The David Pakman Show - 2/14/24: Santos' seat flipped, Republicans impeach Mayorkas

Episode Date: February 14, 2024

-- On the Show: -- Democrats flip Congressman George Santos' former seat with a win by Tom Suozzi, raising the possibility of a blue wave in November 2024 -- A terrified Donald Trump explodes after Democrats take Congressman George Santos' former Congressional seat -- Republicans in the House successfully vote to impeach Joe Biden's Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, a move that is dead on arrival in the US Senate -- Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says that Joe Biden is "one of the most successful Presidents" -- President Joe Biden continues to go after failed former President Donald Trump for "bowing down to a Russian dictator," referring to Vladimir Putin -- 2024 Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley attacks Donald Trump's manhood in the context of Trump's prior attack of Haley because her husband is not on the campaign trail with her, when in fact he is deployed overseas -- Failed former President Donald Trump demands that his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, be made Chair of the Republican National Committee -- Lara Trump, Donald Trump's daughter-in-law, pledges complete and total loyalty to Donald Trump if she becomes RNC Chair -- Voicemail caller says he is unsubscribing from The David Pakman Show because David supposedly supports Joe Biden's supposed support of Israel's bombing of Gaza -- On the Bonus Show: Jared Kushner says he will not return to the White House even if Trump wins in 2024. US Senate approves $95 billion aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, why dating apps appear to be worse than ever, much more... 🍷 Naked Wines: Use code PAKMAN to get 6 bottles for $39.99 at https://nakedwines.com/pakman 💪 Athletic Greens is offering FREE year-supply of Vitamin D at https://athleticgreens.com/pakman 🥄 Use code PAKMAN for $5 off Magic Spoon at https://magicspoon.com/pakman 💻 Stay protected! Try our sponsor Aura FREE for 2 weeks at https://aura.com/pakman 🧠 Try Brain.fm totally free for a month at https://brain.fm/pakman -- Become a Supporter: http://www.davidpakman.com/membership -- Subscribe on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/thedavidpakmanshow -- Subscribe to Pakman Live: https://www.youtube.com/pakmanlive -- Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/davidpakmanshow -- Like us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/davidpakmanshow -- Leave us a message at The David Pakman Show Voicemail Line (219)-2DAVIDP

Speaker 1 Talk of a Democratic blue wave in November is ramping up as we see some extraordinary results last night. The seat formerly held by disgraced, lying, dishonest, indicted former Congressman George Santos has been won by a Democrat, former Congressman Tom Suozzi. And this is now getting all sorts of people fired up about the possibility of a blue wave in twenty twenty four. It has many Republicans, especially Maga, including the failed former President Donald Trump in a tizzy, terrified and furious, including the failed former President Donald Trump,

in a tizzy, terrified and furious, which we will get to. There are two interpretations of last night's win by a Democrat in George Santos's old seat. I'm not here to gaslight. I'm here to tell you the truth. So I'm going to go through both possible interpretations. But let's start with what happened. NBC News reports Democrat Tom Suozzi wins New York special election to replace George Sanctos. As many of us know him, New York's third district will flip from red to blue in an early test for both parties ahead of November's fight for control of the House. We have a bunch of editorializing here about what this means, what it might mean, et cetera. But the really important element of this to consider is that there are two interpretations of what this means for November. Now, one interpretation would be, hey, look, George Santos won this seat by about seven and a half points in 2022.

We now have a complete and total flip to Tom Swozy. If we see even a fraction of that red to flip in even 10 percent of congressional districts. This is over for Republicans in November. They will lose control of the House. Roe v. Wade's repeal seems to have wreaked havoc on the Republican Party as voters across the political spectrum have realized that the modern Republican Party offers them nothing by way of policy that will help the average person. OK, I could keep going with that. That's the hyper optimistic. This is incredible what it means for the rejection of Republicans. As an example of this, here's a CNN reporter last night from the headquarters of Mazzy Pilip, who was the MAGA candidate that lost

this race, saying we are seeing a lot of people who voted Trump but are going for Democrats for the following reason. Looking for trend lines ahead of November and you're hoping to hold on to what is a swing district for yourself as well. Obviously, I talked to two voters today who voted for Donald Trump in 2016, turned around and voted for the Democrats in this race, voted for Tom Suozzi because they said his message on bipartisanship and the fact that House Republicans have really struggled to pass legislation over the last couple of weeks impacted the way they were looking at this race. And if you're a Democrat running in these swing districts, running in a suburban district,

that's the kind of message, that's the kind of playbook that you want to emulate in November. So obviously. So this is part of the optimistic story. As long as we keep voting, these Republicans are quite frankly, F'd major shift in these swing districts from districts that started to lean Republican in 20 and 22 have gone all the way back to leaning Democratic. The border crisis doesn't seem to be the winning issue that Republicans wish it was. This is a swing district where a lot of the discussion, especially with

