The David Pakman Show - 12/22/22: Trump's Taxes Are Depraved, Zelenskyy Addresses Congress

Starting point is 00:00:00 . Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made a sort of last minute, at least as far as it was announced, visit to Washington, D.C. yesterday, which included an address to Congress, a an opportunity that not many foreign leaders get. And we will talk about that in a little bit. The speech that Zelensky delivered to Congress about the help that the U.S. has been providing to Ukraine in its defensive war due to the invasion of Ukraine by Russia and Vladimir Putin was a good speech. It was a powerful speech. And also the entire event had a pretty weird feeling to it. And I think I know what the weirdness was. And I'm going to talk about that in a moment. Much fanfare. And we're going to get to all aspects of this,

Starting point is 00:01:06 but a big standing ovation to kick it all off. And what we're watching here, if you're watching today rather than listening, is Zelensky entering too much applause and a standing ovation and the greetings of so many different people. There's Senator Patrick Leahy and you see Charles Schumer, the senator, and all sorts of different people. Zelensky wearing his typical green. I don't I don't know that I want to editorialize the shade of green, but it is not the best shade. Not that we really care about that. It's just a weird color. And here he greets Vice President Kamala Harris and then the speaker of the House, outgoing speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. And he delivers a speech and many applause lines in

Starting point is 00:02:03 the speech, including reminding the world and the United States that Ukraine is not out of this thing against. Against all odds and doom and gloom scenarios, Ukraine didn't fall. Ukraine is alive and kicking. And another standing ovation there. And of course, it is great that Ukraine has been able to resist what some characterized and handicapped as an easy win for Russia when this started months and months and closing in on a year ago. That is an absolutely great thing.

Starting point is 00:02:47 We now get into the part that I believe was the element of weirdness, which is that there was a feeling of this, that it was sort of, OK, we're going to give you the money. New aid package around two billion, including Patriot missiles. We're going to give you the money, new aid package around two billion, including Patriot missiles. We're going to do it. But you've got to come here and you've got to really thank us. And you've got to act extremely solicitously towards us. And that was absolutely a big element of this speech. I'm glad to thread that President Biden supported our peace initiative today. Each of you, ladies and gentlemen,

Starting point is 00:03:25 can assist in the implementation to ensure that America's leadership remains solid. By camera and bipartisan. Thank you. And of course, it is not actually completely bipartisan, and that's part of what's interesting about this. There are people Thank you. Speaker 1 And of course, it is not actually completely bipartisan. And that's part of what's interesting about this. There are people there are Republicans who are sort of. Soft supporters of the U.S. helping Ukraine, and then there are people like Matt Gaetz and Lauren Boebert, who are flat out just against American help of Ukraine. And they sped into the House chamber at the last minute and sat there looking visibly bored,

Starting point is 00:04:10 never clapping as a deliberate show of how against this they are. Zelensky assuring and reminding everyone in the chamber that the money we are sending to Ukraine is not charity. It is part of the goal, shared goal of global security and democracy. Speaker 4 Financial financial assistance is also critically important. And I would like to thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you for both financial packages you have already provided us with and the ones you may be willing to decide on. Your money is not charity. It's an investment in the global security and democracy that we handle in the most responsible way. Speaker 1 Okay.

Starting point is 00:05:15 And this ultimately led to a Ukrainian flag actually being unfurled on the floor of the house. Let this flag stay with you, ladies and gentlemen. This flag is a symbol of our victory in this war. We stand, we fight and we will win because we are united, Ukraine, America and the entire free world. OK, so now what's happening is Zelensky is unfurling a Ukrainian flag, which is now being held up by Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Kamala Harris. And then similarly, you might see off to the right of the screen that there is an American

Starting point is 00:06:13 flag in a triangle shape. And then that was handed to Zelensky. And off he went with his American flag. And now this is the end of the speech and we see Zelensky leaving with his American flag that was handed to him. So listen, my feelings on this are very mixed. Of course, I support Ukraine. And of course, I believe that it is in the interests of the United States and our allies to beat back the

Starting point is 00:06:47 invasion by Russia. Putin's a lunatic authoritarian. I mean, listen, I've got a decade of commentary on this. There is absolutely no question there. This entire visit extraordinarily heavy on the theatrics, which I feel repelled by the theatrics to a great degree because it is such a stage managed event. But public opinion, particularly global public public opinion, depends on exactly that stage management. And so while I personally find it off putting as someone who follows this stuff all the time, I have to be open to the idea that for people who are busy working in fields that are not political media, their opinion about what should happen may actually be shaped by events like this. And maybe they want to see Zelensky come and

Starting point is 00:07:38 grovel a little bit. Maybe that's what they need in order to be OK with or to continue seeing support of Ukraine as a worthy cause. Now, the history of speeches like this to Congress during conflicts by world leaders of other countries, it's not the longest list in the world. And we know, of course, of Winston Churchill's address to Congress during World War Two as the prime minister of the UK. We know about Lech Walesa's address to Congress during the Cold War as president of Poland. We know about Nelson Mandela's address to Congress during the apartheid era. Mandela, the first president of South Africa. And we have I may be missing a couple, but we have Havel's address to Congress during the Velvet Revolution, the last the last and final president of Czechoslovakia.

