mail dot com slash Pacman to get 50 percent off your first year. That's only about two bucks a month. That's S.T.A.R.T. mail dot com slash Pacman for 50 percent off. The link is in the podcast notes. switch sold for twenty two dollars recently. Deal Dash auctions anything from iPads to clothing, autograph memorabilia, you name it. And here's how it works. You buy bids up front, for example, 30 bucks for 400 bids. Every auction starts at zero dollars. There's no minimum. And each bid increases the price by a penny. If no one bids only 10 seconds after you bid, you win the auction. I found an awesome chair on deal dash. That's going to look great in my office. I'm bidding

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He interviewed failed Republican Arizona gubernatorial candidate Carrie Lake, who's also now running for Senate for the forthcoming show. This was filmed from a number of cameras and it has now been released and it is absolutely fascinating. Now, I want to remind everybody, Tim Miller is a Republican. He's a Republican of a different mold. He has relatively little in common with people like Donald Trump and Carrie Lake, the election deniers, the conspiracy theorists, the populist authoritarians, et cetera. And the conversation is fascinating to see. It really is a good exchange, but it's a good exchange, not so much because of

the incredible points that Tim Miller is making, although he makes good points, but because of how this really shows that when you put forward to these MAGA types, some really simple propositions that used to be uncontroversial for the former Republican party, the party of 15, 20 years ago. There's no similarity. There's no similarity between these modern MAGA Republicans and the traditional Republicans. It's really a completely different animal. So let's take a look at this. This is very interesting to see. We'll discuss various points here. I'm not OK with that. I want you to be able to talk whatever you guys say on the circus. I want to be able to have

conservative students not being shamed. Now, this is Carrie Lake doing the thing about they're silencing the right. They're silencing the right in academia. They're silencing the right in social media. They're silencing the right in society, in your judicial system, et cetera. And Tim Miller points out there's actually an insane amount of speech for young people on the right. This is like a golden age for conservative student speech. It's like it's the best time ever. If you are a conservative student, you want to talk. You have huge platforms. I went to watch you speak at Turning Point USA. All these kids have huge audiences that come to see them. And that's great. That's fine. They're all speaking.

Their speech is another threat. There weren't any cops coming to shut down the Turning Point USA thing. But here's the thing. You say you care about the fentanyl crisis and our kids. I care deeply. So if you care so deeply about this, couldn't you actually do something about it if you stopped the bulls**t

about the last election? If you had just acknowledged that Trump had lost and acknowledged that Trump had lost, and acknowledged that you had lost, you'd probably be in good shape to do something. You probably would have won your governor's race had you just talked about things people cared about instead of the election fraud. So sometimes don't you ever think to yourself, I wish I could just stop talking about this fake thing that Donald Trump made me make up so that I could actually talk about the stuff that's important? Because we agree about fentanyl.

I agree. I wish we could deal with that. I talked about that all the time at the campaign, too. I'm sorry you weren't with me. I watched you. I'm sorry you weren't with me every step of the way. The people of Arizona understand me, and they know me, and they care about me, and I care about them. They reject you.

And I care about them. Getting them better. Freeing the people who are held politically, political prisoners. Yeah, absolutely. I think you're still a little extreme. That's OK, though. It's good to see you again. So Tim Miller is pointing out that had Carrie Lake not adopted.

And when I say adopted, I really do think it's a character. I mean, Carrie Lake used to have completely different politics. And I don't know how much of this stuff she believes. You know, later we're going to have some examples of evidence that Trump does really believe some of the things he said. I don't have any evidence that Carrie Lake believes this stuff. I think she just adopted this this persona doesn't make it any less bad, but it just means it might make it worse because, you know, she's lying. Tim Miller points out if you just focused on stuff like fentanyl, if you focused on

other things instead of talking about how Trump actually won and how you actually won and talking about pardoning the January 6th rioters while claiming to be for law and order. If instead of that, you talked about actual policy, you genuinely might have won in Arizona. And I think Tim Miller is right about that. Now, this gets weird. Carrie Lake kind of strangely touches Tim. We can keep doing this. That's right. I'd love to. We have some areas of agreement. We agree on the fentanyl thing and then you get into other stuff. But the other side, I'm not going to do. I'm sorry, I'm not making you happy. The other stuff