this MAGA candidate, Mazzy Pilip, a lot of the race was about there's an influx of immigrants into New York City. They're destroying the city. It's overrun and all of this dehumanizing language. We've got to control the border. And the Democrat won and won easily. So this is all the optimistic case for what this signals for November. All right. Now let's look at the more cautious case. The more cautious case would go something like this. Tom Swozy Swoazi was not an unknown quantity. He was the representative before George Santos. You could say the Santos thing was an anomaly because Swazi wasn't seeking reelection. He ran for governor, lost. And that if you go back to 2020, Swazi easily defeated Santos 56 to 43. And the only reason this district was a swing district in 2022 was because Democrats put up a random person because Swazi was

running for governor and the random person didn't even really campaign. Santos ran a campaign. Obviously, he lied about his background. But that is the argument that says this is a special case. This is a guy who is very well known in the district. Yes, the district has changed to some degree. But you could argue if you want to be more cautious about what November looks like, that this district only tells us that things are sort of going back to where they were prior to 2022. And that is this was a left leaning district.

It doesn't necessarily tell us anything about November. OK, that's absolutely fine. My preference here is that we take the cautious approach because there's no downside. If you take the wow, this result from the third district yesterday signals epic success for Democrats in November. All it might really do is get some people to stay home if they think that their vote isn't really necessary. If on the other hand, we say, you know, things may be looking good for Democrats because after all, Republicans are offering nothing. They end up opposing their own bills. They end up wasting time on things like impeaching the Department of Sec, the secretary of Homeland Security, which we'll talk about later, which does nothing for my

income. It does nothing for my kitchen table. It does fine. Maybe things are more optimistic, but if we're more careful, we all maybe will remember, you know what? It's not obvious to me what the results will be in November. I'd better get out there and vote. So these are great results. It's a nice thing to take a seat back from Republicans. They still have a small majority through at least January, depending on what the results are in November.

But if we want to handle this as prudently as possible, we remain cautious, but we recognize Republicans are panicking. And that's what I want to talk about next. After last night's results in the third district of New York, where George Santos's former seat was won by a Democrat, Tom Suozzi, failed former President Donald Trump, a civilly liable rapist with 91 felony counts against him, which he will have to wade through over the next year plus. That guy, the failed former president, went on Truth Social Central and indicated that he is completely and utterly terrified about what's going on and what it might suggest

for him in November. And I'll explain that in a moment, because this is a don't think that this is Trump actually being concerned about the Republican Party. He could not care less about the Republican Party other than the question of how it can help him. Donald Trump putting up on Truth Social, quote, Republicans just don't learn. But maybe she was still a Democrat referring to Mazzy Pillip, the Republican candidate, a former Democrat, Trump essentially arguing was a bad

candidate. Republicans just don't learn. But maybe she was still a Democrat. I have an almost ninety nine percent endorsement success rate in primaries and a very good number in the general elections as well. But just watched this very foolish woman, Mazzy Malesa Pillop, running in a race where she didn't endorse me and tried to straddle the fence when she would have easily won if she understood anything about modern day politics in America. MAGA. Now here he engages caps lock Magga, which is most of the Republican Party, stayed home and it always will unless it is treated with the respect that it deserves. I stayed out of the race quote. I want to be loved.

I don't know why that's in quotes. It's really weird. Give us a real candidate in the district for November. Swazi I know him, can be easily beaten. Trump is terrified. Trump sees winning in November as a way to maybe stay out of prison. And he sees that it is getting tougher and tougher for Republicans. Trump bragged about thanks to my Supreme Court picks, we

got Roe v. Wade repealed and they've lost everything since. Now, any one race can be an outlier. Tom Suozzi was the former congressman in this area. He was already known. It's not a normal Republican loss. OK, voters in whatever state rejected a referendum to make abortion illegal. They are special because of this other reason. OK, fine. You can you can maybe find explanations individually for all of these failures since Roe v. Wade was overturned. But it's hard to zoom out and say things are looking good for Republicans. And the way Trump is thinking of this is if I become president, I can use that to stay out of prison. I don't know that that's true. Legal experts insist that's not true. But that's Trump's belief that the way to stay out of prison effectively for the rest of his life

is to become president. And so when Trump sees all of these Republicans losing, they're losing on ballot measures, they're losing at the state level, they're losing at the federal level. He's terrified. And he's lashing out as a bonus, also attacking Adam Schiff, who was a guest on this program not long ago, Democratic congressman in California running for Senate there. An all caps rant about Adam Schiff, where she Adam Schiff, where he said, quote, Slimeball Adam Shifty Schiff, one of the true lowlifes in the history of politics in America, is running for the U.S. Senate in California, a state which he has done nothing but escalate violent crime, destroy by allowing millions of illegal migrants, push the green new scam and all electric car

mandate, perpetuate the homeless crisis and crime, defund the police, be bad to our military and vets and stop water from freely flowing into the state from up north. Almost all of this stuff is a lie, by the way. Other than that and his authorship of the failed and fully debunked Russia, Russia, Russia hoax. Pencil neck is a wonderful guy. Sadly, between rank no choice voting and unlimited numbers of mail in ballots pouring into places unknown to give people that sometimes receive many ballots to fill out and send back at will.

