The David Pakman Show - 2/16/24: Dem calls for $50 min wage, Putin wasn't impressed with Tucker

Episode Date: February 16, 2024

-- On the Show: -- Democratic Congresswoman Barbara Lee, currently running for the US Senate seat previously held by the late Dianne Feinstein, calls for an illogical $50 per hour minimum wage -- Russian President Vladimir Putin says he was not impressed with Tucker Carlson on the basis of their recent interview -- Caller asks if Donald Trump will run for president again if he loses in 2024 -- Caller plans to vote for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. because he believes Joe Biden is too old -- Caller disagrees with David's list of future progressive leaders -- The Friday Feedback segment -- On the Bonus Show: Alexei Navalny dies in Russian prison, FBI informant charged with lying in Hunter Biden probe, office space going unused, and much more... 👍 Manscaped: Use code PAKMAN for 20% off & free shipping at https://manscaped.com 🩳 SHEATH Underwear: Code PAKMAN for 20% OFF at https://sheathunderwear.com/pakman 🖥️ UPLIFT Desk: Get 5% OFF with code PAKMAN5 at https://upliftdesk.com/pakman 💻 Stay protected! Try our sponsor Aura FREE for 2 weeks at https://aura.com/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 Let's start today with an example of a good policy idea, a just policy idea going too far and then actually giving credence to the typically terrible right wing arguments against it. I'm talking about the minimum wage. I'm going to play a clip for you from the debate for the Senate seat previously held by the late Senator Dianne Feinstein. Katie Porter is running for that seat. Adam Schiff is running for that seat. We've interviewed Adam Schiff and Barbara Lee. Katie Porter has ignored our requests for an interview. Here is Barbara Lee explaining why she believes we should have a fifty dollar

an hour minimum wage. Now, I'm here to tell you this would not make any sense whatsoever. And I tell you, this is an advocate of increasing the minimum wage. What Barbara Lee advocates for here actually gives credibility to the reason Republicans oppose raising the minimum wage. I will explain in a moment. Let's take a listen. You're calling for a $50 an hour federal minimum wage. That's seven times the current national minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. Can you explain how that would be economically sustainable for small businesses?

You have 60 seconds. First, let me say I owned and ran a small business for 11 years. I created hundreds of jobs, benefits, retirement benefits, also health care benefits. I know what worker productivity means, and that means that you have to make sure that your employees are taken care of and have a living wage. In the Bay Area, I believe it was the United Way came out with a report that very recently $127,000 for a family of four is just barely enough to get by. Another survey very recently, $104,000 for a family of one, barely enough to get by low income because of the affordability crisis. And so just do the math. Just do the math. Of course, we have national minimum wages that we need to raise to a living wage. You talk about twenty twenty five dollars

fine. But I have got to be focused on what California needs and what the affordability factor. So listen, there's a couple of different things here. First of all, it is absolutely true that there are parts of California where if you're not making six figures, you are going to get pushed out pretty damn far before you can afford housing. That needs to be dealt with to some degree by building dramatically more housing, which we can't do because of building zoning ordinances, codes and all sorts of other things.

The housing issue has to be dealt with. You also have to remember that in most of California geographically. Now I know that the population is overwhelmingly in the coastal cities, but in most of California geographically, the entire 50 dollar an hour thing is completely implausible, even based on cost of living. But here's the problem with this idea. Even if we dealt with the housing issue, we need a higher minimum wage. The minimum wage is absurdly low federally.

It's absurdly low in some states more than others. But this is what we call a good idea going too far. And we end up making the right wing arguments viable when the right wing goes, listen, if you give them a 16 dollar minimum wage next thing you know, they'll ask for a 50 dollar minimum wage. And we on the left go a 50 dollar minimum wage isn't an equilibrium wage. It's not an inflation adjusted wage. It's not a productivity. Nobody would do that. And then Barbara Lee goes, actually, yeah, we would want that when the right says increasing the minimum wage will cause job losses.

We say it wouldn't as long as it's a reasonable increase. We're not talking about a 50 or 100 dollar minimum wage, which would cause job losses because it would be an out of sync wage relative to the surrounding economics of the area. And then all of a sudden she says, well, we actually do need a 50 dollar minimum wage. A 50 dollar minimum wage on a global scale could make domestic businesses be at an even bigger competitive disadvantage and hurt the macro economy of the United States. If you set the minimum wage so far above the equilibrium wage, you can create labor market distortions with an oversupply of workers for these new fifty dollar an hour minimum

wage jobs. This will lead leave other important jobs open and unfilled, which can cause all sorts of problems depending on what types of jobs those are. It's a misallocation of resources. It will reduce the incentive for many people to pursue the sorts of higher education that we need in order to stimulate innovation when it comes to medications and all sorts of lifesaving products, et cetera. It will tamp that down. So we need a well calibrated increase to the minimum wage. If you find the right number for the minimum wage, it's a great thing for the economy. Workers who earn minimum wage tend to spend a higher portion of their income on consumption,

which is demand side stimulus for the local economy. Most minimum wage workers, you give them a reasonable equilibrium raise. They'll spend a lot of that money in their local economies that creates more jobs. It's a good thing. And a couple of ways that you could do this would be tie the minimum wage to inflation or tie the minimum wage to inflation or tie the minimum wage to productivity growth. And this is a way to make sure that the lowest paid workers don't fall behind without going so far that you start to damage the economy. You'll still improve worker productivity with a nice inflation adjusted

wage and you'll do a lot of good for the economy. So to give you some hypothetical numbers, if the minimum wage rose in step with inflation dating back to 1968, you'd be talking about something in the low 20s. And similarly, if it went with productivity, you'd be talking about twenty two or twenty three dollars an hour. You can justify that. Maybe not in every market in the United States. You know, there are parts of Mississippi where cost of living is really, really low. Can you make an economic justification for a twenty two dollar and 50 cent minimum wage there? Maybe not.

