The David Pakman Show - 2/23/23: Train derailment sideshows go horribly wrong, Pence admits to the whole thing

Episode Date: February 23, 2023

-- On the Show: -- Kelly Weill, reporter at The Daily Beast and author of "Off the Edge: Flat Earthers, Conspiracy Culture, and Why People Will Believe Anything," joins David for another discussion about the last year in conspiracy theories and more. Get the book: https://amzn.to/3SmpwiN -- After weeks of Republicans denying they would ever consider cutting Social Security and Medicare, Mike Pence appears on CNBC and says they should consider cutting Social Security and Medicare -- Illinois Democratic Governor JB Pritzker brutally slams Ron DeSantis for his recent stunt in Chicago -- Emily Kohrs, a member of the Trump Grand Jury in Georgia, has been on a bizarre media tour that some worry could endanger a possibly forthcoming indictment of Donald Trump -- Failed former President Donald Trump goes to East Palestine, Ohio for an event related to the train derailment and it goes horribly wrong -- Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump have been subpoenaed by the special counsel investigating January 6 -- Fox News is now openly running Ron DeSantis propaganda specials -- Another voicemail caller confused about David's political orientation -- On the Bonus Show: Texas bill would ban nearly all gender-affirming care including for adults, lawyers for Steve Bannon sue over legal bills, Florida lawyer argues pregnant inmate's fetus is being illegally detained, much more... ⚠️ Use code PAKMAN for a free supply of BlueChew at https://go.bluechew.com/david-pakman 🍎 Little Spoon: Use code PAKMAN50OFF for 50% OFF at https://littlespoon.com 💻 Stay protected! Try Aura FREE for 2 weeks: https://aura.com/pakman 🍷 Crunchy Red Fruit: Code PAKMAN saves you $20 at https://crunchyredfruit.com 😁 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

Let's start today with a sort of thick and meaty policy segment, and let's talk about Social Security and the context of this. And it's been much requested by many of you is the absolute apoplexy from Republicans at the mere suggestion that over the last few years they've hinted at and even sometimes overtly said, maybe we should cut Social Security. Maybe the cuts would be lower benefits. Maybe the cuts would be you have to work longer, meaning raise the retirement age or whatever the case may be. But when Joe Biden said at his State of the Union address a couple of weeks ago, some of these Republicans want to cut Social Security, they went crazy and started saying Joe Biden is a liar and we would never do that and on and on and

on. And then yesterday on CNBC incomes, former Vice President Mike Pence. And he says, oh, we should definitely put on the table that we might cut Social Security and Medicare. They've spent weeks saying we would never do that. Stop accusing us of maybe wanting to be open to considering the possibility of ever cutting Social Security and Medicare. And then here's Mike Pence saying, oh, yeah, yeah, no, like we should definitely think of that because of the debt is that, well, I respect the speaker's commitment to take Social Security and Medicare off the table for the debt ceiling negotiations. We've got to put them on the table in the long term.

And right now, President Biden's policy is insolvency. I mean, we're looking at a debt crisis in this country over the next 25 years that is driven by entitlements. And nobody in Washington, D.C., wants to talk about it. I've been going around the country. I'm going to continue to try and do my part. Are you talking about entitlements? What a heroic thing he's doing. What would you do about entitlements? Well, I think first and foremost, you have to explain to people what's going on. We got a $32 trillion national debt right now, Andrew. Having a national debt the same size as our nation's

economy is unsustainable. Last time that happened was right after World War II. Oh, I don't disagree with you. I'm just curious what's on the for you on entitlements. What's on the table? Well, I think it begins with education. It begins with having the American people understand. Yeah. So twice, like what exactly would you do? Well, we got to tell people all about it. Remember what happened at the State of the Union when Joe Biden merely suggested some Republicans are open to cutting. Take the economy hostage. I get it. Unless I agree to their economic plans. All of you at home should know what those plans are now. Instead of making the wealthy pay their fair share, some Republicans, some Republicans want Medicare and Social Security sunset.

I'm not saying it's the majority. No. Let me give you anybody who doubts it. Contact my office. I'll give you a copy. I'll give you a copy of the proposal. And there was you some Marjorie Trader Green standing and screaming. So they say for weeks and weeks, no, we would never,

ever, ever, ever, ever do that. And then here goes Mike Pence. He's like, oh, yeah, it should absolutely be on the table. We have way too much debt. So let's talk about the truth on this talking point so that we can all understand what is going on, because the right says Social Security is insolvent. It just doesn't work financially. It doesn't work. Here's the truth. And the truth is it's it's a good thing and a bad thing that it's really clear what's going on, because sometimes when things are so clear and simple, the right loves to pretend like they're really complicated, despite Republicans claiming Social Security is insolvent, meaning unable to pay the benefits that it owes or will owe people. If we do nothing,

we change nothing at all about Social Security. There is enough money to pay full benefits until 2035. That means like if you keep doing just the inflation adjustments for cost of living to what people get, you change nothing about what people in other than continuing to do the inflation adjustment to the Social Security cap, like literally nothing changes until 2040, 2035. There is no problem. And if we continue with the do nothing scenario starting in 2035, you can reduce benefits to 80 percent of what they would be inflation adjusted. And then it still continues to be fine, making no

changes whatsoever other than moving benefits from 100 to 80 percent. Now, what is the reason that this is going on? Why is this even a conversation changing demographics? More and more people are retiring relative to the number of workers. So as baby boomers continue to retire, the number of people receiving benefits relative to the number of people paying in is going to fall number of workers. So as baby boomers continue to retire, the number of people receiving benefits relative to the number of people paying in is going to fall out of balance towards the retirees. And then secondly, people on average are living longer, meaning that the estimates for how long people are going to be receiving benefits, it's more years because people are living longer. OK, now I think it's unacceptable to go down to 80 percent of benefits. But again. With doing nothing fine until 2035 and then fine for a very long time on 80 percent of

benefits, I believe if you've paid in based on getting 100 percent of benefits, you should get them. OK, but I've laid out the do nothing scenario. It's not exactly insolvent, is it? It's everything's fine for 11, 12 years, and then we do a 20 percent reduction. But let's fix it. OK, how do we fix it? There's quite a few ways. They're relatively simple. It's just a matter of finding the political will to do it. As a reminder, right now in 2023, Social Security contributions are made on your first one hundred and sixty thousand dollars that you earn per year. OK, once you get beyond one hundred and sixty, you stop paying into Social Security. The amount that is paid in is twelve point four percent.

