The David Pakman Show - 2/13/24: Biden crimes collapse again, we go to a Trump rally

Episode Date: February 13, 2024

-- On the Show: -- Steven Kenneth "Destiny" Bonnell II, Cuban-American political streamer, debater, and commentator, joins David to discuss his recent direct confrontations of right wing extremists, and his latest in-person political activism -- The White House trolls MAGA over the Super Bowl win for the "Swifties" -- After being humiliated in person by Vladimir Putin, Tucker Carlson says that Moscow is a better city than any city in the United States -- David Pakman Show correspondent Luke Beasley attends the Donald Trump rally in Conway, South Carolina, and it quickly gets both scary and dangerous -- Yet another attempt at explaining the "crimes" of President Joe Biden on Fox News -- Failed former President Donald Trump forgets who is president yet again, this time at a rally in Conway, South Carolina -- Despite Donald Trump's constant brain failures, corporate media are continuing to ignore many of them -- Facebook and Instagram officially shadowban The David Pakman Show content, and all political content, confirming what we all suspected -- Voicemail caller says Trump's kryptonite is powerful women -- On the Bonus Show: House Republicans request transcripts of Biden interview with Robert Hurt, Republican Senator defending Putin sparks backlash, RFK Jr apologizes to his family for Super Bowl ad invoking JFK, much more... 🌱 Ounce of Hope: Get a THC Seltzer for just $5 at https://ounceofhope.com 💻 Stay protected! Try our sponsor Aura FREE for 2 weeks at https://aura.com/pakman 🧠 Mindbloom: Use code PAKMAN for $100 off at https://mindbloom.com/pakman 🪒 Henson Shaving: Use code PAKMAN for FREE blades at https://hensonshaving.com/pakman 🖥️ UPLIFT Desk: Get 5% OFF with code PAKMAN5 at https://upliftdesk.com/pakman 💻 Get Private Internet Access for 83% OFF + 4 months free at https://www.piavpn.com/David -- Become a Supporter: http://www.davidpakman.com/membership -- Subscribe on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/thedavidpakmanshow -- Subscribe to Pakman Live: https://www.youtube.com/pakmanlive -- Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/davidpakmanshow -- Like us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/davidpakmanshow -- Leave us a message at The David Pakman Show Voicemail Line (219)-2DAVIDP

The Biden White House continues its sort of subtle trolling of the MAGA right and conspiracy theorists obsessed with Taylor Swift and the Kansas City Chiefs as the new sociopolitical flashpoint. They've moved on, I guess, at least for now from bathroom litter boxes for kids. And they've moved on to how there is a grand conspiracy between Biden and Swift and Travis Kelsey to promote, quote, quote, promote vaccines, endorse Biden all to the detriment, I guess, of Donald Trump in November of twenty twenty four. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre yesterday during a press briefing continuing this. And

just as a reminder for context, in the immediate aftermath of the Kansas City Chiefs winning on Sunday, the White House and Joe Biden's Twitter account X account put out the dark Brandon Biden laser eyes image, saying something along the lines of just the way we drew it up, suggesting and playing into this idea that somehow the Biden administration is controlling who wins NFL games for their political benefit or whatever crazy stuff they're coming up with. Here is Kareem Jean-Pierre congratulating not only the Kansas City chief, but but also the supporters of Taylor Swift. Hope everyone got some rest after

last night's Super Bowl. The president was able to catch some of the game. And on his behalf, I want to extend a big congratulations to the Kansas City chiefs on their third Super Bowl win in just five season. And also congratulations to all the Swifties out there. The president looks forward to welcoming them back once again to the White House. And the first and many questions related to this were about Taylor Swift here as a reporter asking, well, when they are invited back to the White House, Will Taylor Swift also be invited? Folks, this is where we are in this arc. You started the briefing by wishing congratulations to the Kansas City chiefs as well as to all the Swifties out there. I'm wondering when the chiefs are invited

to the White House. Does the White House intend to also invite Taylor Swift? That's going to be up to the to the chiefs and obviously their decision to figure out who's going to come with them when they come. And as you know, it's a White House tradition. I can't I can't speak to attendance and who will be here. And as you can see, the White House press corps just laser focused on substantive questions about policy, about educating America's youth and solving the foremost problems of our day. Listen, I'm basically ready to move on from this entire Taylor Swift thing,

except that she seems to have broken the brains of the MAGA right. They are fixated on her. They are furious that she's registering people to vote. And if they really feel as though they have the cultural cache with the likes of now, let me be clear. I misspoke two weeks ago and said Chris Rock. Chris Rock is not a Trump supporter. I misspoke. I had a cognitive glitch. I met Kid Rock. They can go up against Taylor Swift with the likes of Kid Rock, Ted Nugent, Nugent. What's the right pronunciation? And whoever else they have. I don't even know who it is at this point, but certainly it's something that, oh, John Voight. They have John Voight as well. Let's move on. She's registering people to vote. If we actually wanted to do what was best for the country, we would be all cheering

this rather than only those of us on the left. More people voting is a good thing. More young people voting is a good thing. This is what we should be encouraging. Tucker Carlson in a bizarre moment coming back from the Putin humiliation during his two hour interview with Putin in Russia. Whoa, that clip started a little early going to Dubai for the World Government Summit and kissing the ring, seemingly saying Moscow, Moscow, depending on your preference, is a better and nicer city than any city in the United

States of America. Wow. Putin really is now in full control of Tucker Carlson. Putin humiliates Tucker, makes him sit through an hour history lesson, ridicules him for not having a serious program for having applied to the CIA. And what does Tucker do? He says that Moscow is better than any American city. You've got to see this. What was radicalizing, very shocking and very disturbing for me was the city of Moscow, where I'd never been the biggest city in Europe, 13 million people. And it is so much nicer than

any city in my country. I had no idea. My father spent a lot of time there in the 80s when he worked for the U.S. government and barely had electricity. And now it is so much cleaner and safer and prettier aesthetically. It's architecture. It's food. It's service. How did that happen? How did that happen? And at a certain point, I don't think the average person cares as much about abstractions as about the concrete reality of his life. And if you can't use your subway, for example, as many people are afraid to in New York City because it's too dangerous, you have to sort of wonder, like, isn't that the ultimate measure of leadership? And that's true, by the way, it's radicalizing for an American to go to Moscow. I didn't know that. I've learned it this week. To Singapore, to Tokyo, to Dubai and Abu Dhabi, because these cities, no matter how we're told they're run and on what principles they're run, are wonderful places to live.