But in much of the country, including many of our urban and population centers, the fight for 15. Listen, that was four years ago. There's been inflation since then. There there's there's been five, six years ago even that you can you can make a really good empirical argument for a twenty one or twenty two dollar minimum wage, certainly in many states and urban centers. Fifty dollar minimum wage is not an equilibrium wage, and it just gives fodder to the right wingers who say this is a

slippery slope. Next thing you know, they'll want seventy five an hour, 100 an hour when it is not economically defensible. I have no moral issue with people making fifty dollars an hour, but I am not finding a way economically and empirically to defend that. And that's the point. Vladimir Putin says he was not impressed with Tucker Carlson's two hour interview of him. Honestly, nobody was really impressed with Tucker in that interview. That's for sure. Quote, Sincerely speaking, I didn't fully enjoy this interview, the Russian leader said this week. This is an article in The Daily Beast.

Tucker Carlson did everything he could to impress Vladimir Putin. The article writes, But Putin nevertheless was not impressed. He told interviewer Pavel Zarubin this week, Sincerely speaking, I didn't fully enjoy the interview. Frankly, I thought he would behave aggressively and ask tough speaking, I didn't fully enjoy the interview. Frankly, I thought he would behave aggressively and ask tough questions. I wasn't just prepared for this. I wanted it. Now, there's two sides to this. OK, one side to this is, listen, if I flew to Russia as a critic of Putin and interviewed Putin and I know how many people have accidentally fallen out of windows and died or accidentally

stabbed themselves 10 times. Maybe that one's an exaggeration after criticizing Putin. I don't know that I would be in a position to be as aggressive or assertive with Putin as what I would do on U.S. soil, for lack of a better term. So one part of this is I don't necessarily fault Tucker for not being as aggressive as Putin is alluding to. But Putin, of course, is being coy here in that he understands you're on Russian soil. You know what we've done to adversarial media and dissidents, etc. He can easily, I was ready and prepared for a much tougher interview, but I didn't get it. Thanks to Tucker.

Well, your authoritarian regime may to some degree be the reason why you didn't get that tough interview. This isn't the defense of Tucker overall, but it is it is a reality. The other side of this is Putin is really good at humiliating and diminishing other people. And Putin did this during the interview with Tucker by droning on for an hour about the Tucker said, why did you invade Ukraine? Putin spoke for an hour. Tucker tried to interrupt and Putin would make fun of him about having tried to join the CIA, about how he thought there was going to be a serious interview and all these different things.

So the interview itself was a humiliation. It made Tucker look weak. And then now these comments are just part of that as well. And I am completely against authoritarian leaders. But it can't be denied that Putin is very, very good at this. Now, when we ask the question, what was the interview even for? I don't really know. I mean, they they they both ended up kind of looking silly.

Tucker looked weak and like he was completely unable to control the interview. And Putin looked like he had no real justifications for his actions, didn't give any kind of real. Viable explanation for his aggression in Ukraine talked in circles, and that wasn't really impressive either. The only impressive thing is the casual nature with with with which Putin was able to impress Tucker. And it is no surprise that now Putin is saying, I didn't come away super impressed with Tucker Carlson. for taking a little off the top and a new foil blade to go smooth wherever you want.

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Let's hear from some folks in the audience. We love to do this on the Friday show. We do this via discord at David Pakman dot com slash discord. And we're going to start today with Emma from Georgia. Emma, welcome to the program. What's on your mind today? Thanks for having me. Welcome. So the question I had was, if Trump loses this upcoming election, do you think he would continue to run again? No, I think this is it for Trump. I think if Trump loses this one in twenty twenty eight, he would be, I guess, 82 going

on 83. I truly think that this is it. Trump's either doing four more years as president or zero. And then that is going to be it. All right. Thank you. Thank you for answering that. Which, by the way, Emma, makes it all that more significant if we can defeat Trump in November. I believe that's the end of Trump's political career. And then it's a question of what happens

to MAGA. Does MAGA evaporate, evaporate when Trump is done or does it persevere? We don't know yet. Right. Thank you so much for answering that for me. All right. Emma from Georgia. So great to hear from you. Why don't we go next to Avtec from Chicago? Avtec. I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. Welcome to the program. What's on your mind today? Yes. Thanks for taking my call. I love watching your show, but the biggest thing is I'm currently voting independent. Meaning you're voting for who? Kennedy. Okay. Trump. I've never voted Republican. And I just think Biden will probably die in office. So I can't like vote for someone who I don't believe is going to be physically there for

another four years, either mentally or like health wise. So it's like I don't know what to do. So I just got to vote independent this year. And what's I'm trying to figure this out. It sounds like you're saying politically you agree most with Biden, but you can't bring yourself to vote for him because you don't think he'll survive four years. Is that correct? That is correct. And so let's say you you vote for Biden and he gets another four years and he dies after two years and Kamala Harris becomes president. What's the concern?

