The David Pakman Show - 2/7/23: Balloon Pop Propaganda, They're Praying for Biden's Death

Episode Date: February 7, 2023

-- On the Show: -- Chris Tarbell, former FBI Special Agent and founding partner at NAXO, joins David to discuss his role in taking down the Silk Road -- Republicans are transitioning to now claim that Joe Biden popping the Chinese surveillance balloon might actually have been the wrong thing to do -- Radical Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene whines that her $174,000 Congressional salary is too low for the amount of work she has to do -- Radical Republican Congresswoman Lauren Boebert appears to pray for Joe Biden's death -- Fox News propagandist Tucker Carlson enters a talking point coma about black judges, transgender satanism, and more -- Fox News propagandist Tucker Carlson gives a delusional defense of lying Republican Congressman George Santos -- Failed Arizona Republican Gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake teases her next grift, a run for Arizona Senator -- Right-wing indoctrinator Charlie Kirk wildly claims that TikTok is turning kids transgender -- Voicemail caller praises David's new mustache despite major concerns about it from most of the audience -- On the Bonus Show: Ron DeSantis to take control of Disney's Orlando District, NC senators send LGBTQ bill to a vote, Ted Cruz declares the Grammys evil after Sam Smith performance, much more... 💪 MOSH protein bars: Code PAKMAN for 20% off + free shipping at https://moshlife.com/pakman ✉️ StartMail: Get 50% OFF a year subscription at https://startmail.com/pakman 🍯 Manukora Honey: Get 5 FREE honey sticks at https://manukora.com/pakman 🥂 ZBiotics: Use code PAKMAN for 15% OFF at https://thld.co/zbiotics_pakman_0123 💻 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

Speaker 1 Speaker 1 Well, we're really in the middle of a master class in propaganda from the American right wing. The narrative continues to shift about this Chinese surveillance balloon, which was popped shot out of the sky on the orders of President Joe Biden, who will no doubt talk about the balloon at tonight's State of the Union address, which, by the way, I will be covering live and I hope that you will join me for. Initially, the narrative was Joe Biden is weak and he won't pop the balloon. The narrative then became, well, Biden popped it, but any president would have popped the balloon. So it's not really worthy

of much praise. Now it is starting to become why did Biden pop the balloon. There were other better options from some esteemed military strategists, such as. Newt Gingrich. Yeah, Newt Gingrich weighing in on Fox News saying we could have scooped it. Why wasn't it scooped? It was the wrong thing to pop it. And only then, after it's all done, bring it down and then bring it down in such a way that now they're having to go out and try to find it in the ocean. I mean, we had plenty of capacity to scoop that balloon out of the air. We used to do it all the time with satellite photographs back before you had electronic transmission. We'd have planes that would go out and actually capture the capsule that had the the satellite spy material. Yeah. Now, of course, the sizes of these things are dramatically different. And,

you know, I don't know what sort of super duper pooper scooper Newt Gingrich has in mind here, but I wasn't able to find anything about scoopers for scooping stuff up as big as three buses at 66000 feet, I believe it was or whatever the case may be. Now, does does it mean that that doesn't exist? Well, I don't know. Newt Gingrich is someone who has been out of any position of power for a very long time. And there is no question that Joe Biden was given all of the options. Newt Gingrich certainly doesn't even know what they are. Now, one other thing, I don't know why no one is proposing what really should have been done. Send astronaut George Anthony Kitara Devolder Santos up to grab the thing himself. That really would have been the

solution, obviously. Listen, Newt Gingrich specifically is sort of like a joke. He's kind of like the punch line to whatever joke makes sense at this point in time. He's the guy who said that under his if you were to call it leadership by 2021, we would have had a permanent colony on the moon. So not really a serious guy. But this is really all about propaganda and it's all about narrative. And it's about this idea that you can't allow any Democratic president if you're a Republican to get anything right, anything, anything right at even the smallest level. Joe Biden can do no right. And as I've told you before, I am on the left. I believe that progressive policies are better for the country. I believe modern republicanism is an absolute disaster.

But when Trump got something right, I would tell you whether it was a couple of the tweaks to the tax code in 2017 that did make sense or elements of the First Step Act or the reality that Trump really didn't deserve blame for rising inflation and gas prices at the end of it. Let's call things what they are. And this is relatively uncontroversial. Joe Biden doing what at the end of the day, military advisers put to him, which are also the same limitations that Donald Trump would have had. So the new story is, why shoot it down? We could have pooper scooped it and then brought it down or whatever the case may be. If you want to hear an elected official really relating to the plight of the average man or woman in the United States. I can think of no

better example than radical and repugnant Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene whining that she only makes one hundred and seventy four thousand dollars as a member of Congress. And now she has to work most of the year. If you can imagine, imagine that most of the year she has to work and she's only getting paid one hundred and seventy four thousand dollars while flying back and forth between D.C. and her district on taxpayer funded airline travel. I know this is sort of like when Trump talks about his plane and it's super relatable when he shows up in the middle of nowhere, Oklahoma, on his private plane and whines about how he had to totally refurbish it in front of a crowd that statistically wouldn't be able to meet a four hundred dollar unexpected

expense without incurring debt of some kind. Almost as unrelatable as Marjorie Taylor Greene. She appeared recently on the by the way that she appeared on Glenn Greenwald's Rumble show, which is sort of like a lead in to a completely to another story altogether, which I don't have time for today on Glenn Greenwald's Rumble show. Here is Marjorie Taylor Greene bemoaning she's miserable now that she's a member of Congress. The salary is low and it's so much work for her. The nature of this job, it keeps members of Congress and senators in Washington so much of the time, too much of the time, to be honest with you, that we don't get to go home and spend more time with our families, our friends, with you, that we don't get to go home and spend more time with