Starting point is 00:08:35 How does this compare? How does the situation in Ukraine compare not only on the facts, but in terms of its relation to the United States. I don't know that I have that answer, and it may require looking back from some future point to really fully understand that. But a powerful speech heavy on theatrics that I think was sort of determined to be necessary to continue justifying to some degree in the court of public opinion the support to Ukraine that the United States continues to give support, which I widely am in favor of while recognizing that those are dollars for what is effectively speaking a proxy war against Russia doesn't make it bad. In fact, it's the right side.

Starting point is 00:09:30 This was a war of aggression by Russia, but much more complicated than any simple explanation. Under oath. Fox News propagandist Sean Hannity admits he doesn't believe Donald Trump's fraud claims about 2020. And yet he widely promoted them and hosted guests uncritically who also promoted those very same sorts of claims. A very interesting article from The New York Times in testimony. Hannity and other Fox employees said they doubted Trump's fraud claims. Wednesday,

Starting point is 00:10:06 lawyers for Dominion Voting Systems shared some of the strongest evidence yet that some Fox employees knew what they broadcast about the claims was false. The articles by Jeremy Peters, we will link to it in the description to the YouTube video. November 30th, Sean of 2020, Sean Hannity hosted Sidney Powell on his show, as she had in many other interviews, Fox and elsewhere. She spun wild conspiracy theories about what she said was corruption all across the country in countless districts in a plot to steal reelection from the president, Donald Trump. At the center of the plot were machines from Dominion voting systems, which Powell claimed ran an algorithm. Sometimes they called it a logarithm that switched votes from Trump to Biden.

Starting point is 00:10:49 Hannity interrupted her with a gentle question that had been circulating among election deniers, despite a lack of supporting proof. Why were Democrats silencing whistleblowers who could prove the fraud? Did Hannity believe any of this? Quote, I did not believe it for one second. Now, if you watched Hannity's TV show, you wouldn't have heard him say that Hannity gave that answer under oath in a deposition in Dominion's one point six billion dollar defamation lawsuit against Fox News, according to info disclosed yesterday. Hannity's disclosure, along with others that emerged about what Fox News executives and hosts really believed, became one of the loudest megaphones for lie as their network became one of the loudest megaphones for lies about the election.

Starting point is 00:11:36 This is the strongest evidence yet that Fox employees knew what they were broadcasting was false. This is not a shock. This is not a shock. Hannity is an amoral propagandist profiteer, no doubt about it. But he is not so stupid that he believed this nonsense. And in fact, the totality of the text messages that we now know Sean Hannity sent to people like Mark Meadows and others and this deposition under oath tells us they were knowingly spreading

Starting point is 00:12:04 misinformation. It doesn't make it any better. OK, if you thought Hannity was that stupid, he's not that stupid. But it tells us he knew he was spreading lies. It's almost an even worse case for them. They weren't just gullible idiots. They were knowingly spreading lies and disinformation. And of course, we know that when push comes to shove, they go for it's not news, it's entertainment. Tucker Carlson, Fox News lawyer, said Tucker Carlson is an entertainer.

Starting point is 00:12:30 It's not news. The things he says are laced with hyperbole and exaggeration and titillating language. They're not to believe be believed literally. But in reality, it's not even really entertainment because it's not entertaining. It's sort of B.S. and lies. It's a B.S. factory that they pump out not just for profit. Yes, profit is part of it, but it's also to maintain access to people in power. Hannity, we now know had a relationship with Trump to the extent that Trump has friends. And for Trump, a friend means someone who's useful to me until they turn against me. OK, fine. But that's the definition. Hannity would hang out with Trump. He would be on Trump's plane and all this different stuff. It was to maintain access as much as it was for profitability.

Starting point is 00:13:12 Now, in a well-functioning, educated democracy where people are educated in media literacy, etc., people like Hannity wouldn't have careers, not because they're kicked off of the air. I'm not suggesting anyone kick them off the air, but I'm saying no one would watch it. If we had an educated, informed democracy now, ultimately, I really don't care if they claim now to have privately doubted the things Trump was spreading. They publicly supported it and they are part of why there was a public willing to go and do what they did on January 6th. Will there be any consequences for this? Probably not.

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Starting point is 00:17:54 Well, it begins. Donald Trump paid zero in taxes in 2020, claimed a five million dollar refund. And the big picture of Trump's taxes that has come out based on a report we have, we don't yet have the tax returns, but we have a report about the tax returns from the House Ways and Means Committee is just about everything that we suspected, everything that we suspected. And we're going to talk about it. So let's start with the big picture data. Let's look at Trump's income, taxable income and taxes paid over the last six years.

