The David Pakman Show - 12/3/24: MAGA director apologizes over "2000 Mules," drunk Trump nominee in trouble

Episode Date: December 3, 2024

-- On the Show: -- British Prime Minister Keir Starmer warns Donald Trump that the UK will not side with the US over the European Union after Trump suggests a choice must be made -- Geraldo Rivera gives Trump supporters a serious reality check -- A review of the recent viral Pod Save America interview with Kamala Harris' campaign staff confirms that these people should never be in charge again -- Right-wing propagandist Dinesh D'Souza issues an apology over false claims in his "2000 Mules" movie about the 2020 election -- Defense Secretary nominee Pete Hegseth reportedly chanted "kill all Muslims" before getting kicked out of a bar -- After President Joe Biden pardons his son, Hunter Biden, Donald Trump and MAGA are wildly triggered -- A report claims a drunk Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump's nominee for Secretary of Defense, had to be carried out of a strip club after a fiasco -- On the Bonus Show: Biden surges arms to Ukraine fearing Trump will halt aid, gay couples rush to marry and have children before Trump inauguration, Supreme Court wrestles with FDA's attempt to curb access to flavored vapes, much more... 🍽️ CookUnity: Get 50% OFF your 1st week with code PAKMAN at https://cookunity.com/pakman 🔊 Babbel language learning: Get up to 60% OFF at https://babbel.com/pakman 💪 AG1 is offering you a FREE $76 GIFT when you sign up at https://athleticgreens.com/pakman  🤪 Doomlings: Use code PAKMAN for 15% OFF at https://doomlings.com/pakman 👩‍🎓 The 431 Exchange: Help us reach our goal by donating at https://431exchange.org/pakman 🖼️ Aura Frames: Use code PAKMAN for $35 OFF & free shipping at https://auraframes.com/pakman 🩳 SHEATH Underwear: Code PAKMAN for 20% OFF at https://sheathunderwear.com/pakman -- Become a Member: https://davidpakman.com/membership -- Become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/davidpakmanshow -- TDPS Subreddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/thedavidpakmanshow -- Pakman Discord: https://davidpakman.com/discord -- David on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/davidpakmanshow -- Leave a Voicemail: (219)-2DAVIDP

Welcome everybody. One of the themes of Donald Trump's presidency that was very different from Joe Biden's presidency is that under Trump we were increasingly at odds with our historical, liberally democratic Western allies and Trump increasingly waxed poetic and had these sort of authoritarian wet dreams about dictators and authoritarian strongmen around the world rather than maintaining a historically good relationship with Canada and the United Kingdom and France and Germany. Trump would instead criticize them and criticize their leaders and instead would talk about the strength of she and the honesty of Putin when Putin told him, no, we didn't hack, sir.

Why would we hack? The theme was our typical allies were estranged and our typical adversaries or regimes we would be more skeptical of or cautious of because of their anti-democratic tendencies and beliefs were being reviled by Trump and increasingly seen as why don't we get along with whoever now, as many of, you know, obviously in a vacuum, it's great to get along with people, but at a certain point you have to be able to assert and say, listen, we're willing to get along. We're willing to maintain peace. But when you make threats, when you are anti free press, anti democracy, anti human rights, we can

only get along so well. It's sort of like, excuse the crude analogy, but it's like when people come to me and they say, David, sir, do you have right wing friends? And of course I have many friends who are fiscally conservative and who believe that money is best spent by the individuals who earned it rather than by a government that has collected tax money. That's a philosophical disagreement. It's not going to cause an interpersonal problem. But on the other hand, if you believe that Jews are scum, then that's not going to be a situation where I go, listen,

we just have a difference of opinion. You believe Jews are scum. I happen to be Jewish and don't believe that Jews are scum. At a certain point, we can't just do this, but it's great to get along with people. Why is that so bad? And that's much of what was troubling about what we saw under Trump. Okay. Cut to this week.

We now have in a major foreign policy speech, British prime minister Keir Starmer warning Donald Trump and saying, we are not going to be put in a position where as you antagonize the EU, the UK is expected to side with the United States over the European Union. Here is Keir Starmer himself directly going at the provocations of Trump, which are antagonistic of the EU, antagonistic of NATO, antagonistic of the concept of global agreements and partnerships. Take a listen. So I want to be clear at the outset against the backdrop of these dangerous times. The idea that we must choose between our allies, that somehow we're with

either America or Europe is plain wrong. I reject it utterly. Attlee did not choose between allies. Churchill did not choose. The national interest demands that we work with both. So I want to be. So listen, Donald Trump has made it clear he doesn't like the EU. He doesn't respect the EU more superficially for a while now. The American right wing has had this perspective on Europe that they're sort of, they're sort of sissies over there. The men aren't really men and they just are very beta over there. Um, so we know that Trump's coming in with this attitude towards the EU and Trump's track record has confirmed that he is not shy about using a trade war, pulling support for allies saying we wouldn't come to the shared

