The David Pakman Show - 11/28/23: They're doing gas stove thing again, Trump says he glitches on purpose

Episode Date: November 28, 2023

-- On the Show: -- Brian Stelter, Special Correspondent for Vanity Fair and author of the book "Network of Lies: The Epic Saga of Fox News, Donald Trump, and the Battle for American Democracy," joins David to discuss the book, including Fox News' recent scandals, the impact of right wing media on American politics, and more. Get the book: https://amzn.to/3sJ5Du4 -- Fox News contributor Charlie Hurt, in an act of total desperation, brings back the conspiracy theory that President Joe Biden is banning gas stoves -- Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene publishes a book, which fails hugely, in part because her followers do not read books -- Failed former President Donald Trump admits he will again try to destroy Obamacare if he becomes President in 2024 -- Failed former President Donald Trump claims that his cognitive glitches in which he says Obama is President are actually on purpose -- Donald Trump releases a campaign ad attacking President Joe Biden for being old, and for high gas prices -- Fox News host Maria Bartiromo floats another Biden-Obama conspiracy theory, suggesting that Obama is actually in charge of the government -- Lara Trump, daughter-in-law of failed former President Donald Trump, is furious that things are in Spanish in the United States -- On the Bonus Show: President Biden attacks corporations for price gouging, where lost suitcases from airlines end up, New Zealand's new government plans to roll back cigarette ban, much more... 🔊 Babbel: Get 55% off your subscription at https://babbel.com/pakman 🎁 Uncommon Goods: Get 15% off at https://uncommongoods.com/david 🧻 Reel Paper: Code PAKMAN for 30% OFF + free shipping at https://reelpaper.com/pakman 💪 Athletic Greens is offering FREE year-supply of Vitamin D at https://athleticgreens.com/pakman 👂 MDHearing: Use code PAKMAN to get a pair of hearing aids for $297 at https://mdhearing.com 🖼️ Aura Frames: Use code PAKMAN for $40 off at https://auraframes.com/pakman 😮 DealDash: Use code PAKMAN for 100 free bids at https://dealdash.com/pakman -- Become a Supporter: http://www.davidpakman.com/membership -- Subscribe on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/thedavidpakmanshow -- Subscribe to Pakman Live: https://www.youtube.com/pakmanlive -- Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/davidpakmanshow -- Like us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/davidpakmanshow -- Leave us a message at The David Pakman Show Voicemail Line (219)-2DAVIDP

Speaker 1 We're going to start with a couple of sort of different things today. We have previously spoken a little bit about the obviously untrue allegation that Joe Biden wants to ban gas stoves to force people into woke electric stoves at the top level. Joe Biden doesn't even have the authority to ban gas stoves. I know that sometimes, you know, you we could skip the entire thing just by starting there, right? Joe Biden doesn't even have the authority to do that. Why are we even talking about it? But this is an a surprisingly sticky conspiracy theory, which I thought we were done with, but is now back in full force. Fox News brought on a guy

named Charlie Hurt. He's a Fox News contributor. He also is the he runs or is the editor in chief or has some prominent position at The Washington Times. He says not only is it true that Democrats and Joe Biden want to take away your gas stove, but that the reason they want to take away your gas stove is because of hate. And it's because they don't like joy and they don't like happy things and on and on and on. Listen to this and then understand you and I see this as a completely transparent attempt to distract from the fact that Republicans have failed on policy. They offer nothing. They're out of step with the American voters on just about every issue. For many people who see this stuff, they see it and they get angry. And that's the point of these segments to make people angry, to direct the anger at Joe Biden, even if Biden has no authority to ban gas stoves. Take a look at this. So funny that people

they saw that, you know, her tweet, they saw her stove. They rightly heckled and mocked her and made fun of her and ridiculed her. And then all of the Democrats got freaked out and went on and jumped online and said, oh, no, wait a minute. They don't want to take away the gas stoves. That's misinformation. By the way, could you possibly sound whinier than this guy sounds? No, they do want to take away the gas stoves. And in fact, they are taking away the gas.

Why? Why do you think they want to do it where they control things? Is that is that why? Why do you why do they want to ban gas stoves? Yeah. I think because they hate us. They hate humans. They hate joyfulness.

They hate pies. They hate humans. They hate joyfulness. They hate pies. They hate pie. I didn't know that without a gas stove, there was no pie. That's really the biggest culinary revelation here. Good food. They hate they want us all to be miserable. They want us to suffer because by the way, they hate I now am taking personal offense. The left hates good food. Have you seen the restaurants people go to in these conservative areas? I spent time in rural northern Indiana, couldn't find a more conservative place. It's all gun stores and evangelical churches.

The food was a disaster. Fortunately in Goshen, which is a college town, there was like one hipster coffee shop where I got a so-so cappuccino. If you see the food scene in these red areas, the liberals hate the good food. This guy's off the wall when we're not suffering. If we're if we're not suffering, we're in it. You know, we're making things. We're creating things. we're joyful, we're doing wonderful things. Everybody's happy. And that drives them crazy because they're all miserable. They want all of America to be as miserable and unhappy and unloved as they are.

And we're just not going to go along with it. They're not going to do it. Courageously taking a stand against induction cooktops. So reminder, Joe Biden does not want to ban gas stoves. Joe Biden does not have the authority to ban gas stoves. Where did this all originate? It's useful to know where it originates. There are studies that have shown that gas stoves release pollutants, nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, particulate matter. It's not particularly good for your health. It may not be acutely bad, but in particular, if there's young kids in the house, if there's a people with with asthma or other breathing issues, it's not great. And earlier this year, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission suggested, hey, you know what? We may want to do something to encourage people to switch to

healthier alternatives. Maybe there's financial incentives on electric stoves or we figure something out. Right. That requirements for better ventilation. Who knows? This was interpreted as Joe Biden wants to take away your gas stove when in reality it's the idea that, hey, we know that there are some bad things about about gas stoves. We used to cook with with wood. It used to be that you burn wood in your house to cook. It was a disaster. So then when we moved to oil, when we moved to gas, that was an improvement. Well, hey, there are now further improvements that we can find. But it all originated from, hey, this isn't like the healthiest thing.

