The David Pakman Show - 2/21/23: Biden Ukraine trip triggers, Trump holds deranged event

Episode Date: February 21, 2023

-- On the Show: -- Matthew Remski, freelance journalist who writes about religious cults and co-host of the Conspirituality Podcast, joins David to discuss cults, conspiracies, new age spiritual movements, and more -- Right-wingers are hugely triggered by President Joe Biden's visit to Ukraine, and meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin escalates his threats -- It is revealed that Norfolk Southern eliminated a critical maintenance role in the region that suffered the horrible derailment -- A confused failed former President Donald Trump holds an event in Florida that quickly goes horribly wrong -- Donald Trump openly attacks Ron DeSantis during his press conference, signaling that the civil war is fully on -- Lying Republican Congressman George Anthony Devolder Santos gives an interview to Piers Morgan which goes bad very quickly -- Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis tries to talk about foreign policy and fails miserably -- Voicemail caller weighs in on the culinary lie that are "boneless wings" -- On the Bonus Show: Seattle might become first city to ban caste discrimination, Don Lemon returning to CNN after sexist comment, another person has been cured of HIV, much more... ✉️ StartMail: Get 50% OFF a year subscription at https://startmail.com/pakman 💪 Athletic Greens is offering FREE year-supply of Vitamin D at https://athleticgreens.com/pakman 💪 MOSH protein bars: Code PAKMAN for 20% off + free shipping at https://moshlife.com/pakman 💻 Stay protected! Try Aura FREE for 2 weeks: https://aura.com/pakman 🌳 Use code PAKMAN for 20% off HoldOn plant-based bags at https://holdonbags.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 President Joe Biden made a visit to Ukraine yesterday and it was a completely reasonable visit. It was the indication that Joe Biden and his security team aren't scared to go to Kiev where there were air raid sirens in the background of the visit with the Ukrainian president, Vladimir Zelensky. And yet Republicans are absolutely furious. Some even border borderline defending Vladimir Putin as Putin has suspended the new START treaty, the most belligerent signal recently since the invasion of Ukraine, that he may indeed be going in the direction of at least considering the use of nuclear weapons in this conflict. And it is difficult to know where to start. But let's maybe start with

the statements from Vladimir Putin. The Associated Press reports Russia suspends only remaining major nuclear treaty with the U.S. Russian President Vladimir Putin declared Tuesday that Moscow was suspending its participation in the new START treaty, the last remaining nuclear arms control pact with the United States, sharply upping the ante amid tensions with Washington over the fighting in Ukraine. Vladimir Putin made the statement during his state of the nation address, during which he also said Russia should stand ready to resume nuclear weapons tests if the U.S. does so. A move that would end a global ban on nuclear weapons tests in place since Cold War times. This is not a coincidence in terms of its timing.

Joe Biden yesterday in Ukraine and Putin today. Of course, we're adjusting for the time difference today saying these things. This is a very real threat. We now have the possibility of China aiding Russia that is increasingly in the background of the discussion and the United States in the midst of that. Trying to figure out. And when I say that, I don't mean trying to figure out as if the answer is obvious. I don't mean like Trump's trying to figure out how tariffs work. We know how tariffs work. We are genuinely trying to see. What possible diplomatic paths forward there are while continuing to support Ukraine militarily. As this is an aggression by Russia, although some on the right don't want to accept that.

But meanwhile, many Republicans and we're not going to look through every example because I don't have three hours to just play these clips for you. Republicans criticizing Joe Biden for this trip to Ukraine. And remember that with a lot of these things, it's always we're going to criticize no matter what Biden hasn't gone to the border. Kamala hasn't gone to the border. They go well, they went late and also to the wrong city on the border. Well, but they went. But no, but that shows they don't really care. I thought not going showed they didn't care. Well, no, going but to the wrong city on the border. Well, but they went. But no, but that shows they don't really care. I thought not going showed they didn't care. Well, no, going but to the wrong place at the wrong time also shows they don't care. They just want to criticize. But it's becoming increasingly pathetic and concerning from the standpoint of do these Republicans even hold as a priority

what's best for the United States and our people. Here's Republican Congresswoman Nancy Mace saying, you know, it was President's Day to go to Ukraine instead of Ohio. It it was President's Day after all. Word salad, if you ask me, kind of an embarrassment on the world stage and to be in Ukraine on President's Day, as was just mentioned, rather than going to Ohio, where Americans really are suffering on one of the largest environmental disasters in my lifetime, at least it is an embarrassment. And this. So I thought Americans were primarily suffering, Nancy and Republicans from high from inflation, from high energy prices and other sorts of economic instability

directly linked to what's going on in Ukraine. No, now that's not important because you have to say it was wrong for Biden to go and instead he should have gone to Ohio. So now Ohio becomes really where people are suffering. Now, of course, they're suffering elsewhere. There's always suffering elsewhere. And Joe Biden's no longer in the basement, but he's in the wrong place. So that's bad as well. Why didn't he go to the border yesterday? I mean, it's President's Day after all. So this is we've talked about this before. This is like running through a cancer fundraiser and screaming, what about Parkinson's? Are you all ignored? Don't you care about Parkinson's? And then you go to the Parkinson's fundraiser and you say every last one of you should be ashamed

of yourselves that you're doing nothing about AIDS. Do you know about AIDS? And you're talking about Parkinson's. This is always it's very tired. It's very low brow. It's very transparent, but they can always do this. And they often do when they don't want to have to praise the actions of a Democrat. Donald Trump also held an event yesterday in Palm Beach. We're going to look at this event more extensively later. But there was one moment where Donald Trump also same line criticized Biden for going to Ukraine, but not to Ohio. Speaker 4 in two years, nobody's ever seen anything like it. And even now you have a president going to Ukraine and you have people in Ohio that are in desperate need of help.