defensive NATO allies unless they start putting in the amount of money that Trump says he, uh, believes they should put in. So what happens when Trump forces a choice where it's, are you with us or are you with the EU to the United Kingdom? And it's not really a hypothetical because analysts are already warning that Trump's tariff ideas about putting tariffs on European goods, uh, pressuring distance from China. These are already things that Donald Trump is setting up to do. The other area where this, are you with the EU or are you with us or are you with them? The other area where it's almost certainly going to come up is with regard to Ukraine

for Keir Starmer. Uh, backing Ukraine is a non-negotiable, uh, Starmer believes whatever you believe, Starmer believes that for stability, for freedom in Europe, for security in Europe, Ukraine needs to be supported. Joe Biden believes the same thing. Trump doesn't seem to believe that. So what is going to happen when Trump gets in? What is Trump going to do? The rhetoric from Trump is, oh, the Trump

administration is going to scale back support from Ukraine. That's going to put the UK in a difficult spot. Are they going to stick to their principle, which is we believe that defensive Ukraine is important for Europe and thus for the UK? Or are they going to bow to Trump's demand? Certainly from what Keir Starmer is saying, they are not going to bow to Donald Trump's demands. But of course, it's one thing to say it. It's another thing to actually stand firm when Donald Trump starts the flexing. And so it's fascinating to see the British prime minister with this tough talk.

It's also a question of what happens when Trump is not playing nice and history tells us that this is potentially dangerous waters for the UK. These vague reassurances from Starmer, do we believe them? I don't really know, but what is going to happen with these American alliances if and when Trump comes in and as he did last time, simply doesn't respect the damn thing about what the US has previously committed to engaged in historical alliances and the like from a foreign policy perspective, potentially a very disastrous Trump term coming up. We focus really more domestically on this program,

but it's important to consider what's happening globally and it doesn't look like it's pointing in a particularly diplomatically friendly direction. Geraldo Rivera, who has been a friend of Trump's and so on and so forth, although he has, has had his criticisms of Trump as well. Geraldo Rivera is slapping magas and Trump supporters with a reality check about Donald Trump and pardons and Joe Biden's pardon of Hunter Biden. Geraldo Rivera took to Twitter or as we now know at X and Geraldo tweeted or he put out an excretion as we now refer to them, where he said about Joe Biden's pardon of Hunter Biden, quote, Most dads, including this one, would do what Joe Biden did.

Blood is thicker than water. He was willing to tarnish his honor and reputation to save his child who he believed was being shafted too bad, but it's not like he appointed him ambassador to France and Geraldo Rivera in, you know, every once in a while, Geraldo says something that I find interesting or kind of well put Geraldo Rivera pointing out that, listen, Joe Biden's pardon of Hunter Biden arguably hurts his reputation. He said he wouldn't pardon him. And now he does. But Geraldo makes two important points. Number one, that any dad would do it. Almost no fathers in the United States are in the position of being able to pardon their children. Almost no one. And Joe Biden happens to be in that position for what is it, another seven weeks or something like that,

six weeks, eight weeks, something like that. And he did what Geraldo says he would have done and any father would do. But Geraldo goes a step further and he says, when you pardon your son, you're not allowing them to buy a position of influence and power. Charles Kushner, the father of Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law, who, by the way, Charles Kushner, a former convicted felon, already pardoned by Trump. Trump not only pardoned family member Charles Kushner, but he's making him the, making him the ambassador to France. So the argument here is if you were concerned about what Biden did, how are you not absolutely and doubly furious about what Donald Trump did when it comes to Charles Kushner. Now,

I want to go a little further. A lot of you wrote to me yesterday. Yesterday, when we talked about Biden pardoning Hunter, I said I am against this in principle. I'm against the pardoning of friends, family, et cetera. In principle, I don't believe Joe Biden should interfere in the judicial process. He didn't. Joe Biden said he wasn't going to pardon Hunter and now he did. At the same time, we have to acknowledge that things have changed. We now know that the guy Trump wants to see as FBI director firing, by the way, the FBI director, he previously selected Christopher Wray, who is in the middle of his 10 year term.

If Trump gets his way and cash Patel becomes FBI director, cash Patel has pledged dozens of times to go after Trump's political adversaries. He would go after the Bidens. He would almost certainly try to find more stuff on Hunter Biden. That is a material change from a year ago. We now know that Trump's claims that he's going to weaponize the judiciary and the intelligence community is becoming a reality with Kash Patel. So to the people that are now flipping out, uh, number one, why is your condemnation today so much greater towards Biden than it

has been for Trump? Pardoning Charles Kushner, making him ambassador to France now. Now I still don't like it. I don't. If we zoom out, I want to try to explain this in the, in the most accurate possible way. If we zoom out, if you say to me, is it a feature or a bug to have presidents, uh, pardon family members and friends on their way out of office? I don't like it. It's if you said, David, construct a country, how would you organize separation of powers? How would you do this? How would you do that? And would you let presidents

pardon their friends and family on the way out of office? No, that's not like a feature of a democracy that I would choose. But I understand as a father what Joe Biden is doing here, particularly when you see Kash Patel. Now, I think it's important to mention there are a number of presidents that have pardoned relatives. Abraham Lincoln is one of them. Abraham Lincoln pardoned, commuted or rescinded the convictions of 343 people. One of them was Emily Todd Helm, the wife of Confederate General Benjamin Harden Helm and half sister of Lincoln's own wife, Mary Todd Lincoln. Bill Clinton has done it. Donald Trump has done it. And yes, now Joe Biden