They don't have rampant inflation. We're not going to get raped. And so what is that? Now there's a lot here. I will be the first to tell you that there are fantastic cities all over the world. The American centric view that the vast majority of the non U.S. world is relegated to some dark ages where there's barely plumbing and electricity and you can't get good medical care that that should be debunked. Obviously, completely untrue world class cities all over the world.

It is also true that Tokyo and Singapore and Moscow and all of these places have great things, but it's laughable the degree to which Tucker, I don't know if knowingly or as a useful idiot plays into the Putin narrative, which is, Hey, even Americans come here and say, Moscow is better than any city that they've got. Now, Moscow is a great city. It is not untrue that it has fantastic things. And also the average income in Russia is 14000 US dollars. And the standard of living is much lower than in the United States. And the idea that, hey, you know, we've got democracy here in the United States and our suck. And Russia has this authoritarian strongman. And it's just so great. It's a better city than than than anywhere in the US. And also when Tucker

mentions the nicest city in Europe or whatever, that's also playing into a political controversy. And what I mean by that is certainly Moscow is geographically in Europe, and I would argue it is politically in Europe. But this is also part of Putin's desire to see Russian culture and Moscow as a cosmopolitan center, as equivalent to London or Paris or whatever. And we can debate whether it is or it is not. I think it falls a little bit short of that. But Tucker just hand feeds Putin everything that he wants. So I am not here to allege that Tucker is a Russian puppet or anything along those lines. It's just been fascinating to watch that for a while now, since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Tucker has played very coy with the entire thing and kind of ignoring the basics that Russia has illegally invaded Ukraine and is trying to

steal it. That's a basic element of this that Tucker isn't super interested in reminding you about. Goes to Moscow, interviews Putin for two hours. Putin plays him like a yo-yo. Tucker comes away saying it was a fascinating interview when the reality is it was barely even a journalistic endeavor. I would argue it wasn't even a journalistic endeavor. And then he leaves and says Moscow is the best city I've seen. It's so much better than anything that we have in the United States. He's certainly doing all the things that if you were Putin and you said, who can we get from the United States media elite to just do exactly what we would want them to do? Well, it seems like they got Tucker and Tucker is

doing all of those things. So I don't know if it's all beyond Tucker to even realize the role he's being put in. I don't really know what to make of it. And far be it for me to say that Tucker is in the pocket of Putin. I don't think that it's sort of like the RT thing. The people that were hired by RT were hired because they already knew the things that they were going to say. The entire selection of Tucker now we see beyond any doubt whatsoever was very strategic and specific. And Tucker's doing everything they want him to do. Let me know your thoughts. Let me know in a comment. Let me know in an email info at David Pakman dot com. We'll take a very quick break and be right back. and psychoactive THC products to your door anywhere in the US.

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Luke Beasley, who, by the way, is getting really good at this, went to the Donald Trump rally in Conway, South Carolina over the weekend. This may be some of Luke's best stuff. It gets dangerous during these interviews. He spoke to Trump supporters. We are going to go through these one by one. There's just a handful of clips. Really prepare yourself to be terrified about what may be in America's future. Here's the first interviewee, Luke, speaking to a woman at the Trump rally in South Carolina. Would you rather four years of dictator Trump or four years of democratically elected Joe Biden? Dictator Trump. There it is. Dictator Trump. These people are dangerous. These people are dangerous. They need to be treated as such. And that's a that's a lie. You're a liar. It's the first day he said

I'll be a dictator for one day to put in the border. And one other thing, you're a drill baby drill part. You're part of you're part of the media, a baby media turkey. He's a baby media turkey. You are right there. Wow. That was explosive training and training. Good job. Apply to CNN, MSNBC.

You're great. There was a time where we would have gone to such a rally and found policy disagreements, but we wouldn't have found people who would say, I'd rather a dictator over a Democrat. There was a time where that was not the nature of the disagreement. The woman then takes Luke's microphone and I guess interviews him. Speaker 1 Oh, yes. This will be fun. All right. I'm ready. Hi there. Hello. What's one bad thing about Biden? Do you know? The question is, what's a bad thing about Biden? Now we're going to get into policy. The inflation is a crook. He is He is the guy who's been indicted four times. Come on.

Not convicted. OK, he's a crook. He stole money from country. He stole this left and right and made business deals to get. OK, he said, understand that this is mush mouth nonsense. These are all confused word salads of stuff you hear on Fox News. Trump received millions from foreign governments while he was president. He doesn't. He doesn't take. It's not true. He's a LGTBQ. LGTBQ. I love LGTBQ people. Do you believe in the transgender library story hours for children?

I think they're called drag queen story hours. Right. Which is different than transgender. And they dress up demonically. So would you say you're motivated to protect the kids? Absolutely. And so are you concerned with the leading cause of death for children being firearms and Trump doesn't want to do anything about that? The leading cause of death for children is abortion.

