The David Pakman Show - 11/19/24: Trump mandate evaporates, world leaders terrified

Episode Date: November 19, 2024

-- On the Show: -- Steve Schmidt, renowned American political strategist, commentator, and founder of The Warning, joins David to discuss the aftermath and consequences of the 2024 election -- Donald Trump's supposed mandate evaporates as his popular vote total drops below 50%, and he wins by a smaller margin of victory than Hillary Clinton in 2016 -- Donald Trump confirms, in the middle of the night, that he will deploy the military against migrants -- Updating the latest claims and evidence with regard to voting irregularities in the 2024 election -- World leaders are terrified about the incoming Trump administration -- Nominee for Attorney General Matt Gaetz now has multiple allegations of statutory sexual assault against him -- A deep dive into the line between healthy skepticism and conspiratorial delusion -- Growing numbers of voters already regret voting for Donald Trump -- On the Bonus Show: The Trump administration's next target could be naturalized US citizens, MSNBC's Morning Joe goes to Mar-a-Lago to kiss the ring, company affiliated with Alex Jones seeks to disqualify The Onion's auction bid for Infowars, much more... 🧴 Amallow skin cream: Use code PAKMAN for 15% off at https://amallow.com/pakman 🌱 Ounce of Hope: Get 20% off with code PAKMAN at https://ounceofhope.com 🤪 Doomlings: Use code PAKMAN for 15% OFF at https://doomlings.com/pakman ⚠️ Ground News: Get 50% OFF their unlimited access Vantage plan at https://ground.news/pakman 🔊 Babbel language learning: Get up to 60% OFF at https://babbel.com/pakman 🛌 Helix Sleep: Get 25% OFF and 2 free pillows at https://helixsleep.com/pakman 🖼️ Aura Frames: Use code PAKMAN for $30 OFF & free shipping at https://auraframes.com/pakman 🥐 Wildgrain: Use code PAKMAN for $30 off & free baked goods at https://wildgrain.com/pakman -- 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 to the show, everybody. It has been two weeks since the election and poof, just like that, the supposed landslide victory giving Donald Trump a massive mandate has completely evaporated. That is right. Among other things, as more and more votes have been counted, Donald Trump's share of the vote has dropped below 50%. It's tough to say you have a mandate when most people voted for somebody else. Let's take a deeper dive at the numbers. The numbers, as you can see on the screen, Donald Trump receiving 49.9% of the popular vote, 50.1% of the popular vote went to other candidates. Of course, the vast majority to Kamala Harris. And let's talk about that.

You may recall that in 2016 Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by 2.1. Donald Trump is currently leading the popular vote by only 1.7. What about the raw vote totals? Well, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by 2.8 million votes, and Donald Trump is now winning by just 2.6 million votes. Hillary Clinton had better results in 2016 than Donald Trump this time from a popular vote standpoint. Now, none of this is me saying Kamala Harris should be made president. Of course not.

We're not like them. She lost. We have an electoral college. You need 270 electoral votes to win. And Donald Trump got them. Kamala Harris didn't. But the point here is that in the hours following November 5th, the Maggots, the Magapatamians and even the Magadonians, I don't know, are these three different groups? Who knows? Even the Magadonians were saying this is a landslide victory indicative of a mandate in which Donald Trump should be allowed to do whatever he wants.

When you're famous, they just let you do it. Who was it that said that before? Um, but of course this is very much not the case. We really should respect Trump only as much as they respected Barack Obama. And the reality is that the more votes that come in, the more apparent it is that there was no landslide, there was no red wave. And of course, most people voted for somebody else. Now, this doesn't change that Democrats didn't show up. I mean, if you look, Trump's vote total is a little better than his vote total in 2020.

But Kamala Harris's vote total is notably worse than Joe Biden's in 2020. There's no excuse. Democrats didn't show up. But this bolsters the case for resisting what Donald Trump is trying to do. They're not in the majority. They're merely a plurality of those who chose to vote. Now they're going to claim a mandate no matter what. They are not in the words have meaning crowd unless it comes to what is it they say men

and women's sports, but they are not in the words have meaning crowd. But the most important reason that it matters to see in black and white that Donald Trump has not even 50% of the vote is that we have a fundamental problem in this country. A problem I write about a lot actually in my forthcoming book, the echo machine. And the problem is that as the country has moved left on policy, our politicians have not moved left and maybe have even moved to the right. Now, I want to be really clear. I don't want to be misunderstood. And I know I will be by some, no matter what I say, but I want to be really clear about what I'm saying. If we zoom out, the electorate at large didn't believe the economy was good, despite that being what the economic indicators said. And they didn't believe

