The David Pakman Show - 2/9/23: Twitter Hearings Backfire, DeSantis Tries High Road

Episode Date: February 9, 2023

-- On the Show: -- House Republican Twitter hearings backfire spectacularly, proving the opposite points made by Republicans -- Radical Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene wrongly and falsely claims that Twitter banning her was a violation of her First Amendment rights -- Snowflake Donald Trump tried to get a Chrissy Teigen tweet calling him a "pu$$y @$$ B!tc&" deleted from the platform -- A look back at the radical evolution of the Republican Party over the last 40 years -- Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis attempts to take the high road after Donald Trump's attack on him, but this is a strategy that is destined to fail -- The new line from right wing media is increasingly that Joe Biden is more scared about facing Ron DeSantis in 2024 than he is about facing Donald Trump -- Joe Rogan unleashes the "Jews love money" antisemitic trope -- MyPillow CEO and founder Mike Lindell is completely incoherent during a segment with Steven Bannon about Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis -- The Eggman leaves a voicemail showing his resistance to Netflix's new account sharing policy, defiantly stating that his 21-year-old daughter is still on his Netflix account -- On the Bonus Show: Study finds ultra-processed foods may lead to cognitive decline, the latest on Salman Rushdie, hospitals still full despite COVID threat easing, much more... 👩‍❤️‍👨 Try the Paired App FREE for 7 days and get 25% OFF at https://paired.com/pakman 🍎 Little Spoon: Use code PAKMAN50OFF for 50% OFF at https://littlespoon.com 🧻 Reel Paper: Code PAKMAN for 30% OFF + free shipping at https://reelpaper.com/pakman 💻 Stay protected! Try Aura FREE for 2 weeks: https://aura.com/pakman 🛌 Helix Sleep: Get 20% OFF a mattress + 2 free pillows. Go to https://helixsleep.com/pakman -- 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 Republicans have started the dog and pony show hearings and the first one where they wanted to dress down and grill Twitter executives about anti-conservative bias has backfired so spectacularly, Republicans utterly humiliating themselves that hopefully they are talking behind closed doors and saying, we've got to stop doing this stuff to ourselves because this did not go well. The whole point here was to bring Twitter executives in front of a House panel and to grill them and expose how they were blocking Trump and banning conservatives and all of these different things. They did nothing of the sort and in fact only confirmed how clueless and ignorant they are about everything from

the way technology works to what the First Amendment is and isn't. But we will get to that. Let's look at some clips. Here is a Lauren Boebert, furious, principled, defiant, saying, who the hell do you think you are when you silenced me or something? Take a listen to this. Did you shadow ban my account? Yes or no? Did you shadow ban my account? Again, not to the best of my recollection. The answer is, Mr. Roth. Yes, you did. I found out last night from Twitter staff that you suppressed my account for this tweet. It's a freaking joke about Hillary Clinton being angry that she.

She seems completely unhinged. Couldn't rig her election. It's a joke. But in response, being the sinister overlords that you all are, you placed a nine. And I'm realizing part of the problem with why these things go wrong is their lack of ability to read out loud with proper tone and intonation. Lauren Boebert, understand, is reading this rant that's supposed to make Twitter look really bad. But because her reading skills translate, you know, one of the things that sometimes can be useful when when you're doing this type of thing is you develop a skill where anybody can really do it. You're reading one or two phrases ahead of what you're saying so that you can properly contextualize and have the right tone for what you're saying now. So it doesn't end up sounding weird when you get to the next thing.

She just seems unable to do it. So she sounds very silly day account filter. So I could not be found. And now we see here that Twitter staff said the visibility filter on my account excluded me from top searches, prevented notifications for non followers and much more. This is considered an aggressive visibility filter. You silenced members of Congress from communicating with their constituents. You silenced me from communicating with the American people over a freaking joke. Now, who the hell do you think that you are? Who the hell do you think you are? This was really the theme acting as if criminal things took place and pretending that it only applied to right wingers, which we now know, of course, that it did not.

Then they brought in Clay Higgins, who just seems very dim and confused, like it genuinely doesn't seem like he even understands Twitter. And he seemed to be threatening these ex Twitter employees with arrest for what crimes? I have no idea. Let's see if we can figure it out. You ladies and gentlemen, interfered with the United States of America 2020 presidential election knowingly and willingly. That's the bad news is going to get worse, right? Because this is the investigation part.

Later comes the arrest part. The rep for what? For what crimes? Who's getting arrested? What are you even talking about? Are you familiar with that? Mr. Chairman, I'd like to spend five hours with these ladies and gentlemen doing depositions surely yet to come.

But for right now, I yield the balance of my time to my. Yeah. Earlier during the event and again, this is all of course, this is all stage managed for an electorate, meaning people who vote for these Republicans who don't know any damn better. And I understand that. But to anybody with an ability to evaluate what actually took place here, this is a complete and total joke.

