The David Pakman Show - 2/20/23: Leaked Fox texts are stunning, Nikki Haley still visibly struggling

Episode Date: February 20, 2023

-- On the Show: -- Residents in Ohio near the train derailment are now looking for their own chemical tests as trust in official statements is low -- Fox News gets utterly destroyed by leaked text messages which confirm that, despite on-air claims that they believed Trump's election lie claims, they privately didn't believe any of it -- Anti-vaxxers now want "revenge," although it really isn't clear why -- 2024 Republican Presidential contender Nikki Haley struggles to explain why she is running for President, and whether she has any policy differences with Trump during another interview gone wrong -- Fox News pathetically doesn't mention Donald Trump during an interview with Ron DeSantis about the growing number of attacks against him -- Republicans will reportedly try to make Donald Trump sign a loyalty pledge, which has the potential to completely backfire against them -- The Donald Trump vs Ron DeSantis feud explodes as Trump goes full RINO on DeSantis -- An explainer about right wing virtue signaling and dog whistling -- Radical Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene says something racist while trying to prove how not racist she is -- Voicemail caller says David is erasing bisexuals in his coverage of George Anthony Devolder Santos -- On the Bonus Show: Senator Rick Scott drops plan to cut Social Security which he claims never existed, how the "boneless wing" became a culinary lie, Ron DeSantis looking to expand death penalty, much more... 🛌 Helix Sleep: Get 20% OFF a mattress + 2 free pillows. Go to https://helixsleep.com/pakman 🧻 Reel Paper: Code PAKMAN for 30% OFF + free shipping at https://reelpaper.com/pakman 👍 Get 10% off the Füm Journey Pack with code PAKMAN at https://tryfum.com 💻 Get Private Internet Access for 83% OFF + 3 months free at https://www.piavpn.com/David 😁 Zippix Toothpicks: Code PAKMAN10 saves you 10% at https://zippixtoothpicks.com -- 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 -- Subscribe to Pakman Finance: https://www.youtube.com/pakmanfinance -- 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 Speaker 1 Let's start today with the latest on the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. There's a bunch of different stories here. There's, of course, the regulatory story. There's the story of what caused this definitively. There's the Pete Buttigieg story, which is building even among some on the left and saying, OK, even if it's not Pete Buttigieg's fault, why did he not react or act quickly after it happened, which we will talk about separately? But in the immediate, there's the story about what is going on with chemicals and risks to people's health. Now, I want to start and preface this by saying this is not a conspiracy theory show. We debunk conspiracy theories. And when we talk about what's really going on with the chemicals in East Palestine, Ohio.

We are not even needing to take the position that there is a conspiracy of some kind here. We just know that there is a history of wrongly assessing health risks to people from chemical elements of different kinds and of being slow to tell people of that being the case. So when we look at this article from The New York Times, which says many in East Palestine skeptical of official tests seek out their own, it is not a conspiracy theory to say the government, whether it's federal or state, hasn't always been right or honest initially about these things. And so we want more information. The New York Times says the moves reflect residents deep seated mistrust of government screenings of toxic chemicals and fears of long term effects from the

train derailment. So this is a crazy situation that's taking place. This is Ohio and people you can check out the article. People who were not satisfied with what they were being told about toxic chemicals have been paying independent contractors to evaluate what is going on, trying to find tests of their own. And you can read the details and you can read the names of the different chemicals and you can read the statements from Norfolk Southern, as well as the state government. But there is a very long history of this. So, yes, one part of it is, wow, people are paying. People are so desperate to know is what's in the air, in the water. Are these things harmful to my health, to my family's health? People are so desperate and they are distrustful of the government to such a degree

that they're going into their own pocket, an area that is not a rich area by any means, and saying we're going to try to figure out how we can pay to get real answers here. This is reasonable. This is not a conspiracy. When you look back, I mean, listen, you don't have to think back very far. Look at the Flint water crisis. That's under a decade ago. The city of Flint, Michigan, we've talked about this so many times, changed its water source from I believe it was from Lake Huron, Huron. I don't even know how you say Lake Huron to the Flint River. And it was going to be at the end of the day, a money saving thing. And the river water was corrosive. It caused lead to leach from old pipes. It contaminated drinking water. And the latest I saw months ago is that the people of Flint are still on bottled

water. And it took years to resolve it. There were denials. There were all sorts of claims made that everything's fine and everything was not fine. And people ultimately were indicted. And then there's so many other cases. In the 1970s, there was the Love Canal. Love Canal is a neighborhood of Niagara Falls, New York. Remember, you've got Canadian Niagara Falls and American Niagara Falls and residents of Love Canal discovered that their homes and properties were built on a toxic waste dump. Massive dumps, not a satirical term in this case. And those chemicals in the dump were linked to health problems, birth defects, cancer, etc. The risk was initially downplayed by governments and it took years to eventually evacuate residents.

There's all these other examples. We've saw it with Agent Orange. We saw it with tobacco. We see it with Three Mile Island. So it is not a conspiracy theory to say there is a record of when these sorts of things happen, governments either out of ignorance or out of wanting to keep people calm, for lack of a better term, giving information that is wrong and whether it's deliberate or not doesn't really matter when you're talking about the health of your family. So that's where we are right now. Joe Biden making a last minute trip to Ukraine. But the complaints are the Biden administration isn't sending enough people to Ohio.