Maybe we should look at how we can incentivize people to move on from gas stoves. The really important point here is that induction is great. Now, in all seriousness, I I saluted when they took away my gas stove last year and brought in my new oven with an induction cooktop. I'm not going back. It's absolutely fantastic. I couldn't even list all of the benefits here. But regardless of that, the actually important point, not my stove. The really important point is we often talk about these contrived social issues, cultural issues, conspiracy theories as merely distractions, stuff people don't care about, nonsense not worth discussing. It is true that stuff like gas stoves,

it is a distraction. It is nonsense. But the really sick reality of it is that there are a ton of people, poor people who should be worried about economic issues, who get sucked into this stuff, who get sucked in and start focusing on things like gas stoves. So at the same time, the balance, the tension is these are total nonsense issues and it is working to get voters to think about, hey, inflation's not down. No, they're thinking about inflation is down. They're instead thinking about gas stoves, unemployment's down. They're instead thinking about gas stove. GDP is up. Wages are up. Gas prices are down well down from their peak. They're not thinking about those things. They're thinking about how Joe Biden supposedly wants to

take away your gas stove, despite the fact that he has no authority to do so. So we need to, on the one hand, remind voters, hey, look at all these other things that are going well that these people won't tell you about. But it does also make sense to some degree to take this stuff head on because so many people fall for it. Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote a book, supposedly, and the book has completely flopped. Why did the book flop? I'll give you one guess.

It's because people who support Marjorie Taylor Greene do not read books. This is not ad hominem. This is a movement, a movement that has grown for 20 years where they take pride in not reading books, in not being educated, in laughing off and attacking academia and higher education as worthless liberal indoctrination. And so how the hell are you going to get a group of people that prides itself on ignorance, questions, expertise, rejects empiricism? How are you going to sell them a book? It doesn't make any sense. Marjorie, there's a Newsweek article. Marjorie Taylor Green's book is a flop. Obviously, it's not performing well. She released her memoir.

Imagine a memoir. Imagine thinking Marjorie Taylor Green has led such an interesting and brave and courageous life that I need to know how she got to where she is. I need to know what is the story on Marjorie Taylor Greene. The book is called MTG. It came out a week ago. It's a disaster. They are selling almost no copies. If you look on Amazon, there are only eight reviews. That's it. This is a me. My children's books have hundreds and one has thousands of reviews and I don't know what the hell I'm doing. Look at some of these reviews. Marsha writes, what is she talking about? I was a huge supporter of her and voted for her twice, but this book is garbage. The only thing in it that's truthful is her name was going to buy it for family for Christmas. But glad I read it first.

John Allen wrote surprised when I thought when I heard Marjorie had written a book, my initial thought was it must be a coloring book. But nope. Sure enough, it's actually a book with words in it. Wow. Thought she was the Congresswoman from the theater. Expected a centerfold, but she's the other one. Will probably return. That person thought this was a book by Lauren Boebert. Greg writes, total fiction. I couldn't even get through half the book. Marjorie's living in a different world than most people. You can tell it stretches the truth and imagination. Why on earth would anyone think that Marjorie Taylor Greene's base would read books? And I know it's going to say I know it sounds like an ad hominem. It's just the reality. Funny story. The other day I was invited to a

birthday party and the birthday party was at someone's house who was not my friend. It was held somewhere else. And it turns out that one of the people who lives in that house is a very serious conservative. And it was an interesting thing when I walked in because I saw that there was actually a bookshelf and this is not you don't always see a bookshelf. Sometimes you don't notice it until you think about it. But there are people who have no books in their house, literally no books. There were a bunch of books in this house, like two sort of shelves. I walk over. It's Glenn Beck's book. It's, you know, Ted Cruz's book. It's these sorts of things. And I got curious. So I picked up a couple of these books and none of them had been read. You know how if you actually sit

and read a 300 page book, as you turn the pages, the book takes on a certain feel where the pages and the cover are no longer tight. You can tell that the book has been read. None of these books had been read. And so the interesting thing is, in some cases, the book is sort of like it's sort of like a vase you might have, or it's sort of like an image you would put up on the wall to send a signal about your beliefs. It's not actually a tool for reading and gleaning information from. And for most of these folks, they're just not going to buy a book. The evidence is after a week on Amazon, Marjorie Taylor Greene's book has only eight reviews and they are essentially all one star. You got to sell them something different. Marjorie, you should know this by now. 30 million trees are destroyed every year for toilet paper in the U.S.

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free year supply of vitamin D, which, as I've said, I take in the winter when there's a lot less sun out that drink a is an atom G is in green. The number one dot com slash Pacman to get five free travel packs of a G1 and a free year supply of vitamin D. The link is in the podcast notes. It's been eight years since Donald Trump's 2016 primary campaign started, and we've come full circle to him making exactly the same failed promises from the first term for the second term. And it's as much of a disaster as you can imagine. Donald Trump is now reviving his plan to dismantle Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act, if indeed he gets another four years in the Oval Office. And so what's important to think about here is, yes, if Donald Trump gets elected, he's going to try to do the things he's indicated.