Here's the very same Clay Higgins submitting random items he found on the Internet for inclusion in the congressional record. Also submit for the record a timeline of events with cited sources outlining strong evidence of the Biden family organized criminal actions indicate that we've crossed the threshold of reasonable suspicion. We've crossed the Rubicon based on this thing I found on Gateway Pundit. I like this timeline submitted for the record. Excuse me, Mr. Chairman. Where is that from? That timeline timeline in my hand boss up. I'll get it to you shortly. What did he say? What? Where is it from? I've got to hear that again

from that timeline timeline in my hand boss up boss up. What is he talking about? I'll get it to you shortly. OK, so let's include random items from the Internet. Then it went to representative sessions who took this as an opportunity to bless Elon Musk. That was you knew that was coming. Thank you very much. So I will say it. God bless Elon Musk. That was you knew that was coming. Thank you very much. So I will say God bless Elon Musk. Yeah. Because I think I feel that way. It was Elon Musk that revealed data that uncovered a disturbing cabal. Right. There was a cabal. It was uncovered a cabal in which both the Trump administration and the Biden campaign had the email addresses of people at Twitter and they could email them and say,

hey, we'd like this removed. Now we are going to get to what Trump wanted removed from Twitter. And again, this is part of the total backfire of this. But let me not get ahead of myself. We then go to Congressman James Comer. Congressman James Comer has been a major promulgator of conspiracy theories about the balloon, as we have spoken about here. He tries to convince a lawyer to waive attorney client privilege for no reason other than he wants to. As I think we've notified the committee and we've had these conversations with Twitter as well to try to resolve this issue prior to coming up here today, I don't have anything in writing that clears me in my ethical responsibilities to my former client with respect to answering questions that I think fall squarely within the attorney-client privilege. So unfortunately, I don't think I can go beyond what I've said there already, sir. Yeah. Unfortunately, Mr. Baker, your assertion that the attorney clap privilege, it's overruled as to this particular question and answer. So will you please answer the

question by Mr. We're overruling attorney client privilege just right here. Just I'm just doing it with my gavel. Speaker 4 Speaker 5 There's a point of order, Mr. Chairman. Speaker 6 State your point. Speaker 5 Well, as I understand it, because we just went through this in the January 6th committee where multiple witnesses asserted attorney client privilege, including people who weren't covered by it at all. Ultimately, that's that's the funny thing. Remember the degree to which attorney client privilege was cited by Trump administration people when there were like no lawyers even in the room? And now all of a sudden, an actual lawyer in a completely legitimate use of attorney

client privilege. No, no, no, no. Just talk about it anyway. Tell us any work to decide. So I don't think there's I don't think there's anything we can do within the committee at this point unless I'm missing something. No, Jamie Raskin is missing nothing whatsoever. This was humiliating.

A really interesting moment. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, she took some of the time she had to detail how this account libs of tick tock actually incited harassment against real world health care workers at Boston Children's Hospital, but was still allowed to remain on Twitter. Again, sort of disproofed by counterexample. A compelling moment. Take a look at this. Miss Navarro Lee, are you familiar with the account lives of Tick Tock? I have heard of it from the news.

Yes. Mr. Roth, are you familiar with this account? Yes, ma'am, I am. Are you aware from that from August 11th to August 16th, that account posted false information about Boston Children's Hospital claiming that they were providing hysterectomies to children? Yes, I am aware of that and other claims from the account. And are you aware that this lie was then circulated by other prominent far-right influencers? Yes. And are you aware that all these claims, which I have reiterated, were false, culminated in a real-life harassment and ultimately a bomb threat to the

Boston Children's Hospital? Yes, I am aware. And this account is still on that platform today, isn't it? Regrettably, yes, it is. Despite inspiring a bomb threat due to the right-wing incitement of violence against trans Americans in this country, because they cannot let go of this obsession with fixating violence and inciting violence against trans and LGBT people, in addition to immigrants, in addition to women of color. This is a party that cannot pick on anyone their own size. Speaker 1 Yeah. So this really just a terrible idea for Republicans and the idea that this was a concerted effort to silence the right has been so widely debunked. The flopped Twitter files

themselves debunking that notion. We have video here of Congressman Pat Fallon citing a completely dubious poll saying if the Hunter Biden stuff had been left on Twitter, Trump would have actually won. So there and the Media Research Center polled Democratic voters in 2020 swing states and found that 17 percent would have changed their vote if they had known the contents and evidence of the New York Post story. President Trump lost key states, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arizona and Wisconsin by collectively just over 100000 votes. And if this is accurate, this poll, three point two million votes could have swung and he only needed a teeny fraction of those three point two million. Yeah, it's Twitter's

fault because they censored Hunter Biden's genitalia that Trump did not ultimately win. Now, remember, it is against Twitter's terms of service and it is a crime in almost all 50 states to publish explicit images of an individual without that individual's consent. And that is why that content was removed. So we eventually got to a summary from Democratic Congressman Maxwell Frost, which is really good. I, I, I'm a fan of this guy so far from what I have seen. And his summary is completely correct. Sitting here for over two hours and I'm a fan of this guy so far from what I have seen. And his summary is completely correct. Sitting here for over two hours and I'm still not really seeing the point of this hearing. Me neither. Is it to solve the problems of the American people, what people are struggling with?

No, no, we get it. My Republican colleagues wish that the Hunter Biden story would have helped them win the 2020 election. And that didn't happen. And so they're angry about it. And that's the point of this hearing. Yeah. You know, it was actually the foundation of the chairman's opening statement. It's why he brought up that that poll on the 2020 election. That's what this is all about. Yes, it is about that and about continuing to turn Americans against big tech platforms, not for reasons that should make us concerned about the platforms, but for imaginary reasons like this decidedly anti-conservative bias that they claim exists. This is what you can expect for the next two years. Republicans who are essentially the school

bully while complaining, they are the victims of bullying. That's fundamentally what you have here. And we are going to have pointless hearing after senseless investigation for the next two years. Hopefully those hearings will blow up in their faces as much as this one did, where they make a claim and they swear it's true and then it's proven that they're wrong. But we're still going to have a hearing because we still say it's true. And of course, it's not. It doesn't matter to many of their supporters that these hearings blow up in their faces because their supporters don't live in reality and they don't care. Now, there's a couple things from this hearing that I did not include in this summary because I think they're worthy of their own discussion. And let's get to one of those things right now. Marjorie Taylor Greene during yesterday's failed, humiliating,

instantly imploding Twitter hearings wrongly claimed that Twitter broke the law when they suspended her account because she violated their terms of service. She doesn't understand the law or the First Amendment, but her followers don't either. So this stuff is really effective. Listen to her rant. Let's explain. Fifty two United States law one zero one zero one. Yes. No person shall intimidate, threaten, coerce or attempt to stop any other. I've never heard the word coerce, pronounced coerce. She really speaks in an interesting way. A person for the purpose of interfering with their rights to vote or to vote as he may choose. You didn't shadow ban or permanently ban my Democrat opponent. Because your Democrat opponent didn't violate Twitter's terms of service.