Do your homework. If we only talk about people who have been born, the leading cause of death for children is firearms. And this guy just spoke yesterday at the NRA convention. We could do common sense gun reforms that could protect lives, save those beautiful children you're talking about. But instead, we're all focused on being distracted by drag queen story. Are we need to do away with the false notion that if we just sit these folks down, we can talk them out of their delusions?

Some of them we can. But at scale, that's not how we're going to win. We need to win by going around these people and making them politically irrelevant. Might not be nice. Oh, but they deserve they they get to vote. I'm not saying you don't let them vote. I'm saying we make their vote irrelevant by turning out in such large numbers. Here's another guy that Luke interviewed shows him Trump's post to Truth Social about suspending the Constitution, the guy insists that it's fake. Someone is making it look like that's Trump posting it.

But Trump would never post that. Luke shows it to him. This is, again, evidence that you show them the proof. They just don't accept that they say it's fake. And would you support somebody if they called for the termination of the Constitution? No. No. Can I show you something? Because I'm shocked that so many people don't know about this. On True Social, this is from Trump's True Social, because of his belief that the election was stolen, he said a massive fraud of this type magnitude allows for the termination

of all rules, regulations, and articles. I don't believe that. You don't believe that? I don't believe that right now. Even though he sent it out on true social. Speaker 4 That's not true. Speaker 1 Still up on his account. Speaker 4 No, that's not true that somebody made a fake thing. Okay.

Speaker 1 Somebody made a fake thing. That's Trump's truth social account. Speaker 4 Truth central. Speaker 1 It's not even disputed. It's been defended by some MAGA people. Some people see that and they go, well, listen, when the left goes so crazy, you've got to potentially suspend the Constitution. But then you have people like that guy who go, it's not really Trump. The evidence doesn't sway them.

That is the proof of what we've been saying. They are impervious to evidence. Here's another guy Luke interviews in some sort of biker group vest with a Trump hat. It's it's depressing, guys. Was not an insurrection. What was it? It was an overthrow of the government. It wasn't an insurrection. It was an overthrow of the government. Now, I dare you. To try to parse the syntax in the next 45 seconds of video, I dare you to figure out what this guy is saying. I know English is my second language, so maybe that's why I can't do it. But maybe you can help me. What is this guy talking about, in my opinion, by Trump supporters? Absolutely not.

Who was overthrowing the government? Well, they were in there trying to make a of a fake. I don't know. I try to think of the word. The election was they were trying to make it certifying it. Yeah. OK. And he didn't win.

They were trying to falsify it, get it all through before anybody did anything. My opinion. So then who who stormed the Capitol? Huh? Stormed the Capitol? Well, there are some CIA agents in there, from what I understand. So then the CIA agents were storming the Capitol to stop the certification of Biden's election? No. To make it look like Biden's people did it. Trump's people did it. Yeah. That is quite a yarn that that guy is spinning. He doesn't even understand the conspiracy theories. When I appeared on The Jesse Lee Peterson Show a few years ago, it was evident that Jesse didn't understand his own conspiracy theories.

This is another example of that. Here's another interview and each one scarier and more dangerous than the last. And by the way, really great job by Luke here. Everything that the media has said over the years has been proven wrong. Every time somebody starts a legal case against Donald Trump, eventually they lose. Donald Trump. Oh, sir, sir. Tell me something. Eighty three point three million dollars he's going to have to pay to Eugene Carroll. Also, no, you wait a minute. Listen, so why? Why are you supporting a civilly liable rapist?

By the way, congratulations to Luke for adopting civilly liable rapist. I don't claim to have come up with it and I'm not saying he got it from me, but I love that he is now using that term with Trump supporters. Because you're a moron for even saying that you truly are. That's quite literally the facts that a judge said a jury found him liable for sexual abuse. A judge said he is guilty and we're going to go ahead and move to the. It's going to be overturned. Sir.

Trust me. Save this. Sir. When it's overturned, you all look back and go, I should have been more aware. I shouldn't have believed the bulls**t narrative. All right. Have a good one. You know, all the pedophiles up at D.C., they all need to go to Gitmo.

The guy's back, by the way. Does Trump's close relationship with Epstein bother you at all? Trump and Epstein, here's the deal. Trump has had his picture taken with everybody. The only relationship they had was Trump got his picture taken with Epstein. Trump has been photobombed. He said, oh, Epstein likes him young. Well, yeah, that's, you know, the whole thing.

He's a great friend of mine. No, he's not. No. The whole COVID thing was a scam. It's funny when they say it's a scam, like who scammed who? And Luke does a good job of getting this guy on the record on this. And it goes nowhere. Ivermectin most, by the way, Ivermectin. I started taking Ivermectin immediately. I hope not.

Yeah, absolutely. It was proven to be not effective for COVID. It's the dumbest thing that I ever heard. Ever, what? Dumbest thing I ever heard. Well, we gotta focus in on this then, if it's the dumbest. So what was COVID then? It was fake. COVID was a bioweapon. They actually used HIV and they stitched it into a corona. Stitched it like cross stitching.

Like what's the goal there? Reason for the HIV? Well, the whole thing was to lock down the country. To? For the leftards to try to take over the country. Leftards? Yes, the left. So why can't you guys just accept that covid was fake, but a real bioweapon stitched from HIV?

Crocheted even, you could say, in order for the leftards to take over the country to do what we don't know. I don't know. I don't know why they would in order to achieve what. All right. Here's the last one. And it's so depressing that we're going to have to move on from this because we need to save this country that's getting thrown away. What is making it thrown away? Democrats doing what? Everything they don't. Inflation Reduction Act, lowering prescription

drug costs. Take care. Oh, nah, take care. The guy just bailing out when he realized he wasn't going to steamroll Luke. So simultaneously, a fantastic job by Luke Beasley. And you can find his channel at David Pakman dot com slash Luke and the worst of the worst of the worst of America. And I want to be super tactical with this stuff. When I see this, I say to myself, how do we win elections despite these people? And the way is not to spend hours trying to convince them. Many of these folks are delusional in the clinical sense. The way to do it is maybe by showing this stuff to people who say, I might stay home.