And I was very proud to say that I announced I was going to Ohio. You know, FEMA said we're not going to get many. He was proud of himself about the announcement that he made. The Biden administration said we're not going to give him anything. And then I announced I'm going, please sit down. Yeah, go ahead. We'll be here for a while. Why do we have to do it? Why do we have to? Yeah, it's not like Trump's running a campaign or anything. Anyway, so Trump also criticizing Biden for going to Ukraine instead of Ohio. And then everybody's favorite traitorous congresswoman, Marjorie Trader Green, tweeted, quote, Biden didn't go to East Palestine, Ohio on President's Day. Again,

I don't know why it matters that it's President's Day. It's this very strange thing. Biden didn't go to East Palestine, Ohio on President's Day. He went to Ukraine, a non-NATO nation whose leader is an actor. I mean, OK, so our leader for a while was just a real estate dude and is apparently now commanding our United States military to world war. We must impeach this America last fool before it's too late. So completely unhinged and pathetic. Biden should be impeached because he went to Ukraine. If you can imagine something as absurd as this. So that's the latest. We're going to delve more deeply into the Putin nukes stuff. the Biden trip as it went beyond Ukraine, heading to Poland. We're going to talk about all of it as the week continues. Let's now talk about the train

derailment. You know, I'm not sure where people are getting that. Nobody's talking about the train derailment. Everywhere I look, I see stories about the train derailment, local media, national media, New York Times and Washington Post, CNN and Fox News, independent media, Twitter, Reddit. Everywhere I look, people are talking about the train derailment. So for the people emailing me saying, David, why is no one talking about it? I see everyone talking about it. And one of the things that we are learning as that talking continues is that the train derailment story is quickly building and building, pointing more and more in the direction of sadly being a story

about regulation. And I know that the right hates this. The right wants to argue that businesses have an incentive to regulate themselves. Why wouldn't they? Right. I mean, because if they don't regulate themselves and something bad happens, then it's terrible for PR, except a lot of these companies don't really depend on PR in the sense of consumer facing businesses. So it doesn't really apply. And we know from endless examples from history that it simply doesn't work that way. We have an article here from Freight Waves, which covers the train industry, I guess we would say Norfolk Southern eliminated key maintenance role in the derailment region per the union. There used to be something called maintenance. And if you read the article, you learn a lot about what is going on in the

world of trains. One union rail, one union of rail workers is questioned declining maintenance standards following the derailment. A device that can play a role in preventing derailments is the wayside hotbox detector. It uses infrared sensors to detect bearings, axles or other components that are overheating. And then it uses radio signals to flag rail crews of any overheated components. The rail car that initiated the derailment, we now know, had an overheated wheel bearing, according to a report from the NTSB. Wayside hotbox detectors are usually placed every 25 miles along a railroad. Their use has contributed to a 59 percent decrease in train accidents caused by axle and bearing related factors since 1990. Declining head counts have led to these mechanisms receiving less preventative maintenance,

according to an official from the Brotherhood of Railroad Signalman Union. The FRA has no regulations requiring the use or maintenance of hotbox detectors. A hotbox detector in East Palestine notified the crew moments before the train derailed. It's unclear if any hotbox detector prior to East Palestine notified crews. A surveillance video shared on Facebook from an industrial facility in Salem, Ohio, 20 miles from East Palestine, suggests the train's axle was already on fire. So there are a lot of components to this. And I have friends in the railroad industry and I've been talking to them all about this. And we are not yet at the point where we can definitively say the problem was not enough of these hotbox detectors. And part of the reason why there weren't enough is that there is no

minimum requirement for where they have to be. There are recommendations, but not a requirement for where they have to be. Typically, they are every 25 miles, but there is no actual requirement. So one possible explanation here. And again, we're all trying to learn about what happened. One possible explanation here is surveillance video showed that there already appeared to be a fire on the train 20 miles away, 20 miles away from where it eventually derailed. And if indeed there was no hotbox detector there, even though the recommendation is that there should have been, that is an argument that were were it a requirement to have those hotbox detectors, they might have been notified about this fire, which eventually led to the derailment

as many as 20 miles earlier, at which point you could have stopped the train. The fire would not have been nearly as big and you could have stopped the train. The fire would not have been nearly as big and you could have conceivably prevented the derailment altogether. So that would be an example of how there is under regulation. There's the recommendation of where to place the hotbox detectors, but there is not the requirement. So it's a chain of decisions and things that take place with regulation coming down from the top. Now, we also know that more generally, there's another issue here, which is Norfolk Southern wants to make cut maintenance and opted not to do as much in terms of expenditures on new safety systems when they didn't have to all of that in order to save on expenses and to make more money. And then the third element of this, of course, and I told you this last week

or the week before, there were additional requirements placed on trains by the Obama administration, which were repealed under the Trump administration in twenty eighteen. I'm not going to redo that story now because we all I already told you the details of that. Obama putting in place these things and the Trump administration rolling them back. So we are still building up our exact understanding of what took place here. But it is increasingly pointing to a story about underregulation where we know the technology that can prevent these things. We know that when the technology is used, these events decrease dramatically. And that was not in place in this particular case. We will soon

know for sure whether that was the cause. But the early report says it was. So remember, when the right says we're overregulated everywhere, there may be overregulation in some places. And I'm certainly open to we should have a reason for regulations that are put in place. But removing regulations for the sake of saying we've removed regulations not only doesn't make any sense, it also is extraordinarily dangerous when you're looking at situations like this. We will have links to all of these stories I've been putting up on the screen in the description to the YouTube videos for these stories. You can find the YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash the David Pakman show. minutes later and other companies collect your data every time you open an email from them.

