The David Pakman Show - 2/27/23: CPAC in shambles as Nikki Haley still confused

Episode Date: February 27, 2023

-- On the Show: -- This week's CPAC is in shambles as Fox News is completely ignoring it, while former Vice President Mike Pence has declined an invitation to speak -- Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis delivers a totally deranged interview to Fox News conducted by Mark Levin -- Former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard equates Joe Biden to Nazis and Hitler -- Fox News host Howard Schultz admits that he is not allowed to talk about the Dominion lawsuit against Fox News -- It is revealed that, while crying about censorship, Donald Trump tried to have Jimmy Kimmel censored -- Republicans actually seem to think that Donald Trump will sign and abide by a loyalty pledge in the upcoming 2024 Republican primary -- 2024 Republican Presidential candidate Nikki Haley continues to struggle to explain anything, explaining her foreign policy ideas as "I did a book" -- Dilbert creator Scott Adams melts down in a racist rant, is dropped by many newspapers, and Elon Musk defends him -- Republican Senator Mitt Romney blasts radical Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene for her recent "national divorce" comments -- David issues an apology for a mistake he made based on a voicemail he received correcting a recent statement -- On the Bonus Show: Democrats now prefer Biden as nominee, Idaho bill would criminalize mRNA vaccines, Pentagon warns poppyseed bagels a threat to national security, much more... 🧻 Reel Paper: Code PAKMAN for 30% OFF + free shipping at https://reelpaper.com/pakman 👍 Get 10% off the Füm Journey Pack with code PAKMAN at https://tryfum.com 💪 Athletic Greens is offering FREE year-supply of Vitamin D at https://athleticgreens.com/pakman 💻 Stay protected! Try Aura FREE for 2 weeks: https://aura.com/pakman 💻 Get Private Internet Access for 83% OFF + 3 months free at https://www.piavpn.com/David -- 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

I want to start with CPAC today, the conservative political action conference holding their first 2023 event starting Wednesday, March 1st. Now, I was particularly interested in this CPAC because it was going to allow us to see what is going to be the approach of this group to the 2024 primary at this early stage where Donald Trump is still in command. We have to admit, but there is a fracturing and there are different elements of the right, some of which like the idea of more Trump and some of which are decidedly anti Trump. And then organizations like Fox News were sort of saying, well, we'd rather someone else, but we're not going to completely abandon Trump.

We're going to wait and see what would be the mood at CPAC because of all of these different speakers giving us a window into the talking points that would be applied to the 2024 primary? Or hypothetically, might the CPAC speakers just ignore the 2024 primary as if it's not going on, sort of ignoring it like an elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about? Well, we are still going to be able to see, but it is going to be with a much diminished audience and fewer Republican insiders. And the background of all of this is that a guy named Matt Schlapp, who is not exactly a beacon of gay rights, has been credibly accused of what's the right word at minimum sexual harassment. And I believe it is accurate

to say sexual assault of a male staffer some months ago. And it is believed that this is sort of the black cloud over the head of CPAC. So let's look at a couple of different articles explaining what's going on. First and foremost, CPAC is being ignored by Fox News. One of the biggest outlets for CPAC getting attention is that Fox News covers the event, interviews people there, promotes the event, et cetera. Daily Beast writes CPAC has a major Fox News problem after right wing power broker Matt Schlapp was accused of sexual assault. He and his annual confab have all but disappeared from Fox News, a shocking break from years past. And it is a break for shocking, you know, sort of subjective, but it is certainly a break amid the alleged groping scandal. Justin Barragona for the Daily

Beast writes over the past few years, the conservative cable giant has not only aired the entire multi-day conference on its digital streaming platform, Fox Nation, but the network has also been a featuring sponsor in 2021. For example, Fox Nation paid a quarter of a million dollars to help underwrite the overtly partisan gathering. The year before that, they paid twenty eight thousand dollars to be a sponsor. As of publication, Schlapp and his annual convention have all but disappeared from the Fox News universe. None of Fox Media's outlets are listed among their sponsors, which includes their conservative arch rival Newsmax, as well as far right competitors like Real America's Voice.

Additionally, Fox staffers told the Daily Beast they have yet to receive any guidance on how they will cover CPAC. An apparent Fox News blackout on CPAC would present a stunning break from past years, which reliably demonstrated a symbiosis between the cable giant and the right wing confab. Hannity and Laura Ingraham would often deliver speeches or host panels, which then the network carried. And then outside the ballroom, you would see Fox people walking around. It's not clear whether any of that will be going on. Now, the context does seem to be the alleged groping scandal that I there was some speculation that

this break between Fox News and CPAC has more to do with Trump than it has to do with the groping scandal? Maybe, but I've not seen any actual evidence of that. And the Daily Beast article does mention the Daily Beast first reported that Schlapp allegedly groped the crotch of a male staffer on failed Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker's campaign. The individual this is insane that these are this is the language that's being used, claimed that Matt Schlapp graphed his, quote, junk. And these terms are all in quotes and pummeled it at length. And it was scarring and humiliating. Schlapp is just denying he's like, no, it didn't happen, even though there are text messages that do seem to show Schlapp uncomfortable and maybe I don't want to say

apologetic, but regretful in some way. Schlapp is, as far as we know, heterosexual and married to a woman. So that is part of the problem that CPAC is having. Now, there is another story with this. Mike Pence declines invitation to CPAC as events leader comes under fire. This is from ABC News. The decision by Pence, who is debating a 2024 presidential run, writes ABC News, comes as other notable figures are absent. Ron DeSantis, who spoke at CPAC last year, has two events in Texas as CPAC will be underway in Maryland. A spokesperson for CPAC told ABC News neither Pence nor DeSantis are currently slated to attend. DeSantis, a spokesperson, didn't attend in 2022 and declined to attend in 2021. The context here is also believed to be the sexual assault scandal. Trump is scheduled to headline the event.