You say, really, if you stay home, this guy, right, the pick whichever one of those people you like, this guy's vote. He now has more of an influence over how the country is run than you do. You feel good about that? I certainly would not. And so when I see these videos, I get extremely motivated to vote. Scary stuff. These people are dangerous.

Very nice job by Luke. I love a good conspiracy that evaporates in thin air. Despite herself, Fox News host Maria Bartiromo continues to just make evident that they don't have any evidence that Joe Biden committed any crimes. Here is yet another example of this. She interviewed she being Maria Bartiromo interviewed on Fox News yesterday, Republican Congresswoman Lisa McClain. Once again, Maria asking the logical questions about the Biden crimes. If Biden was peddling influence

and accepting money in exchange for policy, what policy changes did Joe Biden make as a result of getting paid? And Lisa McClain says, well, we don't quite have any examples here, here. And can you identify policy changes that Joe Biden made as a result of taking in money? Nope. Well, I expect to hear the truth. Number one, whatever that may be, I hope they come in and tell the truth. I do think Tony Bobulinski has some additional evidence that he's holding on to. Just remember, Tony Bobulinski was the so-called explosive blockbuster whistle blower who had nothing. And so now they're assuming he must have really explosive stuff he hasn't told us yet. What I am concerned about and the dots that I'd like to see connected is President Biden is soft on American energy, right? He is so remember that domestic oil production was higher than ever under Joe Biden.

And he's soft on American energy, on American energy. But he's very positive on China's energy. He talks about the clean China's. OK, they have no evidence. Question was, what are the policy changes? And she goes, well, I'd like to see the following dots connected. Maybe the following dots aren't connect connectable because you've made it up. Here's one more clip of Lisa McClain unable to actually put forward any factual basis

for this. My hope mine and this is my hope personally is that we find enough evidence for the members of Congress to actually impeach this president. Speaker 1 Very. Speaker 2 Remember, this is her hope. It's not what she believes the evidence will show. She just hopes we can uncover and show the American people that that there was influencing and we can continue to deliver truth and transparency to the American people that that there was influencing and we can continue to deliver

truth and transparency to the American people. Well, she's hoping that that's what they find because she's politically determined to do it. But that doesn't mean that that's what they're going to find. And every day that passes without a shred of evidence, I am more convinced that the evidence probably doesn't exist. Joe Biden is not perfect. He is not an Uber progressive, but he has run an extraordinary White House when it comes

to actually crossing things off in terms of achievements. He has certainly outdone my expectations and there continues to be no evidence that in his multi decade political career he was in it for himself. Trump, on the other hand, very clearly is and was in it for himself. So Lisa McClain can keep looking. Maria Bartiromo can keep asking. And as of yet they have come up with zero evidence. If you're struggling with anxiety or depression, you're certainly not alone. Millions of Americans are searching for ways to just feel better. Many feel they've exhausted every option. They don't know where to turn. If that sounds like you, then guided ketamine therapy from Mindbloom could be a game changer. Our sponsor Mindbloom can help you potentially feel

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days. You've even done done some debates that they were pitched to me as you and destiny. And I just don't want to do it. I don't want to do the prep. I don't want to do the travel. You're going and you're killing. And also, I continue to wonder, are we changing minds with debates? Is this even the goal? Is it actually about who's right versus who's most articulate?

So give me your sense of like, what's the point of doing a lot of these major debates? Ben Shapiro, Glenn Greenwald, Cenk Uygur, et cetera. What's your goal going in? I mean, my goal. Well, let me back up for a second. One thing I'd like people to be aware of is there's a lot of things that can be true simultaneously, but people seem to think that things are mutually exclusive. So somebody will say something like a debate doesn't prove who's right. It just proves who argues better. Generally, that is kind of true. However, that doesn't mean that, well, I'd also say like debates can also be productive or debates can change minds. You know, it might be that some person is more rhetorically gifted, but they don't

have the facts on their side and they managed to win a debate, but that person could also be changing minds. Um, there's like a whole bunch of things that go on when it comes to putting together a debate that just because some people debate in bad faith, or just because some people are more, uh, is it silver tongue, sharp tongue or whatever, doesn't mean that like all debate therefore has to be worthless or horrible. So keeping that in mind, I think if you want to be a debater, and then this goes into kind of what I try to do in debates, you have to, hopefully, I would hope you have the facts on your side. You have a good foundation, a good conceptual understanding of

what you're talking about. And you combine that with some amount of rhetorical flourish, and you're able to be persuasive to an audience that's listening to you, or at least listening to that particular debate. So my goal going in is usually I hope I have the facts on my side. I want to be the most factually correct I can be. I want to serve whatever purpose I'm trying to, whatever I'm trying to further depending on where I'm at. So like if I'm on a far left leaning platform, it might be to push them a little bit to the right. If I'm on a far right leaning platform, it's rather push them a lot to the left. Yeah, I just want to make sure I'm a good representation for the ideas that I'm holding at any point in time. Who do you think at this

point of the folks that you've kind of participated in debates with over the last six, 12 months that you've been really doing this aggressively? Did you find anybody that you were surprised was a particularly good faith participant that you would not necessarily have assumed to be the case? Doesn't mean they were right or they changed your mind, but that you went in thinking this is somebody who's probably a bad faith participant in this conversation and they changed your mind through the conversation. Changed my mind and that I you came away with a much positive, much more positive impression of them than you went in.