has done it. So I don't like it. It's not unique. It's understandable. And the imbalance in how Hunter Biden has been gone after how that essentially a victimless gun crime doesn't mean it's okay. Prosecuted as a felony in this way almost never happens. It does seem as though there was particular special treatment and I mean special from the standpoint of bad rather than good. So, uh, Geraldo with a completely accurate reality check, uh, and if what Biden did is to be as egregious as what Trump has done, Biden should appoint Hunter to some kind of cushy job on his way out of office, something which I'm not a betting man, but I would bet Joe Biden is not going to

do. Ladies and gentlemen, we are over. I got the updated numbers. We are at 3,807 pre-orders of my forthcoming book, the echo machine. When we get to 4,000 pre-orders, I will give away some more copies, maybe five or six. Last time we gave away seven copies of the book on blue sky. I hope you're following me on blue sky, davidpacman.com slash blue sky. It's the non magified new version of Twitter.

So we'll be giving away some books on blue sky. You can preorder the book at davidpacman.com slash echo. Let's take a quick break. We've got some great stuff on the show, some tough stuff. I'm admitting there's some tough stuff on today's show, but I think we're all adults here, most of us, and we're going to be able to handle it. So stay with me. I'll be right back. The David Pakman Show David Pakman dot com. Thank you, David. sent fresh, not frozen, no cleanup or meal planning meals delivered, fully cooked,

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The link is in the podcast notes. One of the things that's clear is that unless you diagnose the problem correctly, you can't possibly fix it. Now, in a moment, I'm going to go through and tell you why some of the diagnoses that are being put out there by people who worked for Kamala Harris strike me as completely incorrect. We're going to deal with that in a moment. Something else that has gone very wrong is that when it comes to the independent media space, the right is just crushing the left. We may even have gotten, in a sense, a head start as the right dominated AM talk radio years ago and other forms of media.

We got a head start on the left, but we've fallen behind. The right funds their independent media in a full throated and unconditional manner. We don't have that on the left. What I will tell you is that here at the David Pakman show, we are primarily funded directly by you. YouTube has an algorithm. Sometimes it stops showing ads on our videos and we stop making money. Facebook, same thing. Tick tock, same thing. The way we build resilience and that we make ourselves sort of immune to the vagaries of the algorithmic I'm not going to. matters what YouTube, TikTok, Twitch or whoever does. So I invite you to get a subscription at join Pacman dot com. It's very affordable. We do extra content every day for our members and it

does directly support the work that we do. All right. We are going to look now at something that's going to be a little difficult. There was this very much anticipated and extraordinarily viral interview that pod save America did with a number of the people who worked on Kamala Harris's campaign. And I want to get straight to my conclusion and then we're going to work backwards from it. The people who ran this campaign cannot stay in charge, period. There is an important debate to be had about what is the path forward look like for Democrats. One thing is very clear. This democratic campaign establishment is completely out of gas. Now, before we watch the first clip, I think it's important to mention my audience is essentially

split 50 50 as to whether the Democratic Party needs to move to the left or to the center or stay where it is. How could you be 50 50 split between three options? But the general point is whenever we do any poll of our audience, whatever options we present, there's pretty equal division. And when we step back from that, my view is that whichever way you move ideologically, if at all, the way that these campaigns are being run as evidenced by this completely failed postmortem is extraordinarily disturbing to me.

Now we're going to start with this first clip in this first clip. Quentin Fuchs folks, I hope I'm saying that correctly. Quentin Fuchs says that after the disastrous debate performance of Joe Biden against Donald Trump back in June, I believe it was, there was a scramble within the campaign and within the White House to convince everybody that Biden was still up for the job and the best person for the job. Fine. That's what they were doing because he was the nominee at the time, but that there was

no backup plan for what happens if Biden isn't the nominee. This is completely and utterly mind blowing. This is the kind of lack of preparation you would expect from amateurs. These are supposedly the absolute best people that the democratic party can muster to run a campaign steering the ship. And they had no backup plan. Take a listen to this. Quentin, you were there when that switch happened. How were you able?

There was a one month period between the debate and when the president actually dropped out. Obviously, it seemed like a dropping out could be a possibility. Were you able to do any thinking or planning in that one month period about what a race with the vice president would look like? Or did you have to sort of start cold on that first day, the moment you got the call or the statement went out? I mean, we started cold. There was no planning involved in any other candidates. I mean, we were honestly in crisis management mode of keeping President Biden in the race, you know, convincing, you know, Democratic allies that he could still do this. And one of the things was trying to keep the president out on the road as much. We were still doing everything we could from a campaign. And he made the decision that he did not want to continue

on. And he pulled some of the senior leadership together and said that he was going to be with the vice president. It also wasn't anything that our team took for granted to just say, OK, she is the nominee. We knew that there was still a situation where we had to sure up delegates. And that's where we started from. And then after that point, that is when we begin to say, OK, how can we define her? Also, Trump's favorabilities numbers were creeping up, as Plouffe said, and we had to do something about that as well. And so it was a lot of walking and chewing gum at the same time. But there really was no sort of contingency planning to turn the race over to her right after that debate or at any point until President Biden definitively said