Californians are, quote, screwed. Make America great again. That is a hell of a rant. If I've ever seen one, we will ban men making about as much sense as that. Not too much interpretation is needed here. Trump's terrified. And when we think of the reasons to get out and vote in November, you know, there's all this talk about Joe Biden doesn't motivate people. He doesn't excite people. Nobody's going to be titillated and aroused by going out to vote for Joe Biden. Well, let me give you a different perspective. When I think about voting in November, even as a voter in a blue state, I think about the alternative is four more years of arguably the most dangerous president that we've had in the

modern political era. I think about my vote helping to prevent a guy from attempting to use political office to avoid criminal consequences for the things that he is accused of doing. I see a guy who admits I'll be a dictator for a day. I see a guy who says I'm going to try to get media outlets unfavorable or inconvenient to me kicked off of the air. I see a guy who is going to cozy up to some of the worst authoritarian dictators in the world. So it's not super important to me that Biden's speeches are boring. It's not really important to me that Biden doesn't excite by insulting his political

opponents. But it is extremely motivating to me to participate in keeping Donald Trump out of office. And by the way, based on Trump's age, based on the apparent lack of interest in Trump's family of getting directly involved in electoral politics, although Lara Trump wants to be RNC chair and we'll talk about that later, 2024 could serve as an inflection point not only for American democracy, but also for just being rid of this MAGA scourge or scourge, depending on your preference, for good. And I don't know that for a fact, but a number of these MAGAts have been defeated. Madison Cawthorn was defeated.

Things aren't looking good for Lauren Boebert. Maybe Marjorie Taylor Greene will lose not in 24 looking OK for her, but maybe in 26 or maybe she'll go away. We really could put MAGA. What's that term DeSantis used in the dustbin of history? If we defeat this guy in 2024. So I would not misinterpret not being cultish as people not being motivated to deny Donald Trump another four years. That's my view. I think Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is increasingly sharing my view. And we'll talk about that a little bit later in the show. Speaker 1 as many of you have heard me say before, when I go to a wine shop, I have no idea what I'm doing and I'm Argentinian and I still know almost nothing

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Well, Republicans have done it. They've wasted American taxpayer time, money and resources impeaching Joe Biden's secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, and for no reason whatsoever other than attempting to virtue signal, I guess, because it is completely and totally dead on arrival in the United States Senate. Let's start with what happened. Increasingly, Republicans, out of reflexive desperation to impeach somebody unable to find even a hypothetical path to impeaching Joe Biden, at least for now, started to focus their ire and anger on the secretary of Homeland Security. Why him? Well, the reason they say is they believe that what they describe as a particular failure on the U.S.-Mexico border

rises to the level of a high crime and misdemeanor, not only to Joe Biden, who they're going to get to, they're going to get to, but specifically for Alejandro Mayorkas, the secretary of Homeland Security. Now is the fact that Mayorkas has a Hispanic sounding name part of why they are particularly focused on impeaching him? I'll ask the question and leave it for you to answer that. But they figured out a way to do it. NBC News reports the vote was 214 to 213, with three Republicans again opposing the impeachment. Mayorkas is just the second cabinet secretary in American history to be impeached and the first in 150 years.

Mike Johnson, the history, the speaker of the House said from his first day in office, Secretary Mayorkas has willfully and consistently refused to comply with immigration, federal immigration laws, fueling the worst border catastrophe in American history. He has undermined public trust through multiple false statements to Congress, obstructed lawful oversight of the Department of Homeland Security and violated his oath of office. Since this secretary refuses to do to do the job that the Senate confirmed him to do, the House must act. Joe Biden says that history will not look kindly at this. Here's the big moment in the House. It you know, when I sit there and I think, OK, let's see, how can we help the American people?

What can we do economically? How can we improve education? How can we get more people health care? And then you see Republicans wasting time on this and then cheering. It's hard to feel like they actually have the best interests of their constituents. And on this vote, the yeas are 214 and the nays are 213. The resolution is adopted. This will now go to the Senate, I guess. You know that I want to remind everybody when we talk about impeachment, impeachment is not the removal of an individual. Trump was impeached twice, but he was acquitted twice in the subsequent Senate trials. The House of Representatives impeaches. Then they present a case to the Senate. The Senate votes

as to whether to convict or acquit that individual who has been impeached. This is by all estimations, completely and totally dead on arrival in the United States Senate. That's just it's it's going to go nowhere. Democrats and Republicans alike in the Senate have no interest in impeaching Mayorkas. It's not clear that there's anything impeachment worthy here, but Republicans are treating this like it is just the biggest victory. Here is video from the House of Representatives. And you see Speaker Johnson coming over. People are shaking hands and hugging him like they did a great thing. Fist pumping their. Was that a terrorist fist pump? As Fox News once asked about Barack Obama, they are acting like this is an incredible and worthy achievement. It is not. It is very much not.