Starting point is 00:18:32 In 2015, Trump reported an income loss of nearly thirty two million dollars paid, had zero taxable income and paid six hundred and forty thousand dollars in taxes. In 2016, Trump says he lost thirty one million dollars, had zero taxable income and paid seven hundred fifty dollars, not seven hundred fifty thousand, seven hundred fifty dollars in taxes. Twenty seventeen, Trump claimed negative income of thirteen million dollars, paid seven hundred and fifty dollars in taxes. In twenty eighteen, Trump claimed a taxable income of twenty three million and paid about a million in taxes on that. Twenty nineteen, Trump claimed about three million dollars in taxable income and paid

Starting point is 00:19:12 a little over one hundred K in taxes. And then in 2020, Trump reported a loss of nearly five million dollars and paid zero point zero in federal taxes, claiming a refund of five point forty seven million dollars. There's a good CNBC write up called Read How Much Trump Paid or Didn't Pay in Taxes Each Year. It outlines the numbers that I just mentioned with a number of other elements, including that the tax returns we were ultimately going to get are redacted. And it may actually still be difficult to figure out

Starting point is 00:19:54 how Trump got to these negative income claims, et cetera. The most important thing that I think is is worth mentioning here is that most of this stuff is almost certainly legal. And what we're really getting to here is the failure of the IRS, despite all these claims that the IRS is predatory and they've got all these armed people, which they really did. They have very few armed people and it's not a big deal that some of the people are armed. Despite all the claims about the IRS, the IRS really has failed us, not even auditing Trump in his required automatic audit that presidents get until they caught wind that Richard Neal in the House Ways and Means Committee was trying to obtain these tax returns.

Starting point is 00:20:42 Then they said, oh, we'd better do that audit on Trump, which we were supposed to have done already for several years. So a few different aspects to this. Is it possible that Trump's taxes will expose crimes? Absolutely. They look like they would be along the fraud lines, stating different asset values for the same assets, depending on whether he's trying to avoid property taxes or personal taxes versus get a loan using those assets as collateral. We already suspect. And in fact, we know based on what the ruling with Trump's business of 17 guilty counts, I guess it was two weeks ago. We already know that that was done at the business level, almost certainly being done at the personal level. The taxes will help to build that case. Are there potential national security issues as a result of some of the people Trump is in league

Starting point is 00:21:34 with? Absolutely. The tax returns could very well expose that. But what's really important to understand is that Trump's not the only rich guy using the tax code in this way and, widely speaking, avoiding IRS scrutiny that would be appropriate for the relaxed application of the tax law that Trump and people like him use. So this is a story about Trump, but it's also a story about the tax code and a story about the IRS. Now, one question that you may have is how do you go negative close to one hundred million dollars over five years in income and yet still live the lifestyle that Trump lives with day to day expenses being so lavish and expensive, the private plane, all these different things. If you lose 30 million in a year, how do you also

Starting point is 00:22:20 have a private plane and all this stuff? The answer is that you are asset rich. You are asset rich. And you can also we don't fully know because we don't have the full tax returns yet, but you can borrow against the assets to have money with which to live that lavish lifestyle. And again, it is not unique to Trump. If anything good will come of this, it's that the Trump tax returns will expose the mechanisms that many rich people use in order to live lavish lifestyles, but pay almost no taxes or in some cases, no taxes at all. You tell lenders that your assets are appreciating dramatically and then they'll give you girthy, huge loans against those assets, which you can then use to live your lavish lifestyle. You tell the IRS these very same assets are worth nothing. I lost money on these assets.

Starting point is 00:23:08 Let me take a loss on them. Give me a tax refund. That's very generally speaking the name of the game. Then you live off of the loans. You use the lot the lies to the IRS to claim a negative income while you're actually making millions and then you get a tax refund as well. Now, if Donald Trump is actually as rich as he claims to be, these tax returns don't really make it look like Trump is super rich. If Trump is really as rich as he claims to be, there's almost certain certainly

Starting point is 00:23:37 criminal level of fraud and avoidance that's going on here. The other possibility is Trump isn't actually nearly as rich as he claims to be. And we may or may not find that out. The reason Trump clearly fought so hard to keep his financial records from becoming public is because he seems to be the fraud. He seems to be not not quite or nearly as rich as he claims to be doing really sketchy stuff with asset values. We've given you the full list before. But the really important takeaway is it's not just Trump doing this stuff. And there's a question as to whether it's the tax code or the enforcement. That's the problem. And I want to talk about the IRS component next. One of the major revelations of the Trump tax returns has nothing to do with Donald Trump.

Starting point is 00:24:27 It actually has to do with the IRS. And there's a really good article in The Daily Beast by Sean Wu called We Haven't Seen Trump's Taxes Yet, but it's clear the IRS failed America. The IRS is required to conduct audits of the president and vice president while they're in office. But Trump apparently got a pass. We'll link to this article in the description for the YouTube video that we're going to put up. But let's talk about the big picture here. The IRS didn't even audit the president who's supposed to be audited as a matter of automatic principle. It's supposed to be mandatory audit of a matter of automatic principle. It's supposed to be

Starting point is 00:25:05 mandatory audit of the president. And as you zoom out, you find yet another one of these projection hypocrisy logic pretzels that the right often gets itself into. They complain about the IRS. The IRS is too big and the IRS is cracking down too much on the wealthy. And the IRS is politically biased and going after the conservatives, even though we know that that's actually that that was an Obama era pseudo scandal, which has been completely debunked. And they say we're for law and order. And yet what we see is they never want to fully fund the IRS and they seem perfectly happy or at least indifferent to the fact that the IRS isn't even really doing the minimum. It's almost like they don't really want rich people and in particular rich conservatives to have to follow the rules predating this specific incident.