He's going to try to use the Department of Justice and weaponize it against his political opponents. He is going to make every effort to shut down media outlets that he considers disloyal or unfriendly to him or whatever the case may be. He is, again, going to just gush over dictators and make friends with dictators and make enemies out of our historical allies. He's going to do all of those things. But on a practical matter, when there is any policy in there to actually look at, it's the same disastrous promises from 2016 all over again.

Donald Trump once again is saying he is going to get rid of Obamacare if he becomes president. Is this even possible at this point? Well, we're going to discuss that in a moment. But here is Donald Trump's declaration from his platform, Truth Social Central. Donald Trump posting, quote, The cost of Obamacare is out of control. Plus it's not good health care. I'm seriously looking at alternatives. We had a couple of Republican senators who campaigned for six years against it and then

raised their hands not to terminate it. It was a low point for the Republican Party, but we should never give up. First of all, this guy has been promising for years that Obamacare is about to end. Remember this incredible viral moment when in August of 2020, Trump promised to then Fox News host Chris Wallace that within two weeks he would have Obamacare replaced with something else. Remember this class of three and a half years? You don't have a plan.

We haven't had. Excuse me. You heard me yesterday. We're signing a health care plan within two weeks, a full and complete health care plan that the Supreme Court decision on DACA gave me the right to do. So we're going to solve we're going to sign an immigration plan, a health care plan and various other plans. All in two weeks, we're going to be signing various plans and nobody will have done what I'm doing in the next four weeks. The Supreme Court gave the president of the

United States powers that nobody thought the president had. OK, so the first thing to understand is that one of the reasons that Republicans and Trump made zero progress on replacing Obamacare with whatever it was they had in mind is that what they proposed was a disaster. They said they were going to come up with a big, beautiful replacement for Obamacare. Everyone would have better care for less money and it's all going to be great. It failed miserably because what they proposed was a disaster. Back in 2017, Trump working with Republicans proposed something called the American Health Care Act.

It was evaluated by dozens of serious organizations, and they all came to the same conclusion. If you replace Obamacare with the AHCA, as it was known, you will increase the number of uninsured Americans. The CBO said it would be by 14 million people. 14 million people would lose care that that had care to begin with. Another estimate said by 2026, 24 million people will have lost care as a result of this. It had changes to Medicare in the proposal, which would have also hurt older folks. It had changes to Medicaid for low income people, which would affect their ability to

obtain health care. It would have allowed insurers to charge higher premiums for older adults than what was allowed under the Affordable Care Act. It was a disaster. And so the reason it didn't pass is because they proposed something that was a disaster. The really important bigger issue is that at this point, Obamacare has been here for 13 going on 14 years. It's no longer really a separate thing. And so when Donald Trump truths about how Obamacare prices are high, there really is no distinct Obamacare. Obamacare was a framework which said plans. Every state has to have plans that meet certain guidelines. And if the state doesn't do

it, we're going to have a central clearinghouse healthcare dot gov where you can shop for such plans. But the idea that there are Obamacare plans and non Obamacare plans, if you look at the state connectors, I'm familiar with the New York one as a self-employed person. I just go and buy myself a plan. I did this when I was in Massachusetts and had a Massachusetts based plan. You simply have a choice of plans and the plans have to meet certain minimum requirements. The idea that there is Obamacare, which costs X and everything else, which costs Y is silly. And that I think is the main takeaway, which is Obamacare is now just

part of the system we have. There's no real way to just get rid of Obamacare. You could defund or try to outlaw elements of that health care act. But it is so integrated at this point into how health care is done that the mere concept of getting rid of Obamacare is nonsense. And by the way, Republicans get that at this point, we're not getting rid of Obamacare. It makes no sense. So Trump, again, raising the same failed promises for 2016. They are even less believable today than they were then. Donald Trump is now saying that his cognitive failures are on purpose in a wild rant about how he definitely doesn't have dementia.

This is really wild stuff. Trump now claims that when he means to talk about Joe Biden, but instead says Obama. He's doing it on purpose. It's not a cognitive gap. This is Donald Trump's new explanation. Trump posting to Truth Social, quote, Whenever I sarcastically insert the name Obama for Biden Obama as an indication that others may actually be having a very big influence in running our country. Ron DeSanctimonious and his failing campaign apparatus, together with the Democrats, radical left disinformation machine, go wild, saying that Trump doesn't know the name of our president.

Crooked Joe Biden. He must be cognitively impaired. No, I know both names very well. Never mix them up and know that they are destroying our country also. And as reported, I just took a cognitive test as part of my physical exam and aced it. Also aced a perfect score, one taken while in the White House. That was the like very serious dementia test. Biden should take one so we can determine why he wants open borders,

no energy independence, a woke military, high inflation, no voter ID, men playing in women's sports, only electric cars and trucks, a weaponized DOJ, FBI, and so many other crazy things. So Trump is saying he is deliberately saying Obama when talking about the current president. There is zero evidence of this. There is no evidence that that's what's going on. Now, Brian Kilmeade from Fox News floated this idea. Remember this? You can't compare yourself to Joe Biden. There's no way. And Donald Trump keeps saying that because he believes Obama's pulling the strings. I talked to him off camera about that. I talked to him on radio about that.

I said, why? And I corrected him on the radio interview. Please go back and listen. I said, you mean Joe Biden? He goes, no, Joe Biden. He's convinced Barack Obama's running the country. That's why he says it. He wants you to think, oh, Brian, come on.

And he thinks that's good. That's good. That's good. Even this other Fox News person wouldn't believe that. And listen, there is zero evidence that Trump is doing this on purpose. There is zero evidence that Trump is being sarcastic when he does this. Here's just one example. They were interviewing him two weeks ago and they said, what would you advise President Obama?