he wasn't going to continue on. Now, you might be saying, David, that's not that bad. I mean, listen, he's just saying they didn't assume that Kamala Harris was going to be the nominee. She had to build consensus. They had to figure out, uh, is she going to be the nominee? Has she convinced, uh, the delegates and that that's just, that's called democracy. David, there's no problem. It was obvious to everyone for a year that if Biden were to step down, it would almost certainly be Kamala Harris. Now, sure,

it could go in a different direction, maybe. But how as the best campaign people that there are, supposedly, when it's so obvious to, you know, I would speak to a random person on the street and they would go, David, it's obvious that Kamala would be the replacement a year ago. And we are supposed to believe that they had no idea. Um, it, it, it's, it's absolutely wild. Now there's one other thing I want to interject into this. John Favreau, um, uh, speech writer, you know, the crooked media guy, John Favreau, he has admitted that when all of this was going wrong and they were saying, no, we had no backup. Well, there was no backup. No, nothing at all. When they had no backup, internal polling showed Trump winning with 400 electoral votes.

And there was no backup plan. Listen to the Joe Biden's decision to run for president again was a catastrophic mistake. It just was. And he and his inner circle, they refused to believe the polls. They refused to believe he was unpopular. They refused to acknowledge until very late that anyone could be upset about inflation. And they just kept telling us that his presidency was historic and it was the greatest economy ever. We just heard him again say that it's the greatest economy ever.

Clearly, 70, 80 percent of voters don't believe that. They don't believe that about their own personal financial situation, but they just keep telling us that. And then after the debate, the Biden people told us that the polls were fine and Biden was still the strongest candidate. They were privately telling reporters at the time that Kamala Harris couldn't win. So they were shiving Kamala Harris to reporters while they told everyone else not a time for an open process and his vice president can't win. So he's the strongest candidate. Then we find out when the Biden campaign becomes the Harris campaign, that the Biden campaign's own internal polling at the time when they were telling us he was the strongest

candidate showed that Donald Trump was going to win 400 electoral votes. That's what their own internal polling said. There were polls showing 80% of voters thought Joe Biden was too old to get a second term before the debate. And then we all watched the debate. And then in the last few weeks, Biden was campaigning, and he said, we need to lock Trump up.

He created a controversy over whether Trump supporters were garbage. He said, you know, the weird thing about slapping Trump on the ass. Like, his moments on the campaign trail weren't flawless either. You can't, you cannot, the weird thing about slapping Trump on the ass, like his moments on the campaign trail weren't flawless either. You cannot. It's absurd.

It's trying to be generous. I'm done being. All right. So you get the point. The idea here is no backup plan, no backup plan. Meanwhile, internally, they're going Trump might get 400 electoral votes. Now, later during this interview, let's get back to the pod. Save America interview.

Stephanie Cutter, another campaign official, talks about how there was just no way for Kamala Harris to distance herself from Joe Biden and that one of the reasons that Harris lost is essentially Biden would have lost. And Harris was a continuation of Biden. He or she acknowledges it will be worse. And I think that's playing out right now. And Dan, on the Biden question, we, of course, got that everywhere we went and we knew what the data was. We knew we had to show her as her own person and point to the future and not try to rehash the past. But she also felt that she was part of the administration. And unless we said something like, well, I would have handled the border completely differently, we were never going to satisfy anybody. So we did talk about things

like she's a different generation. Most of her career is from outside of Washington, not inside Washington. So she knows a lot of the best ideas are from across the country. Now, I just want to pause here. We're going to we're going to listen to a little more of this. It's critically important to understand what she's saying here. She's saying there was really no way on any kind of policy to distance from Biden because then it just looks like you're criticizing Biden. Well, then why are you his VP? It's like an impossible situation. So what they came up with was, yes, she's like Biden, but she's younger. Uh, and while Biden's experience is from inside DC as a Senator VP president, Kamala Harris's experience geographically is from outside DC. Now, as I'm saying it,

I feel like an idiot because it's so stupid that that's going to make people say, well, I'm not impressed by Biden and Harris is the same, but she's younger and she did a lot of work in California instead of in DC. Like what this? These are the distinctions we decided to draw rather than an actual economic message that people could get behind addressing the issues that Trump was addressing like a fool on the campaign trail. Right. Trump had no solutions to inflation and these other things. But we'll get to that in a moment. Her career has been about reaching across the aisle, finding common sense ways to get things done. It's not been based in ideological politics.

