The David Pakman Show - 2/8/24: Republicans furious over failure, Trump explodes over legal defeat

Starting point is 00:00:00 Speaker 1 We start today with remarkable news of President Joe Biden doing something that Donald Trump promised to do, Maggots said would be great to do. And the entire right wing has insisted only a Republican would be able to do such a thing. What am I talking about? I'm talking about decreasing our supply chain dependence on China and replacing it with other parts of the world and other countries. And specifically, we're talking about Mexico. Take a look at this headline. For the first time in two decades. The U.S. buys more from Mexico than from China. These are figures released yesterday by the U.S. Commerce Department, and they show that when you look at the value of goods imported from China compared to that imported from

Starting point is 00:01:02 Mexico in 2023, the Mexican imports went up five percent, more than four hundred seventy five billion. At the same time, Chinese imports declined to 20 percent to four hundred and twenty seven billion. And we now have for the first time in decades imported more from Mexico than from China. Now I am not going to pretend that just because Biden did something Trump said would be good to do, that it's actually a good thing to do. We're going to get later in the segment to is this actually a good thing? But to the extent that

Starting point is 00:01:38 the party line for the right has been, we've got to decrease our dependence on China. We're importing too much relative to what we export on China. We're importing too much relative to what we export from China. That's called the trade balance. It's risky when it comes to pharmaceuticals, when it comes to steel, when it comes to cheap tchotchkes that you buy at any Caribbean destination that look exactly the same, except for it says St. John or St. Thomas or Aruba. You know, the tchotchkes I'm talking about anyway. The idea is we should import less of that stuff. There's a broader trend here.

Starting point is 00:02:12 OK. And the broader trend is that increasingly this is now speaking industrially. Mexico is a viable alternative to China. It's closer. It has surpassed China as our top source of official imports. It's believed by some and I'm trying to be precise, but also careful with my language. It's believed by some that there is less of a national security concern when it comes to imports from Mexico, while at the same time, people coming from Mexico are rapists and criminals. But we're better off getting stuff from Mexico than from China,

Starting point is 00:02:50 according to these very same people. So it's a change that just underscores the dynamics of the changing U.S.-China relationship, how deal flows are evolving and changing. We've got a strong dollar, a global economy that's OK. U.S. exports slightly up in 2023 imports down overall, but comparatively imports way up from Mexico relative to China. And so this is an accomplishment for Joe Biden that Trump and MAGA promised but failed to do. We've reduced our dependence on China and the way that Joe Biden has done it. I think it's not enough to just say it happened while Joe Biden was president. We should be able to say, well, what are the policies that helped it happen? The Biden administration has promoted what's called nearshororing to Mexico.

Starting point is 00:03:45 That's what I mean by getting our stuff from a place that's geographically closer. We've seen this with companies like Hi Soon or his soon moving production to Mexico and keeping supply chains in North America. The climate legislation of 2022 incentivize companies to move manufacturing out of China by offering tax credits for certain products, electric vehicles and others. If you don't source parts from China that encouraged getting stuff from Mexico rather than China, the Biden administration has invested in domestic manufacturing. So those policies have encouraged building or expanding in either the U.S. or with U.S. allies like Mexico. Geopolitical dynamics have certainly helped push this along as well. So we can't deny that there is tension in that part of the world.

Starting point is 00:04:41 China's alignment with Russia as Russia has invaded, Ukraine has further pushed companies to reduce dependence on China and then encouraging foreign direct investments in alternatives has directly led to a surge in foreign direct investment in Mexico up 21 percent. And that's something that the Biden administration has done to make Mexico more attractive than China. So Biden did the thing Magas wanted. Great. Now, is it a good thing? Well, there's debate over that. One of the things that I've explained many times is that publicly, it's very popular to say reduce dependence on China, blinks, bring supply

Starting point is 00:05:21 chains home, et cetera. That's all great in a sense. But we as a country for 40 years or longer, at least 40 years, have implicitly decided we would rather take the geopolitical risk of importing from China in exchange for the cheap stuff, because it's a reality that if you start manufacturing the things we get from China in the US, they will be way more expensive and then people will complain about inflation. They'll, I guess, be happy about the supply chain being brought home. But then they'll say, hey, everything's more expensive. Mexico could be an intermediate, an intermediate there, which is things may go up in price

Starting point is 00:05:58 a little, but we're reducing dependence on China and things won't be as expensive as if we were to manufacture everything in the United States. So that's a that's a political choice. But it can't be denied that Biden did the thing Trump said he would do and that it was a good thing to do, but he wasn't able to do. Will the maggots give Biden the credit? Will they acknowledge that this is what they wanted done?