Now, many of you might say, David, I'm only paying six point two percent. The reason is that in a normal job, if you're a W2 employee, that twelve point four percent is divided between you and your employer. So instead of you paying twelve point four percent, you pay six point two. Your employer pays six point two. If you're self-employed like me, you pay the full twelve point four percent. OK, so what can you do? One thing you can do is you can increase that rate. You could say instead of 12.4 percent, it's going to be something higher on that first hundred and sixty thousand dollars. I don't like that idea because it disproportionately hits those earning under one hundred and sixty thousand. But you could do that. You could say instead of 12.4

percent, we're going to pay 15 percent and that's going to stretch out how long we can pay 100 percent of benefits. Second option, you can raise the cap so you keep it at 12.4 percent. But instead of paying that on your first hundred and sixty thousand that you make, maybe you paid on your first 180 or maybe on your first 200. That seems like a better option to me. Number three, you could raise the retirement age. It's very controversial. I don't like it, but you could say, well, you've got to wait longer before you can get benefits. What I do like is giving a bonus if you delay retirement by choice. This is already part of the way it works. And for people for whom this is new, I think it's useful to know this stuff right now. You can start receiving reduced benefits at age 62. The standard age to get benefits is 67. So your 100 percent

benefit would be if you say at 67 years of age, I want to start getting the benefits from 62 to 67. You get less. And if you at age 67 say I don't need the money yet, either because I have private retirement or I'm going to continue working or whatever. If you say I'm going to wait until I'm 68 or 69 or 70, you get even more benefits when you do retire. We could expand that and say, hey, you know what? People are living longer and many people would gladly delay getting their Social Security benefits. You could say if you choose to wait until age 71 or 72 or 73 or 74, you get more benefits, which leaves money in the trust fund that can accrue earnings and gains. You don't force anybody to do anything, but you give an option. That's interesting. A fourth option is to move the money in the Social Security trust fund to something with

potentially higher return, but with more risk. Right now, Social Security invests in low risk government bonds. Very safe, very low return without going into we're going to buy Bitcoin. You could slightly expand the list of investment vehicles that Social Security's trust fund can be invested in with the idea that there will be a little more volatility. could slightly expand the list of investment vehicles that Social Security's trust fund can be invested in with the idea that there will be a little more volatility. But over time, you should get a higher return and that could close that gap that will eventually appear. And then lastly, you could also increase immigration, bring in people to work to pay

into the system in order to even out that ratio. So we can fix this with some tweaks. You could raise the cap a little bit and then you could offer greater benefits to people who choose to delay retirement a little more, increase immigration a little bit to increase the number of people paying in and consider slightly higher yield, but slightly higher risk investments with some of the money. It's not brain surgery, but it's a political gridlock. And we have the solutions if only we could get our elected officials to put them in place. Lastly, mixing this specific issue of the Social Security Trust Fund generally with that of the national debt is also very dishonest because the truth is Social Security is its own trust fund

and we can manage and make tweaks to that individually. The conversation about the debt is fine, but it really is a separate conversation. So after weeks of saying we would never do that, Mike Pence shows up and says, oh, yeah, we should definitely consider that. Ron DeSantis recently pulled the publicity stunt in Chicago and the governor of the state of Illinois, where Chicago is, didn't like it. And he's firing back and firing back viciously. What happened is that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, in what appears to be a pre-presidential run announcement tour, has been going. He went to Staten Island. He also went to Chicago and he spoke to the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge No. seven on Monday night in Elmhurst,

which is a suburb of Chicago. And at that event, Ron DeSantis went after J.B. Pritzker, the Democratic governor of Illinois, for his criminal justice policies, saying the Safety Act and other Illinois policies are the vocation of public safety. Now, this is an incredibly inaccurate claim by Ron DeSantis. But J.B. Pritzker, who does not mess around viciously, but accurately attacked Ron DeSantis. Take a look at this. The truth is that we we actually have a much better education system in Illinois than they have in Florida. We're ranked higher than they are.

U.S. News and World Report ranks K-12 education in Illinois sixth in the country and number one among the largest states in the country. So he's got nothing to brag about when it comes to education. So he moves on and tries to use this word woke to describe everything. He doesn't even know what the word means and he has no definition of it. It's just anything he doesn't like is woke ism. True. And all I can tell you is that I don't know what that means. And frankly, what I can say about Illinois is that we're a state that cares about equity. We're a state that cares about our families. That's woke caring about your family and equity. That's what he means

by woke, sir, making the investments that are required so that our youngest children will do better and better. And I'm really excited about the direction of our state as opposed to a state where they don't make the investments that are necessary to lift up their education system or their health care system. So Pritzker is, of course, completely correct. Now, the tough talk from Pritzker is being suggested could be because he's planning potentially to run for president if Biden doesn't run or maybe even if he does. It's sort of unclear, but Pritzker's name has kind of been floating around as a possible contender. But put that aside for a second. OK, the truth is that even if you put aside education where Illinois is light years ahead of Florida, that's absolutely the case. Put aside. Talk about the primary subject matter here.