What happens then that concerns you? I honestly don't think Kamala nothing against her. I just don't think she would have the like political know how I feel like the guy walk all over her and they being who like take advantage of her. I don't I just feel like she's not ready. They being who who will walk all over her. Probably the Republican establishment.

But literally meaning what? Like who? So give me a scenario. What happens? Like, for example, Republicans right now, they want I guess they want a border bill. They will still want a border bill under Kamala Harris. Kamala Harris is president. The House and Senate have to pass it. OK, what what does it mean? They walk all over her. It means they convince her not to veto it or something like that.

Well, let's say the Republicans gain control of the House and Senate again. Yeah, she vetoes the bill, but they override her veto against like the like what is actually needed. Like, see, I don't think they're going to have I don't think they'll have a majority. I don't think they'll have a majority such that they'd be able to do that. So I don't think that's a real concern. I guess what I'm getting to have tech is the following. It seems weird to me. Let me put it a different way. Are there issues on which you really agree with with Robert

F. Kennedy Jr.? Like, do you find him that where you look and you say, I love his position on what's on what issues? Environmentalism. I love his stance on environmentalism. He was an environmentalist lawyer. He's done. He has good policies and I just love his like environmentalist stance. What environmental policies, what environmental policies does he have that you like? Well, the problem is I haven't really had much time to look into it because the whole situation is just now coming up fast and Illinois got the election coming up and I'm voting absentee. So hold on a second. But so if you haven't had time to look into his environmental policies, how do you know

you like them? I don't know. He's been environmentalist lawyer and the other environmentalist groups I follow tend to like him and what he's done as a lawyer. The issue I have is he's done some good work as a lawyer, but in terms of what he's offered in terms of his platform, he wants to give private industry huge leeway to basically deal with the environmental problem, let private industry kind of deal with it and says they're well incentivized on their own to deal with it. To me, that's a scary, failed corporate strategy. So I agree with you that some of the work from his past is good, but I'm a little concerned

by what he's offering. Now, here's the last thing I'll say to you, Abtecht. To me, I would vote for the person whose policies I agree with the most. And you said that that's Joe Biden. Joe Biden dies in office. It doesn't change who the cabinet secretaries are. It doesn't change who are the people that are in place as judges. Thanks to Joe Biden being president rather than maybe Trump.

I just don't really see it as a major concern. It sounds to me like you should vote for Biden. OK. Yeah, we could. Yeah, it is. I don't know. I'll probably end up voting for Biden just because it doesn't be the easiest thing to do in terms of like. Policies And I know him better, but I just feel like his age is what's getting a lot of people. All right. Let's vote Republican and vote against Trump. Right. On the Republican ballot. So. All right, Avtec. Well, it sounds like you kind of have resolved it and you'll probably vote Biden. I think that's the right call. OK, thanks. All right.

I've checked from Chicago. Great to hear from you. Why don't we go next to Bray from Springfield? Bray from Springfield, Missouri. Welcome to the show. Hey, David, how's it going? Going well. Cool.

I just wanted to ask about something I haven't heard you guys mention it on the show, but a couple maybe a month or two ago, you guys changed the intro music. On the podcast, I was just wondering what's your process and deciding to change the music. There's nothing super scientific. It's just sort of like, hey, I think it's time for a refresh. Do we have anything audience submitted or what's kind of available? Our friend Stu Brooks from Dub Trio years ago generously told me, hey, if you ever want to use anything of ours, just let me know.

The team looked through the Dub Trio library. We found something we liked. We, you know, worked to figure out which little piece of it do we want to use. And that's basically it. There's there's no kind of like big process, you know. Oh, I see. Well, I knew you're like a musician and I didn't know if you had some part in the producing of it or anything. No, no, no, no. The song we used, it's a dub trio song published years ago and I had no role whatsoever in production. I see. Well, I really like it. Cool. Yeah, no, I like it, too. You know, we got some negative reactions like we do every time we make a change. But overall, the reaction has been very positive.

Right. I had another question about the Super Bowl. And I think, I think they're like people who are claiming that the Super Bowl was rigged, couldn't have possibly actually watched the Super Bowl because, I mean, I know it's just like an anecdote. It's not really solid evidence, but just when the Chiefs won the Superbowl, the camera cut to the other team and just the faces of the other players. Like if this was some giant operation, like they would have to have some kind of, I don't know. It just seems like that'd be hard to fake. Listen, you're, you're mentioning one of the dozens of reasons why I struggle

to believe that it was staged. Speaker 5 Right. I mean, just what just watching the game alone, it that would just have to take so much effort to actually rig something like that. Speaker 1 I agree. All right. Brave. Thanks for Missouri.