Starting point is 00:06:24 Probably not. But it's important to report it nonetheless. I have absolutely unbelievable video to play for you from Fox News the other night. This is nuts in their bloodthirsty targeting of so-called dangerous migrants from Central and South America. Fox News and its propagandist Sean Hannity did an interview with I guess it's fair to call him vigilante, vigilante Curtis Sliwa of I forget even the Guardian Angels fame. This is it's basically a vigilante group that they would patrol the subways in New York when they were more dangerous decades ago and this sort of thing. And I mean, maybe they kept

Starting point is 00:07:11 some people safe in some nominal way. I don't know. Without getting into the past right now, this has become increasingly an anti-immigrant group. During an interview with Sean Hannity, Curtis Sliwa in talking about migrants and the prepaid prepaid cards for migrants that are happening in New York City and all this other stuff. Curtis Sliwa says to Sean Hannity, we got one of them right now. It turns out that what they got was just an American speaking Spanish, not someone who is here illegally. And you could argue that the guardian angels in beating this dude engaged in a hate crime

Starting point is 00:07:52 live on Fox News. OK, let's take a look at this. In fact, our guys have just taken down one of the migrant guys right here on the corner. We've just taken down one of the migrant guys right here on the corner. This was an American citizen. He said in in seven. Well, can you pan the camera? They've taken over.

Starting point is 00:08:11 They've taken over like the camera over there. If at all possible. Yeah. And here, if you're just listening, you see a group of these red bread, beret, guardian angels surrounding a guy. You got your key open, guys. They've got him, I guess, kind of almost choking him out. Is that a good they're trying to take physical belongings from this individual because he

Starting point is 00:08:38 was supposedly shoplifting. Apparently there's no evidence he was shoplifting either. This could be a nice lawsuit. Oh, out of control. Members of the Guardian Angels apprehended a man right there in Times Square in New York City. Curtis, we couldn't exactly see what was going on. What what was happening in front of you while you were on the air with us?

Starting point is 00:08:57 Boy, you've been shoplifting first. The Guardian Angels spotted them. There is apparently no evidence at this time that he was shoplifting. Stopped him. He resisted. And let's just say we gave him a little pain compliance. His mother back in Venezuela felt the vibrations. His mother back in Venezuela felt the vibrations.

Starting point is 00:09:18 This was it turns out that this was an American. OK, there is now extensive reporting. The Guardian reports New York vigil. By the way, it still wouldn't be OK for these vigilantes to beat a migrant either. I want to be really clear. It's important not to miss the forest for the trees. It just so happens that they thought they were illustrating an example of the problem. New York vigilantes take down, quote, migrant. But he was from the U.S. Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa claimed to Fox News is Sean Hannity. The man was shoplifting. NYPD has no evidence of that.

Starting point is 00:09:51 The bizarre incident played out on Tuesday night during a primetime segment. They've taken over, Curtis Sliwa said. The man was not a migrant, but he was a New Yorker from the Bronx. Sliwa claimed the man had been caught shoplifting. Police provided no evidence for those allegations either. Extraordinarily disturbing. Let's watch the last bit of this insanity. He's sucking concrete. The cops scraped them off the asphalt. He's on his way to jail, but they'll cut him loose.

Starting point is 00:10:17 We got to take 42nd Street back. Sean, these illegals think they own this street. The man was an American from the Bronx. They think they rule the night. This is our country. If they can't abide by the rules, then we're going to kick them back from where they came. So does this gentleman have a lawsuit here against Fox News? I don't know.

Starting point is 00:10:40 Does he have a lawsuit here against Curtis Lewa and the Guardian Angels? It's a plausible, according to some legal opinions I've read. And of course, is this might forget about the lawsuit part. Did the Guardian Angels commit a crime here by they said, we you know, we beat him so hard his mommy in Venezuela felt it and then he was scraped off the asphalt. This may have been criminal action by the guardian angels. You know, and it's amazing because I've been out with you on the streets in New York. I've been in Times Square with you.

Starting point is 00:11:13 Police are very appreciative of the support you and the guardian angels offer them. I'm sure that's your but unfortunately they've been told hands off. Well, guess what? We don't keep our hands off. You shoplift, you commit crime, you know, the only crime and assault that appears to have taken place is at the hands of Sliwa and the Guardian Angels. Hannity complicit in promoting and publishing the entire thing. A surreal moment, a surreal moment on gutter trash pond scum.

Starting point is 00:11:45 Fox News is Sean Hannity's program. Hopefully there will be repercussions for the guardian angels. I'll let you know if that's the case. We'll take a quick break and be back right after this. What a show today. We we may actually record and save this one. As the host of this show and also a consumer of news in general, one reliable source of Thank you. They're journalists bring facts and clarity about what's happening in D.C., the economy, climate change, foreign policy, things I care about.

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Starting point is 00:15:24 Speaker 1 and Speaker 2. Speaker 1 and Speaker 2. Speaker 1 and Speaker 2. Speaker 1 and Speaker 2. Speaker 1 and Speaker 2. Speaker 1 and Speaker 2. at join Pacman dot com. Also at that very same website, join Pacman dot com. You can read about the great perks that come with membership, including the award winning bonus show. So consider checking it out at join Pacman dot com. Republicans are furious over the humiliating defeat that they suffered earlier this week with the failure to impeach Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Now, of course, there was no reason to impeach Mayorkas. You know this. I know this. And even many Republicans know this. But that doesn't really matter in Mago world. But it was a huge failure nonetheless. Salon has a very interesting article about this. What the hell are they thinking? Furious Republicans erupt over embarrassing defeat. Now, we know

Starting point is 00:16:14 that the effort to impeach Mayorkas was rooted in political grandstanding and to some degree, xenophobia, xenophobia against not only people coming from Central and South America, but xenophobia against Mayorkas as well. They weren't about genuine concerns with immigration policy or law enforcement. How do we know that? Because Republicans are now holding up their own bill that they said we need to keep the country safe, the border bill. And so this really highlights, despite the failure of the impeachment attempt, that Republicans are the ones using impeachment as a political tool for revenge. And they are claiming that it's the Trump impeachments that actually fit that description politically motivated and without merit.