that Kamala Harris earned the right or the opportunity to continue the Biden legacy as vice president to Biden. Enough voters felt this isn't good enough to give her more power. We're going with Trump. They heard about the deportations and they either liked it or they didn't dislike it enough to dissuade them from voting Trump and Trump won fair and square. But we also have to acknowledge that if you go and you ask voters, Hey, should taxes on the very rich and corporations be used to make sure no one standard of living falls too low? Most voters say yes. They didn't vote for that, but most voters say yes. If you ask voters, do you believe abortion should be legal? In most cases, more voters than ever say yes, it should. And despite

some Trump voters voting to protect abortion rights in certain States like Florida to a degree, big picture, they voted for the candidate that doesn't support that. So the point I'm getting at here is that even though these pseudo populist strong men have done well globally and in the United States and Donald Trump won fair and square, this is not about, oh, there was fraud. No. The truth is that on issues, voters have moved to the left. And this actually makes the loss for Harris even worse. Harris lost not despite or let me let me

put it this way. Harris lost not because she has positions on issues that a vast majority of voters disagree with. She lost despite that. That actually makes the loss worse. It signals how unappealing what she was offering as a pseudo continuation of the Biden administration was such that people said, even though I actually statistically am more likely to agree with Harris on abortion, on taxation, on foreign policy, on education, on all these things, I'm still going to go and vote for Donald Trump. So the takeaway, there is no mandate. I hope everybody gets that.

We are going to be resisting all of the horrible things that Trump plans to do. He'll be able to do some of them, but he'll have to get through the resistance in order to do it. And then the goal is to come out on the other side, strengthened. Will we be strengthened? Well, that remains to be seen at four oh three in the morning last night. Or how do I say this? A day and a half ago at four oh three in the morning.

I don't know if that's the morning or the night. Donald Trump admitted and confirmed on truth central that he does plan to deploy the military to round up migrants. This is after Maga Mike Johnson, or I guess we would call it Trump's little Johnson after Trump's little Johnson and other Republicans spent the weekend saying, no, no, no, this is not the case. Trump's not going to do that. Trump, uh, quoted and responded true to extremist Tom, extremist Tom fitness post saying good news reports are

the incoming Trump administration prepared to declare a national emergency and will use military assets to reverse the Biden invasion through a mass deportation program. Trump saying true, he is going to declare a national emergency or he's prepared to, and he will use that as a pretext to gather up and deport migrants. Now put aside for just a moment that there is no such thing as a Biden invasion. This confirmation from Trump is truly dystopian. Trump is a madman and his people are trying to convince America that he is not. We are getting a little glimpse into the madness based on Trump's cabinet picks. Tulsi, Matt Gates, Pete Hegseth and on and on. Trump now admitting he would like to put them in through recess appointments, even though

Republicans seem to be saying, we're not going to let you do that. What we have here is a situation where once again you have a slice of those who are following this stuff saying, ah, you know, just because Trump's saying something doesn't mean he's really going to do it. Doesn't mean we really have to worry about it. I think the opposite is true. Although I hope that we do prevent Donald Trump from doing all of the things he says he's going to do.

Although I hope that Trump is unable to do so with a lot of these things due to either the guardrails that theoretically exist or other checks and balances, or maybe even Republicans to saying, listen, Gates is a bridge too far. We're not going to do it. The point here is I hope he's not able to do all of this stuff. I hope he doesn't try, but for sanity and for safety sake, we have to assume that he's saying things that he means. Now we're rational people.

We're able to distinguish and say, you know, when Trump says, maybe we'll do something about the fact that you can only serve two terms Trump says maybe we'll do something about the fact that you can only serve two terms. So maybe I'll stick around after 2028. I don't think that's serious. I know some people get mad and say, David, he's going to try. I do not believe that Trump is going to try to run again or stay in power for a third term. So there we can say, all right, that that's that one's that one's too far. But with the camps and the rounding up of migrants, we should absolutely believe him because he has a specific plan in place. We saw it in black and white.

Stephen Miller wrote it. Tom Homan admitted that it's what he wants to do. It's what he's going to try to do. Steve Bannon says that it's a good idea. It's what Trump's going to try to do. We have no reason to think that they're not going to go with that one. So that's where we are today. And Trump confirms, yeah, national emergency is absolutely on the table.

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I know that some people are going to be confused by the instructions. So listen very, very carefully. I wrote a book. The book is called the echo machine. The book comes out in early 2025. You can preorder the book right now. I have seven goodie boxes to give away now with signed. Oh, actually, will they be signed? I don't know if they will be signed early copies of the book and a bunch of other stuff. Here's how you have to do it. If you want a free copy of the book

and we're doing this, no purchase necessary. At first we thought, well, maybe if you've preordered a book, you send your receipt. I'll pick seven people defeats the purpose. Those people have already ordered the book. Those people can afford the book. The idea here is let's get the book into people's hands who maybe can't afford it. You have to be following me on blue sky. This is the first thing. So do not go to Twitter.