our families, our friends, you know, all in our district or maybe just be regular people. How relatable, huh? Because this job is so. Factory workers all over Georgia are sympathizing with this. Demanding it's turned into practically year round. And for those. they expect me to work almost the entire year. Us in the house of representatives, we have to run for Congress every two years. So you're practically campaigning nearly the entire time. That's a fair criticism that you're here serving as a representative. So that's, that's just a couple of examples that I can give you that I believe is a recipe for

disaster. And that's how people just fall into this social club. I would call it a social club here in Washington, D.C. Now, for me, I have no interest in that. I really don't. And I'll tell you why. Becoming a member of Congress has made my life miserable. I made a lot more money. My life is also miserable because she's in Congress. So it's not it's not that she didn't only do this to herself. She did it to many of us. Before I got here, I've lost money since I've gotten here. I have people come up to me and say crazy things to me out of the blue in public places

that they believe because they read it on the Internet or saw it on some some news show. Right. That's never happened to her. Out me. So it's not it's not a life that I think is is like something that I enjoy. You can resign, Marjorie. You didn't have to run for reelection, by the way. I don't enjoy it, but I'm committed to this job because I believe in it. Yeah. Not a single redeeming quality about this woman. Now, let's actually sort of like be thorough here. How does Marjorie Taylor Greene's hundred and seventy four thousand dollar salary compare? You know, you can you can look this stuff up. We're going to first start with income percentile calculator. This is for the United States. And if we type in her salary,

one hundred and seventy four thousand dollars for, I guess, what we will call full time work. She is in the 92nd percentile, 92nd percentile, meaning that she makes more than 92 percent of Americans working full time. But eight percent of Americans make more than she does. And then if we look at for her age, right, Marjorie Taylor Greene is 48 years old. So we can calculate this as well. $174,000 a year. Whoops. That's one point seven million. And she is also in the 92nd percentile there. So, you know, it is not untrue that people can make a lot more money in the private sector that that's absolutely true. Can Marjorie make more money in the private sector? Because it's not exactly clear to me what skills or competency she has. Many people make

more than one hundred and seventy four thousand dollars. But it's just not clear to me that Marjorie Taylor Greene would be one of those people. I don't understand how poor white people in Georgia love a woman who bemoans that she has to work almost the entire year for only one hundred and seventy four thousand dollars a year. That is really the greatest scam perpetrated by the Republican Party on the American people on their electorate. And this goes back to the Tea Party of 2010. This goes back to economic policy that would do nothing for the very people who say, hey,

you know what, Let's vote for lower taxes for the rich. Let's vote for people who will complain about one hundred and seventy four thousand dollar salary. The only person maybe more repugnant than Marjorie Taylor Greene would be her colleague who I guess now she hates, Lauren Boebert. And I want to talk about Lauren Boebert a little bit here before we go to our first break. Lauren Boebert has now repeatedly prayed for the death of President Joe Biden. Tonight is the State of the Union address. Joe Biden will address the nation. I will be streaming live on YouTube, Twitch and Facebook starting a little after 8 p.m. Eastern.

And I hope that you'll join me so we can see what Joe Biden has to say and if and whether he unveils new policy tonight. It actually would make sense for Secret Service to take extra care when screening certain people tonight. And one of those people is Lauren Boebert. I'm going to play a clip for you of Lauren Boebert at some church. She does these church appearances and she is praying for the death of Joe Biden here. Now, I know when you hear it, you might say it's sort of ambiguous. It's really not ambiguous if you understand the Bible verses. So let's listen to what Lauren Bobert had to say and then go from there. God said that he was the provider. I know that Jesus said that he, that we would be blessed, but I just don't know about this month. And Jesus is right there at the table with you. Sam, what kind of conversation is this?

Why are you talking like this? And why are you sad? Jesus, don't you know? We're out of money. COVID's hit. They shut everything down. Joe Biden's president. We don't know what to do, Lord.

It's all right. We pray for our presidents. You know, it says, let his days be few and another take his office. That's why I filed articles of impeachment for Joe Biden. Yeah. Now you might say, David, with all due respect, that's pretty ambiguous. It's not ambiguous if you understand the full context of what she is quoting. The verse that Lauren Boebert references there is Psalm 1098. And it is clearly about praying for the death of an enemy in office because she quoted, let his days be few and let another take his office. And then the rest of it is let his children be fatherless and his wife, a widow. You don't become a widow just because your husband gets impeached. As she talks about,

you become a widow because your husband dies. Your children become fatherless, not because you're impeached, but because you die. And Lauren Boebert also I can't believe I'm using this term, but she preached this message in June as well. Praise the Lord. I hope that blesses somebody. But I. I do want you to know, I pray for our president. Psalm 109, eight says, may his days be few and another take his office. Hallelujah. Yeah. So that's exactly the same thing.

She knows exactly what the verse is. She knows the context. What we're talking about here is praying for the death of Joe Biden. At minimum, every single one of these places where she's preaching needs to lose its tax exempt status. That's is an absolute minimum. And we've talked about that before. But there are people like Lauren Boebert going to tonight's State of the Union who should be screened very, very closely by Secret Service.