is I don't know what you're touching me. The other stuff is what you have. I know she just kind of weirdly touches him. It's it's a really weird, weird moment. The win is the thing. I'm a mom. I'm sorry. I'm a mom. I like to touch too, but you know, in an interview setting, it's a little uncomfortable. I'm sorry that we don't agree on everything, but what I am not sorry about is that I think that you, I do believe that we can't agree that we both love America. We do. Well, I know that I love America. I do think that you were okay with Donald Trump trying to end the American experiment last time. So that makes me wonder how sincere your love is,. I do think that you are OK with Donald Trump trying to end the American experiment last

time. So that makes me wonder how sincere your love is. But I do appreciate it. Thank you for your time. Good. Thank you for your time. This is actually maybe the most critical moment, which is very often when they're backed against the wall, there is really no substantive argument remaining to be made.

They will say to other Republicans, listen, we we both love America. And it's usually a throwaway. And you go, yes, yes, yes, we both love America. But Tim actually has the right response, which is if you went out of your way instead of talking about policy to push a notion that would have allowed Donald Trump to become president, even though he didn't win, that might have allowed you to become governor of Arizona, Kerry Lake, even though you didn't win. Do you really love America in the sense that you're against the democratic system that we have?

How could you love America if that's the sort of thing that you push? Really well done by Tim Miller. I believe the full interview is going to be out this weekend and we'll see if maybe next week we will talk about it. But when these Tim is very well positioned, you don't have to agree on policy. On everything with people like Tim Miller, Mitt Romney, et cetera. But they are very well positioned to at least get some of these MAGA Trump is thinking, hey, is this actually the Republican Party that maybe I grew up with or that existed 10 years ago, 20 years ago? Has something gone completely off the rails with the Republican Party? I'm not saying it'll work. I'm not saying it'll save the party or bring them back to sanity.

But it is these sorts of folks with really unblemished Republican credentials that maybe can get some of these voters thinking twice about their unflinching and blind support and loyalty to people like Carrie Lake and Donald Trump. So we will see. Speaking of horror, one of the Trump rioters is running for Congress. And 10 years ago, I would have laughed this off. Fifteen years ago, I would have said this guy's got no shot. This is a different era. And I'm not ready to say that I'm talking about the so-called QAnon shaman.

This is the guy who I can't imagine anyone in my audience hasn't seen. His real name is Jacob Chansley. He's the guy who rioted on January 6th, 2021, broached the U.S. Senate, breached the U.S. Senate chamber, wearing this strange kind of Viking hat with either a real or fake animal pelt. I don't really know. He is now going to be running because Congresswoman Debbie Lesko in Arizona said she is not going to be running for reelection. That is going to be an open seat. Now, you might remember that this guy, Jacob Chansley, was sentenced in November of twenty twenty one to forty one months in federal prison. As the Axios report says, his lawyers said during the court proceedings that he disavowed QAnon and Trump. He was released to a Phoenix halfway house

last March. A.Z. Central reports Arizona prohibits people convicted of felonies from voting until they have completed their sentence and had their civil rights restored. However, the Constitution doesn't bar convicted felons from holding federal office. So this guy can't vote yet on the basis of his criminal convictions. But nothing stops him from running for a seat in the House of Representatives. I am leaning towards this guy is not going to win. But it is not a scenario like 10 or 12 years ago where we would say someone like this has absolutely no chance. Trump is proof of that. 10 or 15 years ago, we would have said even in the Republican Party, which was already going in a very strange direction at that time, even in the

Republican Party, someone like the QAnon shaman would not have a shot. And if you claim to support the founding fathers, how could you possibly support someone who tried to interfere with the system of checks, balances and procedures and the peaceful transfer of power that the founding fathers put in place? You couldn't. And yet Republicans might if you claim to support law and order. How could you then go and say, well, even though this guy was convicted, convicted of crimes, I think it was unfairly

done or whatever. And I'm going to elect him to the Congress of the United States. Well, you would think that there's a conflict there, a contradiction, a double standard. And there is. But this is the modern MAGA Republican Party. And so the smart thing to do would be not to look away from the seat. Hopefully there's a Republican primary challenger that defeats this guy to prevent it from even getting to the November ballot.

