The David Pakman Show - 1/9/25: The fires have broken their brains, Anne Applebaum weighs in

Episode Date: January 9, 2025

-- On the Show: -- Anne Applebaum, Pulitzer prize winning historian and writer for The Atlantic, joins David to discuss her book Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World -- It is revealed that Fox News gave Donald Trump's campaign the questions to be asked during a campaign town hall in advance -- Donald Trump admits yet again that he is not likely to bring consumer prices down, as he previously claimed during his presidential campaign -- A disoriented Donald Trump is caught endlessly lying once again when answering questions about the California fires -- MAGA and Fox News hosts implicitly and explicitly blame lesbians, women, and "DEI" for the handling of the California fires -- An exploration into why Donald Trump's demented rants are an obvious warning sign for his forthcoming second term -- Donald Trump's reaction to the California fires is a terrifying reminder of what is to come -- On the Bonus Show: Trump asks SCOTUS to pause sentencing, controversy over "empty" fire hydrants spreads in Los Angeles fire reporting, how Trump annexing Canada would change American politics, much more... 💪 Alpha Progression: Get 20% OFF your 1st month or year at https://alphaprogression.com/pakman ⚠️ Ground News: Get 50% OFF their unlimited access Vantage plan at https://ground.news/pakman 🛡️ Incogni lets you control your personal data! Get 60% off their annual plan: http://incogni.com/pakman 💻 Sponsored by Aura: Try it free for 2 weeks! See if your data is safe at https://aura.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 to the show, everybody. We have learned about election interference by the standards of the MAGA right wing. Donald Trump was given the Fox News town hall questions in advance, including questions that he would be asked by the anchors, Brett Bayer and Martha McCallum, as well as questions that he would be asked by members of the audience. It was completely stage managed. It was completely rigged like to sank the boat. Okay. Um, you may recall that when Donna Brazil obtained questions and pass them along to a Hillary Clinton campaign staffer, this was considered the gravest injustice in the history of the United States.

And it turns out that actually Trump and Fox were in cahoots. So let me explain to you here what's going on. Reporting from CNN, Trump camp was fed questions for Fox News Town Hall in advance from person inside network. This is based on a forthcoming book. The report, which Fox said it plans to investigate, comes from the forthcoming book Revenge, the inside story of Trump's return to power by Alex Eisenstat, a national political reporter at Politico. Eisenstat did more than 300 interviews for this book and uh, is based on internal memos,

notes and recordings as well as regular reporting trips to Palm beach where Trump lives and a flight with Trump aboard his plane in June, 2023. The two excerpts in question that outlined the specifics of what took place. Eisenstadt describes a deep relationship between Trump and people at Fox news. Eisenstadt reports that in January of 24, Trump was set to hold the town hall with Iowa voters moderated by Fox news anchors, Brett Breyer and Martha McCallum. Although not all of Trump's advisors wanted him to attend. Uh, the book explains that some of the people around Trump were angry with Fox because they

found Fox's coverage, not glowing enough. Antagonistic was the word Eisenstadt uses, and they didn't want Trump to essentially reward Fox with what was likely to be a pretty well rated primetime event. We all, of course, remember this town hall. We covered it. And I'm going to get to that in a moment. Um, the idea, and you can read about Eisenstadt's reporting. The idea among Trump staffers was, you know, as much as Fox news is like sort of friendly to us, Brett Baier and Martha McCallum might actually ask some tougher questions. And Trump's aides were concerned that he would be pressed on issues that he may not necessarily

be well positioned or predisposed to answer. So long story short, quote, about 30 minutes before the town hall was due to start, a senior aide started getting text messages from someone inside Fox. Holy shit, the team thought there were images of the questions Trump would be asked and the follow ups that were planned down to the exact wording jackpot. This was like a student getting a peek at the test before the exam started. OK, so I want to remind you when former democratic national committee, interim chair Donna Brazil acknowledged, yes, I knew what

the topics would be, not the wording of the questions, not the followup questions. Donna Brazil found out the topics that would be subject matter for Hillary Clinton's town hall. She passed it along to the campaign. She now says it was a mistake and the right wing, including Trump, made this the biggest story for a while. There was no graver journalistic injustice that could have been done. Nothing worse could have taken place, but that was only the topics.

And this time it's not done a Brazil or a campaign operative. This was someone inside of Fox news. Now I'll tell you a couple of different things. Number one, if Fox news is investigation reveals that, oh, this did happen, they are going to blame the individual who did it and say, this was not Fox news policy. This was a violation. What this one person did, if they find the person, they are going to just say one person did the wrong thing.

They no longer work here. They've been fired, whatever. We don't yet know who that person is. So Fox News will never take accountability as yes, we help them out by doing this. It was a rogue person. Secondly, Brett Baier previously denied this. OK, remember the tweet? I guess it was X already, so it would be an excretion.