That is what is insane. The calls are coming from inside the House. Now, one defense that I saw made is she's speaking statistically. Joe Biden's 80 years old. 80 year olds don't tend to live much longer. Well, if you if you really want to play that game right and we can do that, you can look at the Social Security life expectancy tables. These are actuarial tables. And if you are 80 years old, this is from 2019. I don't know that the numbers have been updated since then, but based on these are the numbers used this year from 2019. If you are an 80 year old male, you have a five point six percent chance of dying in the following year and you are expected to live another eight point four years as an 80 year old male in the US in 2019. So for those saying this is just about letting father time take his course or whatever the case may be, you may be disappointed to know the actuarial numbers on which social

security is based. Disgusting woman, an absolute shame and embarrassment is Lauren Boebert. And I really hope that Secret Service is going to keep a close eye on her tonight. We're going to take a quick break. Make sure you are subscribed to the show on YouTube at YouTube dot com slash The David Pakman Show David Pakman dot com. love these. My favorite is the chocolate crunch. Simple, satisfying. Now that I'm back in the gym, I'll snack on one of these after a workout. Mosh is also a mission driven company with a portion of all proceeds donated to support women's brain health research through the women's Alzheimer's movement at Cleveland Clinic. Mosh is giving my audience 20 percent off plus free shipping on Thank you, David. notes. Email services by big tech companies scan every single email you send and receive emails from your doctor, your spouse. That's why you get those creepy ads a few minutes later. And other companies collect your data every time you open an email from them. It's a huge mess. All of this

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And unlike other services, when you delete an email, it's gone forever. And I love this part. You can create unlimited email aliases so you don't have to give companies your real email address, which can really cut down on spam. Thank you very much. dot com slash Pacman. That's S.T.A.R.T. M.A.I.L. dot com slash Pacman for 50 percent off. The link is in the podcast notes. If you don't understand something, it's very difficult to be prepared for it, to know how to synthesize it, to know how to deal with it. And we are seeing such dangerous examples of this coming in general from the divisive narrative being promulgated by the American right wing in a complete vacuum of policy, as we've talked about before, where it's not even that the policy is whatever.

The policy doesn't even matter. They don't even really talk about policy anymore. And we're going to look at a couple examples of that here. And they come from Fox News propagandist Tucker Carlson. Now, one of the reasons that Carlson is particularly dangerous is that similarly to someone like a Ben Shapiro, Tucker Carlson speaks very confidently. The tone of people like Tucker and Ben Shapiro are that they are extraordinarily confident in telling you how things are. The reason that Tucker is arguably even more dangerous than Ben Shapiro is that to some degree, Ben Shapiro is more readily understood as giving his opinion, whereas the context and the sort of production

of Tucker's show, where it just looks like yet another Fox News program, actually tricks more people into thinking that Tucker Carlson is giving you news. And as we know, when it when the rubber meets the road and the lawyers come out because there's a lawsuit, Fox News lawyers are very quick to say Tucker Carlson is an entertainer. He's not a news person. Look at these couple of clips from yesterday from Tucker Carlson's program. In this first clip, Tucker Carlson bemoans, I guess, what he considers some kind of woke affirmative action of sorts by pointing out that Joe Biden has appointed quite a number of black women to be judges. Take a look at this. Out of 97 federal judges confirmed under Joe Biden, total number of white men, five, 22 are black women. So this is race based hiring. It's illegal, but it's also not about

looking like America. It's about punishing people. Now, that could not be less true. And what Tucker Carlson doesn't tell you when he says, well, hold on a second. Ninety seven federal judges confirmed under Biden, 22 are black women. That's like almost a quarter. That doesn't make any sense. That doesn't look like America. But you have to zoom out and you have to realize there are currently about fourteen hundred sitting federal judges, fourteen hundred, actually fourteen hundred and seven. More than half are white men, not just white. More than half are white men. And only four and a half percent are black women. So when you say it's illegal, it's not representative of the way America looks or whatever the case may be.

Understand that African-Americans make up 13 percent of the American population. You would expect if black women and girls are roughly half of that 13 percent, that would be six and a half percent. You still have black women underrepresented by a third among judges. Now, I am not someone who says we need exact equality of outcome. You're never going to have that. It's an unreasonable thing to expect. If I came to you and I said in order for society to be fair in every single place, we must have 50.3 percent women, 13 percent black people, 1 percent Jews or whatever the percentage is. That would be a very unreasonable thing to say.

But when you zoom out, there are places where we look and we have to say this can't be by chance when you zoom out and you say, well, 46 presidents and zero women in a country that's 50.3% women. That is a statistic that doesn't make sense. We don't need 50.3% of presidents to be women. That is a statistic that doesn't make sense. We don't need 50.3% of presidents to be women. You might have a situation where women are less interested in being president than men. And it doesn't have to be because of discrimination. I'm completely open to that. You know, the right wingers love to say this thing where they go, hey, you know what? If you really want equality, why aren't you fighting for 50.3 percent

of longshoremen? It actually the term has man in it, right? Why aren't you fighting for 50.3 percent of longshoremen and bricklayers to be women? Well, that that's not actually what we're saying. And there are all sorts of different reasons why women may be less interested in being bricklayers. And it doesn't have to be because of discrimination. So it's not about equality of outcome. But the very argument Tucker is making is turned on its head by the fact Tucker says 22 out of 97 judges being black women isn't representative of America's demographics. Well, no, but we have such a deficit demographically among among judges that what Joe Biden is doing is only partially making the demographics actually represent America. So it's a bogus argument, but it's ripe and perfect for his audience. Here's one other