But if a Trump rioter were to become a member of Congress, you would really see this authoritarian, populistic insanity that has taken hold of the Republican Party. Go full circle. Lauren Boebert, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Madison Cawthorn, while he lasted, were bad enough. This is yet another level. And I would not count this guy out. Let's talk about the both sides nonsense that is so often used to run interference for the horrible and disgusting things that are said by many of our elected

officials. As many of you may remember, if you watched yesterday's show over the weekend, Donald Trump referred to leftists and socialists and Marxists and other people of the left as vermin. Vermin is a very similar word to that used in German by a guy named Adolf Hitler. You don't have to say Trump is Hitler to recognize that the language being adopted by Trump and others is very similar to Nazi rhetoric. Well, Fox News contributor Juan Williams was on yesterday, interviewed by Fox host John Roberts and Juan Williams mentions Trump is calling opponents vermin. And John Roberts does a false equivalency, the both sides

game by saying, well, Hillary called some Trump supporters deplorable. Let's take a look at this. And then I will tell you why these are two very different things. Trump this weekend was calling his opponents vermin and confusing whether or not President Obama was still in office. And he's 77 years old. Why isn't Biden making the case now? Well, Hillary Clinton called her opponents deplorables at one point. So there's language on both sides. There is language on both sides. Now, that's true. Both sides use language to communicate. John Roberts. I mean, I can't can't argue with that, but this is a disgusting false equivalency.

And if you understand context and intent and historical connotations, you see the perfect example here of why the false both sides thing can be so dangerous. Hillary Clinton did indeed describe some of Donald Trump supporters as being part of the basket of deplorables. And she was referring to the racist elements, the sexist elements, the homophobic elements, the xenophobic elements, the Islamophobic elements within the ranks of MAGA in 2016. Some said, oh, I'm offended. I'm offended by what the same people who used to say I'm offended isn't an argument said I'm offended. But the term basket of deplorables is not inherently dehumanizing to people. It's criticizing ideology. It's

criticizing behavior. The term vermin, even abstracted from historical context, the term vermin is a dehumanizing term. Humans are pests. They are disease carrying animals. And when you bring in the historical context, you can't help but get to Hitler and you can't help but remember the use of terms like vermin to describe Jews. And so historically, it is language that has been used to justify extreme inhumane actions against groups of people. Hillary Clinton saying basket of deplorables is not at all like Trump saying vermin. There is no history in the American left of dehumanizing the right in order to look at doing horrifying, authoritarian, disgusting things. Trump, on the other hand, is placating and and paying lip service to the exact extreme authoritarian, violent ideology that he is referencing with the term vermin.

Jews were referred to as rats during the Holocaust and vermin as well. And it's language that was used to justify systemic extermination. So we have to understand intent. We have to understand context. We have to understand history. And when you do that, you get to a point where you have to see what John Roberts said and say, no, no, no, no, no. These things are not alike. But this is what Fox News does. They run interference for Trump's absolutely most

depraved and dangerous things. And listen, do I think Trump's going to try to actually exterminate socialists? I guess probably not. But is Trump going to try to prevent the immigration to the United States or even try to deport those whose political views he doesn't like? He said he's going to do that. I think he will try. I think that's absolutely something he will do. Is he going to try to weaponize the Justice Department against his perceived or real political enemies? He says he's going to do it, and I believe he will. Is he going to try to shut down media outlets or at least encumber a media outlets whose view is not pleasing to Trump? He said he's going to do that, and I believe that he will.