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at join pacman.com to get a discount. And remember that's P A K M A N. Many people email me. They say, sir, I tried going to join Pacman with P A C K and it didn't sign me up. And there's a reason why, which is it's not how my last name is spelled. Join Pacman dot com coupon code 24 starts now. Check it out. Donald Trump held an event yesterday at Club 45, which I guess they're renaming Club 47 because they want Trump to be the 47th president or something. This was such a confusing event during which Donald Trump visibly struggles to drink water. At one point, it's really weird. He takes questions from children and still can't answer them in any sensible way. I don't know what the hell this guy is doing, but he is incredibly

desperate for relevance. He's desperate for sycophants to suck up to him, which I guess he doesn't feel Fox News and Wall Street Journal are doing anymore to the degree that he wants. Let's look at this. This first clip, Trump takes a question from a kid who's wearing a Trump one shirt. And remember, the right is worried that the left is indoctrinating children. Think about that as you listen to this. Hello, Mr. President. I love that shirt. It's so beautiful. Thank you. He's got a shirt. Trump won. They're cheering that they are teaching a kid to believe things that simply aren't true. After you become the 47th president, what are you going gonna do to stop the war in ukraine yeah so i would

literally start calling not from the day i took over but from the night i won and i called two people two people you know the two people are putin right you know putin is and zielinski zielinski and i'd say we're gonna going to meet. That's how he would say he would get on the phone and he'll go, we're going to meet. And I would I I guarantee I could work that out. I guarantee I know exactly what I'd say, by the way. I know exactly. I tell one guy this. I tell one guy that and I say, you better make a deal. Trump's foreign policy ideas, extremely convincing to nine year olds. I think that that if if there's any big ringing endorsement, there's any bigger ringing endorsement. I can't think of one. Here's another really crazy one. This guy is almost in

tears. It really seems like Trump is taking questions from random people, which is totally fine. I actually think it would be. Imagine if a president more regularly took questions from random people. I think that that's great. The problem is these people are such delusional sycophants. President Trump, I'd like to say it's a great honor to be in the same room with you, by the way, for all I know, this isn't a random person and it's like some fundraising guy or who knows. Thank you. It's my honor. I'd also, I'd also like to thank you for your sacrifice to the people of this country. Thank you. Really a martyr who gave up his great life to help us. Very nice. People don't understand you had it made in the shade

and you stuck your neck out for us. That's true. Oh, dear God. This is this is the United States in 2023. This is the front runner to be the Republican nominee for the presidency of the United States. Trump then pulling out his famous N word rant, which he just loves nuclear is so devastating that we don't even want to talk about it. And that was a word that was never supposed to be mentioned. You have to end words, neither of which should ever be mentioned. I said that once I said, Oh, what a terrible thing to say say. Now you have to end words. You know what the one is, but the other is the

nuclear word not supposed to ever be mentioned ever, ever, ever. Right. But Trump's going to say the N word for us, I guess, when he talks to boot as he likes to say no Trump event is complete without Trump complaining about the 2020 election, which is now closing in on three years ago. And indeed he did. There's no way you could lose the election. And we got close to 75 million votes. And that's only what they agreed to.

That's only what they say. It's much higher than that. But they agree to. So we got based on that, we got 12 million more votes. Right. And we lost a whisker here and a whisker there. And, you know, when you look, oh, I guess he's at least admitting he lost maybe. How about Pennsylvania? Pennsylvania was over at 10 o'clock and then all of a sudden they had a large drop. A dump. By the way, did you notice he's no longer saying dump?

He's now saying drop. Now, these people are really it's so sad. It's so sad. I mean, there's no way. So anyway, Trump bemoaning that election that just got away. It just got away from him, really projecting incredible strength with winding three years on. Trump then is asked a question by Ashton, who I guess is like a young reporter, a young Republican reporter. And he can't even answer these these softball questions in a way that makes sense. Hi, Mr. President. My name is Ashton. I'm the president of the Palm Beach County Young Republic. Very impressive. Yes. So good. As the club and as young people, what is the strategic campaign messaging to reach millennials? Well, look, I said I have one little phrase that I think became the most powerful phrase in the history of politics and maybe in any country.

You know what the phrase is? Make America great again. That's going to be his messaging to young people. By the way, it's the same messaging that got him almost no youth vote in 2016 and almost no youth vote in 2020. That's his message. You go into details and you know what the details because we've been talking about him the whole night. Make America great again. Another one. America first. We put America first. Right. That's really going to resonate with Gen Z. You can just tell. At another point, a completely indoctrinated super fan of Trump says, what can we do to fight for you? What can we do? And Trump says, I need your undying support. This

is literally a cult. It, it, it meets all of the requirements of a cult. Thank you very much. So my question is, since you're fighting for us, what do you want us to do to fight for you? Just your support, your support and not even monetary support. I mean, what we need is your absolute undying support. Undying it. And we have other places throughout the country where the spirit we've never seen spirit like we see it right now. And I think, Donny, that spirit, that support and we can't be stopped.

And once we're there, we're going to fix this country. Speaker 1 Yep. He's going to fix it as soon as he gets a shot. I mean, OK, he had four years and he made the country worse in so many ways. But this time you can believe him. This time he really is going to fix it. Someone in the audience wanted Trump to weigh in on whether AT&T should be dismantled, which is not exactly small government behavior. It's not exactly the lightest touch of regulation that Republicans claim to want. But DirecTV dropped Newsmax. And so now what about dismantling AT&T? Thank you. Yeah. In 1982, AT&T was dismantled

because it became too big for its britches. AT&T subsidiary DirecTV just banned Newsmax. Yeah, they're broadcasting. Is it time to dismantle AT&T again because it's getting too big for its britches? Yeah. The small government crowd that is against regulation is calling for the government to destroy a business. Thank you, sir. AT&T is a lousy company. It's highly over levered. It's run by radical left people. Honestly, it's doing so badly. You know, normally you dismantle when they're doing so well. AT&T is doing badly. They got rid of they took it and DirecTV, which I guess they own, and they got rid of Newsmax and hopefully they'll put it back. Put it back. And OAN also. OAN was fantastic and still is fantastic. But it's a struggle for them because they're being deplatformed.