So I think that this is actually normally CPAC is kind of a waste and I don't typically cover much of it, if any. Sometimes we've not covered any of it live. My goal this year was actually to cover the major speeches live on YouTube, Twitch and Facebook. Again, because of the interest that I have in seeing how CPAC frames the 2024 Republican primary. Now, one of the things that may happen by default is there are with DeSantis and Pence as possible 2024 Republican candidates snubbing the event and Trump going CPAC may just default to will praise the hand that feeds us. Trump is coming here to speak. So we will just get behind Trump. But we don't

yet have the full agenda. I hope it will be released soon and we will see what the coverage is from Fox News. We will see what the attitude is towards the primary. I'm actually as interested as I've ever been in covering a CPAC, which is not typically the case. Ron DeSantis, who has not yet announced that he is running in 2024, will not be at CPAC, but he was interviewed last night by Fox News's Mark Levin. Now, we're going to look at clips of the interview. The interview was completely deranged and delusional. It's not clear who's more deranged and delusional. Is it Ron DeSantis or is it the host Mark Levin? But just for a little bit of context, Mark Levin has a weekly show on Fox News, and there's always

these storylines that develop in media outlets, these sort of cults of personality or storylines that are that are used among different people. The storyline about Mark Levin is that he's the more serious guy. He is a legal scholar and he writes closer to what we might call real books. And he's so busy being an adult that he only hosts a weekly show on Fox News because he's really serious. And so when you sit down with Mark Levin and you've got the dark lighting, as you can see, if you're watching everything about it, this is a serious interview with a serious person. And if you're so serious that you can be interviewed by Mark Levin, you must also be a very serious person. It's all a joke. It's all

it's all just complete and total nonsense. And Mark Levin is a bomb thrower, partisan bomb thrower, just like everybody else spreads disinformation. It's just a story that they make up. But understand that's the context. Ron DeSantis is a very important, deep thinker. And so he's going to come in and have a serious conversation with Mark Levin, starting with talking about the woke. And again, the framing here is they interview DeSantis as if he's already running for national office. He's the governor of Florida. Don't forget, he's the governor of Florida. But the context and the framing and the questions and the topics are this is a guy who should be on the national stage and has a lot to say about national politics, starting with talking about the woke. And yes, you do have to fight the woke in the halls of government and legislative chambers. Right. And we have super majorities as Republicans of Florida. So we will win all those fights. But you also have to be willing to defend your folks against this agenda being shoved down their throat. Right. All these other institutions. Terrible. These people aren't necessarily coming up for elections. So you

talk about things with like the young kids and with Disney. And listen, this guy is at the forefront of the most important issues. The woke have to be fought in the halls of government. And I mean, look at this major issue of Disney. Disney affirmed in some nominal way gay rights. And so we've got to deal with the woke folks. But understand, this is what Republicans want to hear. They want to hear a lot of the same pseudo fascistic so-called culture war issues presented in a marginally more serious manner than Trump presents them. Now, that's a separate issue from whether if a campaign gets going

constitutionally, personality wise, DeSantis has what it takes to face Trump. The different question. But this is the same old nonsense. He then talks about how there was an attempt to impose intersectionality. Oh, the horror, the horror. Florida, our standards require teaching all aspects of black history. And we think it's important. We also when we ban critical race

theory, which we are right to do. Well, right or wrong, it was nonsense. We also required in that same bill that schools have stories of inspiration about great Floridians and great Americans from a variety of different backgrounds. I want students. We need an entire thing about Dana White and the heroic UFC events he held during the virus pandemic. Right. To be to be inspired that they can do well in Florida, you know, as they get old, critical race theory is basically saying some are oppressors, some are oppressed. What kind of a message is that sending to these very young kids? So so we require all of that. Remember, there was no critical race theory being taught to young kids.

Our standards in terms of the basic history with the College Board was trying to do. They were trying to impose CRT. They actually were trying to impose in a black studies course queer theory. They were trying to impose intersectionality and they were trying to impose effectively neo-Marxism. And so the question is, is that something you want to do on your own time? Yeah. Save neo-Marxism for the privacy of your bedroom, please. To go pursue that. But for our taxpayers to be supporting that type of indoctrination, that is not something that we want to do. Now, you might be hearing this and saying, David, what the hell is Ron DeSantis talking about here? Well, he's talking about the things that potential 2024 voters want to hear him talk about. It's the Glenn Youngkin sort of routine.

Run on these things. Talk about these things all the time, which aren't really issues and aren't actually happening. The topic came up of the Electoral College and the mandate and power that that winning the Electoral College gives to a president. That's very interesting because, you know, a lot of these small government supposed small government conservatives talk about, you know, we actually should take powers away from the executive. We they'll just say whatever they think they need to say. Yeah, it's hard to remove them. You know, we actually should take powers away from the executive. They'll just say whatever they think they need to say. Yeah, it's hard to remove them, you know, with the civil service rules and then the union. Oh, and sorry.

And this relates to the idea that they bemoan they would like it to be easier to fire government employees. That's the context here. Rules and all the rest. And well, there was one, there was a proposal that I think a lot of us wanted to see under the prior administration to do the prior administration. What was that guy's name? Schedule F. So anybody that has any policy role is classified as a schedule F and they can be removed by the president.