Remember, DeSantis was speaking to police about law enforcement and so on and so forth. The right loves to talk about the dystopian war zone that is Illinois because of Chicago specifically. And it's absolutely true that Chicago does have a significant gang and gun crime issue. We've talked about how easy it is, by the way, to go over the border into Indiana 40 minutes and then go back with guns that you can easily obtain in Indiana. We've talked. But put that put all of that aside for a second. Despite Florida having the lax gun laws and laws that give police more latitude and all these different things, and despite the allegation that

Illinois is just so backwards on crime, The reality is that Illinois and Florida have really similar violent crime rates. They have different populations. But if you look at per capita violent crime, it's something like it's three ninety per hundred thousand people in Florida and four twenty per hundred thousand people in Illinois. Yes, Illinois has a slightly higher violent crime rate. But the truth is they're both right in the middle around the twenty twenty five out of 50 states. So to put it a different way, even though if you ask Ron DeSantis, Florida is doing everything right on crime, law enforcement and guns, and Illinois is doing everything wrong on crime, law enforcement and guns. They have almost identical

violent crime rates, which really makes you wonder, is Ron DeSantis really doing everything right? Is J.B. Pritzker really doing anything wrong? Because those are pretty damn weak numbers to demonstrate that that's the case. Good for J.B. Pritzker. I like the guy. I am not as familiar with him as on policy as I could be, but he has always struck me as decent and willing to use the sort of language, rhetoric and tone against these lying Republicans that I think we need more of and that we've seen from only only a handful of prominent Democrats. Let's take a very quick break. All of the clips I played for you here will be on our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash the David Pakman show. And they will also be on the Spanish YouTube channel for those who prefer

the Spanish language version of this show at David Pakman dot com slash Spanish. One of our sponsors today is Blue Chew, a unique online service delivering the same active ingredients as Viagra and Cialis in a chewable form and at a fraction of the cost. And they're giving my audience an entire month supply for free. So if you think you could benefit from an extra boost of confidence, all you have to do is take a short quiz on their website. A licensed doctor approves your prescription. The medication comes straight to your home within days in a discreet package. No driving around to the doctor's office or the pharmacy. No waiting around.

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the Georgia grand jury that ended its work a few weeks ago. Let me set this up. And this is this is weird and cringy and just bizarre. One of the members of the grand jury in Georgia that recently finished its work, issued its report and apparently some indictments are coming, although we don't yet know whether Trump himself is going to be indicted, has been on a very strange media tour that I can't imagine is useful to anybody other than maybe herself. She is named Emily Kors, and she was the foreperson

of this grand jury in Georgia. She has been going around giving cringy interviews, speaking in a bizarre way. And I don't know if, you know, I just don't know what I don't know why everything about this woman is so strange. But she is, according to legal experts, potentially jeopardizing the indictment of Donald Trump. We're going to play a first clip here from MSNBC. Her demeanor is bizarre. It's cringy. It's strange. But most importantly, this could really be I mean, the the giddiness and even just listen, under the best of circumstances, this probably isn't a good idea before indictments are announced. But in particular, her demeanor and her giddiness and everything about it is it's not helping

anybody other than maybe Trump. Did you personally want to hear from the former? I wanted to hear from the former president. But honestly, I kind of wanted to subpoena the former president because I got to swear everybody in. And so I thought it'd be really cool to get 60 seconds with President Trump of me looking at him and being like, do you solemnly swear? I'm getting this right.

I mean, I just I kind of thought that would be. Oh, my God, this is this is very much not good, guys. This is very, very much not good. Awesome moment. I can see it would have been awesome. Not indicated by the facts, not necessary out of a sense of duty and justice. It would have been really cool and awesome to subpoena Trump.

Oh, trying to get the former president to come talk to us would have been a year in negotiation by itself. So it sounds like that was ultimately a battle that you all decided not to wage. Exactly. That's kind of how it ended up. I'd be fascinated by what he said, but do you think he would have come in and said anything groundbreaking or just the same kind of thing we've heard? So at some point you don't need to hear 50 people say the same thing. You know what I mean? At some point you kind of start to get the gist. Sure. Um, I just, then she went on CNN and it was an equally bizarre interview.

You know, it's interesting that just raises more questions. I know. I know. I'm sorry. No, no. Please do not apologize. I'm very appreciative of your time. When you say there's no plot twists and people won't be shocked, people are going to people are going to hear that and they're going to think that means that Donald Trump is definitely on that list. I know it's delicate, but can you can you speak to that i can't well i understand i might be able to according to instructions but i don't want to i don't want to speak out on something that the judge like i said consciously chose not to release at this point i don't know if i would interfere with the da's investigations i don't know if I would interfere with procedures in some way. I just, I very much do not want to cross that line.

But in your view, people will not be surprised when they see the list of names to come out who you recommended to face indictment. Especially if they've been following the investigation. I, I can't see it being a shocker. You know, Donald Trump put out... This is just such a terrible idea. ...statement last week about the partial report that the judge did release, the pages that he did.

And the way that he described it is he said that, yet your report means total exoneration for him is how he put it in his statement. What's your reaction to that, Emily? I did see that today, uh, which was fascinating. I'm not positive he read the right document. But, um, I will say that if what he was talking about was our statement where we indicated

that there was no evidence of widespread fraud or widespread vote fraud in the Georgia 2020 election, that might have been what he meant. Other than that, I'm not positive what he meant by that. So anyway, as fascinating as this is, this is potentially a really, really, really bad thing. And here on CNN are former federal and state prosecutor Eli Honig explaining it all to Anderson Cooper.