Technically, Brett Baier said the former president will not have the questions in advance or any knowledge of the questions from me, Martha, or from citizens in the crowd. Now again, the campaign got that. So was Brett Bayer lying or was it some rogue Fox news staffer that did this? If they are unable to deny the reporting, they will say Brett Bayer was right as far as he knew. Trump wasn't supposed to have the questions. He wasn't supposed to have any of it, but he was given it in contra contravention to

Fox news policy. Okay. Third thing, maybe the most, I don't know, revolting aspect or stunning aspect of this is that if you remember our coverage of this Iowa town hall that Trump did, despite having all of the questions and the planned followups and the whole thing, it was still a completely abortive campaign event. I mean, it was a fiasco. Go back and look at the video from January where I covered the event in detail. Trump was a complete and total mess after seat. That

town hall was so bad that many of us thought to ourselves, there's no way Trump's followers are going to fall for this and support him. Of course we were very wrong. We were naive. We thought Trump's followers might actually react to, to, to Trump's dissembling and confusion. They didn't, they still voted for the guy. We were wrong about that. Uh, but, but maybe the most sort of ironic takeaway is that despite Trump having the questions, he still performed terribly. Final thing by Trump's standards, this is election interference. When Donna Brazil found out the topics, Oh, you're going to be asked about the economy and the just Donna Brazile knowing the topics and sending them to the campaign of Hillary Clinton was called election interference by

Trump. What is this? Clearly election interference by Fox News. All right, let's talk about prices, because as we are now just 11 days from Donald Trump starting his second presidential term, Joe Biden's presidency coming to an end. Prices, consumer prices are again in focus. And Donald Trump has admitted again, again, this is now not a one off.

Trump is admitting again, he's probably not going to bring prices down. Now, this is not a new thing. We already talked about how in the recent Time magazine interview, Trump acknowledged it's hard to bring prices down. He acknowledged it after running a campaign for two years on I'm going to bring prices down. Here is Trump again at Mar-a-Lago. This was the thing a couple of days ago, which we covered.

We didn't talk about this clip. This is Trump being asked, you ran on being, I'm bringing prices down. You told Time magazine, not so easy to do. ran on being on bringing prices down. You told Time magazine not so easy to do. Are you going to bring prices down here as Donald Trump's answer to bring down the prices at grocery stores? Very fast. Yeah, we will do it.

We told Time magazine that bringing down prices would be very hard. So what can the American people expect when you get into office? It's always hard to bring down prices when somebody else has screwed something up like they did. But we'll bring them down. We'll get them down.'s always hard to bring down prices when somebody else has screwed something up like they did. But we'll bring them down. We'll get them down. Energy is going to bring down prices. We're going to have a lot of energy.

And energy is what brought it up. Energy and their bad spending. Trump's going to, there's going to be so much energy, it's going to be coming out of Trump's ears. Is what brought it up. And energy is going to bring it down. We're going to have prices down. I think you're going to see some pretty drastic price reductions.

As an example, food, bacon, ham, apples, everything has gone through the roof. It's bananas. It's one of the reasons I won. So as you know, as I said, it inflation was one of the reasons I won. But I think the biggest reason I won was the fact that they are allowing prisoners to come into our country. They released. So now we get off track. The critical aspect of this is, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm going to bring it down. But it's hard to bring prices down when somebody else brings them up. This is signature Donald Trump.

He makes some obviously impossible promise during the campaign. I'll get prices down in, in raw numbers, not just the increase will slow. It's, I will get prices down. And remember the whacked prediction from Trump that he would bring down energy prices by 50%. We'll get to that. He makes the promise. He then hopes that it will be amplified as something he will do. Oftentimes, friendly media will amplify it. And then after they vote for him, it's sort of like a never mind tougher than I thought. Biden really screwed me. Now, there are two parts here that I think are of critical importance to understand. First of all, not only is Trump's economic policy package unlikely to reduce prices

or even slow the rate at which the prices are going up, Trump's policies as promised are going to increase prices. We've talked about that. Secondly, if Trump really did find a way to reduce prices in raw numbers, to reduce energy prices 50 percent, it would signal a disaster for the American economy. And I'm going to talk about that. Trump is talking about slapping tariffs on China, Canada, Mexico. These are some of the biggest sources of what's on our shelves. China, when it comes to products, Canada and Mexico, more when it comes to the grocery store, fresh vegetables, as Trump calls them, fruit, meat. A lot of it comes from across our borders. And economists know because this is what they do. If you put tariffs on these countries, it's going to push grocery

prices up. It's going to push the prices of electronics up. It's not going to go down. It's basic cause and effect. If you make it more expensive for suppliers to import something or to produce grain or whatever, who's going to pay for it in the end? The consumer is going to pay for it. Secondly, and this is the critical part that so few seem to understand price reductions, the likes of which Trump is talking about would not be desirable if you actually start to see deflation the way that Trump is talking about it. Eggs will be objectively cheaper in raw numbers. Apples, as Trump talks about, uh, butternut squash, whatever. Um, when it comes to that level of price reduction, you would really only see that in disastrous economic circumstances.

It would be because of some major calamity that all of a sudden consumer prices would go down by that much reducing the rate at which prices are increasing. Okay. There, we're just talking about getting inflation down to and sustaining it at the generally desirable two to 3%. If you actually saw this level of price reduction, it can only happen because of a massive, I mean, maybe worse than the 2008, uh, recession. We would be talking about a scenario somewhere between 2008 recession and 1929 depression and energy prices down 50%. Forget about it. So what would make more sense for Trump to say and to talk about, and of course he would never do this. Nope. Democrats don't do this either. No politician

would talk about this. Would you say, listen, we have an economy that for 40 years has been increasingly based on the idea that we do import stuff. We get stuff from China. We have partners. A lot of the products that end up in the grocery store shelves come from other countries. So we have a couple of options here. I would love to get inflation down, but we are unlikely to see objective, raw, absolute price reductions. And we don't really want that. What we want to work on is getting inflation controlled, which it has been, and then getting wages up and getting a GDP growth up and increasing dynamism and diversifying industries that a lot of the red states have one industry diversifying that

improving the economy. No politician will say that none of them will say that. And so instead, Trump is like, yeah, yeah, we're going to bring prices down. But like, it's also kind of hard. I might not do it. My prediction, of course, is that we are not going to see prices decline in absolute numbers unless there's an economic disaster. But we will probably see them continue to increase, maybe at a slower rate, maybe at a faster rate.

