The David Pakman Show - 2/8/23: Biden SOTU Massively Triggering, Trump Goes Low on DeSantis

Episode Date: February 8, 2023

-- On the Show: -- George Monbiot, Guardian columnist, environmental activist, and author most recently of Regenesis: Feeding the World Without Devouring the Planet, joins David to discuss the future of the planet, conservation, and more. Get the book: https://amzn.to/40H2U0g -- President Joe Biden goes directly at Republicans during his 2023 State of the Union address, triggering many of them into humiliating themselves by screaming at him during the speech -- Arkansas Republican Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders delivers the most disgusting and delusional State of the Union response speech in recent history -- Republican Senator Mitt Romney confronts lying Republican Congressman George Santos before the State of the Union address and tells him that he should not be there -- Failed former President Donald Trump goes low, implying that Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis previously "groomed" underage girls -- Republican Senator Marco Rubio has a sudden realization about "wokeness" after President Joe Biden's 2023 State of the Union address -- The world is horrified over radical Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene briefly serving as Speaker Pro Tempore in the House of Representatives -- A look at how the mind virus spreads through Fox News propagandist Tucker Carlson -- A look at the defense of "we're just asking questions" often employed by bad faith actors -- Voicemail caller says that Patrick Bet-David, on whose show David recently appeared, is essentially Joe Rogan but with hair 🍎 Little Spoon: Use code PAKMAN50OFF for 50% OFF at https://littlespoon.com 🪒 Henson Shaving: Use code Pakman for FREE blades at https://hensonshaving.com/pakman 💪 Athletic Greens is offering FREE year-supply of Vitamin D at https://athleticgreens.com/pakman 😁 Zippix Toothpicks: Code PAKMAN saves you 10% at https://zippixtoothpicks.com 💻 Stay protected! Try Aura FREE for 2 weeks: https://aura.com/pakman -- On the Bonus Show: Most Dems don't want Biden in 2024, FBI says Baltimore woman plotted to shoot up electric substations, single-use plastic production up despite pledges, much more... -- 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 2 Well, welcome everybody. It was quite a long night with the state of the union delivered by Joe Biden. It has led to this cone of hair sticking out the side of my head. And sometimes it is even stronger than gravity. So I apologize to the extent that it is distracting. But we have to talk about this Joe Biden state of the union. My expectations were that Joe Biden would probably mention a few new policy ideas, which he did. But I did not expect him to go at Republicans so directly and so brutally. And Republicans are so easily triggered that the guess was they would be somewhat triggered by Joe Biden. But the degree to which last night's State of the Union address made these right wingers explode even during the event, shouting things at

Joe Biden and humiliating themselves in so many different ways. It even surprised me. Now, Joe Biden called for a billionaire tax. He called for a larger tax on stock buybacks, saying quadruple it, presumably from one to four percent. He announced a plan to expand the thirty five dollar a month cost cap on insulin beyond just individuals on Medicare. But what really got them in a tizzy was when he really laid an incredible trap for Republicans, where Joe Biden said, you know, some Republicans want to sunset Social Security and Medicare. And they started yelling, no, no, no, you're a liar. To which Joe Biden said, well, great. I guess that means that subject is off the table and we don't

even have to talk about it anymore. Take a look at this. Take the economy hostage. I get it. Unless I agree to their economic plans. All of you at home should know what those plans are. Instead of making the wealthy pay their fair share, some Republicans, some Republicans want Medicare and Social Security sunset. I'm not saying it's the majority. Let me give you, anybody who doubts it, contact my office. I'll give you a copy. And there you see Marjorie Taylor Greene very much channeling Cruella DeVille screaming and pointing at Joe Biden. Copy of the proposal. I mean, it doesn't.

I'm glad to see you. I tell you, I enjoy conversion. You know, it means if Congress doesn't keep the programs the way they are, they'd go away. Other Republicans say, I'm not saying it's a majority of you. I don't even think it's even a significant. But it's being proposed by individuals. I'm not politely not naming them, but it's being proposed by some of you. Folks, the idea is that we're not going to be moved into being threatened to default on the debt if we don't respond. So, folks, as we all apparently agree, Social Security, Medicare is also off the books now.

So listen, this is this is really one of the greatest traps that I've seen set in this sort of live format. It would be a good trap no matter what. But to carry it out live in front of an audience is is quite stunning. Now, it is a subject of debate whether Republicans really are open to sunsetting Social Security and Medicare. The idea of sunsetting is something that was popularized by Rick Scott, senator from Florida, which is all legislation sunsets after five years. And then we decide, do we want to bring it back or not? And he didn't name Social Security and Medicare, but he also didn't say Social Security and Medicare were exempt. So a reasonable interpretation would be they are open to sunsetting Social Security and Medicare,

although maybe their intention is to keep them as they are. But debate aside, Republicans flipping out in this way now puts them in a corner where they can't seriously, they can't in a serious manner come forward and say, well, let's debate whether we want to cut Social Security and Medicare, because here they seemed vehement in their opposition to that. So an absolutely brilliant trap, really a masterclass in exposing these hypocrites. And the event also exposed, by the way, that Kevin McCarthy has no power. Kevin McCarthy trying to shush members who were screaming during

the State of the Union address. They ignored him. Here is one moment during which Marjorie Taylor Greene screams out. And if you're watching, you will see Kevin McCarthy shaking his head no and trying to shush her with very little success. Investing in American innovation and industries will define the future that China intends to be dominated. Investing in our alliances. And there you see McCarthy shake his head and go, shh. And he had no control, no control over his party. Here is just one of many images of Marjorie Taylor Greene just screaming at the top of her lungs and completely humiliating herself in every way screaming at the top of her lungs and completely humiliating herself in every way. When the topic of fentanyl came up, which is increasingly being

