The David Pakman Show - 11/25/24: Trump transition goes haywire, new AG pick might be even worse

Episode Date: November 25, 2024

-- On the Show: -- New reporting exposes that something appears very wrong with Donald Trump's transition from Joe Biden's administration -- Donald Trump's voters are about to get screwed, and they have no idea -- Pam Bondi, Donald Trump's second choice, replacing Matt Gaetz, to be Attorney General, might be an even worse choice than Gaetz was -- Senator Tammy Duckworth says she believes Tulsi Gabbard, Donald Trump's nominee to be Director of National Intelligence, may be a Russia asset -- Questions surface about whether Donald Trump believes "Urban Development" means a black guy as his lone Black nominee thus far for that office happens to be Black -- Republican Senator Rand Paul admits that Donald Trump's plan to deputize the National Guard for his deportation force is likely illegal -- Doctor Jerome Adams, former Surgeon General under Donald Trump, warns that Trump could have three pandemics to deal with -- Doctor Janette Nesheiwat, from Fox News, is nominated as Donald Trump's Surgeon General -- On the Bonus Show: Most Dems not motivated to oppose Donald Trump per poll, Florida health official advises stopping fluoride in water, Jussie Smollett's conviction overturned, much more... 🌱 Ounce of Hope: Get 20% off with code PAKMAN at https://ounceofhope.com 🐶 Ollie dog food: Use code PAKMAN for 60% OFF your first box of meals at https://ollie.com 👍 Buy the FÜM Journey Pack and use code PAKMAN for a FREE GIFT at https://tryfum.com/pakman ⚠️ Ground News: Get 50% OFF their unlimited access Vantage plan at https://ground.news/pakman 🖼️ Aura Frames: Use code PAKMAN for $45 OFF & free shipping at https://auraframes.com/pakman 💻 Get Private Internet Access for 83% OFF + 4 months free at https://www.piavpn.com/David 🛡️ Incogni lets you control your personal data! Get 60% off their annual plan: http://incogni.com/pakman -- Become a Member: https://davidpakman.com/membership -- Become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/davidpakmanshow -- TDPS Subreddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/thedavidpakmanshow -- Pakman Discord: https://davidpakman.com/discord -- David on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/davidpakmanshow -- Leave a Voicemail: (219)-2DAVIDP

. Welcome everybody. Hope you had a good weekend. Something is very wrong with Donald Trump's transition and often the question when it comes to these failed administrations, the question ends up being, is it malicious intent or merely laziness and incompetence or why not both? That's also a third possibility. Let me tell you what's going on.

First of all, before we even get into all of the things that Trump's transition team is not doing, Trump is refusing to disclose who is actually funding this transition to begin with. Peter Wade from Rolling Stone has a report on this and points out that not only is Trump the first president elect not to sign an ethics agreement, which would set fundraising limits and transparency. We'll talk about that in a moment. We also don't have any idea, uh, who is, uh, donating money, funding the transition and

thus it makes it more difficult to even know where to look for the corruption, nepotism, quid pro quos, you scratch my back, I scratch yours. Um, the article details the way that this goes and uh, what would typically be expected. Um, the Trump transition team, according to the New York times has privately created an ethics code and conflict of interest guidance for transition staff, but there is no legal requirement, no re legal requirement with regard to how any of this is ultimately going to be handled. The article also points out historically

presidential transitions, including Trump's own in 2016 signed an agreement to receive financial assistance from GSA. That's the general services administration in exchange for getting some money from the GSA. They also have the ability and wherewithal to monitor how you are funding and managing the transition. Uh, when you accept that money, you are funding and managing the transition. When you accept that money, you agree to abide by certain conditions. Those conditions limit individual donations to five grand and require transparency without disclosing donors. We also would be worried about foreign influence. So let's start with why this is so important. You may recall, you may recall that in 2016 we had a long list of people that we knew to watch during Trump's presidency because they had donated, uh, to Donald Trump's

transition, uh, to the inauguration and in a lot of different, uh, places. We didn't have to go fumbling around in the dark when we would see, Oh, this is a really weird thing. Trump is doing seems to be providing some kind of favor. This is advantageous to these companies or these individuals. Then you go and you look and you see, Oh, they funded the transition. They funded the inauguration. Now, all of a sudden we understand, obviously the name of the game is hiding, hiding that obscuring that, making it difficult for people to know who you even owe the favors to. So this is, this is part one of what's going on here. Um, the second part of this, and this is arguably as or more important about this transition gone wrong, uh, as reported by the daily beast, Trump team still hasn't signed the transition documents in order to formally, you know how every normal president, including Joe Biden said, we're

going to have a peaceful transfer of power. You can count on our full cooperation. Trump didn't do that in 2020. Trump didn't invite a president elect Biden to the White House. Trump didn't foment or support that peaceful transfer of power. Biden is doing it. That's what most presidents have done. But in order to kick that off, in order to start sharing information about what's going

on, in order to start briefing incoming staffers and getting them up to speed about what's going to be, what's going on so they know what will be on their plates when they, uh, uh, come into office in January. The Trump people need to sign some documents. They're not doing it. The daily beast reports press a secretary, Karine Jean Pierre said, Jeff science, Biden's chief of staff has consistently reiterated is a desire to work on ensuring a smooth transition of power. The problem is that Trump's transition team has still not signed the key documents

needed to facilitate that. This came up during a press briefing. Um, there are memoranda of understanding that say, here's who's coming in. Here's who you'll be working with. Here's what we will provide. Let's officially get this thing going. They haven't done that. They just haven't done it. So they are preventing that that process from starting. She added Korean Jean Pierre did their teams continue to stay in touch.