Starting point is 00:26:05 Think back. The IRS has a history of discrimination and unequal enforcement, especially against marginalized communities and small business owners. We could also look at the ongoing issues with the IRS is outdated and error prone systems, which for average taxpayers just make it really difficult to get your taxes done. People often end up going to paid services, even though there are often free services available depending on your income. The confusion and the frustration that the IRS continues to put taxpayers through average taxpayers combined with the tax software lobby, which is very strong, create a situation where for many of the average taxpayers with average incomes, it's both more expensive and more complicated and frustrating and convoluted to file taxes

Starting point is 00:26:58 than it has to be. While meanwhile, the very rich and the privileged take advantage of all sorts of different mechanisms to often end up paying a dramatically lower effective tax rate than people with significantly lower incomes. That's a failure of the IRS and of the elected officials that dictate tax policy and manage the IRS. And then when you think about what is this really done? The IRS has played a major role in enabling corruption and abuses of power by the wealthy and powerful by turning a blind eye to what is and again,

Starting point is 00:27:33 we tax avoidance and evasion of I believe avoidance is legal, whereas evasion is not. There's a gray area there in terms of the spirit of a lot of these laws, if not the letter, by turning a blind, a blind eye to it and failing to even adequately audit and investigate high income people in corporations. They are allowing the wealthy to buy their way out of paying their fair share above and beyond what the tax code is even trying to achieve. So this is the type of stuff that erodes trust and faith in government. And meanwhile, they want to tell you, oh, Biden wants to double the type of stuff that erodes trust and faith in government. And meanwhile, they want to tell you, oh, Biden wants to double the size of the IRS and arm everyone when the

Starting point is 00:28:09 truth is that there's fifty five thousand IRS people expected to retire over the next 10 years. Fifty five thousand of the new hires are just to replace people that are retiring. That just gets us to where we are now in terms of their arming the IRS. The IRS has a small law enforcement division. So does Amtrak. So does the MTA in New York City. It's not really a big deal. It's not actually an authoritarian police state crackdown. They want to focus on that when the truth is the IRS is dramatically undersized and underpowered. And that's really what we're learning from the Trump tax return story. An insanely sweaty Donald Trump has delivered a visibly confused statement on immigration. I guess this is his campaign, you know, for a guy who said Biden's a loser for running a campaign from his basement, even though Trump lost to the guy running a campaign from his basement.

Starting point is 00:29:06 Trump now, I guess this is his campaign putting to get filming in a very hot room where he's sweating and talking about issues he doesn't understand. Here is Trump's latest statement put out yesterday about immigration far more illegal immigrants. Oh, and that volume is humiliatingly low. Here we go. Let's let's start it over. Far more illegal immigrants have entered the United States in the last two years than at any time in American history and by a massive margin. Now, if that is true. What Trump is talking about is we've caught more people now. If you're catching them, aren't you doing a good job as far as Trump is concerned?

Starting point is 00:29:53 Mm. Confusing. We've never seen anything like it. Our country is under invasion. Nothing has dramatically changed on immigration since Trump left and Biden came in, other than there was a temporary slowdown on movement of people due to the pandemic. And that has eased. But policy wise, almost nothing has changed. Speaker 6 Days ago, 16000 illegal aliens were encountered crossing the border

Starting point is 00:30:23 in a single 48 hour period. Now, understand, by the way, the jump cuts because Trump can't string together more than a sentence at a time are bizarre. Remember, what Trump means by encountered is apprehended, apprehended. That sounds like the Border Patrol under Biden is doing a pretty good job by Trump's own standards. A colossal migrant caravan recently poured across the Rio Grande and into the streets of El Paso, Texas, and the people and the police didn't know what to do about it. It is truly a massive invasion. Any form of amnesty now would be a catastrophe. It rewards Joe Biden's lawlessness and it rewards the criminal cartels and it rewards everyone who has broken the laws of our nation. And again, the first priority on amnesty is people who have not broken the law.

Starting point is 00:31:21 Kids, individuals who were brought here when they were legally minors. We're talking about DACA. It's low hanging fruit. We should deal with it. We could deal with it. They don't want to do it because they've never done anything to our country like they're doing right now. Our country is being poisoned. Remember, our border is not open because, by the way, dehumanizing language. People are poisoning the country. They are so filthy that they are. It's it's a poison of insufficient resources or legal authorities. Our border is open because Joe Biden has ordered it to be open.

Starting point is 00:31:58 Understand that there is no such policy that Biden has enacted because Biden has broken the law and torn it into shreds. He has shredded our system and he's destroying our country. Biden inherited a flawless deportation system that was working like never before in our history. We never did so well on the border as we were doing just a short time ago. And now understand that the deportation system Trump's talking about is the use of Title 42 to more quickly deport people. That is on the basis of covid being a global emergency. Trump wants you to believe covid wasn't really a big deal. And all these red state governors were right to do nothing about it.

Starting point is 00:32:41 But it was also such a big deal that you needed an expedited removal process for migrants. Wait, how can both be true? Was COVID an emergency or was it not? Trump administration giving Biden more resources will simply translate to even more releases because that's really what they have in mind. All right. So none of this is true. And again, for a guy who ridiculed Biden for campaigning from his basement, Trump's campaign in the five to six weeks since he announced has been to sit in a hot room and record sweaty videos. It doesn't sound particularly good. And by the way, Biden's polling was much better than Trump seems to be right now.