Starting point is 00:17:03 But it is this failed attempt at impeaching Mayorkas that actually is that. So Congressman Ryan Zinke admitted that the Republican Party has succeeded more in obstructing than he has succeeded that then they have succeeded at actually accomplishing anything governing. I knew that we he said, I knew that we would have the ability to block the Democrat agenda. We've exceeded my wildest expectations on blocking because we not only block the Democrat agenda, we block the Republican agenda. We don't have command of the field.

Starting point is 00:17:40 So he's admitting we are so obstructionist that we are blocking our own agenda and the failure to impeach while at the same time opposing their own border bill is just another example of that. Congressman Troy Neals of Texas said to Axios the vote on Mayorkas was, quote, shameful, adding, I mean, what the hell are they thinking? We should have gotten this done. And then Congressman Corey Mills from Florida said there's a plethora of reasoning and justification and evidence. I just don't understand why we can't do the one thing the American people want.

Starting point is 00:18:18 Of course, the American people don't want Mayorkas impeached. Congressman Mark Alford from Missouri, Republican, said it's very frustrating as a freshman to realize we don't have the cohesiveness and fortitude to come together to vote what's right for America. It's not right for America, but it's true. They couldn't come together to vote for it. And Marjorie Taylor Greene said she didn't have anything to say to the three Republicans who voted against this. But Gallagher and McClintock saying only, quote, I think they'll hear from their constituents. One of the stories that is a related story to the weaponization of impeachment is that of the misguided priorities of the Republican

Starting point is 00:19:06 Party when they could actually participate in fixing real issues. I've said this before. DACA overstayed visas, companies that get away with hiring undocumented immigrants. And it's only the immigrants who are punished and not the companies. They could actually participate in really solving something. But their priority isn't to solve something. Their priority is to have a problem to point to, to use the problem they point to, whether it's real or imaginary, to justify putting their candidates in power, to justify attacking

Starting point is 00:19:41 Democrats. And these efforts, you know, it's it's not just that they are liars about their principles. It's not just that what they want or what they claim to want in many cases would be bad for the country. These are efforts that distract from their ability to solve real real problems. And they've calculated this is the sickest part of it. Republicans have calculated and they might be right in their calculation. They've calculated that the benefit of participating in solving real problems is smaller than the benefit to be gained from continuing to insist that we have all these problems and we're going to impeach this and we're going to impeach that

Starting point is 00:20:22 they have clearly determined. And maybe they're right that if they just participate in fixing DACA, for example, which they mostly agree on, we all know this. Republicans have determined even if we fix DACA, it's not going to be that useful to us. Credit might go to Democrats and it might not be connected to it. So we're just going to obstruct. We're not going to participate in dealing with climate change, which many of them don't even believe in. We're not going to deal with economic inequality. We're not going to deal with health care. We're not even going to deal with the actual border problems we claim exist. We'll oppose our own bill at the end of the day. We'll just try impeachment because we believe that this will benefit us and our reelection is more than actually solving problems. And the sick reality with the 2024 Republican Party is they might be right.

Starting point is 00:21:11 They might actually do better with their voters by just insisting that they're going after these boogeymen rather than solving actual problems. And that should scare all of us. Maga Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the House, is blaming Democrat Al Green, who was recovering from surgery when he appeared in scrubs at the House of Representatives to vote against the impeachment of Alejandro Mayorkas. That is who Mike Johnson is blaming. Now, this is, of course, ridiculous, and I'll tell you why in a moment.

Starting point is 00:21:43 But just consider if your entire plan depends on one guy who had surgery not showing up to make the math work, it might not be the strongest plan. Speaker 4 What happened yesterday with the vote on Secretary Mayorkas? Why bring that to the floor if you didn't have the votes and will you hold another vote to impeach? Speaker 5 Yeah, on impeachment last night was a setback. But democracy is messy. We live in a time of divided government. We have a razor thin margin here and every vote counts.

Starting point is 00:22:10 Sometimes when you're counting votes and people show up when they're not expected to be in the building, it changes the equation. But listen, we have a duty and a responsibility to take care. Sometimes when people show up to vote and they're not expected to be in the building, it changes the math. And of course, he's referencing Congressman Al Green, who showed up in a wheelchair wearing hospital scrubs after surgery to vote to prevent the ridiculous impeachment of Mayorkas. These are sick people.