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David Pakman's new book. I'd love one of the free copies, whatever. Okay. We are going to pick seven people who use the hashtag and give you a free book. That's it. You've just got to be, we'll check if you're following me on blue sky and then we'll get your address. We'll send it to you. It'll be a promo box with an early copy and other goodies. No purchase necessary. This is completely free. But the two things are follow me on blue sky and make a post about my book with the hashtag echo machine 2025.

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The David Pakman show is and has been for a long time now made possible directly by our audience. I invite you to subscribe to the membership program at join pacman.com. It's quick, it's easy. You'll get the daily show commercial free hours before we publish it to everybody else. And also the daily bonus show, check it out at join pacman.com and you can use the coupon code. not again to save bigly. All right. Over the last week, there has been a ton of speculation about so-called election fraud in this 2024 election.

Now, as you know, I take a nonpartisan view on this issue and I try to be as objective as possible. In 2020, I looked into the claims from Maga of voter fraud. I found them to be without merit. There were these outrageous conspiracy laden delusions that didn't materialize. It was mostly brought on by Maga's complete and total inability to accept that Donald Trump simply lost. That's all that happened in 2020.

There were not fraudulent dumps of ballots. There were not, uh, just, just none of it materialized. Now, this time around, I continue to hear from people in the audience that say, you know, David, this time there really was voter fraud. Did you see this letter? Did you see that analysis? And like last time, I try to be as objective as possible. I continue to look at the claims and I continue to examine them to the best of my ability. Now early on after the results started coming in, both sides were claiming these vote totals suggest that there is fraud and the explanation for all of it is they were still counting the votes. Right winger Benny Johnson, with whom I've appeared on the Piers Morgan program, published

an excretion to X where he said, weird how 20 plus million Democrats just disappeared in a single election from 2020 to 2024. Super strange man. Joe Biden got 81 million votes. Kamala got 60. Very sus. Now, Benny Johnson is arguing the early vote totals were proof that there was fraud in 2020. Uh, the, the, the right arguing that it must be the case that the 2020 numbers were bogus.

But then we also had left wingers using those early vote totals to justify their point of view. A tweet from a left winger who thought this was nefarious read quote, so people that voted by mail are doing the track my vote thing. All 20 million that voted Democrat that have reported so far say they were told they didn't vote, including my cousin and sister, two different States, 20 million missing Democrat votes. And Kamala is going to call Trump at 4 PM today to concede WTF. Now once again, those ballots were not counted yet.

They almost certainly didn't come from the seven swing States that decided the election. The fact that there were extended vote counts in California, for example, tells us nothing about potential or supposed fraud in Michigan or Georgia or states that would have made a difference. So it's really important to understand a lot of these claims contextually. And most importantly, as more and more votes have been counted, the gaps and changes from 2020 are completely plausible and reasonable. The other thing that should be accounted for is there's been a lot of stock placed in early

vote mail in vote versus same day vote discrepancies here there over the last two election cycles. There have been massive shifts in voter behavior in terms of who is likely to vote early in person by mail, all of these different things. And what I come to when I look at all of it is that the only thing there's really evidence for is that those who voted genuinely preferred Trump to Kamala Harris. Now by a much smaller margin than we thought at the beginning as Donald Trump's vote share has now dropped below 50%. But that seems really to be the takeaway.

Now let me deal with a couple of other claims that were made. There is the claim that Elon Musk's Starlink satellites were used to alter vote counts in swing states. I addressed this claim a little over a week ago. We still have nothing new that would be evidence or proof of that at all. The conspiracy theory falsely attributes vote tampering to Starling technology. Remember that election infrastructure is not connected to the internet in such a way that Starlink satellites would be able to do what is alleged. And most

importantly, we have no evidence at all that that happened. If someone presents evidence, then we can evaluate it more seriously. Uh, and then the other claim that's being made is how do you get Democrats winning Senate races in states that Trump carried? It doesn't make sense. This one has been used by both sides to allege fraud. Eric Havdi, for example, has claimed it. People on left and right have claimed you've got these different results. Senate versus Trump.