A failed former president, Donald Trump, now says that he will go to Ohio to the site of the derailment on Wednesday. I don't know the details of that, but if it's possible and if there is a public facing event, we will try to cover that. And if Joe Biden goes, we will try to cover that as well. But that's where we are. And it is unclear at this point how the residents of Ohio right now get definitive answers about water and air and soil and and those sorts of elements. Eventually, I'm sure we will get the full story, including from official entities. But right now, I would be skeptical as well. You don't have to ascribe malicious intent to it yet, but I would also be skeptical that

the full scope of this is known. Fox News leaked text messages confirm that while on air, people like Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham were acting as though there was merit and legitimacy to Donald Trump's bogus claims that he actually won the 2020 election privately. Fox hosts were texting each other and others and saying, this is nonsense. We know it's nonsense. This is a really big disaster. Fascinating, but not altogether surprising story. Rolling Stone has an article. Tucker Carlson pushes election fraud. B.S. Same night filing reveals he knows it's B.S. Dominion Voting Systems is suing Fox News for

spreading conspiracy theories, conspiracies about the company's role in nonexistent fraud in the 2020 election. Dominion submitted a bombshell legal filing Thursday, revealing that most of the Fox News hosts who pushed the big lie knew it was total BS, as well as the internal strife over how to cover it. These text messages are fascinating. Tucker Carlson was particularly incensed. The filing reveals, quote, Sidney Powell is lying, by the way. I caught her. It's insane. He texted to Laura Ingraham on November 18th. Ingraham responded that Sidney Powell is, quote, a complete nut, as is Rudy Giuliani. Quote, It's unbelievably offensive to me, said Carlson. Our viewers are good people and they believe it. Well, then why are you continuing to push that idea on air? He said,

how did senile hermit Joe Biden get 15 million more votes than his boss, rock star crowd surfer Barack Obama? Results like that would seem to defy the laws of known physics and qualify instead as a miracle. Was the 2020 election a miracle? So what? So the story here is they knew it was B.S. They were texting each other that it was B.S. And yet on air, they continue to entertain this stuff as if it was a serious thing. Here's an example of Laura Ingram interviewing Sidney Powell, whom privately she was saying is a complete nut. Yeah, this is coup 5.0. And the Department of Justice and the FBI really need to get after it right now and

investigate all the reports of fraud. There are hundreds of them. Wow. Hundreds of report of fraud, reports of fraud. That's that's stunning. Well, I hope Attorney General Barr is doing that. Very, very hopeful that he's doing that. Otherwise, we're in big trouble as a country, especially with elections going forward. Yeah. So there's a lot to understand. Privately, Laura Ingraham is saying Sidney Powell's a nut. OK, publicly, Sidney Powell comes on, makes all of these false claims about the election. And Laura Ingram says, if this isn't being investigated, we're in trouble as a country.

Wow. Openly lying to their audience. Another example, here's actually a good little compilation that CNN did. Remember, privately, all of these people, all of these people are saying this is nonsense. Here's what they were saying publicly. The fix already in. It is a damning indictment of Fox News. The outcome of our presidential election was seized from the hands of voters.

As a network publicly and repeatedly promoted former President Trump's 2020 election fraud claims to millions of their viewers. Every American should be angry. You should be outraged. You should be worried. You should be concerned at what has happened in the election and the lead up to this election. Privately, top anchors and executives mocked Trump's lies, calling them ludicrous, really crazy stuff and totally off the rails. The revelations coming from hundreds of pages of newly released evidence in the legal filing as part of the Dominion Voting System's lawsuit against Fox News.

In this text exchanged two weeks after the election, Tucker Carlson texting other Fox News hosts, Sidney Powell is lying, by the way. I caught her. It's insane. He says about Trump's lawyer Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani's unfounded claims. Sidney is a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy. Laura Ingraham wrote back. Tucker responds, it's unbelievably offensive to me. Our viewers are good people and they believe it. Even as those same hosts went on the air arguing completely otherwise. All right, these election challenges are still going on and disturbing irregularities have

been found and must be investigated. Have they really Laura? To the fullest. On election night, the network first to call Arizona for Biden. The Fox News decision desk is calling Arizona for Joe Biden. That is a big get for the Biden campaign. As Trump's baseless conspiracy theories started to take hold. This is a fraud on the American public.

So we'll be going to the U.S. Supreme Court. Carl. Yeah. Anyway, you guys get the picture. So there's a bunch of different stories here. Of course, there is, again, the story that Fox News lies to its audience for profit. Now, you could say, well, but David, all of these for profit media networks are going to create content that is profitable. Yes, but they don't all brazenly lie while behind the scenes the anchors are saying we are telling lies to our audience. There is actually a difference there.