They deplatformed me and now they're all begging for me to come back. You know why? Because they're dying out there without us. That's why truth is so good. That's why truth is so good. But you know what I mean. Truth. AT&T is like a lousy company.

It's leveraged to the hilt. Yeah. It's doing very poorly. And yet they get rid of a Newsmax and an OAN, who actually both got very good ratings. And I think there's a lot of pressure being put on AT&T dropped, you know, their stock since that time. Yeah, the guy in the crowd is all is very much aware of that. So just a completely unhinged event in every single way. There was the most interesting moment was where Donald Trump seemed to acknowledge something I said yesterday, which is some of the people that are getting into this race against Trump, which is really just Nikki Haley. It may be less about winning than about auditioning to be Trump's

VP. And Trump seems to be saying exactly that. A lot of people are right now auditioning. You know that a lot of people, a lot of people that are running at one percent, two percent, three percent, no percent. We have a couple that are joining. There are no percent. I say, I wonder what they're doing. I think they're auctioning right now. They're auditioning right now. Auctioning. They're auctioning. No, I don't think Trump's wrong. And in fact, I think this is one of the possibilities when it comes to Nikki Haley as to why she is not drawing a single policy distinction with Trump. So there it is. Trump addressing supporters and taking questions. Good for him for taking questions. It's just the

questions are insane and the answers are even crazier. That's the only downside. But it's a beautiful thing, I think, to take questions from supporters. Let's now focus in on the DeSantis part. I'm separating out a couple of moments from yesterday's deranged and delusional event that Donald Trump did in Florida, where he is just going after Ron DeSantis or as he knows him wrong, Ron DeSanctimonious, not Meatball Ron, at least not as far as we know so far. This is a building civil war, but it is between a guy who's running for president and a guy who right now isn't actually running for president. Ron DeSantis hasn't announced anything, but Ron DeSantis, even without announcing, is polling so strongly relative to Trump winning in some polls, losing in others, but polling very strongly for a guy who's not running that Donald Trump is threatened.

Donald Trump's ego is threatened. Donald Trump's path to victory is threatened. Now, I do think at the end of the day, Trump is going to run circles around DeSantis in a national campaign because of the optics. I don't think DeSantis is up for what it will take to defeat Trump in a national campaign. But regardless, Trump is feeling threatened. So Trump is regularly going after Ron DeSantis, who he claims on Truth Social all the time. He never thinks about. He told us last week, I never think about the guy. And yet he brings him up. Here is Donald Trump bringing up the crowd size. It's the same old stuff, folks, the crowd size that Ron DeSantis didn't get a big crowd in New York yesterday.

And not only does this mean Trump is thinking about Ron DeSantis, he's also paying attention to DeSantis's events. We're there actually. And it was really good. It was really nice. And everybody thought it was great. And about two, three days later, oh, there didn't seem to be much energy. They'll even take this crowd. You know, Ron De Sanctimony has had a crowd in Staten Island today. One hundred and thirty nine people in Staten Island. We got a lot of people. We have one hundred and thirty nine times about 30. The audio clearly being run by Antifa during this event. We got a lot of people here, but I always say

hit your enemy a little bit early. Some people say don't, but I say do. But, you know, I'll tell you. So there is Trump hitting the enemy early, as he says, which is a completely deranged language to be using in these circumstances against the guy who hasn't even announced that he's running. And then in another moment during this, Trump mentioned the vote differential between DeSantis for governor and Trump for president, continuing to try to it's basically a penis size contest. Well, and I never mentioned this because I don't like hitting Republicans. I really don't. Right. But I did get 1.2 million more votes than Ron. 1.2 million more.

Wow. Nobody wants to mention. The press refuses to mention it. We'll have to talk to our Club 47 people about this. They don't want to mention good. No, I got 1.2 million votes more than Ron. And Ron did good in Florida, but I did great. Yeah.

So basically all the hits at this event, I mean, there was almost nothing missing from Trump's routine from this weird event. OK, he didn't do Obama. That's true. That was missing. But short of that, really doing all the old tricks. So Trump will be in East Palestine, Ohio tomorrow. I don't know if there's going to be any kind of live event. If there is, we might look at covering it. If Joe Biden visits East Palestine, Ohio, we will also cover it. And all of the clips, these these thick and meaty clips that I played for you today, you can find all of them on our Instagram by going to Instagram and searching for David

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it? Or is it conspirituality? We usually deemphasize the first syllable, but we can talk about why. I mean, conspirituality is good. So, I mean, I think that will will give us a good kind of entry point into some of the subject matter that you talk about just to pick something. And every time I broach these topics, invariably there are people in my audience who get upset, sometimes misunderstanding what I'm saying about whether it be homeopathy or yoga or Reiki or cupping or whatever. OK, but just to pick something because you have some experience with it. Let's talk a little bit about yoga. Yoga is interesting because it is a form of sort of exercise and physical practice. And also tied in with it is some woo sometimes and a spirituality element.

And some practitioners, just like you see with different modalities, will make more claims than others about the supposed benefits of something like yoga. So let's start there. I mean, what talk about your experience with yoga, benefits of the practice that we know are evidence based and where things sometimes go beyond that? Well, I'm glad that you're starting here because I've done a lot of years doing cultural criticism on yoga and wellness and the cults associated with them. And sometimes I do forget the benefits, what actually got me interested in

the first place, why this is a thing, why it's a huge industry. And I think, you know, the evidence question is actually quite, you know, the cards are the judgment is still not in because it's very difficult to do science on yoga. But I think the basic benefits that everybody agrees on is that you can use postures and stretching and mindful breathing to get more familiar with your bodily reality and maybe befriend it a little bit more. And I think for most global North, you know, American European practitioners, there was a time in which those simple benefits were basically the focus of what the practice had to offer. There was a period in the 70s, the late 60s, maybe when yoga was largely associated with simply loosening up one's body and psychology, becoming more receptive and creative, and maybe even supporting the project of reimagining society in gentler terms. And a lot of people would have transformative moments with the post conditioning and expectations. It was a kind of exercise of mellowing out or even dropping out. But that's actually between, you know, this sort of rigid post-war Don Draper era Fordist economy. And then, you know, Gordon Gekko starting to get to the gym in the 1980s with a kind of just do it physical culture that begins to integrate with yoga in a