And you have to understand that this is a Republican Party controlling the House of Representatives that can't pass a budget. They demand their own border bill, but then oppose the bill because it wouldn't be good for Trump. They are constantly fighting with each other. They're fighting with each other over who should be RNC chair and what type of RNC chair has their party's interests in mind. They removed their own Republican speaker and replaced him with a MAGA loyalist. They lost a lying representative in George Santos after standing aside and looking the

other way for years until it finally got to be too much. And they said, I guess we've got to get rid of them. And now they have impeached a cabinet official, the second ever in the first in 150 years over the fact that people come over the U.S. Mexico border illegally, just like they did when Donald Trump was president of the United States. Oh, but we're apprehending more people. That shows that they're not doing their job. Isn't their job to apprehend more people? Isn't that evidence that they are doing their job? Now, I'm being a little bit tongue in cheek. Obviously, there are problems both with our immigration system and specifically pointedly

at the US Mexico border. But the idea that now all of a sudden it's impeachment worthy is laughable and it's pathetic. And this is going absolutely nowhere in the Senate. Will voters reward or punish Republicans in November for spending time and resources doing stuff like this? I don't know. I certainly hope that they get punished. I have to tell you, I have had a dramatic upgrade to my opinion of Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez over the last 12 to 18 months. The wide eyed, bushy tailed, arguably naive rookie that she once was has been supplanted in a good way by a far more pragmatic, practical, realistic and quite shrewd political operative. She, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, last night appeared on CNN, interviewed by Jake Tapper

in the context of awaiting the results for the New York Third District special election, wherein George Santos's old seat was won by Democrat Tom Suozzi. And she was asked by Jake Tapper about concerns regarding Joe Biden's age. I'm not going to tell you in advance what she says, other than to tell you she is absolutely and completely spot on. Take a listen to this. Do you have any concerns about his age? Do you have any concerns about whether or not he should be the nominee? I mean, I think right now when it comes to the president's age, folks are talking

about how he's 81. But we have to look at first of all, Donald Trump is around the same age as 77. He's 77 years old. They could have gone to high school together. And beyond that, Donald Trump has 91 indictments. And I know who I'm going to choose. It's going to be one of the most successful presidents in modern American history that passed the Inflation Reduction Act, that got us the American Rescue Plan,

that ensured that we could pass one of the largest federal investments in climate change in U.S. history. And as far as we go, as we know, virtually all the filing deadline deadlines have passed. There's already been a primary voters have outright rejected Dean Phillips. President Biden is going to be the Democratic nominee and hopefully he'll be reelected as president. Speaker 1 Are you. There are two wings of the progressive wing of the American left or the American Democratic Party or call it what you will, and they have very different opinions about what you just saw. And this is not trivial.

This is part of determining what is the path of the American left. This is a very simple and straightforward analysis from AOC, which I share on a couple different grounds. First of all, she is correctly pointing out we've got a couple old guys here. We've got Biden and we've got Trump. If you are honest with yourself and with others and you look at the presidency of Joseph R. Biden, it is very difficult to come away saying that this has been anything but an extraordinarily successful term. I've given the list before. The list is much longer than we can fit into an hour. Joe Biden involved in passing multiple major pieces of legislation.

No president has done more student loan debt forgiveness than Biden. No president has done more proactively to normalize cannabis in the United States. I didn't think Biden cared about cannabis. And he's saying, let's take it off of schedule one, which is a must do. I've been talking about it for a decade. He got us out of Afghanistan. It was messy, but we needed to get out and he got us out. Joe Biden has made a number of small but important changes to Obamacare related health care law, expanding the child tax credit. I mean, I could go on and on and on and on. On paper, this is the most progressive presidency, at least since FDR and probably ever. Joe Biden has surrounded himself with confident, competent

people who get the things done that they're supposed to do, period. And AOC is completely right. But then there's the next part of her analysis. This is not a normal horse race, OK? I don't think it would be accurate for me or for corporate media to pretend that this is just, hey, we got two candidates. Everything's totally normal and typical. We have two elderly candidates.

One of them is under 91 felony indictments. One of them is a former president who already lost and is running again and tried to stay in power after losing and subvert democracy. Everything about this is unprecedented and unusual. But also AOC is right that this talk of kick Biden out, just replace him or whatever. He's the current president of the United States. He's already won every primary that there has been. There's every indication he's going to win every single primary.