No, you did that to me. And that was wrong. And it was against the law. It was against the law. Wait, no, it wasn't. You see, not only that, was it was it me that you violated my First Amendment rights. You violated countless conservative Americans. These were doctors that were trying to tell the truth about COVID. They were lying. Doctors that were having success treating people with ivermectin. That is not a scientifically demonstrated claim. And in fact, ivermectin does not work on COVID.

That you all would not allow to be talked about on your platform. These were parents complaining about their school boards, teaching gender lies in their schools, biological males entering their daughters bathrooms and sports. These were also people questioning the 2020 election. And guess what? That's Americans First Amendment right. Notice how on that one she doesn't say they were right to question it. She's now moved to they are allowed to question it under the First Amendment. Now, understand that Marjorie Taylor Greene has no clue and no understanding of the First Amendment nor of the law. So I know many of you know this, but let's put it together nice and

concisely here. As far as the First Amendment goes, it applies to the government. It does not apply to private companies like Twitter. So when Twitter decides to ban someone, it is not a violation of their constitutional rights. Could Twitter commit a crime by banning people? Sure. If Twitter was banning people. Either overtly or it could be demonstrating demonstrated that they were targeting people of certain protected classes for banning. If Twitter all of a sudden was banning Jews from Twitter for being Jewish or banning black people from Twitter because they were black, that would be a crime.

It wouldn't be a First Amendment issue. It would be a nondiscrimination issue. But the First Amendment does not apply to Twitter. Now then you get to the second part of the argument, which is that some people argue that because Twitter is such a big platform, it should be treated as a public forum. Now, that is not the law. That is not the law. It is not the law. But let's imagine for the sake of argument that we accept that that's the way it should be. The First Amendment also doesn't guarantee the right to speech in all circumstances, nor does it guarantee freedom from consequences of your speech. There are still limits on speech,

incitement to violence or whatever the case may be. It is circumstantial. But that's if we imagine that the law is different than it is. And Marjorie Taylor Greene said this was a First Amendment violation and it was a crime. Even if someone's speech isn't prohibited, social media platforms still have the right to set their own standards and enforce them as they see fit. I've been the target or I guess I could say the victim of the misenforcement of these policies when YouTube was at YouTube. No. When Instagram had a policy against covid disinformation, I did a video covering a guy who said drink urine for covid. OK, I didn't say drink urine for covid. I would never do that. I wouldn't suggest distilling

urine, drinking it, injecting it, using it for flambé. I would not suggest urine for covid in any way. However, I was caught up and we had a problem because the terms of service were misapplied because I quoted someone spreading covid disinformation. I was caught up in it. It wasn't a crime. I disagreed with that because it was not an application fairly of the terms of service. But none of it relates to criminality. But with them, everything's always a crime. Now, one other argument that Republicans sometimes make is that social media censorship is biased against conservatives. The reality is social media companies are private businesses. They can enforce their policies however they want. If they wanted to ban conservatives, they would be allowed

to do that. Now, again, it goes back to, well, Twitter's so big it should be regulated in a different way. Should be and is are two completely different things. And lastly, remember that these social media platforms aren't the only way to communicate with others to express themselves. So one of the arguments people like Marjorie Taylor Greene are making are have been when I am running a campaign against someone. I'm speaking as Marjorie now. I know it's hard to imagine, but I'm speaking as Marjorie. She argues when I'm running a campaign against someone else and you ban me and not them. Essentially, it's almost like a campaign contribution of sorts. It's against the law. You're silencing me. First Amendment. We've debunked basically every aspect of that.

But the other thing you have to remember is Twitter is not the only way that you run a campaign. Twitter is not a requirement to run campaigns. There's TV. She can put her videos up on YouTube, Facebook, all these different things. She can be interviewed, et cetera. So also in that way, it is neither a crime nor a violation of anyone's rights. Absolute last thing on this. There's also the business regulation hypocrisy of these people when they make these claims. On the one hand, Republicans claim to be against government intervention in business. And at the same time, here they are demanding Twitter should be forced to publish someone's

tweets. Why? That's extremely heavy handed regulation to come in and say to a private business, we as the government are going to tell you you've got to publish urine conspiracies. You've got to publish Marjorie's conspiracies or whatever the case may be. So this is absurd in every way. Marjorie Taylor Greene is wrong on every one of these claims. But you go to a Trump rally and you interview people and they go, oh, Twitter's violating

people's First Amendment rights because they don't know any better. All of these clips will be on our YouTube channel, YouTube dot com slash the David Pakman show. Here's the perfect last minute Valentine's Day gift. One of our sponsors paired is the app that offers you daily questions, games and guided conversations for couples designed by clinical psychologists. An independent study by Open University found couples who use paired for three months see an average 36 percent increase in the quality of their relationship. Every day paired sends you and your partner prompts designed to let you emotionally connect in a meaningful way. You don't see their answer until you've answered and using paired just a few minutes a day lets you build a deeper knowledge of yourself and your partner boost intimacy. There are hilarious