very profound manner where yoga becomes something that you do to become more self-sufficient, not necessarily more open or empathetic with other people. And I think strangely when that happened, some of it happening through till today, yoga as a culture began to remember and even emphasize some of the early 20th century themes that tiedowdhury, like everybody can have a late 1960s yoga moment because it's not the clothes or the technique or the alignment. It's not green smoothies. It's just, you know, breathing deeply through a choreography of postures, focusing on sensations and emotions that can give a lot of relief, especially if you're extremely online, overly extroverted, you know, disconnected with your body. They're really simple gifts. You can enjoy them at home without becoming compulsive or without turning yoga into some

kind of like side hustle in a gig economy, which is what a lot of Gen Xers like myself and then also millennials actually did for better or worse. Right. So there's all these other areas that we could explore. There's the kind of commoditizing yoga into the franchise business for profit and sort of like that aspect of it. There's the way in which what you just talked about is the benefits start to be kind of built

upon more and more and more, sometimes by charismatic, for lack of a better term, what become cult leaders in some cases. And we've talked about that. There's all these different directions that we could go with this. Let's maybe start with the latter a little bit. What are the sorts of promises about yoga that sometimes are made, which then open the door down to the more sort of like cult like aspects of this? Well, I would say that the promises are totalizing in the yoga world, that not only is it about health and wellness, but there's also this spiritual element that is spoken about. It's part of a self project that many teachers will also speak about being related to, you know, a global awakening of consciousness. This was very big

through the 60s and 70s. And, you know, it's part of a general historical turn away from, you know, community participation and towards the self project. And so ideas of personal health and, you know, heightening your immunity and, you know, avoiding conventional medicine become wrapped up in this as well. And the problem is, is that, is that like the definitions for what yoga practice is are very vague, very subjective. Um, it's not like there are any real standards for how we can assess the competence of yoga teaching. Um, and what tends to rise to the top in terms of industry leadership is, you know, you use the word before is the charismatic, you know, in the absence of being able to really sort of prove that you are a competent or a even a safe yoga teacher, what you can do is you can show that you perform the appearance of equanimity or even enlightenment really well. Now, that all gets heightened in the visual age of Instagram, of course. But the problem with charisma is that,

not all charismatics become cult leaders, but all cult leaders are in some way charismatic. And charisma is kind of like this organizational principle in the cultic dynamic where there's some sort of mysterious, undefined power that a single person or idea has at the center of a group. And that draws sort of energy towards that power center and away from, you know, mutual aid and sharing and horizontal relationships. What are some of the warning signs if you're in and we can stick with yoga, but we could talk about elsewhere. What are some of the warning signs that you might not be going to just like a yoga class, but this may be more of the one that's that's the cult like thing?

Yeah. I mean, silver bullet claims about your health, about your physical health, your mental health, the teacher who suggests that such and such a posture is good for the reproductive system or for liver cleansing or for depression. These are all medical claims, and they are absolutely ubiquitous throughout the yoga world. In fact, like the primary textbook written in 1966 by BKS Iyengar, it's called Light on Yoga. And it's like, I don't know, 300, 600 pages long, or maybe it's 300 pages long with 600 plates. But every single posture has an unsubstantiated medical claim attached to it. Right. That emerges out of a, you know, an earlier time. It's not like this guy is a charlatan trying to pull wool over people's eyes,

but there's this general sort of epistemological, I don't know, lack of rigor in the industry that ends up, you know, confusing the pleasures of stretching and deep breathing with feeling like there's some sort of magical healing going on. And so, you know, silver bullet claims are a real red flag. I would also say that, you know, there's a feeling of, you know, I don't know, contradictory authoritarianism versus personal autonomy. I would call it like the Tony Robbins lie, right? Like, like you pay me and you do exactly what I say and you'll experience total personal freedom. Um, as long as you keep paying me and doing exactly what I say. Exactly. Right. Um, then there's the problem of, of intrusive eye contact, which I think people can identify if, you know, if they're on YouTube now, they can

flip over to teal Swan and see how she does that. And then there's humorlessness. I have never, ever met a wellness influencer or yoga grifter or yoga cult leader. I've never encountered anybody in that whole echelon that has a sense of humor, that can laugh at themselves. They're just really puffed up and defensive and usually anxious because I think usually what they're what they're selling is built on nothing. You know, as in hearing you talk about some of the things you mentioned, I've had not with the later characteristics here, but when I've gone to massage therapists, which I don't do often because I find it all a little bit awkward and I also really don't like the oil, which gets everywhere. I'll tell you, I often they will. It'll be a completely fine massage. And then at the end, they'll say, you know, massage can release a lot of toxins into the body. So make sure to drink a lot of water to then flush them out. And immediately I'm thinking, wait a second. So water, we're talking about kidneys. Some toxins

are processed through the liver. You massage me. And I Google, is there any scientific basis for that? And of course, there is no scientific basis for that. Right. But it's just kind of part of the whole experience. It's and it's it's so casually inserted in there. I think one of the things that's going on in that encounter, too, is that they're saying you're going to be sore after I just manhandled you. And I think you should take care of yourself. And actually, this kind of soreness or even afterglow of pain is part of something that's good. And and it establishes I'm not saying the person is trying to rip you off, but I think it establishes the kind of thought process by which you think, oh, the consumer begins to feel like, oh, something is coming out of me. I'm in a process