They're trying to move this forward in the absence of signed MOUs. The current government cannot begin the process of providing briefings or security clearances for incoming officials. Crucially, the FBI also remains unable to conduct any background checks on Trump's prospective cabinet. That is a critical aspect of this. Number one, calling something mandatory doesn't really mean anything if there isn't a method of enforcement. Well, it's mandatory that you disclose your donors for the transition while they're just not doing it unless you have a way to enforce it.

Slapping the name mandatory on it doesn't really do anything. Well, they need to sign these memos in or well if they're not doing it and there's no way to force them to do it, if there's no enforcement mechanism saying that it's mandatory, it doesn't really matter. The other aspect to this that's, that's, you're probably already thinking of. We know that Donald Trump is nominating to his cabinet, some problematic people, problematic for national security, certainly problematic in terms of will they do anything to help the average American person?

We'll talk about that in the next segment. It would stand to reason that if you suspect some of these folks would have trouble passing an FBI background check, you just prevent the FBI background check from even happening. There would be precedent for this from Trump where Trump had people that he just said, give them the classified info even though they had not passed an FBI background check. They did it in the first term and it seems clear that they're going to do it again. This is another example that pushes back against these people who go, Oh, it's alarmism. You know, all these people worried about this and worried, worried about that. Trump's not going to do anything crazy.

There's really no concerns here. Well, everything we have is pointing to, he's going to do more of the same sort of thing that we saw in that first term. In the first term, there was a little bit of sharing classified information with people who couldn't actually pass an FBI background check in the second term. So far they are preventing the FBI from even starting the apparatus of background checking the people that Trump is nominating. Could tool C pass an FBI background check? I don't know if she could. Could Pete Hegseth pass an FBI background check? Could Sebastian Gorka pass an FBI background check? I'm not sure. And we may not find out. So it's just another example of how what Trump sort of started a little bit to do here and there

in that first term. His plan is to scale it up. He's saying he's going to scale it up. And the actions so far suggest that as well, a little bit of no background check stuff in the first term, a lot of no background check stuff in the second term. That's where things are headed. And something here is what's happening with the transition so far. We're, we're months from the start of the presidency, seven weeks, something like that. What we're seeing just with the transition is already a sort of red alert. What the hell is going on here? Moment. All right. We need to talk about the incoming Trump administration's cabinet. Now, specifically the selections, these selections are poised, not only to be confirmed potentially

with no FBI background checks as we already talked about, but Donald Trump's cabinet picks are poised to undermine the very people who put Donald Trump back in office. They voted for him. As we've said before, thinking he'll be good for me, he'll be good for my family, he'll be good for the average person. And with every subsequent nomination, almost every subsequent nomination, we learned that that is very much not the case. I'm going to give you some examples of how Trump's cabinet picks are not just going to

be neutral for the average American. Trump's voters are about to get screwed. Let's talk about a few of them. Marco Rubio for secretary of state. Marco Rubio is a big Hawk pro intervention when it comes to foreign policy. What happens when you have a pro intervention secretary of state? Well, you have costly interventions in wars that disproportionately impact working class people whose sons and daughters end up serving in

these theaters. Rubio loves military spending. It'll drain resources from domestic programs, which might actually be good for the average American infrastructure and job creation. Rubio's foreign policy is not good for the average Trump voter. Pete Hegseth for secretary of defense, Fox news pundit, no real experience running anything. He is more interested in making inflammatory statements than actually having a military that's ready.

The fact that Hegseth is incompetent could lead to mismanaging defense budgets, putting soldiers many from rural and working class backgrounds at risk with inadequate equipment and poor planning. Hegseth has no business being there. It won't be good for the average person. Tool C. Gabbard has this track record, which we'll look at in more detail later of cozying up to authoritarian regimes could destabilize alliances that keep Americans safe and secure. Tulsi's foreign policy approach could create economic instability, harm trade relationships

and harm industries that depend on trade, manufacturing, agriculture. This is crucial to Trump's rural voters. They'll get screwed under Tulsi, Trump's new agee nominee after Matt Gates dropped out in shame, Pam Bondi, she's already proven. She's willing to put personal loyalty over justice. She dropped an investigation into Trump university right after Trump's charity gave her a donation. And as attorney general, she'll focus primarily on protecting Trump. What are Trump's interests?

She's not going to address the crime that Trump voters say must be addressed. She's not going to deal with voting rights. She's not going to deal with the corruption. She'll participate in the corruption, nevermind deal with it. Terrible choice for the average American. Who else? Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The anti-vaccine rhetoric is a threat to public health, especially for rural and underserved areas where health care access is already limited. He'll try to dismantle public health initiatives which disproportionately help folks who can't otherwise afford a lot of those things.

Many of them are Trump voters. They'll be more vulnerable to preventable disease, communicable disease, skyrocketing health care costs. more vulnerable to preventable disease, communicable disease, skyrocketing healthcare costs later, by the way, we'll talk about how Trump could have three pandemics to deal with during this forthcoming term. And you just go down the list, a secretary of labor, Lori Chavez de Remmer. She supports deregulation that favors corporations over workers. That means fewer worker protections for overtime pay, working conditions, protections, job

security. She wants to deregulate everything. That's not good for workers. You keep going down the line. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins, big ties to big agriculture that prioritizes the huge corporate farms over small family owned operations. Trump says the small farmers love them. Doesn't seem like there will be much to love under his nominated secretary of agriculture.