All of these things, we were trying to tell a story and give the impression that she was different without pointing to a specific issue. Can I ask this? Why not a specific issue? Is this something she was unwilling to do? You're worried you would feel disingenuous or because she felt like she was part of the administration. So why should she look back and pick out cherry pick some things that she would have done differently? And of course, that would be something to think about before you make it the nominee was part of it. And she also she had tremendous loyalty to President Biden. And, you know, if we had said, just imagine this, I mean, you've been on plenty of campaigns. Imagine if we said, well, we would have taken this approach on the border. Imagine the round

of stories coming out after that of people saying, well, she never said that in the meeting, or what meeting when she said this, or I remember when she did that. And it was just. So listen, you get the picture. I'm not pretending that it was an easy situation. In a lot of ways, it was a completely dysfunctional situation, but the approach is admittedly disastrous here. The takeaways, the postmortem are, what are you guys thinking? Here's David Plouffe arguing that a lesson from what happened weeks ago, a month ago

now, almost is that Democrats need better super PACs. What? This doesn't make any sense. Listen to them. Been through this, you know, some time ago, but then witnessing again this time, we have to stop playing a different game as it relates to super PACs than the Republicans love our democratic lawyers I'm tired of it okay they coordinate more than we do I think amongst themselves I think with the presidential campaign like I'm just sick and

tired of it okay so we cannot be at a disadvantage number one number two to Jen's point I think you don't want duplication but I think having multiple players on the field as long as they're well-coordinated is great. Like back in 20, you know, I spent a bunch of time with Tara McGowan, who now runs Courier with Acronym, and all we did, I think it was $80 or $90 million, which was great. We only did digital low-information voters, right? So whatever Future Forward was doing, we were very focused on that, particularly low information voters of color. So I think to have an ecosystem where whether it's on issues like reproductive health or climate or manufacturing or health care or a specific lane that you're focused on in terms of messaging, I think that's really, really important. I think that they tend to have more entities that are, you know, to Stephanie's point, clearly it is not legal what

they're doing, but we're at a disadvantage when our folks are playing by a different set of rules than they are. I mean, I remember going back to 2012. You guys might remember this. Mitt Romney is running around the country asking for specific dollar amounts at Super PAC events, and we were told that Barack Obama couldn't even attend them. I don't understand how they could be blaming a lack of coordination among super PACs when Harris significantly out fundraised Trump. There's a Forbes article which details this, which says FEC filings through November four show super PACs spent approximately 668 million supporting Harris while PAC spent only 194 million supporting Trump during the exact same period of time. So I'm all for you don't unilaterally disarm. You don't give away a tool that the other side is using because then you obviously lose. Like I get all of that. But at the same time, what about looking at the campaign, the candidate,

the issues, the fact that Trump was talking about economic policy in a way that Kamala Harris simply wasn't, even though Trump's ideas were terrible as a way to fix it. Um, it doesn't make any sense. It just does not. We need better super PACs is the answer. Oh my God. Uh, finally, here is David Plouffe arguing that you need to dominate the moderate voter in order to win. Finding people. It's really hard for Democrats

to win battleground states. OK, let's look at Pennsylvania. Twenty five percent of the electorate is liberal, roughly. Thirty four percent conservative, by the way, in most battleground states, that conservative numbers over 40 way, in most battleground states, that conservative number is over 40. So in every battleground state, there's more conservative than liberals. So in Pennsylvania, if Exeter believed Trump won conservatives, 91.8. Harris won liberals, 93.6. Moderates, Harris won 56.43. But you kind of got to win 60% of them, right? So, you know, for Democrats to win battleground states, to Quentin and Jen's point, it's it is a false choice. You want to maximize your base, of course. And that was a place where we spent enormous time, a lot of resources. That's critical. And obviously, I think in Milwaukee, you know, just to use use that as an example, we hit our turnout targets fell a little bit short in Philly and Detroit. So that's not good. That's part of the equation. You've got to couple that with dominating in the middle, not just winning it a little. We have to dominate the moderate vote. Now, mathematically, he's not wrong. But the

problem is that they keep trying the same stuff and it never works. You know, Stephanie Cutter brought up the campaign struggles for Kamala Harris and people seeing her as a continuity of of Biden. But that's kind of how the Democratic strategy was designed. Harris actually ran slightly to Biden's right. As I've said before, Biden very clearly ran to Obama's left and he won. Harris did not run to the left of Joe Biden. I know they called her a communist and a Marxist and all this stuff. That's because she wasn't white. Okay.

Cause she's not white that, that, but there was nothing to it from a policy perspective. And after all of this appealing to the middle, and it's not that she campaigned for a day with Liz Cheney, that's not why she lost. But if you take the totality of it, exit polls found that essentially the same percentage of Republicans voted for Trump this time as last time it did nothing. She got slightly less Republican support, according to one exit poll, then did Joe Biden in 2020 and two points less than Hillary Clinton in 2016. So they went for it and they just didn't get it. So you either have to change your math or you have to change your strategy, but you

can't just keep repeating the same thing over and over again. So final thing I want to mention on economic messaging. President Joe Biden, as a candidate in 2020, ran a way more economically progressive campaign in terms of rhetoric and speeches. Now, I know Kamala Harris had her tax deduction for new businesses and but as from rhetoric and speeches, every speech Trump was talking about prices and cost of living more than twice as often as Kamala Harris did it. Now Trump has no real plan to fix it. He's going to put in place tariffs, which will just make everything more expensive.

It's vapid from an actually from an able to do something standpoint, but it's a losing strategy when your opponent is talking twice as much as you are about something that keeps showing up in the polling as one of the more important, most important issues. So I see this postmortem as essentially a disaster. They're acknowledging things went wrong, but not really the underlying reality of why that is. So my view is we need a totally new approach when it comes to the campaign. Obviously, different candidates will deal with that.