Perspective now from CNN senior legal analyst Eli Honig, former assistant U.S. attorney. He's also the author of the new book Untouchable, How Powerful People Get Away With It. Also with us, our chief political correspondent and co-anchor of CNN's State of the Union, Dana Bash. First of all, why this person is talking on TV, I do not understand. She's clearly enjoying herself. Yeah. But I mean, is this responsible? She was the foreperson of this grand jury. This is a horrible idea. And I guarantee you that prosecutors are wincing watching her go on this. I was wincing just watching her eagerness to like, you know, hint at stuff. It's painful in that respect. This is a very serious prospect here. We're talking

about indicting any person. You're talking about potentially taking away that person's liberty. We're talking about potentially a former president for the first time in this nation's history. She does not seem to be taking that very seriously. There's no reason for her to be out talking. No, there's none. It's a prosecutor's nightmare. Mark my words. Donald Trump's team is going to make a motion if there's an indictment to dismiss that indictment based on grand jury impropriety. She's not supposed to be talking about anything really, but she's really not supposed to be talking about the deliberations. She's talking about what specific witnesses they saw, what the grand jury thought of. So you get the picture. Now, a couple of people, a couple of you emailed me and said, David, is it possible that she

is pretending and playing a character in order to derail the entire thing? I don't know. Everything about this is so weird that the truth could be anything. Trump already launching an attack on her on his platform, Truth Social, posting, quote, This Georgia case is ridiculous, a strictly political continuation of the greatest witch hunt of all time. Now you have an extremely energetic young woman, the get this for person of the racist

special grand jury going around and doing a media tour, revealing incredibly the grand jury's inner workings and thoughts. This is not justice. This is an illegal kangaroo court. Atlanta's leading the nation in murder and other violent crimes. All I did is make two perfect phone calls. Now, not everybody's reactions to this are sane. Charlie Kirk, for example, said that the woman is a witch. Yeah, it's really funny. Someone might go to jail and have to

spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to defend themselves. But that warrants a giggle. Now, maybe that was just a nervous giggle because you're in front of millions of people making a complete fool out of yourself. And now we learn about her love of alchemy. No joke. She posts on her social media page about herbs, about casting a circle, demonic circles, how to cast spells. Not a joke. This is all on her social media page. Yeah. Now, this is why you don't go out and do a media tour. So I hope that this doesn't derail whatever was coming. I hope it's not used in the future, as Ellie Honig suggests, for a dismissal. But this is a very, very bad idea. And now all we can do is wait. A 2024 candidate, Donald Trump, went to

East Palestine, Ohio, yesterday and held an event. The event was completely deranged. Trump talked about football. Trump brought Trump water. He went to a McDonald's. He told people to have fun. And the entire event was a complete and total farce that went horribly wrong right away. In this first clip, Trump falsely claims that the Biden administration intends to do nothing about what took place in Ohio, but that his presence there got them to all of a sudden start doing things. That's what it is. This is really America right here. We're standing in America. Unfortunately, as you know, in too many cases, your goodness and perseverance were met with indifference and

betrayal in some cases. Biden and FEMA said they would not send federal aid to East Palestine under any circumstance. They're not going to send aid. I thought that was a strange statement because I've been working with FEMA for a long time, four years, and they were great with us with the tornadoes, the hurricanes, and things like this. And it was a strange statement to come out, and they were doing nothing for you. They were intending to do absolutely nothing for you. JD and I spoke, and they said, they're not coming. They're not going to come.

And I said, that's very strange. FEMA said, specifically, this doesn't meet the criteria and that's horrible and somebody has to do something for those people. I said back when I announced that I was coming, they changed their tune. It was an amazing phenomena. The mayor and I were discussing that. It was quite amazing what happened. And they said that we can't let this happen. That was a big change face. J.D., do you ever see a change like that? That was a quick. Yep. As you know, of course, Trump has an unblemished record as the beacon of corporate responsibility and is just the perfect person to really turn to on this issue and hold big

corporations accountable. Now, nothing that he's saying there is true, but he does have to make himself the center of attention. Trump also says that he brought Trump water for people, even though when we research it, it seems like Trump water hasn't actually been a thing for a very long time. But what it seems like it is, is Trump gets labels for some other water and just puts them on. It's all crazy. But he says he brought Trump water for people in East Palestine. But he also brought like lower quality water for them as well, in case some people don't want the great water, I guess. I don't know. Especially thanks some of the incredible people that helped us because we're bringing thousands of bottle of water, Trump water, actually. Some of it we had to go to a much lesser quality water.

You want to get those Trump bottles, I think, more than anybody else. But we're bringing a lot of he brought good water and he also brought lower quality water for people. Absolutely beyond parity. The reality, of course, in terms of Trump's record on train regulations, is that there were safety rules put in place by the Obama administration for high hazard cargo trains, which Trump then said, oh, Obama did that. Oh, yes, Obama.

Then I'm going to go ahead and repeal those. And that is exactly what took place. Trump then started ranting about football, if you can believe it. You know, it reminds me a little bit. I don't know if you remember when Ohio State was going to be playing football for another season. They were going to sit back and watch with the China virus or covid, whatever you want to call it. And I called the head of the Big Ten, Big Ten footballers. You got to get this football open. And they were great.

They responded. And Ohio State played that season. Now, the Big Ten denies that Trump had any involvement in this. But it is one of those stories that Trump loves to repeat. Nobody remembers that, I think. Right. Does anybody because it didn't happen? You know, you got at least one, at least one.

