The David Pakman Show - 11/18/24: Trump cabinet hits brick wall, RFK in pain while eating McDonald's

Episode Date: November 18, 2024

-- On the Show: -- A deeper dive into what would happen when MAGA red state armies invade blue states to round up migrants -- Trouble in paradise as Elon Musk praises the lower of tariffs despite Donald Trump's plan to raise tariffs -- Leaked statement from Mitch McConnell saying there will be no recess appointments puts a major hurdle in Donald Trump's plan to confirm his nutty cabinet -- Matt Gaetz gets disastrous news as headlines claim Republicans have no plan of confirming him to his nominated role of Attorney General -- Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump's nominee for Secretary of Defense, is revealed to have paid off a woman who accused him of sexual assault -- Dana White's UFC has been completely taken over by the Trump cult, as seen this past weekend with Jon Jones, Joe Rogan, Elon Musk and more -- Robert F. Kennedy Jr., nominated by Donald Trump to be Secretary of Health and Human Services, appears to be in visible pain while eating McDonald's with Donald Trump on Trump's plane -- Growing concerns that independent progressive media, including The David Pakman Show, will be targets of the incoming Trump administration -- Republican Senator Markwayne Mullin completely debases himself and reverses everything he previously said in order to suck up to Donald Trump -- On the Bonus Show: Study finds X's new algorithm likes Republicans and Elon Musk, Ann Selzer announces her retirement from polling after Iowa strikeout, AI chatbots defeat doctors at diagnosing illness, much more... 🍽️ CookUnity: Get 50% OFF your 1st week with code PAKMAN at https://cookunity.com/pakman ⚠️ Ground News: Get 50% OFF their unlimited access Vantage plan at https://ground.news/pakman 💪 AG1 is offering FREE GIFT and FREE year-supply of Vitamin D at https://athleticgreens.com/pakman 🛡️ Incogni lets you control your personal data! Get 60% off their annual plan: http://incogni.com/pakman  🛏️ Eight Sleep: Get $350 OFF the Pod 4 Ultra at https://eightsleep.com/pakman 🧠 Try Brain.fm totally free for a month at https://brain.fm/pakman 💻 Get Private Internet Access for 83% OFF + 4 months free at https://www.piavpn.com/David -- Become a Member: https://www.davidpakman.com/membership -- Become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/davidpakmanshow -- TDPS Subreddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/thedavidpakmanshow -- Pakman Discord: https://www.davidpakman.com/discord -- David on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/davidpakmanshow -- Leave a Voicemail: (219)-2DAVIDP

. welcome everybody. Hope you had a great weekend. What did I do? You know, the sun goes down so early these days. It's just, it's just depressing. Actually, I made some beautiful Milan Nissa, my native Argentine is certainly not national dish, but a top dish for sure. And I'm fully on oven baked. You know, the reality is if you, uh, if your oven has an air fry feature, you just don't need to deep fry it, which I'm sure Robert F Kennedy jr would be pleased about assuming it's beef tallow.

But you know, that's a whole other story. We'll get back to that later. Listen, uh, last week I did a story called this Trump Stooges plan could mean civil war. And that story received a half a million views on YouTube and another quarter million on Facebook. It generated a lot of interest is the point. And I didn't really expect the reaction that the story received. And a few people did react kind of unthinkingly by saying, oh, David, Trump wins. And now suddenly you're the one talking about a civil war. Except of course, this is nothing like the right wingers who for 10 years have been predicting civil war.

None of us on the left were talking about civil war before Donald Trump's first term. This was super specific. This was, here's a policy proposed by Stephen Miller, Trump's deputy policy guy. If he gets his way, if the deportation plan is carried out the way Stephen Miller describes, it could generate a situation tantamount or equivalent to civil war. And the number of followup questions were stunning. Has something like this ever been done before? Red state armies invading blue states. What forms of resistance might we be able to employ against such a fiasco? How is right-wing

media likely to cover such an event? So let's get real. What would happen if these MAGA red state armies of weaponized national guards marched into blue States and started rounding up immigrants, but also beating back resistance as blue state mayors and blue, uh, blue city mayors and blue state governors have said there would be. Now I am not talking about some call of duty fantasy. Uh, I am keeping this very specific to what Stephen Miller said his plan would entail. And as a reminder, the plan from Stephen Miller for Trump's deportation force is that red state armies made up of national guard units from states with MAGA governors would invade blue states, create chaos, generate disorder, all under a pretext for a carrying out law enforcement and deportation in blue states against the will of the blue state governors.

And that's a critical aspect to this. So the first question is whether there is precedent for such a disaster. Well, in the 1960s, federal troops were sent to Southern states to enforce desegregation. They were protecting rights. What Stephen Miller wants to do is trample rights in the name of Trump's deportation obsession. And even then those deployments in the sixties to protect rights still generated a whole bunch of backlash, protests, riots. I mean, you name it. We can also look at the Kent state shootings in 1970 where national guard troops were called

in to manage protests and that also led to disaster and multiple students being shot dead. So imagine that. But now with partisan red state troops enforcing laws in blue states, the potential for violence is enormous. The second question is, okay, we got the precedent part out of the way. Would that even be legal? I've mentioned before the posse comitatus act, which says that, uh, the military cannot be used for domestic law enforcement.