What do you think? Info at David Pakman dot com. a faster rate. What do you think? Info at davidpatman.com. Let me know. And also huge announcement. We have surpassed 5,000 pre-orders for my forthcoming book. Now, when you, you know, we get 60 million views a month on YouTube, 5,000. It seems like such a small number. The average book release only sells 200 to 600 copies. Even the average commercial book release with a real publisher, right? Not if you account for all the self-published stuff, even commercial book releases only average about 2000 copies ever. The book is two months away and we have accumulated it's about 5,100 pre-orders. I don't even know what to say. Um, we are now starting to

think about not whether it could make the New York times nonfiction bestseller list. But where on that list might we be able to land? 5,000 might put us in the middle bottom, depending on what else comes out the same week. 10,000 positions this book with no legacy or corporate media support, with no contributorship of mine on CNN to boost sales, just with our grassroots independent platform, it positions the book to really get some attention. Barnes and Noble is now saying we might actually do a big buy and put this book in our store. So the point here is, thank you. machine. They will get it for you and it'll be available on the same release day as Amazon, Barnes and Noble, everybody else. So thank you more about this. Uh, later in the month,

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that's easy to follow and it'll get you real results. Look to alpha progression. And right now is the best time to try alpha progression because you'll get 20% off your first month or 20% off your first year at alpha progression.com slash Pacman. The link is in the description. As Trump's inauguration approaches, we're already seeing what the next four years are going to look like. A Trump campaign official said Pennsylvania election workers will face jail time for counting mail in ballots with technical errors like missing dates. Part of the rights attempt to so election distrust and weaponize the courts. This story is almost exclusively being covered by right leaning news outlets, spinning the narrative to villainize the election workers.

So the public probably has a skewed perspective on what's really happening. That is, unless you use ground news, which lets you see every side to every story like this one. Ground news is an independent platform that exposes the biases of media outlets by showing you who owns them, what angle they're taking on each story, and what hidden agendas might be lurking in the background. Ground news is daily briefings are a great way to stay informed without feeling overwhelmed. It gives a quick breakdown of the day's most critical stories from every angle. Go to ground.news.com for 50% off their unlimited access vantage plan. It's their biggest sale of the year. And the link is in the description. We are an independent audience

supported program. I will remind you that we are not part of any major media conglomerate. We don't have any contract involving executives and, uh, uh, you know, six year deals or any of this stuff. We just go on as long as the audience wants us to. And the primary source of revenue is individual memberships that people sign up for at join pacman.com. I invite you to sign up there as well. A disoriented Donald Trump was caught lying for no reason about just about everything, including most recently the California wildfires. Donald Trump and Melania were in Washington, DC yesterday, at least in part to visit the,

um, uh, casket of former president Jimmy Carter lying in state. And Trump took some questions at some point, I guess, after maybe before and just lying about stuff for no real reason, which is really going to be, I believe the theme of this forthcoming presidency, Trump with 30, 35,000 lies in his political career, which is just, it's, it's sort of like when someone says, Oh, you know, the, the, the, the universe is 4 billion years old and we struggle to really understand, or is it 13 billion? Now, is it earth is 4 billion universe 13. Now I don't remember the numbers.

It doesn't matter because as humans, it's difficult to conceive of these numbers. The number of lives Trump has told is a difficult number to conceive of and asked about the fires in California. Donald Trump, Trump starts to talk about Beverly Hills is just burning down. The fires are not affecting Beverly Hills. Why is Trump saying this? We just don't know. It's sort of like, why does Trump call it the 1917 flu? Or why did Donald Trump change the path of a hurricane on a map with a Sharpie? Unforced lies, but he just keeps telling tragedy. I know those areas

very well. I have many friends living in those houses. That is a true tragedy. Nobody ever thought, I mean, virtually Beverly Hills and areas around Beverly Hills are being decimated. Uh, the biggest homes, some of the most valuable homes in the world are, are just, yeah, the, the big homes in Beverly Hills are completely fine for now. Beverly Hills has not been decimated. And this is it's almost like PTSD from the covid era. When you have a crisis, you need a leader with a steady hand, with accurate information, because without agreeing on the facts, you can't possibly solve the problem. And this is just a totally fabricated lie.

If you hear Beverly Hills, oh my goodness, I have family in Beverly. They're fine. There's nothing happening in Beverly Hills right now. There are no fires that have reached Beverly Hills to this point. Unaffected, unaffected by the fires. Trump continuing to talk about the fires and, um, I guess he's worried about the insurance companies is his big concern. This is a true tragedy and it's a mistake of the governor.

And you could say the administration, they don't have any water. They didn't have water in the fire hydrants. They don't have water. And yet they have the water comes from, you know, where up north and it comes down at levels. They get millions and millions of barrels of gallons of water. Yet they have, the water comes from, you know where? Up north. And it comes down at levels, they get millions and millions of barrels of gallons of water. Barrels of gallons? They have and they send it out into the Pacific. For the Pacific, it's like a drop, it's nothing. But for California,

we take care of the whole state. So what's happened is a tragedy and the governor has not done a good job. With that being said, I got along well with him when he was governor. We worked together very well and we would work together. I guess it looks like we're going to be the one having to rebuild it. But what happened there, I don't think is anything that I've ever seen quite like it. And the insurance companies are going to have a big problem because the insurance companies, people are homeless. people have lost pets and it's the insure. Who is going to think of the insurance companies?