just clip from yesterday. And again, it's just these are talking point comas that Tucker goes into here. It's something about transgender Satanism. They're so shameless about this. They don't even care. Tonight's transgender Satanism brought to you by Pfizer. Inject their products in your body. That is a very, very concerning laugh. So listen, there is horrible stuff happening on Tucker Carlson's program. And if you were saying, well, fine, there's horrible stuff happening there. But Tucker is never going to say, well, we should be defending George Santos, is he? Well, let's talk about that next. There is apparently no low too low for Fox News propagandist Tucker Carlson, who is now issuing a delusional defense

of George Anthony Kitara, Devoldolder Santos. You might know him as just George Santos, the lying Republican congressman who lied about everything. Tucker Carlson has found a way to defend him. We are going to look at a clip. This is really a clinic in disinformation. And Tucker Carlson starts by talking about Joe Biden, but it morphs into a defend of defense of George Santos. And it is fascinating to see. See if you can pick out the rhetorical tools that Tucker uses here. I'm going to try to keep a list of them and then we will discuss. So we haven't watched a ton of cable news recently, but we assumed with mass layoffs underway across the U.S. by the way, this we

thing is funny. You're talking about yourself, Tucker. I mean, egg shortage, crumbling cities, the prospect of a third world war looming on the near horizon. We assumed we knew what the other channels would be covering because there are an awful lot of threats out there. What we didn't know until we tuned into MSNBC and CNN the other day was that all of those threats go by a single name. And that name is Mr. George Santos. George Santos. Weeks into his new job as a freshman member of Congress and just months from his previous life of near total anonymity, George Santos has somehow transformed into the single most dangerous and historically significant figure on the global stage today. So we have here already two tools that are used. We have what about ism and we have you could call it reductio ad absurdum. You could call it straw manning. So so the what about ism is Tucker

Carlson shifting from a discussion about Biden to one about how George Santos has been treated, which are actually two completely different things, no matter what Tucker tries to tell you. And then the sort of straw manning is the idea that Democrats are telling you Santos is the most dangerous guy in the world. Democrats aren't telling you Santos is the most dangerous guy in the world. They're saying he's laughably dishonest and has no place in the House of Representatives, which is true. George Santos is like 9-11 in human form. Nothing will ever be the same now that George Santos is here. You will never forget the moment you first saw George Santos. Where were you when George Santos was elected? It's a story you will tell your grandchildren. Watch. On Capitol Hill, this is George Santos's reality. It seems almost every

day there are new questions about the freshman congressman's past, some stretching back more than a decade. Can you keep up with all the Santos lies and controversies? He is now out-Trumping Trump in terms of flooding the zone with excrement. Not just saying that he played volleyball, but he had a scholarship, that he slayed teams from Harvard and Yale. A perfect portrayal of self-loathing, that he clearly is so disgusted with himself and so disgusted with the life that he's led, a life of lies, a life of fables. People didn't decide because they thought he was somebody totally, totally different. It was a lie and a fraudulent election.

He has to resign. Not a volleyball champion, and he doesn't appear to be a champion of the people either. The voters did not elect you, Mr. Santos. They elected a version of you invented by your imagination. Sadly, George Santos represents so much that is wrong today. Lies, denial, and the death of shame. It was a stolen election. It was a stolen election. You heard Adam Kinzinger say it and CNN filled in the blanks. There's false equivalency, which is also another rhetorical

tool, which is that the left is saying Santos stole an election in the same way that Trump is saying that Biden stole an election. And of course, the two things could not be more different. So there's false equivalency. This is really a clinic in logical fallacies. It's not just that George Santos claimed that he once played volleyball in college, played volleyball in college. It's worse than that. Indescribably worse. George Santos told other people out loud and CNN can exclusively confirm this, that he had a volleyball scholarship. All right. You get the point. We're not going to do the full four and a half minutes of this. Tucker Carlson has found a way to come to George Santos's defense

as someone who is just now a target of the latest woke mob. I saw a really good comment on Reddit about this. And what that comment said was, hopefully 100 years from now, if the US survives the next 100 years, this sort of stuff, this era will be seen as the golden age of ignorance. And school kids will hear about the things that were said and believed. The military is really in control right now. Obama's in control. George Santos is actually a fine person to be a member of the House of Representatives, all this stuff. Kids will look back at 2023 and they will say, how did humans believe that stuff back then? It will be sort of like when we say, how did they think at one point that leeches cured all sorts of different medical conditions? We say that's so

silly. How could anybody think that? Hopefully in the future, people will learn about this era and they will say, wow, what a stupid era, really the golden age of of of ignorance there. And this is really a good test for how far will they go? Is there nothing they won't defend if it has an R next to its name and if the left doesn't like it? We saw they went for Trump. Now, even with George Santos, they're finding a way to defend him. It is of how far will this go sort of situation. And sadly, I don't think we want to know the answer because they will go very, very far. We will have all of these clips that I played for you on both our Instagram and our YouTube accounts. Find us on Instagram at David Pakman show.

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were ultimately taken down, one of the things that is often described as the story is told in many of the books about it is that it's really like the prototypical example of different law enforcement agencies in the U.S. not working well together, which is sort of like this narrative that often exists about, well, the FBI wants credit. Well, this also involved HSI and involved all these different agencies. And the Silk Road would have been taken down much sooner were egos put aside. That's a story that's often told. Do you think that that's fair as far as the way that it went? No, not exactly. You know, the other agencies were doing good investigations.