Great to hear from you. Very much appreciated. Why don't we go next to Ty from Connecticut? Ty from Connecticut. Welcome to the program. What's on your mind today? Speaker 4 Everybody happy Valentine's Day. Long time no talk. Thank you. I hope you got something nice planned for later and you're not working all day. All right. Apologies to the audience because every time I get up on here, everyone complains about how I talk slow but I'll make it quick I guess you had a video I didn't watch the whole thing that came out a little earlier ago talking about who is the next democrat or progressive to lead the future or whatever

and you're talking about like Jamie Raskin and John Osloff and the dude from California and stuff like that. I'm like, what are you talking about, bro? Like, what's a progressive? What are we doing here? Okay. Did you have a question? Yes. What is a progressive? What are we doing here? None of those people you mentioned are like particularly progressive. What makes any of those people progressive that you mentioned in that video? Oh, so the way I approach this is not. Let me find the individual with the most far left policies I can and say that that's the future of the progressive movement.

The way I evaluate the question is not only what are their ideas, but also how politically skilled are they? How good are they in thinking on their feet in debate situations, in fending off right wing propaganda? You know, there goes there's a lot more to it. So I guess I would just ask you, Ty, I mean, who do you see as the future progressive leaders? You know, admittedly, it's a bit bleak right now. You know, I'm I'm a pretty big fan of the squad. I know that there are aspects of the online that for reason, kind of go really hard at them. But they all have their own struggles. It's pretty hard to be a Palestinian right now if you're Rashida Tlaib. And Cori Bush is going through it.

I haven't heard anything from her. Look, I found the video confusing because we from like Bernie Sanders to Jamie Raskin. In what sense did we go from Bernie to Raskin as in the leader of the progressive movement, which was the the the like the title of your the theme of your video or whatever? Like how did that happen, according to you? The way it will to say that it happened, I don't think it has happened yet. I guess the question is, who is going to spearhead the next generation progressive movement? As I say in the video, it's not going to be Bernie since we're talking about the next generation. So by definition, it has to be someone younger. So then the question becomes who has the right mix of political skill,

pragmatism, connections and reasonably progressive ideology. And so I look at folks like Raskin, Newsom, Ossoff, Stacey Abrams. I think in terms of even younger people, Maxwell Frost and Richie Torres are industry interesting. You know, I mean, it's just my opinion. You know, I get that you're saying you disagree with me, but your only idea so far is like maybe the squad. I don't know. And I really question the political skill of the squad.

By the way, I don't even know that AOC is still even in the squad. I see AOC AOC recently. I did a video on this earlier this week. AOC has gotten significantly more reasonable and now she seems to be detested as a sellout by some on the far left. Speaker 2 OK, well, without getting into all of that, I did not make a video or whatever, so I'm not prepared to tell the world who the, but let me just ask you, because it seems like you're kind of, you were like delegating your like, oh, someone wrote this or someone said this or like, well, David, like, let me just ask you, like, you are like, supposed to like, you're like on the left side or whatever, like, who do you think ideally is a good candidate in

terms of your metrics of pragmatism? Who should we be looking at to get to get behind us? Like, I just gave you a list of five or six people. And you and you think that, like, John, you think that like John, you think that the youth, you, you think that we should be like, let me, let me, let me, let me, let me, let me, so next election cycle, presidential leader of the progressive party, who is like your ideal? What do you mean the leader of the progress? What party? What progressive party? Progressive movements. Yeah., progressive movement. You sorry. Who's your ideal candidate, my friend? Speaker 1 You're saying if I imagine someone from the ground up, what would their characteristics be or just to give you names of people? Speaker 2

Give a a maybe a single name, your most ideal candidate in a 2028 presidential election to lead the progress. Speaker 1 I don't have a single one. I just gave you six people that I think are doing interesting things. OK. I don't know. I'm. I don't give me time now. You give me a name. Who's your ideal? Give me. I think I'm looking for someone exciting. I think. OK. And I don't see any of that from any of them. So you're saying the ideal person for you, they're not even in politics right now. You couldn't name anybody. I don't think so. But I don't think it's so. I don't think if you don't think there's anyone that meets your perfect standard, then we would have to consider. Hold on, Ty. Hold on. I got you. If you're saying there's

no one that meets your ideal standard, it would make sense to choose from those who maybe fall short of that, but are the closest. Is that fair? I'm not saying that that's never fair. I'm just trying to get your true sense of it. Like, do you really love like Jamie Rath? Because I'm not excited about I don't love any of these people in the sense that I don't really care about these individuals as people, because for me, I don't idolize these people. For me, these are tools we use. Voting is a tool we use to get folks that will advance as many of our interests as possible for the greatest number of people. So I don't need to be excited. For me. It's just who's bringing to the table the right combination of skills, pragmatism, personality and positions.

So it's where I'm struggling with you, Ty, is you're blowing up everyone I'm mentioning. But you say the ideal person doesn't exist. So OK, pick from the people that exist. Who would you pick from from the people that exist? Let me. It's it's you know, it's it's really, really tough. Admittedly, it's really, really tough. I don't I don't have a great answer. Do you have someone that's better than the people I named? See you when you put in the pragmatism thing, because I'm thinking about that, um, that woman in California, was it in Seattle or something like that? I can't remember her name.