There are many criticisms of corporate media that can be made that apply to all of these outlets. But this sort of brazen lying was not being carried out by every corporate media outlet. So that's that's one story. The second story, of course, is that Fox News presents itself as news. But the people I just named Hannity, Ingram, Tucker Carlson, when the rubber meets the road and they end up in court universally, Fox News lawyers say these are not news people. These are entertainers who use hyperbole and exaggeration. And that's the argument they make when they are confronted with the reality of their lives. But there is a third story here, and it's about the congressional hearings that are going on. We talked about last week and the week before the weaponization of government

hearing. We talked about the big tech hearings, et. Part of their story. But let me be clear, not Fox News. Part of the story from the right has been that media was biased in suppressing news of the fraud and irregularities, the Hunter Biden story, criticism of liberals, etc. This is part of the story that they're telling. What those hearings to some degree are trying to do is to retrospectively legitimize and sort of rehabilitate what networks like Fox News did to come down against Twitter, for example, for limiting the spread of certain disinformation rather than saying, hey, you know what? Fox News hosts knew they were spreading lies. They want to use the hearings to say, forget about the text messages. The Fox News people

and everybody on the right thought they were telling the truth. And it was big tech and whoever else that censored that truth, even though privately we know that they know that they were telling lies. So we will see what the outcome is from this lawsuit. It is a very big deal. And I will let you know as that happens. But humiliating, if you have a sense of shame, it's not clear that the Fox News hosts do. There's a very interesting and disturbing article in Vice that I would encourage all of you to read about anti-vaxxers now wanting revenge, political revenge and legal revenge. And what's extraordinarily disturbing about this is that it doesn't make any sense and it's very dangerous. And so I'm not going to tell you everything that is in this

article, but the article is written by Anna Merlin. It's part of Motherboard, which is like the tech side, I guess we would say, of Vice. And there's a particular part that I want to point to here. Now, the subheading of the article says buoyed by the purported end of a pandemic that continues to kill thousands. Anti-vaccine activists now vow to punish their enemies. These people, said one, need to go to prison. There's a particular section of this article that is very scary. OK, and it reads major anti-vaccine figures are now seizing their chance to enact what they see as justice and do a little fundraising and image burnishing in the process. Besides Big Tree's nonspecific legal threats,

we have Children's Health Defense, the most moneyed and influential anti-vaccine organization in the U.S. led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. CHD is often involved in strange and frequently doomed litigation. But recently and with much fanfare, it launched a new one, an antitrust lawsuit against major news organizations and social media outlets, which they accused of conspiring to collectively censor online news about covid. The defendants included frequent anti-vax targets like the Washington Post and BBC. The plaintiffs are a veritable who's who of people making bogus host health claims, including CHD itself, Ty and Charlene Bollinger, who run websites and sell products devoted to making bogus claims

about cancer and vaccines. Jim Hoft, who founded right wing news site Gateway Pundit and Joseph Mercola, who I've spoken about before, a longtime figure in the natural health world who's been a major funder of the anti-vax movement. They now are going to try to seek the revenge they believe they are entitled to. Now, it's very important to understand that the vindication they are asserting for themselves, they are claiming the anti-vax are claiming they have been vindicated. Now, often and I know that this is hard to believe. Often it's as simple as, oh, you know what? We were right.

They said the vaccine prevented covid and it doesn't. Boom. OK, now only if you do no investigation yourself and completely suspend all memory of what took place for years, could you believe that in the real world? We have a more evidence based understanding not only of vaccines, but of covid and all of these different things. And so, for example, when you take the claim, they told us the vaccine prevented covid and it doesn't. You have to remember three plus years. Has it been three? Yeah. More than three years of history. The original vaccine meant to focus in on the original variant was very good at

preventing transmission and infection, meaning with that original vaccine, you were actually very protected against getting covid at all. As the virus continued to mutate, the effectiveness of the vaccine against infection diminished. This wasn't hidden. There was no cover up. It was all over the news as soon as it became known. And over time, the vaccine became less effective down to most recently from the latest studies I've seen, essentially not effective at all at preventing infection or transmission. The vaccine became primarily a tool that will prevent you from getting sick and prevent you from dying with relatively good efficacy, arguably saving millions, if not more lives.

That doesn't vindicate the anti-vax people. The anti-vax people were saying the same thing all along. What changed are the circumstances of the virus and the vaccines. Similarly, they claim to be vindicated over side effects, myocarditis, pericarditis, except they'll never tell you the real data about the risks of those conditions from the vaccine versus the risks of those conditions from covid. That's something they conveniently leave out. They insist that there were cover ups about hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin and zinc and vitamin C and vitamin D and all these different things. And they say they won't even allow it to

be studied. But you can look up and find endless peer reviewed studies about all elements of that. It seems as though maintaining a good level of vitamin D, generally speaking, is a good thing for fighting off a lot of infections. And that includes covid. That includes covid. The zinc Z-Pak vitamin C thing does not appear to be useful. Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine have now been studied very much extensively, not effective on COVID. So the vindication they claim one could only believe if you either aren't paying attention or aren't actually looking for scientific peer reviewed data. But that doesn't mean they aren't going to ruin a lot of people's lives with these lawsuits and these calls for

retribution. So read the vice article. We'll link to it in the description to the YouTube video for this story. And we'll talk more about it as those lawsuits move forward. One of our sponsors is Helix Sleep. I have been sleeping on a Helix mattress at home for years now. I couldn't be more happy with it. I recommend it to everybody. The other day, even though she's not allowed in the big bed, I put my baby daughter on the mattress and even she loved it. Helix Sleep is the premium mattress brand offering tailored mattresses based on your unique sleep preferences. Take the Helix Sleep Quiz. It asks you about your body type, your sleeping position. Do you get hot at night? Do you have back pain? And then Helix will match you with the mattress that's perfect