The left would litigate that. But I honestly think we would win on that in the Supreme Court. And I also- Isn't this a great serious interview, guys? I also think it's one thing to have some type of job rules for the bowels of the bureaucracy, like your supervisor, what they can do. President of the United States has Article II power. Who controls the executive branch? Is it the elected president or is it some bureaucrat in the bowels of the bureaucracy that can't be- A lot of focus on bowels in this interview. Be fired. And so I think push needs to come to shove on this, but whoever gets a majority of

the electoral college has the right to impose their agenda through the executive branch. And what they did with President Trump was basically try to nullify the election through not only bureaucratic intransigence, but malfeasance with the collusion hoax and some of those things. Yeah. Well, really, really throwing in everything there. So listen, what they're talking about here is that they're the federal government is a major employer and there are all sorts of of jobs and roles within the federal

government. There are some which truly are only bureaucratic positions. They are not in any way remotely political. And then there are jobs within an administration and federal government that are obviously political. The president's cabinet, for example, and well on down from there. And the idea was Trump and some Republicans have gotten the idea that in the middle, there's a ton of nominally bureaucratic positions that are actually very political. And so rather than having those jobs be protected by unions and and mediation and arbitration, all these different things, they just want to make the president be able to fire all all of these people. And these are huge numbers of roles. And of course, if you have the view that these really aren't political positions and these

are jobs that people depend on in a way that a secretary of state is not likely to depend on that job to feed their family, that they should be protected from a president coming in and just going replace everybody. Not to mention in a lot of these jobs, you really don't want to be replacing people every few years is the truth. So this is what they're talking about, making it easier to fire people. So, again, a completely deranged interview, authoritarian while still pretending that he's kind of small government framed as a very serious

discussion between legal scholars when it's actually just the same tired political nonsense with a little bit of different window dressing. And quite frankly, if Ron DeSantis decides to run for president, that I think is what the candidacy will be. The same old political nonsense and supposed culture war issues as a shield for authoritarianism with slightly different window dressing. All of these clips that I've played for you here, we'll have them on our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash the David Pakman show, but also on the Spanish YouTube channel. So what was that? Something is glitching. Do you guys hear that? Oh, my God. I got to get out of here. Dear God. Oh, my goodness. OK, let's close everything. That was really embarrassing. The Spanish channel.

David Pakman dot com slash Spanish approaching 2000 subscribers. Let's take a break, fix all the technical problems and come right back. Did you know that every year 30 million trees are cut down to meet the demand of toilet paper in the United States alone? Here's something really simple you can do to fight climate change a little bit in your home. Our sponsor, Real Paper, makes toilet paper 100 percent from bamboo stocks, which keep growing forever. No trees are cut down. It's shipped right to your door in plastic free packaging. It's fluffy. It's soft like regular toilet paper. You're not making any quality sacrifice. And for every box you buy, real paper donates to reforestation efforts across

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here. Thank your lucky stars every day. You're not Dave Pakman. Exactly. You have access to the very same sound board that I have here. You can sign up at join Pakman dot com. It's quick, it's easy, and it is a beautiful thing. Former Democratic Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard,

who now regularly speaks at anti-vaccine events, seemed to shock even Fox News host Jesse Waters when she compared affirmative action ideas and the idea of I mean, I don't even she compared Biden to Hitler. I don't even know how else to say it. This you have to see the general subject matter during the former congresswoman's interview with Jesse Waters was Biden, quote, choosing diversity over competence, which, by the way, there's no evidence at all that Joe Biden has done. And she said these are the principles that the Nazis and Hitler embodied. She has really taken well to this new role as an anti woke, free speech, whatever they call her at this point. Right.

Their philosophy, identity politics. And this is one of the main reasons why I left the Democratic. By the way, I'm sorry to already interrupt. I wonder, remember, Tulsi's against identity politics. Will she come out against the identity politics campaign of Nikki Haley, who's like, I don't really know of any reason that you would vote for me over Trump on policy, but like I'm younger and a woman and of Indian heritage is she is is because Tulsi, of course, would never play partisan games. OK, sorry. Let's take it from the top here. their philosophy, identity politics. And this is one of the main reasons why I left the Democratic Party, because you're seeing how their agenda of identity politics is directly undermining the traditional Democratic values that were expressed so beautifully and clearly

by Dr. Martin Luther King, that we should judge each other, not based on the color of our skin, but based on our character. And yet, as you have displayed here over and over with example after example, they're proud to be judging people, hiring people, selecting people based on race, which is really, let's be clear how serious of a problem this is. It's based on genetics, race, based on your blood, your genes. And where do we see that connection? Well, these are the very same geneticist core principles embodied by Nazism and Adolf Hitler. And this should be something that is sickening and alarming to every single Democrat and every. It's sickening and alarming to me that Tulsi would say this.

Single American. We have seen where this philosophy can lead. Right. Noticing, hey, we dramatically underrepresent, for example, black women in the judiciary. Maybe we could like make them slightly less under representative. Next thing you know, they'll be coming to kill the Jews. It's exactly the thing. This is insane. Now, you all know me on this issue. I don't believe that we can even remotely have a judiciary that exactly matches the American population along every demographic line. I have not heard anyone on the left say, listen, the population is like 50.5 percent women. So 50.5 percent of all judges should be women. And white people make up what is it now, like 69 percent of the population. So we need 69 percent of the population of the judiciary to be white.