You could be close. But by now you still at least one, at least one. You could be close. By now you still would be close, probably. But we got that open very early and you had a great season of football. Yep. All thanks to Trump, of course. And then lastly, even though Trump is obese, he makes a fat joke about East Palestine Mayor Trent Conaway saying that he's very easy to find because he's overweight. Right. So how could you possibly miss him? I also want to recognize a man who has been working tirelessly for this community since the beginning of the nightmare. And Trent, where's Trent?

He's very easy to find. I do think Trump doesn't see himself as obese because he so frequently talks about other people's weight and size while claiming to be six, three and weighing only 239, which, oh, God, what is happening in this country? So anyway, there is Trump's very inspiring visit to East Palestine, taking credit for things he didn't do, ignoring his own role in reducing train regulations, calling the mayor fat and then going to McDonald's and I don't know, handing out MAGA hats as he did. Another horrible embarrassment. You can find these clips if you're morbidly curious about what this all looked like. We'll have these clips up on our Instagram, which you can find by

searching Instagram for David Pakman show. They'll be on Facebook at Facebook dot com slash David Pakman show. And of course, on the YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash the David Pakman show. Imagine for a second that you try logging into your email account only Thank you. feeling. And we dealt with it at the show not that long ago. But now I have an app called Aura, which gives me much more peace of mind. Our sponsor, Aura, is the all in one solution for keeping your online account safe because Aura will scan the dark web for your personal info, password, social security number, and you get fast alerts when they find something. You also get fast alerts about credit inquiries. Aura protects all of your devices from malware. Aura even requests the removal of your info from data broker sites. And Aura helps you manage what your kids can do on their devices. You can

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take twenty dollars off your first shipment. That's crunchy red fruit dot com. Use code Pacman for twenty dollars off a single purchase or sign up for their bi-monthly club and email circle at crunchy red fruit dot com for twenty dollars off. The info is in the podcast notes. It's great to welcome back to the program today, Kelly Weil, who's a reporter at The Daily Beast and also author of Off the Edge, Flat Earthers, Conspiracy Culture and Why People Will Believe Anything. Kelly, great to have you back on. I appreciate your time. Thanks so much for having me again. So when you were last on about a year ago, we talked a lot about how people fall into conspiratorial thinking, how sometimes seemingly

benign conspiracy theories don't sort of stand alone and they're often wrapped up with other beliefs that can be more damaging. We talked a little bit about how we can get people to maybe revise some of their thinking over the last year. We've seen Twitter in particular change dramatically in terms of its enforcement and application of terms of service under the stewardship of its new owner, Elon Musk. And that's certainly had impacts. We've also seen platforms like Facebook and YouTube slightly change, if not their policies, at least the way that they implement or police the terms of service around conspiratorial or non science based content.

How would you kind of characterize big picture the direction that things have gone in these areas over the last year? It's a good question. I think big tech broadly has been stepping away from some of the misinformation fears that really characterized around the 2020 presidential elections. And, you know, I want to give them some credit in the past, but also not too much credit because around that election, I think a lot of them were more cognizant of what they needed to do to combat

misinformation, but they weren't doing the best job of it. I think some of the best work that they did to keep the platforms from going totally off the rails had to do with combating algorithms that they had that prioritized conspiratorial content. I'm thinking mostly of YouTube, which had recommendations that put the weirdest stuff at the top of your feed. And although that still happens, to their credit, they have taken action against some of the really bonkers stuff. It's harder to find flat earth accidentally, for example. But now we're kind of swinging back in that same direction. Pardon me, Twitter has its new For You feed. It's a total rip off of the TikTok for you feed.

It's, you know, guessing what you want to see. Often, you know, our worst impulses do drive what we want to see. We do want to see the weird stuff, the conspiratorial stuff, the stuff that you're clicking on at two in the morning. So I do think we are seeing maybe a bit laxer rules on how things are promoted and distributed on social media. Yeah, there seems to be sort of like an air of we're really not going to be able to stop this. And maybe it really shouldn't even be our responsibility at the end of the day. That seems to have I don't know if it started when Musk took over Twitter and kind of spread from there. But there seems to be less of a concern with this, at least among what I'm hearing publicly

from many of the platforms. Yeah, absolutely. I think there's sort of a learned helplessness there because I do broadly think that it's true. You know, social media platforms can't administer away all the conspiratorial thinking. You know, that's a very human drive we have. It's not going to change if Facebook were to vanish off the face of the earth tomorrow, nor really do I think should they be involved in litigating the, you know, minutia of what

we share. But there are very deliberate decisions that some of these social media leaders are taking. Elon Musk, you look at who he interacts with, and these are people who came out of like Gamergate blogs, right? These are former alt-right conspiracy mongers. And so there's a difference between saying, well, you know, maybe we'll be a little bit more libertarian with how we police things. Maybe we'll let things, you know, hang a little bit looser. And Elon Musk going and like sharing the weirdest stuff that you'd normally find on 4chan and, you know, saying, huh, interesting anyone looking into that? So,

you know, it's they're not completely as helpless as sometimes they portray themselves. The anti-vax issue has gotten interesting over the last year because over time, the truth about what the vaccines do and don't do for the latest variants has changed. And this is being used by some anti-vaxxers, including those described in a recent Vice Motherboard piece as now wanting revenge, so-called revenge, because they feel that they've been vindicated. This has become a tough one because to take something as simple as does the vaccine prevent you from getting the virus? When we go back to that first vaccine and the first variant, the data was very clear that it did prevent you from getting and spreading the virus. There were people then saying, no, it

doesn't. Over time, as the variants have changed and the vaccine has been updated, it's primarily a tool to prevent you from dying or ending up in the hospital. But now it is a different reality about whether it prevents you from getting the virus. Things have changed in the real world. The anti-vaxxers have been saying the same thing for three years. It now more closely lines up with what they were saying all along. That's a really difficult situation to handle. It's so challenging.