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five zero off all one word. You can find the info in the podcast notes. So there's just one more aspect of yesterday's completely clown car, humiliating Twitter hearings that Republicans orchestrated now that they control the House of Representatives that I want to look at separately. And it is about the snowflake triggered nature of the failed former President Donald Trump, who tried to get a tweet from celebrity Chrissy Teigen about him removed from Twitter. Now, there is some strong language in this segment. I'm giving you fair warning even before I get to it. I'm just letting you know that there is strong language in this segment. One of the stories that has been told by the right is that the Biden administration, which, of course, was not an administration at the time it was it was a campaign,

was demanding content be removed from Twitter simply because it was disadvantageous to Joe Biden. Now, when you evaluate that claim, what you find out is that the Biden administration wanted explicit images of Hunter Biden shared without his consent against Twitter terms of service and a crime in most states removed. And that was absolutely legitimate. But we have now found out that there was a tweet which just was insulting to Trump that he wanted removed. Here is Congressman Frost speaking to Twitter executives about this. Again, there is strong language here. Listen to what it was that Trump wanted removed from Twitter. Miss Nervoli, earlier you testified about a 2019 tweet um that was about president trump and i think it's from uh miss tegan what was the tweet about would you like me to give

the direct quote yeah um please excuse my language this is a direct quote but chrissy tegan referred to donald trump as a pussy ass bitch. OK, free speech. And what happened after Miss Teigen posted her tweet? What did the White House do? What did the Trump White House do? From my understanding, the White House reached out to ask that this tweet be removed. Now, folks, that's not a campaign. That's an administration.

That is government. Calling Twitter, emailing Twitter, sending a smoke signal to Twitter and saying, remove the speech of this private citizen on a private platform. It was my team's job. This fell underneath the policy for abusive behaviors, and we evaluate it underneath our insults policy. At that time, up to three insults were allowed. And so it was our job to determine how many insults were included within that phrase. Right. Right.

White House reached out, not an agency, but the White House reached out and request that you remove the tweet. From my understanding, yes. Yeah. That is the epitome of these right wingers. The left wants everything censored. Well, they want images that are a crime censored. But you want Chrissy Teigen censored because she called you names. And the irony is that Trump's attempt to censor the tweet reinforces the accuracy of Chrissy

Teigen's tweet. That's the amazing thing. They say Twitter censoring conservatives while they are demanding that liberals be censored for opinions that are of no national security implication. They're not doxing anybody. Nobody's at risk. Nobody's in danger. Trump is the best protection ever. Even if someone saw Chrissy Teigen's tweet and they wanted to go and do something to Trump. It is the theme of authoritarian narcissists being very thin skinned people like Trump. And we can look in history and find other examples. They see statements. They see criticism like this as a threat to their power and their ego. Hitler, Stalin, Kim Jong-un, just to name a few. They all had the same personality trait. Hitler, as the leader of

Germany, was infamous for his sensitivity to criticism. And he saw media as a tool for propaganda. He would suppress criticism of his regime. He would censor newspapers. He would jail journalists because these authoritarian narcissists see themselves as threatened by any kind of criticism. Another example, Joseph Stalin, former leader of the Soviet Union. Stalin would brutally repress dissent. He would imprison and sometimes execute critics and political opponents. He saw criticism as a direct threat to his rule, and he did everything he could to silence it. And then more recently in North Korea, Kim Jong Un. And there's more. It goes earlier than just Kim Jong

Un, Kim Jong Il and others. But an authoritarian leader who is so thin skinned, Kim Jong Un, notorious for strictly controlling information, suppressing dissent and doling out severe punishment for criticism of the regime. Trump is not Hitler, Stalin or Kim Jong Un. But Trump has that same authoritarian, narcissistic tendency that they do. And it's embarrassing and it's pathetic. And again, allegations are confessions. The left is trying to censor our speech. They're not. But you're trying to censor the left's speech. That's what we keep learning. You know, I've gotten a lot of emails over the last month or so from people saying, David, sir, I hear it vaguely mentioned that the Republican Party is now more extreme than ever.

But is that true? Is it true that the Republican Party has actually moved to the right? And particularly in the context of looking at people like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert and similar extremist lunatics in the Republican Party, it's reasonable to ask, has it always been like this? And the truth is that it has not. This is not a segment about how great the Republican Party used to be. This is a segment about how much less extreme the Republican Party used to be. For those who don't know the history, the Republican Party was once a relatively moderate

political force in the United States compared to where they are today. Over the last 40 years, there has been a radical transformation in the Republican Party where it has become more and more extreme in its views and its policies, in its rhetoric and in the level of extremism that it is willing to accept within its ranks. Again, I might have to say this 20 times. I'm not rehabilitating the old Republican Party. I'm comparing what it used to be to what it is today. And one of the most glaring sort of examples of this shift has been the party's view on social issues in the 70s and 80s. There were many elements of the Republican Party that were generally and sort of superficially, at least supportive of abortion rights and of gay rights. But we know that that

has changed dramatically. And it is a party that has won many elections and raised a ton of money being completely against abortion and completely against LGBT rights. If you go to the 70s and 80s, you can find that abortion rights and LGBT rights were simply not as partisan as were not partisan issues to the degree that they are today. And you had some Republicans that were actually supportive of those causes. If you look at President Richard Nixon, one of the first politicians to publicly support abortion rights in a 69 speech, he said this should be a decision made by a woman and her doctor, not the government. That's the small government position on abortion. In 72, the Republican Party platform included a plank supporting abortion rights to some

degree. They maintained that for four years. And in 1976, the Republican Party became significantly more anti abortion. You go to 1977, a Republican led Congress passed a bill known as the Gay Rights Bill, and it banned discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in the federal government and in Washington, D.C. That was a Republican led Congress at the time. You then look at Ronald Reagan in 86 when Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act.