pronounced fentanyl, I still don't know why they pronounce it this way. But in any case, you know what I'm talking about. When Joe Biden brought up the deaths as a result of fentanyl, a heckler believed to be Matt Gaetz started screaming, it's your fault, it's your fault. And this was another opportunity for Republicans to debase themselves. Fentanyl is killing more than 70,000 Americans a year. You got it. So you hear combinations of it's your fault, it's the border, etc. The idea being that weak on the border, Joe Biden is letting fentanyl in. Now, of course, as we've been covering since Joe Biden became president, the differences in border policy between Donald Trump and Joe Biden

are extraordinarily subtle. Really, the change is that as the pandemic eased, movement of people increased again. But this is another one of these baseless tropes. There were all of the standard sort of elements of pomp and circumstance during the State of the moments was when Joe Biden actually recognized, I guess we would say, Brandon Say, the 26 year old who disarmed the Monterey Park gunman. And these moments are common in State of the Union addresses. Join us tonight is Brandon Say, a 26 year old hero. Brandon put his college dreams on hold to beat his mom's side. His mom's side when she was dying from cancer.

And Brandon... Brandon now works at the dance studio started by his grandparents. And two weeks ago, during the Lunar New Year celebrations, he heard the studio door close. And he saw a man standing there pointing a semi-automatic pistol at him. He thought he was going to die. But he thought about the people inside.

And that instant, he found the courage to act and wrestled a semiautomatic pistol away from the gunman who had already killed 11 people in another dance studio. 11. He saved lives. It's time we do the same. Banned assault weapons now. And there is Lauren Bobear, of course, shaking her head, probably upset that Brandon say wasn't armed himself in order to stop that gunman. Another moment like this,

Joe Biden recognizing Nancy Pelosi's husband, Paul Pelosi, of course, who was attacked brutally and viciously by a what do we even call call the guy a radicalized conspiracy theorist of sorts. And it is actually really good to see that 82 year old Paul Pelosi seems to be recovering well. Speaker 4 A few years, our democracy has been threatened and attacked, put at risk, put to the test in this very room on January the 6th. And then just a few months ago, an unhinged big lie, a sale and unleashed of political violence, the home of the then Speaker of the House of Representatives. Using the very same language the insurrectionists used as they stalked these halls and chanted on January

6th. Here tonight in this chamber is a man who bears the scars of that brutal attack, but is as tough and as strong and resilient as they get. My friend, Paul Pelosi. Paul. And of course, these are calculated moments. These are stage managed moments, but they are moments that are expected. And then, of course, as is often the case, because presidents want to make the case that things are good under their stewardship. Joe Biden closing the evening with pretty strong optimism. We're not powerless before the forces that confront us.

It's within our power of we the people. We're facing the test of our time. We have to be the nation. We've always been at our best, optimistic, hopeful, forward looking, a nation that embraces light over dark, hope over fear, unity over stability, over chaos. And it went on from there. So a good speech overall, the three real proposals, billionaire tax, increasing the tax on stock buybacks and expanding the thirty five dollar a month price cap on insulin.

Many other topics discussed, Republicans extraordinarily triggered and leading to maybe the most disgusting State of the Union response speech, which I want to talk about next. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the Republican governor of Arkansas, was selected to deliver the response to Joe Biden's State of the Union address last night. Maybe the most disgusting and delusional State of the Union response that I have ever seen. And by the way, being given by someone whose state is a disaster. Now it's not an ad hominem when I say Arkansas is a disaster. It is empirically a disaster.

It is the seventh worst state in the country in terms of places to raise a family. Forty fifth for health and safety in the five worst states for violent crime per capita. Forty seventh in infant mortality. Forty first in education. Forty first in the economy. The state is a disaster. And Sarah Huckabee Sanders is spending time and resources on things like, for example, banning the teaching of critical race theory in Arkansas public schools, which wasn't being taught anyway. And she is selected to deliver the response. OK, we knew it would be a big anti woke party. And indeed, Sarah Huckabee Sanders starts her response speech basically by calling Biden a liar. And she knows a lot about lying. That's for sure.

She was Trump's press secretary for a while. Good evening. I'm Sarah Huckabee Sanders. We know being a mom to three young children taught me not to believe every story I hear. So forgive me for not believing much of anything I heard tonight from President Biden, from out of control inflation and violent crime. Remember, violent crime trending down, inflation down six months in a row. To the dangerous border crisis and threat from China. Remember that nothing has substantively changed with border policy from Trump to Biden. The China thing is sort of like an amorphous one. Biden and the Democrats have failed you. They know it and you know it.