Starting point is 00:33:21 We'll have this clip on our Instagram, which you can find at David Pakman show David Pakman dot com. But you can help make a change. Our sponsor, Hold On, makes trash and kitchen bags that are heavy duty, plant based, non-toxic and 100 percent home compostable, which means they break down in weeks rather than decades. They don't fill up our landfills. They don't pollute our oceans. Their zip seal kitchen bags come in sandwich or gallon bag sizes to fit your needs. And the best part about Hold On bags is they work. I use them at home. They're just as good The David Pakman Show David Pakman dot com. Today we're going to be speaking with Garrett Bruhog, who's a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Rochester, working at the Laboratory of Laser Energetics, the largest university laser lab and one of the only places in the world that can do laser driven fusion experiments.

Starting point is 00:34:57 Garrett, really great having you on today. I appreciate it. Yeah, happy to come on, David. So I want to talk about this recent breakthrough that's made a lot of news in the field of fusion energy before we even get to that. Let's maybe develop an understanding of what we mean when we say fusion energy. I think for a lot of people, it's sort of straightforward to understand, OK, you can take something like coal and you burn it and then you can use that heat to do different things. I think many

Starting point is 00:35:26 people can understand that, or you burn gasoline in your car. When we're talking about fusion energy, what exactly is it? What are we talking about? What's the mechanism? Yeah, so fusion is one of the two primary forms of nuclear energy that we can acquire. Right now, what we do all over the world, in fact, what's keeping my lights on right now is fission, where we split very heavy things like uranium and utilize the heat to boil water, turn a turbine, and make power to power our homes. Fusion is what powers the sun. It's also what powers our largest thermonuclear weapons. It's where we take very small atoms like helium and force them together. That generates an enormous amount of energy. And we have never been able to do a controlled,

Starting point is 00:36:12 sustained fusion chain reaction on Earth without a thermonuclear weapon until last week or two weeks ago. So fusion is the coming together of atoms in order to produce. Is it is it accurate to say to produce heat? Speaker 2 It produces several forms of energy, but everything will eventually just get converted to heat to boil water or heat up gases or something like that. It's it's kind of the the old adage that no matter what humanity does, we eventually boil water. Speaker 1 Right. OK. So in other words, fission is the separation of atoms, whereas fusion is the

Starting point is 00:36:52 combination. That's the that's sort of the fundamental difference we're talking about. Yes. So the breakthrough, which you alluded to at Lawrence Livermore National Lab in California, it's being described as a huge advancement towards nuclear fusion. What what exactly is it that happened? Yeah, so it is a really big scientific achievement. It's a huge advancement. It's been the goal essentially ever since we discovered fusion to get a fusion chain reaction in the laboratory. So humanity has generated fusion chain reactions. We did it first in the 1950s with the I.D. Mike thermonuclear weapon, and now it's some of our scariest weapons. But that is not useful. That is just a capability we have. We want fusion on a small scale, controllable, so that we can make clean sources of power.

Starting point is 00:37:48 And that has been very, very challenging to do. And what Lawrence Livermore National Labs did was they generated a self-sustained fusion chain reaction in the lab, no nuclear bombs, no gigantic destruction. Everything was controlled and done and is repeatable. And that has never been done before. So it is it is a huge advancement. It's kind of like a Kitty Hawk moment. The airplane is finally taken off. What would it look like to use this technology to generate the energy that humans use for day to day lives? What would do we know what a fusion power plant would look like? Yeah, there's a lot of different designs using lots of different technologies.

Starting point is 00:38:28 There's a huge plethora of ideas for how to use fusion once you can get ignition, which is what Livermore did. For your average person, it's going to look just like a fission power plant. It'll be just a big chunk of concrete that will make an enormous amount of power for the amount of land it takes up. There will be no CO2 and you might see some clouds coming out from the cooling water. And that would be about it. So with with our traditional is it fair to say that our traditional nuclear power plants, these are what we would call fission nuclear power plants. They split atoms and thus they do fission at those plants. One of the concerns that exists is what do you do with the spent fuel and how long it

Starting point is 00:39:15 lasts, et cetera. Now, I've said before, I think that those who are basing their opinion on nuclear fission based on 40 year old plants are probably not accurately assessing them based on what modern plants would look like. But putting that issue aside for a second, you still have this issue of the spent fuel in a fusion plant. What are the source materials and what's left over after the fact? So the source material is some special forms of hydrogen, but it's something that's in the glass of water I'm drinking from right now called deuterium. So that's heavy hydrogen. It's very common. It's not a big deal. It's used in all sorts of applications, primarily nuclear, but

Starting point is 00:40:00 even in medical tracers. And we have effectively an infinite supply of it. It would, you know, the sun will be long burnt out before we ever burn through the deuterium supply. The type of fusion that Lawrence Livermore did, which is the quote unquote easiest, fusion is still very, very hard, is called deuterium tritium. So the other input is a special type of radioactive hydrogen called tritium. We have to breed that via lithium. So from the perspective of an outside observer, ignoring all the science, the plant will eat deuterium, which we just get from water, and a small amount of lithium.