Krishna something. She's like a five. She's like a. Speaker 1 You're saying the socialist city council member in Seattle. Speaker 1 Yeah. Look, you said pragmatism. You're putting in all these other things. I'm just saying a progressive like I'm just I'm not attacking you, Ty. I'm just saying, are you referring to the socialist city council member? And I personally like her. And I get that she could be, you know, kind of hard to digest for a lot of people. Yeah. She's dead on arrival, Ty. This is the part of the reason she's not on my list is the idea that she's going to be the leader of the of the National Progressive.

It's totally dead on arrival. All right, Ty, listen, I appreciate the call. Let's keep thinking about it. OK, got you. All right. Ty from Connecticut. You know, it's like if everybody I'm mentioning is terrible and then you don't have any better ideas, then maybe my ideas aren't so terrible. You know, I don't know. All right. Let's take a very quick break. If you're holding on,

stick with me. We'll go right back to the discord lines in a moment. Did you know that even if you exercise once a day and then basically sit the rest of the day, you can still suffer the consequences of a sedentary lifestyle because physical inactivity throughout the workday can cause a whole host of different health issues. And that's one of the many reasons I use a standing desk at desk that can go up or down. It gets my creative energy flowing. I can walk around. I get circulation. I really don't want to go back to a regular desk. And the standing desks I've been using for years are from a company called Uplift Desk, which is why I asked them to become a sponsor. They let you customize every little detail of your new desk, dozens of different

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That's you. P.L.I.F.T. Desk dot com slash Pacman. Use the code Pacman five for five percent off. The info is in the podcast notes. All right. Let's hear from a few more people via discord. You can find our discord at David Pakman dot com slash discord.

Let's go next to Eddie from France. Eddie from France. Welcome to the program. What's on your mind today? Hi, David. I've been a listener for, I think, three theme songs now and a member for two. Appreciate that. So to give you a bit of time frame. Thank you. But I really wanted to ask. Would you be willing to talk more about the Israel Palestine conflict? I'm willing. I just don't have anything new to say about it.

So I would just be kind of like I don't know that I I would. I've kind of said everything I have to say about it. So I would just be kind of like, I don't know that I would. I've kind of said everything I have to say about it. Speaker 3 That may be maybe fair, but as a channel of your size, I think you actually do have quite a bit of sway in the general political discourse, I think. At roughly two million, I wouldn't be surprised if you have you know Biden staffers listening to your show every so often yeah and it could be beneficial while maybe you don't have anything new in the general discussion of this uh you know there's things happening every day that I think are important to report on from when the U.S. was blocking condemnations from the U.N. to, you know, billions in funding to Israel or I mean, now we're at over 30,000 civilians killed, according to your med monitor. Joe Biden could very well lose due to a massive loss in Arab American support.

Those that even worked for his campaign in 2020 are vowing to not only not work with him, but never vote for him again due to these issues. And I think it would be good because I think your audience doesn't necessarily overlap with other audiences that are talking about this on a very regular level, like Kyle Kulinski's show, Majority Report, Hassan Piker. So I just kind of wanted to come in and just say, would you be willing to maybe even just once a week or just how you covered COVID or even Ukraine for a while, because it's been kind of dark since I think I'm not mistaken, October 17th. That's a long time.

Yeah, you know, I am going to continue basically doing what I do. I will cover Ukraine, Israel, Myanmar, Ethiopia, the Syrian civil war. I'll cover all of them when I feel as though there are specific things going on that I can give a unique take on that are related to the primary focus of the show, which is domestic politics. So there have been a number of segments in the last couple of months about if or how the situation in Israel will impact the American election. Like that's a very in my wheelhouse topic because that's a big issue for us.

And so we've looked at polling of young people, their view on Biden related to his his actions in Israel and Gaza. So like that's very much related to this show with Ukraine. Similarly, this isn't really a foreign politics, foreign foreign affairs, foreign policy show. So I cover it when there's something actionable and relevant to the way I do the show. So Putin's interview with Tucker met that. As you say, there's lots of other shows from what you're telling me that are covering this daily. So it's not like there's a shortage of shows covering those things, you know?

Sure, there's not a shortage. But like as a progressive, I would think that you would want to cover something like, for instance, after the ICJ ruling where Rule 15 to 2, you know, Israel needs to provide aid to Gaza. Immediately after that, there was that report that said 12 UNRWA workers participated in the October 7th attack. Channel 4 did a deep dive into this, even got their hands on the documents. There was no evidence of this, but based on that, Joe Biden has canceled all funding to the UNRWA, which supplies all food and medicine to Gaza. And since the correction where his press secretary has been confronted directly on this, they're taking no action on it. I think this is very much

within that wheelhouse. And it happened quite recently. Yeah. All right. I mean, listen, I'll tell you one thing, and I don't do the show based on what generates the most interest. I do plenty of stories just because I want to do them, even though most of my audience doesn't care. The stuff you're talking about, my audience does not really have that much of an interest in it, as evidenced by the number of people that watch those clips. Now, I don't believe something is worthy or not of coverage based on the views that it gets. The reason I bring it up is you're asserting that my audience is extremely interested in this stuff and I'm not giving them what they want. When I cover stuff