So we should believe them when they say this stuff. We should not be lulled into these false equivalencies by people like John Roberts on Fox News. But most importantly, we should just all vote to prevent it from even becoming a thing. And I hope we will. I love my Helix sleep mattress. I've been sleeping on Helix mattresses for years now, which is why I asked them to be a sponsor. You actually take their famous sleep quiz, takes just a few minutes to answer questions about your sleep preferences, body type, sleep position, whether you have back pain and Helix will match you with a mattress that's perfect for you, which is really unique and helpful because

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Go to PIA VPN dot com slash David. The link is in the podcast notes. One of the real fears and dangers in the context of Project 2025 and a potential second Donald Trump term is that whatever restraint existed in Trump's first term when it came to getting total and complete loyal loyalist yes men and yes women in Trump's cabinet and around him would be completely removed and unrestrained. And indeed, we have now learned, thanks to an extraordinarily disturbing Axios report, that there is a pres-screening taking place right now of loyalists for what is being described as an unprecedented power grab. This is an extraordinarily

dangerous situation. The report is by Jim Vande Hei and Mike Allen of Axios, and it outlines exactly what we've been in fear of, exactly what we've been expecting. Let's take a look. Former President Trump's allies are pre-screening the ideologies of thousands of potential foot soldiers as part of an unprecedented operation to centralize and expand his power at every level of the U.S. government if he wins in 2024. Hundreds of people are spending tens of millions of dollars to install a pre vetted pro Trump army of up to 54000 loyalists across government to rip off the restraints imposed on the previous 46 presidents.

If you think you know the extent of this, you probably don't. The screening for ready to serve loyalists has already started, driven in part by A.I. from tech giant Oracle. Social media histories are being plumbed. When Trump took office in 2017, he included many conventional Republicans in his cabinet and key positions. Those officials often curtailed his behavior and power. Trump himself spends little time plotting governing plans, but he is well aware of a highly coordinated campaign to be ready to jam government offices with loyalists willing to stretch the traditional boundaries. If Trump were to win thousands of Trump first, it's not America first. It's Trump first.

Loyalists would be ready for legal, judicial, defense, regulatory and domestic policy jobs. His inner circle plans to purge anyone viewed as hostile to the hard edged, authoritarian sounding plans that he calls Agenda 47. This also is sort of overlapped and intertwining with the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025. So here's the critical part to understand. There's Trump's cabinet in Trump's cabinet in his first term. There were some slightly more restrained people, Rex Tillerson, for example. And I'm not praising these people. I'm just saying they were slightly more restrained. This is crazy to say because he's such a warmonger. But John Bolton was not willing to do

anything that Trump wanted. He was willing to do some things, but not anything. So you've got the cabinet. But this is not about the cabinet. This is about actually taking over the entire departments of the federal government, normally staffed by career federal government employees. A lot of these folks, you work in the State Department, if you work as a career defense department employee, you might have personal politics Department, if you work as a career defense department employee, you might have personal politics. You might not. Some of them are apolitical. Some of them vote. Some don't vote. But the point is, these are career officials who understand. I am here in a nonpolitical role. I am here regardless of whether the person in the White House is a Republican or a Democrat or some third party, if it ever becomes a real possibility.

And those are the people that Donald Trump wants to replace and instead install partisan, outrageous extremists to really reshape and take over huge aspects of what are often nonpolitical elements of the government. This is Steve Bannon's. Steve Bannon loves this. People like Steve Bannon, when they talk about we're going to deconstruct the administrative state, when folks talk about we'll get rid of the Department of Education and we're going to get rid of the IRS and all these different things. Getting rid of them is not very realistic, but the possibility of completely taking them over

with unhinged loyalists, that's not an impossibility. And so when we think about voting in November and we think about, well, what action can I take? What's my list of possible actions? I can vote for the Republican nominee. I can vote for the Democratic nominee. I can write in someone else. I can vote for a third party candidate. I can stay home. I can encourage others to stay home or encourage others to vote. When we think about all of our actions, we really need to keep 2016 in mind and the Supreme Court picks that could have been Hillary Clinton's instead of Trump's and how we would still have Roe v. Wade if that were the case. And then we need to say which action gets us closer to another four years of Trump or DeSantis, although it's looking

unlikely or Nikki Haley. And is that an action that I'm comfortable taking? Is that an action that I'm going to feel able to defend depending on what happens? I know where I am. And it's really important to understand that there is a contingent of the left that will say, David, that's that's centrism. David, that's establishment hackery. We're not going to get the revolution we need with that sort of thinking. But remember, I'm not an accelerationist. Sometimes people run and they go, people write to me, they say, David, you know, there there's a look at look at all these socialists who are furious with you for what you're saying. Don't you feel a need to respond