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possibility that Nikki Haley is actually running to be Trump's vice presidential nominee than it is about her inability to actually come up with differences between what she would do and what Donald Trump would do. But it's starting to get a little bit embarrassing. So we're going to look at a clip from Fox News Sunday, during which Nikki Haley was interviewed by Fox host Shannon Bream. Now, you might remember that last week Nikki Haley was asked multiple times on days two and three of her campaign. What are the differences between you and Donald Trump? And she basically made it about identity. She's younger, was the long and short of what she said, refusing to really criticize Donald Trump. And what you have to

understand is that this is very similar in some sense to what we started to see in 2015 and 2016, which is it's a version of ignoring Trump. Now, it's a different version. In 2015, 2016, many of the Republican candidates ignored Trump because they didn't want to take him seriously. And they assumed if we ignore him, he will go away. And yet what Trump did was he won by attrition. As one candidate would drop out, he would pick up the vast majority of their two or three percent, and then that would get him to seven, eight. And then they would keep ignoring him. And then someone else would drop out and then he would pick up their one or two percent and that would get him to nine, 10. And you understand this is a different version of ignoring Trump, which is we don't like

Trump. We know about the anti MAGA people in the Republican Party. That's who we're targeting. But we're also not going to really put a line in the sand and draw any kind of distinction from Trump. So will it work? I don't think so. But I don't know that it's designed to work.

If you're Nikki Haley and you're running for VP, this is arguably exactly what you have to do. But it is pathetic. Take a look at this. She says she's focused on Joe Biden. The problem is she's not going to get a chance to face Joe Biden unless she wins the Republican nomination. Clearly, you think you're a better option than he is or you wouldn't have gotten into

the race. So where do you two differ? I don't focus on President Trump, and it's amazing that the media wants to talk about that so much. Well, it's not really amazing. There are two candidates, you and Trump. So if you're going to talk about this race at all, 17 months out or whatever, the natural thing would be you compare and contrast the two candidates. She won't allow that because she will draw no distinction from Trump other than his age and his gender. Well, I just spoke to Mary. You will have

to focus on him and Governor Sanders or anybody else who gets in to get to President Trump. You will have to get through that field. My announcement was to a few thousand people in South Carolina. I just had packed rooms in New Hampshire. Not one person asked me about President Trump. Everybody wanted to talk about Biden. Everybody wanted to talk about the problems facing American families. I'm focused on Joe Biden. He's the one that's the president. You know, I will tell you, I think Americans need to have options. I think they need a new generation. I think we need new energy going in. I think we need to leave the status quo of the past and start looking ahead. And that's what I'm going to do.

And as much as people want to talk about other opponents, they're it's shut. She acts almost like it makes no sense that one would talk about the opponents in the race she's running. She's running in the Republican primary. So naturally you would talk about her opponents right now. There's one. His name's Donald Trump. Will be more. Many of them are my friends. My they're my friends.

Focuses on American families, how they're struggling. And remember last week, Donald Trump is my friend. Listen, there's two possible. Well, there are two. There's two reasonable possibilities here that explain this other than she's clueless. One is she's not running for president. She's running for VP. And so the way to get in Trump's good graces is to do as well as she can in the primary without attacking Donald Trump. That's one possibility. The second possibility is she's counting on Trump getting indicted and having to drop out. And by not attacking Trump, maybe she will end up being seen the most favorably by the MAGA people, such that if Trump ends up indicted and dropping out, she will they will switch to supporting her.

These are gambles. I have no that whether it can work is predictive in nature, and it really depends on whether those things happen. She also here's like a bonus clip during the same interview. She sort of couldn't explain why she was running, which is really just a fail. Check this out. This is she she's asked, like, why would someone vote for you? And she's like, why not? Speaker 1 OK, so I want to put up something for The Wall Street Journal this week. They said you had a great day, your great rollout day. But they said you have to provide a rationale for your candidacy that you haven't done yet. They said you've got to answer this question about why you versus anybody else in the GOP field. You know, they're talking about

the fact that you say, you know, America first, America should be powerful. Those are things that any GOP candidate is going to say. So why you? Why not me? You know, I am a wife of a combat veteran. I'm a mother of two children, one who's getting married. And I see how hard it is for her to look at buying a home. Are these credentials in Nikki Haley's mind to say, make her the president? That's in college. And I see what he's dealing with with woke education. You know, her kid is dealing with woke education.