HSI had good investigations going as far as going up the chain. But unfortunately, this is a new way of dealing drugs. I mean, this was, you know, they were the buyers didn't know who the dealers were. The dealers didn't know who the admins were, you know. And so it really was just, you know, it didn't go a normal investigative route. You know, I wanted this new cyber route. So for people who don't know what what the Silk Road was, can you give them sort of a brief synopsis? I mean, it was it was a dark Web site that was originally, I believe, dealing mostly in illegal drugs, but actually came to be much more than that. Yeah, it was an online dark market Web site operated on the Tor network with the Onion router. It was a hidden network developed by the Navy back in the late 90s.

And you can't trace IPs traditionally through it. It works on a different protocol that kind of hides where the traffic is coming from and going to. But it also worked through anonymity through cryptocurrency. This was the early stages of Bitcoin. So you literally could go on there and buy almost anything. It was a $1.2 billion empire by the time we took it down. Now, there were two things you couldn't buy on Silk Road. You couldn't buy guns because that was on a different website. And you also couldn't buy fake IDs or fake college degrees. You could buy fake IDs, but you couldn't get a fake college degree. They didn't want you to be like a doctor and and not really have the education. When this started to

become an investigation that involved multiple agencies, what was really or let me put it a different way. What were their concerns about where it could go or was the concern really what was already taking place with it? Really, it was what was already taking place, you know, in the FBI. And I can't speak for HSI or IRS or DEA in their investigations. The FBI investigation really came out of, we had a lot of cases around that time. It was 2011, 2012. A lot of cases just ended. It was Tor. We can't do anything about it. So we had just done a big case involving Anonymous and the arresting of Sabu, Hector Montegor. And one of the other guys on the Anonymous case was a guy named

Jeremy Hammond, and he was arrested and he was using Tor. So. And one of the other guys on the anonymous case was a guy named Jeremy Hammond. And he was arrested and he was using Tor. So it was one of those interesting things. We didn't do anything with Tor. It just happened. That's how he's hiding. And it took us an extra six months to find him. But once that case was over, we started sitting around and thinking about maybe we should take a look at Tor and see what we can do. There's so many cases being closed just because it comes up as a Tor IP address. If I recall correctly, a big kind of breaking point in starting to look at Ross Ulbricht was someone involved in the investigation. And it's been a little while since since I read the book

about the investigation, someone put together an old handle that Ross used on some message board, which then they figured out, oh, they're that's I recognize that that's also appearing elsewhere. Remind us of that detail. But maybe more importantly, how long did the Silk Road investigation go before the name Ross Ulbricht ever actually was mentioned? Well, so there's a path there. There's a story there that, you know, it's kind of difficult. So the connecting, the name you're looking for is Frosty. Yes. So someone on a message board way back at the start of Silk Road posted, hey, I'm starting this onion site, and it's going to use cryptocurrency. If anybody has any programming help, reach out to me at Frosty.

It was posted in the username Frosty in the forum. They said reach out to me at Ross.Albrecht at gmail.com, which, again, is the clue in our world. Not until we found the server and was able to go through sort of the networks of the server and find that there was a backup server in Philadelphia. And then there was a computer that was reaching Silk Road, you know, and then his posting of from Frosty with the email address Ross Albrecht at Gmail dot com. And that was originally the way that the investigation turned to look specifically at Albrecht. Yeah. I mean, we had to develop a few other things before we knew that he was in the Pacific Coast time because there was a jabber server that he had set up. That's a communication server for his admins to talk on. And we knew that he was in the Pacific Coast time because there was a Jabber server that he had

set up. That's a communication server for his admins to talk on. And we knew that his time frame was around then. But that specifically that was where we connected Ross through that frosty connection. If you look at critiques of the way that Albrecht was ultimately prosecuted, it seems what most often comes up is something along the lines of, you know, the drug part. Increasingly, there's a view that drugs should be decriminalized at minimum. Many should actually be legalized more commonly with cannabis than with cocaine. But this is sort of like the way things have kind of moved over the last decade, 15 years, particularly libertarians like Albrecht

subscribe to that ideology. And there are many who say that were it only the drugs alone, really what was happening shouldn't actually have been against the law. However, it went over into you could hire hit men on the Silk Road and it went over into all this other stuff that I think is more universally thought of as like, you know, that that stuff definitely shouldn't be legal when someone like you or others in the FBI are investigating something like this. How much or does it matter at all what your personal feelings are about, for example, which drugs, if any, should be illegal or decriminalized or legalized? Or does it quite literally never enter into the work as you were investigating something like this? Speaker 4 It really never enters into the work. I mean, so I was assigned to New York. I was a special

agent in New York. And I like to say in New York, you know, it's so specialized. There's, you know, let's jokingly say there's a bank robbery. And the first question is, was the bank robber left handed or right handed? Because there's one squad handles left-handed bank robber. The other handles right-handed bank robber. You're put on a squad. And we were very – we were criminal cyber intrusions. So we were the criminal hacking crew. That was our squad. And there was another squad that did national security hacking.