They are going to just have a terrible problem as they, I am sure we'll do everything they can to deny every penny of claims that they can get away with. Trump, as is often the case recently, somehow it all comes back to water, big, powerful water. And Trump just obsessed with water. California, Mr. President, during the pandemic, you often said that you didn't believe that you should bail out blue state that that you believe they mismanaged. Given your criticism of Governor Gavin Newsom, are you willing to work with him? And do you believe that federal aid should be provided to California for as long as it takes?

Well, it's very sad because I've been trying to get Gavin Newsom to allow water to come. You'd have tremendous water up there. They sent it out to the Pacific because they're trying to protect a tiny little fish. Tiny little fish. Which is in other areas, by the way, called the smelt. And for the sake of a smelt, they have no water. They had no water in the fire hydrants today in Los Angeles. It was a terrible thing. And we're going to get that done. It's going to finally be done. I got it done from the federal side and he didn't want to sign it,

but it's not going to happen again like that. As is usually the case, significant confusion sort of wrapped around tiny little kernels of truth when it comes to Trump talking about anything that's happened in the past or potentially will happen in the future. So just unforced lie after lie. And then finally, Trump asked about President Joe Biden's pardon of Liz Cheney specifically to protect her from Trump. Interestingly enough, and Trump just says that was ridiculous. He says, Oh, I have no, I thought it was ridiculous that he did that, but we have more important

things to talk about. Liz Cheney was, uh, she lost in the Republican Party, as you know, in her state by the biggest margin in the history of a politician running for Congress. She lost by like 42 points. Nobody's ever lost like that. So I have I don't care about Liz Cheney. I care about these people. There you go.

Doesn't care about her. But of course, he is the reason why Biden felt he needed to levy a pardon. So if you get your information from Donald Trump, which many people do because they're part of the cult and eventually even non Trump supporters would expect, I can get just basic facts from Trump. You would have come away from this, uh, a series of questions and answers, believing that if you have family in Beverly Hills, if you have friends in Beverly Hills, it's been decimated. 90% of it has just been burned down. Of course, that's not the case. And it is really a sort of hearkening back to Trump's COVID press conferences where he talked about everything opened by Easter, Easter of 2020, mind you,

injecting bleach and the entire thing. However, if you thought Trump's perspective on the fires is a little cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs, just wait until you see what broader MAGA is up to. Lesbians are to blame for California fires and female firefighters and DEI and nonwhite firefighters. I know, David, what the hell are you talking about? Lesbians once again. Listen, at least they're not blaming trans people, right? They're taking a break from that due to a combination of homophobia. It's a combination of a bunch of different things due to a combination of homophobia, it's a combination of a bunch of different things. Due to a combination of homophobia, a complete disregard for the facts and desperate attempts to criticize their political adversaries, Fox News, MAGA people, et cetera, are blaming DEI and women believed to be lesbians by them

that are part of the Los Angeles fire department for what's happening in Los Angeles with the fires. I'm going to give you a few examples. And of course, as is always the case, you've got to read between the lines a little bit to really get at what they're saying. Here is Fox host Jesse Waters, who puts up a picture of the leadership of the L.A. F.D. And, you know, I'm going to be honest with you. I don't know if the individuals pictured are lesbians. I don't really care about speculating. But what's circulating from the right is that they are lesbians.

OK, let's imagine that they are. Here is Jesse Waters pulling the same stuff they did with Kamala Harris. This is the sort of like DEI thing. And Waters implies just based on their appearance, we should be questioning whether they know what they're doing. So who else is running things? This right here, ladies and gentlemen, this is the leadership of the L.A. Fire Department. I sure hope they know what they're doing.

Yes. Laura Ingraham, with much of the same stuff, saying it is D.I. Diversity, equity and inclusion policies in the LA FD, meaning they haven't just hired all white men that is responsible for what is going on. Take a look at this. I haven't even mentioned the idiotic DEI priorities that have infected the hiring of senior personnel throughout the state. The fire chief of LA, I'm sure is doing her best, but of all the challenges facing California,

she has made a point of focusing on diversity and inclusion because fires care about the color of your skin. OK, then we have Matt Walsh excreting on X quote, Los Angeles deliberately set out to exclude white men from becoming firefighters and now they don't have enough firefighters to prevent their city from burning to the ground. D E I is a cancer that destroys everything it touches. Now of course it may well be the case that Los Angeles doesn't have enough firefighters, but that's like a funding issue.

What's the total number of firefighters that they are funding? The idea that there are funded firefighter jobs remaining open because they are doing DEI and only hiring certain types of people is completely without basis. Now you might be saying, where are they getting this? Like, what what is this about? This is a really old thing. OK. In 1994, there were reports about white men being limited in terms of taking the civil service exam in L.A. This is 1994 because 20 years before that, in 1974, there was a federal consent decree whose goal was to increase minority applications

in Los Angeles for a lot of these types of positions. So that was 1974 decree which affected applications in 1994. That federal consent decree was terminated in 2002. That's 23 years ago when a judge threw it out saying it outlasted its purpose, putting it in place in 74 using it in 94. We're now in 2002. It's outlasted its purpose. It was thrown out.