It actually provided some legal protections for gay and lesbian immigrants to the United States. In 87, the Republican Party platform included language supporting anti-discrimination measures for gay and lesbian Americans. So it's not that those views necessarily reflected the views of the entire Republican Party at those points in time. But there used to be support at least to some degree for those causes among Republicans in the 70s and 80s. That's social issues. Taxation in the past, Republicans were open to the idea that we might raise taxes if it meant funding important programs or if it would reduce the deficit. Today, they never even

acknowledge that increasing taxes to fund certain programs can actually reduce the deficit by being economically stimulative. They pretend that that's not an economic reality anymore. And we know the result. It's led to the erosion of so many different social programs. Immigration is an area where the views of the Republicans have changed quite dramatically. In the past, Republicans were often supportive of immigration, saw it as a source of economic growth, sort of were OK with the cultural diversity component of it as well. But now we've seen the Republican Party become obsessed with building a border wall, cracking down on immigration, saying we shouldn't even provide a path to citizenship to people who were brought here as kids by their parents through no fault of their own. But when you go back to 86,

I mentioned that Immigration Reform Act that President Reagan signed. It provided amnesty to millions of undocumented immigrants already living in the United States. And Reagan said at the time, quote, the legalization provisions in this act will go far to improve the lives of a class of individuals who now must hide in the shadows without access to many of the benefits of a free and open society. That was Reagan who said that John McCain in 2005 co-sponsored the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act, which would have provided a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. Mitt Romney, as recently as 2012, expressed support for comprehensive immigration reform, which would have given a path to citizenship for some undocumented immigrants. So this has been a change at climate change. I'll mention briefly, you had a time in the past when Republicans were open to talking about what actions should we take to address the issue of

climate change? They didn't necessarily agree with Democrats on what those actions actions should be, but they agreed on the science. They didn't question the science. You now have much of the Republican Party that just says, oh, no, the science is completely wrong. So the Republican Party's shift to the extreme right is very real. It's been extraordinarily impactful because it has influenced media coverage of a lot of these issues. Media coverage has influenced public opinion on a lot of these issues. But the Republican Party has moved dramatically to the extreme. And I don't know at this point what's going to turn it around.

Let me know your thoughts. Leave a comment. Send an email to info at David Pakman dot com. real paper makes toilet paper 100 percent from bamboo stocks, which keep growing forever. No trees are cut down. It's shipped right to your door in plastic free packaging. It's fluffy. It's soft like regular toilet paper. You're not making any quality sacrifice. And for every box you buy, real paper donates to reforestation efforts across America through their partnership with One Tree Planted. So instead of the toilet paper you're currently buying, which cuts down trees and wastes plastic,

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is his approach. It didn't work for any of these Republicans in 2016. It's not going to work for Ron DeSantis. So let's take a look at this clip. The context here, I will remind you, is that Donald Trump published to Truth Social Truth Central, a picture of Ron DeSantis with some allegedly high school girls re trothing a message that argued that Ron was grooming high school girls re trothing a message that argued that Ron was grooming high school girls. Donald Trump posting. That's not Ron, is it? He would never do such a thing. Ron DeSantis was asked about this. He attempted to take the high road. Listen to this. I spend my time delivering results for the people of Florida and fighting against Joe Biden. That's

how I spend my time. I don't spend my time trying to smear other Republicans. Yeah. Oh, how great, Ron. Really, really great. You took the high road. You will lose if this is what you do. He doesn't have a chance in hell of defeating Donald Trump if that is going to be his approach. It's not what Republican voters want to see at this point. He's going with the I'm above this sort of approach on this thing. And they tried it in 2016. It did not work. It might have gotten you two, three, four, five, six, seven percent. But then Trump consolidated support and consolidated and consolidated. DeSantis does have the possibility of defeating Donald Trump in a 2024 primary. DeSantis hasn't even announced that defeating Donald Trump in a 2024 primary. DeSantis hasn't even announced that he is running at this point and he's polling really

well against the former president when he hasn't even said, I am actually a candidate for this office. This is not about DeSantis can't win. But think back to a couple of weeks ago, a month ago, a month ago, two months ago when I told you, pulling aside, I don't know that DeSantis constitutionally, personality wise, has what it takes to go up against Trump and Trump's nicknames and Trump's insults in a national campaign. I don't know whether DeSantis has it in him. The fact that he is already going with I'm above this stuff. I'm not going around

criticizing other Republicans. I don't waste my time on this sort of thing. There is not a chance in hell that DeSantis wins with that approach. If you disagree with me, I want to hear from you. I just don't see it. And part of the reason why is that these Republican voters, many of these Republican voters, they don't want unity and decorum and the right tone or any of this stuff. They voted for Trump. They voted for the guy who said grab him by the you know what was drawing stuff with Sharpies and said that woman's not attractive enough for me to ever have sexually assaulted her.

They don't want little Marco and Ted Cruz. His wife is ugly and all this different stuff. That's what they wanted. That's what they wanted. That's what they voted for. And while many of them will tell you, oh, I want to return to civility and all these things. And some of them genuinely do want that. The Romney esque ones. Most of them don't. Most of them want that alpha energy that they claim comes from Donald Trump. And they're not going to go for this. So if this is DeSantis's approach, he is dead in the water on this campaign that hasn't even started yet. Disagree with me. Let me know. Agree with me. I want to hear from you as well.