OK, yeah, there's actually a guy that I debated yesterday called Mark Lamont Hill, and I've done a lot of Palestine, Israel debates now, and I've had a pretty bad impression of honestly almost everybody that debates this topic on the left or the right. And then this guy was going to come in as a pro-Palestinian debater, and those debates have tended to go really, really poorly. But he was actually an incredibly thoughtful debater. I really appreciated it. He responded to everything that I said thoughtfully, not with just headlines or tweets. He seemed to have a pretty comprehensive understanding conceptually of everything that had happened in the history of Israel-Palestine.

It wasn't just, again, just headlines or little nuggets of information. And even though we disagree, I think, pretty broadly on the issue, I really appreciated his ability to engage in that conversation with me. You do something which a lot of streamers and content creators don't do, which is you'll often do your prep for these debates on your stream, which is, depending on your perspective, either extraordinarily mind numbingly boring or that's not my impression. I actually find it pretty interesting to see what the process is by which you kind of build up your understanding of what is likely to come up in a debate, your historical understanding, et cetera. Give me the basic framework for you. You're going into a new issue.

You may have some passing knowledge of you've never studied it formally. What are the component parts to how you would prepare for a debate? I would say that the rough outline, this is probably going to be pretty unique to me since I'm a streamer, so I've got a lot of resources. I think usually the rough outline will be maybe we have topic X. Maybe it's a pretty broad topic. I'll just read down the Wikipedia on topic X. If there's a link or like a term that I don't know, I might click the link and read that article as well. But that'll be the first step is to read down topic X on the wiki. That'll give me kind of like a skeleton structure, an outline of it as I'm reading it.

This is a bit more intuitive, but if I'm reading it, this is a bit more intuitive, but if I'm reading it and I read something that seems like a little bit extreme or a little bit like, is that actually true? I might Google that particular thing to see if there are news articles that are relevant to it or to see if I can find an original source relating to it. It's really good sometimes to hunt down the annotations on Wikipedia, because sometimes the underlying material doesn't always satisfy or justify the sentence that sourced it. So yeah, I would say I'd start with the Wikipedia bare bones. I'll Google off the Wikipedia for different articles. Depending on how much depth I want to go in, I might pick up a book and either do passages or for Israel-Palestine, it's been reading an entire book. But it's going to depend on the type of topic

and what type of, like the subject matter for that particular topic. So for instance, I remember at one point in time when I was debating like race realism and IQ, part of my prep for that, there was like an 11 hour lecture series by I think Robert Sapolsky on evolutionary biology. So we watched that on stream and like took notes and kind of went over it. But I don't know if I would take like an 11

hour lecture if I was debating like is Hamas using human shields or is the IDF, you know, committing genocide? I don't know if there'd be like an 11 hour lecture series for that. There'd probably be a lot more news articles. There'd be a lot more reading of websites about international law. And there might be certain figures on either Twitter or certain writers for certain outlets that I know are renowned for their international law takes that I might read their stuff instead. Does the format of the debate that you're going to be in change the way that you would prepare for it? Yeah, absolutely. I prefer long form stuff. I hate 10, 20 minute like radio interviews where basically we both go and we give like our one and two sentences about a topic and then we move on to the next thing. I hate that. I want to be able to critically engage with what somebody's saying. Meaning if somebody says something, I want to present a level one, a level two, a level three challenge. Like, hey, you said this. What about that? Oh, well, I think this. Okay, well, what about this? Right. I want to be able to do that back and forth. That's really important to me. So I prefer longer form debates. That being said, even in a longer form debate, there are different types of people that I'm going to be debating that I have to be prepared to debate in different ways.

So for example, over the past couple of months, I've talked to, on both ends of the spectrum, I've got Ben Shapiro and I've got Alex Jones. And if I'm doing an Alex Jones conversation, I need to be ready to meme. I need to be in a really good mood. I need to be ready to throw a bunch of jokes. I have to look like I'm having a good and fun time because if you look like you're salty and upset and angry, it plays poorly with the audience. If you play along with a person, it makes you more warm and receptive. That would be like rhetorical strategies I'd keep in mind for Alex Jones. For Ben Shapiro, Ben Shapiro is way more respectful. I know we're not going to do crazy back and forth like that.

And I know he's not going to say completely outlandish stuff. So I need to be a bit more informed, uh, about what his arguments in particular are. And I need to make sure that I'm carrying myself in a respectful way for that conversation. So I might watch actual Ben where I've did. I watched actual Ben Shapiro videos that I could have his arguments already in mind. Um, for that conversation, I don't need to watch Alex Jones videos to prepare myself rhetorically for that conversation. The being in a good mood thing is interesting because one of the things I've noticed in checking out some of the recent debates you've done is there was a time probably 18 to 24 months ago where and I say this with total respect.

And, you know, you and I are friends. A lot of the conversations you were having, you didn't really seem like you wanted to be having. You seem kind of miserable to be there to some degree. And to some people, they would write to me and'd say, this is coming off as condescending. I've noticed that you seem to be in a sort of better mood for lack of a simpler way of saying it in the recent debates. Is that something that you have almost like calculated and determined is better for the

way that you come off? Yeah, I think when you say things like calculated, something sound it sounds a little manipulative. No, and I don't mean it that way. You're aware of the way it comes off. No. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm very aware of the way that it comes off. Yeah. I would say that around from like 2016 to 2018. Did you ever have you? Oh, God. Have you heard about Gamergate? Well, yeah. I mean, I was I started covering it without even knowing what I was stepping into. And then, you know, yes, I've heard of Gamergate. Yeah.