of purification. I'm getting straight with myself. I'm renewing myself. I'm shedding my old skin. And that's a kind of rhythm that can be really easily monetized, I think, because often the answer to soreness from massage is more massage in the same way that that the answer to pain from yoga is often presented as doing more yoga. Right. What what happened during the pandemic that sent this is not unique to yoga, but we can talk about it that way if it's more, you know, if you're more precise in that particular category that kind of sent yoga folks down into the conspiracy rabbit hole in some other

areas? Speaker 3 Well, a lot of things happened that flowed together to really create a perfect storm. We have a lot of people who are suddenly locked out of their places of wellness, but also sometimes, you know, spiritual worship. And they're starting to spend all of their time at home, online, the online space is very flat, very competitive. You know, March and April of 2020, you couldn't go onto Facebook without seeing like 25 people in my feed offering an integration or an intersection between political conspiracy theorizing and new age promises of wellness and renewal. Right. And it's not just an intersection. It's kind of like the two things are dependent. It's because things are so bad in the world that we are being called to awaken. It's because they are developing vaccines at a very fast rate that we urgently

must improve our immune systems so that we don't get microchipped. So there's kind of like a, you know, sort of a mebius strip of anxiety and promises that begin to take over the online space. And what people found was that the closer they got towards, you know, literal QAnon fever dream conspiracy material, the more popular they became. And we have a number of examples of people who vastly increased their followings because they started posting red-pilled material. Now, what happened and what was quite tragic was that they might have had an affinity for these ideas, but it's not like they had full commitment or necessarily knew exactly that, oh, this this is a blood libel fantasy. Oh, this is actually part of the satanic panic that's being extended from the 1980s. They may not have been aware of any of that, but by the time they invested their online identities with, you know, promoting that material, some of them really lost a lot of contact with not only their business, you know, sort of market, but also with their families. And so I did a lot of reporting in the follow up

after that first acute phase. And there was a lot of people who were like, I really, you know, I don't really believe in QAnon. And I want to with, you know, I was just trying to share information. And I really just want to do the yoga. And of course, then there's a some small percentage of people who are still sort of building their brand on this very anxious and very potent mix of conspiracy theories and spiritual promises. Like the world is terrible. And here's the spiritual answer, which has to be which has to be total. It's not just that you're going to avoid the vaccines. It's that you're going to look into my eyes and we're going to experience the face of God together and everything's going to be OK. Last thing I want to ask you about, what are some new new age or spiritual things that are going on that maybe I or my audience haven't heard of?

Because there's so you know, I find these fascinating in a lot of different ways. And we've talked about everything from, you know, crystals to, I mean, just all these different things. What's the new stuff that's coming up now? You know, we have a correspondent on our podcast named Mallory DeMille, and she's the tick tock correspondent. And so she looks into things like, you know, the Healy biofeedback machine and she looks into light language TikTokers and we might send her on a neo pagan hunt. amongst very young people who consider themselves to be star seeds or alien children or indigo children who believe that 2023 is actually a portentous time for for world destruction. And they're folding in sort of weird stories about the weather balloons and UFOs and the train. But that's basically just end time stuff, right? I mean, it's just it is end time stuff. Yeah. But but things on TikTok can can accelerate at an alarming pace and and get people really revved up. But I mean, what I have resolved to do after spending like three years now in the mud of this stuff is I tried to look for like spiritual organizations or movements that are trying to sort of account for this

material. They're trying to do something. And, you know, sometimes it's hard to find places where I feel like, oh, I would attend that or I would. Yeah. Are there any? Well, you know, when whenever I come into I don't want to endorse anybody directly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But but whenever I come into contact with something that makes sense, uh, that feels like it's grounded in reality, you know, it's going to be like a black church. It's going to be a first nation ceremony community. It's going to be like a, an LGBTQ plus support group. Like anything that's just purely associated with self-help or self-work or the self project. I just don't find very compelling any more personally. And I also think it remains vulnerable to this kind of like hyper-individualistic, very reactionary politics, inviting and soaked kind of environment that I just find really toxic. I mean, I don't know what the human spirit is. But I do find

that the people who are creating the deepest sources of meaning are in these groups that are doing something to sort of account for their place in society to resist some of the excesses of late capitalism. You know, they're debating the best ways forward and transparent ways. They focus on everyday work and, you know, just normal things like parenting and community care. Well, I'm reading between the lines and I'm not hearing an endorsement for Deepak Chopra in what you're saying. No, you're not. You're not actually because because because there's something extremely elitist and unaffordable. Yeah. Aside from the pseudoscience, aside from aside from his his his relationships with, you know, influencers who are peddling all kinds of

of of conspiracy stuff. Yeah, it's it's just inaccessible. And I think that's good, actually. Yes. Strange way. It should be more difficult to get sucked into it. I agree with that. We've been speaking with Matthew Remsky, co-host of the Conspiratuality podcast, also a freelance journalist. Really appreciate your time and insights today. Thank you, David. Thank you so much. Plastic, it's everywhere we look and not enough is being done about it. One hundred billion plastic bags are used and thrown away every year. Here's something super simple you can do to reduce plastic and help the planet a little bit. Our sponsor, Hold On Bags, is the company making plastic free trash bags and zip seal kitchen bags. They're just as strong and high quality as the plastic bags you're used to. Hold on bags are 100 percent