That's federal law. What the Trump plan on deportation would do is weaponize the national guard, essentially sidestepping the law. States control their own national guard troops unless they are activated by the federal government. And if you force red state National Guards into blue states without the consent of the governors of those blue states, it would almost certainly be unconstitutional. Law and order, right? Blue state governors would immediately file lawsuits.

If this was done, it would create months of years of legal chaos, but who knows what they can get away with while the legal challenges are taking place. It would almost certainly become violent. This isn't me advocating for violence. I'm against violence. It's being realistic. And that gets us to part three. What happens on the ground? The protests will get ugly. I mean, how how do you think it will go with red state troops patrolling San Francisco or New York City? Local citizens will start to protest, but you will have armed troops from different states attempting to do crowd control. It's like taking a match and throwing it into a fireworks factory. Think tear gas, think injuries, think mass arrests. But then the sort of craziest part is that then local law enforcement will resist.

The mayor of New York city will tell NYPD resist the Pennsylvania national guard now attempting to patrol our streets to round up immigrants. That is a recipe for complete and total disaster. And that's probably the goal. I mentioned this last week in the story, the chaos that this will generate will be used to justify even more federal crackdowns. Well, we we've we've got to do the curfews. We've got to send more troops, maybe even martial law, because that's exactly what they

want to generate. The final question is how will right wing media cover such an event? They should come out against it as unconstitutional. Realistically, they will cheer it and they will say this is necessary enforcement because we've got to get the criminal illegals out. And these blue state governors are getting in our way. You'll see the tick tock videos of troops on city streets going viral or, you know, on X or whatever, it'll explode with partisan takes and it will be a complete and total disaster. So please share this clip, spread awareness of the plan. We're not speculating. It's in black and white from Stephen Miller's plan. And let me know

info at David Pakman dot com. What do you think is the most dystopian part of this entire thing? Trouble in paradise. First Lady Ilonia Musk seems to be increasingly at odds with Trump on the topic of tariffs. This is you knew this was going to happen. You knew this was going to happen. Washington post reports, Musk appears to pressure Trump on cabinet and tariffs, irking advisors, Elon Musk, the billionaire who has become Donald Trump's first buddy appeared to publicly pressure the president elect on economic policy and a key cabinet pick. This is super, super interesting. In a Saturday morning post on X, Musk praised a foreign leader's decision to cut tariffs, the same import taxes that Trump wants to raise to the highest level in a century. Several hours later, Musk posted that Howard Lutnik, Trump's co-transition chair, would

be a better choice than hedge fund executive Scott Bessent for treasury secretary. I absolutely love this. You know what is so great about this? So let me give you the backstory. Trump wants to raise tariffs. Economists have said bad idea. These blanket tariffs on China, they're just not a good idea. As I've said to you before, tariffs are not objectively good or bad.

It's sort of like saying, Hey, uh, are taxes good? It's like, well, taxes on who, for what purpose collected in order to fund what, at what rate, you know, our taxes, good or know, our taxes, good or bad our tariffs, good or bad. Well, tariffs can serve very specific, uh, goals, or they can just be a disaster depending on how they're implemented the market or country on which they are placed, whether there are alternative or substitute goods, what domestic supply chains look at, you know, all of these different things. Are tariffs good or bad?

It really depends. But as a general principle, Elon Musk has started to praise countries that have eliminated tariffs, which is at direct contravention to what Donald Trump plans to do now that we don't even really need to get into the specifics of the tariffs here because at the end of the day, I don't really care what Elon Musk actually thinks about tariffs and I don't think Trump understands tariffs. He's shown that to be the case. Economists have said tariffs has implemented the way Trump wants to do.

It would be a bad idea. This is more about the fact that this was destined to happen. We have already heard reports about people at Mar-a-Lago annoyed that Elon Musk has been hanging out there since election day, traveling with Trump. They went to UFC together over the weekend. I'll tell you about that a little bit later. Musk just kind of hanging around there. Uh, JD Vance missing, by the way, if you're JD Vance, you're like, why, why don't I get

to go to UFC? Why don't I get to hang out at Mar-a-Lago? But that's a different story. And there have been reports of people at Mar-a-Lago individuals involved with Trump's transition team and others who are getting kind of annoyed at Elon Musk's presence. And now on top of everything, Elon Musk comes out and starts undermining not only Donald Trump's cabinet picks, but also Donald Trump's plan to just throw tariffs on everything China related when he is praising other countries that are saying, uh, we are actually going

to get rid of tariffs. This was bound to happen, but I'm surprised it's happening this quickly. I expect based on the way Donald Trump's first term went that certainly within six months of the start of his term, more of it will probably more like 12 to 18 months in. But within six months I expect you are going to see some horribly public falling out, falling out, falling out, falling. I think falling out. It's like attorneys general.

You will see a lot of fallout publicly between Trump and some of his cabinet picks. Will it be tool C if she can even get confirmed? Will it be Matt Gates if he can even get confirmed? Will it be Marco Rubio as secretary of state? I don't know, but you expect to see that in any Trump cabinet at least six months in. We're not even at inauguration day. They haven't even formally counted the electoral votes and Trump and Musk already seem to be having a problem.