So it follows logically that you would vote for Nikki Haley, huh? The daughter of immigrant parents who are upset by what's happening at the border. That's identity politics. Of course, I don't want to wait for someone else to fix this. I want to make sure we get in there and fix this. I'm not a lawyer. I'm an accountant. I've never worked in D.C. And I think it's time that we start putting a fire under what's happening in Congress. I think we need term limits. I think we need mental competency tests for for people over the age of 75. And I think we need far more transparency than we're seeing today. And what I do strongly believe is the American people need options. I don't think you have

to be 80 years old to be in Washington, D.C.. This is like getting sad. This is really getting that. Why should anybody vote for you? Well, why not? And it's good to have an option that is under 80 years old. Whoa, pretty compelling stuff. I really like the vision of America that Nikki Haley is laying out here. And I think it's time for us to start getting aggressive, getting back to what it means to end socialism in this country. What? When did socialism start in this country? That would be my question to Nikki Haley. This is really sad and pathetic. And, you know, the most positive spin you can put on this is that this is a play on if Trump's indicted, she'll just be there or she'll be Trump's VP. But this is a campaign that is going nowhere very, very quickly. And we're going to continue following it and seeing if Nikki Haley is interested in putting together any kind of

coherent explanation as to why she's running. All right. Let's go now from Nikki Haley, who is officially running in twenty twenty four to Ron DeSantis, who is not officially running in 2024. This is super interesting. Fox News interviewed Ron DeSantis this morning and said, hey, what do you think about all of these Republicans that are attacking you now? The main Republican who has been attacking Ron DeSantis is Donald Trump. No mention of it on Fox News. Just they don't even mention it. What exactly is going on here? I have an idea and I will tell you in a moment, but let's take a look at this clip. And again, when you see how every day Trump is attacking DeSantis, how do you interview DeSantis about all of the people that are attacking him and not

mention the main guy who's doing it? Look at this. You've come under a lot of incoming fire recently. Nikki Haley taking aim at you, Larry Hogan, as well, the governor of Illinois, you know, from your visit coming up here to Chicago. You know, what are what's your reaction to some of those attacks? OK, so it's already weird because like who's your reaction to some of those attacks? OK, so it's already weird because like who's paying attention to Larry Hogan's attacks? Everybody's paying attention to Trump's attacks. Well, Lisa, you know, if you're if you're an office holder and you're just sitting there twiddling your thumbs and not getting anything done, no one ever says anything. You can kind of just fly under the radar.

But when you're out there leading, when you're out there setting the agenda, not just for Florida, but really for the nation, which we've done. He's setting the agenda for the nation. This does sound like a guy who's running over the last few years. People see that and the people that don't necessarily like that are going to respond accordingly. But I can just tell you, if people are not firing at me, then I must not be doing my job. And so I view it really as positive feedback. Well, listen, you could get some positive feedback if you just stood up, turned around and said, hey, folks, I'm going to run for president. Just saying you would wind up with a standing

ovation right now. We'll give you 20 seconds. You guys like to have that announcement. So listen, we we're going to delve into this in a lot of different ways. But what is Fox News doing here? How does Fox News, which has been softly leaning towards DeSantis and softly getting ready to get away from Trump if Trump is not the nominee. Why don't they bring up that the lion's share of those attacks have been coming from Donald Trump? That that's who people are paying attention to. And we'll have examples of it later on in today's show. Not Larry Hogan and Nikki Haley. Nobody really cares about those attacks on DeSantis. Well, it seems that it's part of the same strategy we've

seen, which is Fox would rather someone other than Trump. But if it is Trump, they don't want to openly be hostile to him. Now, Trump has already started targeting Fox to some degree, talking about sinking ratings and different things. But it seems part of that same strategy. Fox isn't ready to abandon Trump yet, but they do want to set themselves up to be friendly with whoever. And so the way is you bring on DeSantis, you ask him about the attacks on him. You just don't mention that Trump is one of the people that's been attacking him. They're creating fake. It's the there's constantly an elephant in the room that people aren't mentioning. And this is the latest example of it. It's going to be a wild primary, that's for sure. All of the clips

I played for you in this segment, you can find on our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash the David Pakman show and on our Instagram. Just search David Pakman show on Instagram. One of our sponsors today is fume. Fume is on a mission to accelerate humanity's breakup from the bad habits that consume far too many of us, including ones that harm our health. Fume is a natural diffusive device that uses plants and behavioral science to trade out your negative habit for a positive one. Fume is not a vape. It's a non-electronic device designed to transform your negative habits instead of pods filled with potentially harmful chemicals like a vape. Fume uses cores infused with plants like peppermint and cinnamon for delicious natural flavors.