But anyway, yeah, around the Gamergate era, 2016, 2018, maybe even a year, a year and a half afterwards, the way that you projected strength and persuasion online, I blame Ben Shapiro to some extent for this because he always did that. Facts are feelings. Facts are feelings. The way you presented strength was by being a condescending dickwad, right? You're screaming at the person, you're an idiot. You don't know anything about this topic. You're so stupid. Like that was just the way the debate went. And your goal was to kind of humiliate the other

person, make them look bad and stupid because there's a transference that occurs when you are watching your favorite content creator get destroyed by another guy. You're like, ooh, I feel kind of dumb. I feel kind of stupid. I don't know. And that was kind of the go-to way to persuade audiences back then. Yep. I would say over the past four or five years, I've made a gradual transition into being a bit more empathetic or compassionate to where it's like, listen, I understand, you know, your particular perspective, let's talk. That's also going to depend on the exact issues that we're debating too. But I think in general, yeah, over the past half decade, I've tried to do the more empathetic or compassionate approach because I think that especially as the left broadly, probably

progressives more specifically have gotten control of kind of the culture being incredibly condescending and patronizing doesn't make as much sense anymore because I think we're in the power position when it comes to moderation and regulation on all these platforms. So better to be compassionate to bring people over, I would say. So you mentioned progressives in the left. I want to think of the right way to kind of enter this. I consider myself someone unquestionably on the left in watching your content. It is abundantly clear that you are also someone who is overall on the left.

When I see somebody like Sam Harris, who I interviewed recently, he is clearly on the left. And yet you me, Sam Harris, others will have factions of the left that either through purity tests or whatever else the case may be, personality dislikes, et cetera, will say we are actually on the left because of ABCD, whatever. Generally speaking, what's your sense of the level of infighting and whether the left is currently fractured in a way that is going to be damaging in terms of winning elections? Is this a real issue or is the left basically together in your mind? So I think it's important to understand the reason why purity tests happen are because when people that purportedly have the same values as you have far different applied

positions, that feels really bad. If I'm in a room with 100 conservatives, and all of them say we should have no minimum wage, and I might be like a federal minimum wage 1250 an hour or something like, okay, I don't I don't care. You guys don't want minimum wage. Like I don't expect us to agree on that fine. But if I'm standing next to somebody else, or I'm in a room full of progressives or leftists or Democrats, and all of them are like, we think, I think we need a $25 an hour minimum wage. I'm like, okay, that sounds really high federally. And now they accuse me of hating the minimum wage or hating poor people. Well, hold on. We align on this value. And you're not just attacking my applied position because people

never attack applied positions. You're attacking my fundamental position. You're saying that we don't share values. If a conservative says that we don't share values, I don't care. It's almost funny. You almost laugh it off like, oh, you just want to destroy big business or you just want to help all the immigrants and blow. It's like, OK, yeah. But when somebody says, oh, well, you hate poor people, you hate the homeless, you hate minorities. Oh, hold on. So I think that I think broadly speaking or on the macro level, it's got like the bigotry of small differences, I think. At least this is how I've come to understand it. There's an interesting phenomenon where I think the far left, I think, is really problematic and the far right is really problematic.

But the far left in terms of governance is like two people in Congress at this point. I don't even know why we consider AOC like the far left, like troublesome anymore. The problem with the far right. I think the far left thinks she's sold out at this point. Yeah. The far right couldn't hold the majority speakership in the House of Representatives. This has never happened in U.S. history. And the Republican Party is tearing itself apart because 85 percent of the Republican Party is following one guy right now, Donald Trump. He's not even really a Republican. So the far left is a huge problem when you're like on Twitter and social media, or I would say in some institutions. I think administrators for school, I think, can rightfully come under heavy criticism

for some of the crazy, insane stuff they say. I think that institution, there's some weird power there that probably needs to be addressed. But legislatively and in terms of voter bodies, man, walking out on the street and finding a socialist or a communist is pretty hard. I can find Trump supporters in any major blue city on in the entire United States. So, yeah, I mean, like both the factions are problematic. But on the left, it's a that's a very, very, very small faction. Electorally, that's not going to affect us on the left.

Electorally, on the right, the Republican Party is literally tearing itself apart under Donald Trump. So I don't think they're equivalent in terms of problems. Why do you think there is a desire among this slice of the left to take people like you or me and and say we're not really on the left? We're neolibs or we're center right or whatever. What what do you think is the the goal of the people who say that? Is it to change our views? Is it to try to get people just not to watch our content? Like, what's the point? I think there's a combination of things going on.

I think for one, I think a lot of these people are young, which is good. You should be radical and you should be crazy. And if you're a young 19 year old and you've just read your first volume of Das Kapital

and you've just had your first humanities class and you look at the injustice around you and you're like, man, why don't these guys talk about this more? Why don't they do anything? I think that's fine. I think young people should be crazy and radical.

And that's good. It's healthy. I read Ayn Rand. I was a Ron Paul 2008 supporter, do or die. So I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. I think that, so there's the young aspect plays into it. The fact that they're on college, so they're all kind of amplifying each other's opinions. The fact that social media, I would say this is a bad thing.

This sounds really mean. I'm 35 now. But I think it makes young people feel a little bit more important than they actually are. Now on social media, you can tweet anything and it gets, it might pick up 10, 20, 30,000 likes. And now you feel like your opinion is like hot. Oh man, I matter. And it's like, bro, you've never even worked a job before. Slow down. You know, I think if people will practice power where they can, I think that when you're a young person, you probably feel really powerless. Like what, I mean, what do do? Again, you might not even work a job. You might still work with or live with mom and dad. You're accumulating a whole bunch of college debt.

You don't even have your degree yet. How do you participate in the world? Well, the one place where you can exercise power is on social media. And if people don't align with your values and you want to attack them, they're like, yeah, this is the one place that you can actually do something. So let's pause our conversation there with Stephen Kenneth, Destiny Bunnell, the second, the full conversation will be posted to our YouTube channel, youtube.com slash the David Pakman show on the podcast, radio show and TV show. We'll go to a quick break and be back right after this. When I'm doing any kind of my work, prepping for the show, whatever it might be, I love a standing desk, an adjustable desk that can go up or down for sitting or standing.