The whole world seems to be exploding and imploding. And he said, it's very simple. He should immediately resign and they should replace him with President Trump, who kept the world safe. And I'm not just talking the United States. China respected him. Russia respected him. North Korea respected him. Russia respected him. North Korea respected him. And he used another word other than respect who he said fear.

So as you can see, just absolutely no reason to believe that Trump is doing that on purpose. There's half a dozen examples of this from the last couple of months. There's no indication of sarcasm. Trump rarely uses sarcasm. Trump's followers don't necessarily always understand sarcasm. And this is an after the fact attempt to rationalize what is going on. Trump is realizing people are increasingly concerned about this. Here's how I'm going to explain it away. Now, we'll talk in the next segment about if you have a referendum on age, who actually wins on this thing. But it is definitely interesting and a sign to be paid attention to that the

cognitive gaffery has become so known to Trump as a concern, at least among some, that he is now trying to explain it away and explain it away with completely unbelievable assertions like I'm doing it on purpose. Now, let's look at the campaign ad that has been published and discuss the referendum on age. Donald Trump has published a campaign ad. It is a campaign ad essentially arguing Joe Biden's old and gas and gas prices and other prices are high. I don't believe that this is going to be a winning strategy for Trump. And I'm going to explain why in a moment. Donald Trump publishing this, the truth social.

There's a bunch of music on it. What I'm going to try to do is just kind of describe what's going on and the gist of this as we as we listen to it. All right. So let's take a look. So here's Trump walking at his inauguration, looking strong, talking to Kim Jong Un, looking very powerful and very strong, talking to Putin, looking very powerful and very strong. Of course, we know there's very little strength here. Shots of gas prices under two dollars. And then Trump dancing on stage, which just makes him look dumb. Perfectly frank to be perfectly frank.

But OK, now it cuts to Biden tripping on Air Force One with clown music. And then Biden tripping somewhere else and then Biden tripping and falling somewhere else. Biden talking to people off stage in a clip that was used to make him look like he didn't know what was going on. Pictures of high gas prices. So now it's a gas price argument. Inflation reports on screen. And then lastly, a picture of I think this is Joe Biden at the beach, although I'm not totally sure. So listen, this is a very interesting campaign ad for a bunch of different reasons. First of all, this is a really simplistic view of gas prices. As I've said before, I don't attribute much credit or blame on gas prices to presidents. Presidents can do very little on gas prices. It relates to

global demand. Is there a pandemic? Is there a war? Global factors, OPEC decisions, so many different things on inflation. Inflation is actually down dramatically. So on the economic stuff, the economy is actually fine. More and more voters are understanding and believing that we did have a period during which it wasn't connecting. The economy was more or less fine by our traditional metrics. Still problems, but the economy was fine. But voters weren't believing that that has started to shift over the last four to six weeks. And I believe that if the economy stays as it is right now and the election next year is a referendum on the economy, I think Biden wins. OK, then we get to Biden is old. OK, yeah, Biden's old. Trump is old and obese and doesn't exercise

and eats a terrible diet and lies about his health. And actuaries have looked at Trump and Biden and statistically expect Biden to live longer. And also, I trust the people around Biden to make good decisions. I would not trust the Trump loyalists around Trump if he were to become president again to make good decisions. So if again. Old and economy. A referendum on the economy, if things don't get worse in the next 11 months, I believe Biden wins. And if you say, do you want the old guy or the old obese guy who doesn't exercise and eats a terrible diet and lies to us about his health? I go with the guy who is merely old. If I'm missing something, I want you to let me know and tell me exactly what I'm missing and why you see it differently.

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completely unlimited. After you set up your aura frame, you'll see why they were named the number want anymore. And one of the coolest parts is that the photo storage on the cloud is completely unlimited. After you set up your aura frame, you'll see why they were named the number one digital frame by The New York Times, Wired and others. From now through Cyber Monday, Aura is having their best deal of the year. You'll get forty dollars off the best selling Carver matte frame. Go to Aura frames dot com slash Pacman. Use the code Pacman. Today, we welcome to the program Brian Stelter, Vanity Fair special correspondent, also author of the book Network of Lies, the Epic Saga of Fox News, Donald Trump and the Battle for American Democracy. Brian, it's so good to have you on.

You know, I'm interested in what you have to say on this, not only because the book is interesting and it's a really interesting look at what took place after the 2020 election, but also because you have experience in this industry. You know a lot of what the conversations are like behind the scenes when coverage is unfolding on a particular major issue. So just to start with, as I understand in the book, you make the argument, as I understand your argument, that Fox News was a major factor in the idea that the 2020 election was stolen, even getting the pickup and the attention that it did among Republican voters. Why?

Why do you feel that that's the case? Yeah, that's right. The big lie didn't just happen. You know, Donald Trump did not just conjure this out of thin air. It was made to happen and it happened in large part on Fox News. You know, yes, there were these ideas and the fever swamps of the internet even before Fox started to air them. But on the weekend that President Biden was projected to be president-elect, on that weekend when crowds ran into the streets in New York and