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self-destructive idea from the Republican National Committee. I will explain why. Let's talk about these loyalty pledges. The Associated Press reports Republican primary candidates will be blocked from the debate stage this summer if they do not sign a pledge to support the GOP's ultimate presidential nominee, according to draft language set to be adopted when the RNC meets next week. The proposal sets up a potential clash with former President Trump, who has raised the possibility of leaving the Republican Party and launching an independent candidacy if he doesn't win the nomination. While R.N.C. officials and Trump aides downplay that possibility, such a move could destroy the Republican Party's White House aspirations in 2024 and raise existential questions about the party's future. This is

so potentially disastrous for the Republican Party. And I love it. Now, interestingly, a senior Trump aide could not say whether Trump would sign the pledge to support the eventual nominee, but suggested privately that he plans to participate in the debates. Campaign spokesman Stephen Chung declined to answer the question directly as well. Chung said President Trump is the undisputed leader of the Republican Party and will be the nominee. There is nobody who can outmatch President Trump's energy or the enthusiasm he received from Americans of all backgrounds. So listen, I don't think Trump can do this. I don't think Trump can sign that loyalty pledge. And there's a couple of different reasons why. First of all, existentially, Trump may not win the nomination.

We just don't know yet. If you put him head to head up against the Santas, it's not that good. If you put him in a multiway race, he has a plurality, but that could change. And what if he gets indicted or whatever the case may be? There's all these different scenarios. So Trump, in order to maintain leverage and power, really can't sign this pledge because he kneecaps his own power. Part of the power of Trump right now is that if he chooses to go and run third party, he ends Republican chances in 2024. The math of it is relatively simple. We've talked about it before. You think about all of these states which are swing states or their Republican states, but but only by a few points. If you take a state that Republicans usually win by

three, Trump saying I'm running third party, if he pulls even just 10 or 12 percent of the vote in those states, it'll mostly come off of the Republican nominee and the Democrat ends up winning. Trump running third party is a gift to Democrats. If it happens, I would love to see it. He would he would have the chance at being one of the most successful third party candidates in history. I mean, in the modern era, you've got Ross Perot is the one that mostly comes to mind. Trump would really have a shot at being one of the more successful third party candidates in the modern era, and it would destroy Republicans possibility of winning. So that would be absolutely fantastic. But there's another sort of aspect to this, which is much of Trump's campaign, like in 2016, is going to be based on attacking his fellow Republicans

and making fun of them and talking about how terrible they are and all these different things. How can Trump seriously attack Ron DeSantis in the way he's been attacking him if he has also signed on to support DeSantis no matter what, if DeSantis is the nominee? It fundamentally doesn't work. And so the loyalty pledge actually risks pushing Trump towards that third party run in the following way. If Republicans if the Republican Party really holds firm and says, Trump, if you don't sign this thing, you can't debate. By the way, not allowing a former president to debate would be unbelievable. And many people are writing to me saying, David, they would just buckle.

They would just say, oh, no, no, no, you're allowed to debate. But imagine that the Republican Party says you've got to sign this loyalty pledge in order to debate. Trump doesn't sign it. They say we're not letting you debate. That pushes Trump to go and say, you won't let me debate. I'm no longer running in your primary. I'm now running third party. That's it. Democrat wins in 2024. So Trump really does have a very powerful tool in his pocket and he can use it like a cudgel. He genuinely can. It'll be fascinating to see if it happens. The Trump DeSantis feud has exploded as Donald Trump spent the entire weekend posting to Truth Social attacks on Ron DeSantis, including going full rhino Trump giving Ron DeSantis the full rhino treatment. Remember that rhino means Republican in name only. It's a pejorative attached to Republicans that someone feels

aren't really Republican. So let's take a look at Trump's posts. He is not holding back, despite claiming he doesn't even think about Ron DeSantis. He spent the entire weekend posting about him. Trump first posting, quote quote in writer Selena Zito's fake news puff piece about DeSantis, which supposedly appeared in the dying New York Post, which is way down in readership, just like Fox News is way down in ratings. Why doesn't she mention that he wants to cut Social Security and Medicare loves losers like Jeb Bush, Paul Ryan and Karl Rove and it getting clobbered in the polls by me. DeSantis is a rhino who is trying to hide his past. I don't read the New York Post anymore. It has become fake news, just like Fox and the Wall Street Journal. Anyone who doesn't suck up to Trump and pray at the altar of the

great failed former president is now a rhino and is fake news and is bad. But understand that this is a dramatic escalation. Trump last week said, I don't even think about Ron DeSantis. And then he spent the entire weekend trothing about Ron DeSantis. Trump continuing Trump. And by the way, isn't Trump really the rhino? And what I mean by that is Trump never represented Republican values. Trump wasn't even really a Republican that we knew of for the vast majority of his life until he started getting traction by criticizing Barack Obama. If there's any real rhino, it's actually Trump. But let's put that aside for a second. Trump continuing to post, quote, Ron DeSanctimonious wants to cut your Social Security and Medicare closed up Florida

and its beaches. Loves rhinos. Paul Ryan, Jeb Bush and Karl Rove disasters all is backed by globalists club for no growth. Lincoln pervert project and uninspired coke. And it only gets worse from there. He is a rhino in disguise whose poll numbers are dropping like a rock. Good luck, Ron. You know, for a guy who says, I don't think about Ron DeSantis, he will not stop posting about Ron DeSantis and seems completely consumed by Ron DeSantis. And that's how, you know, Trump is lying when he says, I don't ever think about this thing. And anybody who says I do is wrong and bad and evil and lying. It's a signal that that's exactly what he's spending his time thinking about. And it's clear that he is. And then another one this morning, Trump just out of control. Quote, support for

DeSantis cools in latest GOP poll, Washington Times. Of course it cools. He wants to cut social security and Medicare loves throw them off the cliff. Paul Ryan, who is destroying Fox News and The Wall Street Journal, piglet Karl Rove and quote Jeb. Also, Ron DeSanctimonious is for globalist club for no growth and open borders. Charles Koch. We want America first, not America last. That's the ranting of a madman. There's no denying it. There's no way around it.