Starting point is 00:40:39 Now, we get concerns about lithium supplies because of electric cars and things like that. We're talking like 100 kilos of lithium a year for a power plant that could power a major city. It's not a it's not a major concern. It's just like with fission, where the total amount of material going in and out is just minuscule. There is no direct nuclear waste. There's no spent fuel from fusion. It just makes helium. But it also makes an absurd number of neutrons, which is a type of radiation, and it will make the inside of the reactor radioactive. There is no way to get around radioactive waste anytime we do any kind of nuclear activities, including medicine. Every hospital generates a large flux of radioactive waste, but it's a benefit. It's cancer treatment and therapies and all this good stuff. And we know how to handle the waste from these sorts of systems. Fusion would

Starting point is 00:41:31 not generate the very long-lived spent fuel. As you pointed out, we can handle the spent fuel from fission, but ignoring that, fusion won't generate it. We're talking things more like 100 years of radioactive lifetime, and there's ideas for how to even shorten that. So that that is one of the big advantages that people point to with fusion. What are the risks of this technology applied as a power plant, for example, to power a city, as you mentioned? What what can go wrong? And if something goes wrong, what happens? Um, in some sort of kind of absurd worst case scenario, you could have radioactive material released to the environment. It would be small. It would be, the impact would be very low. The general issues would be things to people at the plant, very similar to what's happened with fission failures. You, if you worked at the plant, you similar to what's happened with fission failures. If you

Starting point is 00:42:25 worked at the plant, you'd be worried you might have to fight a fire or something like that. Often fusion power plants are envisioned to use very interesting, weird coolants. So you imagine like flowing super hot liquid lithium. I'm not so afraid of the radiation. I'm afraid of flowing liquid lithium getting in the air because that will make a very nasty fire. But these are all, you know, the fusion is going to be regulated just like fission. It's going to be very, very tightly controlled. And everyone takes this job very seriously as to how it would be put together. I wouldn't I would be more than willing, just like I'm willing to live right now, right next to a fission plant. I wouldn't have any concern living next to a fusion plant right now. If my understanding is

Starting point is 00:43:07 still accurate, it takes somewhere between six and 10 years to get a new nuclear fission plant up and running. What is the timeline? And maybe it's hard to say because we don't yet exactly know what these would look like. But is there a different timeline for fusion energy plants? There is hope that it could be sped up, but I honestly think the sort of things that would speed up a fusion plant construction will speed up fission construction as well. A lot of the issues that we see with fission come down to just some of the dumbest stuff like pouring concrete and laying steel. Fusion requires a lot more complex equipment too. So it's going to be many iterations of learning how to build these power plants before we ever get good at it.

Starting point is 00:43:52 It's not something I would expect to see, even if everything was ready to go tomorrow, I wouldn't expect to see power plants just going up left and right without massive, honestly, government support. You have to look at how places like France did their large fission build outs. You just have to throw tons of money and personnel at it. Speaker 1 When you look at something like or let me put it a different way. When you talk about this being difficult, fusion being difficult, what does that really mean in the sense that as an outsider, in my mind, it seems to me that once you figure out what you need in terms of equipment and you do it, you do it now, you can replicate it. Is is there some chance to it where you

Starting point is 00:44:38 can do the exact same thing and it only works some of the time at this point? So we are on, we have just gotten ignition at Lawrence Livermore. Arguably, we got it last year, but we don't need to quibble about all of that. What it is is we're there now, but we're only just barely getting there. And if you've ever played around with something like doing a science experiment where you're just figuring it out, there's often mistakes and issues. And you just kind of have to do something over and over and over again to learn how to do it better. But by difficult, what I'm actually getting at with fusion is that the conditions needed to make a fusion reaction happen are very, very, very hard to reach.

Starting point is 00:45:20 And the equipment required is very expensive and complicated. When we're comparing to other sources, incredible magnets that there's just nothing to compare to. Now, that's not to say we can't get good at that. I mean, jet engines used to be one of the most complicated and incredible things on the planet that only militaries could afford. And now all of us can ride on a jet aircraft. Aircraft themselves used to be something that almost no one could build. But it's, we are are at the like I said, we're kind of at the Kitty Hawk moment. We just got things to go. We're not getting seven four sevens tomorrow. If we say they won't happen if we zoom out a little bit. The feeling seems to be growing that in even as little as 50 years, we're going to look at the status quo of cars driving around

Starting point is 00:46:27 burning gasoline, pulling oil out of the ground, burning coal. This this this is going to seem crazy, for lack of a better term. Right. I mean, it seems as though what we are with the the forms of energy we're using now are going to seem almost primitive compared to what is apparently on the horizon. Is that the right assessment? Yeah, I would say so. I mean, we already have a lot of options that make what's currently powering most of the world look primitive, right? We can we can already utilize things like nuclear fission.

Starting point is 00:46:59 We have, you know, good photovoltaic stuff like that. The sci fi technologies here and it's only getting better when people say that fusion power is the holy grail of clean energy. This is based on emissions specifically. Or are there other aspects to this, too? The claim, the reasoning behind that, and I'm not I'm not entirely sold on that statement. I've heard it. I've heard it plenty of times. I think it comes from a kind of science fiction optimism around fusion and a lack of understanding, or maybe not a lack, but a naivete over some of the other sources. Fusion is emissions-free.

Starting point is 00:47:47 The fuel supply is effectively infinite. Like I said, it doesn't matter. There's so much, we don't even need to worry about it. And those are the big benefits on top of the lower radioactive waste inventory. But what I just described is basically advanced fission as well. And so I think that's kind of where it doesn't always click. It's this idea that if we got to fusion, that all our problems are solved. But that's not really true. One, like I said, it's going to be hard to get these things out and cheap and effective and reliable. But we have options now that can reach a lot of those goals. Fusion, in my mind, is more of filling in this large portfolio of various energy options. Each of them have benefits and drawbacks. And it's not just this science fiction utopia.