Starting point is 00:22:38 You have to understand that on a personal level, these are sick people. How dare he be OK enough after surgery to show up and vote and ruin our great math for something that is totally worth doing? A funny moment is Johnson was asked, what would you say to Americans concerned that Congress can't get anything done with you in charge? And he goes, oh, it's just not true. What would you say to Americans concerned that Congress isn't able to do basic functions? Well, it's just simply not true. We're governing here. Sometimes it's messy. The framers anticipated that you would have a system where people with very different philosophical viewpoints that come from different parts of the country and different constituencies would have different ideas on how to resolve their problems. But what they also anticipated is that we'd be able to get in a room and arm wrestle over public policy and come to consensus to move the ball

Starting point is 00:23:28 forward for the most people. That is what's happening here. You're seeing the messy sausage making the process of democracy play out. Speaker 1 It's all so messy and we're showing you how the sausage is made. The question is is completely correct in its assumption. They are unable to govern. And the entire speakership fiasco itself is an example of that. The continually failed impeachment inquiry on Joe Biden is an example of that. The failed impeachment vote on Mayorkas is an example of that opposition to the bill they wanted and negotiated on the border is another example of that opposition to the bill they wanted and negotiated on the border is another example of that.

Starting point is 00:24:05 And again, if your path to impeachment is counting on one guy to be stuck at the hospital after surgery, that is not a strong impeachment. And of course, they didn't even have all of their own party members on his side. Now, here's one bonus clip on this. This is sort of funny. You can't get away from conspiracies with these people. Here is right wing provocateur Charlie Kirk speculating that those three Republicans, a Buck, Gallagher and McClintock who voted against impeaching Mayorkas, that they must

Starting point is 00:24:39 be getting blackmailed. There's no other reason that they would vote against it. You know that we were one vote away from impeaching Alejandro Mayorkas, who's a traitor to the United States. But there were three Republicans, Tom McClintock, Ken Buck and Mike Gallagher, who said, no, we don't want to impeach Alejandro Mayorkas. We're going to put the numbers up there on screen. Makes you wonder. Are these people compromised? Ken Buck, especially what has Ken Buck done in his life? Is somebody holding blackmail over him? You might say, Charlie, that's an exaggeration.

Starting point is 00:25:11 There's no evidence of that. Hold on. Remember when the smooth-talking southerner, I forget his name, from Tennessee, the guy who said that he got punched in the kidneys, said that there are people that walk the floors and whisper in your ears, don't vote for this or else the naked pictures that we have with you with the underage girls are going to be leaked.

Starting point is 00:25:30 Those are his words, not ours. It makes you wonder if Ken Buck, Mike Gallagher and Tom McClintock are compromised. What now, of course, they have on these people. Yeah. As he even admits, there isn't actually evidence. The claim that one person said sometimes threats are made against some people is not evidence that Buck Gallagher or McClintock have, you know, kiddie porn pictures or whatever it is that's being an intimated here at all. And whatever the reasons for Buck Gallagher and McClintock to vote against this impeachment, they were the only ones who actually had the what would we call it, the testicular fortitude to say, hey, there's no evidence against this guy.

Starting point is 00:26:16 Under every president, you have people who cross the border illegally. Under Joe Biden, by the way, a higher percentage of those apprehended are being deported and a higher percentage of those who cross, we believe, are being apprehended. And you could say that's good. It's bad. It's evident. But it just is what it is. That's the data we have from the very same DHS that existed under Trump, different people running it, but same DHS, same record keeping abilities. So it's total speculation, baseless speculation. And they are now coming up with

Starting point is 00:26:50 anything they can to try to explain away these failures. It was because of a Democrat who was doing too well after surgery. It was because of three blackmailed Republicans or whatever it is that they claim. It is failure after failure for this party. And my hope is that it continues. This is really one of those cases where their failures are good for Joe Biden. They are good for Democrats in November and they are good for the American people who would not benefit in any way from the impeachment of Mayorkas at the end of the day. When you log into your Google or Facebook account, these companies have your IP address, which is valuable to them, because when you do all of your

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Starting point is 00:29:51 The link is in the podcast notes. Today we welcome to the program Garrett Graff, distinguished journalist, bestselling historian, and his most recent book is the topic of today's conversation, UFO, the inside story of the US government's search for alien life here and out there. Garrett, so great to have you on. I really appreciate it. Absolutely. My pleasure.

Starting point is 00:30:18 So just to start somewhere, you know, with these recent so-called UFO hearings, many have emailed me and said, David, you are not covering enough the claims of the so-called whistleblowers. It's abundantly clear there's been cover up of alien contact. They visited us, et cetera. I find the claims not super compelling. There's a bunch of different reasons why, which maybe I'll get into as the conversation develops. But can you talk a little bit about what is there in the category of not speculative things

Starting point is 00:30:57 that we we know for sure that the government has either done, recorded, participated in with regard to possible alien contact? Yeah. So I'm sort of a weird person to have written this book because I am not a lifelong ufologist. I'm not someone who grew up on X-Files or Star Trek or devours sci-fi novels day in and day out. I come at this subject as someone who has covered national security for 20 years in Washington. My previous books are about things like nuclear weapons in the Cold War, cybersecurity, FBI and the war on terror. My book before this one was a history of Watergate and Richard Nixon's presidency. And what got me interested in this subject was one of the things I think some of those people who are emailing you have seen or picked up on, which is there has been a sea change in the way that Washington talks about