So I think that Doge, the department of gag worthy edge Lordsords. I'm sorry. The Department of Government Efficiency. I think it'll probably go very wrong and almost certainly accomplish very little. But that's if it even gets going, because Trump and Musk already seem to be having trouble in paradise. That's for sure. And that is something we are going to cover very closely as it goes forward. Who could have guessed, who could have guessed that putting two egomaniacs together might not work out super well over the longterm tomorrow, I'm going to have seven goodie boxes, including my forthcoming book with other extras to give

away tomorrow. Okay. I will tell you exactly how to claim one of these seven gift boxes with my new book tomorrow. But what I will tell you is that you will need to be following me on blue sky in order to qualify. That's we were, we're getting off of X. We're no more excretions. We're getting off of Twitter. Uh, and blue sky is a fantastic new platform. So if, let me make sure this works. If you go to davidpacman.com slash blue sky,

that works. Make sure you're following me on blue sky. And tomorrow I'll tell you how to claim one of the seven early copies of my book with extras. We'll take a quick break and be back right after this. Our sponsor, Cook Unity, is the number one meal delivery service in the United States, and it's really easy to understand why. Cook Unity stands out from the other meal subscription services by offering chef crafted The David Pakman Show David Pakman dot com. That's 50% off your first week by using code Pacman or going to cook unity.com slash Pacman. The link is in the podcast notes with Donald Trump being elected and the insane cabinet

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We have some potentially disastrous news for Donald Trump's completely unqualified threat to national security cabinet picks. You know who I'm talking about. And MAGA is furious. Media reports MAGA flips out over now deleted tweet claiming Mitch McConnell told the Trump team there will be no recess appointments. This is absolutely fascinating. I hope, of course, that it is true. A number of articles have been written about this. Some are not particularly high quality articles, but let me lay out what it is that is being alleged. Supporters of Trump freaked out on Senator Mitch McConnell after a now deleted tweet claims he spoke out against recess

appointments for Trump's nominees. Sunday evening, last night, New Yorker staff writer Jane Mayer wrote in a now deleted post on X, we might call it an excretion quote message to team Trump. There will be no recess appointments. Senator Mitch McConnell said tonight at a Washington gathering recently, Trump's nominees have faced significant pushback as many doubts. Some of them will get enough support from Republican senators to make it through. So here's the tweet from Jane mayor. That tweet has since been deleted, has since been deleted. And of course, of course, um, immediately blow back and backlash from endless, uh, Republicans. Let's hope that this is true. Now there really are two sides to this.

We spoke with Tim Miller, former Republican consultant last week about one aspect to this. There are there is a view. That some of the lowest quality Trump picks people like Tulsi Gabbard and Matt Gates are not really being selected to be confirmed. They are sort of sacrificial lambs and that eventually when their nominations are rejected by the Senate, or if it might not even get to that point, but if it does, they'll be rejected or it might be communicated before confirmation hearings. Listen, they're, they're just not getting in. You've got to pick someone else. One view is it's part of the plan

and Trump has his real pick in his back pocket, someone less cartoonish, but more effective and likely more dangerous. Tim Miller doesn't believe that that's the case. And I'm inclined to think it's also not the case. You know that, uh, when George W. Bush select selected Harriet Myers to the Supreme court, it seemed as though he had the wherewithal and personality and advisors that it might have been indeed a planned sacrificial lamb of a completely unqualified person to then put in the real pick or it worked out that way.

Regardless, I don't think that Donald Trump functions in that way. And in fact, what we saw during his first term and since is that his impulse control is extraordinarily limited and that his ability to think strategically is also not particularly well developed. So I'm inclined to think that Trump picked Gates because Gates is the guy who will weaponize the DOJ against Trump's political enemies. That's what Trump wants and that's what Gates will do. That's why Trump picked them. I think it's that simple. I think Trump picked tool C to director of national intelligence because he genuinely thinks that that's the person that will be the right combination of completely and totally subservient to Trump will, uh, do what

he wants and says, and also will sort of agitate people on the left because Tulsi is someone who used to claim to be on the left, even though there was never really anything progressive about her. So I think Trump really wants tool C. That being said, there are people who obviously are not going to have a problem getting confirmed. Marco Rubio is secretary of state. I don't agree with the guy's politics. I don't think he will be a good global representative of the United States. I think he has no business being secretary of state for political reasons, but it's difficult

to argue that a, I think he's 50 something, a 50 something year old, longtime Republican Senator with no major scandals is ripe to be rejected. I don't like the guy. I don't think he, he has the politics we need, but it's hard to imagine he's going to be rejected. On the other hand, Matt Gates embroiled in child sex trafficking and prostitution allegations completely extreme in terms of his associations and his background. It's completely legitimate to say, okay, even if you like the guy's politics, this is not someone who has, it would be humiliating to have him as a G tool.

See, uh, we've talked about how her foreign policy views seem far more favorable to Russia than they do to the United States. So we, we've outlined her background. It seems far more plausible that Republicans would reject them. And we learned last week as we wondered, how is Trump going to get these people confirmed? We learned last week of the plan to do it via recess appointments. Trump after winning a couple of weeks ago, immediately posted, if you want to be in leadership in the Republican Senate,

you'd better be okay with recess appointments. It's not clear that John Thune, the incoming Senate majority leader is okay with recess appointments and Mitch McConnell seems to be saying there will be none. So if indeed Gates and Gabbard are going to end up in Trump's cabinet, it appears as though they will have to be confirmed by the Senate. And that allegedly is looking increasingly unlikely. So now let's go from the general problems, the general problems getting people, Trump's people confirmed to the specifics of Matt Gates.