Harris, again, split ticket voting is not that rare. We know in Arizona, for example, that the split ticket voting led to Trump winning Arizona, but Carrie Lake losing because there were about last I checked, it was about 75000. The number may have changed. There were about 75000 people who went out. They voted for Trump and they did not vote for Carrie Lake. That's split ticket voting that went against Republicans. At the same time, we have other states in which there are some people on the left saying the split ticket voting is suspicious. It went for Republicans. Um, it's,

it's just split ticket voting and there is no evidence of fraud there. And then finally, there are people generically claiming that there were software breaches in the battleground states, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, et cetera. We did have breaches recorded from 2022 in Georgia. Despite breaches, there was no evidence that there was any manipulation or tampering of the votes. That's 2022. And we just don't have evidence of that in 2024. Finally, I do want to address the recount thing, which is we should have recounts. We need recounts. Recounts could change everything. Couple different things on recounts. Recounts are usually reserved for elections where the margin of victory is smaller than

a threshold defined in advance by the states. And the idea is we're not going to do recounts in states where there is no realistic expectation that the modification that you could find with a recount would change the result. On average, recounts shift results at the most point oh two to point oh four percent. It's an insane amount of work. It's extraordinarily expensive. And when you look at the numbers and you see the margins are orders of magnitude bigger than what you would ever expect to change with a recount. It's simply not codified that that's what you do. So that's that's my current view as far as the recounts go.

Not surprisingly, world leaders are terrified about the forthcoming Donald Trump presidency. And why wouldn't they be? Now I'm going to address what I call the sissy Europeans retort. This is, this is what I've made the sissy Europeans retort, uh, in a little bit. But first let me tell you a little bit of what different people are saying. Uh, here is Ed Davey, the leader of the UK's liberal Democrats party, uh, speaking at the the House of Commons. Take a listen. Mr Speaker, President-elect Trump praised Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine. And I quote, he called it genius. He also said he would encourage Russia to do whatever the hell they want to NATO allies. So what action is the Prime Minister taking

to encourage a Trump presidency to change its mind? Because otherwise it's a huge threat to global security and to national security in the UK. Does he agree with me that the US will not oppose President Putin and support our brave Ukrainian allies. The UK must lead in Europe so that together we do. The suggestion is that we may need new global leadership when it comes to Russia, Ukraine, if indeed things are going in the direction of the United States actually being deferential to Putin under a Trump presidency. Absolutely terrifying. Jagmeet Singh, the leader of Canada's new Democratic Party, also expressing significant

concern about Trump. Canadians woke up today with a lot of folks really worried about Donald Trump's plans, which are going to hurt people. I expect that the prime minister will come out and state clearly that Donald Trump's plans are wrong. The fact that he has proposed an across the board tariff is wrong. That's going to jack up the price of everything. It's going to hurt workers in Canada, and it's going to hurt workers in the United States. Economic concerns there expressed by Jagmeet Singh. That's in Canada. We've got the UK, we've got Canada.

You seeing a theme here? It's our traditional Western democratic allies that are saying, oh my goodness, this is that this does not sound good. The mayor of Paris and Hidalgo quoted by NBC news, NBC new rights, NBC news rights, Paris mayor, Anne Hidalgo said Trump's win was quote bad news for the world democracies, Europe, climate women, and Ukraine, a country fighting for our freedom. She accused Trump of playing his part in undermining democracy and the rule of law. Her counterpart in London, mayor Sadiq Khan, who has clashed with Trump, said many Londoners

would become, quote, anxious about the outcome of the U.S. presidential election and, quote, many will be fearful about what it means for democracy and for women's rights or how the result impacts the situation in the Middle East or the fate of Ukraine. He added others will be worried about the future of NATO or tackling the climate crisis. All true. The leader of Ireland's Labour Party, Ivana Bacik, said, quote, devastating U.S. election result. A Trump win spells disaster on so many fronts for Ukraine, for Gaza, for climate, for women's rights, for migrant rights and for Europe. The U.S. has made a choice.

Now the impact will be felt worldwide. Grim prospects ahead. And there are many other examples. for Europe. The U S has made a choice. Now the impact will be felt worldwide, grim prospects ahead. And there are many other examples. Spain's deputy prime minister, Yolanda Diaz saying Trump's victory is bad news for everyone who understands politics as the means to improve lives rather than poison them with hate and misinformation. Many other examples. Now the Now, the reaction for many, the reaction for many to this is why do we care what sissy Europeans think? And much of this is based on a zero sum idea. The idea that anything that's good for the US is bad for all of our allies or anything

that is bad for our allies is good for the US. So of course they're mad because Trump is going to do so many things that will be great for us and bad for them. Now of course this is not how the world works as an extraordinarily simplistic and childish view. Put aside for a moment that anything climate related really does not respect country borders. Pollution doesn't degradation of, resources, doesn't the fact that we've drawn imaginary lines on a map doesn't mean that what we do or what they do or what they do doesn't affect

each other. It does. But there's a bigger issue here, and it's that it makes the United States a seemingly illegitimate and untrustworthy global partner to have an unhinged lunatic at the helm who will just say, I don't really like this treaty or that agreement or this consortium, even though we've agreed as a country to participate. We're out. We saw it with Paris climate. We saw it with the Iran nuclear deal. When that happens, we're out. We saw it with Paris climate. We saw it with the Iran nuclear deal.