A couple more secretary of energy nominee, Chris Wright, straight out of the fossil fuel industry. He's all in on deregulation. He might end up boosting profits for energy companies, but who will be hurt? The rural communities, more pollution, et cetera. Linda McMahon, the wrestling lady for secretary of education, no experience with education policy. Her experience is in pushing to harm public schools by supporting private schools.

That's not going to be good for the average person. Kids in Trump areas are going to be stuck with fewer opportunities and even more diminished public schools. So all of this, all of this is going to screw the average Trump voter. The entire cabinet so far is a slap in the face to Trump's working class supporters. These picks, if you look at them, it'll be great for Trump's inner circle. It'll be great for big corporations, the people at the top of those corporations. It'll be great for billionaires, but that's really the, the, the, the full scope of it. And the question is, are Trump voters going to figure it out this time?

Because he did the same thing last time to a lesser degree. Most of them still voted for Trump in 2020. They came back and voted for him again in 2024 and 2020 it wasn't enough in 2024 it was. Will they realize that this is Trump's doing or will they stand aside and cheer while they actually are damaged? We know that with Obamacare, even though it was red state governors who denied their residents the Medicaid expansion that Obamacare put in place, a lot of those red state voters still said it's Obama's fault. I don't have health care, even though the federal government put the plan in place,

provided the funding, made it available. And red state governors said, no, thanks. My state doesn't need it. Then you've got a Trump voter or whoever in Kentucky who thinks in 2016, I don't have health care because of Obama. I'm voting for Trump, even though actually Kentucky is a bad example of other states. And they actually don't even know where, where the blame should go. So they're going to get screwed.

The perennial question is, will they actually blame the right person remains to be seen? I hope it doesn't happen, but it's not looking good. Hey, real quick. We have launched the show on a new platform. The platform is kick. We are very careful when we on a new platform. The platform is kick. We are very careful when we add a new platform. Last year it was Snapchat year before it was Tic Tac. Now it's kick kick is a new stream, new or streaming platform. It's an alternative to Twitch. We're

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We'll stream the show daily kick.com slash David Pakman. Check it out. I'll give you an update in a week or two as to how things are going there. We'll take a quick break. We will talk about Pam Bondi. We're going to talk about tool C and many others. Glad you're with us on what will be a shorter week. Thanks to the federal holiday later on this week. This holiday, there is one gift that is guaranteed to put a smile on their face. Top quality THC products from our longtime sponsor, Ounce of Hope. Whether you're shopping for friends, family or yourself, premium psychoactive THC goodies from Ounce of Hope are perfect because they are federally legal and ship anywhere in the US. No medical card needed.

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Don't cozy up to this person. None of that because we're funded primarily directly by you. No American companies taking money from Russian, uh, from the Russian government and funneling it to us the way so many others have been caught in the last three or four months. Remember the tenant media indictments, none of that stuff for us. The primary fund funding source is just people who listen to the show or watch the show. I invite you to sign up at join pacman.com. We made a major website upgrade over the weekend, um, in terms of the performance of the website that it's a great problem to have. Thanks to the 1100 new members who signed up this month.

Um, the website started getting bogged down. We have made a significant upgrade as far as performance goes, and we're continuing to do everything we can, uh, to make that a website work as well as possible. You can use the coupon code, not again to get a sizable discount off of the cost of your membership. If you thought that the corruption of the incoming cabinet couldn't get any more blatant, and if you thought Trump couldn't possibly find someone worse than Matt Gates to be attorney general, well, how about Florida attorney general Pam, former Florida attorney general Pam Bondi.

This is really a masterclass in how to weaponize public office for personal gain. Remember the story back in 2013, Trump university was under investigation in New York. Shocking, right? An institution with Donald Trump's name accused of fraud. What are the odds? We would never expect that because everything Trump does is on the up and up. New York's attorney general was going after Trump university for allegedly scamming students out of millions for what was ultimately worth not much more than the toilet paper that Trump would flush 10 to 15 times

down the Mar-a-Lago toilet as he was surrounded by classified documents. OK, at the same time that New York was investigating Trump University, Florida's then Attorney General Pam Bondi was thinking about joining the investigation, thinking, thinking very hard, very strongly thinking. But then something magical happened. Trump's foundation, the very same, quote, charity that was later shut down for being a complete and total scam, cut a twenty five,000 check to Bondi's campaign. And wouldn't you know it shortly after the check from Trump's charity cleared Pam Bondi's office decided, you know what,

we're not actually going to open up the formal investigation into Trump university. Like a miracle, it went away the way Trump told us COVID would be gone by Easter of 2020. Uh, the potential investigation by Pam Bondi into Trump university really did disappear, but it gets even better or worse depending on what your basic ethics are. The $25,000 donation that Trump made appears to also have been against the law because charitable donations aren't supposed to be used for political campaigns, which is exactly what Donald Trump did. Even Trump's team ended up admitting this one is a little sketchy and the foundation

was ultimately slapped with a fine. But by that point, Trump got what he wanted, which is that Florida decided not to join the lawsuit, not to join the investigation into Trump University. So fast forward to now, Donald Trump is rewarding Pam Bondi with being the top prosecutor in the country. Attorney General Pam Bondi, the same person who at best looked the other way when Trump was greasing the wheels and at worst actively buried a case to protect Trump.