Let's leave it there today. Let me know your thoughts. Info at David Pakman dot com. We'll take a quick break. This holiday season, after that insane election we just had where you might be feeling like it's the end of the world, it's good to take time to slow down, enjoy time with loved ones. And here is a great way to do it. Doomlings, a delightful card game for the end of the world. Doomlings is a really funny new card game for two to six players. The game doesn't

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The link is in the podcast notes. This holiday season, let's remember how powerful it is to have Thank you so much, David. to who encouraged you along the way. That's what the 431 exchange is for. For so many adult learners. Our sponsor, the 431 exchange is a nonprofit that provides scholarships to adults 18 to 75 who were working to transform their lives and support families. The 431 exchange fills a vital need in Louisiana, which ranks 40th in K through 12 education. We've talked about that. And that means opportunities are limited from an early age. One scholar studying agricultural engineering says over the past four years, I've felt so

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at four thirty one exchange dot org slash Pakman. A generous donor will match all donations up to fifteen thousand dollars so you can double your impact, maybe even give a donation in someone I would absolutely love this story I'm about to tell you if it hadn't wreaked so much havoc and created so much chaos and done so much damage to the United States. Dinesh D'Souza, the director of the obviously bogus film about non-existent voter fraud, 2000 mules acknowledges that there are flaws in the film. Now, this is the understatement maybe of the century when it comes to voter fraud, New York times reporting on this, the director Dinesh D'Souza, who is facing a lawsuit over the documentary, admitted that an analysis used to make claims about election fraud that were later debunked had been faulty. Now, we're going to go through the article. D'Souza is trying to pretend as though there was this small data analysis flaw, but big picture, the points

made by the film are valid and backed up by data. The whole thing was, is, and will always be bogus. Dinesh put out a statement where he said, we recently learned that surveillance videos used in the film may not have actually been correlated with the geolocation data. Now, let me remind you the main crux of the argument of this film. The argument was as follows. We have video here of people dropping off ballots at drop boxes. And we have geo location data showing people near these ballot drop boxes. There are way too many people walking through relative to the number you would expect for the areas. It's obvious that what's happening is that the ballot drop boxes are being used

to just submit gobs and gobs of fraudulent votes. And the whole thing was bogus. Now, even without knowing that the geo location data they put up on the screen, uh, has nothing to do with the videos they show you of people putting ballots in a box. It always was specious. Just because you have a video of someone putting five ballots in a drop box doesn't mean anyone's doing anything wrong. Maybe you have five voters in your house or maybe you have three voters in your house and two neighbors and you said, I'll go and drop these off.

Maybe you were the person assigned to collect the ballots, uh, at your work. Maybe it's not really five ballots. Maybe it's just one. Uh, just because you have video which claims to show someone doing something wrong when all you see is ballots being put in the drop box, which is what people are supposed to do with a drop box at the end of the day, that's not proof that you've done anything, uh, wrong fraudulent or whatever the case may be. The geo location data we later found out aside from whether it linked up with the people

on video doing the ballot box submissions, we found out that the geo location data was far less accurate than what we were led to believe. And so just because on the map it looks like someone's near a drop box, which again is no crime, it's not proof of anything. It turns out that the accuracy is such that they may not even really have been going by the drop box. So the point here is Dinesh now facing a lawsuit completely career, completely in shambles, humiliated

globally. Despite all of that, he wants you to believe that some of the surveillance videos may not have correlated with geolocation data, but the takeaway is that even if they did, it would still prove absolutely nothing when it comes to fraud. Now, one other critical paragraph here. The admission from Mr. D'Souza follows years of defiance. He had long argued that the evidence in his film was sound, even as election experts at the state and local levels declared the conclusions unfounded. In 2022, the Republican attorney general of Arizona asked the FBI to investigate true the vote. That was the source of the geolocation data for ignoring requests to share the documentary's evidence. The film helped demonize drop boxes as a fraudulent method of

voting in the eyes of many Republicans. Of course, there is no evidence whatsoever that drop boxes are a tool of fraud or any of it. This should be it for the entire film. It was always bogus. And now even the director admits that there are flaws. I still get emails. I still see YouTube comments. We still see it on our tick tock. People saying, David, what do you mean? It's secure. Haven't you seen 2000 mules? The film is bogus. And even the director admits that a central data element of the case that they make is not correct. We should never hear about 2000 mules again. We're going to talk a little bit later in the show about Donald