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These products are really great. It's so easy to make the switch. Go to hold on bags dot com slash Pacman and you'll get 20 percent off with code Pacman at checkout. That's H.O.L.D.O.N.B.A.G.S. dot com slash Pacman code Pacman saves you 20 percent. The info is in the podcast notes. I have to hand it to Piers Morgan. Last week it was Carrie Lake and this week it's George Anthony DeVolder Santos who show up and they get absolutely brutalized by Piers Morgan. This is really fascinating stuff. George Santos, the lying Republican congressman, to his credit, he showed up clearly having

received some media training over the last few weeks. You can tell he's just a little more polished and a little bit more poised, but still horribly dishonest. He agreed to take questions from Piers Morgan. And it is absolutely fascinating to see this. In this first clip, George Santos defends his lie about being Jewish by saying it's a joke. He's Jew ish and that everybody in the past thought it was funny. And this is clearly a very sick individual. I've always made this as a party favorite joke,

and I've done it on stages across. What's funny about claiming you're Jewish? No, no, no, not falsely claiming I'm Jewish. I'd always say I'm I was raised Catholic, but I come from a Jewish family. So that makes me Jew ish. It's always been a party favor. Everybody's always laughing. It's been a party favorite or favor. I don't even know what he's saying. Everybody's canceling me. Everybody's pounding down for a's been a party favorite or favor. I don't even know what he's saying. Everybody's canceling me. Everybody's pounding down for a pound of flesh because you're not Jewish. Well, I never said I was.

I've always said you were. And I would always say, but my grandparents are Jewish on my mother's side, so I'm Jew ish. That was always a joke. Everybody used to laugh it up. Guys, don't you know the joke? It's so funny. But it said it's a room with 1000 people in November. People were hysterically laughing.

It was funny to them. They loved it. I don't think Jewish people find it funny. But there's another thing here also, which is important to mention, which is. It's different to as an obvious joke in a room during a live event to say, I consider myself Jew ish and make it clear that it's a joke versus the numerous statements, numerous statements where he said Jewish lineage, my parents, grandparents, Holocaust, this, these are two dramatically different things. Speaker 4 Jewish. I was in a room with the Republicans.

Speaker 1 You think you find it funny that a US congressman who's a Catholic with no apparent background of any Jewish heritage whatsoever, other than you say you have it, no one can find it. I think a lot of Jewish people would find that offensive. I begged it for when we were at the RGC in November. Well, no, no, no, no, no. It's obvious that Jewish people find that offensive and it's become abundantly clear. He's like, no, no, no, nobody finds it offensive at all. Nice job there by Piers Morgan pointing out the absurd absurdity of this. The other fascinating moment from this interview was when George DeSantos, George DeSantos. Oh, boy, that that is quite a Freudian slip. George Santos, George DeSantos, George Santos says

the Republican Party basically made him fabricate his background in order to, like, be taken more seriously or something like that. Australia's superstar. I was there as my family with this and it was all untrue. So I don't categorize these as mistakes. I think that part of your process, the cathartic process of redemption, if you like, it's got to start from, I've been a terrible liar. I mean, would you be prepared to say that? Sure. Like I said, well, I've been a terrible liar on those subjects. And what I tried to convey to the American people is...

Things that were untrue is what he tried to convey to the American people is. I things that were untrue is what he tried to convey. Made mistakes of allowing the pressures of what I thought needed to be done in order to. You guys, did you see that? His mistake was he let his misunderstanding of pressure to say things that weren't true. Make him lie like it's this is like and I apologize if people were offended. This wasn't about tricking anybody. This wasn't about this. It's it's no, no, no, no. Let me think about tricking. Let me finish. It wasn't about tricking the people. This was about getting accepted by the party. Right. He had to lie because otherwise the Republican Party wouldn't accept him. Now, sadly, this is all sort of part of the George Santos rehabilitation tour. And it's

becoming increasingly clear that if nothing changes, he's going to be able to stay in the House of Representatives. He'll probably serve one term and then be soundly removed. He is off of all of his committees. It will be a meaningless term, but it is increasingly looking like he's going to be able to stay. But don't worry, everybody, because he's decided he's not going to lie anymore. Now, here was an interesting revelation. He says in terms of why did you think you could get away with it? He says, I ran in 2020 and told the same lies and no one noticed that they were lies then. You never got a master's in business at New York. No, not like I said, no. Right. I mean, again, did you not think people would find this out?

You know, Pierce, not after I had, you know, running to be like a reality TV. No, no, I understand. You know, if you if you were going on Celebrity Apprentice, which I went on, right, it doesn't matter. You can embellish stuff about yourself. Nobody cares, right? But to run for Congress of the United States and to just tell blatant lies about even your academic record, I'm just struck, not necessarily that a politician would lie, but that you would think no one would find out.

Well, I'll humor you this. I ran in 2020 for the same exact seat. necessarily that a politician would lie, but that you would think no one would find out. Well, I'll humor you this. I ran in 2020 for the same exact seat for Congress, and I got away with it then. And I guess. Right. Well, that's honest. Stupid. So you thought, actually, they're not going to find out. No, I didn't think so. So he's like, I told the same lies two years ago and nobody, nobody noticed. And then asked about if he knew that there would be this firestorm, would he even have run for office? And he says, no, I would not. How are you dealing with the complete loss of your anonymity? Now, what's it been like for you to be George Santos on the streets in America? Well, it's uncomfortable. Think about it this

way. Just last night... He's the real victim, guys. My husband and I went out to the movies, and, you know, as I'm walking from getting the tickets to get to the concession stand to get to the theater, that's George Santos. It whispers all across the movie theater, so it's just very strange, you know?

Does part of you like it as much as part of you finds it uncomfortable? I can't stand it. And a lot of people think I love it uncomfortable? I can't stand it. And a lot of people think I love it. I just can't stand it. It's something I'm going to have to learn how to deal with because, as you said earlier, when we were talking before taping, once that genie's out of the bottle, you can't put it back in. So you need to learn how to live with it.