But they want you to believe that if they put up a picture of three women that they say are lesbians, maybe they are, maybe they are. I just don't know. Um, that you are going to jump in and go, oh, my God, the fires, the fires that Trump wrongly said are affecting Beverly Hills, which, by the way, is a different city. This is the other whack thing. All of the different lies conflict. Beverly Hills is not part of Los Angeles.

So if you believe Trump that Beverly Hills has been decimated by the fires and then you believe Jesse Waters that the lesbian women running L.A. F.D. are part of the problem. Los Angeles, Beverly Hills is a different city. It's a different municipality. None of it makes sense. But what they want you to believe is that lesbians and diversity and women and D.I. are the problem here. And you know what?

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That's a U R a.com slash Pacman. The link is in the podcast notes. It's great to welcome to the program today and Apple bomb Pulitzer prize winning historian and writer for the Atlantic. Her latest book is autocracy Inc. The dictators who want to run the world. Uh, it's Who Want to Run the World. It's so great to have you on. I've been really looking forward to this conversation. I'm interested in, as someone who really specializes in this, what do you think is the primary similarity between those who have these sort of autocratic leanings and tendencies from a

motivation standpoint and what makes them sometimes different from each other that maybe would start to kind of give us a framework to think about global autocracy? That's a great question. And it's interesting that you personalized it because usually the question is about the system. What do the systems have in common? Because my book is about very different countries, you know, Venezuela and Iran and Belarus and Russia and China and North Korea. And they have very different religions and so on. They do all have what they have in common is people who run them. Sometimes it's a single leader. Sometimes it's an elite or an oligarchy who believe that they have the right to rule with no opposition and no checks and balances whatsoever. So no free press, no independent judges, in some cases, no legitimate opposition, that they have either

through the power they've accumulated or because they somehow believe they represent some spiritual element of the people, or in some cases, just because they're corrupt, they feel they deserve to rule or would like to rule without anything standing in their way. And that desire for total control is what makes an autocrat. And then when we think about maybe some of the differences among autocrats that do distinguish them materially, are there any or are the similarities more notable than the differences? Oh, no, there are very many differences. I mean, there are religious differences, cultural differences, differences in the way the dictatorship works.

I mean, I think the differences are often more cultural than anything else. You know, Xi Jinping is somebody who doesn't show emotion in public. He's very distant and far away from people, whereas someone like Hugo Chavez, who was the dictator of Venezuela, was on TV all the time and performed for people and sang and was very present. And so different countries seem to require

or expect something different of a leader like that. But as I said, the desire for control is the thing that unifies them. I was watching today earlier a few minutes of the former presidents arriving for the funeral of former President Jimmy Carter. And I saw George W. Bush. And of course, Donald Trump is there. He's sitting with Barack Obama. There was this quote from Bush, George W. Bush, when he was president about dictatorship certainly would be easier for him or something like that. And then, of course, we have the entire discussion of Donald Trump's kind of desire for autocracy. And he's very impressed in many ways with global authoritarians and these sort of strong men leaders.

Can you talk a little bit about, is there something materially different about this Trump era with regard to your studies of autocracy that is different from the casual? Yeah, it'd be much easier if I didn't need congressional approval for things that George W. Bush sort of represented. Like how materially different is the MAGA or Trump ism perspective on this? So I think this is the thing that Trump has in common with the world's autocrats. And this doesn't mean that he will be able to behave like they do. But his instinct is that he should be able to rule or decide without any, again, no checks and balances, no one and nothing standing in his way. You know, press that doesn't agree with him is fake news. You know, judges who don't agree with him are corrupt judges. You know, it's not just that he finds Congress to be bothersome.

You know, he expects Congress to agree with him. And when it doesn't, he, you know, he lashes out. I mean, he has a complete lack of appreciation for why these things exist, why these checks and balances and why these rights and institutions exist, how they've contributed to prosperity and to freedom in our country. And he, you know, he doesn't have a historical understanding of them, but he also doesn't have an instinctive philosophical understanding of them, which actually, I think every previous president, at least those in recent history, did, including the ones who said things like, I wish I didn't have to deal with Congress all the time. Wishing you didn't have to deal with Congress doesn't mean that you would seek ways of trying to change or damage Congress.

But that's something I could imagine Trump trying to do. Once again, it doesn't mean he will succeed. But he has an instinct of somebody who probably outside of politics was able to do whatever he wanted. He ran his own company. He didn't have people standing in his way, who grew up in a life of, you know, very privileged, where ordinary obstacles that other people get used to overcoming were also not put in his way. And he feels he should continue to live like that. I mean, we heard a little bit of this also. If you remember before the election, there were some people who, some of his prior colleagues, John Kelly, his chief of staff, said to a couple of journalists, including a colleague of mine, you know, described this moment when Trump said how much he admired Hitler's generals.