And I think it gets at a reason conspiracy theories are so potent. The reason that we can all fall for them is because conspiracy theories, you know, they're something that we activate when we do have uncertainty, when we don't have all the information, when something is frightening in front of us. And conspiracy theories often latch onto a kernel of truth, or at least an emotional truth, right? And the truth here is that the vaccines, they're not perfect. They will keep you out of the hospital. They will make it harder for you to catch and spread this virus. But like you said, as the virus mutates, vaccines have been playing catch up. And while it is absolutely a phenomenal

idea for people to get their vaccines, get their boosters, it's not going to be the miracle cure that, you know, we're really hoping for, I want to say, like, summer of 2020. And so anti-vaxxers who, to your point, have always been saying that you can't take the vaccine, it's, you know, it's garbage, or it's going to hurt you. They've had to kind of tailor their messaging and say, well, okay, not everybody dropped dead three months after getting the vaccine. It's not the zombie apocalypse that we warned about, but it's not working perfectly. And so they take this new reality and they retrofit it onto what they were saying to say, well, you shouldn't have taken the vaccines.

And I think to that point about revenge, they certainly certainly some of them, I think, do kind of yearn for a future where all their political opponents drop dead because they got the back. Yeah. As we've seen the media discussions of covid more generally reduced, we also seem to see a little bit less about ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine and urine injections or nebulizing or whatever. You know, I'm sure you saw that guy. What is what is kind of filling the void right now? I mean, I see they're they're talking more about Hunter Biden laptop, even though that's a different sort of thing. It's not really equivalent to, you know, ivermectin. What what new things over the last

six months are you seeing getting more oxygen? Well, I think we're seeing a lot of, I hate to say it, but like Republican cope with the 2022 midterms. A lot of people not accepting that their party really didn't sweep the way they expected. So this is going to be a relitigation of 2020 election fraud hoaxes. I'm seeing a good number of environmental conspiracy theories percolating right now. We just had the train derailment in East Palestine that, of course, was the result of huge bipartisan lapses in labor rights and in transportation laws and the way that these railroads can lobby. But because this is a frightening situation where it is true, our politicians

don't really have the answers. We've seen this void where the right can step in and say that this is a plot against you, either, you know, that they, I don't know, that the left is covering up for this or that, you know, it's a deliberate sabotage of the Midwest, of food supplies that are really onto that right now, this idea that Democrats are going to nuke Amish country or something like that. So I think that's really powerful. And that comes, I think, side by side with other conspiracy theories right now that are really hitting back at the idea that you should be polluting less. They're really up in arms right now about the idea of the 15-minute city, the idea that you can walk,uting less. They're really up in arms right now about the idea of the 15-minute city, the idea that you can walk, you know, you don't need a car, you can walk to the

things you need at your child's school, the supermarket. And they're, you know, calling that a New World Order plot to suppress people. So we, I think, are seeing a lot of conspiracy theories that try and fit a more conservative ideology into the reality of this moment where we are facing fraud and frightening environmental reality. So I think that's going to be a trend going forward. The other one recently has been the quote spy balloon. And of course, I mean, anytime you get anywhere, even remotely close to aliens, all sorts of folks come out of the woodwork. But so I don't know if I can say

surprisingly, but somewhat surprisingly, you're seeing some of that come even from marginally more serious people like are we sure that this isn't alien life or whatever the case may be? It ended up being a topic for Biden's press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, talking about it a bunch of times. Has anything surprised you in what we've seen related to the balloons? You know, actually, yes. And maybe it speaks to a quaint idea of conspiracy theorists that we still hold, where they're the ones with the tinfoil hats trying to talk to aliens in their backyard. When we got this this trending topic,

this idea that there were UFOs that we were interacting with, I'm like, okay, well, at least we're going to have some vintage conspiracy theories. We're going to have some aliens. Weirdly enough, people didn't latch on so much to the idea that these were aliens trying to communicate with us, which it doesn't seem like they were. It was often hobbyist balloons that were being you know, aliens trying to communicate with us, which it doesn't seem like they were. It was, you know, often hobbyist balloons are being shot down, but that the balloons were actually a

distraction from something else. The balloons were a plot. They were trying to distract you from the East Palestine derailment. They're trying to distract you from reporting on a Russian oil pipeline. So it was really interesting to see the emergence of something that in the past, I think kind of classic conspiracy fodder. And it wasn't enough in this moment. It wasn't the red meat the conspiracy theorists were looking for. That's another interesting trait of a lot of these conspiracy theories. You know, last time you and I talked about how as apparent evidence in favor of a conspiracy theory can be just as useful as the absence of evidence, because the absence of evidence becomes part of the conspiracy. So it becomes kind of

unfalsifiable in the same way. An event can be an event you are being lied to and not told the truth about or the conspiracy can be the event is real, but it's fundamentally a distraction from some other thing. And it's another aspect of the sort of unfalsify ability of a lot of these things. I think that's absolutely right. You know, one thing that I struggle with as a journalist, I think a lot of journalists have this frustration is the idea that you'll see it on Facebook. People say, why isn't this being covered? Why isn't this being covered? And in some respects,

I think we do have to take that seriously. If people feel like the reality they're living isn't reflected adequately in the news, I think that is something that we need to take into account. But oftentimes they're saying, why isn't this being covered? And you say, what? And they link to a CNN article. It absolutely blows my mind. But to your point, I think this idea that you can touch on the apparent lack of coverage and say that this is indicative of a cover-up or this is suggestive of another plot really does show the flexibility of these theories. It allows people to take their perceived, the media that they're taking in and say that it's part of a broader plot, that it's part of

a broader effort to distract you or to steer you in a certain direction. And I think a lot of, especially a lot of alternative media folks have really become quite adept at taking what the news media is putting out and saying that it's part of a distraction effort or it's part of a, you know, a broader scheme. Yet even just the coverage itself, aside from this is the real story or not or whatever the case may be, if you perceive or claim there isn't coverage, the lack of coverage is part of the conspiracy. And if there's a lot of coverage, then it must be a concerted effort to talk about that as opposed to the thing which really should be discussed. So even the amount of coverage can be used.