Washington and LA, that was the very same weekend when Fox News presented a counter narrative, a different story, a story that Trump was really the victim and that a company called Dominion was one of the villains, rigging machines and stealing the election from Trump. In telling that story, Fox gave Trump and millions of fans false hope that maybe Trump would actually win, that maybe actually he could be reelected, that he could stay in power. So it's no wonder why some Fox addicts boarded planes, flew to Washington, showed up at the Capitol on January 6th. You know, it was because of a story that was told for weeks and weeks and weeks on TV. Do you think that the conversation behind the scenes at Fox as the weeks turned to months and they continued

signal boosting some of the stuff was their primary conversation about what is true and how likely is it Trump may get this thing overturned or is there a conversation about what is going to get us the best ratings ratings? That's right. That is what it was about. Uh, it was very, uh, very seldom a conversation about what is real and more conversation of what will rate what's going to rate. And look, I worked at CNN. I understand the ratings pressures to some degree. Uh, I looked forward to seeing the ratings for my Sunday show every Tuesday morning because I wanted to see how well I stacked up against my competition. And, you know, there's there's a there's an element of ego and also joy to that. It's just fun. It's interesting. You know,

to think about what do viewers want to hear? What do they want to watch? Where it goes off the rails, though, is where you have producers at Fox studying the minute by minute rating, something I never saw at CNN, almost like, you know, up and down like a line graph where you can see every guest, every banner, every story, what rates best and what doesn't. And what happened inside Fox November 2020 is that lies about voter fraud are what rated best. It's what caused the producers to keep repeating these stories over and over again. There's an idea that some have that if in the net net, this backfired for Fox in the sense that the Dominion lawsuit imploded, all of these other issues, the the way in which this has now taken on

legal liability, they got rid of Tucker Carlson and that was a big draw for them, et cetera. Is it even accurate though to say that that's the right calculation? Like what's missing from that analysis? You know, I quote a researcher in the book saying maybe what happened with dominion and Fox was that Fox had to pay a line tax and this is just the cost of doing business for an hour like Fox. They're going to tell stories that their audience wants to hear. Some of those stories are going to be not just untrue, but defamatory, dishonest, deceptive,

maybe defamatory. And as a result, you know, they're going to have to pay settlements. And I think that's a pretty cynical way to view it. But there's some truth to it that, you know, this was the cost of doing business for Fox. This was the cost of being in cahoots with Donald Trump and following him down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. Ironically, it's not Trump that had to pay $787.5 million. It was Fox. And yes, networks like Fox have insurance for these sorts of things. But this is not the only case. Dominion settled,

but Smartmatic is actually deposing Rupert Murdoch right now. There are still cases that are very much alive. They're going to cause further financial pain for Fox, further reputational damage, further erosion of their credibility. And I think, David, that's the broader point here, is that accountability for the big lie can come in many forms. We're seeing it through the criminal courts, through the civic, through the civil courts. The cases like Dominion, we're seeing public pressure, shame, embarrassment, like we're seeing big lie accountability.

But for Fox, yeah, it might be the cost of doing business. Based on your reporting, to what degree was the Tucker Carlson firing related to the Dominion settlement? There were this idea that it's preemptive because there's this lawsuit coming and, you know, all the different details that are there or a different story that's told, which is it was an opportunity that worked, but there were actually fact factions that wanted to get rid of Tucker already. Where does that all kind of land for you at this point? Tucker Carlson has claimed that he knows for a fact that he was fired as a condition of the Dominion settlement. And I think that's the yet another one of his own conspiracy theories. He had another one of the falsehoods

that he has promoted to millions of people. There's just no evidence that Dominion wanted him fired or tried to get him fired. In fact, there's lots of evidence to the contrary. Dominion wanted Tucker to testify because they thought he was going to help their case. He thought he was going to help Dominion's case in front of a jury. That's because Tucker Carlson dismantled Trump-aligned lawyer Sidney Powell in November of 2020. Tucker went on the air and said, we want to see the evidence, but you won't show it to us. Shame on you, Sidney Powell. It's the paraphrase. Anyway, there's no evidence for Tucker's conspiracy theory about this. What does make sense is that Dominion forced Fox to look Tucker in the face and recognize his intolerability. Here's what

I mean by that. Dominion was able to obtain so many emails and texts and memos from inside Fox, including messages where Tucker Carlson used the C word to insult female executives, where he was very, very nasty about some of his colleagues, where he used a phrase. He said, that's not how white men fight in a way that is seemed very racial. So there were all these messages that the Fox board of directors had to confront. They had to face who he was. They even brought in an outside law firm because they were so worried

about the possible damage to the company. So Dominion was a factor insofar as they had to actually fess up to the guy that they were promoting as the face of Fox News. But that wasn't Dominion's fault. That was Fox's fault. They promoted him. They nurtured him. They coddled him for years. They looked the other way. They put up with all of his conspiracy theories. They promoted him as he was going out further and

further on to a limb with his craziness and his apocalyptic visions of America in decline. That was all Rupert Murdoch and Lachlan Murdoch's doing. And eventually Lachlan just couldn't take it anymore. There were there were so many reasons to cut ties with him. Do you he I know that he has argued that he's coming out on top because now he's publishing content to X and Elon Musk loves it and so on and so forth. But was Fox News really the best platform for Tucker in terms of building what he built? Hmm. I think the answer is yes. I think the answer is yes, because Fox is still the beating heart of the GOP, speaking mostly to an older white Christian conservative audience that

is still addicted to cable, that is still tethered to the cable cord, that is not streaming the way that a lot of your viewers and my listeners are. So I think it's a different dynamic. Yes, he can say that he's going out and building something new and posting videos to X, but he doesn't have the same influence that he had before. He doesn't have the same gravitational pull. And that's because the Fox platform is still really powerful. Not among all Americans, definitely not among younger Americans, but still among that GOP base. The 70-year-old guy that's definitely going to vote in every primary. That's the Fox core constituency. And that was, for a while,

Tucker's fan base. He was able to share that audience with Trump and Fox. But because Tucker was canceled, his show was canceled in April. You know, I think he's lost a connection to a lot of those viewers. And we'll see if he's able to rebuild it now or not. Let's talk a little bit about what's been going on at CNN. I know it may be difficult or impossible for you to be totally objective about it since you were kind of caught up in the so-called revamp. And listen, I've had I had a Spanish language show I was doing, which ended. I was never really even told why I had my suspicions. OK, things happen in this business. People are in, people are out, whatever. What's your assessment of the so-called revamp that CNN launched, which didn't even really get completed before there was already another change to the revamps.