Yeah. And actually what I took away from that wasn't that he knows anything about Hitler's generals who actually tried to kill Hitler at one point, you know, or that he admires the Holocaust or anything like that. What he admires is the idea of having people who work for you who are absolutely loyal and who are not loyal to some constitution, who aren't bound by the rule of law, who aren't bound by any kind of ethics or norms, who just do what you say. And that's what he imagines Hitler's generals to mean. And I think that's what he that's how he would like to rule. serve Trump. Is that a common thread also with historical autocracy, including in the 20th century, that that was the expectation? The expectation is of complete loyalty. And actually, interestingly, it's not just a trait of

full dictators. It's also a trait of some autocratic populist leaders in democracies. You know, one of the signs of a declining democracy is when an elected politician replaces civil servants and others who are subject to laws and rules and ethics standards, when he replaces them with people who are directly loyal to him and not to the system and not to the constitution and not even to the mission of whatever government department they work for. The desire for absolute loyalty is absolutely an autocratic desire. And of course, it's not a desire that you have if you believe in good governance, because the best civil servants, the people who make the best

policy are not people who are doing so in the name of or for the purposes of a particular political leader. They're doing it for the good of the nation, you know, or to keep the water clean or to make the trains run on time. You know, you do those things for the benefit of people and not for the benefit of the leader. One of the real notable shifts during the first Trump term was that a lot of the statements from our kind of historical Western allies, Germany, UK, Canada, et cetera, were seen by Trump and the people around him with growing skepticism. But at the same time, it was after meeting with Putin with total credulity saying he said they didn't do the hack. I don't know.

He said it very strongly. I believe him. Or after the meeting with Kim Jong Un, he made the following promises and I believe him. And of course we all know they're the same promises that North Korean leaders have made for a long time and they don't stick to them, et cetera. Or I don't know. I was impressed with how she said that the drug dealers get a very quick trial.

They're always found guilty and you move very quickly to the sentencing phase. There was this shift into believing the statements of folks that much of the democratic world understands are not reliable folks to listen to and the growing skepticism about the statements from our allies. Now in, in some general way, it seems great to always, you know, if he's the president of the United States and we believe that he's looking out for us, it's great to be skeptical of everybody in some way. I don't know, trust, but verify or whatever the case may be. But what I was very surprised by was the degree to which the supporters of Trump accepted that implicit credibility from folks where previously that would not have been there.

Do you have some thought on how that happened and what it meant and sort of how that might play out in a second Trump term? So again, you know, Trump's instinctive admiration always goes to people who seem to enjoy absolute power and control. And it's about, that's the thing he admires rather than what they do with their power. So, you know, the admiration for the leader of North Korea, which is impoverished, backward, poor society where people live miserable lives and where there's not just no free expression but very little interesting culture. There's no, you know, nothing comes out of North Korea that you would want to read or buy or eat or anything. I mean, there's no, there's nothing produced there that's country. And nevertheless, what he admires is the absolute power of the leader. I mean, and I think there's something similar happening with Putin and Xi. You know, those are people with control power

and they're at some level like Hitler's generals. I mean, those are the people that he admires. I agree with you that the additional layer of, you know, these are people who are also skilled and effective propagandists. I mean, Putin was a KGB officer. He was trained in deception. You know, Xi covers himself in layers of falsehoods and obfuscation, you know, even towards his own people, let alone towards the outside world. The credulity towards them, as opposed to anybody else, is really remarkable. I don't know the degree to which people around Trump really share that or whether they pretend to share it. I suspect most of them don't. But it seems to be a

characteristic of Trump himself that because the most fundamental thing about them is their power, he admires it. I mean, I will say on a related note, one of the things that's been very striking as we're speaking, you know, over the last few days and a few weeks has been the degree to which Trump and Elon Musk, who's now in his shadow or his sidekick, I'm not sure what exactly his function is going to be, the degree to which they have spent time criticizing and attacking American allies. So Canada, Denmark, Mexico, rather than attacking, rather than focusing. The very first comments they've made about foreign policy are not directed at America's enemies. And remember, by America's enemies, it's not just a matter of the war in Ukraine. I mean, Russia and China both conduct extensive cyber operations against the United States every day on a daily basis. They're constantly seeking to undermine our infrastructure, to steal our data, to read our telegrams. grams. Denmark is not doing that. And yet it's Denmark, because of the real or fake or pretend idea that we're going to occupy or buy Greenland, that has suffered the most turmoil and consternation since Donald Trump was elected and not China. And it's a it's a very that makes it this a very peculiar political moment. The last thing I want to ask you about in some general sense,

when we talk about adversaries and some that are aligned with Trump, say, why wouldn't we want to get along with everybody? Why wouldn't we want better relations with Russia or China or whoever? Sure. In some completely generic sense, that does make a lot of sense to me. What's missing from that analysis that makes these sorts of folks, I guess, sort of marks in some way for global autocrats when that's their entry point to the conversation of let's just kind of get along with everybody. That would be the target. That would be the goal. So, of course, the goal is to get along with everybody. And I should say, I have no objection to Trump talking to Putin or

Xi. There's no, you know, diplomacy is important in any circumstances and leaders should speak to each other. What's worrying about Trump and about some of the people, not all of them, some of the people around Trump is a naivete. So these are very cold-blooded people, the world's autocrats. They are, as my book argues, they work together now, mostly opportunistically. It's not an alliance. It's rather they have a set of common interests. They work together using military and economic and propaganda means to undermine the democratic world. That's actually at the heart of all of their foreign policies. Why did Russia invade Ukraine? Partly it was