Trump's secretary of defense nominee, Pete Hegseth, but there's so much going on with this guy that I do want to bring him up here. Uh, there is a report Trump defense secretary nominee drunkenly chanted, kill all Muslims before being kicked out of the veterans group that he led. Now, later in the show, we're going to talk about some of the more, I don't know what to call it, personal allegations against Hegseth, which involve claims that he drunkenly was singing on stage at strip clubs and making passes at coworkers and all of this sort of stuff, stuff that's less like kind of directly material to the role that he would have. But as secretary of defense, if your view in any way is kill all Muslims, I don't know

any serious person who would even joke about that. Nevermind someone who should be in the position of running the military if you can imagine. Okay. So the article says Donald Trump's controversial nominee for secretary of defense is under scrutiny after he chanted kill all Muslims before getting kicked out of a veterans group for being too intoxicated. According to a report, Hegseth, former Fox news host and army national guard officer has a history of leadership in veterans advocacy groups including concerned veterans for America and veterans for freedom. During his tenure, Hegseth's behavior allegedly reached a tipping point when according to

a whistleblower report, he drunkenly chanted, kill all Muslims, kill all Muslims at a bar during a, an official trip to Ohio in 2015 witnesses claim he also tried joining performers on stage at a strip club. We'll get to that later. Um, he is Pete Hegseth qualified to be secretary of defense. No. Is Pete Hegseth view as a total war hawk in line with the supposed philosophy of Donald Trump, which is no new wars, no, no war, no, no, no.

Is Pete Hegseth from a personality standpoint, completely unqualified and, and the wrong choice for a position requiring tact and careful consideration and all of the other things required by secretary of defense? No, completely unqualified. Is dancing on stage drunkenly with strippers uniquely disqualifying. No. And I will deal with that later. But when you consider the various global conflicts and deployment theaters of the American military, should a guy who chanted kill all Muslims be anywhere near the department of defense?

The answer is obviously no. You wouldn't, if you were a serious military, you wouldn't even want kill all Muslims guy deployed globally anywhere, whether it's a country where there are predominant Muslim population populations or not secretary of defense, we're going to make kill all Muslims guy secretary of defense. It's hard to think of a more backwards selection. We have to ask, do they really care about this stuff when they continue to try to push through Pete Hegseth?

Uh, now cash Patel, it's sort of like, why did Matt Gates have to turn down the nomination? They probably would have tried to push him through as well. So after the break, we're going to delve in more detail into the totality of the allegations against Hegseth, the sexual assault, the drunken chant, drunken singing with strippers and all of it. A lot of it is not directly material to the role of secretary of defense being the sort of person most people I know, it doesn't matter how much alcohol you give them.

They're not going to chant kill all Muslims. It's sort of like I've said before, it doesn't matter what you give me. I'm not going to start yelling the N word. It's just not in there as the sort of thing I would think or say when you blame alcohol, if that's the explanation, but that's not really reflective of how he feels. Who really believes that? I certainly don't. So let's take a break after the break.

We're going to take a broader look at these nominations and the potential path forward. And can they even really get themselves confirmed? The best gifts should really feel like they were picked out just for you, which is why I love aura digital picture frames during the holidays, because you can give it to mom or grandpa. You can give them the same gift, but personalize it with their favorite pictures. I've given these to so many family members now. Sometimes I'll preload it with pictures of my daughter or sometimes I'll preload it with different things. Depends who I'm giving it to. It is a really great gift instead of cuff links. OK, fine.

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The link is in the podcast notes. Donald Trump and MAGA continue to completely melt down over President Joe Biden pardoning Hunter Biden. I already spoke about earlier in the show. I'm against this whole thing in principle. And I also understand that if you are President Joe Biden and you see Trump nominate to FBI director cash Patel, a guy who has made it clear, he will go after the Biden family. You see the way that Trump promises to and is nominating people who will weaponize the justice department against their political adversaries. Joe Biden did the

obvious thing that any father with the ability to pardon people will do, which is he pardoned his son. This is wildly triggering Trump and MAGA who seem not to care or not to know or not to remember that Donald Trump has pardoned family members and also nominated some of them to cushy jobs like ambassador to France, as he has now done with Charles Kushner. So as a reminder, I told you yesterday that after Biden announced the pardon, Trump took to troth central where he said, quote, does the pardon given by Joe to Hunter include the J six hostages who have now been imprisoned for years?

Such an abuse and miscarriage of justice. Trump then doubled down on the so-called hostages. We call them criminal defendants since I believe in law and order and law and auto as Trump says, um, I don't refer to them as hostages. I refer to them as defendants because that's what they are. Trump back on truth posting quote, everybody's talking about the hostages who are being held so violently, inhumanely and against the will of the entire world in the middle east. But it's all talk and no action.

Please let this truth serve to represent that if the hostages are not released prior to January 2020, 25, the date that I proudly assume office as president of the United Shays, there will be all hell to pay in the Middle East. And for those in charge who perpetrated these atrocities against humanity, those responsible will be hit harder than anybody has been hit in the long and storied history of the United States of America. Release the hostages now. So as often is the case, we can't tell whether in this second troth Trump is talking about the J six hostages that he had posted about immediately before, or if he's talking about hostages held by

Hamas, it's never totally clear what he's talking about. But what I can tell you is that Donald Trump is laying the groundwork to say he is pardoning the defendants who participated in the Trump riots of 2021. It's critical to also understand that the magas who are just furious, indignant about Joe Biden's pardon of Hunter Biden seem not to care about all of the nepotistic and cronyistic pardons that Donald Trump has put out there. Either you support and defend the pardon power of presidents or you don't. I'm not big on it personally, although I do understand there are cases where I would say