So really, I was just investigating hacking. And really, Tor had come up. We had partnered up with Southern District of New York, who had a case with the DEA at the time, and then brought in the IRS. And so really, I was looking at 18 USC 1030, a violation of hacking rules. And that was one of the things sold on Silk Road, was hacking tools or hacks for hire. And so that was sort of the nexus. But really, when we opened up the Silk Road case, we opened up 25 other onion hire. And so that was sort of the nexus. But really, when we opened up the Silk Road case, we opened up twenty five other onion sites and it really was more looking into

using Tor as a way of hiding criminal activity. When you see the sentence that Albrecht ultimately got, which was, I believe, two life sentences without the possibility of parole, does 40 years plus 40 years. OK, does that seem like the possibility of parole does. Plus 40 years. Plus 40 years. OK, does that seem like the right sentence for what he did? That is not my decision. You know, I'm a part of the you know, that's the thank God the government has different branches. You know, I'm part of the I was part of the executive branch.

We're no doubt the laws, you know, the legislative branch does the you know, what laws there are and the judicial branch does come up with the punishment. So that's way beyond my scope of expertize. No, but as a guy who now is out and just might have an opinion, I really don't have an opinion on it. Yeah. And I'm not suggesting I don't know that. I mean, sometimes people say that because they don't want to answer.

I actually am open to the idea that you really just that's not the way you think about these things. You have a particular role in this whole thing. Yeah, certainly. I mean, I I'm not I wouldn't be upset if someone I arrested, you know, was let go. I mean, I wrecked I arrested Hector Montague. He spent months in jail, was facing one hundred twenty five years, but did a great job. I'm not offended by all the work I put in and he got out and got he was only in prison for for nine months for for what he did. You know, that doesn't offend me in any sort of way. So, yeah, I really don't have an opinion on it. What's the current state of dark web marketplaces? Because it's not really

a topic in the news right now, but it's sort of like by definition, the idea is it's dark web. So you don't necessarily know about it. These aren't indexed websites. You need a special browser to access it. Do you know much about the current state of these types of marketplaces? I do. I'm still involved in them. So, yeah, you know, you would ask me right after Silk Road and right after Ross got sentenced to all that, you know, two life sentences in 40 years, I would have said it would have gone down. I would have no one would do this is crazy, but it actually exploded right after that. There was a big state of, you know, people setting up these sites and stealing people's cryptocurrency. But now it's becoming

to, you know, there's places, you know, and I don't want to tell kids how to get there. Right. You know, but but there are many, many dark market websites out there that you can still still do many more than there were back in the day. Are they ever based in the United States or is that just like the height of ignorance to approach it that way? I think some people probably still do it in the United States. You know, it's it's sort of a whack a mole. Someone makes a mistake, a configuration issue or something like that. Law enforcement gets them. But the latest takedowns haven't really used infrastructure in the United States that I've seen. You mentioned the connection to crypto and that crypto was often the payment method that was used. One of the interesting and full disclosure, I have no emotional attachment to this question.

I also have no opinion. I was in not early, but, you know, 2016, I bought some Bitcoin and it did really well and I've mostly sold all of it. And I have no opinion as to where it's going or how much it's used for criminality. One of the arguments that was made early about Bitcoin was it's overwhelmingly used for criminal activities. But my understanding is that when the Silk Road was shut down, the throughput of transactions barely changed at all, which sort of would be a counterpoint to the idea that Bitcoin was primarily being used for criminal transactions. Did you and your investigative work come to have an opinion about that and how regularly criminal motivations were at play

for Bitcoin transactions? So, you know, in my world as an FBI agent, I only looked at criminal activity. So, you know, I saw it attached to everything. I mean, it really was the birth of ransomware. I mean, we've had encryption for 75 years we're fighting, we're still fighting that to this day on that sort of thing. So, you know, I am a technologist. I liked cryptocurrency. I see the point of it. I like that, you know, two people can meet in a far off place and make a transaction and it's locked in place within, you know, 60 minutes at most. But I see a lot of criminal activity connected to it. What are you seeing now in terms of the trends of the cyber threats, scams, phishing at the individual level, if you're able to comment on it? You know, about five years ago, I was getting a lot of the, hey, you owe tax money and we're sending the police to your house, to which I

would say, send them. Sounds interesting. Obviously, I know I don't you know, I'm not giving you any money. Social security scams give us access to your computer and we'll like log into your bank, that sort of stuff. I'm not being targeted by that anymore. I'm getting a lot more sort of like telemarketing stuff, like wanting to sell me warranties on vehicles I don't even have and this sort of thing. What are the trends right now? What's going on? So we're seeing a lot of phishing scams for crypto theft. So any sort of like accounts that are taken over where it's sent out that you're part of a crypto network, if you're part of an exchange, you know, you'll start getting a lot of phishing emails and the phishing, the phone calls give me access. And then because it's so easy, you don't have to.

They give access to their computer and just take the wallets right out right there. You don't have to convince them to do anything more. I think one of the biggest trends, and so I host a podcast with Hector Monsergur, Sabu, the guy I arrested, a hacker in the Fed, and he made a prediction, and I agree with him, that this year we're going to see a lot more insider threats. People inside networks who we give access to are going to be stealing data. He kind of made that prediction based on the large technology layoffs we've seen lately. But we're seeing more and more networks have been protected from the outside outside and very few people are doing things to protect internal network stuff. What's the lowest hanging fruit right

now just for individuals in terms of protecting themselves? What can they do better? Yeah. I mean, you know, I know people who, for example, they just don't pick up their phone anymore. And just by doing that, unless they they quite literally know who's calling them, even if they think it might be their bank, they just do not pick up the phone as an example. And that right there knocks 50 percent down or, you know, that type of thing. Yeah, no, I would definitely do that. You know, the email stuff is still the phishing stuff. But one of the easiest things you can do is called segmentation. There's no more no more flat networks at work. You'll never see just one router and everyone connects to the same router in any office, but we're seeing that at home still. A lot of people just have one router. They give their