Russian imperialism and a desire to crush and eliminate a neighbor, but it was also because Russia wanted to show the world that the rules of behavior in Europe, the idea that we have borders, the idea that there's rule of law, that we have the Geneva Conventions, that there's the UN Charter, he wanted to show that none of those rules count anymore, that the idea that there's rule of law, that we have the Geneva Conventions, that there's the UN Charter. He wanted to show that none of those rules count anymore, that the world that was created, led by the United States and by liberal democracies after the Second World War, that that rule is over and that he's going to destroy it. She has an intensive media network of media and influence and money and finance all over the world, which is also designed very specifically to create an alternative to American influence and alternative institutions, alternative sources of funding and trade. You know, these are countries whose leaders, whose foreign ministers and whose chief businessmen

wake up every morning and think about how can we undermine the United States. And to not understand that and to imagine that if you're just nice to them and you talk to them and you have meetings with them, that you can then somehow evade or avoid or push back against those huge structures that have been set up to do this, I think is, actually, it's a little bit beyond naive. I mean, it's, you know, it indicates ill will towards your own country. You know, if you care about your own country, if you care about our prosperity, if you care about America remaining influential, America remaining the most important country in terms of world trade and culture and other things around the world, then you should be working towards building and maintaining your

country's influence. And by ignoring threats or pretending they're not there, then you're doing something very damaging to your own people. The book is Autocracy, Inc., The Dictators Who Want to Run the World. Anne Applebaum, thank you so much for your time today. Really appreciate it. Thank you. Guys in my audience, I know you're tired of the chafing with traditional underwear. Our sponsor sheath makes the most comfortable boxer briefs I've ever worn. If you're sick of the boxers that are too

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to keep you dry. If you were ready to take underwear comfort to a new place, a place you didn't even know it could go head over to sheath underwear.com slash Pacman and get 20% off with the code Pacman. That's S H E A T H underwear.com slash Pacman use code Pacman for 20% off. The link is in the podcast notes. Earlier in the show, we watched a few pieces of Donald Trump's latest, uh, gong show press conference, which was of course a complete and total train wreck. And yesterday we watched pieces of the Mar-a-Lago press conference where he was fantasizing about taking Canada by economic force, taking Greenland and the Panama canal, potentially with military force, renaming the Gulf of Mexico,

the Gulf of America, and of course rambling about water pressure and gas heaters and itchy heat. And it is easy to laugh. I get it. And to a degree it can be tempting to dismiss this as kind of like Trump being Trump. He says a lot of things. It doesn't necessarily reflect what he's going to do. But I do think it's important to talk about this, especially as we're now just 11 days

from the inauguration of Donald Trump and really think about what it means because it's not just bizarre and sometimes sort of ha ha funny. As many of our blue state and foreign viewers have already recognized. This is extraordinarily dangerous for a number of different reasons. Now, of course, there's the decline side. Trump's decline isn't new. And you might hear me saying that. And you might say, David, which, which decline are you talking about exactly? It doesn't have to be cognitive decline or just that. What we're talking about here is a personality decline, a behavioral decline, a temperamental decline, speech fluidity and constitutional decline.

And it's something that we've seen building for years. The incoherent rants, the nonsensical tangents, the inability or unwillingness to answer a question directly, the complete on, uh, inability to stay on message. It's not just self restraint. It's an increasing detachment from reality. And right now with Trump approaching 80 years of age, he's angling for a second term where without having to worry about reelection, without being accountable to voters in any real way,

he can finally be the unrestrained Trump that he probably wanted to be in his first term, but realized at least to a degree that he had to run for reelection. We could stop the analysis there and it would be terrifying enough. But then you have to add to that, that this time around, it is much more overtly going to be an administration and a cabinet controlled by billionaires and by corporate cronies whispering in his ear, which they did before, but it's going to be even more overt and out in the open. and it's really shaping up to be a recipe for complete and total disaster. Think about what Trump's second term would mean in practical terms. The man who stood on stage two days ago and when he was asked about the January 6th rioters being pardoned, he said, we've got to figure out what Hezbollah has to do with the January

6th riots. That guy is going to have the nuclear codes. I recently read and have recommended in my once a month, um, a book recommendation newsletter, which if you're on our, our main newsletter, you get my book recommendations once a month. I recommended the book, uh, by Annie Jacobson outlining what a nuclear war scenario looks like. And my takeaway from the book was, as I read the fictionalized version of it in the real world, starting 11 days from now, the people in this book that are making the decisions would potentially be Trump and Pete

Hegseth. And that's absolutely terrifying. This is not a guy, as you see the press conference two days ago and the one yesterday that I would trust to make split second life or death decisions, especially in an environment where ego and self aggrandizement are his primary values and concerns. And then you zoom out even further and you say, okay, forget about the nuclear codes for a second, but just global diplomacy. Forget it. Forget it. Imagine Trump again at a high stakes summit with world leaders ranting about renaming the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of America or bodies of water, uh, uh, and, and their relevance to water that slowly drips out of our showers. And why are we putting water in the Pacific when we're not getting the shower pressure that we need in Los Angeles and, and sort of waxing

poetic about seizing foreign territory. It's absurd. There's an element of comedy, which often is a sort of protective measure. We laugh to avoid crying, but it's horrifying. It's for horrifying because think back to the G seven where Trump came out with Putin and said, I don't know, I trust them. He told me they didn't hack and he denied it very strongly. And yeah, I believe Putin over all of our intelligence agencies. That was before. That was what, seven years ago now. This is where the rubber will meet the road with real decisions that have to be made that

impacts peace, stability, uh, and just people's ability to live without who knows what hanging over their heads. And then we also have to talk about the military. Put aside the nuclear codes for a moment. Put aside diplomacy for a moment. Do we really want someone who floated the idea of economic force to annex Canada or military force to take the Panama canal and or Greenland? Do we want that person in charge of the armed forces or overseeing economic policy when the only people he listens to