Nothing really factual there, but an interesting way to start. She then goes really hard into the woke stuff, claiming, listen, we got sucked into this culture where we didn't want it, which is quite a bit of revisionist history. And while you read the consequences of their failures, the Biden administration seems more interested in woke fantasies than the hard reality Americans face every day. Most Americans simply want to live their lives in freedom and peace. But we are under attack in a left wing culture war. We didn't start and never wanted to fight. Hard to imagine a bigger lie than that. Republicans realizing they were failing on policy and that the country was turning on

them on just about every issue, decided we are no longer going to fight for policy. We're just going to fight the culture war. This is quite literally the opposite of the truth. Every day we are told we must partake in their rituals, salute their flags and worship their false idols, all while big government colludes with big tech to strip away the most American thing there is your freedom of speech. Another dog whistle that they use endlessly to point the finger at all sorts of different parties over people's supposed speech being taken away when it is not. Now, Sarah Huckabee Sanders did say

one thing I agree with. She meant it differently, but she said that the dividing line is now between normal and crazy. I agree with that. I disagree with her about which side is crazy. The dividing line in America is no longer between right or left. The choice is between normal or crazy. True. It's time for a new generation of Republican leadership. Upon taking office just a few weeks ago, I signed executive orders to ban CRT racism and indoctrination in our schools. Now, remember, CRT is not being taught in Arkansas schools. However, Arkansas is still at the bottom of the list in terms of education out of 50 states. But that's how she chose to use her time as governor and resources. Let's go to the very end of this disgusting speech.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders ending it with a painful looking grimace. Look at this. Thank you. God bless you and God bless America. Yeah. Following the theme of the Republican Party for the last six, eight, 10, 12 years. Absolutely no meaningful substantive policy for just everyday people who work or who want to work or who used to work but became disabled or whatever. It's none of that. Just culture war. Dog whistles, anti-wokeness and a focus on issues that aren't even really issues.

And of course, completely strawmanning the totality of Joe Biden's speech, maybe the most vile state of the union response that I have ever seen from an individual who is quite frankly, one of the most vile participants in American politics that I can recall seen from an individual who is, quite frankly, one of the most vile participants in American politics that I can recall over the last 10 to 20 years. Maybe my favorite moment from the entire State of the Union yesterday was when Senator Mitt Romney, a Republican, had a conversation with lying Republican Congressman George Santos. It was seemingly tense after the fact Mitt Romney was asked, what was that all about? And Romney says, I told Santos, you don't belong here. Romney, listen, not not a guy I voted for in 2012, but good for him for saying this to George Santos. Check this out. Yeah, why? Why?

I didn't expect that he'd be standing there trying to shake hands with every senator in the president of the United States. Given the fact that he's under ethics investigation, he should be sitting in the back row and staying quiet, parading in front of the president and people coming into the room to be able to respond. By the way, I have to tell you, many elected officials in these situations, they walk super fast and it makes the reporters have to sprint and blah, blah, blah. Look at Romney respectfully walking slowly in order to allow the reporters to do their job. You got to commend the guy for it. He said he says he you know that he embellished his record. Look, embellishing is saying you

got an A when he had an A minus line is saying you you graduated from college. You didn't even attend and he shouldn't be in Congress. And they're going to go through the process and hopefully get him out. And but he shouldn't be there. And if he had any shame at all, he wouldn't be there. Right. Why did you make a point to say that, though? I mean, you went, I mean, it was kind of out of your way. He was standing right there in the aisle, shaking hands with everybody. Did he respond to you?

He may have. I didn't hear anything. Man, this is just absolutely the best. And John Boy did a sort of attempt at lip reading what went on. Let's just listen to a little bit of it. I would have given a lot to be sitting right there between the two of these guys. My Twitter just absolutely blew up from this lip reading. So I'll try and dive into it a little bit.

Everyone kind of figured out what Romney is saying. He comes in on the bottom right. He says, you ought to be embarrassed. You ought to be embarrassed. Ought to right he says you ought to be embarrassed you ought to be embarrassed ought to be embarrassed you got to be embarrassed you got to be mid saying you got to be embarrassed and he's just saying i should be i should be and then i don't know what he says here i actually don't know what romney says it looks like that anyway, so then they go back and forth, forth looking at this like it's the Zapruder film. Good for Mitt Romney. I don't have much other commentary other than good for

Mitt Romney. We've got to keep the pressure up on George Anthony Santos Devolder. Some people wrote to me and said, you shouldn't include Katara because there's really nothing lying about being a drag queen, although he did lie about whether he was a drag queen. But you maybe don't include Katara. So anyway, George Anthony DeVolder Santos, he shouldn't be there. And we've got to keep the pressure up so that he maybe will resign. I think the window may be closing on that. But absolutely nice job by Mitt Romney. So big picture, Joe Biden, good speech, triggering Republicans overtly. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, disgusting response. And Mitt Romney, best sort of, I guess we would call it ancillary moment at the event. And we will have all of these clips for you on our Instagram at David

Pakman show and on our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash the David Pakman show. do to simplify your life. Our sponsor, Little Spoon, is your one stop shop for healthy, easy mealtime and snack time for your baby, toddler or big kid delivered right to your door. Little Spoon delivers fresh, organic baby food, which comes in single ingredient varieties or multi textured purees. Little Spoon is meals for toddlers and big kids. They're free of junk and taste great. Even the pickiest eaters love them. I've even tried many of them myself. They really are great. Having healthy snack time is so easy with Little Spoon's organic smoothies, which come in convenient pouches in great flavors like strawberry banana shake, purple carrot acai. I love purple carrots. I'm going