So it's not just corruption. This is cartoonish, blatant corruption. And if Pam Bondi does become attorney general, she's not just another Trump lackey. She is someone with a proven record of protecting Trump at all costs. Donation not going to look into Trump University. And this would send a very clear message, which maybe is the message Trump is trying to send after all of this, which is Trump doesn't just ignore the law. He recruits people to help him rewrite the law in his favor. So that's part one.

Part one is Trump doesn't have friends. He has loyalists suck ups and Pam Bondi did her bit job back whenever. And now she's going to get rewarded with this role if she can get herself confirmed. That's part one. Nepotism, corruption, the sort of perverted version of loyalty that Donald Trump favors. But there's a second part of it here. There's a reason Bondi is also interesting to Trump. It's not just, hey, here's a nice little job to reward you for what you did for me 11 years ago.

The additional aspect to this is that much like Matt Gates would have done. This is not different. Pam Bondi will go after Donald Trump's political adversaries. Matt Gates would have done it too, to be clear. But Pam Bondi is going to show up very ready to say, who do you, who do you want me to target? Who is it? You believed raw, you believe wronged you at some point during, uh, the last, however many years you've been in public life and in public office and a candidate, she will go after those people. So let's not kid ourselves. This is the same playbook Trump's been running since day one. It's loyalty over competence.

It's personal gain over what's good for public service. And above all, it's keeping Trump untouchable. You've got to hand it to him. Private reporting from the summer was that Trump sees winning as the way to keep himself out of prison. And it seems that it's going to him. Private reporting from the summer was that Trump sees winning as the way to keep himself out of prison. And it seems that it's going to work. It seems that that's exactly what it's going to be. The difference from 2016 to 2017, Trump's first term, the difference from Trump's first term to this incoming second term is that it's even more shameless this time. In the first term, a lot of Trump's first cabinet picks

at least had the veneer of competence, not all of them, not Betsy DeVos, for example, but some of them did have the veneer of competence. And then a lot of them resigned, were fired. And then Trump brought in the really incompetent weaponized people. This time, Trump's going straight to the incompetent weaponized people tool. See Hegg Seth, he tried Gates now Bondi. It's almost impressive the audacity the guy has, but if you kept getting away with everything, wouldn't you be audacious as well? It seems that that's what's going on. All right. A number of you wrote to me recently and you said, David, Bernie Sanders has declared Tulsi Gabbard is not a Russian asset. When a sitting senator tells us that we should believe him. Absolutely legitimate

to say, well, Bernie certainly should be listened to. But if the standard is when a sitting senator tells us something, we should listen. Then we also have to apply it to Senator Tammy Duckworth, who over the weekend on CNN said she does think that Tulsi is a Russian asset. Now, before we even play the clip, I do think it's important to remind you when we say a Russian asset, we're not saying a secret agent. We're not saying someone on the payroll of Russia who coordinates with Russia. We're saying more of a useful idiot. It's sort of like remember RT America, this Russian propaganda channel, which a decade

ago I appeared on a couple of times before I said not going to do that again. Um, that you would always hear from the people on RT. No one tells me what to say. I'm allowed to say whatever I want. Well, you're allowed to say whatever you want, but you were chosen because they knew what you would be likely to say. That's why you're there. And not recognizing that makes you a useful idiot. Much the same way. Here is Tammy Duckworth laying out her view about Tulsi and the Russia stuff. Take a listen. She's a critic of U.S. intelligence operations. She has promoted Russian propaganda. Your fellow Democrat, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, called her, quote, likely a Russian asset.

Now, you and Tulsi Gabbard are both veterans. You served with her in the House. What do you think of her? Well, I think she's compromised. I think by going to Syria and basically backing a brutal dictator there, I mean, Russian-controlled media called her a Russian asset. So I do think that we have a real deep concern whether or not she's a compromised person. And frankly, the U.S. Intelligence Committee, I'm sorry, the U.S. Intelligence Community has

identified her as having troubling relationships with America's foes. And so my worry is that she couldn't pass a background check. So listen, we talked about the background checks earlier. Senator Duckworth may indeed be right that Tulsi couldn't pass an FBI background check. Trump is trying to prevent FBI background checks from even being done. Simple solution, folks. Very easy. Can't pass a background check. Just don't do it.

It's sort of like if you don't test, there's no COVID cases. Just stop testing. Then the COVID cases will go away. Just don't background checker. Then, then we just can, can move on. But there's a couple of things that I think are important to consider here. Number one, again, if you take Bernie seriously as a sitting Senator who says, I don't think tools, he's a Russian asset, then we also need to take seriously Senator Duckworth saying, I think that she is second aspect to this that I think is absolutely critical. This is not about Tulsi is getting, uh, talking points from the Kremlin. That that's not what this is about. This is about the gray area where we don't know whether Tulsi really has American interests as her primary priority or foreign interests as her primary priority.

Now, you might say, well, David, I'm not I'm not a nationalist in that way. I want the well-being of all people. So maybe it's fine that Tulsi has the priorities of the Russian people or whoever or everybody. Right. Maybe it's fine that Tulsi has the priorities of the Russian people or whoever or every right. But if you're being hired to perform a particular role for the American federal government, if there are questions about who you think is, uh, what group of people is the priority for Tulsi, that's a problem. Let me give you a counter example.