passwords out to people that come and visit and that sort of thing, or they connect internet of the things when your thermostat is connected to your router. A lot of thermostats and things like that have hard-coded passwords, or they don't change the administrative passwords. Well, that's a hole right into your network. So segmentations either through VLANs or having physical different devices have, you know, more than one router in your house and secure it that way. Oh, that's interesting. So, for example, you could you could set up a separate Wi-Fi network for the thermostats alone and you on your phone never connect to that network. Yeah. Anything you do banking on should not be on the same as your Internet of Things, especially things that punch

what I call punching holes in the firewall. So because you can change your thermostat from outside your house, right, because you can look at cameras that you've had connected to your Internet, those are holes in your firewall. That means that, you know, it's an entry point into the defense system. So, you know, have a different network that doesn't have that connected to it used for your, you know, banking, logging into banking accounts and that sort of thing. All right. That's useful and actionable. And it's not unrealistic. You know, sometimes the tips you read are like, yes, I could do that, but I'm basically segregating myself out of the way society is operating, which is not practical.

It's like a diet that you can only sustain for a week. It's not super useful long term. Yeah. These routers are super cheap now. So it's really a thing you can do. And, you know, configuration. There's a lot of YouTube videos out there that can help you configure, you know, different networks. We have been speaking with former FBI special agent Chris Tarbell, now a founding partner at Naxo. Chris, really appreciate your time and your insights today. Thanks so much for having me on. I appreciate it. It was fun. send tons of your personal information to tech companies and data brokers based on your IP address. They have a disturbingly accurate understanding 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. There are 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 or three a month and you'll get four months free. The link is in the podcast notes. All right, it's been a while, but let's talk a little bit about Carrie Lake, who is moving on to her next likely grift running for Senate in Arizona. It seems maybe she's getting ready to give up on taking that governorship back that was stolen from her, which, of course, wasn't stolen. She simply lost to Katie Hobbs, the rightful winner and the now governor of the state of Arizona. Carrie Lake is starting to tease that she may indeed run for Senate. We are going to look at a video from Charlie Kirk's program. You might notice Charlie Kirk now adopting a totally new look, getting himself some big glasses and wearing a shirt and tie and I guess maybe needing to be

taken more seriously or something along those lines. He interviews Carrie Lake and Carrie Lake says, you know, I it is something I am looking at very strongly and we already have polling data of what this will look like. Let's take a look at this clip. Some people are clamoring for you to run for the U.S. Senate. Very few people. I can tell you that. I had a lot of people reach out this weekend over it. Yeah, we got people are contacting. That's exactly what people do. They go, hey, you know what? I want Carrie Lake to run. I'm going to call Charlie Kirk to tell him about it. Diego running cinema might run. Therefore, there's a very clear lane for a three way race. Is this something you're interested in?

Something you're entertaining? What are your thoughts? Yes, I am entertaining it. I mean, my number one priority is our court case. And I have full confidence. She has to say that because you have to keep that grift going until you've completely dried until it has completely dried up. But also she's entertaining a different way to help Arizonans, which is to run for senator, I guess. A court case. And I have hope that we'll get a judge to do the right thing. But I'm also looking at what happens if we don't

get a decent ruling in that. Right. And they want me to go away. They want our movement to go away. I represent we the people. And if they want us gone so badly that they're willing to steal an election, then... Which didn't happen. I'm not going to let them have that. I won't go away.

And I've seen some internal polling that shows I am the only Republican who can beat these other two. I find both of them incredibly dangerous to the people of Arizona. I find them, you know, Kyrsten Sinema's voting record being 83% or rather 93% of the time voting for Joe Biden's agenda. I find Ruben Gallego being a self-admitted socialist really frightening for Arizona. And if I'm the only Republican who can beat them, I would be willing to jump in. There's always this martyrdom language. Did you hear at the end how she says, if I'm the only Republican who can beat them, right, this is despite her best interests.

If she just finds herself in the position of being the only person that could actually come in and save the state of Arizona. She's willing to do it. She's not she doesn't want to do it. She's not excited about doing it. She's willing to do it rather than the more interesting and exciting things, I guess, that she could be doing. Now, we do have some early polling in that hypothetical matchup. We talked about this in late December. Paul finds Sinema gets only 13 percent support in a three way race with Gallego and Lake. And roughly the way that it looks right now. And we have a longer clip just talking about this polling. It's basically a tie between Gallego and Lake with or without Kyrsten Sinema. So it was something like 48 to 47, I think it was when you don't include Kyrsten Sinema. So it was something like 48 to 47. I think it was

when you don't include Kyrsten Sinema in Lake versus Gallego. Excuse me. And if you do include Kyrsten Sinema, it's something like 40, 41. And so what was interesting about that is Carrie Lake and Giego roughly receiving 50 50 support from Kyrsten Sinema voters. I'm going to take a sip of water. Thank you. I don't want one of those Fox News moments. So will Carrie Lake ultimately run? I don't know if it'll get her attention, if it'll get her back to Mar-a-Lago or whatever the case may be. But Carrie Lake going to do whatever it is that is best for her. All right. I want to talk just a little bit more about Charlie Kirk, but this is really not about Charlie Kirk. This is actually about the trans kids issue and a new version of the same tired, homophobic talking point from 15 years ago or even longer.