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suggesting that Ron DeSantis might be a pedophile in a new attack in which he accuses DeSantis of grooming young girls. This is really something else. Business Insider has a story about it. Trump shares photos of DeSantis alleging he partied and drank with high school girls when he was a teacher. Trump reshared a 20 year old photo of DeSantis that appears to show him posing with recent high school graduates. The original poster accused DeSantis of using alcohol for, quote, grooming high school girls. Trump is ramping up attacks against the Florida governor who may challenge him, may challenge him for the 2024 GOP nomination. Here is the post Donald Trump posting yesterday. That's not wrong, is it? He would never do such a thing. And indeed,

it is an image shared by a different truth social user. Truth central with a picture of an individual that appears to be Ron DeSantis, three women whose faces are blurred. and the title here is Ron DeSantis, demonious, grooming high school girls with alcohol as a teacher. Now, you don't have to defend Ron DeSantis his actions to realize how ugly this has the potential to get. Now, there's a few different stories here. One story is if Trump is going this hard against a guy who isn't even running against him yet, how ugly would an actual campaign get

between DeSantis and Trump? I think the answer is it would get extraordinarily ugly, potentially more than ugly enough to damage both of them and help whoever is the Democratic candidate. And that's something I would be very glad to see. Secondly, there is this question of hypocrisy because at the end of the day, remember when Donald Trump ran Miss Teen USA and Miss USA, he said, I'll go backstage before a show. Everybody's getting dressed, you know, no men anywhere. But I'm allowed to go in because I'm the owner of the pageant. So I'm inspecting it. You know, they're standing there

with no clothes, these incredible looking women. And I get away with things like that. So Trump doesn't exactly have an unblemished record with this stuff. Grab them by the you know what the allegations by E. Jean Carroll, the allegations which were later retracted in the legal sense against Trump and Jeffrey Epstein together involving a young girl. There's all these different things. So there's the hypocrisy angle as well. But at this point, it is abundantly clear if DeSantis runs against Trump, it may be the ugliest Republican primary. I don't want to say ever because there have been some ugly things in history, but certainly the ugliest in the modern media era of the last 40 years. And it's I don't

think it's good for the country to see it. But at the same time, if it hurts both Trump and DeSantis in the long run, it is actually good for the country. DeSantis or Trump being president next would be so bad for the country that anything that damages or reduces that possibility is actually a good thing for the country. So it's getting very ugly very quickly and it's only going to get worse. I want to show you a very funny short clip of Republican Senator Marco Rubio. Rubio appeared on Fox News last night after Joe Biden's State of the Union address. And it is so funny what Rubio says. I'm not even going to tease it for you. OK, let's just play it and then we will discuss. You didn't hear a lot of talk then we will discuss. You didn't hear a lot of talk about

pregnant men tonight. You didn't hear a lot of talk about some of these crazy things because they're pivoting now to an election mode and they know all that stuff is toxic. So try and pretend it's not happening. But it remains at the core and at the heart of their administration. Not a lot of talk tonight except for the climate stuff, which, by the way, he doesn't tell you benefits China. Marco Rubio realizing in real time, Joe Biden didn't talk about pregnant men. Joe Biden didn't talk about woke stuff. He says it's because they're pivoted, pivoting to election mode. The reality is Joe Biden never was talking about this stuff.

And in fact, these are very small issues on the Democratic side, on the left, in the Democratic Party. I will not deny for a second that if you spend a lot of time on Twitter or Reddit, you might see a whole bunch of stuff about wokeness and so-called pregnant men and all of these things. I don't deny that you might see that if you spend a lot of time on these platforms. But if you spend a lot of time on those platforms, you would have been one of the people in 2020 who thought that Bernie had the nomination wrapped up and that there was no interest in Joe Biden being the nominee. And as I told you then, and as I will repeat now, the discussions that dominate some of these online

spheres are not actually the issues of greater concern to the vast majority of the Democratic Party, nor of the constituents of the Democratic Party either. And there was a reason that you didn't hear a lot about woke sorry about pregnant men last night, which is it's not actually an issue that is at the forefront of the minds of almost anyone on the left. I would actually go even further. Part of the reason that those sorts of things even come up at all are because the right has abandoned policy and only wants to talk about that sort of thing. It is because the right brings forward issues of they're putting cat litter boxes for furries who are studio for people who think they're animals or they even know how to define furry. But that's

not a real story. But it is the right that creates the story. It's the right. They want double mastectomies for prepubescent girls. Wait a second. Do they have breasts if they're prepubescent? That doesn't make any sense whatsoever. It's the right that is crowbarring a lot of these issues in. None of this stuff has ever been at the heart of the Democratic Party. And this is why looking at Twitter isn't super useful to figure out what's going on in the U.S. overall and what's going on within the Democratic Party. Maybe Marco Rubio is realizing that if you want to see this clip, it's on our YouTube channel, YouTube dot com slash the David Pakman show. It's a new year. Many of us are trying to make new positive changes. Here's

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It's really great to have you on. And you know, this is a conversation that could start in any number of points. But but maybe let's start it this way. I think many of us now realize intuitively that planning on indefinite growth on a on a planet of limited resources mathematically makes little sense. There's something that we recognize there intuitively. However, there are various perspectives as to what the sort of real big issue is, whether it is transportation emissions, fossil fuels, eating meat, whatever the case may be. What's the best way to frame the problem to be solved and what is the most sensible approach to solving that problem? So so the problem is the gathering collapse of

Earth systems. It's not a climate problem. It's not a soil problem. It's not a forest problem. It's not a fish problem. It's not a transport problem. It's it's not an anything else problem. It's an everything problem. It's all Earth systems together are suffering massive strain as a result of human activity. And these are our life support systems. These are what sustain this remarkable, beautiful, diverse, abundant planet on which we are so lucky to live. And all these Earth systems are complex systems, which means it means a very specific thing. They're self-organizing and they're self-stabilizing within a range of stress. But you push them beyond that range and the self-organizing properties become self-amplifying.