When that happens, we lose credibility. When we lose credibility, if your primary concern is economics, it's bad economically for the United States. When the world is moving ahead on the latest technology, the latest business processes, the latest way to accomplish this, that or the other thing for the betterment of homo sapiens. When the U S is seen as an untrustworthy partner, and we're just not part of the discussion as we increasingly weren't towards the end of Donald Trump's first presidency, it hurts the United States economically. It reduces business opportunity. It reduces innovation. So this idea that we're sort of an Island island and if it's good for us, it's bad for everybody

else. So who cares if they're terrified or upset? It couldn't be more simplistic or not based in fact, it's just not how the world works. And if we actually do think critically, it should be of significant concern that so many of these countries are terrified about what comes next. I want to briefly address the latest with Matt Gaetz. Matt Gaetz is Donald Trump's nominee for attorney general. It's not clear based on this nomination whether Donald Trump thinks the attorney general is

supposed to be the main prosecutor of crime or the main perpetrator of crime. If it's the latter, well, then Matt Gates as a selection might make more sense. A lawyer representing two women who testified before the House Ethics Committee told ABC News Matt Gates paid both of his adult clients for sex. And in addition to that, one of the lawyer's clients says she witnessed Gates having sex with a 17 year old. This would be statutory rape. Take a listen. Presented two women who spoke to the House Ethics Committee. He was in the room for both of those interviews. And here's what he said. One of his clients told those house

investigators. At this particular event, what did your client witness? So she testified in July of 2017 at this house party. She was walking out to the pool area and she looked to her right and she saw Representative Gates having sex with her friend who was 17. Now, Matt Gates has denied he ever had sex with anyone under the age of 18 years old. We also know, according to sources, that a woman testified to the House Ethics Committee that Matt Gates had sex with her when she was 17 years old and in high school, and he was a sitting congressman.

Again, Matt Gates has denied that. We also know that House investigators were looking into Venmo records and accusations that Matt Gaetz allegedly paid women for sex. Again, these are allegations that he denies. Here's what this attorney told our Juju Chang about that aspect of this investigation. Both of your clients testified that they were paid by Representative Gaetz to have sex. That's correct. The House was very clear about that and went through each. They essentially put the Venmo payments on the screen and asked about them. And my clients repeatedly testified, what was this payment for? That was for sex. So the question we, of course, come to is, will it matter? Does it matter that an accused serial statutory rapist accused, we're all being clear.

These are just accusations from multiple women. Will it matter in terms of the ultimate outcome of Gates confirmation? I do not believe it will. And there's two reasons for that. Number one, it actually seems as though Republican senators have already potentially decided Gates is not getting through. We're just not going to do it. This doesn't make sense. It's not good for the party. So the nomination may be dead in the water already.

As far as Trump not standing by Gates. No, no, no, no, no. As we've said before, birds of a feather assault together. Donald Trump has faced his fair share of such allegations, uh, close to 50 or at least 50 potentially. Um, and, uh, it doesn't seem that it affects Trump's support of Gates whatsoever. And in fact, recent statements are no, no, no. Trump's actually standing behind Gates. That's the latest news. So I do not believe that this is going to be dispositive at the end of the day in Gates getting confirmed or not. But from everything we're hearing from Republicans in the Senate, this nomination seems like

it is about to be flushed 10 to 15 times. I hope that that is indeed the case with Donald Trump being elected and the insane cabinet appointments and everything else he has planned for the next four years. Right wing media is trying to create a new normal and convince us that the zeitgeist is changing. So it's never been more important to be an engaged and savvy news consumer. And that's where our sponsor ground news comes in an independent app and website designed to help you navigate the chaos of today's current events. For every story circulating round news will give you instant access to the sources reporting

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go to Helix sleep.com slash Pacman. That's H E L I X sleep.com slash Pacman for 25% off everything and two free dream pillows with any mattress. The link is in the podcast notes. It's great to have back on the program today. Steve Schmidt, renowned American political strategist, commentator, founder of the warning, a popular newsletter podcast and YouTube channel. Well, Steve, I don't know where to start. Um, I mean, I think one, one place is one of the reactions I'm now seeing from some on the Trump supporting right is to say that a lot of our worst fears are kind of hyperbolic. And often they will say, you know, the first term didn't actually see all of the things we worried would happen.

And therefore, this term won't either. You put out videos before the election, including Steve Schmidt explains why Donald Trump will become the next Hitler if he wins. Trump will be the end of America. Talk to us. Is there a hyperbolic or sensational element to that? Or are those your literal beliefs? What I said in the immediate aftermath of the election is that I stand by everything that I have said about Donald Trump over nine years. I am right about who he is. Donald Trump campaigned as a fascist.