Reva, how do you assess what's happening on CNN? I think right now CNN is excelling because they're in the middle of covering a couple of huge stories. One of course being the war between Israel and Hamas and that CNN at its best, you know, covering those sorts of conflicts and events. Covering the 2024 election is another one. And right now, I don't see CNN pulling punches or going easy on any of the candidates. I see some pretty fearless, truth-telling journalism. But what you're talking about, that so-called revamp, that phase where you saw a new president of CNN come in and say that, you know, covering Trump wasn't

that difficult. You know, he should be on the air. There should be a town hall. I know there's a lot of, you know, complex feelings about that. Here's the way I view it, which might be a little bit different. I think, you know, CNN in the Trump era, CNN in the Trump presidency, we were at a certain volume. The volume was very

high for very good reason. This was an unprecedented and sometimes dangerous situation with a commander in chief who was telling the public that the press was the enemy, that places like CNN hate you, that they should be destroyed. Really awful language from the president of the United States. And at the same time, we were trying to tell the truth as loudly as we could. The volume was very high. So I think what was happening post Trump is the volume was coming down. And I think that's true. Before Chris Licht arrived as the head of CNN, the volume was coming down. And Licht wanted to keep bringing the volume down, which was something that a lot of the anchors, I won't speak for others, yours truly as an anchor at the time, I agree with that vision,

with that idea. Let's not always be at 11 when it doesn't have to always be at 11. So anyway, I would just suggest it was more of a gradual change. Maybe he made noise about it. Maybe he made it more prominent. I don't really know., here's the issue with the volume thing. Yep. We are facing once again, an incredibly difficult situation where the leading candidate for the Republican nomination is an election denier. He has anti-democratic impulses. He has a vision for a second term that is unlike anything this country's seen. And so it's time to raise the volume. You know what I'm saying? The volume is going to naturally get louder. There's going to be assertive, aggressive coverage. There has to be in order to speak truth to power. So I think that's what we're going to see. I think that's what we are seeing. I think the new, new boss at CNN, Mark Thompson has has urged the staff don't get caught up in these, you know, debates

about, you know, how to how to reach all viewers or how to be impartial. Just go report the news fearlessly. So on that note, we know a lot of the stories that the political right tells about why CNN and MSNBC are bad. I'm also interested in your view, though, or maybe I'm particularly interested in your view on the criticisms from some on the left of CNN and MSNBC are that they are pushing basically center leftism, the corporate Democrat line, and that actual progressive ideas, many of which are quite popular in the United States,

if you just ask people about ideas that those don't really have a place on CNN nor on MSNBC. Is that a fair criticism? I think it's a it's an interesting criticism and there are elements of fairness and it should be we should talk about it. Why are things the way they are? Right. Who gets booked on TV and who doesn't? What stories are selected and which aren't? And I would suggest to you that comes, and maybe it shouldn't work this way, but I would suggest to you that it mostly is a product of candidates, of politicians, of elected officials, of who's in charge, of who's running for president, and then who is in key offices. Because let's say you're a Sunday show host the way I was.

If you're a Sunday show host, do you want to book people who have power, who have influence? You want to book the heads of committees. You want to book elected officials or people seeking higher office. You want to book. And Brian, when you say you want to, this is you personally, or this is, this is what your bosses expect or what is the, I mean personally, I mean personally, but I think this is true for other anchors as well. So when you have a Bernie Sanders running for president, suddenly his ideas, his views, the views of his voters are, are, are more prominent. They are better represented in the cable news discourse just by virtue of him running for

office. Right. And I think we see that these days with Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and Ilhan Omar and others. They have widened the aperture for the discussions that happen, at least this is the way I view it, on CNN and MSNBC because they are there representing constituents and representing voters and bringing points of view that you're not gonna hear from older lawmakers who have been around for decades, who are going to say the same old things. So I guess I would suggest that it's more, it's less about, you know, corporate mandates, which I never really experienced at CNN. It's

less top down saying we're going to cover the news from this way, or we're going to focus on this topic. I think it has more to do with who are the people in power or the people seeking power? Are they being fairly covered? Now, that opens up, David, to an interesting question, which is, what about the insurgent candidates? What about the outsiders who are trying to get elected? What about third party candidates? Those I think are very real points to make.

In 2016, for example, CNN had town halls with the Green Party and Libertarian Party. That's important, to make sure that we're showing the full spectrum of public opinion and what is possible out there. But do you think I'm making any sense? Yeah. I mean, I think what some in my audience are angry about and they're angry with me as well, by the way, even though I'm not in corporate media, is some in my audience believe that Marianne Williamson and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. should be getting way more attention.