to them? No, I'm not a socialist and I'm not an accelerationist. I believe that history has shown that the biggest progressive victories come on the heels of incrementalism. Oh, but David, that's not sexy. That's not hot. That's not going to make Tucker Carlson hot like the M&Ms used to make him. Right. But I care about reality. You look at the progressive era, you look at the New Deal era, you look at the civil rights era. Those are the three biggest. I don't know if I call them eras literally, but those are the biggest three eras of real progressive change. And they came over a couple of decades in many cases based on who's on the Supreme Court and who's on the Supreme Court is based on who was elected president a few years before and Supreme Court decisions and then lawsuits and

activism. That's the way that we've achieved success. So, yeah, I understand that that when I say what's the path to making sure that it is not Trump, but Joe Biden or whoever that gets to make Supreme Court decisions? I understand some people go, David, oh, that's that's nonsense. That's not going to really fix the problems we have. We need to burn it all down and vote third party even if it's going. You can do that. It's just a different view. And my view is that history has proven that when we elect the right people and prevent the wrong people from getting in, we actually do make progress. It's sometimes slower than we would like. It's sometimes not as exciting as some would desire. But the choice for 2024 is clear. They've got the list. They're prescreening the people now.

So I'm going to be doing the thing I can defend and feel good about. Everybody's free to make their own decisions for sure. Donald Trump Jr. has testified again in the civil fraud trial against the Trump organization. This time, though, he is testifying for Trump's cause. The prosecutors have already put on their case, which ended last week. You might remember that Donald Trump Jr. testified then he testified again. And this is not without its risks. Take a look at this Newsweek article, which explains Barbara McQuaid, a former U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, suggested the defense will now want to provide the narrative with their questions for Trump Jr. But the former president's eldest son, he's just a boy. Remember

the president's eldest son, former president's eldest son may risk losing credibility if his latest testimony differs too much from what he has already said under oath when answering questions. McQuaid said it's going to be very difficult for Junior to really have a lot of credibility here. His whole strategy when he previously testified was to distance himself from knowledge about these things. It was all about accountants. I don't pay attention. Sure. Maybe I signed off. But remember, he gave that press conference at the end of his testimony where he said, I relied on accountants to do accounting. It's going to be difficult for him, I think, now to say anything with authority other than to repeat what's already said. So the idea here is

if indeed the narrative when the questioning was difficult was, I don't know, I wasn't involved. Accountants did it. If now Trump's lawyers try to spin a convenient line of questioning wherein he asserts a whole bunch of knowledge, if that knowledge he asserts, while it may be convenient to the case, comes at a direct conflict with what it previously said about. I wasn't involved in any of that stuff. This could be a real problem, particularly when you're talking about a bench trial, not with a jury. Now, we have some video and different elements from a junior's testimony that I want to show you. Here are protesters shouting crime family at Don Jr. as he arrived yesterday for his testimony. Family. All right. So there is Don Jr. smiling as the hecklers shout crime family. Here is Don Jr.

speaking. I believe this was before the testimony. When exactly was this? This was, I believe, before why we are apparently already guilty of fraud, having never even heard from us at that point before ever hearing from these witnesses. So that's why, you know, it's a little bit ridiculous, right? You can't even make your case before. Oh, wait, this is it. Well, the document that you're relying on this, you're not, I'm not supposed to rely on a big five accounting firm, like one of the biggest accounting firms in the world. I can pay them millions of dollars. I rely on them to do accounting, but I'm supposed to know more than them. By this logic, insurance companies are going to start suing patients for listening to their

doctors. Right. If you understand, like, am I supposed to know more? Oh, Don Jr. doesn't know anything about it. I'm not an accountant. I'm a business guy. I went through each and every one of our deals. Had they asked me those questions, I could have very easily answered them, but I can't answer. I am an expert, but they didn't ask me. We know, you know, you know about everything about a document that literally everyone acknowledges. I had nothing to do with it. I rely on the accounts to do that. OK, so Don Jr., you know, it's never totally clear what point he's even trying to make. It's whatever is convenient at the time.