The campaign was repugnant, race baiting, dishonorable. And here's reality. Seventy four million of us voted against it. We said no. We have representation in this country. We have rights in this country. Including the right to oppose. the right to assert conscience, to dissent, and to say no. A couple more million people voted for Donald Trump,

and we can talk about that. Now, what I did say is I'm going to be very clear and precise with regard to my use of language. Until he governs as a fascist, I will not say that Donald Trump is governing as a fascist. Campaigning as a fascist is different than governing as a fascist. Right. But there are no people that I'm aware of that have campaigned as a fascist who have not governed as a fascist. And when I look at the insanity and the desecrative nature

of his early nominations, they suggest to me tremendous extremism aimed at annihilation of these agencies is functional for the purposes of creating chaos in order to assert the need for more power to end the chaos. He has said that he will deploy the military as part of his mass deportation operation, of which we have no details except for that some of the parameters call for the construction of, quote, massive detention facilities. So what words are we to use to call those? What euphemism are we going to settle on? So, yes, this is a dangerous time. And I don't think that you compare Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler loosely. And I absolutely don't think if you do it, you go sit down and have tea with him at Birch's Garden. Excuse me, Mar-a-Lago. To some degree, the Harris campaign made an attempt to kind of reach people like you. And what I mean by that is folks with

historically conservative politics. She appeared alongside Liz Cheney at a few events. She didn't do any better with Republicans than Biden did four years ago. According to the exit polls, I think she got 5% Biden got 6% Hillary got 7%. Now one of the responses to that, like for example, Tim Miller said a lot of those people don't call themselves Republicans anymore. So that number may not really tell you what you're getting at, which is people who were previously Republicans who already were not by 2024.

I don't know the answer to that. Maybe you can shed some light onto that. But the gist of it is it didn't really work. Is that accurate? Why didn't it work? Or is there something we're not seeing in that five, six, 7% that I mentioned that we need to know? Well, I'm, I'm just in a, I'm going to reject the premise of the question and hopefully swing around and answer and answer a bunch of it. So I'll come back to, to Liz Cheney, but let me just

say that when did she first campaign with Kamala Harris? What was it? October 24th, 26th, right? Late in the game, for sure. It's late in the game. So I don't think it mattered. I don't think it mattered. I do think that something that Liz Cheney did matters a lot, right? John Kennedy thought a lot of what she did, and he labeled it a profiling courage. You don't see a lot of them. And in this moment, where Donald Trump is president again, the one thing that I would beg your progressive listeners is to understand that ideology is not a marker of character. There are progressive scumbags and there are conservative scumbags. There are MAGA scumbags and there are resistance scumbags.

That when you see a person demonstrate conviction, a tremendous loss. She could have gotten in line. Should have been Secretary of Defense. She stood up for the Constitution and she opposed it. Now, I'm going to say something, and this is the truth. And Republicans need to hear it. Democrats need to understand it too. A lot of the bad things that happened in America that led to Donald Trump happened in the Bush-Cheney administration.

What primarily happened, and an awful lot of Democrats went along with this. Not all, but many. Barack Obama didn't. Hillary Clinton did. But George W. Bush started a war that cost $4 trillion, created a suicide epidemic 25 years after the war started that still affects America's veterans. We had casualties that number into tens of thousands of Americans and ally forces and a million Iraqis in the civil war. And we lost these wars that ended in humiliation and defeat.

The economy was crushed. The American dream was stifled. And so the name Cheney does not connote change. It connotes a governing class that has been rejected by the American people that spans both parties. So you can look and say, Donald Trump defeated the Democrats in this election. Bullshit. He did. But it's so much broader than that.

He defeated the hypocrisy and sneering condescension of corporate media. He demonstrated the hypocrisy of it all. I mean, what greater conceivable example since the fucking star over Bethlehem could there be on this point than Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski's genuflection down there? And remind you that Scarborough was a Biden advisor. Campaign strategy was being run from the morning Joe said. John Meacham is writing speeches. Joe Scarborough looks in the camera and he says, this is the best version of Joe Biden ever, analytically, intellectually. And if you don't believe that's true, F you. People were voting against that. They were voting against a lot of suffocating elitist know-it-allism, which doesn't really work great in this country. in a classic example is.

The young millennials or Gen Zers or whatever described in the stories about the campaign going into rebellion. In the last week of the campaign, the Kamala Harris would gain to go on the Joe Rogan show. Are you crazy? And so how much how much just Steve, since you bring that up, you're I think you're pointing to the Joe Rogan thing as a symptom. You're not saying had she done Rogan, she would have won. No.

What I'm saying is there's a symptom of the judgmentalism. Who who are those people who get to say, who get to judge? 40 million people are listening to it. And there's six of them around a campaign table or 23, 24 years old throwing a shit fit that their values will be violated if kamala harris goes on this it's insanity and the country won't stand for it and it may be the case that you have to lose more elections to get a grasp on it right but the country on these culture issues has moved far and fast on a lot of things. And it just screamed, stop. Most effective ad of the campaign was the TheyThem ad.