Starting point is 00:32:08 UFOs, what the government now calls UAPs, of course, Unidentified Anomalous Phenomenon, in that you see serious people talking seriously about UFOs. And that was really what got me interested in this. And there was the reporting in 2017 by the New York Times and Politico, where I used to work, looking at a then unknown program in the Pentagon studying UFOs. There was some follow-up reporting about Navy aviators, Navy fighter pilots who had had encounters with objects that they said, you know, they couldn't explain, that defied physics as they understood it, that did not appear to be technology that the U.S. could match or possess. And that there was, for me, one sort of very specific moment that got me interested in this subject, which was in December 2020, John Brennan, who had just wrapped up the better part

Starting point is 00:33:14 of a decade as CIA director and White House Homeland Security Advisor, gave this interview where he talked about UFOs to another another dc journalist named tyler cowan and john brennan said basically it was very tortured syntax uh there's stuff out there flying around we don't know what it is it puzzles me and it could constitute some phenomenon that some might recognize as something like a new form of life. Like that's a very, very weird statement for someone like John Brennan to make, in part because like there can't be that many things that puzzle John Brennan. Like he sat atop a $60 billion a year intelligence apparatus that was solely tasked with answering sort of any question that could occur to him or other senior U.S. officials. And so to me, if he was leaving office

Starting point is 00:34:15 saying, there's something to this UFO story, I don't really know what it is. It puzzles me. Like that felt like a story worth diving into. And as I got into this, you know, the people you're sort of talking to and hearing from who are saying like the government is covering up are like, I think, right and wrong, which is there are, at a very basic level, like, it's clear that the government is covering up its full understanding and knowledge about UFOs and UAPs. I don't think, though, it's for the reason that people think it is, which is that they are covering up meaningful knowledge of contact with extraterrestrials or crashed spaceships or crashed alien bodies. I think it's a couple of different, there are a couple of different sort of obvious cloaks of secrecy, though, that surround the ufo subject one one layer of it is just simply some chunk of what

Starting point is 00:35:28 the public considers ufo sightings are in fact our own government's secret test projects right stealth bombers stealth fighters new drones helicopters um you know a big chunk of ufo sightings in the 1950s turned out to be the U-2 spy plane, which, like, very much was an unidentified flying object when civilian pilots began to spot it in the sky. There's another layer of this, which is the government is really squirrelly talking about its sensor capabilities, you know, what it detects, what its radars can pick up, what it can hear in, you know, sonar systems and acoustic listening systems. And some chunk of public UFO sightings are advanced adversary technology being tested against us. You know, Chinese planes, Russian drones, Iranian drones.

Starting point is 00:36:31 And, you know, the government doesn't really like to talk about what it understands about what those technologies are. And, you know, it doesn't come right out and say, yeah, we picked up a Chinese drone flying at this precise moment at this precise speed because that would, you know, give the adversaries some knowledge of how the systems work. So to me, you know, like there is some chunk of this that is, you know, a government cover up of its knowledge. But what I don't see much evidence of, and as someone, again, who's covered national security for 20 years, something I'm sort of logistically dubious of the government's capability to pull off, is this idea that the government has some longstanding cover up of meaningful knowledge. And I think actually quite the opposite, which is there's a lot of evidence that the government

Starting point is 00:37:33 is just as puzzled about UFOs and UAPs as the rest of us, that in essence, John Brennan was telling the truth. And that in its own way, I think that that cover up of the government's ignorance is actually a core part of the motivation, which is it's a really uncomfortable thing for a government bureaucracy to say, yeah, you know, we don't have any idea what this stuff is. You know, like you don't want to be the like intelligence officer briefing that to the CIA director and you don't want to be the CIA director briefing that to the president being like, man, you wouldn't believe these weird UFOs flying around that we don't have any idea what they are. So let me let's do a couple of kind of quicker ones, which maybe are yes, no. And just to just for the for clarity at the beginning of that, you said unidentified anomalous phenomena. Isn't it aerial?

Starting point is 00:38:29 Isn't it unidentified aerial phenomena? Speaker 1 No. So they've they rebranded it a second time. Oh, OK. OK. Speaker 2 Identified aerial phenomenon. Then they rebranded it a second time. OK. Identified anomalous phenomenon. Got it. Which is meant to also encompass USOs on unidentified swimming objects or unidentified submerged objects. OK, good. Understood. So on a couple of different things, I know that there are people who have made claims and we can talk about the recent hearings if if you want to. But in your research, did you come across anything that you would identify as proof that any kind of extraterrestrial life form has ever visited Earth? No. No is a very short answer. which I will also keep short, is I also don't, one of the big changes that I talk about in this book

Starting point is 00:39:30 is the evolving science and astronomy around extraterrestrial life in the last quarter century makes clear that almost absolutely intelligent life teams across our universe. It's probably though too far away for us to know, and we might be sort of functionally alone as we are right now in this particular moment in our universe's history. And so to me, there's also a level of this, which is the answer to what we consider UAPs or UFOs could be fascinating and world-changing and mind-bending and still not be