And then 12 percent of the population is 55 to 64. I'm making that number up now. So 12 percent of the judiciary must be 55 to 60. Nobody that I have seen, myself included, is calling for that type of equality of outcome when it comes to the judiciary. What Joe Biden has identified is that the judiciary is already dramatically unrepresentative of the population at large. So Joe Biden, during his tenure so far, has nominated disproportionately more black women to the judiciary.

That's true. And we still have a dramatic underrepresentation of black women in the judiciary. Joe Biden has only made it slightly more reflective of the population. Now, what the right loves to say is because of the prioritization of identity over competency by virtue of appointing a lot of black, a lot comparatively more black women, we are reducing the competency because they're being chosen not for their judicial acumen, but instead because of their racial identity. This is one of the dumbest things that they claim when they want to act against identity, act against affirmative, so-called affirmative action under the guise of identity politics. This is a country of 331 million people.

My guess is if you said we are going to have a judiciary that is 70 percent black women, there are enough competent black women judges that you could do it and they would all be competent. Similarly, if you said we're going to have 80 percent of the judiciary be Asian people. Oh, but isn't that going to choose racial identity over competency? We have 331 million people in this country and we have enough competent Asian jurists that you could do that anyway. So the issue is not that we are choosing incompetent people based only on their race. It's we have so many competent people of

all races in this country that if you say, well, I'm going to over select a group that has been historically underselected, you're choosing from all competent people. That's the reality. And there doesn't sound anything like Nazism in it to me. If you disagree with me, let me know. Fox News host Howard Kurtz admits he's not talking about the Dominion lawsuit against Fox News because Fox News told him you're not allowed to talk about this. Now, a lot of people are making a very, very big deal out of this. I'm going to give you my view of it in a moment. Howard Kurtz does like the media watchdog show on Fox News. The show is pretty bad. But the point here is he brings this up. Dominion is suing Fox News over their role in promoting conspiracy theories

about Dominion voting machines in the aftermath of the 2020 election. Howard Kurtz and others on Fox News haven't talked about it. Why? Howard Kurtz explains. Some of you have been asking why I'm not covering the Dominion voting machines lawsuit against Fox involving the unproven claims of election fraud in 2020. And it's absolutely a fair question. Yes, I believe I should be covering it. It's a major media story given my role here at Fox. But the company has decided that as part of the organization being sued, I can't talk about it or write about it, at least for now. I strongly disagree with that decision. But as an employee, I have to abide by it. And if that changes, I can't talk about it or write about it, at least for now. I strongly disagree with that decision. But as an employee, I have to abide by it. And if that changes,

I'll let you know. Yeah. So many of you have pointed out to me that Fox News is completely silent about the fact that there is this massive lawsuit and the discovery led to the revelation of those texts wherein we learned that Fox News hosts who on air were pretending like there was merit to the things being said by Donald Trump about the 2020 election were texting each other and admitting it's all lies. It's all crazy. There's nothing here. It's a major story. And Fox News hasn't been talking about it. Now, I have to tell you, this is not the big shocker that some are making it out to be. There is no doubt about the newsworthiness of the subject matter. And I'll tell you what, I think no matter what, Fox News hosts wouldn't be allowed to talk about it. But

it is true that any lawyer worth anything would tell Fox News, don't talk about this lawsuit on the air because it can only create more problems for you. Best case scenario, it doesn't help you, but it doesn't hurt you. Worst case scenario, you do what Alex Jones was doing daily on his program while the defamation suit against him was going on and you just damage yourself. So I think no matter what, like aside from lawyers making the suggestion, Fox News has probably determined this isn't a good thing for us to be talking about regardless. But there is no way that lawyers aren't for Fox News aren't saying do not talk about the lawsuit on the air. So the most you could say about someone like Howard Kurtz is if you really disagree with it that much, then you should leave.

That's perfectly fair thing to say. At the same time, it's expected CNN would do the same thing. MSNBC would do the same thing in this situation. It would be quite silly to be talking about the lawsuit. Alex Jones did it and we saw how well that went for him. We have yet another data point in which we find that while claiming that the left was censoring the right on Twitter and elsewhere, the Trump administration was demanding others be censored. So let let me back up a little bit as we start to talk about this story. During the first, I guess, the first couple of days of hearings about the weaponization

of big tech or whatever it was, we learned we learned that the Trump administration wanted celebrity Chrissy Teigen censored for an insult she made about President Donald Trump. Let me remind you, we look this. Remember, these were hearings meant to make the left look bad and they made the right look like triggered snowflakes. Miss Nervoli, earlier you testified about a 2019 tweet. Yeah, that was about President Trump. And I think it's from Ms. Teigen. What was the tweet about? Yeah. Would you like me to give the direct quote? Yeah. Please excuse my language. This is a direct quote, but Chrissy Teigen referred to Donald Trump as a pussy ass bitch. Okay. Free speech. And what happened after Ms. Teigen posted her tweet? What did the White House do? What did the Trump White House do? Right. From my understanding, the White House reached out to ask that this tweet be removed. It was my team's job. This fell

underneath the policy for abusive behaviors. And we evaluated underneath our insults policy. At that time, up to three insults were allowed. And so it was our job to determine how many insults were included within that phrase. So the Trump White House reached out, not an agency, but the White House reached out and requested that you remove the tweet. From my understanding, yes. OK, so the story that they were telling on the right is it's the left that constantly wants to do censorship and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. A celebrity insults Trump and they try to get the tweet deleted. But we now know that that's not the only such example. We have also also now learned that the Trump White House was pressuring Disney, meaning ABC, to censor Jimmy Kimmel. This is at this point. Are we surprised by this at all?