And they then amplify shocks passing across the network until the point when they hit their critical threshold and collapse into a different equilibrium state. Can you give a couple of examples of that? Because in the abstract, it may not be obvious what that means. Well, a classic example was the Great Dust Bowl, which you in North America will be well familiar with. In fact, it's one of many dust bowls that have happened over history, but it's the one that everyone knows about. And soil is a complex system. It's a fascinating, extraordinary

ecosystem from which we get 99% of our calories. But if you hit it and hit it and hit it repeatedly with bad ploughing, with other bad decisions in agriculture, then you degrade it and degrade it. And you might not notice very much to begin with. You'll notice perhaps a slight drop off in crop yield, a few other issues taking place. But it's still there, still seems to be functioning OK. But what's happened is that unbeknown to you, it has lost its resilience. And then an external shock comes along like a major drought and instead of damping down that shock and regulating itself as a healthy system does

this degraded system amplifies that shock and suddenly collapses and the rate of erosion of soil erosion when when it's highly degraded and hit by a major drought, can rise 6,000 fold more or less overnight. It just falls off a cliff. And then the soil which stays on the land, because it's a biological structure, like a coral reef, it's built by the little creatures that live in it. Because that biological function has collapsed, the structure completely collapses, and then it can literally blow away. It can just blow away in the wind or wash away with the rain, and suddenly there's no soil on the land. And that's what happened in the Great Dust Bowl and many other dust bowls. But it's what

happens in different ways to every kind of complex system. Another one which very nearly collapsed was the financial system in 2008. And again, very similar reasons. It behaves in an almost identical fashion, bizarrely, and it's self-organising without human agency. Obviously, there's human agency involved, but the human agency doesn't control the structural dynamics within that system. And it came within a whisker of collapse. And it was only a bailout globally amounting to trillions of dollars that prevented that complete collapse into a new equilibrium state, which would have been very hard indeed to come back from. to pick one area that you've written about and that is a big subject of discussion. You know, when we talk about, for example, our food system, there are a number of different perspectives about what particular aspect of it is problematic and sort of individual as well as collective decisions that can and arguably should be made. One perspective is, well, it's really about which foods are being eaten. And for example, if we went off completely

of animal agriculture and replaced protein with, you know, this is not groundbreaking stuff here, right? We're talking about soy and almond and all these different things. Then we things we would just be much better off. And then the counter to that has been, well, you know, almond and avocado, extraordinarily water intensive. They're transporting bees to the west coast of the US. Half the bees die. So by number of organisms, you're doing damage in a different way. What about the idea of a regenerative type of agriculture, which is less about do we include animal products or not, but using land in a different way? And there's some interesting pilot projects of this being done in the United States. And the counter to that becomes, well, that's really lovely for

I forget the guy's name in Virginia who's doing it, but that's not that useful if you're then transporting that food across the country or whatever. So it becomes really difficult for the, quote, average person to really know what should I do and what should we do as a society? How do we parse some of these discussions? Yeah, no. Well, these are all the right questions. The first thing is that the term regenerative has become a bit like the term sustainable. It's slapped in front of anything you happen already to be doing. So regenerative ranching, formerly known as ranching. And it's and it's I mean, it hasn't been used for very long, but it's already completely lost its meaning. And everyone says, oh, well, yes, of course, what I'm doing is

regenerative. And you say, okay, regenerative of what? What are you regenerating here? So in some parts of the US, and certainly where I live in the United Kingdom, if it's to be ecologically regenerative, one of the absolute baseline conditions for that is that trees can return to a formerly forested land. If there were once trees on your land and the trees are not coming back, that is not an ecologically regenerative system. That's a really, really basic measure of whether it's ecologically regenerative or not. And of course, agricultural systems, you know, they don't let trees come back spontaneously, because, you know, either you're ploughing the land, or you're grazing animals, which selectively browse out tree seedlings, because they're very tasty and nutritious. So that's

not going to happen. So ecologically, it doesn't even meet the most basic, the crudest measure of what regenerative means. In terms of keeping soil on the land, there's no doubt that some systems are better at doing that than others. But against it, you must weigh how much are they producing. So what you've got to measure against this idea of how well it's protecting the soil is also how much it's producing. So if you've got a very extensive system occupying a huge amount of land, not doing very much damage to the soil, but not producing very much either, that can be just as damaging in all sorts of other ways as a very intensive system, which is doing more damage to the soil but producing lots of food and the reason for that is the massive ecological opportunity costs and carbon opportunity costs of extensive farming. What that means is that every hectare or every acre of land that you're using could have

been supporting a wild ecosystem if you weren't using it. It could have been supporting a forest or a natural grassland or a savannah or a wetland, all of which are crucial ecosystems. And the great majority of the world's species depend on wild ecosystems for their survival. So a lot of what's called regenerative is just actually extensive. It's low yield farming occupying a lot of land. And that's agricultural sprawl. And just like urban sprawl, agricultural sprawl is a very bad thing. We should be leaving as much land as we possibly can for nature. So the holy grail, what we really need to look for is farming which has high yield

and low impact. And that's a really hard thing to achieve. A few farmers are managing to do that. And we should celebrate that and find ways of replicating what they're doing. But we shouldn't be celebrating either high yield and high impact or low yield and low impact, let alone in some cases, particularly ranching, low yield and high impact. That's a very worse kind of system. And unfortunately, the great majority of cattle and sheep ranching ticks that box, low yield, high impact. They kill the large predators. They exclude the trees. They exclude the wild herbivores. It's an ecological disaster. So what Joel Saladin at Polyface Farms was was the guy I was thinking of earlier. And so there are these different ideas that include micro micro microbial

proteins, insect protein, a shift to perennial crops, vertical farming, slash indoor farming, slash urban farming, which are sort of overlapping ideas. Do any of those get this idea of high yield and low impact? Some do, some don't. Some are much more successful than others. And, you know, there's a lot of nonsense in this field. You have to really carefully pass, you know, where's the nonsense, where's the good common sense? The one that hits the button most effectively is precision fermentation, growing food from microbes. So for 12,000 years,

we've been using multicellular organisms, animals and plants to produce our food. And we've been breeding them and breeding them and pushing them to their very limits and beyond. You know, if you go into an intensive chicken farm or hog farm, you'll see animals push beyond their limits. But we've scarcely begun with single-celled organisms. And these are super productive and use far less in terms of land, in terms of water, in terms of fertilizer and other environmental resources. You can produce, according to one set of estimates I did, all the world's protein on an area of land the size of Greater London, our capital city in the UK, all the world's protein. And that then would enable you to release huge tracts of land for ecological restoration.