Matt Gates just got disastrous news about the possibility that he will become Donald Trump's attorney general. NBC news reports that a majority of Senate Republicans doubt that Matt Gates will be confirmed as attorney general. Isn't that delightful news? Now I know what you're going to say. If it's not Gates, it'll be someone worse. Well, it's hard to really imagine worse than Gates. The thing about Gates is that it's not about judicial philosophy.

It's not about his views on federal supremacy or it's because he would be a lay down like a doormat unhinged ass kissing brown noser to Donald Trump. You want me to go after your political adversaries? Yes, sir. You want me to go after your political adversaries? Yes, sir. You want me to go after progressive independent media, by the way, something we'll talk about later in the show. Absolutely, sir. Why not?

That's why Gates was chosen. And the new reporting is that more than half of Senate Republicans, including some in senior leadership positions, are privately saying, I don't see any path for Gates to be confirmed. Obviously, if half of Republicans and all Democrats vote against the guy, his nomination is dead. You can read through the article in more detail. We will be posting it.

And one of the things that the article says is NBC news spoke to more than 15 additional Republican sources who agree there are not enough votes in the Senate to confirm Gates. And some estimated that closer to 30 Republicans consider Gates to be unqualified Gates and Trump attorney Todd Blanch are moving forward on trying to fill out the justice department, but it appears as though they may not even be able to get confirmed. Vice president elect JD Vance has been working the phones to try to get a read on where senators stand on Gates.

It would be a fantastic thing for this to be rejected. Now I know that the big picture, if we zoom out, Trump's going to get most of his picks confirmed. That's true. Even if Trump doesn't get Gates, he's going to get someone less controversial who's still going to do a lot of harm when it comes to Gates specifically. We still need to take any kind of victory where we can get it. And the idea of Gates being the country's top prosecutor is flatly humiliating to the United States. It's flatly humiliating. So I get it. If it's not Gates, it'll, it'll be some lawyer you've never heard of. Who's going to do horrible things, who is going to set the

priorities of the justice department in a way that's completely antithetical to the way you or I would do it. I get that he's going to get an attorney general eventually. But rejecting Gates and saying such a blatantly unqualified, uh, and quite frankly, disgusting selection, even Republicans are saying we can't allow that to happen. So Gates seemingly, seemingly dead in the water. If the reporting is true and also some interesting news, Pete Hegseth might have trouble getting confirmed secretary of defense as well. The top three picks from Trump so far who could be heading towards a rejection for their

nominated positions are, as I mentioned, attorney general nominee Matt Gaetz, director of national intel intelligence nominee tool, see Gabbard and number three, a secretary of defense nominee, Pete Hegseth. It's getting worse and worse and worse for Hegseth. An exclusive from the Washington Post defense pick Pete Hegseth paid accuser, but denies sexual assault. According to his attorney, the Washington Post has been able to obtain a series of documents that outline allegations of, I think we have to call it rape against Pete Hegseth. Pete Hegseth paid a woman who accused him of sexual assault, reads the article as part of a nondisclosure agreement.

Although he maintained the encounter was consensual, Hegseth's attorney, Timothy parla Torre says Hegseth was visibly intoxicated when the incident happened, maintained that police who were contacted a few days later, they encountered the woman, uh, concluded the complainant was the aggressor in the encounter. Hmm. Hegseth agreed to pay an undisclosed amount to the woman because if he feared that if the information went public, he'd be fired from Fox news. The statement came after a detailed memo was sent to the Trump 10 transition team by a

woman who said, I'm a friend of the accuser. The memo alleged he raped the then 30 year old conservative group staffer in his room after drinking at a hotel bar. The person who sent the memo did not respond to requests for comment. You know, the reality here is that birds of a feather assault together. And we think of this as negative. Trump has done the same thing. So it is just par for the course for them.

This will likely not affect the process at all. It is true that there is concern among some Republican senators about Pete Hegseth. I struggle to believe that this is genuinely the reason why they are concerned. There were similar allegations brought against Brett Kavanaugh, Donald Trump's Supreme Court nominee. He sailed through. They didn't care about it. They just, they just didn't care about it. They just they just didn't care about it. Donald Trump himself has dozens around 50 allegations against him. Republican

voters have now voted for the guy two times in a row. Trump certainly has a type. And I'm not talking about the women he's accused of assaulting. Trump has a type in terms of the people he hires. And in a sense, there is not really a damage. The concept of a damaging story at this point in the Trump mega era kind of doesn't really exist. And if Pete Hegseth fails to be confirmed or if the nomination ends up being withdrawn before the confirmation hearings even happen, if it becomes known that Hegseth is not going to be going to be able to get confirmed.

I don't believe that it will be because of this. This is easy to say, you know, they made all the fake allegations against Trump and these are fake allegations against Pete Hegseth because he's been nominated. Of course, then you go, well, but hold on. The, the allegations were made a long time ago. The documents are from a while ago and they will say, no, no, no, it's all part of a plan. It was because he was a Fox host or because of this or because of that. They just don't want him.