Rolling Stone article. The former president was so incensed by the late night host, Jimmy Kimmel, making fun of him that he had his staff take action. This was in early 2018. The American national security apparatus was fixated on reports that North Korea was building nuclear weapons, which could reach the US or that Russia was plotting chemical weapons assassinations in Europe. Trump, meanwhile, was busy targeting his idea of an enemy of the state late night host Jimmy Kimmel. According to two former Trump administration officials, Trump was so upset by Jimmy Kimmel's comedic jabs that he directed White House staff to call up one of Disney's top executives in D.C. to complain and demand action. ABC is owned by Disney in at least two separate phone calls that

occurred around the time Trump was finishing his first year in office. The White House conveyed the severity of Trump's fury with Kimmel to Disney. Trump's staff mentioned the leader of the free world wanted the billion dollar company to rein in Jimmy Kimmel for trashing Trump. And Trump felt that Kimmel had in the characterization of a former administration official been very dishonest and doing things that Trump would have sued over. The incident was so bizarre news of it spread around the corridors of power in D.C. Other administration officials who had nothing to do with the pressure campaign expressed they were confused that the white that they expressed hearing from Disney that they were confused that the White House was telling them Trump wants to tone down

the humor. They are the triggered snowflakes. And I know we've said it so many times before. Accusations are confessions and it's projection and all of these different things. It really is the truth. And from the Twitter files, we learned basically that the Trump administration had the same access, if that's what you want to call it, to request things be removed as the Biden campaign. Remember, Trump administration, Biden campaign. And from all of these anecdotes, we're learning that the Trump White House was regularly trying

to use their powers of censorship while claiming that it is the left that was trying to censor them. It is yet another case where the truth is the opposite of what they tell us. I am sure these two examples that we mentioned today aren't the only ones. Did you know that half of Americans are deficient in vitamin A, vitamin C and magnesium? Most Americans are deficient in vitamin D. I take vitamin D during the winter. It is sometimes difficult to eat exactly the right amount of each food to get exactly what you need. I just make my life simpler with AG1 by Athletic Greens. In the morning, one scoop of AG1, I get the entire day's worth of 75 high quality vitamins, minerals, and whole food sourced ingredients. It's what I want. It's no more. It's no less.

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Let's talk a little more about this loyalty pledge that Republicans and the Republican National Committee want every candidate who is vying for the Republican primary to sign in advance of participating in any debates. We talked about this last week. Many of you wrote to me about it and we have more about it. I'll remind you what's going on. The RNC and the Republican Party want every single candidate who's running to agree in advance.

Even if I lose, I will support whoever is eventually the Republican nominee. Really, the concern here is Trump. Why? Well, Trump is a child and Trump puts himself above everything, above party, above everything. And so it's a legitimate risk to the Republican Party that Trump might run in the Republican primary, but lose. Maybe DeSantis wins. Maybe who knows? Somebody else wins. And then Trump, instead of saying, hey, you know what? I lost fair and square. I'm going to support the person that won. I mean, it's like laughable that he would do that. Right. Trump instead will say, well, you know what? It was stolen. It was rigged. And I'm going to run as an independent and show these Republicans who's boss. And the reason that

this would be so devastating to the party is there are so many states where the margins are always thin, whether it's a Republican or a Democrat who wins everything from Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona. There's so many states where it's always pretty close. If Trump ran as an independent and took just five to seven percent of the Republican vote, it would guarantee that the Democratic candidate wins. Trump running as an independent could guarantee one of the biggest Democratic victories in twenty twenty four that we've seen in decades. So they've asked him to sign a loyalty pledge.

They're asking everybody to sign a loyalty pledge. And one of the things that came up last week was Trump isn't going to do this. But now there's a different perspective. Now, the perspective for many of you is, oh, Trump will do it. He just won't abide by it. Well, on CNN, Ronna McDaniel was asked by Dana Bash about this entire loyalty pledge scenario. And here's what she had to say. I want you to listen to what former President Donald Trump said a couple of weeks ago in an interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt on this very topic. Please. If you're not the nominee, will you support whoever the GOP nominee is?

It would depend. I would give you the same answer I gave in 2016 during the debate. It would have to depend on who the nominee was. So are you prepared to block the former president? Well, he signed it in 2016. He did. Everybody signed it in 2016. He did. Everybody signed it in 2016. But this is about the here and the now.

He didn't commit to it. I think they're all going to sign it. I really do. I think the voters are very intent on winning. And they do not want to see a debate stage of people saying, I'm not going to support this guy. I'm not going to support this guy. What they need to say is, I'm going to do everything I can to defeat Joe Biden. And that means supporting the nominee of the Republican Party. You can't see a scenario where Donald Trump would just

skip the debate if he's forced to sign something. I want to be on the debate stage. I think President Trump would like to be on the debate stage. That's what he likes to do. And I expect they'll all be there. So listen, I actually have revised my view a little bit. Last week, I was really leaning towards Trump's never going to sign this thing and they will capitulate and let them on the stage because otherwise their voters will start a mutiny. I actually now believe the more likely scenario is Trump will sign whatever he needs to sign to get to the debate stage. He'll play coy if and when the question comes up during the debates. But then if he loses, he'll say, screw that pledge. It's not legally binding. It means nothing. I

signed it. But then when I signed it, I meant if they if they fairly win, they didn't fairly defeat me. So I'm going to go and run as an independent anyway, if that's what he wants to do. The point is Trump's completely dishonest in this way. And the more I think about it, I can't think of any. Anyone who knows Trump at all the way we do, because we've been following him for so long, who thinks he would actually come out and just say, I am going to support this person that just defeated me. It's very difficult to imagine that that's the case. The interview had another interesting moment, which was about accepting the results of 2024.