That's genuine regeneration, bringing back ecosystems that we've destroyed. What sort of food item would it be that one is consuming in that in that estimate? So what it produces is a high protein flour, about 60 percent protein that you can turn into almost anything. So I had it in its raw state. I was the first person in the world outside the laboratory staff to eat a pancake made of of microbial flour. Did it taste like chicken, surprisingly, as they say? Actually, bizarrely, it tasted like a pancake. It was a small flip for man. And the but, you know, that was just simply taking the the flour made from the dead bodies of these bacteria, turning it, mixing it with a bit of wheat flour because the protein content was too high.

Otherwise, you would have made an omelette. And then a bit of water and bang, you've got a pancake. But then because these proteins are much closer to animal proteins than plant proteins are, you can produce animal-like products much more easily, much more effectively, far less processing, tastier, cheaper, the whole lot. But you can do all sorts of other things as well.

And just like the agricultural revolution produced a whole load of products that people couldn't even imagine. I mean, when the first people caught a wild cow, they weren't thinking a camembert, right? So the microbial revolution will produce endless possibilities that we can't even picture at this time, all sorts of new tastes and textures and flavors. The last thing I want to ask you about zooms out a little bit. You know, when

there was this in many cities and states in the United States, the plastic straw debate, as we might call it, about individual restaurants saying we're going to have paper straws or we will use a pasta noodle as a straw, you know, these different things. There was a blowback which said, you know, those individual decisions are fine, but really they they are almost a way not to think about where the vast emissions come from, which is industry. Where is the balance between individual choices versus focusing on the type of activism that will make systemic change? If we think about all the way over on the individual side, all the way over on the activism only side, where is there a balance to be found that's most effective?

Well, what economic power and political power wants us to do is to think of ourselves as consumers and say, oh, we can make decisions. You know, we as consumers, we can change things through the things that we buy. And our power as consumers is always weak, partly because there are some super consumers, some mega consumers. We call them billionaires. And they have far more power than we do. And we've got absolutely no means of influencing them. And then there's multimillionaires who also have far more power than we do. And so, you know, we're really weak as consumers.

And our choices are really limited anyway. And generally, the difference between them is absolutely microscopic. Except for issues like whether you eat animal products or not you know cutting out animal products from your diet that makes a huge difference the way you travel the way you heat your home those are important things most of the rest is pretty minor consume less yeah but consume differently you don't make that much of a difference but as citizens we are powerful and demanding new systems, changes to systems. That's where our power comes in. And of course, we're just constantly discouraged from seeing ourselves that way, precisely because when tremendous pressure and great threat, we have to mobilize and become active politically if we're going to intervene effectively in it. Absolute last thing with the new estimates that global population is actually going to

peak and start to decline at some point this century. Does that do anything to counteract all of the estimates that assume continued population growth beyond 2050 or 2070, whenever the estimate is? Does that actually say, hey, you know, we actually don't need to be quite as worried about some of these things as some are? Well, so human population growth is about the only environmental indicator, which is plateauing. Okay, almost all the others are going through the ceiling. And it's weird how some people still go on and on about population growth, or its population. And that's a way really of deflecting responsibility, because we, you know, living in the rich world, consuming far more than the average global citizen, we can then point to people much poorer than ourselves, probably brown people, black people and say they're the problem.

They're the problem because they're having too many babies. It's a way of deflecting blame and responsibility. But there is a genuine population crisis. It's a livestock population crisis. It's a livestock population crisis, because while the human population growth has come down to below 1% a year, a massive decline, livestock population is growing at 2.4% a year. That's a massive rate of growth. And to put it in crude terms, by 2050, there'll be an extra 100 million tonnes of human being on the planet and an extra 400 million tons of livestock on the planet. Right. They are consuming the planet. It is it is our livestock eating habits which are driving us to global catastrophe above anything else. So, yeah, there is a population crisis, but it's not the one people are talking about. The book is Regenesis Feeding the World

Without Devouring the Planet. We've been speaking with the book's author, George Mambio. Really appreciate your time today. Very much. Thanks, David. Great to talk to you. You might remember that a few years ago, the show got hacked and many thousands of dollars were stolen. We never got it back. It's a terrible feeling. It can happen to anyone. But a couple of years ago, we got aura, which really gives us significantly more peace of mind. And our sponsor aura is the app that protects you from scammers by alerting you anytime your info like email passwords, social security

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email password are already out there. You may be surprised. That's a URA.com slash Pacman to try or a free for 14 days. The link is in the podcast notes. Many of you a few days ago sent me video of what appears to be Marjorie Taylor Greene serving as speaker of the House of Representatives, telling me that it made you physically ill to see it. Interestingly, that is exactly the headline that Newsweek selected for their coverage of this bizarre event called Marjorie Taylor Greene presiding over House leaves viewers, quote, physically ill. Now, I want to make sure everybody knows what did

and did not happen. Let's take a look at the video of Marjorie Taylor Greene, and then I will tell you what this was all about. Pursuant to the rule, the gentleman from Arkansas, Mr. Westerman and the gentleman, gentleman, woman from New Mexico, Miss Miss Fernandez, each will control 20 minutes. The chair recognizes the gentleman from Arkansas. Now, many of you saw that and wrote to me and said, David, is Marjorie Taylor Greene now the speaker of the House? She is not the speaker of the House. What you have to understand is that she briefly presided over the House. This is a role called Speaker Pro Tempore or sort of means like for a little while. And it's frequently rotated.