Now, at one point, they were both running as part of a Democratic primary that wasn't actually happening. And because Joe Biden is the incumbent and that's what the DNC is doing, RFK is now independent. It turned out a lot of his supporters are actually on the right. And it was interesting to Fox News until all of a sudden the RFK vote might actually hurt Trump more than it hurts. All these things, all these things shift around. Right. But I think the concern some have is what is the right amount of coverage, for example, for a Marianne Williamson to get, given that she is polling six ish, but there's not actually a primary. But that's a problem that many people say is because they don't get attention to begin with. Right. I would say that this does get to a flaw within the media about editors and producers and

political directors deciding who they believe is electable, who they believe is legitimate, who they believe is viable. And there is truth to that. But then at the end of the day, the voters are ultimately the ones that decide. I'm picturing the night that AOC won in New York and that New York One crew was there and you were seeing her live reaction to that surprise victory. At the end of the day, she didn't get a lot of press coverage before she was elected, but she was still able to get across the finish line. So there's a lot of different factors at play here. What I think is important to note is that viewers, readers, listeners, they do have a lot of power, not just in what they choose to listen

to and watch and read and consume, but also in writing emails, in being heard and making their voices heard. You know, public pressure in all of its forms does matter. And I don't say that in terms of like, go bombard, you know, MSNBC or CNN with thousands of emails. But look, I actually, you know, on my program, some of my best booking ideas, my best guests started as an idea from a viewer. And I tell that to make the point that it is not, it's not top down, at least not my, not in my experience at CNN, I had a tremendous amount of autonomy. So people didn't like something that was on me and not on anybody else. You know, it wasn't that, um, I'll give you an example. Oftentimes there's

this misperception that, uh, what's covered on television news is impacted by advertisers. Well, you know, I don't even know who was advertising on my show. I didn't even see the ads because I was in the middle. I know that the TV is literally black when the commercials are running. So like, I'm just, I'm just giving an example of a misperception that, that is out there and I understand why it exists. Um, but at the end of the day, you know, if anything, these shows need input from viewers, they need feedback from the audience that makes those makes the shows better. And I think that's an empowering, I hope that's an empowering thing to point out. Um, I guess the one thing that I would add to that is because we also used to hear like from RT anchors, no one tells me what to say, but to some degree, I think we do have to

recognize the people that are there are there in part because they know, hey, we don't have to worry about what Brian's going to say in terms of our advertisers. We're choosing him for that reason. So I completely understand the point you're making about nobody was coming in and saying, you've got to do this or you can't do that. You don't know the advertisers. At the same time, people are hired to some degree because they are considered appropriate for the totality of that network. And that includes being brand safe.

I'm sure you would acknowledge. Hmm. I, you know, I guess to some degree, but I'm trying to picture I'm trying to I, you know, I, yes, to some degree, but I'm trying to picture, I'm trying to picture, you know, you hire this, you know, I was like 29 years old, hired at CNN 2013. I'm trying to picture like seven years later when I'm on the program picking literally any story I want, picking literally any guests I want. I just, uh, you know, was I, you know, I'd like to think I'd like to think that the world is more complicated than the way that, you know, that you're portrayed. I think all of these are factors. I'm not saying that I'm not saying it's,

hey, we got to pick someone who will never offend an advertiser. But to some degree, I think there is a pedigree and your background as a reporter, I'm sure, played a role in it. In other words, people don't randomly end up there with no connection whatsoever to what viewers or advertisers aren't going to have a problem with. It's not an indictment of anybody's particular reporting or the production of the show. I think there's just a structural reality that's important to consider when you analyze any program. Well, I'll give you an example of what I think about structural reality. Yeah. When I hear that, I think more about the idea that when you're doing an hour long show on cable news, you do need to hit your ad breaks. You're going to have five ad breaks. Again, I

don't know who the sponsors are going to be on any given day, but you got to make time for 20 minutes of ads. Plus you're going to put on segments of a certain length. You're going to, you're going to try to have a certain variety of segments. You're going to end up producing Yes. undermining basic ethics and morals. But the point is, I want to have all of those kinds of channels. But then I also am grateful that we have this burgeoning independent media that is going to rely on subscriber revenue directly. That's going to have a more direct relationship with the audience. I guess what I'm trying to say is all of the above. All of the above is the better approach, is the better way to go. Consumers are better served when there's a wider array of outlets, including, by the way, public media, right?

Subsidized, you know, the PBS and NPR model foundations and donors, all of that. You know, let's get as many different forms as we can. So I think ultimately we're better off as a society. Hard to disagree with that. That's for sure. The book is Network of Lies, the epic saga of Fox News, Donald Trump and the battle for American democracy. Super interesting. And we've been speaking with the book's author, Brian Stelter. Really appreciate your time today.

Talk. Great. Thanks so much. One of our sponsors today is Deal Dash. Deal Dash is an auction website. It's been around 14 years. You might have seen their ads on TV. Deal Dash only auctions brand new items. You can get incredible deals. A Nintendo Switch sold for $22 recently. Deal Dash auctions anything from iPads to clothing, autograph memorabilia, you name it. And here's how it works. You buy bids up front, for example, 30 bucks for 400 bids. Every auction starts at zero dollars. There's no minimum. And each bid increases the price by a penny. If no one bids only 10 seconds after you bid, you win the auction. I found an awesome

chair on deal dash that's going to look great in my office. I'm bidding on it right now. It's sort of fun. If you don't win the item, you can use the buy it now feature to buy the item at the listed price and you get your bids back and you have a 90 day money back guarantee on your first bid pack purchase. So try it out. Use my promo code Pacman for 100 free bids with your first bid pack purchase or go to deal dash dot com slash Pacman. The info is in the podcast notes. Fox News propagandist Maria Bartiromo continues her descent into conspiracy land and sucking

up to Donald Trump. As I've said many times before, Maria Bartiromo really used to be a very solid business and finance reporter when I was just starting to follow business and markets, et cetera, I was in high school. She would do great interviews of CEOs. She would report from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. And it is all crumbled into nothing more than Trump brown nosing and pushing wild conspiracy theories. Here is Maria Bartiromo yesterday or maybe the day before speaking to Republican

Congressman Richard McCormick. And she floats the increasingly popular idea that it is actually former President Barack Obama, not Joe Biden, who is currently in charge. They love this one. They love running the show here. I mean, you know, does he know what's going on or is he being directed by President Obama? He definitely doesn't know what's going on, whether he's being directed by Obama or some other staff members is really questionable. But if you look at his cognitive decline in the last 50 years, we've been able to literally real time watch this guy in public life and the way he used to talk, he should be very for 50 years. We've been watching him and he's changed over those 50 years.