Let's start with a clip to tell you what I'm talking about. Here is Charlie Kirk saying that Tick Tock is turning kids transgender, turning kids transgender. The language really matters here. Listen to what he has to say. I want to play a piece of tape here, Jack, and get your reaction. This is Senator Tom Cotton talking about how, hey, if you're fired up about the balloon, wait till I tell you about TikTok. Play cut to. Well, China has been waging a Cold War against the United States for decades.

And unfortunately, not many of our leaders have acknowledged that they want to deny that it's happening. But when a nation like China is waging a Cold War against us, the only choice is whether to win or to lose. I think this spy balloon that so vividly went across America is a very high profile reminder to Americans about what the Chinese communists have been up to. Because I got to tell your viewers, if they're worried about a spy balloon flying across middle America, let me tell them about the TikTok app that they may have on their phone and what it means for their security and their privacy and that of their children as well. Yeah. And not to mention TikTok is turning kids trans. Jack, we're already in a cold war. The degree, the casual nature with which these people say insane things. Yeah.

And by the way, TikTok is turning kids trans. Now, a couple of different things here that I think are important to point out. First and foremost, the Charlie Kirk show is on TikTok. OK, he has not as many followers as we do. Fine. But over 200000 followers on TikTok, the Charlie Kirk show, if Charlie Kirk thinks that TikTok is a problem, then why is Charlie Kirk on TikTok making the problem worse by directing viewers of his onto that platform? But I want to talk about this idea of turning kids trans.

This is verbatim what used to be said about kids being turned gay. Fifteen years ago on this show, I went in. I would interview virulent homophobes like Peter LaBarbera and Chaplain Gordon Klingenschmitt and the Westboro Baptist Church people and Dr. Paul Cameron. Is he still alive, by the way? I'm actually curious about that. Dr. Paul Cameron. Let's see. Apparently he is. Yeah, he's 83 years old. So I would interview these folks. And remember, at the time, they Brian Fisher was another one. They never really were too worried about lesbians. Gay men was their focus. And one of the things they would say is kids are being convinced boys in particular are being convinced to be gay. Now they've switched to kids are being convinced

to be trans. You can't convince people to be gay or trans. Now, I want to do this thoroughly because I think that this entire talking point is B.S. and it's dangerous. But there is one conversation that we can have about this. OK, you really can't convince people to be gay or trans. If that, you know, if it's seven or something, you would started to say, hey, don't you find these little boys attractive, David, or it's great to like boys instead of whatever. There's no way that you can convince people to be gay or trans. What can happen is that people who are gay or trans might not be comfortable expressing that because of social stigma or pressure or fears or whatever, and that if they perceive that it would be fine for them to just be who they are, they don't have to hide it.

You might see more young people willing to express who they actually are. That is absolutely true, that when you reduce stigma and you reduce fear, people are just more comfortable telling you who they are. Now, all of that being said. I am open to the idea that the discourse can temporarily encourage people to see solutions to a problem they're having in whatever is prevalent in the narrative. And what I mean by that is there are now here I'm not talking about people who are trans. What I am talking about is there are people who, for all sorts of different reasons in their lives, come to have what we might call a crisis. They aren't happy with their lives or with who they are or with how things are going or whatever

the case may be. I know people who become fixated in an unhealthy way, for example, on a particular diet. I am aware of someone who was having problems in their life. And they decided it was diet related. They believed their food was making them depressed and all of these different things. And so they said, I'm only going to eat fruit and nuts. And they did that for a year. And it was completely extreme and terrible. And then they said, you know, the problem is my diet, but it's the wrong diet. I'm going to go on the meat diet, essentially. And they were eating, you know, sticks of butter and 10 eggs for breakfast or whatever. And then they realized I just what I really needed was actually just to sort out emotional problems I was having. I should just

be eating a normal diet. I am open, although I have not seen evidence that this is going on. I am open to the idea that for kids of a certain age where there are these sort of struggles and identity issues that they might temporarily if what they are hearing about is being trans, they might wonder maybe that's the issue that I'm having. And then, of course, at some point, they would realize that that it is actually not that I am open to all of this other stuff. You can convince kids to be trans that there's no evidence of it whatsoever. And it's quite frankly absurd that Charlie Kirk just so offhandedly says it. We have a voicemail number. That number is two one nine two. David P.

Many comments about my mustache that I came back from vacation with. Here's one. Hi, David. I love the 70s porn stash that you've got going on the mustache. that I came back from vacation with. Here's one. Speaker 4 very beautiful chest under there or is it just a shirt? Yeah, no, I I you know, I have thick Semitic hair all over my body, certainly. But but most of the comments about the mustache, quite negative, actually quite negative. My my girlfriend is worried that I might end up she she actually thinks I might end up profiled by police. And I said, no, no, no, no. And she said, don't drive a white van. But no, the mustache is just a joke and it will be gone soon. But I appreciate everybody's concern. We will talk on the bonus show today about Ron DeSantis setting himself up to take control of Disney's Orlando district under a new bill. It's crazy what's

happening down there in Florida. North Carolina senators are sending a controversial LGBT bill to a vote after a wild committee hearing, which we will discuss. And Ted Cruz now says the Grammys, the Grammys are evil after Sam Smith had a Satan themed set and it really triggered right wingers. All of those stories and more on today's bonus show. Sign up at join Pacman dot com to get access to the bonus show. And remember that tonight, just after 8 p.m. Eastern, 5 p.m. Pacific, I will be live with Joe Biden's State of the Union address. I hope to see you then.