Dean Phillips lost to Biden with Biden as a write in. Marianne Williamson has quit. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is no longer running as a Democrat. So it's a bit delusional to think that Biden's going to be kicked out and replaced. Now, if you say to me, David, if Biden weren't president right now, would you be saying out of everybody you could pick, Joe Biden should be the nominee? Obviously not. Obviously not. And Junkie is going to be back on the show soon and we're going to delve into this. If we were starting from scratch, my view would

be different. But right now, the idea of kicking Biden out, replacing him forcibly or him stepping aside. If Biden is a major health issue or worse between now and the election, of course, he will have to be replaced and it will be quite a quite an insane situation. But AOC is essentially completely right here. As far as the math, you know, Biden's 81. Trump is 81 minus three point five raised to the 91st power, 91 felony counts and divide multiplied by Trump's corruption and incompetence. So to me, the math still says Joe Biden. Good for AOC. Now, what's the downside here? There's a wing of the left,

a wing of so-called progressives who say she sold out. She no longer is what she once was. She no longer represents the hope and change that she did. It's called being realistic. It's called I ran in one way before I knew a damn thing about how politics works. Now I'm on the inside and I see how it works. She clearly still remains true to the values and principles that got her elected. But her approach tactically is much more pragmatic,

hard to fault her for that. I'm concerned that some progressives have now turned on her on the basis of her just being more realistic. Joe Biden is a pounding Donald Trump for a Trump bowing down to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. I have to tell you, I agree very much with Joe Biden's analysis here. Here is Biden speaking about Trump's recent comments on Putin and NATO and saying, I encourage Russia to attack NATO allies. It's the responsibility of a great nation, and we are a great nation that the rest of the world looks to. And I mean that the rest of the world looks to us. The stakes are already high for American security before this bill was passed in the Senate

last night. But in recent days, those stakes have risen. And that's because the former president has sent a dangerous and shockingly, frankly, un-American signal to the world. Just a few days ago, Trump gave an invitation to Putin to invade some of our allies, NATO allies. He said if an ally didn't spend enough money on defense, he would encourage Russia to, quote, do whatever the hell they want, end of quote.

Can you imagine a former president of the United States saying that? The whole world heard it. The worst thing is he means it. No other president in our history has ever bowed down to a Russian dictator. Let me say this as clearly as I can. I never will. For God's sake, it's dumb. It's shameful. It's dangerous. It's un-American. Hard to argue with the analysis. This is all a reference in part to the following comments Trump made over the weekend. They asked me that question. One of the presidents of a big country stood up, said, well, sir, if we don't pay and we're attacked by Russia, will you protect us? I said, you didn't pay your delinquent.

He said, yes, let's say that happened. No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want. You got to pay. You got to pay your bills and the crowd cheering. Now there's a historical analysis here to be made. It's not as simple as dictator bad. We offer zero. We are mean to them. OK, if you look back in American history, there are examples

of American foreign policy being more conciliatory or cooperative towards authoritarian regimes or dictators. It's often driven by a calculated strategic interest or an ideological alignment or an attempt at diplomatic engagement in order to disabuse them of their dictatorial approach. You could look at FDR's relationship with Stalin during World War Two, Stalin, a horrible authoritarian, the U.S. and Soviet Union allied against Nazi Germany. Roosevelt engaged in diplomacy. There was a very specific reason why Nixon creating an opening with China in the 70s to normalize relationships with China, with the idea that maybe there will be a joint effort to counter Soviet influence in the context of the Cold War. So there was like a

strategic reason to do it or Reagan with the Soviet Union and Reagan, you know, famously took a hard line stance with the Soviet Union, called it the evil empire, et cetera. But he also engaged in diplomacy with Gorbachev and there were arms control agreements, et cetera. There are ways to do this in a strategic way. Trump's not being strategic. He's just enamored with dictators. That's all it is. It's that simple. And he is just in love, love letters. He used the term love letters with Kim. It's Putin. It's Duterte. It's, you know, I could give you the full list and it is very, very scary. Here's a little more from Biden on on NATO and on Trump's perspective on American. When America gives us word, it means something. When we make a commitment, we keep it.

And NATO is a sacred commitment. Donald Trump looks at this as if it's a burden. When he looks at NATO, he doesn't see the alliance that protects America and the world. He sees a protection racket. He doesn't understand that NATO is built on fundamental principles of freedom, security, and national sovereignty. Because for Trump, principles never matter. Everything is transactional. That is exactly right. That is a snow. I know Biden didn't come up with that. He's right. He's reading it. It's a speech that was written. Transactional is one of the most accurate

ways to describe Trump's perspective on all of this stuff. I like that Biden's going after Trump on this. Foreign policy rarely moves the needle when it comes to elections. But Biden is still right to target Trump on this. Trump hates it. Trump doesn't like it. Trump's priority is always just what's best for himself.

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Although she clearly has no path to the Republican nomination whatsoever, 2024 Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley is for now staying in this race. And she continues to go after Donald Trump, most recently going after him for the size of his manhood. We could say pointing out the apparently silly little reason Trump avoided going to Vietnam while her husband, despite being attacked by Trump, is actually serving overseas. Now, the context of all of this, remember yesterday's voicemail. If you didn't hear it, check it out at the very end of yesterday's podcast. Listener called in and said Trump obviously doesn't like being criticized by anybody,

but there's something about competent, strong, intelligent women going after Trump that really triggers him. And that is exactly what's happening with Nikki Haley. She really has struck a nerve handing out Trump's dementia test at one of her recent rallies, staying in the race. How dare she stay in this race and not bow down before your orange God, Trump? Here is Nikki Haley in response, of course, to Donald Trump saying, where is Nikki's husband? How where is he? Well he's serving overseas. A better question is where's Melania? Here is what Nikki Haley had to say, bringing up the infamous bone spurs.