It is completely plausible that Hegseth does not make it through confirmation. I don't believe that it is the sexual assault allegations that will do him in. Let me know what you think. And here's the bigger question I have for you. Who do you believe is the most likely nominee so far to fail confirmation? Is it Hegseth? Is it Gates? Is it Gabbard or is it somebody else? Let me know. Info at David Pakman dot com. Did you know that countless commercial databases and people search sites are storing your personal information?

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UFC has been completely taken over by the Maga cult. We're going to look at what happened in Madison Square Garden over the weekend at a UFC event, but this really is a sort of natural follow up to our recent story about how a lot of theoretically nonpolitical spaces, including a creators related to business or sports or fitness or whatever have been culturally coded with that. C O D E D with messages that push people towards a right wing is a mega ism voting for Trump. And now we come to UFC.

I want to remind everybody about shut up and dribble. Remember the people telling NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick to just throw the ball and stop kneeling during the national anthem to make political points. Remember the people telling LeBron James shut up about vaccines, shut up about Kamala. Just shoot the damn ball. LeBron. Remember, keep politics out of sports. Well, all of a sudden the Trump mega crowd has completely taken over ultimate fighting. Dana White, who's the owner of UFC, loves Trump.

And over the weekend at a UFC event in New York's Madison Square Garden, Donald Trump was welcomed with a full on Trump propaganda reel that played on the Jumbotron. One of the fighters, John Jones, praised Trump during his victory speech and handed Trump his belt. And then also Trump and UFC commentator Joe Rogan had this love fest of hugs. We're playing the video here. Here is Trump showing up and going over. He shakes Rogan's hand and then he actually, he shakes some other guy's hand, then hugs Rogan and then they're talking.

It's a love fest. I assume Trump saying thank you for endorsing me very strongly, strongly, strongly endorsement. And you know the whole thing. Everybody loves each other. Everybody's cheering, whatever. Even the official commentary for the fights was bowing down to Trump and talking about how awesome it is and how great all of this is. It's been fully bought, sold and paid for. Now, UFC and Trump ism is one.

Here is Trump with Dana White. You can see the first lady, Ilonia Musk, walking behind Trump. You see MAGA, Mike Johnson, Eric Trump, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. The vague was there with tool. See, we'll get to all of it. Okay is now making his way to the world famous octagon by UFC CEO Dana White, 45, soon to be 47, President-elect Donald Trump. I wish the people at Cajon could hear the sound in this room. It's so loud in here. It is so loud. Okay.

So anyway, it went on and they talk about, oh, there's Robert Kennedy and his cabinet and the energy and it's also fantastic. Elon Musk, as I mentioned, was there, uh, alongside right wing musician kid rock here. You see them in an image and we're going to get to the presence of RFK Jr and MAGA Mike Johnson in a little bit. But I have just one other video to play for you here. Here is John Jones handing his UFC heavyweight championship belt to Donald Trump. Okay. So there are two important stories here.

There is a cultural story and there is a political story. The political story is that once again, we don't want regulation on businesses except when it's convenient. We don't want to increase the deficit except we do it every time that we are president, right? It's another principle that has fallen. Athletes should stick to being athletes. Musicians should stick to being musicians.

We don't want to hear Bruce Springsteen or Taylor Swift rant about politics because it should just be about the music. Except what about kid rock? And I struggled to think of other right wing musicians. There's that rapper for for Giotto blow who hangs around at Mar-a-Lago. Right. But the point is we don't want to hear politics from musicians except the the musicians that agree with us. Then we're glad to have them talk about politics. We want athletes to shut up and dribble, stand up from kneeling and throw the ball up. We don't want politics in sports except can we completely take over this UFC

league where they are bowing down at the altar of Trump, putting Trump videos up on the Jumbotron hand. You know, Trump wanted a purple heart. Well, he also wanted a UFC championship belt and I guess John Jones gave it to him. The principle of keep politics out of sports only applies in so far as they aren't right wing messages. As soon as they are right wing messages, they want it there. So another principle they claim to care about in the toilet flushed 10 to 15 times. Then we get to the cultural sort of a situation here. We've talked a lot about how you find health and fitness influencers on YouTube and their messaging is coded with right wing language. You find entrepreneurship and business content on TikTok and you start to

get subtle cultural messages and sometimes not so subtle that obviously, if you believe in all of this stuff, you must also be voting for and supporting Donald Trump. You find it in all of these different cultural spaces. And this is somewhere the left has really failed. And it's not, you know, we, we keep hearing the phrase the left wing, Joe Rogan. It's, it's not about that. It's about entire spaces that have been taken over with this culturally right-wing stuff. And the epitome of that example is UFC. Now I know that there are some of you who would say, David, obviously UFC would be coded right wing. It's about something that, you know, some people don't even think it should be legal. The idea that you would enjoy two men or two women beating the hell out of out of each other, pointing themselves on a life

path towards brain injury and CTE, all to fulfill this extraordinarily limited and shortsighted view of what masculinity means or in the case of the women's fights. I don't know, femininity. I'm not even really sure. Of course, that that's going to appeal more to right wing people. And maybe there is something obvious about that. But I have lots of left wing friends who love this stuff, who they love UFC, and they just find themselves annoyed by by the Trump crap.