And Ronna McDaniel also plays coy with this. She goes, oh, yeah, no, I think all the candidates will accept the 2024 results because we're going to win, which is exactly the language that got us into the 2020 mess to begin with. We were talking about promises now that whomever the Republican nominee is, ultimately, will accept the results in 2024. I expect that they will accept the results in 2024. I don't know who that person is right now, but yes, we're going to accept the results and we're going to move forward and work to govern this country. But I think they're going to accept the results because they're going to move forward and work to to govern this country. But I think they're going to accept the results because they're going to be the president. Well, that doesn't really inspire confidence.

Wrong. Saying they will accept it either way is different than there's going to be no reason not to accept it because the Republican candidate will have won. So listen, it's not a big surprise, but they are already gearing up for the same election denying nonsense in 2024. Let's not get ahead of ourselves on that. There's time to get to that. But just know they are setting it up. It is still really unclear to me, but also to Nikki Haley, why anyone should vote for her, according to Nikki Haley. We talked last week about how Nikki Haley was asked, like, why would people vote for you? And it was basically

like, I don't really know. And identity politics. Well, I'm a I'm a different generation and, you know, women power. And I'm also a minority and just very strange stuff to hear from Republicans who claim to be against identity politics. She's now had another week to try to come up with some policy ideas. She was asked about her record at the U.N. She could name nothing other than that. She did a book. She didn't write a book.

She did a book. Are these do these count as answers in politics at this point or in Republican politics? We've been talking about foreign policy this morning. You did an incredible job at the U.N. fighting for America first. How are you differentiate yourself from the other candidates and the other candidates? Trump, right? I mean, that's it's Trump and Vivek Ramaswamy, who whose whose announcement went over like a lead balloon.

Speaker 4 Your plan for foreign policy. Speaker 1 Give us the plan. Speaker 4 Well, you know, one of the main things I did at the United Nations that I think is so important is I did a book focused on the hundred ninety three company countries, the hundred ninety three companies. And oh, my God, let's say we've got to run that back. This this is an answer. She was asked, what would you do in terms of foreign policy? Well, you know, one of the main things I did

at the United Nations that I think is so important is I did a book that focused on the hundred and ninety three company countries, the percentage of time they voted with us and how much foreign aid we give them. Yeah. Chef, can you tell us what would be your approach to poultry based dishes if you were to be hired to run this restaurant? Listen, one of the biggest things I did over the last three months is I did a book where I would list items available at different restaurants. Oh, oh, OK. But so like what would what would the poultry dishes be here? It's just completely incoherent. And by the way, she did a book containing information anyone can just Google about different countries. And by the way, it's not even clear she actually

claims to have written it. Notice that she said she did a book rather than I wrote a book. This is really a problem in my eyes. I don't know that the Republican voters care about policy, but she continues to do this. Remember last week she was asked, you know what, like why would anyone vote for you? And just very confusing answers. OK, so I want to put up something for The Wall Street Journal this week. They said you had a great day, your great rollout day. But they said you have to provide a rationale for your candidacy that you haven't done yet. They said you've got to answer this question about why you versus anybody else in the in the GOP field. You know, they're talking about the fact that you say,

you know, America first, America should be powerful. Those are things that any GOP candidate is going to say. So why you? Why not me? You know, I am a the wife of a combat veteran. I'm a mother of two children, one who's getting married. And I see how hard it is for her to look at buying a home, one that's in college. And I see what he's dealing with with woke education. You know, I'm the daughter of immigrant parents who are upset by what's happening at the border. I don't want to wait for someone else to fix this. Anyway, so as you might remember, her answer was basically, you know, there's there's people not enjoying what they're being taught and woke. And, you know, I'm the daughter of immigrants, truly a horrendous candidate. I mean, just horrifyingly bad. And usually candidates are able to cite reasons to vote for them, which we might say that's not

a good reason. She's not even able to cite what would count as a reason. Now, if we want to take a very quick look at the latest polling, you know, it's not as bad as I thought for Nikki Haley. If we look at the most recent A rated poll, which is a Fox News poll. Remember, Fox News polling actually isn't bad. It's conducted by Beacon Research. They have a poll. If it's Trump head to head against Haley, Trump crushes Haley 66 to 24. And that's not super shocking. If it's a multiway poll, it's Trump 43, followed by DeSantis 28. And then Nikki Haley tied for third with seven percent. Seven percent is nothing to sneeze at, given that she just launched her campaign a couple

weeks ago. It's not great. And by the way, if I was a betting man, I'm not. My bet is Nikki Haley does not end up getting seven percent of the vote in the Republican primary, but it's not even March of 2023 yet. So so, you know, who knows? But listen, I mean, she's starting with seven. All right. That's something you can build from, at least hypothetically. I don't know that you're going to build it by having no policy and just saying you're younger than Trump, a woman and and of Indian heritage.