Starting point is 00:48:42 Last thing I want to ask you, what's the next step? Is it just to repeat this very same thing that happened or is there some clear advanced next step that we go to? So the immediate next step is to repeat and get more fusion yield. We think due to how ignition works, it's like striking a match. Once you can get the match to strike, you can get more and more fire. We think we can get a lot more fusion out of the Livermore facility. So they're going to work on that as hard as possible. But there's already designs for how to build the next laser facilities to push this forward. And there's other fusion concepts that are being worked on, other reactors. But everyone can use the fact that we lit the

Starting point is 00:49:22 match to study how that match is lit and to build these next step machines, I expect we'll see many machines reaching ignition in the next 10 years. And then we can really start to evaluate what's the best way to move forward for power or super interesting propulsion, which is a whole other aspect to it also. Yeah, that that relates to the idea of going to Mars and connects with so many other things that are going on. Fascinating stuff. We've been speaking with Garrett Bruhog, who's a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Rochester. Garrett, really appreciate your time today. Thank you. Yeah, thank you so much. Let's face it, the holiday season can be a stressful time for anyone, even a stressor

Starting point is 00:50:07 on relationships, in-laws dividing time, mismatched expectations around gifts. Our sponsor paired is the app that makes it easy to maintain a feeling of connection with your partner during this crazy time of year. You and your partner download the app, you pair together, and every day paired gives the two of you questions or quizzes, games to have fun, stay emotionally connected, deepen your conversations. And all of the exercises were developed by academic psychologists and expert relationship therapists as well. My girlfriend and I have been using paired quite a bit lately. It's fun, especially with the baby these days. It's more important than ever for us to find quality time.

Starting point is 00:50:51 And paired is really the perfect way to spark that with funny moments, meaningful conversations. And we can use paired on the go. Don't let end of year stressors get in the way of you and your partner enjoying some connecting. Paired makes it simple and giving your significant other a paired subscription is a great last minute holiday gift. Head over to paired dot com slash Pacman for a seven day free trial and 25 percent off a subscription. The link is down below. All right. I think you're going to like this. Did Carrie Lake hire the worst lawyers in the world for this completely bogus attempt to steal the Arizona gubernatorial election, which she, of course, lost? Before I show you the lawyers, remember what Carrie

Starting point is 00:51:34 Lake said yesterday? We looked at this clip yesterday where she was talking about hiring lawyers are true patriots. We had attorneys who did walk away because the left is threatening them with their ability to make a living and practice law. And some of our attorneys said, look, I got mouths to feed. I can't do this case. I don't want to be sanctioned. So I really love it.

Starting point is 00:51:53 I got to a point where I said, I'll take anybody. We'll take better call. Solve to come on in here. Speaker 1.: Yeah, she'll quite literally allow any lawyer to represent her. So let's get to the chaos. Significant difficulties yesterday for Kerry Lake's legal team. They had an issue with their witness list and then they forgot they removed a witness and then they try to call that witness. And the judge is like, you told us you weren't calling this person. Look at the level of confusion among these lawyers. Not exactly

Starting point is 00:52:18 legal geniuses. What happened? What's saying that he's not on the list oh this is the best so they're shuffling through their so they're shuffling through their so they're shuffling through their paperwork now. Hmm. Where is that list? Who's on the list?

Starting point is 00:53:00 They're saying he's not on the list. The list I'm looking at, Your Honor, does show Aerosmith designated a witness. Your Honor wants to give me a few minutes. I can go through my emails and what the court was given. I don't know that we provided that list, Your Honor. I think you. We also I think there was an email communication from plaintiffs counsel. Not exactly Clarence Darrow, as you can imagine, continued problems then where they now it

Starting point is 00:53:38 just it just it's so bad. Look at this. That she works with Betty in getting records from Maricopa County in response to FOIA requests, Your Honor. And you've also told me that this was disclosed previously. Yes? I am, Your Honor. Yes.

Starting point is 00:53:54 When was it disclosed to? Oh, I'm sorry, Your Honor. This last week has been like four months. And if you want, Your Honor, it's going to take me a good 45 minutes to look for disclosures. Wait, stop. One second. You're an officer of the court. I'm just asking for your word. If you tell me it was within- I'm telling you it was disclosed, Your Honor. You're telling me within the last week? Yes, Your Honor. As opposed to this morning, something like that? Your Honor, that I have created on two separate occasions

Starting point is 00:54:25 at their request that I give them access to all of our records via a link so they can go online and download them. And I can show this court that I provided them at least two links to do so. Wait a minute. I don't want to waste a bunch more time on this. We've already spent a lot of time on it. I'm just down to the by the entire the entire trial. The entire case and hearing is a waste of time. Asked little consideration, which is disclosure. So they're not shocked by this. Disclosure is different than saying, here's here's here's where all my stuff is.