like that, it will sometimes get one or two percent the audience of the average of what we do. So that is a signal to me that it is not an unmet need among my audience. And in particular, as you say, so many other shows are covering that stuff daily, you know, so I'm not sure I know what else to say, Eddie, but I hear what you're saying. The facts about what my audience is looking for aren't totally corresponding with what you're saying, but we'll continue to evaluate and tweak and adjust the show that we do. I don't think that I'm asserting that your audience would be interested. I'm doing more of a an appeal to to humanity and principle here of what you as a progressive or leftist, whatever you want to consider yourself in the US is

actively participating in an active and these plausible genocide, according to the ICJ. Hundreds of thousands of people are starving now. I have untreated infections and wounds. We are actively participating in that by funding the weaponry and defunding the aid. Yeah. As as you know, Eddie, as you know, Eddie, I completely have a different perspective than you as to the entire framing. And this is part of the issue that, OK, so now we would need an hour and a half to even unwind what you just said. And I lose my entire audience if that's what I spend my time on. Just the show's over, the show's over, if that's what I do. All right.

I guess doing what you do. All right, Eddie. Thanks for the call. Let's see. Yeah, it's so complicated because we let's not even let's not even continue delving into it. We'll maybe I'll do a segment addressing that sort of call. Let's go next to how about what about Anthony from Denver? Also a website member. Thanks for calling in, Anthony. What's going on? Thank you. So my question is in regards to legislature attempting to address the housing market. And I know that last week you had that call that was talking about the purchase of single family homes, but I kind of had a different aspect I wanted to ask about. So in Colorado, we recently had a bill that requires all long-term rentals to be registered through the state in

order to hopefully ensure minimum standards of living. And now there's also a bill getting introduced that would change the tax bracket of short-term rentals from residential rates to commercial rates, which is basically quadrupling the rate from, I don't know, seven to 28. I was wondering your feelings on that approach to try to kind of balance out the housing market and slightly disincentivize commercial purchases of residential homes. I'm not against that. I mean, essentially, the economic concept is if you make something expensive enough, you disincentivize people from buying it. It's not a new concept. And the ways to do it are numerous. With all of this housing stuff, we need to build way more housing units.

That's a big thing. It's limited in many cases by zoning. So I think that this relates to zoning. It's limited in many cases by funding. So I'm I'm open to you know, we've talked about how in Vancouver and many other parts of Canada, they've put in place a tax for foreign purchases of properties. And the idea is to disincentivize those from other countries to drive up the cost.

All of these ways of making it more expensive for the people who we don't want driving up prices. I'm kind of fine with all of it, but we really need a direct path like, you know, do not go directly to jail, do not pass, go do not collect two hundred dollars sort of thing to building more housing. And by definition, if we continue to have housing be part of a market, which we call the housing market, which I believe we're going to continue to do, I don't think we're going to decommodify housing.

And I don't think we should in totality for the reasons I've said. We need to dramatically increase the number of housing units. And I think a lot of policy needs to be geared directly around that. And then taxes, fees, et cetera. Yeah, fine. Depending on the market we're in, a lot of that can be appropriate, but it's not the big picture solution in my mind. OK, great.

Thanks. I do have another quick legislature question, if that's OK. Yeah, go ahead. Sure. So there's a bill getting introduced in Florida that would make it an act of defamation to call someone a racist. I was wondering your opinion on what you think the reaction would be of Florida legislatures if the first successful case to get brought up is from Letitia James against Donald Trump. Yeah, I think like with many of these things, you know,

they put in place the book bans and then all of a sudden the Bible is banned because it actually violates a lot of the principles that are kept in mind when it comes to what books are allowed and what books are not allowed. All of those sorts of things related to speech of different kinds have the potential to backfire. Honestly, though, so many right wingers seem so ideologically committed to some of this legislation that even if it backfires once, but it succeeds for them 15 times, they'll be OK with it. So even though I see the point you're making, it seems like it would be a complete rejection of the principle they use to create some of these bills. I don't think it's going to change their minds right away, even if that happens. OK, great.

Thanks. All right. Anthony from Denver. Great to hear from you. Why don't we go next to. Oh, I don't know. How about Janelle from San Antonio? Janelle, welcome back to the program.

What's on your mind today? Hi, David. How are you doing? Doing well. Good. Okay. So I just want, I wanted to, uh, as a woman step forward and just tell you that with all of this stuff going on, with all the laws against women being able to get what they need health care wise, abortion, whatever, you know, all these men discussing our bodies and making the law. I just wanted to say that women are waking up. Women are not going to put up with it anymore. We realize now that men, unless they're doctors, of course, unless they're my OBGYN, should not have any say at all, legislatively, anywhere, anything, 100%. women should be able to get what they need done, done. And men need to trust women as adults. You know, I'm not talking about the children victims here. I'm talking about women adults. Men just need to trust them to make their own decisions 100% of the time, because this is an

area in life that men have no control over. And most men have no idea how any of it works in the first place. So now you're not saying, Janelle, that male loved ones who are involved in these decisions should be excluded. You're just saying that as a matter of the law and of government and of policy, the idea of disproportionately men imposing rules and decisions on women, that's wrong. And that can't that can't be allowed. Exactly. Exactly. I'm not talking about loved ones who are welcomed by the woman to come in and help her make a decision. Not listen, Janelle, you are making a good point. I struggle to argue with you because you're, of course, absolutely correct. Yes. And I think now women are going to keep fighting for their rights. We are going to get it put into the Constitution

that women deserve 100 percent bodily autonomy 100% of the time, whether that means getting abortion or consent to have sex in the first place. Now, Janelle, let me ask you just one thing. Denying somebody that it's a crime punishable by law, not something that people get away with. Any lawmaker in the future that tries to legislate a woman's body should be thrown in jail. I think it's that I think that's going to be that's going to be very, very tough to make any of that the law.