Speaking of Ron DeSantis versus Donald Trump, Fox News and Fox and Friends specifically continues to sort of take this approach of softly and subtly pointing more in the direction of this of DeSantis than Donald Trump. I'm going to play for you. This is a couple of minutes long, but it's worth looking at this in its in its totality. I'm going to play for you a couple of minutes segment from this morning's Fox and Friends in which Steve Doocy, Ainsley Earhart and Brian Kilmeade, I'm reminding myself of their names as I as I look at them here, spend a couple of minutes with sort of erratic word salads, really unclear what the direction of the segment was. It was about polling. It was about these different things. But eventually they get to another

subtle push towards DeSantis and away from Trump. And the one they come up with today is Biden would rather run against Trump than DeSantis or put a different way. The way Brian Kilmeade puts it is Biden is more scared of DeSantis than he would be of Trump. And it's another way to subtly suggest, as Fox News has increasingly been doing subtly, they're not abandoning Trump, but they're subtly pointing to as Fox News has increasingly been doing subtly, they're not abandoning Trump, but they're subtly pointing to DeSantis. DeSantis would be the stronger candidate because Biden would rather run against Trump. Let's let's really dig into this because there's

a lot here. I understand that people want to dismiss bad polls, but his response yesterday to Judy Woodruff was, yeah, 50 people on a cell phone saying they're unhappy about the direction of the country. We don't really care about that. Okay, if your polls were good, if they were fine, you'd be like, the polls show people will improve of the economy. What he's referring to, the fact is that most people say 50% in the Glass-Gallup poll, 50% say they are worse off this year than last year. And 70% believe they were heading in the wrong direction. Two-thirds of the country said they were living paycheck to paycheck. Inflation is up.

Gas prices are up. And now understand that two thirds of the country living paycheck to paycheck isn't a new thing. Four years ago, I told you and remember who was president then that something like half of Americans would need to borrow money if they got hit with an unexpected four hundred dollar expense. A lot of this stuff isn't new for a long time. Many Americans have felt the country's going in the wrong direction, but they're there. You can see that they're sort of struggling to come up with a story.

And eventually the story they shift you is Biden is more scared of DeSantis than he is of Trump. They're down. They're up from where they were when he took off. It's just crazy. And so the president is going to Tampa today. This is the second time in two months uh the president or the vice president have been down in florida why is that is it because desantis they're worried about that or these senior communities too uh well what they're trying to do is uh exactly uh desantis democratic strategists expect the president to set the stage for a relection and draw contrast with Ron DeSantis. You know, he's drawn comparisons to Donald Trump in the past. But now it looks and you speak in the polls, you see these polls and Ron DeSantis is surging.

It's like, OK, forget about Trump for right now. Let's let's go ahead and go down to where Ron DeSantis is and talk about saving all this stuff. Florida was a purple state and now it's completely red. We saw that. 19 points. Ron DeSantis won in a landslide. So it'll be interesting to see how the president does. Are they going down there to try to save Florida in their mind and bring it back?

Well, I think he's got a message in the area that he feels as though is experiencing good economic times, number one. Number two, seniors, he wants to continue to harp on that inaccurate message that Republicans want to get rid of in sunset, Medicare and Social Security. And I'll add something else. As good as Ron DeSantis is doing, even though he's getting a good pack together, it looks like he's going to run, Donald Trump's still beating him in most polls. And in fact, I think he's a solid second, but Trump's still up front.

And I just wonder on some level if President Biden rather have Trump than than to say. So there it is. Would Biden prefer Trump rather than DeSantis? And so this is part of the they have built an ejector seat, so to speak, so that if it comes to it that Donald Trump is not the nominee, they want to get away from Trump as quickly as possible. And they would rather move beyond Trump and go to DeSantis. But they can't just bail altogether because Trump indeed might be the nominee. And if Trump is the nominee, he might indeed be the president again. And Fox News doesn't want to want to lose access.

But this is now like the sixth or seventh sort of segment that we've seen from Fox and Friends, where they're either doing the man on the street interviews where they happen to bump into all Republicans who want to Santas over Trump or they're talking about polling or whatever the case may be. They are continuing the subtle push away from Trump and towards the Santas. What exactly their motivation is? You know, some say it's because Rupert Murdoch personally really doesn't like Trump. Others say it's because they see the writing on the wall or it would be better for them for this, that the other thing. I don't really know what the answer is. I don't think it's completely clear. And it may be different for different people at Fox News, but they are setting themselves up to be right in there with a hypothetical DeSantis nominee

or DeSantis administration. But they've got to play it safe. And so this is the sort of stuff that they're doing. What do you believe is Fox's motivation and endgame? Let me know. Info at David Pakman dot com or leave a comment if you're watching on YouTube or Facebook or Instagram. We'll take a very quick break and much more coming up after this. One of our sponsors is Helix Sleep. I have been sleeping on a Helix mattress at home for years now. I couldn't be more happy with it. I recommend it to everybody. The other day, even though she's not allowed in the big bed, I put my baby daughter on the mattress and even she loved it. Helix Sleep is the premium mattress brand offering tailored mattresses based on your unique sleep preferences. Take the Helix Sleep quiz. It asks you about your body type,

your sleeping position. Do you get hot at night? Do you have back pain? And then Helix will match you with the mattress that's perfect for you. Most people don't know where to begin when shopping for a mattress, including me. Helix makes it simple and less risky because, you know, you're getting a mattress that fits your needs. It ships free. You can try it for 100 nights to see if you like it. And it comes with a 10 or 15 year warranty. Unlike many mattress companies, all Helix mattresses are made in the USA by a skilled production team. So you are supporting good jobs. Helix sleep is giving my audience up to 20 percent off plus two a Well, this really bums me out. But podcaster Joe Rogan, on whose program I've been a guest twice in the past, has unleashed the Jews love money stereotype trope.