But I said, I don't know if all of these guys and gals really have what it takes to face Trump in a national campaign in which Trump ignores all rules of decorum, the very same ignoring of all the rules of decorum that made the U.S. a joke internationally when Donald Trump was president are the rules of decorum that generate media attention and that get those folks who aren't that close followers of politics, but they like a good fight and an interesting combative personality. It brings them out of the woodwork. And that's why Trump won in 2016. It was missing from 2020. The part of why Trump lost 2020, aside from failing on covid, is that he didn't have

the environment that he had in 2016 to do this sort of stuff. This really is Trump in his element. That's the crazy thing. And so I know not everybody in the audience agrees with me on this. I think unless someone can match Trump on this sort of stuff, he has a very good shot at running away with the 2024 nomination. Let me know what you think. Leave a comment. Leave a comment. Let me know what you think and look forward to hearing from you. to curb the nicotine cravings. Zypix toothpicks are super discreet. You can use them anytime, anywhere. Smoking and vaping aren't allowed, including flights, sporting events in restaurants. They're available in six different flavors with options of two and three milligrams of nicotine. If you're not a nicotine user, Zypix also offers caffeine and B12 infused toothpicks. Zypix has already helped tens of

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or their organizing their efforts. Virtue signaling the left or virtue signalers. What does that actually mean? And by the way, it is really the right that participates in a lot of this virtue signaling, which I don't think will come as a surprise to you at this point. Virtue signaling means when you express a moral or an ethical stance or a political stance, it can even be in order to gain approval from others and signal your virtue. Virtue signaling means I express an opinion which I may or may not really hold, which I may or may not really even understand in order to signal to others that I am saying the right things so that they then will have

a better opinion of me. It can take many forms. It could be you post things to social media about your charitable donations or your activism in order to signal your virtue. You publicly express outrage over some issue in order to appear socially conscious or that you're on board or whatever the case may be. Now, it's really important to understand that engaging in activism and expressing values is not inherently bad. That that's not the point of virtue signaling as a pejorative. When the signals, when the actions are being done, when the signals are being sent primarily to gain social approval or status, that's when it becomes virtue signaling rather than simply expressing an opinion. The right loves to say that it is the left that predominantly engages

in virtue signaling. But much like the right likes to say the cancel culture is on the left when the cancel culture is actually on the right, as we've talked about before, much like the right likes to say that it is the left that is engaging in voter fraud. But in fact, it's mostly happening on the right. It is exactly the same with virtue signaling. Let's talk about how the right engages in virtue signaling. Conservatives might display American flags or say, I support the military in order to signal that they are patriotic and to gain approval from their peers. In many cases, they don't really care about either, but they are using those symbols, support the troop stickers, whatever, to signal that they

are on the right team when it comes to those issues. Or they might say, we've got to stop this cancel culture from the left. The left. I'm for free speech because they want to appear to be defending values that are currently in vogue, even though they neither care nor understand what the hell they're talking about, nor whose speech is being limited. Blue Lives Matter stickers or paraphernalia or whatever to show we support law enforcement in the military. They might not even really care or understand what's going on with law enforcement or the military when they use phrases like I support traditional values. I am about real America. You're talking about signaling that you support conservative cultural norms. Now, we're slowly starting to get over to dog whistles, which I will get to in a moment.

Other examples of right wing virtue signaling include posting on social media about how you want border security. We have to have a border when you live in Iowa. doesn't mean you can't care about immigration when you live in Iowa. But for many of these folks, it is a form of virtue signaling, sometimes expressing religious beliefs or even going to church to be seen at church can all be examples of right wing virtue signaling. But and this is where we start getting into dog whistles. Virtue signaling and dog whistles are two different things. When we talk about dog whistles, we're talking about coded language

or symbols that have a hidden meaning that is meant to communicate a particular message to a specific audience. Often there is bigotry or prejudice in dog whistles. So I'll give you some examples. Different ones are dog whistles to different degrees. When people have been talking about I support medical freedom during the pandemic, often what they mean is I'm against vaccines. And so it's a dog whistle more than a virtue signal in that it is coded. If you're not part of the discussion, you would hear medical freedom. I don't know. Sounds good. Yeah, sure. Why not? But it is often a dog whistle for anti-vaccine talking about often the word urban, particularly talking about like gun violence needs to be dealt

with for what it is, an urban problem. They're talking about black people. OK, so urban in certain contexts is a is a dog whistle for black and or brown people. Sometimes law and order can be a dog whistle where you're sort of saying, well, I'm tough, tough on crime. But law and order is also often used as a dog whistle to support racially biased policies like, for example, stop and frisk. America first is sometimes a dog whistle to white nationalists and others. States rights is one that's been used by politicians to support policies that discriminate against minorities, roll back civil rights. States rights has been used as a dog whistle up to and including support of slavery. Quite literally when they talk about the civil war. Globalist