I think you are rethinking your pledge to support him if he's the nominee. What I'm thinking is you all need to ask him what he has to say about that because he owes a lot of military families an explanation with that. He owes a lot of veterans an explanation on that. You don't disrespect someone who's done something that you weren't willing to do. He was not willing to go overseas, but supposedly because he had bone spurs. He's never been near a military uniform. He has no right to talk about anything that a service member does because that's off limits with him when he wasn't willing to serve himself. It's actually pretty interesting that one of the things that typically is worshiped by right wing voters, Republicans, those sorts of folks is a certain image of the alpha male. And it includes

it can include military service. It doesn't usually include, you know, wearing makeup every time you're in public the way that Donald Trump does. It doesn't usually include a lot of the things that Trump actually does. Not a guy who gets his hands dirty, et cetera. But once Trump entered the political scene, there was almost a complete and total reversal. They stopped pretending that they wanted to be pretending. I don't know if they were pretending. They stopped saying that the U.S. should be the world's police officer and instead went to we are now against war. They stopped saying we need someone who has been man enough to serve in the military to saying, oh, no, Trump's actually smart because it didn't make sense for him to go to Vietnam or whatever

the case. It's just another reminder of how the principles mean nothing when they become politically inconvenient. The bottom line is Trump doesn't like what would what would he call them? Would they be uppity women who get out of line and invoke their opinion or criticize him? Here, by the way, is the original comment from Trump about where is Nikki's husband lifetime? She said, I will never run against him. Then she comes over to see me at Mar-a-Lago. Sir, I will never run against you. She brought her husband. Where's her husband? Oh, he's away.

He's away. What happened to her husband? What happened to her husband? Where is he? He's gone. He knew he knew, but no. So of course, Nikki Haley's husband is serving in the military, something Trump never did. And by the way, I think it's fine not to serve in the military.

I wouldn't want to serve in the military. It's not for me. I didn't join. But Trump actually went out of his way to obtain arguably exaggerated documents about why he can't go. And then now he's criticizing someone who's not on the campaign trail because he's actually serving. Meanwhile, Melania is completely missing.

She's nowhere on the campaign trail and Trump seemingly ignoring or just not wanting to talk about that. Hey, this is really, really a strange argument to see made. Republican Congressman Greg Murphy says that Trump has less dementia than Joe Biden, as evidenced by Trump being smarter than Joe Biden. And the smarter you are, the less likely you are to get dementia. Now, I want to make one thing clear because I got a couple of emails from some medical professionals over the last 24 hours. There is a difference between age related memory decline and dementia. They aren't the same thing. And with both Trump and Biden, we could talk about

is there some level of dementia, subclinical or clinical level of dementia? And separately, there's the question of age related memory decline. These are two different things. And I really do think it's important for us not to interchangeably use age related memory decline and dementia because they are two different things. But the argument that Greg Murphy makes here is because Trump's smarter, we have less of a dementia concern. You know, for the for those who are saying that Trump, because of his age now, should do this. It's a very well-known fact in the medical literature that says that someone's intelligence is tied to their risk of having dementia later on in life. And those who are more intelligent

have less a risk later on in life. Well, Joe has proven when his younger scholar days, when he was near the bottom of his law school class that he's not, you know, he's not as intelligent maybe as President Trump has been. And so, you know, it's comparing apples and oranges. But I think point blank, if he wants to prove that he's intelligence, take a damn test. I mean, it's very simple. All right.

So first question, is it true that there's a link between intelligence and and dementia risk? There is certainly a correlation that appears in some studies. The cause and effect of it is a little bit unclear, but there's data. There are some findings that say there could be a protective effect. Higher cognitive ability has a protective effect against developing dementia. The concept of cognitive reserve suggests that if you are of higher intelligence, you have greater mental flexibility, you have richer networks of neural connections in the brain, and that may be able to compensate for pathology related to dementia. That's one idea. There are longitudinal studies that show that if you have

a higher cognitive ability in early life or midlife, you have a lower risk of dementia later in life. And then more practically, higher intelligence is often just associated with more health conscious behaviors. The idea being, well, it's not the intelligence, but the intelligence often leads to higher educational attainment. When you have higher educational attainment, you'll often be engaged in more stimulating activities, have a higher income, which often correlates with better health outcomes. All of this stuff independently seems to reduce the risk of dementia. So we don't yet know for sure on cause and effect, but in some general sense, there does seem to be an association between higher intelligence in early and midlife and

lower dementia risk and prevalence later in life. Now, that all being said, these are mostly observational studies, confounding factors. Much of the information is self-reported and it has to be disaggregated from socioeconomic status and other things. Bottom line, though, do we even know that Trump is smarter than Joe Biden? And if he is smarter than Joe Biden, is the intelligence difference such that it would be statistically significant in correlating with the decreased dementia risk? There's no evidence of any of that stuff whatsoever. The same Congressman Murphy also said when it comes to dementia risk, Kamala Harris had better worry,

because when we talk about intelligence, I don't know. I've been told by sources that it is, in fact, Susan Rice running things. By the way, this is before we even get into the Kamala Harris thing. This is another conspiracy theory. And Vivek Ramaswamy said this to me on the show when I pressed him. Who's really running things? Who he first demurred and didn't want to say. But then he said people like Susan Rice, Maria Bartiromo, has now picked up on from, you know, a long time from when Joe Biden first walked into the Oval Office.