I don't know if it's enough to dissuade them from following it altogether, but, uh, there, it's not completely obvious that it has to be a right wing environment. I know some others say, well, you know, football was always historically right. And then it went left with Kaepernick and then it came back. It, although in one sense it seems obvious that UFC would appeal to right wingers. I don't know that that's the case overall. And anecdotally, I know many left wingers who like it, but it's been completely taken over. A perfect example of what we've been talking about. Now let's talk about the flight to UFC

because there's something interesting there. You really can't write this stuff. Obese fast food eating president elect Donald Trump, we are told is going to make America healthy again by selecting Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to run health and human services and then feeding RFK McDonald's on his plane. So let me explain the circumstances of this picture that we're putting up for you. This is a picture of a Donald Trump's plane. They were flying to or from the UFC match in Madison Square Garden over the weekend. We already talked about how that went. Elon Musk is there. Donald Trump is there. Donald Trump jr. Robert F Kennedy jr. And Maga Mike Johnson are pictured here and they are all having, they are all having McDonald's food and RFK even has a Coca-Cola in front of him leeching

plastic out of the bottle riddled with high fructose corn syrup and all sorts of colorings and flavorings. Okay. Now, if we zoom in on Robert F. Kennedy Jr., he looks like he's in physical pain. He's holding a Big Mac or maybe that's a double cheese. I don't know what it is. I haven't been to McDonald's in more than 20 years. It's some kind of sandwich from McDonald's and he's got a Coca-Cola and there's another container. I don't know if those are nuggets that the extruded, um, uh, chicken, uh, um, paste congealed into a nugget form, or if those are fries, I don't know what that is. And RFK looks as if he's in physical pain. Now, where do you even start with this? As some of you might recall, RFK not long ago said his issue with, with a McDonald's isn't that it's fast food. It's that they no longer use beef tallow to cook the food. Well, here he is. There's seed oils all over his food,

no beef tallow, and he's having it along with the high fructose corn syrup Coke out of a, uh, plastic bottle, the Coke filled with processed sugar. And I thought that RFK was going to be getting rid of that. So listen, what what's the big story here? Obviously, anyone with a good head on their shoulders realizes RFK solutions to our health problems seem to be get rid of seed oils based on very bad science that they are, quote, inflammatory. Give everybody raw milk, which has been found to have no nutritional benefit over pasteurized milk, but significantly increases your risk of getting listeria or E. coli and lands people in the hospital every single year. Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine rather than vaccinations, I guess, on and on and on at

the top level. They want us to believe that obese President Trump, who eats McDonald's daily and doesn't exercise, is going to usher in a new wave of health to the United States. That's very difficult to believe at its core. And then you've got RFK eating McDonald's but thinks vaccines are bad and we're supposed to believe he's going to make America healthy again. So there's like three, four different stories here. Obviously, one little side story is J. is JD Vance must be so pissed off

right now that they're not including him in anything. Elon Musk and RFK get to go with Trump to, to UFC. Uh, tool C Gabbard was there standing behind Trump clapping at people getting their heads bashed in. Uh, yeah. And JD Vance is left out. So that that's kind of one story that JD Vance is kind of just like missing here. Number two, it's that as often is the case, sometimes the way that they propagandize is making really complicated things seem very simple. Now, listen, here's the problem. Uh, we got to get off seed oils. We need raw milk. The vaccines are no good and HIV doesn't cause AIDS and all the other crazy stuff. Oh, it's super simple, except you're wrong on everything. And then other times they make simple things seem

complicated. And as I've said before, we could make America significantly healthier, significantly healthier without RFK starting to mess with the FDA or the CDs. Forget about all of it. Forget about all of it. If we could just move people towards get fewer than 10% of your daily calories from what we would call ultra processed food. That's the stuff RFK was eating in the damn picture. Get fewer than 10% of your calories from ultra processed food. Walk 10,000 steps a day. Get enough water. Make sure your vitamin D level is what it's supposed to be. This applies more to people in the north where we, you know, we get less sunlight. Make sure you're getting 30 or 35 grams of fiber a day, depending on whether you're,

you're a male or female. The reason that this is such a critical thing is if you are doing that, it's pretty hard to eat unhealthy. Uh, because if you're getting 30 to 35 grams of fiber, you're probably not just stuffing your face with McDonald's every single day, right? These simple that that's really it. Okay. These simple that that's really it. OK, if 80 percent of the country did that, you solve a bunch of obesity, you solve a bunch of diabetes, you reduce you, you likely reduce based on the data we have right now, a bunch of the colorectal cancer. Right. I mean, and you

don't need RFK. You don't need this whole huge thing. Just, just those six, five, six principles alone. But instead we're supposed to believe that the obese fast food eating president is going to be the one that makes everybody healthy by hiring RFK. It's just a laughable at its face. And like every single one of the Trump scams, they're just, uh, they're, they're all falling for it. The visible pain on RFK's face in that picture really tells you a lot of what you need to

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changes the patterns in your brain. With brain FM, I am locked in. The distractions go away. Thank you. music for an entire month. Totally free. I think you'll find that as useful as I do. Go to brain dot FM slash Pacman. The link is in the podcast notes. Did you know there is only one VPN fully optimized for streaming 4K video and downloading large files? That's our sponsor, Private Internet Access. A VPN hides your IP address, allows you to make it look like your device is anywhere and The David Pakman Show David Pakman dot com slash David. The link is in the podcast notes. Is Donald Trump's new cabinet going to target left wing content creators, potentially

including me? This might not be as crazy as it sounds to some of you. So let me explain. Before the election of Donald Trump a couple of weeks ago, I received a ton of concerned emails and calls and people just saying, Hey David, do you, do you think you're in trouble if Trump wins? Um, this guy really seems to want to weaponize his administration against anyone adversarial. And three weeks ago I basically thought I'm too small potatoes for Trump to care about what I'm doing. There's just no way.