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everything is customizable. The material, the size, the color, the wheels. I have the huge one with no wheels, for example, wire management accessories. They really offer everything. Uplift desk has been chosen as the New York times best standing desk for the last four years. They have four point nine stars on Google. I've been a longtime customer. You will love it. I am sitting at one of these right now. I use it to record the show every day. My audience will get five percent off at uplift desk dot com slash Pacman. Use the code Pacman five. That's U.P.L.I.F.TFT desk dot com slash Pacman. Then use the code Pacman five to get five percent off. The info is in the podcast notes. Everything you do online can be tracked by your Internet service provider, tech companies, the government hackers. Unless you use a VPN to

encrypt your online activity, hide your IP and make yourself anonymous. The VPN I use is private internet access. They are the only VPN to prove multiple times in court. They do not log your internet activity. Their stringent no log practices are independently audited by Deloitte. Private internet access has a next generation server infrastructure with IP addresses in 91 countries in all 50 states. It's one of the only VPNs fast enough for streaming video and downloading large files. Private Internet access lets me access a bunch of Argentinian soccer that I otherwise wouldn't have access to. It's super easy to use. You turn it on once, you forget about it. You don't need to be a computer expert. Private Internet access has a 30 day money back guarantee, 24 seven customer

support. And my audience gets private Internet access for 83 percent off. This comes out to just two or three a month, plus four extra months for free. Go to PIA VPN dot com slash David. The link is in the podcast notes. All right. Failed former President Donald Trump once again, forgetting who is the current president, then trying to laugh it all off as he's doing these cognitive gaffes on purpose. And corporate media continues to barely mention it, although it is getting a little bit more attention than it once was. Let's take a look at a couple of clips. Here is Trump the other night in Conway, South Carolina, once again, forgetting who is the current president. I did. And then I hear that they like Obama better. They should like Obama better. You

know why? Because he didn't ask for anything. We were like the stupid country of the world. And we're not going to be the stupid country of the world any longer. We're not going to be got bad under under this guy. So he now wants to send them 50, $60 billion. I have to say one thing. So Trump just acting casually like Barack Obama is still president of the United States. And then he is also suggesting that Obama might secretly be Muslim. How many times have we heard this now from Trump? Never mind anybody else. How many times have we heard this? And then, of course, Trump continuing to insist all of these gaffes are on purpose or by sometimes I'll interchange, I'll say by Barack Hussein Obama. Barack Hussein.

Boo Muslim, boo Hussein. But every time I say that, the fake news, oh, that's a lot of fake news back there. The fake news. Speaker 5 Every time I say it, any time I want to be have a little fun, Governor, we have fun sometimes, even though the country is going to hell, we have to have a little bit of fun. But every time I interchanged Barack Hussein Obama, remember Rush Limbaugh, he'd go Barack Hussein Obama. I wonder what he was getting at.

I wonder what he was getting at. That he must secretly be Muslim. But every time I do interchanging, we do a little interchanging. They say he doesn't know who the president is. He thinks it's Barack Obama. I say, no, no. But I think Barack Obama has a lot to do with running the country right now. And we can't let that happen. He wants us to believe that every time he's confused about who's president, it's all on purpose. And then lest anybody in the crowd worry, Trump reminds us he got a beautiful score on a dementia test in case you were concerned, you know, and I've called for cognitive tests. I actually think any body running for president should have tests, I think. And I pass them every time.

Dr. Ronny Jackson gave me the first one. He comes out scored as not demented every single time he takes one of those tests. So Trump's brain continuing to crumble. Oh, but David, what about Joe Biden? Yeah, Joe Biden's old, too. And if they're both demented, I'm voting Biden. How's that? Very clear, very easy choice. As much

of this stuff continues to happen. The discussion on corporate media is about Biden and mostly not about Trump. And that's what I want to talk about next. The coverage about Trump's apparent cognitive decline relative to Biden's has been absolutely pathetic. Media Matters has a good write up and points out that Trump's verbal confusions get very, very little coverage occasionally on MSNBC, almost or in many cases, zero coverage on Fox News and a little bit of a sliver on CNN. Now, I want to remind people this stuff is happening all the time. Here is Trump again saying that Viktor Orban is the leader of Turkey. He's not. He's the leader of Hungary. Trump says it again. And the right wingers don't care. Viktor Orban. Did anyone ever hear of him? He's probably like one of the strongest leaders anywhere in the world.

And he he's the leader of right. He's the leader of Turkey. Front's on both Russia. Front's on both Russia. Yeah. And of course, Orban is not the leader of Turkey. He's the leader of Hungary. And Hungary also doesn't have the borders that Trump claims it has.

This is happening every day. Here is Trump the following day in Vegas saying, hey, you know what happened last night? Referring to the prior primary. The prior primary was days earlier, days earlier. And last night, you know what happened last night, right? None of the above. So I'd like to congratulate none of the above. I was one of those.

None of ever above us. I was one of them. No. So I watched that last night and they won by 44 points. And of course, that wasn't last night. That was much earlier in the week. It was on Tuesday night and this was over the weekend that Trump said it so extraordinarily confused and disoriented corporate media, barely willing to cover it.