She was really in charge. I don't know if you believe that to be true, but what do you think is going on behind the scenes here about the border? They recognize the public cares about this. It's now the number one issue for the election. Yeah. You know, I've said many, many times this is a public government. Biden's not doing it. Kamala, good Lord. We talked about intelligence being a risk factor for dementia. Let's not even go there with her. Speaker 1 All right. So the idea is Kamala is really stupid and therefore her risk of dementia is very high.

So conspiracy theory wrapped up in an attack on Kamala Harris that some are saying is a racist attack. The idea being he's focusing on her not being smart because she's a woman of color. I don't know if that's what's in Murphy's heart, but that was the reaction of some of you in the audience. And then, of course, suggesting that because Trump is just such a genius, he couldn't possibly have as much dementia or memory issues as Joe Biden has. Make of it what you will, whether this qualifies as a cogent analysis at this point, I sort of struggle to believe.

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With Brain FM, I just feel more productive and focused, easier to start on difficult work, easier to stay focused without getting distracted and do that really important deep work that I love to talk about. The team behind Brain.fm actually won a National Science Foundation grant related to ADHD. And the app includes a special mode just for ADHD if you need it. They even have amazing sleep sounds that I've started using at night. You can try Brain FM totally free for an entire month. Just go to brain.fm slash Pacman. The link is in the podcast notes.

Nepotism meets corruption meets meets incompetence, meets narcissism in the fight for being the next chairperson of the Republican National Committee. Donald Trump is demanding that his daughter in law, Lara Trump, be made RNC chair or co-chair, referring to her as very talented. She is making clear that it will be complete and total loyalty to Trump. Officially, the RNC will become an institution of Trump if she is selected. But let's start at the very beginning. Mediaite reports Trump endorses his daughter-in-law for RNC co-chair, referring to her as very talented. Remember that Ronna McDaniel announced

that she will be resigning from the RNC this after a number of I don't even know what to call them. We could say she's beleaguered. She was called out on the debate stage by Vivek Ramaswamy. Different factions of the Republican Party saying Ronna McDaniel is doing the right thing or the wrong thing. She's supportive enough of Trump. She's not supportive enough of Trump. The party needs to get rid of Trump. Who the hell knows? Donald Trump putting out the following statement. The RNC must be a good partner in the presidential election. It must do the work we expect from the national party and do it flawlessly. That means helping to ensure fair and transparent elections across the country, getting out the vote everywhere, even in parts of the country

where it won't be easy and working with my campaign as the Republican presumptive nominee for president to win this election and make America great again. For these reasons, I think my friend Michael Watley should be the RNC's next leader. Michael has been with me from the beginning and has done a great job in his home state of North Carolina and is committed to election integrity. Hint, this guy's an election denier, which we must have to keep fraud out of our election so it can't be stolen. Trump then goes on to say, my very talented daughter-in- law, Lara Trump, has agreed to run.

Wow. We are so blessed. She's agreed to do it. We weren't sure we could get her. She has agreed to run as the RNC co-chair. Lara is an extremely talented communicator and is dedicated to all that MAGA stands for. She has told me she wants to accept this challenge and would be great. I have also asked Chris Lassavita, in whom I have full confidence to assume the role of chief operating officer of the committee. OK, so Trump is saying, put my my daughter in law in there.

They are in shambles. The RNC is in shambles. The Republican Party is in shambles. They've lost everything under the sun since repealing Roe v. Wade through the three Supreme Court justices that Donald Trump selected. And the plan is bring in Trump's daughter in law as RNC chair. MSNBC's Garrett Haik just mentioned speaking with a Republican strategist who says this entire thing feels a little too much like the TV show Succession. It's not to say that they're joining the RNC leadership table to universal acclaim. I just got off the phone with a Republican strategist who compared the idea of Laura Trump being the co-chair to cousin Greg becoming CEO in succession, that it's not something

that is especially widely received as helpful to the RNC. But it does speak to the fact that these party committees always become tools of the candidate who is running, who is the nominee of that party. So there basically are two interpretations here. Interpretation one is this is unique nepotism. This is worse than what you normally see. This is pathetic. It's Trump again,

installing friends and family. The counterpoint would be, OK, maybe the daughter in law is a touch too much. But in practice, these committees are tools of the nominee. Trump's not the nominee yet, but he's the presumptive nominee who's going to get in his way unless he dies or ends up in prison. For her part, Lara Trump is pledging complete and total loyalty and making it clear if she is RNC chair, it will officially be the committee of Trump. Let's talk about that next a little bit. Lara Trump appeared on Newsmax. She's not even pretending that her RNC chairship, if it became such a reality, would be anything but loyalty to Donald Trump. At least she's admitting it, right? If I am elected to this position,