And something has now changed. And I had a number of conversations over the weekend with our fellow creators. And what changed is that now a bunch of the people that Trump has nominated, I know for a fact, know about my views on them and at one point had staff that were keeping an eye on the show and it is absolutely plausible that if confirmed, some of them would set their sights on us now and I, and I'm comfortable being specific. I know that as of about 18 months ago, people associated with RFK Jr monitored what I was saying about him.

I'm not claiming they were reporting back to RFK every day or anything like that, but I, I know that he had people associated with him who were very aware of the things I was saying about him on the show. I know that when she ran for president as a Democrat, Tulsi Gabbard staffers were paying attention to my opposition to her as a Democratic candidate. I know that when Matt Gaetz started having the sex trafficking prostitution allegations, he had staffers down in Florida who were watching what I was doing and what I was saying. So think back a little bit to Donald Trump's first term.

I was obviously nowhere on the radar of secretary of state Rex Tillerson. Is that Rex Tillerson? It just, just no, nobody cared what I was saying. Nobody was paying attention. Trump's first attorney general, Jeff sessions did not have any staffers who even had an idea who I was or about the David Pakman show or about most of the shows that are sort of like at our level right now. And part of it was when Trump was first inaugurated, I had 300,000 youtube subscribers.

Now I have 2.6 million. So the objectively measured that has changed. But part of it is that a lot of the people that Trump is now picking are generationally my contemporaries. So everybody is just more clued into what's happening with online media and with independent media. But the really big difference is that the current slate of people Trump is picking are genuinely, genuinely resentful, triggered people who would love to get some shows like ours shut down and they will be operating in an environment where that kind of retribution has been promised by Donald Trump and where they might even be expected to participate in it.

And in terms of what we, what we might see, they might even try to do it. Now I'm not going to go beyond, you know, if I were to come to you and say, I expect that on day one, attorney general Matt Gates comes after me. Of course not. Of course not. But think back to Donald Trump's first term. The DOJ wasn't really hyper focused on shutting down left wing creators in the first term, mostly because they were distracted by their own chaos.

And this time it just all seems very different. Donald Trump and his allies are openly talking about, we're going to reshape the DOJ. We're going to reshape the FCC. The IRS is going to be, uh, something that we might use to target political opponents. They've floated things like media accountability boards. Who can we shut down expanding defamation laws to go after critics? Who do you think that that's going to be aimed at? Mostly the big networks that Trump doesn't like.

He doesn't like how CBS, uh, handled the 60 minutes pieces. He doesn't like how ABC handled the debate. Those are like the big targets, but you have to consider that there's only a few of those big targets. They're going to run out of those big targets in the major legacy corporate media very quickly. So just imagine the same vindictive instincts of the first term with fewer guardrails and more aggressive personnel. It could actually get pretty ugly for independent progressive media pretty quickly. This is not just about me or my show.

This is about independent creators. If people start seeing political retribution against left wing voices, the chilling effect of that could be massive because if they did go after a couple of the bigger progressive voices, what do you think's going to happen to the medium sized progressive voices, the up and coming smaller progressive voices, those who are thinking, you know, I'm really, I'm displeased with this new Trump administration. Maybe I will start a podcast or YouTube channel. A lot of them will just say, no, thanks. It seems too risky. And that's what a lot of this is about. This is about creating an environment where people are too scared to criticize, which sounds very much like some of

the other countries that Donald Trump idolizes. And again, I'm not saying Trump is going to turn the media landscape into North Korea. Uh, I'm not saying Trump is going to turn the journalism, uh, world into what happens in Russia with Putin. I think he would like to, I don't think he's actually going to do that, but there is a real possibility here. Um, that as a group, progressive independent media starts to be targeted. Obviously, I hope it's not going to be me here. I hope it's not going to be anybody.

Now you might be expecting there to be like some ask coming here. There really isn't. I'm just letting you know, I've had conversations with some in the cohort that are sort of the larger progressive YouTube channels. And it's something we all are thinking about and are all worried about it. Generically, it's more important than ever to support independent media. Is it a membership? Is it just subscribing? Is it sharing content?

Whatever. There is no specific ask here. Obviously, I always welcome people to subscribe to the YouTube channel to become a member. All of those things make us more resilient financially if the time comes where they do come after us. But this is really about awareness and the fact that there's a lot of us that now think this is a real possibility. I may have found the most pathetic Republican senator in the country. Now, I know all of you probably think, oh, it must be X or it must be Y or there's a lot of choices is the point.