But just one other question, Janelle, if women all of a sudden women legislators said, hey, we want to ban abortion and we're women, so we get to do it. You still wouldn't be OK with that, right? Absolutely not. OK, so it's not just about a decision for somebody else's body. That's the principle that I think we're getting to. Exactly right. All right, Janelle. Well, good. An important declaration. I appreciate it. All right. Thanks for calling me, Dave. All right. Janelle from San Antonio. Let's go to a break. I'm sorry I wasn't able to get to more people, but I will try again next week that I promise you. Look at the stats and our sponsor, Aura, gives you peace of mind. Aura is the all in one solution to

keep your accounts safe. Aura scans the dark web for your personal info, emails, passwords, social security numbers and alerts you if anything is found and helps you fix the problem fast. You also get alerts about suspicious credit inquiries. Aura protects all of your devices from malware with state of the art antivirus. And Aura helps you manage what your kids can do on their devices with really easy to use parental controls. You can try Aura for free for two weeks at Aura dot com slash Pacman. Your usernames and passwords could already be floating around. It takes just seconds to find out using Aura's free trial so you can change your passwords Let's get into Friday feedback for the week. Emails, YouTube comments, Instagram replies, Twitter replies, tick tock replies. It's all

fair game. And some of them will end up featured here. Some very interesting comments that I'm hearing from folks on all sides of the political aisle with regard to the forthcoming election. Here's Eddie S who said, I voted for Obama, believing him to be more progressive and was disappointed with his status quo presidency. I voted for Joe Biden expecting a more status quo presidency and have been pleasantly surprised by how much more progressive he's turned out to be. Age and wisdom sometimes go together. You can simultaneously hold the views that Joe Biden isn't as progressive as you or I are or might like him to be. And that he has also been the most progressive president, at least since FDR, if not indefinitely. Both of those things can be true.

And I had very I won't call them low. I'd call them moderate expectations for Joe Biden. And he has blown my expectations out of the water. I know that a lot of the discussion is about, you know, on the right, it's about Marxism and dementia. And on the left, it's about status quo and being a true progressive and who can really beat Trump. But it's really difficult to make an empirical case that Joe Biden has been a bad president by any stretch of the imagination. Francis Simmons wrote in and says the only reason Trump hasn't bragged

about warp speed again, meaning Operation Warp Speed to develop vaccines for covid, is because he was booed when he did. Since then, he's never mentioned it again. He has to keep his cult happy. Yeah. For a while, Trump was in this seemingly difficult position where on the one hand he wanted the benefit of having pushed Operation Warp Speed. Trump wanted us to think thanks to him, we have vaccines. On the other hand, his followers hate vaccines, many of them. And when he did try talking about his how he deserves credit for the vaccine, he got booed. Now, I don't know if Francis is completely right that Trump hasn't talked about it since, but it's very clear that on balance, the benefit of talking about how he did the vaccine stuff

has diminished dramatically. And he's talking about it really infrequently, arguably. I mean, listen, I wouldn't even really say that it was an accomplishment. Every country did the same thing. They pre purchased vaccines to provide funding. One of the things that we can say he actually did right, like he didn't get in the way. It's no big miracle that Trump did it, but at least he didn't stand in the way of vaccine development.

He can't even really talk about because so many of his followers hate it. One of the funny things we're seeing on the YouTube channel as the election approaches is just getting flooded with trolls who just come by and say Trump 2024 Trump 2024. Here's just one little screenshot that shows it to you. This really doesn't bother me. There's there's a false belief among some of the Trump supporters in the audience that if Trump wins, I personally will have failed in some way.

I'm not enough of an egocentric narcissist to think that I can influence the outcome of the election. I'm just sitting here in the corner doing my little show. We have 330 million people in this country, tens of millions of whom are borderline lunatics desperate to put Trump back in power. The fact that I might not be able to change that doesn't really have too much meaning. And so the people who like love to come through and say, Dave, you know, Trump 2024, when Trump wins, you're going to do this. You're going to do that. I'm not going to do anything. And as I've said before, Trump winning would actually be great

for the show. It'd be bad for the country, which is why I don't want it. But it would be great for the show. And so I think we're going to be OK either way. Now, Mr. Choi wrote in with something different. Mr. Choi commented by election day, Pacman will vote for Trump. There's very little I can say about this. If you think I'm some secret Trump supporter or will become one and won't be honest with my audience about it, you're going to be waiting for a while. But one of the things I have said before is there's no character on the show. There's no here's what I say publicly, but here's what I really believe privately. Everything that I espouse on the show is really my belief. And by the way, there's a number of areas where if I just wanted to do what made the audience happy, I could take a different position.