Call it whatever you want, which is linked to so much ugly anti-Semitism. Now I'm going to play the clip and I'm going to talk about it. I do want to say that I don't actually think that Joe Rogan has a genuinely anti-Semitic bone or anti-Semitic ounce of lean muscle mass in his body. I think that he just doesn't understand why saying Jews love money is different than the example he gives of Italians love eating pizza. I just think he doesn't get why. They are two different things and it's a very bad analogy. And as many of you know, I don't know if Rogan's willing to have me back on his program. You know, I've done some segments since I was last on which were critical of things he said, but I think I've done them respectfully and I would be glad to talk about any of my views about his

views anytime. And I would love to explain this to him as well. I have no idea. But I don't think that this is about Joe Rogan being an anti-Semite just based on personally knowing him. Let's get into the segment and hear how it all went down. Are you sitting next to Ilyan Omar where she's she's apologizing for talking about it's all about the Benjamins? Yeah. Which is just about money.

She's talking about money. She shouldn't have apologized. That was not an anti-Semitic statement. I don't think that is. It's about Benjamins or money. You know, the idea that Jewish people It's about Benjamins or money. You know, the idea that Jewish people are not into money is ridiculous. Listen, it's like saying Italians aren't into pizza. It's stupid. Listen, I understand. OK, so listen, the analogy to Italians eating pizza couldn't be more misleading and it couldn't be more wrong.

And there are a number of important points here. First of all, analogizing to Republicans, to Republicans liking pizza, to Italians liking pizza groups, Jews liking money under a category of what we might consider like positive things. And this is the difficulty with some of these anti-Semitic tropes that in a vacuum they sound like positive things. You know, when people say Jews do so well in the banking industry, you might mean that in a totally benign way or not. But it's connected to long standing conspiracies of Jewish conspiracy to control certain industries to their benefit and to the detriment of others.

And it's wrapped up in really, really ugly stuff. So the analogy to it's just a good thing. Liking money, liking pizza. It's just it's a it's a totally fine and good thing. That's that's one issue, which is it's connected to all sorts of historical, horrible stuff that eating pizza by Italian people is not. Secondly, it's not Jews love money and Italians love pizza, right? Everyone loves money. Jews are the ones tagged with the stereotype that they are so obsessed with money above and beyond everybody else that they conspire to acquire it in a way that's different than everybody else. I mean,

have you met black people who hate money? Have you met white people who say, oh, money, throw it out, put it in the trash, burn it? Of course not, because it's not about liking money. Ascribing it to Jews is about something above and beyond that. It's the conspiracy to obtain money, including by immoral or illegal or deceptive means by controlling certain industries. And it's different. It's unique in some way. And it's linked to thousands of years of anti-Semitic tropes, stereotypes and discrimination. Now, Rogan might genuinely not know that. And so that's why I'm being careful and saying I'm not alleging Joe Rogan is an anti-Semite in saying these things. I think he just doesn't understand or know the reasons why

this is very different than Italians like pizza. The last thing about this is the analogy to pizza is also a terrible one because Italians liking pizza isn't a collective action linked to anti-Italian tropes and stereotypes about Italian conspiracy to like pizza or eat pizza. Like it doesn't even make sense. As I say, it doesn't make any sense. You're talking about something that is individual. When the discussion is about Jews liking money, it's no longer about individuals. Right. It's not about John Stewart likes money. He loves money. It's a trait that is ascribed to the group working together. And that's where this entire like conspiracy stuff comes from. So I you know, it's really important. A lot of times when people say this stuff, they don't actually know or understand the origins and they go, I don't know, it's just like

saying Jews like love money is like saying black people are good at basketball is like saying whatever. These sound like positive things, but they're interlaced inextricably with really ugly historical things, stereotyping, xenophobia, all sorts of stuff. And so it is really easy sometimes for people to defend this sort of thing and say, liking money, it's not even a bad thing, but it would be better if people understood the history and really what it was that they were talking about. So, again, I have no personal beef with Rogan and whether or not I've been blacklisted from his show. I genuinely have no idea. But everything I've ever said on this show about the things Joe has said, I'd be willing to talk about with him. I'm not hiding behind a microphone or behind a screen or any of it. I don't know if he has any interest in that,

but I am glad to any time on his program or on mine. I'm going to play for you some number of incoherent seconds. I guess it's about 90 seconds of my pillow founder and CEO, Mike Lindell appearing on Steve Bannon's program. And I have to tell you at this point, I genuinely don't know whether Steve Bannon takes Lindell seriously because Bannon is as much of an incoherent joke as Lindell or whether Bannon sees Lindell more of as like as a, as a goofy entertainment element, but he doesn't take him seriously. There was a segment on Steve Bannon sees Lindell more of his like as a as a goofy entertainment element. But he doesn't take him seriously. There was a segment on Steve Bannon's. Actually, I'm wrong. This was on Lindell TV. You know what? I don't know where this seems to have

been a simulcast, both on Lindell TV and on Steve Bannon's war room. I don't know where Pillow is upset with Ron DeSantis for some reason. He's calling him a backstabber and all these different things. The segment starts with Mike Pillow literally holding a pillow and then moving it out of frame. I wasn't able to find what took place in the 15 seconds before this clip starts, but the presence of the pillow makes me think it might be pretty damn interesting. See if you can make heads or tails out of this. And then again, if you're listening, imagine that as this segment starts, Mike Pillow is moving a physical pillow out of screen. So what is going on? DeSantis is a pretty straight guy. What is he heckling you? Because he's upset about what you're doing in Miami-Dade or what is a shot across Mike Lindell's bow?