I'm talking about Mark Wayne Mullen, Republican Senator Mark Wayne Mullen. He started to debase himself last week. Last week, Mark Wayne Mullen was asked, hey, you've said horrible things about Matt Gates. You've revealed, you know, how he, uh, underage girls that he was sleeping with and show you pictures on the floor of the house. You've brought, you've told us about all these things. Clearly you wouldn't support his nomination to a G right. And Mark Wayne Mullen just kind of said, well, you know, I, uh, I trust Donald Trump's decision

making process. I just, I really do. It's getting even worse. Mark Wayne Mullen was interviewed over the weekend and he was asked by Kristen Welker on NBC News. You don't defend the stuff that RFK says about vaccines, right? Because Mark Wayne Mullen has actually accepted the science of vaccination. He was not a longtime anti-vax guy. You know,

vaccines don't cause autism, right? Senator Mullen and Mullen just totally debases him and says, you know what? I don't know about any of this stuff. I think RFK may be on to something. Check this out. What a 180. Speaker 1 Nice. All of those picks robustly. But Senator, let me just go back to this because you've been on the record saying that you do believe vaccines are safe and effective. You're not concerned about RFK Jr. overseeing the largest health agency in the land? I have said that there's some positives to vaccinations. I've also questioned vaccines multiple times and I think they should be questionized. For instance, why is America highest in all? Did he just say they should be questionized? I've got to hear that again. Questioned vaccines multiple times and I

think they should be questionized. For instance, why? I think he says questionized, wow. Is America highest in autism? But what is causing that? Is it our diet or is it some of the stuff we're putting in our children's system? We used to be almost not even heard of. Then it went from 1 to 10,000, then the 1 to 5,000, 1 to 2,000. In some races right now, one out of every 36 kids by the age of three have developed some form of autism. What is causing that? And if it is a vaccine, there's no nothing wrong with actually taking a hard look and finding is that's what's causing it.

So listen, the United States does not have the highest rate of autism, but also this is a much deeper issue politically. So let's talk about a couple of different things. First of all, we've we've interviewed experts on this. The US, you can say a lot of things work well and not well in the American healthcare system globally. The U S does a very good job screening for autism. There are many more checkpoints at which autism screening can take place.

We've gotten better at diagnosis. We are getting increasingly good at identifying what we might call high functioning or low on the spectrum, autism, et cetera. That's number one. Number two, the U.S. is also not the highest, like depending on where you look, the numbers actually vary hugely. There's one study I looked at which says the U.S. is all the way down at one hundred and thirty sixth in terms of the autism rate. That's really low. Um, another study says the U S is sixth highest in terms of autism, regardless, we're not number one, but even if it were true that it is not because of better diagnosis, it's just, there's more autism in the United States than anywhere else. It would also not prove that it's vaccines.

And also, the US doesn't lead the world in childhood vaccination. If you believe that the vaccines do cause autism and that's why the US has high autism, if that's true, right, there's all these ifs. It would need to follow that the US is doing more childhood vaccination than other countries. If you want to argue that it's vaccines that cause autism. And that's also not true. If you look at countries like Portugal, the Seychelles, Bhutan and others, they have way higher vaccination rates for child vaccines than we do in the United States.

Why don't they have the higher autism rates? Well then they would resort to, well maybe they're not good at diagnosing autism, but that's exactly the point we're making. That seems to be why the U S has become more frequently a diagnoser of autism. So like every aspect of it is wrong. Every aspect of it is an unproven if, but let's not even talk about the specific vaccine autism part. Let's talk about Mark Wayne Mullen.

This is what starts to happen when people like Trump come in. I think Mark may Mark Wayne Mullen is horrible. I think he's a horrible senators. Political views are disgusting, but he used to tell the truth about Matt Gates. He used to be much connected to reality when it came to vaccination. And when people like Trump come to power, it normalizes repeating a bunch of this stuff. You pick RFK. It becomes clear you're either with us or you're against us. You're either with RFK's view on this stuff or you're against us. Mark Wayne Mullen, I doubt,

believes any of this stuff. I think Mark Wayne Mullen still believes his old view about vaccines. I think Mark Wayne Mullen still believes Matt Gates has no business being attorney general, but now he feels obligated to say it. And this is what happens when the cult takes over. And this is a real difference between left and right. Sometimes to our detriment, sometimes, sometimes not so much, which is all of the right wing media ecosystem was completely united behind Donald Trump. The right wingers who were against Trump were completely ostracized and alienated. Mitt Romney, Kinzinger, you know, some occasional influence or somewhere, but essentially they were all completely united on the left.

This was very much not the case when it came to Kamala Harris. Now you could say that's good. I'm not making a value judgment. It's, I don't want everybody thinking the same thing. Diversity of opinion is good. And also when you end up sabotaging your own candidate and ending up with someone worse, you can argue that the, the, uh, ends are very much undesirable. The right you're, you're either with us or against us. That's it. Mark Wayne

Mullen knows it. And so now he's saying, Oh no, RFK vaccines, autism, RFK, it all sounding pretty good to me. It's because he has no choice unless he wants to be completely ostracized and alienated the way they've done to so many others. We have a fantastic bonus show for you today. We have updates as to what the new Twitter algorithm likes and doesn't like. It probably won't surprise you. Ann Selzer has announced she is retiring from election polling after striking out with that last minute poll in Iowa and AI chat bots already are outperforming doctors in illness diagnosis in certain areas. We expected it to happen and it is happening. All of that and more when I am joined by producer Pat on the bonus show.

Remember to sign up at join pacman.com and recall that you can also preorder my forthcoming book, The Echo Machine at David Pacman dot com slash echo physical book, audio book, e-book. It's all available. Every preorder gets a bunch of free stuff. Just go to David Pacman dot com slash free book stuff. After ordering a thirty four hundred preorders so far. I'll see you on the show.