Starting point is 00:40:18 aliens. And this is where you get into the frontiers of physics that we are, you know, just beginning to scratch the surface of, you know, interdimensional travel, parallel universes, time travel from the past or future. explanations for UFOs and new APS that could still blow our mind and yet still not be aliens. Right. You know, at this point in my life, my sense of all of this in terms of the things that just don't make sense in terms of some of the claims include and I'll just list a few things. The fact that the depictions of so-called experiences with aliens mirror so closely what has been in fiction in popular media, the difficulty in believing that after traveling from so far based on what we know of the universe, they just keep crash landing in the same dumb ways and they haven't figured out how to fix that. You know, there's just sort of these themes that for me are really difficult to get beyond that make me think, you know, you talked about the potential inability of a government to

Starting point is 00:41:38 really successfully cover this up and the number of people that would have to be involved. That's where I kind of am top level. Where are you on those points after having researched and written this book? Speaker 3 Yeah, alien knowledge, would be the biggest secret you could possibly imagine the U.S. keeping. Right. You know, short of something even weirder, like Joe Biden talks directly to God. Right. And that, to me, you know, the government is capable of keeping very big secrets.

Starting point is 00:42:30 The government is able to keep very big secrets for a very longstanding program and a very large program that the UFO whistleblower who testified before Congress last summer has talked about it in interviews that this is a government cover upup that dates back to the 1930s and that currently in government there are about 5,000 people who work on. Right. Do you have any idea how much paperwork 5,000 people in government generate? And even if that's only been a program that's been existing for 5, 10, 15 years, let alone 90. Right. You're talking about a huge population of people who have never accidentally attached a PowerPoint briefing to an email to a roommate or left a briefcase behind on an airplane that, you know, was then subsequently discovered. The government's just not that good at that scale. And, you know, I'll give you one very concrete example.

Starting point is 00:43:55 The CIA torture program, the biggest secret that the U.S. government kept during that period after 9-11 and the war on terror. Yes. On the order of 500 people in government knew that. Maybe it was 300, maybe it was 800, but it was more than 100 and less than several thousand. It only kept for three years and generated 2.2 million pages of paperwork that took the U.S. Senate the better part of a decade to sort through. And here they're talking about 90 years and 5,000 people. Right. So over the course of 90 years, you're talking 70, 80, 100,000 people who might have worked on this program or been exposed to

Starting point is 00:44:46 that knowledge and not one of them has like actively come out and done a meaningful tell all, let alone sort of accidentally had some bureaucratic error that resulted in this program becoming known. Hard to believe. Last thing I want to ask you about in the limited time we have left the testimony you're referring to, David Grush. He makes insanely specific claims, including so many aspects of this deaths and all these different things. You think he's just mentally ill? You think he believes that you think he's lying?

Starting point is 00:45:19 I mean, what do you what do you make of it? No, I think actually the answer is he's probably telling the truth about almost everything. It just doesn't necessarily make that one final leap that either he is making or that the public is making when they listen to him. So what I mean by that is, you know, one of his claims is sort of at a pretty basic level is the U.S. government has a UFO crash retrieval program that has recovered unknown technology that the U.S. government has a UFO crash retrieval program that has recovered unknown technology that the U.S. government believes is extraterrestrial. I believe every part of that statement is true, and it just doesn't lead to the place that the public hears. The U.S. government has had a UFO crash retrieval program for a hundred years.

Starting point is 00:46:02 Meaning things that fall and we retrieve them. Yes. It's what we originally called the Foreign Technology Division of the Army Air Corps. And it goes around the world and captures weird enemy craft that crash. Japanese Zeros, Messerschmitt fighters, Soviet MiGs. Right now, I'll bet it hoovers up a bunch of Chinese drones and Iranian drones and probably some Israeli drones. I'll bet it has a warehouse where it keeps the technology that it has recovered that it doesn't know what it is. That would seem to me to be a pretty basic part of a UFO crash retrieval program is that like we've recovered some stuff. We don't really know what it is. I'll even believe that there's some guy on that team who's like looked at some of that stuff and said to a buddy.

Starting point is 00:46:57 I don't know what this is. It doesn't seem human. Yeah. Yeah. That doesn't look like anything I've ever seen humans make before. And that in this, I've called it an intergalactic game of telephone, where you have generations of these whistleblowers like David Grush come out and say, basically, I have secondhand knowledge of a buddy telling me he's worked on a UFO crash retrieval program. Or I met a guy who said the U.S. government has recovered unknown technology. Right. What I think the public mishears in that is that that's like an official conclusion that like the director of national

Starting point is 00:47:40 intelligence has like sat in the situation room in the White House and said to the president, we have recovered alien technology according to 17 U.S. intelligence agencies at a high degree of confidence. And I don't think that last part is true. I think that like there's a team that exists that's recovered some weird stuff. There's a dude, maybe a couple of dudes on it who are like, this is really weird stuff. And that like that in this game of telephone gets translated to, you know, what the public hears, which is we have a secret hangar under Area 51 where we keep the aliens. Right. Right. That seems eminently reasonable to me as a as an analysis of it. The book is UFO, the inside story of the US government's search for alien life here and out there.