Absolutely. Again, it's a real frustration. You know, ironically, right now, today I am reporting on East Palestine. And so when I'm talking to you says, yeah, we're getting swamped by grifters on the ground. We've got Benny Johnson's on the ground who are running around filming videos. And look, I think, you know, fundamentally, there does need to be a lot of aid there. I think people are rightly happy to be getting donations and stuff like that. But you it's very easy to turn these things into a circus over the amount of perceived coverage or lack thereof or people's imputed agendas when what's really going on is an environmental crisis with, you know, a pretty traceable backstory as to how it happened. Yeah. Even as I receive emails from people saying it's not getting coverage, I'm realizing everybody's emailing me about the fact that it's not getting coverage. I'm realizing everybody's emailing me about the fact that it's not getting coverage. It's on CNN. It's on Fox News. It's in The Washington Post, New York Times, Alternative Media. The story about the coverage seems to take on a life of its own.

It really does. And, you know, I could speculate a couple of reasons why one is, you know, I think regardless of political orientation, I think we do have an ambient anxiety about the environment. We know something's up and then you see something just as shocking as that big, great plume of smoke. And that really grabs attention. The East Palestine derailment also speaks to a sort of forgotten class narrative that I think the right has become very adept at wielding without actually addressing the underlying issues. Trump went to East Palestine just this week when we're speaking. And he understands that that is a predominantly white working collar community that does often constitute his base. And even though some of the solutions that could help that community, you know, immediate donations now, but also, you know, longer-term investments in social programs that would help and that are very often progressive or liberal programs, it's having a town like that at the heart of such a striking incident. It does kind

of feed into this idea that these are people who are being left behind in a way that conservatives can help, but liberals can't. That's a really interesting interpretation as well, which which makes a lot of sense. The book is now in paperback off the edge, Flat Earthers, Conspiracy Culture and Why People Will Believe Anything. We've been speaking with the book's author, reporter at The Daily Beast, Kelly Weil. Kelly, always appreciate your time and insights. Thank you so much for having me. One of our sponsors is Zippix nicotine toothpicks. Don't you think it's time you stopped putting smoke and vape oils in your lungs? Zippix toothpicks are a convenient way to curb the nicotine cravings. Zippix toothpicks are super discreet. You can use them anytime, anywhere.

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Well, Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump have now been subpoenaed by the special counsel. And this is a very, very big deal, which potentially will lead simply to hundreds of times over many hours pleading the fifth, depending on how it goes. The New York Times reports Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump subpoenaed in January 6th investigation. Now, you might be saying, David, sir, hold on. I thought that ended because Congress ended. This is not that investigation that the last congressional term ended, better said. And now Republicans have taken over.

This is not that investigation. This is the special counsel. The article says the special counsel overseeing the inquiry into Trump's efforts to retain power after the 2020 election wants the former president's daughter and son in law to testify to a grand jury. The decision by the special counsel, Jack Smith, to subpoena Trump and Kushner underscores how deeply into Trump's inner circle Smith is reaching and is the latest sign that no potential high level witness is off limits. The article also

says the disclosure about the subpoena comes two weeks after it was revealed that Smith subpoenaed former Vice President Pence. Pence plans to fight that subpoena, invoking his role as president of the Senate to argue that it violates the speech or debate clause of the Constitution. As far as these subpoenas go, quote, It is unclear whether Trump will seek to block whether Donald Trump will seek to block Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner from testifying on the grounds of executive privilege as he has tried with some other witnesses. Both of them served as White House officials in the Trump administration. Trump declined to try to stop them from testifying before the House committee, an aide to Ivanka

and Jared didn't respond with a request for for comment. It's ironic how the Trump cult often overlooks how Jared Kushner received billions from Saudi Arabia, which is a country they love to demonize. But they're obsessed about Hunter Biden's laptop and Jared Kushner, who admittedly we don't talk about that often on this program either. He and Ivanka seem to have kind of decided for our personal image. This entire thing was very bad. And there are articles about how, you know, in the waning days of the Trump administration, they wanted to just kind of like return to their old social lives in New York City. And a lot of people didn't want to welcome them because they were understandably disgusted. So they ended up I think it was like

moving to Miami. But it's a whole mess. But Jared and Ivanka are at least somewhat connected to the reality of how they are now seen. And the truth is that they don't get the scrutiny that they probably deserve as individuals who were far more involved with the Trump administration than were Eric and Don Jr., for example. And the double standard with the Hunter Biden laptop is, of course, wild. And reasonable people could point to them and say, you know, they made hundreds of millions of dollars while serving for the government, thanks to nepotism. And somehow that doesn't deserve an investigation. But Hunter Biden, when we know ninety nine percent of the Hunter Biden story and his drug issues and the entire thing,