I'm not sure that that gets you beyond seven percent, but it will be interesting to watch. We'll take a very quick break. I am going to talk about the Scott Adams racist meltdown. I have a history with Scott Adams. We'll talk about that and other things after this very short break. of who you are and what you do online, even when you're using incognito mode. But you can put an end to it by using a VPN. The only one I use is private Internet access because it's the only VPN that is proven in court multiple times. They are not logging your activity. Their no log practices are even independently audited by Deloitte. Private Internet access also hides your activity from your Internet service provider, who is also usually logging everything you do online. Private Internet

access is also lightning fast for downloads and streaming content normally only available in other countries. Private Internet access couldn't be more simple. Take a second to download it. Turn it on. That's it. You don't need to know anything about computers. Go to PIA VPN dot com slash David to get 83 percent off. That's only two oh three a month and you'll get four months free. The link is in the podcast notes. All right, let's talk about the Dilbert Scott Adams fiasco. So some of you may recall that Scott Adams, the guy who draws the Dilbert cartoon, has been on this program before. And we used to kind of mix it up on Twitter. And then a few years ago, I think it was kind of early ish in the pandemic. He just blocked me on Twitter. And I know that I could like log out to see what he's posting, but I don't care that much. So I've not been following Scott Adams since

he cut me off. And when he would be on, we would have like spirited discussions, which I thought were generally pretty good. But something kind of started to go wrong with Scott Adams. And when he banned me, a black man, when he blocked me from Twitter, he really seemed to almost like crack like it was. I don't remember what it was over, but I think I said, oh, I think that you're arguing in bad faith about something. And he went crazy, insulted me and then blocked me and just seems to have kind of descended into a dark place over the last several years.

I found out over the weekend that he unleashed a completely racist meltdown style tirade on Twitter and that this subsequently led to a bunch of newspapers saying, yeah, we're going to get rid of Dilbert. We're all set with Dilbert. We're not going to have it anymore. Now, I admit personally, it really bums me out. I used to love Dilbert growing up and I know a lot of people like, oh, Dilbert's so lame, it's boring, whatever. I really liked it growing up. And it was just kind of a sad thing to see Scott Adams descend into such political insanity. And now even beyond that, where I don't know, this seems to be going beyond the political to the personal. Something really seems to be going on.

But fear not. He has some defenders. Elon Musk has come out of the woodwork to defend Scott Adams. So let's look at what's going on. CNN article from this morning says Elon Musk defended Dilbert creator Scott Adams after hundreds of newspapers stopped printing the comic strip because of Adams recent racist comments. Last week, Adams called black Americans a hate group and suggested white people should, quote, get the hell away from them. Oof. Adams effectively encouraged segregation in a shocking rant on his YouTube channel. His comments came in response to a poll from the conservative firm Rasmussen Reports. Not a good pollster, by the way, that said 53 percent of black Americans agree with the

statement it's OK to be white. In response to a tweet, Twitter owner Musk said Sunday that, quote, the media is racist. You know, it's so funny. The right loves to say you got to be really careful when you call someone racist. That's one of the most serious things you can do. How can you call Scott Adams racist when you don't know what's in his head? And regardless of what he said, he might not really be racist and all these things. Oh, oh, Elon Musk is defending him. The media is racist. Yep. Checks out. No, no critique needed there. Musk also didn't criticize Scott Adams comments. And Musk said without evidence that, quote, for a very long time, the U.S. media was racist against nonwhite people.

Now they're racist against whites and Asians. Same thing happened with elite colleges and high schools in America. Maybe they can try not being racist. Musk later agreed with a tweet saying Adams comments weren't good, but had an element of truth. He accused the media of giving black victims of police violence, disproportionate coverage over white victims of police violence. Black people are more likely to die from police use of force than white people, according to multiple studies. What were Adam's comments? Well, here they are. He said on his YouTube show, quote, If nearly half of all blacks are not OK with white people, according to this poll, not according to me, that's a hate group.

I don't want to have anything to do with them. And I would say based on the current way things are going, the best advice I would give to white people is to get the hell away from black people. Just get the F away because there's no fixing this. He has since said on Twitter he was only advising people to avoid hate. So anyway, we now have all these articles about how newspapers are dropping the comic strip. And of course, all of these right wingers are saying this is now censorship. Some newspapers said it's not a difficult decision. The Cleveland Plains dealer said we are dropping the Dilbert comic strip because of Scott Adams racist rant. USA Today's network also dropped it. So listen, it's all the exact same stuff that we always hear. And it's the

same routine. Scott Adams, in response to this, tweeted, quote, Dilbert has been canceled from all newspapers, websites, calendars and books because I gave some advice everyone agreed with. Wow. My syndication partner canceled me. So listen, I think something is very I think Scott Adams is struggling personally, but that doesn't mean we excuse the things he said. Everybody here is exercising their rights. Scott Adams expressed his speech in this insane tirade on YouTube, which he followed up on Twitter. People who read it responded and said, I either like that or I don't. And some of them stopped following Scott Adams. And some of them said, I'm not going to read the Dilbert strip anymore. And some of them wrote to newspapers and said, don't carry this anymore. Everybody is speaking. This is speech. And then newspapers

made a decision with whatever barometer they want to use to make that decision. Some said we're no longer going to carry the comic strip. Everybody is expressing their rights. It's the free market at work. It's action and reaction. Remember, we're not talking about the First Amendment because this is not about the government doing anything. But we are talking here about everybody's rights to say what they want. And sometimes things you say have consequences. A lot of people struggle or are unwilling to accept that, quote, free speech, sometimes used colloquially, doesn't mean my speech can't have consequences or therefore it is no longer free speech. And of course, good thing Elon Musk

showed up and cleared it up by reminding us the media is racist, which really added significant moral clarity, as you can imagine. So. Everybody here has been allowed to say whatever they want. You don't have a right to have a syndicated comic strip. If Scott Adams wants to take control back, he can keep drawing Dilbert and just release it on his website. He would then control the platform. Nobody would be able to, quote, cancel him. And that's absolutely something that he can do. But it's seeming like a sort of sad. I don't want to call it the end for Scott Adams, but it's been a very sad decline, particularly for me, because I really used to like the comic strip when I was, you know, 12 years old. I thought it was good.