Marco Rubio. I don't like the guy's politics. He's a Hawk on foreign policy. I think, you know, I use the term doofus. I don't think he's, he's literally a dumb guy, but he's doofus see with a lot of his political perspectives. But I have no question in my mind that Marco Rubio would function as a representative of the United States if he becomes secretary of state in the way that is clear. That is what he and the people around him see as best for the United States. It's clear that his priority would be what's best for the United States as he sees it. Now it may be the case that we disagree. It may be the case that his policy wouldn't actually be good for the United States,

but that's a different thing with tool. See, it's really not clear. And that alone is a major red flag. You'll recall that Russian state media outlets like RT and Sputnik would consistently promote tool. See his viewpoints frame her as this anti-establishment voice because her commentary and her positions were useful to them to attempt to delegitimize American democracy. She's echoed narratives favored by the Kremlin. It doesn't mean she's getting the talking points from them, but she's saying exactly what the Kremlin would want her to say, criticizing American support for Ukraine, framing it as an unnecessary provocation against Russia, even though it's actually defense against an illegal Russian invasion, opposing sanctions

on Russia, suggesting, oh, the sanctions on Russia will harm Americans more than Russians, which does not appear at all to be the case saying that the U S should respect Russian security interests, which is straight out of the Kremlin playbook. She's portrayed the conflict as one that the U S should avoid escalating, which feeds into the Putin idea that NATO expansion triggered this invasion. And the U S actually could be responsible for that. This stuff all gets featured in Russian propaganda as evidence that the U S is divided. They love the Tulsi stuff. She, uh, has been accused of defending Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. Who's a close ally of Russia. Russia's interest is propping up Assad. Um, and that again, aligns her with the goals of the

Kremlin. So it's circumstantial evidence without a doubt. We're not, I haven't heard anyone say tool C is coordinating or even financially tied to Russia. I've not made that claim. I've not heard it said, but ultimately she's being a useful idiot here. And that's not a pejorative. We're not using the term idiot as like, you're a moron. We're useful. Idiot is a particular term, which is she potentially unintentionally we'll give her the benefit of the doubt. She unintentionally ends up serving Russian interests. And that doesn't mean that she's an agent or a spy or anything like it. The question that should be asked is when there is such lack of clarity as to whose

interests she serves, should she be in a position as sensitive as director of national intelligence, especially when it's not clear she could even pass an FBI background check. My opinion is no. If your opinion is yes, I want to hear from you. Info at David Pakman dot com. 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. Thank you so much, David. dot news slash Pacman to take advantage of their biggest sale of the year. You'll get 50 percent off their top tier vantage plan. That's ground dot news slash Pacman. The link is in the podcast notes. Sometimes the people we are closest to are the toughest to shop for. Luckily, there's a gift everyone on your list will love. It is the aura digital picture frame. I gave one to my mom, preloaded it with pictures of the baby and some of me. Right. I

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checkout. That's a you are a frames dot com. Use code Pacman to get forty five dollars off their best selling Carver matte frame. The link is in the podcast notes. This is really kind of weird and I don't it's a strange topic to introduce, but there's just kind of no way to say it other than ripping the bandaid off. It seems as though Trump thinks the secretary of urban development has something to do with being black because the word urban is in the title. And he again is selecting a black guy to lead the Department of Housing and Urban Development. And I think it's

sort of like an insane asylum, Hannibal Lecter sort of thing. So let me explain that to you and remind you what I'm talking about. Donald Trump, during his rallies leading up to this recent election, would start talking about how people are being let out of insane asylums into the United States. And that led him to tell this story of Hannibal Lecter, the fictional character played, of course, by the great actor Anthony Hopkins in the movie Silence of the Lambs alongside Jodie Foster, of course. And we were always confused about it. And Trump would say, oh, they say I have cognitive decline because I'm talking about Hannibal

Lecter. But no, they're emptying insane asylums into the country. What it seems to be is that Trump fixated on the word asylum and was confused between people who come to the border and seek asylum, a legal process for getting temporary protected status in the United States, seeking asylum and being in a quote, insane asylum, what we might call an inpatient psychiatric hospital. Trump seemed not to understand the difference between the two. I believe that's the oranges of, uh, Trump's entire Hannibal Lecter insane asylum thing.

So that brings us to secretary of urban development. You might recall that despite having almost no black cabinet members last time, Trump had selected Ben Carson, who happens to be black, to be secretary of housing and urban development. And at the time we said he doesn't he's a he's a neurosurgeon. He doesn't really know anything about this other than Trump might think because the word urban is in the title and Ben Carson's black. Trump's like, let's get a black guy.

OK, that was an N of one. We now have an N of two because Donald Trump has named former Texas state representative Scott Turner for housing and urban development. How is this the real world? And it also is the case that I believe despite having no other black folks in his cabinet thus far, once again, the guy that Trump has selected to lead housing and urban development is a guy who happens to be black. This is completely nuts.

I would not. This is like the whole story. It just seems Trump believes urban development means black people and you've got to put a black guy in that role. Um, if, if you think there's some other explanation, the with N of one with just Ben Carson, all right, could be a coincidence, even though it sort of sounds like something Trump would believe now that it's two of two, it starts to point in a slightly different direction. So let me know what you think.