It's not exactly a blistering indictment, is it? It's like very Clinton ask if you will. He no longer has that cognitive ability. He misinterprets questions. He misinterprets emotions. He doesn't have a strategy. He doesn't have any sort of education or an ability to interpret new data. This is something that as an ER doctor, I would

look at somebody like this and think they really need to be taken care of rather than trying to take care of an entire nation. So, you know, you don't even actually have to go back 50 years with Joe Biden. You can go back 11 years and see Joe Biden run circles around Paul Ryan in the VP debate in 2012 when it was Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan running against Barack Obama and Joe Biden. He has slowed down. There is no question whatsoever. But when these guys say nothing about the notable cognitive gaffery of Donald Trump and talk about how Joe Biden is both demented and doesn't know what day it is, but also is carrying out one of the biggest conspiracies, criminal conspiracies that he's ever seen or that we will ever see.

You start to wonder whether they're really talking in good faith. I would be fine with any candidate for president being subject to whatever testing we want to do. But for whatever reason, people like Maria Bartiromo and Richard McCormick want only to talk about Joe Biden. Now, here's a bonus clip. Here is also an unhinged Maria Bartiromo saying, I'm sure because of Biden, there's going to be a terrorist attack soon, right? Right. Speaker 4 What are you going to do about it? You're an elected official.

What are we supposed to think? Congressman, are you expecting a terrorist attack on this country soon? Pretty please. I don't know about soon, but the groundwork is being laid. Almost rooting, almost rooting for a terrorist attack to prove how bad Joe Biden is. I don't think that this storyline is going to get Donald Trump elected. Call me crazy. Tell me I'm wrong.

I don't expect to see that. And I think that if they stick with this, the economy being pretty good is likely to make it really difficult for Donald Trump to win a rematch of an election he already lost. Let's talk about Lara Trump and Spanish. Donald Trump's daughter in law, Lara Trump, went on TV and she bemoaned that stuff is in Spanish in the United States. There's some stuff in Spanish. What stuff she's talking about? I don't actually know. Here is Lara Trump on Newsmax. And this is really reminiscent of a guy named Pat Buchanan. Pat Buchanan, a couple of decades ago, was one of these right wingers who was all concerned about people need to speak English and there's problems with Hispanic

immigrants and so on and so forth. Here is Lara Trump taking a page out of the Pat Buchanan playbook. This is the United States of America. We speak English here, but you go anywhere in this country, Eric, and you'll find everything in English. You'll also find it in Spanish. But I think you're right. Look, at the very least, we need a system to vet people to make sure that people are coming here for the right reasons.

And this is. Yeah. Everywhere you go, everything's in English, but you also find it in Spanish. This is like a low rent version of Pat Buchanan. OK, Pat Buchanan used to come up with this whole framework in which Hispanic immigrants are bad because they resist learning English, which makes it so that they don't assimilate. And Buchanan would he at one point compared Mexican immigrants unfavorably to Italian immigrants. And back in 2006, Pat Buchanan said Mexicans are determined to retain their language and loyalty to Mexico. This is something we've seen pop up many times in the Republican Party.

J.D. Vance, for example, has pushed a bill to designate English as the official language of the United States. They love talking about that. We need to assert our official language of English, which is true. It is the United States doesn't have an official language in that capacity. Now what's the truth about this? The truth is that Spanish is the most spoken non-English language in the capacity. Now, what's the truth about this? The truth is that Spanish is the most

spoken non-English language in the United States. 13 percent of the American population speak Spanish as a first language and another seven percent of the American population has proficient or better Spanish as a second language. That's an insane number of people. 20 percent of 330, 335, 340 million people speak Spanish. What's the big deal if there's parts of the country where you find things in Spanish? Now, by the way, I don't even know what Lara Trump is talking about. I know that there are official documents which sometimes are in English and Spanish and sometimes further languages as well, based on how likely it is that there are Americans that speak those languages.

But this is the exact sort of Pat Buchanan xenophobia that we used to see a lot. And Lara Trump is just angry, really angry that you can go around and see Spanish written in places. These people are pathetic, but this is all they have. It's all they have. And it's not surprising to see Lara Trump go there. We have a voicemail number. That number is two one nine two. David P. Here's a caller who says I should pick more non crazy right wingers who call about policy. Listen to this. Your latest podcast. And every time you do these voicemails, I hear basically nut job people getting airtime. Yep. And I mean, I don't know. maybe that's good for your ratings I'm not really sure I'm sure there's a reason why you do it but I would just like to offer a courtesy critique

like hey I bet you there are some people who are probably saying things that are maybe a little bit more policy based or things that actually have some more content to them if all we're trying to do is highlight, you know, that the right is crazy. I mean, I think there's a lot of time during your podcast where. So listen, the unfortunate reality is that the vast majority of messages I get from right wingers are either endless voicemails that hit the three minute maximum and then cut out without making any point that I would be able to respond to in a coherent way.

Or they are crazy, furious people. It's the unfortunate reality. I want to feature more substantive policy based critiques from people that call me. The problem is I get a lot of that from the left and we sample those voicemails and I want all voices to be represented, but it is slim pickings from the right. So I'll continue trying. I'll try to do better, but they are very few and far between. We have a great bonus show for you today. Sign up at join pacman.com. I'm out of time, but I hope to see you on the bonus trip.