What's going on here? Well, let me let me let me try and frame this. And this could we'll just say we don't know why, but you can draw your own conclusions. So this morning, what he hosted a lawyer, six lawyers or so in this in this little roundtable. Well, one of them is Libby Locke, who represents Dominion voting machines against, it says right on the thing, against Mike Lindell, Rudy Giuliani, and many others. You guys understanding this so far? And he called her in his opening statement when he introduced her, Libby is an extraordinaire at First Amendment defamation law.

Well, I'm telling you, Ron, you didn't watch that. You probably don't understand what's going on in our country. There's a reason that the whole country wanted me to be head of the RNC. Well, that obviously isn't the case. When they did the Rasmussen poll. It's because I want to get rid of machines and make our elections. We're doing a class action lawsuit against all machines, elections and not selections.

So what he did, I told the Daily Beast today, Steve, they called me and I said, because they watched it and I said, let me tell you something. They called me and they said, sir? I said, he just blew any chance. If he was thinking of running for president, your ship has sailed, Ron. You just well endorse Donald Trump

right now and try and save face because you don't know what the people want. Speaker 1 Now, I want to remind everybody that the day I believe it was the day after Trump announced in November that he was running in 2024. I don't remember what the context was, but the day after or two days later, Mike Pillow said DeSantis is about to endorse Trump. DeSantis isn't going to run in 24 any day now. He's going to come out and say, actually, I endorse Donald Trump. Now, of course, that didn't happen. Like almost all of Mike Pillow's predictions, it has not come true. But what is our understanding of Pillow at this point? Is he deeply delusional or does he believe the things he said? I don't know the answer.

I've interviewed Pillow twice. I've most recently been leaning towards he's serious about this stuff. He means it. But now I'm sort of going back like, could anyone really be this delusional? Does Steve Bannon take him seriously? I also don't know the answer to that. I don't know what is going on with this guy. We can only hope and pray that at least within the Republican Party, which is the only place he has any credibility left, he is increasingly seen as a joke and ostracized and moved to the margins of the political discussion. But I knew that day that he appeared at the White House during covid with Trump to announce that he believes Trump was a God given a God given president. Gosh, darn it. You could tell this guy was trouble and he certainly

has turned out to be trouble. And he told me a few months ago that he's like in for thirty five million. At that point, he was in for thirty five million so far and all of this election stuff and machines and investigations and whatever. It's got to be more than that by now. At some point, the money's got to run out, you would think. But there is the latest from Mike Pillow holding a pillow for part of a segment with Steve Bannon. We have a voicemail number. That number remains 2192 David P. We've been talking on the world famous bonus show lately about what's going on with Netflix accounts. Oh, the bonus show where you want to make money. Everybody else that makes money to fund themselves is bad.

We make a little bit of money on the bonus show. Sure. The big thing that's happening with Netflix accounts is a crackdown. No more sharing accounts between people who don't live together. And I admitted I'm still on my mommy's account. That's absolutely true. It has all my preferences and my likes and dislikes. And I've been on that account for, I don't know, 20 years. And I'm going to stay on it until they take it away from me. And the egg man called in to weigh in on this. Hi, Dave. My daughter turned 21 years old today. Happy birthday to her birthday present for her. I told her she can remain on our Netflix accounts for 30 more years. Just like you and your family. Shalom, brother. Yep. That's absolutely right. I've got my our Netflix accounts for 30 more years.

Just like you and your family. Shalom, brother. Yep, that's absolutely right. I've got my account on my mom's account, my profile. My little brother has one as well. And I'm sticking with it until Netflix takes it away and we will see how long that is. We have a fantastic bonus show for you today. Ultra processed foods. What is that? What's the difference between processed and ultra processed?

Well, we will talk about it. Ultra processed foods may lead to cognitive decline, says a new study. Is the study trustworthy? We will discuss. We have really good news about Salman Rushdie. He is back to a certain degree. We're going to talk about it. Some some amazing pictures of Salman Rushdie published in The New Yorker. And we're going to talk about the aftermath of that horrible, horrible attack that he was the victim of. And lastly, the virus threat is easing from covid. But U.S. hospitals are as full as they have ever been. Why? What is the reason? Well, we're going to talk about it. It's not from respiratory disease. It's from other things. All of those stories and more are on two days bonus show. Sign up at join Pacman dot com. You will get instant access to the show. It's really cheap to sign up. But I understand that many folks would like a discount

and I'm glad to offer one. You can use the coupon code. Please no more Trump. That's all one word. No spaces. Please no more Trump. You can use that coupon code to get a discount off of the cost of a membership. And I want you to remember that we continue the fight for two million YouTube subscribers. You can help us for free by signing up at YouTube dot com slash the David Pakman show. And by the way, voting, you can only do once. If you have multiple Google accounts, you can subscribe to the YouTube channel multiple times. Perfectly legal.

Carrie Lake's not coming after you for it. Pillow's not coming after you for it. Nobody's coming after you for it. So just just mentioning it. We will see you on the bonus show or otherwise back tomorrow.