We'll talk later, maybe later this week as to what we would expect. This is a, this is a cabinet position, secretary of housing and urban development that does not receive a lot of attention, typically receives less scrutiny than something like, for example, a secretary of state, even significantly less scrutiny than secretary of education, but housing and urban development, particularly when it is the magas who insist, oh, everything, including housing is too expensive. They love to say housing is too expensive, vaguely or nebulously blame Democrats in expensive blue cities for that problem. While at the same time not wanting the secretary of housing and urban development to push the

policies that would increase the housing stock significantly and uh, hopefully push down housing prices. So we'll deal with that in more detail later, but it seems at least for now, Trump thinks secretary of urban development means you need a black guy. All right. Rand Paul is not a Senator that I agree with. I think Rand Paul gets so much wrong about so many different things, but Rand Paul is the type of guy who every once in a while, like a broken clock, he gets something right. And Senator Rand Paul appeared on face the nation this weekend and acknowledge Trump's deportation plan has elements that appear to be against the law. Now I'm going to prepare you before people write in and say, David, are you endorsing what

Paul is saying? No, listen here. You're're going to see in these 55 54 seconds is Rand Paul kind of hem and haw. He uses caveats. He supports the general idea of Trump's mass deportation plan. But there is a specific aspect to it that he says would be against the law. And he's right. Take a listen to what he has to say. If they send the army into New York and you have 10,000 troops marching, carrying semi-automatic weapons, I think it's a terrible image and I will oppose that.

But it's not that I oppose removing people. I just object to what has been against the law for over 100 years, and that's using the army. And again, against the law is code for illegal, not exactly law and order. But deputizing the National Guard, that specifically is the proposal. You also oppose that. I don't think it's the best way to do it. It's less clear whether that's legal or illegal. Typically, it has to be done at the behest of the governors. I still don't like a militarization of police, whether it's National Guard or Army. I think there's a lot of FBI. There's a lot of border patrol agents. There's a better way to do it. And it needs to be individualized. That doesn't mean

I'm any less serious about getting it done. It just needs to be done according to the law and consistent with our traditions. So listen, beggars can't be choosers. Broken clock is right twice a day. You know, whatever you want to apply to it. Rand Paul is completely correct about the claims he's making regarding the illegality of what Trump wants to do. It is against the law as enshrined by the Posse Comitatus Act. We've talked about it now multiple.

We've talked about it a dozen times over the last five years. We've talked about it now three times. We've talked about it a dozen times over the last five years. We've talked about it now three times over the last two weeks. What Trump's plan would do is deputize National Guard, meaning the military, to do domestic law enforcement. Now, I know that they will counter and say, well, it's not really domestic law enforcement because these are undocumented immigrants and therefore it's really foreign law enforcement. No, no, no, no.

You're enforcing the laws of the United States. Yes, you're applying it to those who came from other countries, but you are physically within the United States enforcing American laws here. That's against the law according to the posse commentators act and Rand Paul is completely and totally correct. Now what he's saying is I still agree with Trump about getting everybody out. I think that there's a different way to do it, which is use border patrol, which is already here specifically for this purpose.

Use FBI agents do other, okay, well, so he's, he's trying to figure out other ways to make it legal, but he's trying to figure out other ways to make it legal. But he is absolutely and completely correct. Now, there's another critical aspect to what he has said here, which is that typically and by typically we mean as prescribed by the law in order to have National Guard doing stuff. Now, put aside for a second whether they are functioning as domestic law enforcement. That's illegal. Let's just put it aside. If national guard troops are going to be doing whatever in New Jersey, it is up to the New Jersey governor to say, here's what we want them to do. Now, this almost never is the sort of proposal we're looking at now, but the more common

situation in which we see this is after some kind of natural disaster, the governor of proposal we're looking at now. The more common situation in which we see this is after some kind of natural disaster, the governor of New Jersey, for example, like after Superstorm Sandy will say we need National Guard out here to distribute water, to go and do search and rescue, to sandbag certain areas for the water level to come down. It's the governor of New Jersey. And there are also some MAGA's kind of playing playing fast and loose saying, oh, in this plan, Trump has the National Guard would be activated by a governor, except what they're missing is it has to be the governor of the state in which the National Guard is going to be doing stuff.

They want to pretend that if the not the Josh Shapiro would do this, but they want to pretend that if the Pennsylvania governor says, hey, National Guard, go into New Jersey and do ABC, that it's fine because a governor authorized it. That is not the way that it actually works. It is the governor of the state in which they are operating. So Rand Paul wrong overall in his view about this entire mass deportation initiative, just completely wrong overall, despicable, horrible, right. That it would be against the law per the posse commentatus act for national guard to do domestic

law enforcement in the middle. And I would argue deceptive is when he says, typically it's up to the governors to decide if the national guard is going to be doing stuff. The critical part is the governor of the state in which the national guard will be deployed. Uh, otherwise it would be, Hey, you know, Greg Abbott in Texas says that the national guard is deploying to Connecticut. So it's fine. Yeah. But it's up to the Connecticut governor to decide what goes on there. Not up to Greg Abbott. And in fact, if you support state's rights and state sovereignty, you should really support that as well.