Starting point is 00:48:31 We've been speaking with the book's author, Garrett Graff. Garrett, I really appreciate your time and insights today. My pleasure. Thanks for a fun topic. Did you know there are hundreds of commercial databases and people search sites that hold your personal information and the number is growing every year? Anyone in the world, boss and X can use these people search sites to see your online activity, to find your home address, phone number, email address, license plate number, family members, financial info,

Starting point is 00:49:05 even your political beliefs. Europe has certain laws that protect people against this. But it is a big problem in the United States. The FBI is even buying this data from these companies to get private information about Americans without search warrants. And the solution is our sponsor Incogni. It takes just moments to sign up. The David Pakman Show David Pakman dot com. you updated every step of the way with live information about who's complied, where is Incogni still working on it? Incogni will even send follow ups and appeals on your behalf.

Starting point is 00:49:51 Go to Incogni dot com slash Pacman. You'll get 60 percent off with the code Pacman. That's I N C O G N I dot com slash Pacman. Use code Pacman for 60 percent off. The link is in the podcast notes. As we speak, the Supreme Court is discussing whether Donald Trump can or could or should be removed from ballots around the country in twenty twenty four. But we already got one decision from an appeals court earlier this week, which was that Donald Trump does not have the blanket immunity from criminal prosecution that he claimed. This wildly triggered the failed former president who I mean, he spent all day posting to Truth Social about this stuff, starting with, quote, without presidential immunity,

Starting point is 00:50:46 the presidency will lose its power and prestige and under some leaders have no power at all. The presidency will be consumed by the other branches of government. That is not what our founders wanted. And then continuing with this stuff, saying, quote, If a president does not have immunity, the opposing party during his or her term in office can extort and blackmail the president by saying that if you don't give us everything we want, we will indict you for things you did while in office, even if everything done was totally legal and appropriate. That would be the end of the presidency in our country as we know it and is just one of the many traps there would be for a president without presidential immunity.

Starting point is 00:51:26 Obama, Obama, Bush and soon crooked Joe Biden would all be in prison. Protect presidential immunity. Make America great again. Now, these are the rantings of a furious guy who's worried about spending the rest of his life in prison. But that doesn't mean there isn't an important discussion here about presidential immunity. It just so happens Trump is on the wrong side of it. Presidential immunity provides a sitting president with certain protections from legal liability,

Starting point is 00:51:55 including immunity from criminal prosecution for actions done while in office in the performance of official duties. This is a critical aspect of this. The immunity of presidents does not extend to actions taken before or after the presidency or actions taken during the presidency outside the scope of official duties. Trump's I could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and I wouldn't lose support thing. Our best understanding of presidential immunity would be that Trump taking out a gun and shooting someone on Fifth Avenue would not be part of his official duties as president. And even if he did it while president, he would be open to criminal prosecution. The Supreme Court has addressed issues related to

Starting point is 00:52:39 presidential immunity. They've made it clear the president is not above the law. If you look at United States v. Nixon from 1974, the Supreme Court held the president is not immune from judicial processes in criminal cases. And Trump's claim that if you get rid of presidential immunity, every political opponent will misuse the legal system, undermine the presidency, etc. We should be concerned about the misuse, political misuse of the legal system. That's I mean, it's valid in the sense that if that were happening, we should oppose it and we should seek to stop it.

Starting point is 00:53:19 But we have checks and balances that prevent that. And indictments and prosecutions require evidence of wrongdoing. They must go through layers of judicial review, grand juries, courts that are designed to act as neutral arbiters. In Trump's case, many of those arbiters in courts and judges were appointed by him. And so Trump's suggestion that if there is no presidential immunity for criminal, allegedly criminal actions that are not directly related to one's role as president, and if that were the case, Obama would be in

Starting point is 00:53:50 prison and Bush would be in prison and Biden would soon be in prison. It's speculative. It doesn't reflect legal standards that we have in this country for criminal prosecution, and it certainly doesn't reflect the historical application of presidential immunity. So is presidential immunity an important and relevant topic? It absolutely is. It's particularly relevant when we say things like, well, presidents are response. The president is the commander in chief of the military. George W. Bush, when he decided to invade Iraq, that decision led to the deaths of thousands of American and coalition troops. And I mean, what's the real number of Iraqi civilians?

Starting point is 00:54:33 Is it hundreds of thousands? Is it in the millions? I don't know. What about prosecuting him for murder? Well, I'm not taking a position as to whether it's good or bad, but determining what the military will do and engage in is one of the roles of a president. And that is where presidential immunity is understood to apply. Now, I know many of you will say, David Bush should have been charged for murder.

Starting point is 00:54:56 He should have been charged for war crimes. I understand. But that is uncontroversially where presidential immunity applies to the things Trump did. It does not apply. And he is going to have to get out of this by either striking a deal or getting acquitted, not by getting bailed out on presidential immunity. So that's where we are. And we'll be watching the trials very closely.

Starting point is 00:55:20 This is so funny. Tucker Carlson could be hit with sanctions over his interview of Russian President Vladimir Putin. As some of you know, Tucker has interviewed Putin. The last we heard that interview is going to be released later today. At some point, it's reportedly almost two hours long. There is a report from Newsweek. Tucker Carlson could face sanctions over the Putin interview. Tucker Carlson's face sanctions over the Putin interview. Tucker Carlson's interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin could see the conservative pundit targeted by the EU lawmakers.