They'll hop all over Biden. And again, the real critical part of this is it's less about an adjudication of which one of these guys is more slowed down cognitively. It's the realization that a cognitively declining Trump is dangerous, whereas a supposedly cognitive cognitively declining Biden has dozens of major accomplishments to his name, has put reasonable people around him and has done a pretty damn good job as a demented president. So if you say to me, David, it's demented Trump or demented Biden, who are you voting for? I know what the answer is. The question is,

do you do these people on the right? It's not clear to me that they do. I hate that I have to kind of put a final nail in the coffin on this issue today because it's a very horrible one. But Facebook and Instagram have permanently shadow banned us. I don't even know where to start on this. You may recall that in October we noticed that the videos we would post to Facebook got 98 percent fewer views. In fact, we have an image that we're putting up on the screen here. This is a chart of our Facebook video views. And you see that everything's going along fine. And then October 18th, boom, what happens? They just go away. Very similar numbers on Instagram. We look around, we ask, we contact Facebook. No, sir, everything's fine. Everything's

fine. We recruit some Facebook employees in our audience to try to submit internal appeals. What's going on with this page? All very mysterious. But we can tell we are shadow banned. Our content is not being recommended. We then figure out, oh, we are shadow banned. This is something that Facebook calls not recommendable. And we're putting that up on the screen. And very slyly, Facebook has now inserted a new reason why you might not be recommendable. Obviously, all the old reasons are there. You're spreading disinformation or there's inappropriate content or you deal in civics. You deal in civics. The primary subject matter of your content is civics. And I thought this is really weird because Facebook has not put out a statement about this.

And now the following Instagram. This is NBC News. Instagram will stop recommending political content. Remember, Instagram and Facebook are both owned by the parent company Meta. And if you look at this article, the article explains this is it for political content on Instagram and on Facebook. And they actually mention here, well, a lot of people don't like politics. They don't want politics shoved in their face. So only if you opt in, will you see political content? What? By the way, they are doing the exact same thing on Facebook. It says the same control will roll out on Facebook at a later date. So here's and by the way, look at this. Instagram defines political content as potentially related to things like laws, elections or social topics. If you talk about the law. By default, your content will not

be shown, will not be recommended on Facebook and Instagram. If you talk about elections. Oh, I don't know. We have maybe the most important presidential election of my lifetime coming up in nine months. Oh, no, no, no. People don't want to see that. We're not going to recommend that any social topic. Oh, what about abortion? What about free speech?

What about cultural issues? No, people don't want this stuff shoved down their throats. They are permanently shadow banning political content on Facebook and Instagram. This is not just a crisis for our show. About 15, sometimes 20 percent of our revenue used to come from these platforms. Gone. Bye bye. You produce the wrong type of content. We should be doing makeup tutorials, puzzle building on screen and pranks. By the way, all that content is fine. But that's what people want to see. So that's what we will recommend. But content of value in terms of getting people engaged with the political system, getting people engaged with the structures that determine what people engaged with the structures

that determine what their lives and the lives of other Americans are like. A lot of people just don't like seeing that. So by default, it's going to be banned unless people go and opt in to see that sort of content. So crisis for our show, because now we've got to find 20 percent of our revenue to make up, I would argue a cultural crisis. If we have gotten to the point where the platforms say so many people just don't want to hear about what's going what our elected officials are doing, what the Supreme Court is doing, what educational infrastructure is doing, we're going to default to that's off. How disastrous is the situation in the United States of America that that's where we

are? So what do we do? Well, we need to find new platforms. Hopefully there will be platforms. I mean, listen, you look at what we're doing on Snapchat. Our Snapchat has been growing, growing, growing, growing. Maybe there are platforms that will welcome this type of content where we can reach people and say, hey, rather than tuning this out and going to the hey, we sent somebody a glitter bomb in the mail sort of content, which, by the way, it's funny, I'm not saying bad things about that content, but in terms of its importance to figuring out what the world we live in is going to be like, I think we would argue it's not quite as high on the list. That's what people want. We've got to find platforms that will say,

hey, no, we are going to prioritize law, election, social issues. That's important. And we need to continue shifting our support to our website. I'm so sorry that I have to mention that. But this is the reality. As I've said before, every one of these platforms at different times has shut off the revenue. Now it's Facebook. So if you care about this, if you believe shows like this one doesn't have to be this one, I would love it if it is that if you believe shows like this are important. Please try to consider supporting us directly. You can go to join Pacman dot com. It's really cheap. We put up a bunch of extra content for our members. Sign up at join Pacman dot com. You can use the coupon code. Save democracy 24. That is what is at stake. I hate that that's where we are, but that's what's at stake.

I'll have more information on this if I ever get it. And I may not. This may just be it. Bye bye. Permanently shadow banned. We have a voicemail number. That number is two one nine two. David P. Here's an interesting voicemail about Trump and his relationship to powerful women. Yeah, David, I got it. Trump's kryptonite is women, powerful women, anything. They'll take him down. There's James E..J. and Carol. Nikki Haley's chomping at him. They really do a number on him on his psyche. Just watch the unravels.

Trump does, as the caller points out, Trump does seem particularly triggered when it's women that don't back down from him. He's triggered when anybody doesn't back down. He demands loyalty. He expects loyalty, all of that. But the caller is right that it seems extra triggering when it's a woman, when it was briefly Megyn Kelly. It's Nikki Haley now, Nancy Pelosi, whoever it is. I think the caller is absolutely right on the bonus show today. House Republicans have requested transcripts of the now explosive interview between Joe

Biden and special counsel Robert. They want to see what exactly did he say about not remembering? We will discuss the senator defending Vladimir Putin. Tommy Tuberville has sparked some serious backlash, as he should. We'll tell you what he said. And Bobby Kennedy Jr. is apologizing to his family for a Super Bowl ad that included them saying that wasn't my ad. It was a pack that did it. Yet he had the ad stickied on his own Twitter page. If you're sorry about the ad and he didn't produce the ad and you don't like that your family was featured, then why did you sticky it to your Twitter page? All of those topics and more on today's bonus show. You know where to sign up.

It's join Pacman dot com.