Here are some images of Don Jr. and Letitia James in court yesterday morning. Donald Trump sort of I don't even really know how to describe what he's doing. Kind of smirking, I guess, a little bit towards the camera. Attorney General Letitia James also in court, but not at the lawyers table, rather sitting behind many people, including Donald Trump himself, very triggered by what he described as a smirk on her face. She is sort of smirking. I will admit she did sort of seem to be smirking there.

And then lastly, here is Don Jr. after his testimony or during a break in testimony saying that if his father ends up banned from doing business in New York City as a result of this trial, New Yorkers will be begging Trump to come back. This is sort of like a tears in my eyes story. The rest of you will realize what's going on. They'll realize the destructive practices here. They'll realize just how insane that is. And they'll be begging for Speaker 3 There you go. If if they indeed say to Donald Trump, sir, you're not allowed to do business in New York anymore. People will just be lining up, crying, saying, please, sir, we need you doing business in New

York as if one guy is really going to totally reshape the city in the way that these MAGA Trump is want to see happen. So we'll see what the entire defense looks like this week. This is indeed a bench trial. It is not about convincing a jury. It's about convincing a judge and the normal lawyering. I don't even necessarily want to call them tricks because that that's demeaning and maybe a way that it shouldn't be. But a lot of the typical mechanisms that you might use to influence a jury, at least in theory, would not work when it comes to a judge. So let's see what sort of defense they put

up. We'll see what happens today, tomorrow, have a kind of wrap up on it on Thursday, and then we'll see ultimately what the judge decides. This one is coming to an end and it is serving as a sort of preview of the sort of environment that we are going to see when Trump's criminal trials finally start. It is going to be nuts, that's for sure. Have you seen these people search sites? It's a big data privacy, that's for sure. Have you seen these people search sites? It's a big data privacy problem in the United States. They publish personal profiles on millions of Americans for people to see.

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Dot com slash Pacman. Use code Pacman for 60 percent off. The info is in the podcast notes. ABC's Jonathan Karl appeared yesterday on MSNBC with Jen Psaki and brought with him some extraordinary audio recordings of conversations that he had with Donald Trump. I'm going to play some of these conversations for you. And the first clip is completely and utterly off the wall. And in this clip, it did. Let's just play. I don't even understand how to explain this to you. Trump seems to really believe. That there's a path for him to be reinstated president. This is after he's left office.

This is after Joe Biden is president of the United States. We continue to talk about who are the true believers, who are the ones just saying this stuff earlier in the show. I told you, I believe Carrie Lake is not a true believer. I think she's a I believe in saying whatever I need to say in order to get attention from people. And maybe that's that Trump won. Maybe it's not Mike Pillow, I've said, I think, is probably a true believer with Trump. It's harder to know. But here is a recording in which Trump genuinely seems to be saying he believes there is a way for him to be reinstated president just in the middle of a presidential term. Take a look. Months after Biden's inauguration seemed to think that he could be reinstated. And we have a little audio from your interview we're going to play, and then I want to talk to you about it.

By the way, when you had a release recently, you said 2024 or before. What do you mean by that? You don't really think there's a way you would get reinstated before the next election. I'm not going to explain it to you, Jonathan, because you wouldn't either understand it or read it. I mean, this is incredible, and this is one of the things. For all the things that you saw over the course of the Trump presidency, this one really stood out to me for the post-presidency. Mike Lindell, the MyPillow election-denying

guy, he was out saying that Trump was going to be reinstated and he had an oddly specific date. He said August 13th. This was right before that, shortly before. And this was right before that. I figured this was like a QAnon wacky thing that was out there. But I

saw this press release that he put out, and it wasn't a press release about it. It was about something else. And then it was actually criticizing NBC. But the last lines of it were 2024 or before. And that's why I asked if he and you can see he's like, I'm not going to explain it to you. So he's not denying it. But what I found is he was actively pursuing this. He was talking about it with everybody who would listen privately. And he seemed to truly believe that there was going to be a series of steps that would happen in these states that he lost and that Donald Trump was going to be able to go back into the White House. Joe Biden was going to be evicted. And that there's there's a story. I mean, it's not,