Starting point is 00:55:52 Current and former members of European Parliament have said the Newsweek Carlson's work in Russia could see the former Fox host in hot water with the EU, according to Guy Verhofstadt, a former Belgian prime minister and current member of the European Parliament. As Putin is a war criminal, he said, and the EU sanctions all who assist him in that effort. It seems logical that the External Action Service examine his case as well. This is really an argument that goes to the tone, substance and positioning of the interview. If the interview that Tucker Carlson does with Putin allows Putin to further the propaganda

Starting point is 00:56:33 and lies that are the basis on which the illegal invasion of Ukraine is based, you could make the case that Tucker created that environment and fomented, aided and abetted a sanctioned Putin in spreading that propaganda and therefore would be liable for sanction himself. Newsweek reached out to Tucker Carlson Network by email for a comment. They didn't get one. I think that there's actually a bigger issue here. So the EU can sanction people.

Starting point is 00:57:08 Obviously, they can ban people from coming to the to the EU, etc. I do think that there are concerns here with I find it hilarious that a Tucker Carlson propaganda fluff piece of Putin could get him sanctioned by the EU. We also do need to balance freedom of speech with the responsibility to avoid becoming a conduit for propaganda, especially when we have an active and sensitive international conflict going on where death is just absolutely rampant. And my wish, you know, the entry point for this is Tucker might get sanctioned. I wish that journalists, media figures and pundits and Tucker's not a journalist. Some people emailed me about that. He's a pundit. He's a you know,

Starting point is 00:57:51 I see him as a propagandist. We should have standards that we set for ourselves in avoiding amplifying the narratives of authoritarian leaders, especially when you have a conflict. And I've talked about responsible platforming. I've interviewed people on the show with vile, disgusting views. I've interviewed people on the show who would like to see people they don't like dead based on identity, for example. But what I try to do and I take seriously is I need to either strategically give them enough rope to hang themselves and make it clear their ideas are terrible or be ready to rebut those ideas or whatever. But I don't want to be a conduit for the furtherance of the propaganda.

Starting point is 00:58:28 And it would be great if every media figure took that seriously. I haven't seen the Tucker interview yet. I don't have an issue with an interview taking place. What matters is the content framing and positioning of the interview. And it's a reality that I mean, listen, the the Twitter numbers that are attributed to Carlson's videos are fake. We know that if you scroll by the video, that's a view, even if you don't actually watch it. But these interviews could influence public perception of what Russia is doing in Ukraine. And they can serve as a platform for leaders like Putin to promote their agendas to an

Starting point is 00:59:02 international audience. And that's what we have to be really careful about. So I am not ignoring the free speech concerns. Obviously, it's not a First Amendment issue when we're talking about the EU sanctioning Carlson. The First Amendment is part of what's in the United States. So it's not bound by that. I see the free speech concerns. I would like there to be a higher standard. That standard clearly doesn't exist for many of these people. I will reserve judgment on this particular interview until we see it, which should be tonight.

Starting point is 00:59:35 We have a voicemail number. That number is two one nine two. David P. Here is a caller who is wondering, is Trump having trouble finding someone willing to be his VP? Take a listen to this either. David, I'm a longtime listener and I've been a member for a couple of years and I wanted to propose a question to you. Do you think that Donald Trump is having an issue finding a VP because he tried to hang

Starting point is 01:00:03 the last one. Thanks. Speaker 1 That's a good. You would think that there might not be so many people willing to be Trump's VP since at least Trump's followers wanted the last one to be hanged. Mike Pence on January 6th. No, I don't think that's the issue. Interestingly enough, I don't know if there is an issue. Trump has said a lot of different things about VP. He said he's going to pick a woman. He said, I've already selected. He was then asked, what about Tim Scott? He said, yeah, I'm thinking about everybody. He has said a lot of different things. I don't know the truth of what's going on with Trump and finding a willing vice president. I don't think the hanging thing

Starting point is 01:00:41 is really going to be an impediment. Shockingly enough, I think there's so many people so eager to be adjacent to power and being vice president. You're a heartbeat away from being president of the United States. I think the hanging risk is something many possible VP candidates would be willing to tolerate. On the bonus show today, Marianne Williamson has ended her presidential campaign. The IRS expects to collect hundreds of billions of dollars in unpaid taxes thanks to new funding. And Jennifer Crumbly has been convicted of involuntary manslaughter over her son's school

Starting point is 01:01:19 shooting. This is a very important ruling in terms of precedent. All of those stories and more we will discuss on today's bonus show. Make sure you are signed up at join Pacman dot com. Oh, the bonus show where you want to make money. Everybody else that makes money to fund themselves is bad. Let's make a few dollars on the bonus show. Just like Alex Jones says, sign up at join Pacman dot com.

Starting point is 01:01:42 You can use the coupon code. Save democracy 24. I democracy. Twenty four. I'll see you then. And I'll be back tomorrow with a Friday show.

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The David Pakman Show - 2/8/24: Republicans furious over failure, Trump explodes over legal defeat

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