It doesn't give you you are not the speaker of the House. You are temporarily presiding. But it is simply a it's a duty. We could say it's an assignment that you can be given. And she was not the speaker of the House. That being said, it is disgusting and very worrying that someone as unhinged as Marjorie Taylor Greene is slowly pulling herself closer to the mainstream of the Republican Party, a mainstream, by the way, which is outrageously extreme. It's a mainstream that has become extreme. There was a segment on CNN about this. Let's take a look at a little

bit of Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Republican congresswoman from Georgia, reelected in November. She has pushed baseless QAnon lies and conspiracies that include saying that Democrats and celebrities are part of a Satan-worshipping pedophile ring. She has since tried to walk back her involvement in QAnon. She also questioned the events of 9-11, something she's also tried to walk back. The so-called plane that crashed into the Pentagon. It's odd. There's never any evidence shown for a plane in the Pentagon. There is an Islamic invasion into our government offices right now. Kennedy getting killed in the plane crash. That's another one of those Clinton murders, right? So she has pushed conspiracy that mass shootings were staged and false. Listen, you get the point.

It is outrageous that someone who has said the things Marjorie Taylor Greene has said even got herself elected. OK, but she did. Voters in Georgia wanted her to represent them, or at least they thought they did. But it is a new level of absurdity that there is this image, even if it is only a very temporary role, a speaker pro tempore presiding over the House of Representatives. I'm with you. I'm with you. And the world sees it and they are horrified. How is it that in the United States such a deranged individual can achieve this level of power and prominence. And of course,

if you remember what happened in 2016 with Donald Trump, the Marjorie Taylor Greene fiasco all of a sudden seems a lot less unlikely. But there it was. We will almost certainly see it again over the next couple of years and then hopefully never again after that. I am going to show you the cycle, the mechanism of how the mind virus spreads through people like Tucker Carlson. This is I really hope that this is instructive for people. OK, this was a cycle that took place over the last week or so. An article was written in Newsweek by a student.

OK, an individual named Kevin Bass wrote an article in Newsweek which got a bunch of attention called It's Time for the Scientific Community to Admit We Were Wrong About covid and it cost lives. And as you can see, the title for Kevin Bass is MSM, DPH, D student medical school. And he wrote an article where he says as a medical student and researcher, I saw staunchly supported efforts when it came to covid. But then he comes to say we were wrong. We were wrong about everything. Now, this is an opinion piece by somebody who is not really, strictly speaking, an authority on any of this stuff. We're talking about a student here and students know things. OK, no disrespect to students. But the idea that this is some kind of medical authority is, of course, very, very wrong. The fact that this article was written got Kevin Bass an interview on Tucker Carlson

the next day or a few days later. The fact that he was on Tucker then makes it seem as if this guy really is a medical professional rather than just a guy with an opinion in Newsweek. And of course, when something appears on Tucker Carlson, even though Tucker's show is an opinion show, then it is repeated elsewhere as if it is news. And very often the next day, Fox and friends will say, as discussed by Tucker Carlson yesterday, and this is how you take nothing. You take an opinion article by a student who's not a medical authority in Newsweek and turn it into what seems like, wow, it's a report that we were wrong about COVID.

So let's take a look at a little bit of this interview with Tucker and Kevin Best. Thank you for coming on and thank you for writing this piece, which I thank you. I want to recommend everyone totally nonpolitical. And I don't even know what your politics are. I assume you're liberal, but you're honest in this piece. Why were you moved to write this? This man is not a doctor or a scientist or a nurse or a healthcare worker. He's never seen a patient. He's a student. Tucker Carlson has a student on a show to talk about an editorial that he wrote. Let's hear some of his words, shall we? This is, by the way, from the Twitter account Decoding Fox News, which is a really good account.

Well, for many of the reasons that you discussed that I realize that we have lost trust in this country as a healthcare industry from the ordinary person. Anybody who knows, anybody who's watching the media, anybody who is on social media and is talking to ordinary people realizes just how angry so many ordinary people are. And I felt- Who the heck is an ordinary person? If you're not a healthcare worker,

you're just a student, you're calling other people ordinary. I'm a little confused here. I felt that if I wrote a piece like this apologizing for, you know, I didn't set policy, but I certainly supported it. And every single day I certainly patted all my friends on the back for supporting it and for thinking the right kinds of thoughts. Dude, you're just a dude who wrote an opinion piece. That's it. You've never seen a patient. You're not a doctor. But if I apologized, then at least I was doing my part to to to make things better. And what an attention grab. I mean, genuinely, what an attention grab this nonsense is. And if you look at the article again, this is just a guy with some opinions. He talks about how he believes scientific expertise wasn't used appropriately, how a

lot of things were preferences and not really science. It became a team sport. There were obfuscations about aerosol spread and transmission and mask mandates and all these different things. And he is ready to admit it. And of course, that is ripe. It is ripe for a propagandist like Tucker Carlson to say this sounds great for our show. Come on in. Come on in and explain yourself. And the Fox News viewer doesn't really know any better. Medical researcher. Oh, wow. We're talking about a student who is not a medical authority in any way, who just said in an opinion