I agree with this decision as a general principle. I'm not big on it. And so I have to apply that to both Biden and to Donald Trump. I also understand how given such a power, a father would obviously use it for their son. If you come to believe that the person who's going to come into office after you has a vendetta, personal vendetta against your family and is going to choose people that will go after your family. That's exactly what Trump is doing by selecting cash Patel to be the director of the FBI. So daily beast reports, MAGA goes into full meltdown mode over Joe Biden's pardon of his son Hunter. It didn't take long for some of MAGA's

biggest names to weigh into the president's surprising move. It has a bunch of different quotes, you know, James Comer, who always is desperate to get his name in headlines. Joe Biden has lied from start to finish about his family's corrupt influence peddling activities. Not only has he falsely claimed that he never met with his son's foreign business associates and that his son did nothing wrong. But he also lied when he said he would not pardon Hunter Biden. You know, what's really funny, James Comer has one tool. That tool is it's a hammer. We know that for James Comer, Hunter Biden being pardoned by Joe Biden is proof of the stuff that James Comer spent years looking for and found none that Joe Biden

was in some way involved in corrupt business practices with Hunter Biden. James Comer has claimed it. He said, Biden's going to be arrested for it. Biden's going to be impeached for it. None of it happened because they didn't find any evidence. Now that Biden pardons Biden, James Comer pops up and he says, oh yeah, this is about those corrupt business practices or this, that the other thing has nothing to do with it whatsoever. No proof of that at all. Many other Republicans also posting about this. Congressman Jim Jordan said, Democrats said there was nothing to our impeachment inquiry. If that's the case, why did Joe Biden just issue Hunter Biden a pardon for the very things we were inquiring about. That is not the case.

It is true that you can argue a blanket pardon is potentially for anything. But Jim Jordan is doing the same thing as James Comer, which is pretending that there is evidence for that which for which there is really no evidence at all, which is Joe Biden was bribed by China in connection indirectly with they don't have any proof of any of it. What we do know is that Trump has pardoned family members and then has given some family members cushy jobs. Tiffany's father in law, one such individual, and also now Jared Kushner's own father. A drunk Trump nominee was reportedly carried out of a venue after an absolute and total fiasco involving strippers. Who am I talking about? No, it's not Lee Zeldin. I'm talking about Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump's nominee for secretary

of defense. Of course, always the best people. We already saw the Matt Gates nomination to AG completely and totally implode. We may see the Hegseth nomination implode. We may see the cash Patel nomination implode. Here is the report from nj.com. Uh, the New Yorker reports, Pete Hegseth was forced out of concerned veterans for America after a whistleblower report that includes an anecdote of him being held back from trying to dance on a stage with strippers. It described him as being repeatedly intoxicated while acting in his official capacity to the point of needing to be carried out of the organization's events. The detailed seven page report compiled by former CVA employees back in 2015 says at one point, Hegseth had to be restrained while drunk from joining the dancers on the stage

of a Louisiana strip club. It also says that despite being married at the time, he sexually pursued the female staffers of the organization, which were divided into the party girls and the not party girls. So listen, the whole idea of Trump is hiring the best people, that whole thing. It's complete and total nonsense. He hires terrible people all the time. If I'm Frank, I don't really care about him drunk dancing at a strip club. We know that his personal behavior is antithetical to what the evangelical Christians claim that they support and what Trump claims he supports, even though Trump does the same stuff. We know all about that. The bad judgment of doing drunken strip club dancing and all of it while, while working in this capacity, of course it's a problem. This behavior would

get you fired essentially anywhere. I don't deny that. But to me, being utterly unqualified is a bigger problem. The wild authoritarianism is a bigger problem. The being a war hawk for a long time is a bigger problem. Those are the real problems. Is he from a personality standpoint, completely unsuited to this task? Of course he is. Of course he is. Is it also the case that I would accept someone with personality problems if they were eminently qualified and bringing value to the table, to a job. I also would to a degree, right? I mean, listen, uh, it's, it, there's different levels, but Bill Clinton had affairs, but

he did a lot of good things as president and he was, uh, you know, smart and, uh, well informed about a lot of these different issues. Did he behave like a prick in terms of his relationship with Hillary Clinton? Of course he did. But, uh, for me, the main problem with Hegseth is not a drunken strip club dancing. Now this, the alleged sexual assault of multiple women, that is a problem. That's a little more than just a personality, a flaw.

What's my hope as far as heck, heck Seth goes, obviously that the, the nomination implodes. Of course, if he can't get confirmed, Trump will pick someone arguably equally as bad as far as policy goes, but maybe they wouldn't be as humiliating of a selection as Pete Hegseth is destined to be. We have a fantastic bonus show for you today. The Biden administration is arming Ukraine in advance of what they expect to be. Trump no longer helping Ukraine. We are also seeing gay couples rushing to marry and have children before Trump is inaugurated.

And finally, the Supreme Court is wrestling with the attempt by the FDA to curb access to flavored vapes. What is the latest research say about these vapes? Hint, it's not good. All of those stories and more on today's bonus show. Sign up at join Pacman dot com. Look forward to seeing you there. Pre-order the book at davidpacman.com slash echo. And I'll be back here with you tomorrow.