But anything you hear is just what it really is. So what I will tell you is this. I don't see any path to me becoming a Trump voter by November. I just don't see it. If it happens, I will tell you if I become the Trump supporter, this guy predicts I will absolutely give you that information. DG said I voted against Trump twice and will do so a third time. But let's be honest, Biden is way too old. He's always messing up thoughts and delivery that it's hard to defend him against the cognitive

decline allegations. Yeah, I think a better approach on this, because, listen, as I've been saying for years, it's obviously not the same Joe Biden from 2012 when he ran circles around Paul Ryan in the VP debate. It's obviously not that Biden Biden's in his 80s now. My view on this is even if you convince me that Biden is suffering from cognitive decline, it seems obvious Trump is as well. Trump's ideas are terrible and Biden's ideas are good. Trump puts sycophants around him who get nothing done. And Biden puts people around him who have executed what I believe on paper is the most

progressive presidential term, certainly in 70 years. So if they're both demented, I'm voting Biden and you should do it. It actually doesn't really make things that much more complicated. Oh, well, why not kick them out and find someone new to run? Because you probably lose if you do that. It's really chaotic after Biden has already swept every primary. Then go, you know, I think we're going to kick you out because of your age. Really?

Well, I've got arguably the most successive progressive term in history. Yeah, we're going to kick you out because you're 81 or however old he is. That generates chaos. I don't think that helps Democrats. So that's why I don't think they're going to do it. Jeff Hudson wrote in and says, if Trump got what wanted, he might not find he has won because Biden would also have the same rights that Trump wants. And Biden is the president with the power of the president. Trump, you reap what you sow.

Yeah, I think what this individual is trying to communicate is that a lot of the arguments Trump is making now with Biden as president are potentially really bad arguments for Trump. For example, if there really is total presidential immunity that Trump claims for himself while he was president, that means Biden has total and complete immunity right now. If Biden wants to come up with whatever way to stay in office indefinitely, according to Trump, Biden has immunity. You can't do anything about it. Or similarly, if Trump had

every right to stop the counting of the electoral votes, send things back to the states, fake slates of electors, all of that stuff. If Trump had that ability legally in 2020, Biden has it now and he can do that exact same thing to keep himself in the Oval Office. If that's the point Jeff is making, I think it's a very good one. I think it's a very good one. Wicked beats posted to the subreddit. Do you think Joe Biden will eventually resign? And they write, Joe Biden seems to believe that he must personally defeat Trump in 24. Biden doesn't trust anyone to get the job done but himself. Otherwise,

he would announce he's not running and allow Democrats to hold a primary election. Biden once said, while campaigning, I view myself as a transition candidate, implying he knows he's too old to stick it out for two whole terms. I think he may still see himself this way and that he probably knows he's too old for another full term. I know it. You know it. Your grandma knows it. You know it. Your grandma knows it. Eighty three years is pretty old to be starting a second term for the most scrutinized and important job on Earth.

The only way Biden ensures the presidency remains with Dems in twenty four and twenty eight is to win the election and eventually resign at an opportune moment, passing the torch to Kamala Harris before advanced age renders him ineffective. He would avoid an election disaster for Dems in 2028. This is an interesting one. This is less crazy in the sense of saying kick Biden out now, despite an extraordinarily successful first term. I am not yet ready to take a position on resignation after winning.

But I'm going to think about it. And this is someone who is at least being a little more realistic in their thoughts about what could or should go down. All right. And also from Reddit user OK, Refrigerator says, I don't understand why a criminal conviction would change potential Trump voters minds against voting for him. I think this makes a lot of sense. Take a look.

If someone is willing to vote for Trump up to this point, why is conviction the deciding factor? They ignore his mental decline, his role in January 6th, his fallaciation. I don't know if that's a word of foreign dictators, his known abuses of blue collar workers, his gross affiliation with Jeffrey Epstein is 91 bogus indictments, bogus in quotes. What would a guilty verdict do to change the minds of these people? Why would they even believe the trial was fair? I'd be curious if anyone has an explanation. I actually agree with this completely. And what I what I the way I would frame it is as follows. If you are still a supporter of Trump. At this stage of the game, why do you care about

conviction? You would write the convictions off as rigged. They would reinforce your need to support Trump. But here's the important thing. The poll that this person is referring to found 80 percent of Americans say if Trump were convicted, they wouldn't vote for him. The really important thing to remember is that that includes a whole bunch of people who already would never vote for Trump. So I think that the slice who would change their position on this based on an on a conviction is actually quite small. I don't think the conviction would move that many people. And if that's the case, I think the numbers do not look

good for Trump in November because it means he already has lost a lot of voters. I don't know that for a fact. Nobody should stay home. Every single one of us must vote. But it is absolutely the case that if you are still sticking with Trump right now, why the hell would you let a conviction dissuade you? And that's what makes me think Trump's in a really bad spot in November. Let me know your thoughts. We have a fantastic bonus show coming up today.

Sign up at join pacman dot com. It's going to be a doozy and then I'll be back here on Monday.