piece, I used to think things that I believe were wrong. That's all. It is not substantively relevant to anything. But this is exactly the type of propaganda that many Fox News viewers see and go, oh, you know what? It's true. The masks don't work and the vaccine doesn't work and it never made sense to stay home. And this thing doesn't spread and it's not a respiratory virus. And it came from a Chinese lab and all these different things. Whereas not only is this guy not even saying that, he's not even someone with any actual medical authority to be making these claims. And this is how they create a feedback loop. We've seen it in so many other ways. The Fox News opinion side gives an opinion. It is then reported on by the news side as if it is newsworthy that such an opinion was

given. Here, we're just adding an additional layer. A guy writes an opinion. Opinion show Tucker Carlson invites the guy as if he's an authority to give that opinion. And then it spreads even further as if it is now news that this guy said we got a bunch of stuff wrong about covid. Now, were there things that as we got more information, our views changed? Of course. Were there things where the facts changed over time? Of course. Early, the first vaccine was very effective at preventing transmission against the original variant of covid. Over time, that effectiveness at preventing transmission dropped to what I most recently understand to be essentially no protection. The idea being that the vaccine is very effective at reducing serious illness, hospitalization and death. So as the facts

changed, what I made an effort to report to you based on those facts also changed. But it was never about my opinions. This is just opinion. This is how Fox News turns it into, quote, news reporting. Let's talk a little bit about we are just asking questions. We are just asking questions. I'm going to play you a clip from CNN of James Comer being interviewed by Caitlin Collins and confronted about a conspiracy theory he floated about the Chinese balloon. Take a look at this. One thing you said as we were learning about this balloon and tracking it, you asked on Fox News, is it bioweapons in that balloon? Did that balloon take off from Wuhan? We don't know anything about it. And you don't have any

evidence that this is the question. I mean, what is in the balloon? This is something that we believe the white house should have advised us on. They should have had a briefing to tell us what this was. I mean, back home in Kentucky, this is all anybody talks about. What was this balloon? Everyone was concerned in Kentucky. It was all balloon 24 seven. No one trusts China. They know China is an adversary. My concern was the military had no idea anything about the balloon. What was in the balloon? Uh, where was it?

A spy balloon? Was it a weather balloon? Like China said, what exactly did the, did the us military know about this? What did our intelligence know about this? Did they know it was even in airspace before it got in the Alaska airspace? So, you know, it's just a lot of questions. And that was just one of the questions just for all we know, it could have bioweapons. They could be testing. But you don't have any evidence.

No, no, I didn't ask the question. He's just asking questions sort of like I could say, is James Comer a pedophile bank robber who secretly spends his time producing child porn? Why hasn't anyone investigated it? Why won't anyone investigate it? Well, David, because there's no evidence of that. I'm just asking questions as a phrase has become a really common defense for people who promote conspiracy theories.

But it's actually a dangerous weaponization of free speech because the idea behind I'm just asking questions is I'm seeking information. I'm not promoting anything false by asking a question. How could I? It's just a question. I'm asking a question because I seek information. But that's, of course, not the case when it comes to a lot of these conspiracy theories. The people who are just asking questions are asking questions as a way to promote false, baseless, sometimes harmful ideas without having to take the responsibility for the consequences of floating those ideas. Someone might say, I'm just asking questions.

Have you ever considered that the moon landing was fake? Why haven't you considered it? Whatever. And when you look at the intent of that, it implies there's reason to support the conspiracy theory when in fact there's overwhelming evidence to show actually the moon landing was real. And the problem with this type of rhetoric is that it lets the false information spread without being challenged, because at the end of the day, what's wrong with asking a question? And it also creates a false equivalency between here are the established facts and here are just these are questions and they're just as valid. Well, actually, there are questions with the intent to promote a conspiracy theory. And when someone says

I'm just asking questions, we can evaluate their intention. Why is it that they are asking this question and not a different one? Why is Comer asking? Remember, he doesn't have evidence for any of this stuff. Why is he asking? Were there what did he say? Were there bioweapons versus were there Tootsie Rolls? Right. Both would just be questions. No evidence for either. Why is he asking one but not the other? Well, you have to go and look at his intent. And the intent, of course, is to sow exactly this type of concern about the Biden administration. We have a voicemail number. That number is two one nine two. David P. Here's another voicemail about my appearance on the Patrick Bet David podcast.

David, it's Alan from Jersey. Yeah. I don't know what the heck is going on with you, but you're on some weird PB and J podcast and the PB and J guy is like Joe Rogan, except he's exactly like Joe Rogan, except he has hair. Okay. And you're trying to tell him how you were scamming people into buying the extra insurance at Circuit City and he doesn't want to talk about that. I mean, what the hell's going on with you, David? I mean, you're moving to Florida now. You're swimming with the dolphins.

You're going to move into the villages with Pat and. Well, listen, I'm not going to the villages, but I have to tell you, there is something very appealing, very appealing about getting out of the cold for two to three months out of the year. Maybe I'll become a snowbird. But if I did, it's going to have to be southern Florida. I don't see myself as a Jacksonville guy. But as far as the PBD appearance, we'll be publishing the whole thing to our YouTube channel very soon. And I look forward to getting more great feedback about it. PBD is Joe Rogan with hair, though, is an interesting one.

We've got a great bonus show for you today. Sign up at join Patman dot com. Don't miss it. I will see you.