by the way, just six months, because what I learned is that interview was about six months. Yes, yes. But he kept on going on into into last year, into 2022. He actually went to Mo Brooks, who he had endorsed running for Senate in Alabama. It was quite conservative. I think he was it this way. He wore body armor to the to this. This is, you know, you could really forget everything else that Donald Trump did just on the basis of that and that belief that Biden's president. But they might be able to go and get me back into the Oval Office somehow. They might be able to do it some. I don't exactly know how. Just that alone is arguably disqualifying for Trump from the presidency. And as we all, I think, understand, if you do remove a sitting president, they don't

bring back the last guy. There's a line of succession. And that's missing from so many of these discussions about how this actually works. Here's the full story about Mo Brooks and what Trump had cooked up with Congressman Mo Brooks on going on into into last year, into 2022. He actually went to Mo Brooks, who he had endorsed running for Senate in Alabama. Quite conservative. By the way, I disagree with Jen Psaki. Moe Brooke does nothing conservative about Moe Brooks. He's an extremist ideologue. There's

nothing conservative about it, but OK, people should know. I mean, let's put it this way. He wore body armor to the to the speech outside the White House on January 6th. He was the first guy to lead the objections in Congress to Biden's certification. So anyway, so Mo Brooks, he called Mo Brooks up and again, unannounced call. And Mo Brooks told me he picked it up and he made a series of four demands of him. And the demands were all related to this reinstatement thing. He wanted Brooks to go out and call on Biden to be removed from the White House, call for a rerunning of the election and for Trump to be reinstated as president. And Mo Brooks, again, in a pretty extreme Trump diehard,

said, no, that's unconstitutional. I can't do it. And Trump then a few days later withdrew his endorsement. But this is what was going on. He really thought that something was going to happen, the Cyber Ninjas audit in Arizona and everything else, that it was all going to happen. The cyber ninjas audit in Arizona and everything else that it was all going to come to this big culminating moment.

Speaker 1 This is based on actual conversations with Trump, and it seems to answer the question, did Trump actually? So there are there are two different but related questions. Did Trump really think he won? The answer might be no. Trump seemed to believe that there was a way to get reinstated, whether he really believed that he won or not. We have to understand that although these are related questions, they are separate questions. Trump might have believed he lost, but that he still could figure out a way to get back in the Oval Office. This alone. There are 10000 other reasons why Trump has no business being president. This alone would be a reason

Trump has no business being president. One more clip from this interview. Trump, I guess, denied to Jonathan Karl that he threatened to leave the Republican Party and run independent. It was pretty widely reported at the time. But here here Trump says, I didn't do that. When you got on the plane, you got a call from Ronald McDaniel. Do you recall? Do you recall that phone conversation? No, because you would say that you are saying that you told her you were going to leave the Republican Party.

This is the sickest thing I've ever heard. I never said any such thing. You mean I was going to form It never says any such thing. You mean I was going to form another party? Yes. Yes. Oh, that's OK. Never happened. Now, as you heard, Trump denied pretty vehemently there that he has ever said anything like that. The RNC actually tried to deny it, too, until Carwell reminded them that his source had confirmed the story in a recorded interview. It's very awkward.

It shows you just how uncomfortable Donald Trump's relationship with the party's establishment has been. Also, it's interesting that Trump would deny something that was already confirmed on the record by other people. So the level of depravity here higher than we thought, certainly higher than we thought. The implications for twenty twenty four. It's no different. We got to make sure this guy doesn't get anywhere near the Oval Office again. But extraordinary audio from Jonathan Karl. And listen, this is why people

record things so that later when they are denied, you go, well, here I have the recording and here's what you said. There is one other aspect I want to talk about related to this week's civil fraud trial. And this is a pretty this is a pretty narrow and specific thing. There is reporting now from the New Republic and elsewhere that is along these lines. This article is called Trump's idiot lawyers just shared faulty evidence in fraud trial. This is genuinely funny. It's also sad to a certain degree. Much of this civil fraud trial in New York centers around.

The Trump organization lying fraudulently representing real estate values. They would say these properties are worth more when they needed them as collateral for a loan. They excuse me. They would say these properties are worth less when it was to reduce or mitigate property taxes. This is just like adding insult to injury. During the course of this case, the Trump team displayed information about their buildings. That was wrong. OK, now we don't know whether they displayed the very documents on which they committed the fraud as their own evidence or whether these are clerical errors. But either way, it's proving the heart of the case. Here's an example. The Trump team put up a document saying 40 Wall Street. This is one of the big controversial buildings that's at the heart of this case.