he had nothing to do with government. He had nothing to do with Joe Biden's vice presidency. He has nothing to do with Joe Biden's presidency. They want extensive investigations and hearings and endless resources and millions of dollars of taxpayer money going to the Hunter Biden laptop, but they're not even thinking about Jared, Jared and Ivanka. One of the things I do think, however, about Ivanka, my instinct right now, given the distance that Ivanka and Jared have kind of put between themselves and Trump's 2024 campaign, Ivanka has kids that I think she actually does care about. I think she would throw her dad under the bus if it meant saving herself and her family. The most likely outcome at the end of this entire subpoena is an eight hour deposition where Ivanka pleads the fifth

five hundred or a thousand times. I still think that's the most likely outcome. But if it really came down to self-preservation, I actually do think that Ivanka would do what she needed to do to maintain her immediate family unit. But that's just a guess. Let me know what you think in the comments. Fox News continues to try to thread this needle where they want to do what they can to make someone other than Trump the Republican nominee in 2024. But Fox doesn't want to go off the deep end, off the diving board, so to speak, in case Trump ends up being the nominee. So some of the things Fox News has done to subtly and softly push voters and public opinion towards Rhonda

Sanders include they'll do a man on the street segment. And it just so happens that 10 of the 11 people they talk to say, I would rather DeSantis be the nominee than Trump. Now, of course, you can talk to as many people as you need to until you get enough to create the narrative that you want. And the narrative that Fox chose to create was let's make these men on the street segments overwhelmingly point to Republican voters who prefer to Santas over Trump. They have been giving more sort of serious positive coverage or at least neutral coverage to DeSantis events than they have to Trump events. OK, the latest thing is that they are straight up running like a Ron DeSantis propaganda special.

Here's the promo for it. Take a look. Fox station's hit docu series is back. Who is Ron DeSantis? We will never, ever surrender to the world. He was in the Middle East advising SEAL Team one to advise them. You have to be the best of the best. He's a good man. He's a good husband. He's a good father. Is this Ron DeSantis's opportunity

to run for higher office? I think it is. Who is Ron DeSantis streaming now only on Fox Nation? Yeah. So anyway, remember what Angelo Carusone told us about this. Fox News primarily wants to be adjacent to power. And because it's not yet clear that Donald Trump isn't going to be the nominee, Fox News needs to continue at least plausibly setting themselves up to fully jump back on on the Trump train if Trump is indeed the nominee and if there are potentially going to be another four years of a Trump administration. However, Rupert Murdoch doesn't think much of Trump. And it's very clear from the released text messages that we got last week that many of the Fox News hosts don't really think much of Trump, at least as far as his level of honesty. This includes Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, Tucker, etc., who knew Trump was lying all along about the

big lie and the entire thing. So as Angelo told us when I interviewed him, Angelo Carusone from Media Matters, Fox News wants to do what it can to push voters to Ron DeSantis or to anybody so that Trump is less likely to be the nominee. But they need to have a sort of eject button. Right. They need to have an escape pod to get back to Trump and not completely sever that relationship because Trump is such a sycophant and he loves because Trump is such a sycophant and he loves because Trump is such a sycophant lover and he loves suck ups. Even though Trump is now criticizing Fox News as being the rhino network and all of this different stuff, if he is the nominee and if Fox goes right back to him and, you know, is eating out of his hand

and whatever, Trump will go right back to doing the primetime Fox News interviews and the entire thing because Trump loves the attention as well. It's a sort of symbiosis of narcissism and a symbiosis of narcissism and an obsession with power that is going to keep that relationship going if indeed Trump is the nominee. But for the time being, subtly, but increasingly less subtly, Fox News is doing what it can to hope that and and influence the Republican primary towards someone other than Trump right now, based on the polling, the best contender, of course, would be Ron DeSantis. And speaking of that polling, we've got a few recent polls.

There is a coefficient poll which has DeSantis up 33 over Larry Hogan and Trump up 27 over Larry Hogan. So so like DeSantis performing slightly better than Trump against Hogan. But DeSantis versus Trump, DeSantis is leading by four. However, in a multiway race, if you do Trump, DeSantis, Hogan, Nikki Haley, Mike Pence, Mike Pompeo, Tim Scott, that's better for Trump. And that is the trend in every single one of these polls. When the polls include more than just Trump versus DeSantis, Trump tends to lead when the polls are just Trump versus DeSantis. It's much better for DeSantis in general. So that continues to be a trend that, of course, we are going to follow. We have a voicemail number. That number is two one nine two. David P.

Continued confusion, folks. Am I a socialist or not? I am not a socialist, but the confusion continues. Speaker 4 Hi, David. This is Lokesh from Atlanta, Georgia. Well, I want to ask you, you used to be you used to call yourself a social Democrat a couple of years ago. Yeah. And I want to ask what label best describes your politics now in 2022? Thanks. Have a nice day. Bye bye. OK, it's actually 2023. With all due respect, I know we're all making that same mistake. It's I'm still doing the anyway. I this might come as a shock. I am still a social Democrat, social democracy being a well-regulated form of capitalism. I am still there. And. Yeah, I don't the confusion about my politics has certainly increased lately, but I am still not a socialist and I know there are people waiting

anxiously for that to happen, but for the time being, I am still a social Democrat. We have a great bonus show for you today. Texas has a bill which would ban nearly all gender affirming care, including for transgender adults, adults who are supposedly able to make the decisions that they believe are best for them. Lawyers for Donald Trump propaganda, Steve Bannon, are now suing Bannon over legal bills. Apple doesn't fall far from the tree, does it? And a Florida lawyer argues that a pregnant inmate's fetus is being illegally detained. This actually could be a really big deal case. All of those stories and more on today's bonus show. Oh, the bonus show where you want to

make money. Everybody else that makes money to fund themselves is bad. No comment on that. But I do invite you to join us on the bonus show. Sign up at join pacman.com.