are billionaires looking for tax breaks and more deregulation? These are people who see Trump not as a leader, right? The billionaires who want Trump's ear, they don't see him as a leader. They see him as a tool to push their agenda, no matter the cost to working Americans. And then finally, crisis management. We saw how Trump handled COVID-19. We saw the denial and the deflection

and the refusal to listen to experts. We're seeing inklings of it as he defers to RFK experts. We're seeing inklings of it as he defers to RFK Jr. rather than doctors and medical researchers on issues of individual health. Imagine him dealing with another pandemic, whether it's bird flu or, you know, lack of vaccination induced measles or whatever it is. He's not going to deal with that properly. Imagine the natural disaster. Imagine a financial crisis this time with no real accountability other than maybe he wants to set up his son

to be VP in 2028. He's not going to listen to advisors that actually have expertise. He's not going to be seeking real solutions based in fact, it'll be, let me make this up as I go along, just like I always do, but with extraordinarily more disregard for expertise. So the reality that we land on is the instability, the decline of whatever kind you want to focus in on the unchecked ego. It makes him uniquely unfit for the presidency. It's not about partisan politics or personal dislike. I'll be honest. I think in a, to a great degree, Trump would probably be pretty entertaining to hang out with, right?

To a degree. I understand why the people, some of whom always said, I don't like this guy, um, are now saying, well, you know, the Mar-a-Lago stuff and he's a nice guy and the plane and Trump force one on a personal level, it would probably be entertaining to hang out with Trump. But do you want someone ranting about water pressure and gas heaters and all of this other stuff meeting with world leaders or deciding the fate of the economy? It's not funny at the end of the day.

It's a warning sign that a lot of Trumpists are ignoring. Trump has told us who he is. He has told us loudly, clearly, and without apology, the stakes couldn't be higher. And as many of you know, I do not agree with Jenk Uger's assessment on the show yesterday that this is a new MAGA, whether it's a new MAGA or not on some minimal level, they are not influencing Trump. And Trump is as unhinged as ever. I w I now want to talk about more specifically with the natural disaster thing, Trump's reaction to the fires. We saw some clips from yesterday of Trump being asked about the fires. And one of the things he did was completely make up out of thin air. Beverly Hills is in trouble. Beverly Hills is being destroyed. Beverly Hills is being

decimated. Of course, that's not true. But Trump's reaction with this natural disaster was also a combination of all of his worst instincts. It included attacking Governor Gavin Newsom with insults, attacking Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, attacking President Biden, attacking the Green New Deal, which is not even law yet and attacking Los Angeles in general. He put out a couple of troth on Troth Central yesterday. And this is a reminder. We don't have to wonder, you know, the Puerto Rico hurricane that he dealt with as president and slow getting aid.

And then he shows up and he shoots paper towels like like basketball free throws. How might he handle a natural disaster this time? Well, we can see it. Here is Trump on truth. Quote, Governor Gavin Newsom refused to sign the water restoration declaration put before him that would have allowed millions of gallons of water from excess rain and snow melt from the north to flow daily into many parts of California, including the areas that are currently burning in a virtually apocalyptic way. He wanted to protect an essentially worthless fish called the smelt by giving it less water. It didn't work, but didn't care about the people of California. Now the ultimate price is being paid. I will demand that this incompetent governor allow beautiful, clean, fresh water to flow into California. He is the blame for this on top of it all. No water for fire hydrants, not firefighting planes, a true disaster. Okay. So

Gavin knew scum to blame for everything. Trump then engaging caps lock, no water in the fire hydrants, no money in FEMA. This is what Joe Biden is leaving me. Thanks, Joe. Attacking Joe Biden. Then the fires in Los Angeles may go down in dollar amount as the worst in the history of our country. In many circles, they're doubting whether insurance companies will even have enough money to pay for this catastrophe. Let this serve and be emblematic of the gross incompetence and mismanagement of the Biden new scum duo. January 20th cannot come fast enough. Again, Trump showing where his real loyalties are. The insurance companies. Oh, think of the insurance companies. Trump continuing one of the best and most beautiful parts of the United States of America is burning down to the

ground. It's ashes and Gavin new scum should resign. This is all his fault. And then finally, fire is spreading rapidly for three days, zero containment. Nobody has ever seen such failed numbers before gross incompetence by Gavin new scum Karen Bass. And Biden's FEMA has no money all wasted on the green new scam. L.A. is a total wipeout. Of course, the Green New Deal is not law. Some minor elements of a Green New Deal framework, part of some of Biden's infrastructure bill. But there is no Green New Deal that is lost law. And there is no possible way to say that the nonexistent Green New Deal is the reason why there are fires in California that are raging out of control. We don't have to wait till January 20th or 21st. We don't have to wait until the next actual natural disaster when Trump is president.

This is a reminder of how Trump will deal with natural disasters and it is absolutely humiliating on the bonus show today. Will the sentencing happen tomorrow? Trump is now asking the Supreme Court to delay it. We will also talk about the facts of the Los Angeles fires and what is taking place. Where are they? What is the death toll? We will discuss it. And finally, if we were to integrate Canada into the United States, what would the impact be on American politics and the American economy, even though it's not going to happen,

obviously. There have been a couple interesting articles kind of analyzing what that would be like, and I'm going to discuss that with you on the bonus show. Sign up and get instant access at joinpacman.com. I will see you on the bonus show, and I will be back with a new show tomorrow.