Mitt Romney is blasting Marjorie Taylor Greene on her secession insanity. We're going to look at a short clip. Remember that Marjorie Taylor Greene last week said that we need a national divorce where we divide up into red states and blue states. I told you all of the reasons why that makes no sense. Senator Mitt Romney, a Republican, was asked about it. And here's what he had to say. Senator, what do you think about Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene's call on social media for a national divorce, dividing the country up between Republican and Democratic states? You know, I think Abraham Lincoln dealt with that kind of insanity. We're not going to divide the country. It's united. We stand divided. We fall. Yeah. Listen, I didn't vote for Mitt Romney, but he does seem like a fundamentally decent and honest guy who just tells you what he thinks. And he thinks a lot of modern Republicanism

is completely insane. Now, I've told you the two main reasons why this entire separate into two countries won't work. The first is the unconstitutionality of unilateral secession. Now, maybe Marjorie Taylor Greene is talking about a version where like everybody agrees. Everybody's like, no, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like Oklahoma, you should go go do your own thing. But the Constitution of the United States, which is the supreme law of the land, doesn't provide a provision for secession. And in fact, the idea of secession arguably was tested in the Civil War. Supreme Court has ruled you can't just secede.

States can't just say we secede. It's not a legal option for any state. If you attempt to do it, you would be violating the Constitution and Supreme Court rulings. Now, the second part of it is that the red states aren't viable as a country. And I know that if you watched last week's show, you already know this, but I do want to get it into this clip as well. The red state country that would be created is fundamentally not viable economically. And this is for a number of different reasons. GDP per capita is much lower in red states than blue states. Red states are disproportionately subsidized with federal funding that comes

from blue states, which overwhelmingly pay money in rather than get money out. Blue states, on average, have more diverse economies, whereas red states often depend on one industry or product or sector. So it's very at risk to that one oil in Texas or agriculture in Kansas. So that makes the economies generally more vulnerable to economic fluctuations. There are, on average, more educated people in the blue states. That leads to higher paying jobs and more innovation. There's better infrastructure as a result in the blue states. Education and access to health care tend to be better, which also makes it more attractive for business. It's a vicious cycle. And right now,

to a great degree, the red states are being pulled up by all of these aspects of blue states. If you've just got red states as a country, it really wouldn't work well at all. And Mitt Romney just pointing out that it makes no sense for a number of reasons. Good for Mitt Romney. I wish there were more Republicans willing to stand up and just say these these people shouldn't be here. Marjorie Taylor Greene is a disaster. Mitt Romney went up to George Santos, George Anthony DeVolder Santos during the State of the Union and said, I'm shocked you're even here. You should be ashamed. If we had more Republicans like Mitt Romney, the Republican Party would be just a party with we disagree with on policy and less of the

scourge or scourge on the United States that it has become. We have a voicemail number. The number is two one nine two. David P. I made a mistake last week and I apologize for it. I'll remind you what the mistake was. And it relates to Charlie and the chocolate factory. Violet Beauregard turns into a blueberry, not a justice group. A justice group. He is so bad that he gets stuck in the whatever tubing system is carrying the chocolate out to that. Yeah, but it was Violet Beauregard who swelled to the blue to the side of a blueberry and turned blue.

Yeah. So last week we were talking on the bonus show that, you know, the bonus show, I hope. Oh, the bonus show. You want to make money. Yes. Everybody else that makes money to fund themselves is bad. We were talking about the effort to rewrite elements of Roald Dahl's books, including Willy Wonka, the Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I forget that

with the book and movie have a different name. In any case, one of the things is they don't like Augustus Gloop being described as enormously fat anymore. That's, I guess, wrong. So publishers want to change it to something else. And I was describing, you know, he's like he swells like a blueberry. But that is not the story. It is indeed violet that swells like a blueberry. And Augustus Gloop is the one who gets like stuck in the piping, I guess, of the chocolate factory. I was wrong about what I said. My analysis is the same, which I am against the rewriting of books. I think the book is a complete act. It is not to be now retrospectively modified. Yes,

Roald Dahl was a horrible anti-Semite. That's a separate issue from whether we should mess with the vocabulary in the book. And we had an extensive conversation about this with Pat on the bonus show, which I welcome you to check out. But I was wrong in my retelling of the story and I apologize. We have a great bonus show for you today. Democrats have seen a major shift and now prefer Joe Biden as the nominee. Interesting. An Idaho bill would criminalize giving mRNA vaccines. What? Why? You can probably guess. And the Pentagon is warning that poppy seed bagels could be a threat to national security. Yes, it is related to the Seinfeld episode about the poppy seed bagel. So we will talk about all of those stories and more on today's bonus show.

Please do yourselves a favor. Sign up at join Pacman dot com before they take your machine. We're doing a class action lawsuit against all machines before they take your phone and your espresso machine and your desktop computer and all of it. Get a membership at join Pacman dot com. I'll see you on the bonus show.