We know that states rights is only a concept they support when convenient, when it's inconvenient, all of a sudden. Well, you know, maybe it's just Greg Abbott's rights to do whatever in any state. I'll take it from Rand Paul. And I think the maybe bigger takeaway is even though Rand Paul still gets 80 percent of this thing wrong, the fact that even he is saying aspects of this are illegal should really make us consider that Trump is trying to do illegal things. And we knew that Stephen Miller with his deportation plan, he doesn't care about the law.

He cares about propaganda and weaponizing government. And that's exactly what they plan to do. You watch YouTube, you listen to podcasts, you've heard a ton of ads for VPNs, but all VPNs are pretty much the same except for one. Our sponsor, Private Internet Access is the only VPN that can confirm your Internet activity is not being logged. Their software is fully open source, so you can see the traffic isn't being logged. Their systems are also independently audited by the big four accounting firm Deloitte to confirm nothing is being logged. And they've demonstrated multiple times in court they have no record of user activity.

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solicitors and scammers get your information from these very same sources. Go to Incogni dot com slash Pacman and use the code Pacman for 60 percent off. That's I n c o g n i dot com slash Pacman for a huge 60 percent discount. The link is in the podcast notes. Many of you have written to me extraordinarily concerned about the selection of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to secretary of health and human services. And, you know, we've been joking a lot about raw milk and ivermectin lollipops for everybody. But they're not that I need to tell you. It's extraordinarily serious, this position, and it should be taken seriously. And you need a serious person in that position.

Donald Trump's former surgeon general, Jerome Adams is now sounding the alarm that the way we're headed with RFK in charge of that department, we could be heading to three pandemics under Donald Trump. Jerome Adams posting on Twitter, whooping cough cases up five X this year, 100,000 global measles deaths, mostly in kids, H5N1 steamrolling towards pandemic status, egg prices skyrocketing. The new administration had better have a strong infectious disease response plan and had better ensure public health and vaccine confidence stay high or they'll be distracted with outbreaks for four years this time instead of just one. There are many reasons to be concerned.

And this, of course, is one of those situations where you really are going to be much better off in blue states than red states, not just because the blue state economies are so much better and the health care and the education is better, although that is part of it. But also because the place is most likely to start playing coy with vaccines under Mr. Secretary R.F.K. Junior are the red states as well. Now look at the whole track record. Even though Trump initially wanted credit for the covid vaccines both before and after he's promoted vaccine skepticism.

He suggested infecting injecting disinfectant during covid and all that stuff. But imagine the damage that that level of ignorance could do to public trust in vaccines for diseases like measles and whooping cough. We'll talk about that. Those are outbreaks that love it when vaccination rates drop. You know, with the COVID vaccines, really, the vaccine is about keeping you alive, preventing serious illness, preventing hospitalizations. They're good at that. They're not good at preventing transmission with pertussis, whooping cough and measles. It is all about preventing transmission. And you'll recall that Trump's first administration tried slashing the CDC budget multiple times.

Why fund public health when you can talk about building a wall or whatever? But if those cuts happen again, we could end up underfunded for a response to H5N1, which is knocking at the door, which I've been telling you about, and also potentially heading in the wrong direction on whooping cough and on measles. And Trump has had as an elected official, sort of a, an off again on real on again, off again relationship with science. We could say it's a complicated relationship. He sidelines experts because his gut instincts are better. Twitter posts are better. People he hears on Fox News

are better. And when you're talking about measles, whooping cough and H5N1, you could be talking about delayed or botched responses to threats that are emerging. And we know what happens when there's a pandemic at stake and delay is not good. And going the wrong direction is also not good. We would expect in this environment, whether it's measles, whooping cough or H5N1, like it's already written. We all know it. It's written on the wall. If anything at any point is asked of any of these magas, we are endlessly going to hear

they're taking my freedom. They're taking my liberty, all of this stuff. And those diseases are going to spread. I joked that with our last week. These are very morbid jokes. I'll admit I joked that with RFK at the helm, it's almost like communicable disease got its own lobbyist and they now have someone lobbying in favor of contagious disease in the incoming administration. Now, it also is worth mentioning the whole egg

price thing. On the one hand, there's this irony that new reports suggest eggs aren't going to get any cheaper under Trump if things keep going in this direction with bird flu. Part of the reason egg prices are up has nothing to do with Joe Biden. And in fact, inflation numbers have been lower in the United States under Biden than in all of our Western developed sort of allies. But H5N1 is also obviously it impacts poultry. It's going to impact egg prices. Whatever Trump's responses to H5N1, we can safely assume it's not going to bring down egg prices. Maybe we'll do a press conference blaming China. Maybe he'll blame

immigrants. Maybe he'll blame windmills. But it is not going to be a response that actually will do what he said he would do on egg prices. Vaccination is another aspect of this that I want to talk about. Whooping cough, whooping cough has an R not a reproduction rate of 12 to 17. That's very, very contagious to have herd immunity on whooping cough. You need 92 to 94% of vaccination. You know that in this environment, there will be six to eight percent, mostly right wingers. Although, as I've said before, there's left wing anti-vax as well. There could easily be six to eight percent of parents who say that we're not doing the whooping cough vaccine and whooping cough is extra tricky because we know that immunity wanes, whether you've gotten a vaccine or whether

you've gotten an infection, immunity wanes, and you need the boosters to maintain protection. You need 92 to 94% protection in order to have herd immunity with measles, even more contagious. The are not can go as high as 18. So one of the most contagious diseases that is known, you need a little bit more vaccination for herd immunity instead of 92 to 94. It's more like 93 to 95. You you absolutely need that if the goal here is to prevent an outbreak. And you can certainly assume five to seven percent of parents, especially in this kind of new anti-vaccine covid skepticism climate, may move in a different direction. On top of the fact, you'll have RFK saying on the one hand, I'm not anti-vax, but then having told, I believe it was Lex Friedman,

there is no safe and effective vaccine period, full stop. So this all looks very bad. And all we can do is what take the precautions we can take ourselves, talk to people, hopefully be in states where state government is doing what it can to protect people. What else can you do at a certain point? You can't do more. And that is a sort of depressing realization. Adding to the bad health news, Donald Trump has nominated Fox News lady for surgeon general. Now I'm being a little unfair.