But people miss the point if they process it entirely through the prism of its antagonism towards trans kids. Gen X, my age, voted for Trump demographically. And I think a lot of people voted for Trump because there's a lot of people with Gen Xers get together who don't want to do their pronouns. Guys, girls, you know, the first time I ever got a death threat was giving a very early speech in favor of gay marriage. I led as a Republican when I was one, the marriage equality campaigns for the ACLU. Right. I don't take a backseat to anyone on these issues. I was for gay marriage three years before But if you insist as a political party that you're going to impose your will on the people, and an example of that is how many polls did we see where the American people were pretty clear they didn't want Biden to run for a second term?

What did he do? And in the end, there was no primary, no vote, no voice. And Kamala Harris got the baton handed to her 104 days before the election. And I'll tell you what, the most incredible thing about her is she has never been in a general election in a competitive race against a Republican ever before. This was it. She's never done this before. And she had moments of sheer brilliance. She completely stepped up. But man, was she handed a bag full of shit. And a lot of people in the media deceived a lot of Democrats and a lot of young Democrats in this country by telling them that Biden was FDR. And no one saw him like that. He was as absolutely as unpopular as Bush was

when I ran John McCain's campaign. He's had 36% approval. And I talked to people around on the McCain campaign and reporters, I said, I can't even describe how nuts it would have been to have gone into that election with the, we're Bush's third term. So look, Kamala Harris went on The View and was asked a decisive question, right? There's always a decisive question. Two types of elections change or more of the same. Not a thing was the wrong answer. Right. There were a lot of possibilities.

But they all involved pissing off Joe Biden. But I'll tell you what. Would you rather have Kamala Harris in the White House right now and a pissed off Joe Biden who felt that he got a little bit tread on? I would have taken that. Yeah. Yeah. Steve, as far as what now happens both to anti-Trump Republicans, but also what I call the demoralized and despondent left, many of whom I'm hearing from regularly who say I start gagging when you tell me about let's look at 2026. It's just I I just can't now go. We're going to get them and let's start figuring out and

let's talk about who will run in 28. It's just a huge swath of my audience is like, no, no, no, no. This was so devastating. I'm out for a while. What, what, what now for those groups of people? Well, you can't, you can't get out. Okay. You don't have to charge.

You can just sit and do less. And read. And comprehend. And orient towards what's happening. And get ready to oppose it. Right. And what I would ask is if any one of your great many listeners are fans of politicians. Let that go. Right. Don't trust any of them.

Be skeptical of power. Understand who your allies are and hold them to account. Now, I have some bad news about 2026. Chuck Schumer is a disaster. The communications disaster. Jon Stewart making fun of him the last night, brutal. He's a strategic disaster and a tactical disaster because Democrats have no shot really to pick up any seats in 2026 in the Senate. Right. society craters. And there's a turnout that's so volatile that it changes the composition of the electorate in red states profoundly and historically. So absent that, the only races of consequence that matter in a federal election are the House. Democrats have to get the power of the purse back. They have to take back the House. And the good news is there are only three elections in the last 124 years where the incumbent president's party has picked up seats in the first midterm election. And the

bottom line is Trump won by 3 million voters and a lot of people aren't going to like a lot of the things that he is going to do. We are nothing if not a fickle people. So to all the despondent folks out there, George W. Bush's approval level was a solid 77 percent on the day the Iraq war began. Give it six months. Now, you have a right to be angry about being lied to by a small circle of staffers around Biden about his competency and capacity. You got a right to be angry about corporate media and Joe Scarborough and the constant bullshittery and the access media. And you got a right to be mad as hell about the Democratic politicians who won't fight, who can't see it coming, who will accommodate what needs confrontation,

and who will normalize what is deeply, deeply wrong. And so there will be leaders who emerge. When they emerge, get behind them. of Americanism that tolerates dissent, that accommodates everybody, that believes in opportunity for everybody, that rejects these dogmas of collective guilt, that rejects extremism, and makes clear that the purpose of politics is to make the lives of ordinary people better. So if I had a reading assignment, I'd say go read five or six John Kennedy campaign speeches, pick them at your leisure, and go read FDR's 1940 inaugural. There's going to be a moment soon where people are going to need to be on the streets protesting.

I've never marched in a protest in my life. I suspect I won't be in my first one. Because when the military deploys and Trump rolls through the U.S. Senate and acts with impunity and immunity, we will be in deep crisis. And Americans have an absolute right, a God given one, in fact, to stand, to oppose, to defy and to say no. Rest up. It's coming. Make sure that you are getting Steve Schmidt's newsletter podcast and or YouTube channel. The warning, Steve, always appreciate your insights. Even, uh, even these as, uh, as, as not obviously optimistic as they are. Thanks, Steve. Great to be with you. The best gifts should really feel like they were picked out just for you, which is why I love aura digital picture frames during the holidays, because you can give it to mom or grandpa.