Starting point is 00:55:02 You can do that. So the judge explaining to the lawyer why it just doesn't make any sense what they're doing. Then they get into an argument about like an exhibit number. Seventy five, Your Honor. It's yours. You are seventy five or what? No, it's there's only one number. It's the court's number that we're referring to. Not male in mind. Yours is it's 75 and 75 submitted. Understood. I say are one for their bet. Got it. Very good. Seventy five. Yeah. Yeah. So these are the people that apparently are going to get the Arizona gubernatorial election overturned. So Carrie Lake's choice of lawyers, not particularly good. Let's briefly

Starting point is 00:55:40 talk about her choice of experts. I'm going to play for you a brief sample of testimony from Carrie Lake's supposed expert. And this was a guy who was going to help overturn the election or something. And we already looked at how her lawyers don't seem super competent. And then now here is an expert. And it all goes bad very, very quickly. Goes in a door. Number three goes to McTec. The much more sensitive tabulators, according to you, it would not count it. It would then go to duplication. It would be duplicated. Then it would be tabulated. Is that your understanding of the elections in Maricopa County? Your technical description is not possible. I apologize. I wasn't attempting to give a technical description. I was just saying what happens based on your testimony. So you're saying in that scenario, that voter who wanted to vote

Starting point is 00:56:41 for Cary Lake would never have that vote tabulated. Is that your testimony? My testimony is that a shrink to fit setting would rely at the application level, which would reside on the EMS, which Mr. Garrett just testified since the print job to the printer. Therefore, aren't you guys understanding this? It can't be accidental as all the employees that man the EMS are trained. Whether it's accidental or inadvertent, I gave the two options. Please allow me to ask the question. I'll allow you to answer. Whether it's accidental or inadvertent, if the shrink to fit 19 inch ballot has to be duplicated, once it's duplicated, would it be tabulated? To your understanding. There are two technical

Starting point is 00:57:35 ways that that image would be there. None of the ways you it's not even possible. That's not possible, Your Honor. So what a waste of time. This is what courts are now being bogged down with. Here's another moment where the witness says that Mike Pillow has been, I guess, paying for some of his travel. Everything about this is crazy. That event held in Missouri, Missouri. about this is crazy. Speaker 4 00 00 00 Speaker 3 00 00 00 Speaker 4 00 00 00 Speaker 4 00 00 Speaker 5 00 00 Speaker 6 00 00 00 Speaker 7 00 00 Speaker 8 00 00 Speaker 9 00 00 Speaker 10 00 00 Speaker 11 00 00 Speaker 12 00 00 Speaker 13 00 00 Speaker 14 00 00 Speaker 15 00 00 Speaker 16

Starting point is 00:58:05 00 00 Speaker 17 00 00 Speaker 17 00 00 Speaker 17 00 00 Speaker 17 00 00 Speaker 17 00 00 Speaker 17 00 00 Speaker 17 00 00 Speaker 17

Starting point is 00:58:09 00 00 00 Speaker 17 00 00 00 Speaker 17 00 00 00 Speaker 17 00 00 00 Speaker 17 00 00 00 Speaker 17 00 00 00 Speaker 17 00 00 00 Speaker 17 00 00 00 Speaker 17

Starting point is 00:58:24 00 00 00 Speaker 17 00 00 00 Speaker 17 00 00 00 Speaker 17 00 00 00 Speaker 17 00 00 00 Speaker 17 00 00 00 Speaker 17 Speaker 4 All their travel was arranged. He asked me to speak at the event and I spoke. Speaker 1 Yeah. So the expert is funded by Pillow and speaking at Mike Pillow events, disastrous experts,

Starting point is 00:58:37 disastrous lawyers. Carrie Lake every day is claiming like they're getting major legal victories in these hearings. They are not. Katie Hobbs will be the governor of Arizona. Mark my words. I'm not a betting man, but that's something I would bet on. We have a voicemail number. That number is two one nine two. David P. This caller has a quite frankly great suggestion about tomorrow's charity membership drive. Take a listen. Speaker 4 Hello, David, sir. This is Liberty calling you from Connecticut. I have a question. When you

Starting point is 00:59:09 have the new member drive and the first month is going to be you're going to match donations. Yes, charity. And I don't know the name, but I know about the charity. What I would like to suggest is if you have either a phone or on on your site, an option for those of us who are already members to donate what would be equivalent to one month membership fee for that same purpose to be doubled and donated. We've got it. OK, if you are already a member tomorrow, when we do the end of the year charity membership drive, you can get as many memberships as you want for other people by checking the box that says this

Starting point is 00:59:51 is a gift. The payment will be donated. It will be doubled and the membership will be given to someone on our membership waiting list, which you can find at David Pakman dot com slash free membership. We're doing all of it. And you can you can quite literally give the membership to anyone you want. So chin tend to occur. Well, it's better if you know how to spell the person's name, which I don't know that Trump did when he started reading those names. But you can send the membership to anyone you want or you can just leave that blank and we'll give it away. We've got like a thousand people waiting for memberships. OK, bonus show today. We're going to talk about Mike Lee's new obsession with banning

Starting point is 01:00:29 porn. We're going to talk about the permanent disappearance of daily room cleanings at hotels since the pandemic. Good or bad. We'll talk about it. And we will talk about American self-reported mental health at a new low. Not good. Not good. All of those stories and more on today's bonus show. Sign up at join Pacman dot com. Get instant access to the world's famous bonus show.

The David Pakman Show - 12/22/22: Trump's Taxes Are Depraved, Zelenskyy Addresses Congress

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