Forty Wall Street is a 72 story building. However, the bond prospectus, which is sort of like a brochure you use to raise money, says that it's 63 stories tall. So I don't know of any way that a building can be both 72 and 63 stories. Now, there's another problem, which and by the way, their their explanation here is that even though there's 63 floors of space, when you include like the cupola of the building and the very top of the antenna, everything that it is a height of 72 stories, that's their explanation why they are now presenting documents that are causing even more of a problem. Another issue is with the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas. They put up

a slide saying here's a 64 story building, but the architectural drawings don't say that. And part of the reason is that the floor numbers skip. They don't have every floor. It goes from floor eight to floor 16. So floor 16 is really like the ninth floor. It goes from floor eight to floor 16. So floor 16 is really like the ninth floor. This is super common in Vegas, actually. One of the I'm trying to think of which hotel it is. There's a hotel that I have stayed at, you know, half a dozen or more times for a conference where they tell you, oh, sir, we've got you up on the 63rd floor. Oh, delightful. You go. The first floor that actually has rooms on it is called like the 20th floor. Then you're doing the math. You're like, I'm not six. And when you get up

there, you go, this is obviously not 63 stories up. So all of this, is it confusion? Is it part of the very fraud that the case centers around? We don't really know. But Trump's own lawyers are presenting so-called evidence that only makes it seem as though they are indeed guilty of the very thing that they are trying to deny. We have a voicemail number. That number is two one nine two. David P. Here's a caller who says, David, Biden's numbers are so bad. How isn't there a primary going on? Take a listen to this. Hi, David. This is Matthew from Las Vegas, Nevada.

I just had a question with Biden's polls being so low. How is the Democratic Party getting away with not having any kind of primary at all? Why is the media calling them out on it every day? Thanks, David. Have a great day. You know, I as I've said before, I would love a primary. I want primaries. I want candidates. I want choices. I want democracy, all of those different things. I've also explained that neither the Democratic nor the Republican Party ever hold a primary when an incumbent president is running for reelection. That's

not unique. It's not unique to twenty twenty three or twenty four. It's not unique to Joe Biden. It's not unique to the Democratic 24. It's not unique to Joe Biden. It's not unique to the Democratic Party. But there's another thing there because Biden's numbers are so bad. The reality is in this hyper polarized modern political era, it's really common that presidential approval is between 37 and 43, almost no matter what presidents do in that sense. Biden's numbers aren't uniquely bad in the modern historical era. If you're talking about Biden's primary numbers, he's overwhelmingly winning. In fact, I could even probably pull up some of these.

But when you look at primary numbers, you see that Biden has between here it is between 68 and 77 percent of the Democratic primary vote. So if you're looking I don't know which numbers this caller is talking about, but approval numbers pretty standard in the modern political era. Democratic primary numbers, Biden polling between 68 and 77. People talk about Trump with 58 percent is overwhelming. Nobody can beat Trump. Biden's got as high as 77 from good pollsters like Quinnipiac. So those numbers don't look particularly bad. And then when you look at hypothetical general election polling, certainly you can find polls that have Trump up. In fact, there's a whole these are state polls all from Bloomberg.

But when you look at national polls, you see Trump's up to over Biden. But Biden's up to over to Santas. These are really common numbers a year out from an election before the Republicans have even chosen their nominee. So I take issue not with the idea of a primary. I'd be glad to have a primary. Anyone who wants to run should run. Let voters vote. The parties never do it when you have an incumbent president running for reelection. I take issue with the idea that Biden's numbers are uniquely bad. The Democratic primary numbers

are overwhelming for Biden. The hypothetical general election numbers are close to even and it's a year out. And the approval numbers are what we've seen in the modern historical era. So let me know which are the numbers that are so bad. We have a great bonus show for you today. I won't even tell you what's on it because it's so shocking and titillating. But you can sign up at join Patman dotcom. We'll see you on the bonus show.