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to get 30 dollars off and a free item in every box you receive. The link is in the podcast notes. This particular discussion is sorely needed, especially as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. selection by Donald Trump to be his secretary of health and human services has brought everything from anti-vax to raw milk to food dyes into the forefront of a ton of these discussions. And the real question here is when does the healthy skepticism that is set up to challenge authority in a meaningful way cross the line into paranoid conspiracy delusion? Now, this has become hyper politicized when it comes to big pharma vaccines, disease wars, voter fraud. The way MAGA Republicans are increasingly fighting this is by saying what

you believe, everything you're told, what you trust, every institution blindly. Now you trust anyone who says that they're an expert. So let's see if we can find the line because healthy skepticism is good. It's so good. In fact, I think we should teach critical thinking, epistemology and media literacy to kids starting at age eight or nine. Really teach them to think for themselves, critically analyze what they're told. Why is my country really going to war? Does mucinex really clear mucus or was it approved despite no real evidence

that it works? Why is Facebook free to the end user? Explain what is being monetized and bought and sold if it's free to me to use. These questions are great questions. These are part of the foundation of progress of thinking for yourself. Then you get to the conspiracy thinking the Bilderbergs and the Illuminati control the banks. Vaccines have microchips in them in order to do mind control, this sort of thing. So let's talk like a little bit about big pharma. It is healthy and a great thing to question. Why do pharmaceutical companies set exorbitant drug prices and for us to lobby for transparency in clinical trials makes absolute perfect sense. Believing that vaccines are a government tool for microchipping or population control has crossed

the line into conspiracy delusion. Now I'll give you in a little bit the sort of steps you can take to distinguish between the two. When it comes to media, it's healthy to analyze media bias, corporate influence, and how advertisers might influence what you see on TV to claim that all mainstream media outlets are coordinated by a shadowy cabal, maybe involving George Soros or other old Jewish men to suppress the truth goes over the line. There's a clear difference there. When it comes to the government, it's healthy skepticism to critically evaluate the justification for surveillance programs, drone programs, or military interventions. A hundred percent.

On the other hand, believing that every war is orchestrated by a secret group of elites like the Illuminati for global domination goes beyond where we see the facts take us with technology, asking how tech companies use your data and wanting better regulation and transparency on data privacy. 110% believing 5g technology is a weaponized tool to spread disease or control your mind is on the other side of the conspiracy delusion side elections. This is a big one demanding election transparency and secure voting systems. I'm with you a thousand percent insisting elections are rigged without evidence and relying on unverifiable anecdotes or debunked claims goes into the conspiracy delusion side, uh, food and health. And this is a big one with RFK

questioning the health impact of ultra processed foods and demanding transparent labeling and regulation. I'm with you a hundred percent. On the other hand, believing that every processed food contains hidden toxins deliberately designed to make people sick to then later make money on treatments goes beyond any facts that we have. And I know I've talked about this before. Oh, this food dye is banned in Europe. So it must be terrible here, too. Well, I try to avoid food dyes, but understand that many of the food dyes that are banned in Europe are actually allowed in Europe under different names and banned in the United

States under those names. It goes both ways. Okay. So what are the main principles here? Healthy skepticism relies on credible, verifiable evidence. The conspiracies tend to rely on speculation, anecdotes or cherry picked data. The healthy skeptics say, here's something I'm wondering about the truth of what sort of evidence would prove me wrong. The conspiracies reject the counter evidence and when they can't deny that the counter evidence exists, they go, it's part of the coverup. The count, the seemingly contradictory evidence is part of the, of the coverup skepticism considers incentives and power dynamics in an evidence-based way. The conspiracies imagine elaborate schemes with no clear motive or benefit or ability to even

carry them out. On the healthy skepticism side, we prioritize peer reviewed studies, transparent reports, seriously reputable experts. Conspiracies rely on secret insider claims, second or third hand claims, as we've seen a lot with the UFO stuff recently, unverified videos and fringe sources, and often, uh, depend on non-experts telling you these experts really aren't experts, even though they do seem to be with skepticism. We shoot for consistent reasoning. The conspiracies will often contradict themselves. Like many conspiracies rely on the fact that the government is both completely

incompetent and unable to do anything right, but also able to carry out a conspiracy theory that would involve dozens of departments and hundreds or thousands of people without anybody actually leaking any of the evidence for it. So that that's a conflict with a lot of these conspiracies. The completely incompetent, ultra competent government is carrying out the conspiracy. So this is not, there's gray area here. And sometimes we learn new things over time that make us revise our views, but that's part of the healthy skepticism, which is we do revise our views based on the evidence. Hopefully this is useful.