She is a doctor. I'm talking about a TV doctor, Jeanette Neshawat. We've talked about her before. The New York Times announces Trump chooses New York doctor to be next U.S. surgeon general. Dr. Jeanette Neshawat is a medical director for a chain of urgent care clinics. Her sister served as an advisor in the first Trump administration. Trump said on social media that she's committed to ensuring that Americans have access to affordable quality

health care and believes in empowering individuals to take charge of their health, to live longer, healthier lives. That is coded language if I've ever seen it. Now, if her name sounds familiar, it's because she is the author of this notorious word salad on Fox News just about 10 months ago. We covered it at the time. This is one of my favorite Dr. Jeanette clips. This is our potentially incoming surgeon general. Listen and weep, my friends. There's all that other stuff is just a distraction right now. Voters miss the American dream. And the only hope to get that back to reality is President Trump by looking at those polls. And you just take a look. What has Donald

Trump done? We've seen what he's done in his four years. Compare that to what President Biden has done under Trump. We had a thriving economy. We were energy independent. We had some semblance of organization at the border. And, you know, we look at the Abraham's accord as well. I love the Abraham's accord. I was actually thinking of Jeremy's accord, his Honda accord. It's in the shop for a new a new belt. But she's making a good point. Abraham's accord has a lot of new features.

So all these things that he did for us, our four ones were expanding. You could fill up your gas tank and go out for a movie on Friday night. But we're not seeing that right now. And Americans are. This is this is not a serious group of people. I don't know how else to say it. And part of the problem. And I have I have quite a chapter in my forthcoming book, The Echo Machine, about this.

It is now a badge of honor. It's seen as a as a feature rather than a bug to support those who aren't really experts now. OK, she isn't. She is a doctor and absolutely she's a doctor. But as we've seen, just being a doctor does not make you a reliable purveyor of public health information. And that's fundamentally the critical part of being surgeon general. Look at that Florida, uh, Dr Ladapo anti-vax anti-fluoride. We're going to talk about that on the bonus show today. Just because you are a doctor doesn't mean that you have even remotely the right instincts when

it comes to public health. And of course, the concern is that this is yet another, let me turn on the TV and pick someone that I see there. Oh, I turned on the TV. Pete Hegseth is a veteran. He can be secretary of defense. Oh, Jeanette Neshawat is a doctor. She can be surgeon general. RFK talks about vaccines. He can be secretary of health and human services. This is a crisis where it's not just that expertise itself has taken a backseat. They attack expertise and say, we know as well as anybody, and it all comes from the top.

This is one of the things maybe more than anything that Donald Trump put out there during his first term, which is military generals. Trump knows more, uh, nuclear physicists, physicists, Trump knows more doctors. Trump knows more public health officials. Trump knows more. He knows more than everybody. And that has now emboldened your average parent to say, I know more about which materials are appropriate for a seven-year-old than professional educators. It has emboldened your average parent to say, I know more about which materials are appropriate for a seven year old than professional educators. It has emboldened parents to say, I know more about whether a kid should get the measles vaccine than my pediatrician. This is the totality of the crisis of expertise. And, uh, and I do write about it in the book.

Speaking of the book, almost 4,000 pre-orders. We are now entering the territory where New York times nonfiction bestseller is not just a pipe dream. So thank you to the nearly 4,000 people who have pre-ordered. I spent the weekend signing with Sharpies like this one, signing book plates. Everybody who pre-orders will get a signed book plate. You can preorder anywhere books, e-books and audio books are sold. Also want to remind you we have launched on kick the streaming service kick dot com slash David Pakman. Even if you want nothing to do with kick, my small request is just follow us on kick. It actually is a requirement in order to get a verified monetized channel on kick to have

some followers. We're streaming the show nightly on kick kick dot com slash David Pakman. All right. What is on today's bonus? Oh, the bonus show where you want to make money. Yes. Everybody else that makes money to fund themselves is bad. Huge bonus show.

Most Democrats say in a new poll they don't have it in them to oppose Donald Trump. This is scary. Number two, as I mentioned, Dr. Ladapo in Florida says, let's get fluoride out of drinking water. Let's talk about the truth about fluoride. And finally, Jussie Smollett's conviction on the attack he staged against himself five years ago has been overturned. Why was it overturned? We will discuss and explain on today's bonus show. Sign up at join Pacman dot com. I'll see you then. We'll be back tomorrow. Remember,

it's a shortened week with the holiday. We'll be here Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Just just so everybody's ready. Make sure make sure I always get emails. Sir, where is today's show? Well, it's Thanksgiving Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday this week. I'll see you on the bonus show and back here tomorrow.