can be a dog whistle for Jews. We've talked about that one extensively before. So both virtue signaling and dog whistling involve sending a message to a particular audience. The difference is the virtue signaling is more about gaining approval, whereas the dog whistling is more about communicating a hidden message to those who understand the terms. So both important terms to understand when I use them in the future. Hopefully they will now be more clear. Let me know what you think of my missing examples of either that are relevant. Check this out. Marjorie Taylor Greene tried to make a statement about how

not racist she is. And in doing so, she made a horribly racist comment. I'm going to play this for you. It is some really, really wild stuff. And I'll just play it for you and then we'll talk about it. I know a ton of white people that are as lazy and sorry and and probably worse than black people. I know Marjorie Taylor Greene to prove to us how not racist she is, says, you know what? I'm not racist. Lots of white people are even as or lazier than black people. I know that might be hard to believe if if you can believe this. There are also lazy white people who challenge black people for laziness. Did that just come out wrong, Marjorie? Or am I misunderstanding what it is that you were saying? There's actually a longer clip that I'm trying to find. Let me see if I can

find it here, which gives a little more more context. Lazier, I think, would be the key word here. No, I'm not able to find. OK, so it this is really a disgusting person, really a disgusting person. And during this same this was during like a live that she did of some kind answering questions. I don't know. She said on the issue of Confederate statues, black people should actually be proud of Confederate statues because it's a reminder of how far the country has come. This is crazy. I don't want our statues taken down in our country.

I don't think you remove or erase history. So I do. I do agree those statues shouldn't be taken down. Right. They're part of our history. We should learn from our history. We don't erase it. But that doesn't make me a racist because I just, I guess I say, leave the statue up there. If I were black people today and I walked by one of those statues, I would be so proud because I'd say, look how far I have come in this country. Look how far my people have, what they have overcome. And these are good things. Yeah. It's just like, you know, in Germany, if they had Hitler statues, obviously we would all say these are great reminders of how far we've come.

We used to have Hitler here and now we've come so far. And so the more Hitler statues you have, the better reminder it is of how far we've come. What an imbecilic thing to say. Now, I have gone back and forth over the last couple of years that Marjorie Taylor Greene's been around. As to whether she's really this dumb or whether this is sort of a character she's playing, this live thing really gives me the impression that she's genuinely this dumb. I don't I don't think this is a character that she's playing. Let me know what you think. But I have a very hard time believing that this is staged in any sense of the word. We have a voicemail number. That number is two one nine to David P. Here's a comment about my coverage of George Anthony DeVolder Santos and specifically how I have sort of taken a light touch when it comes to his previous marriage to a woman. In particular, I've said there's a long history

of gay men who aren't living as gay men publicly marrying women. Also, the marriage to that particular woman might have been an immigration scam. But anyway, this caller says there's something else I'm doing wrong in my commentary. Take a listen to this. Oh, David, I just have one little complaint about your coverage of George Santos, please. You talk about LGBT members and gay gay men who are potentially married to women to either sexuality. But you've completely forgotten the fact that bisexuals exist and are attracted to both. I would appreciate if in the future you keep that in mind and don't erase the B in the

LGBT community. Speaker 1 I am not erasing bisexuality in my coverage of George Anthony DeVolder Santos. He has never asserted that he is bisexual. If that it I would just be crowbarring that in for no we have no reason to even consider that in the sense that Santos has had every opportunity to talk about his sexuality and he's never asserted that. So it's not about he's either. I mean, I guess if you could take the approach that if he's lying about his sexual orientation, the truth could take the approach that if he's lying about his sexual

orientation, the truth could be anything, and that could include bisexual. But I don't know why we would suspect that in particular, other than the story of the immigration scam, which, quite frankly, seems like the most plausible one to me at this time. So I would never erase bisexuality, but I also don't know why I would necessarily insert it either. We have a fantastic bonus show for you today. We are going to talk about Senator Rick Scott dropping his plan to cut Social Security and Medicare, despite the fact that he spent the last two weeks claiming that that plan didn't exist. But now he's dropping it. But it also didn't exist. Very complicated. We also are going to talk about one of the greatest culinary lies in the history of the United States,

the boneless chicken wing, the boneless chicken wing. It doesn't exist. There is no such thing. There's no wing in a boneless wing. We're talking about a piece of the chicken breast or the tenderloin. And we are finally going to get to the bottom of this culinary lie. And also, Ron DeSantis is now looking to expand the death penalty in Florida. What does this mean? How is the Catholic Church reacting to it? A really interesting story about Ron DeSantis that's not getting nearly the attention it deserves. So we will talk about all of those stories and more when I'm joined on the bonus show by producer Pat. Oh, the bonus show where you want to make money. Yeah, everybody else that makes money to fund themselves is bad. Let's make that cash right, Alex, on the bonus show. Sign up at join Pacman dot com. You can 24 starts now to get yourself a discount. I will see you then.