And just that's what I'm doing. If you know what was going to happen to you in terms of the ferocity of the attention. You know, you're currently got eight different official investigations into you. You know, people have called you the biggest liar in the world. You know, all this stuff. If you'd known what was going to happen, would you have still wanted to run for office? Absolutely not. Yeah. So there it is. He would not have run if that was the case that he knew this was going to happen. So listen, the interview is pathetic. He's clearly been coached to some degree about how to answer

some of these things. He's strategically, you know, saying I was wrong about this. I was wrong about that. But but still kind of saying I was forced into all of it and these were embellishments and all of this sort of thing. But he's going to be allowed to stay. It seems to me I believe that he has weathered the height of the pressure. And I would love to keep pressuring him and I will, but I don't think it makes a difference if it's me doing it. It seems as though the storm is passing and he'll kind of be allowed to ring linger without really accomplishing anything until he's voted out in 2024 would be my guess. I am going to play for you something that is amazing. Videos of Ron DeSantis talking about

foreign policy or trying to. And it's really, really funny. Who would have guessed that Ron DeSantis trying to talk about foreign policy would be so funny? We have I don't even know how or where to start this. Ron DeSantis did an event yesterday in Staten Island, which is the most conservative of the five New York City boroughs. I've only been once, to be honest, other than driving through. But it's not a place I'm super familiar with. But I know on paper it is the most conservative of the five boroughs. He did an event there and he also appeared on Fox News during the Fox News appearance. Here is Ron DeSantis downplaying the threat that Russia poses to other countries. Typical talking point, Trumpian talking point so far following in the line of Trump

and really putting together with completely kind of clueless tone, a very similar foreign policy idea or framework as that which we have seen from MAGA. Governor, what does a win look like for us in Ukraine, for Ukraine? Well, I think it's important to point out, I mean, you know, the fear of kind of Russia going into NATO countries and all that and steamrolling, you know, that has not even come close to happening. I think they've shown themselves to be a third rate military power. I think they've suffered tremendous, tremendous losses. I gotta think that the people in Russia are probably disapproving of what's going on. I don't think they can speak up about it for obvious reasons. So I think Russia has been

really, really wounded here. They're really the ones that have had it tough. You know, I don't think that they are the same threat to our country, even though they're hostile. I don't think they're on the same level as a China. Yeah. China is increasingly pronouncing that. So this is this is a typical playbook. OK, this is I'm not going to come out and say the things that a lot of the people that

would vote for me are thinking, which is like they actually kind of like Putin. They're enamored with these authoritarian strongmen. But he's going to just say, yeah, you know, there's not really that much of a threat and we don't really have to worry that much. And it's really Russia that's been hurt by all of this. And the U.S. getting behind Ukraine is actually like really bad for the Russian people and so on and so forth. But the funniest part of it is, you know, Florida governor tries to talk about foreign policy and clearly has no idea whatsoever whatsoever what's going on here. He was asked during the same interview about the visit to Ukraine. Is this the same interview or was this later in the day?

I believe it is the same interview asked about the visit to Ukraine by Joe Biden. And you won't be shocked to know that he doesn't like it. Things first on the president's unannounced visit. Is this a good move? Well, you know, Brian, I'm reminded of when he was vice president, Obama and Biden opposed providing lethal aid to Ukraine during those years. And then I'm also reminded that I don't think any of this would have happened,

but for the weakness that the president showed during his first year in office, culminating, of course, in the disastrous withdrawal in Afghanistan. So I think while he's over there, I think I and many Americans are thinking to ourselves, OK, he's very concerned about those borders halfway around the world. He's not done anything to secure our own border here at home. We've had he's on message, right? I mean, this is what the other Republicans said. Millions and millions of people pour in tens of thousands of Americans dead because of fentanyl. And then, of course, we just suffered a national humiliation of having China fly a spy balloon clear across the continental United States. So we have a lot of problems accumulating here

in our own country that he is neglecting. This is the language of someone who's running for president. I don't know how else to say it. This is a message that this is not a Florida message. This is a message you give in New York about global issues that you understand very little about. And look at, by the way, when you look at that clip and the previous one and what we know about DeSantis, take a look at the foreign policy sort of package that DeSantis is putting together, blaming the United States for the Russian invasion of Ukraine and Biden's alleged mishandling of things, attacking Biden while Biden is in a war zone. Right. Because at the end of the day, that's where Joe Biden went, suggesting

he would dial back support for Ukraine and give Russia more breathing room to do what it wants to do, minimizing the threat from Russia, of course, saying that he was against the Afghanistan withdrawal, even though Trump was going to do the exact same withdrawal. And when asked, Trump didn't even articulate that he would have done anything differently. And of course, scaling it up with aggressive talk about China, which may or may not be warranted based on the facts, but it's just his favorite thing. We're China. This China, this China, that this is a guy who does very much seem to be setting up a run for president and one that is going to be horrifying when it comes to foreign policy. By the way, a quick look at his event here in Staten Island, and you can see it is an extremely diverse crowd of a few dozen white men. I think I see one

woman in the audience, but basically an extraordinarily diverse crowd of white men who were eager to see DeSantis speak. Why? I don't even know. It's all extraordinarily strange. He will probably announce pretty soon will be my guess. We have a voicemail number. That number is 2192 David P. Yesterday on the bonus show, we talked about the culinary scam that is the boneless chicken wing. It's not a wing. And a lot of people called in. Here's one voicemail. Hey, David, you know, I was listening to the the explanation you gave around the terrible false advertising with boneless chicken wings. You know, they're not real wings at all. That's right. It would be like, you know, somebody taking a liquid made from

soy or almonds or something like that and then calling it something like milk, which is not at all. You know, you just use that marketing because it sounds better. You know, as Pat was saying, listen, we talked about this. You can make a case that almond milk shouldn't be labeled as milk because it's not milk. You could make the case that a boneless wing shouldn't be called the wing because it's a chicken breast, right? Or a tenderloin. My view on this is sort of if we agree that we can name things based on their usage, almond milk and oat milk are used functionally as milks. And that would be an argument for saying

you can call it milk. The counterpoint would be, and this is the one that big dairy says it's not milk and therefore you can't really call it milk. I don't know what the answer is, but it's getting very, very complicated. We have a great bonus show for you today. Sign up at join pacman.com. I'll see you then.