I can assure you there will not be any more $70,000 or whatever exorbitant amount of money it was spent on flowers. Every single penny will go to the number one and the only job of the RNC that is electing Donald J. Trump as president of the United States. Hey, she's being honest. You know, she's telling us that's all it's going to be. Nikki Haley isn't thrilled with this. She's going after Trump for this as well. Good for Nikki Haley.

You know, she's she's out there pointing out all of the things that should be pointed out about Trump, the nepotism, the cognitive decline, the total lack of respect for members of the military, all of it. It's too little too late. The voters don't care. But Nikki's doing her thing. What we saw yesterday was he took a different approach. Now he has decided he is fired the RNC chair. He's named who's going to be the new RNC chair. His daughter-in-law will be the co-chair. And he is making his campaign manager the officer that runs the party. Think about what's happening right now. Yeah.

Is that how you're going to try and take an election? Yes. Yes, that's exactly what they're going to try to do. You know, Nikki Haley is operating in a world that thinks it's still plausible for the 2024 Republican Party to go back to being the Republican Party of 2012 or of 2008, which, by the way, was no beauty. It was still a party I opposed, but at least they operated in something approximating a more normal way of being a political party. Very different situation right now. It's almost sad that Nikki Haley thinks that old party may still be a possibility. It's all nepotism. It's all Trump. It's all Maga. And she's getting crushed. It doesn't seem she has a path to winning even a single state.

But good for her for staying in. She's triggering Trump by staying in. She's probably weakening Trump a bit in the eventual general election by staying in. But Trump is now it's not even just friends now. It's overtly make my daughter in law chair of the RNC. Let's see if they do it. How long does Nikki Haley have in this campaign? It's probably more like months than weeks because she seems determined to staying in for for at least now. But it's going to be over pretty damn soon. We have a voicemail number that you can call any time of day if you have something you want to suggest or praise me for or I guess criticize me for. You can call two one nine two. David P. Here is a caller canceling me, unsubscribing because I support Joe Biden's genocide in Gaza.

David, your complicity in Biden supported bombing of Gaza. I'm with you, man. Sorry, but a waste. Yeah, unsubscribe. We'll see what happens with Luke. I'm hoping he doesn't fall into the same trap you did. Yeah, I guess referring to to Luke Beasley. Look, guys, I don't know how many times I have to tell you this.

I don't support bombings. And I also don't believe that what's happening in the Israeli Hamas war is Biden's. I understand that the United States sends aid to Israel. I understand that. But you're taking a big leap, especially when this is primarily a domestic politics program. And we talk about what is best for the American people, what economic policy, what health care policy, what education policy, what should be done with student loans, what should be done with the drug war, incarceration, immigration, et cetera. I find it a little bit of a stretch when folks

come in and say they're canceling me because of something I haven't even talked about in weeks and which obviously is not reflective of my view. That being said, we've had I would put it in the dozens of people canceled their paid memberships because of miss understood or miss attributed positions on what's going on in Israel and in Gaza. My only request, listen, you support or don't support anybody you want for any reason you want. My only request is make it something I actually believe or don't believe. You know, I got one that said, David, when you said you support the total extermination of Palestinian kids, I knew

I couldn't support you anymore. And I said, can you send me the day and the clip and the time code when I said that? Because that is really something that's not ringing a bell. And then I never hear from these people again. Here's my request. If you're going to send me one of these, I'm unsubscribing because of your view on on Israel messages. Give me the link and the time code where I said the thing you're accusing me of saying. My guess is in looking for it,

you'll realize you must be thinking of somebody else and that I didn't say any of this stuff. All right. We've got a great bonus show for you today. Jared Kushner, the son in law of Trump, says he's not going back into politics. This is very interesting because it seems to be the same thing that Ivanka is doing or not doing. We'll talk about the why. We'll talk about what's going on. The U.S. Senate has approved a ninety five billion dollar aid package for a number of countries, including Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. We will discuss the geopolitical implications there. And we're going to look into the dating app paradox. So many people are reporting that the dating apps are worse than ever. They are as robust as ever. The algorithms are as finely tuned as ever.

And yet people are reporting, including friends of mine on these apps, that it's a disaster. There's research into what's going on. NPR has an interesting article about it. All of those stories and much more on today's bonus show. The party doesn't have to end right now. If you want to get instant access to the bonus show, go to join Pacman dot com. You can use the coupon code Save Democracy 24 to shave about 50 percent off of the price of a membership. And then we will get you that bonus show, commercial free audio and video feeds of the show and so much more. I hope to see you then.