The David Pakman Show - 3/12/24: Trump employee blows whistle, Biden suddenly leading many polls

Episode Date: March 12, 2024

-- On the Show: -- Cal Newport, Associate Professor of Computer Science at Georgetown University, New York Times bestselling author, host of the Deep Questions with Cal Newport podcast, and author of his new book "Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout," joins David to discuss the book, which you can get here: https://amzn.to/43ewdsE -- On the one hand, Biden is old, and on the other hand, in the last 24 hours, Trump claimed presidential immunity in a porn star hush money case, a former Trump employee admitted to loading classified documents onto a plane, authoritarian Viktor Orban said Trump told him he'd give Ukraine no money if he becomes President, the RNC has fired dozens of staffers as Trump-backed leadership takes over, and Trump's former White House economic advisor has been told to report to prison -- President Joe Biden is suddenly leading numerous national polls, and we discuss the reasons why -- Brian Butler, a former Trump Mar-a-Lago employee known as "employee number 5" in court filings, publicly admits that he helped move classified documents onto a plane while federal authorities were looking for them -- Republican Congressman Byron Donalds admits to Fox News host Maria Bartiromo that they have absolutely no evidence of criminality by President Joe Biden -- Failed former President Donald Trump smears E. Jean Carroll again during the end of a CNBC interview -- President Joe Biden states that to fix housing, we must build significantly more housing, which is absolutely correct -- Voicemail caller who is a longtime listener is impressed that David went from the basement to meeting with the Vice President at the White House -- On the Bonus Show: Why Nikki Haley voters should support Joe Biden, US lawmakers vote to force sale of TikTok, George Santos will run again in New York, much more... 🌱 Ounce of Hope: Get a THC Seltzer for just $5 at https://ounceofhope.com 🌳 MyHeritage: Try it free for 14 days at https://davidpakman.com/myheritage 👍 Use code PAKMAN for 10% off the Füm Journey Pack at https://tryfum.com/PAKMAN 😮 DealDash: Use code PAKMAN for 100 free bids at https://dealdash.com/pakman 💪 Athletic Greens is offering FREE year-supply of Vitamin D at https://athleticgreens.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 -- 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

. We start today with an incredible revelation. Joe Biden is an old guy. He's elderly. He admits it. And what I want to do today is to compare and contrast what's going on with Joe Biden, meaning he continues living and thus is older every day. And when that happens, eventually you're old. And on the other hand, just the last 24 hours of headlines coming from the modern Republican Party, from the Trump campaign. And if this contrast doesn't make you feel something about the difference between the competing platforms and values that are at stake, if after listening to what I'm going to tell you here, you are going to go to this.

They're just kind of the same. Trump and Biden, it really doesn't make a difference who wins. Then maybe you're not reachable. That's the message I have for you today. So on the one hand, on the right, we continue to hear about how Joe Biden is old. He's not exciting. He's not high energy. Who's really in charge? And when it comes to policy, Republicans saying the border, the border, the border, yet they are not really able to articulate what exactly changed in terms of policy under

Biden. What exactly would be different under Trump that would solve the immigration problem at a higher level? Mass deportations won't really change or solve why people are coming here and overstayed visas and no DACA permanent status. OK, so from the right, what we hear about the left is Biden's old. He's confused. He's disoriented the border here. Just the last 24 hours from MAGA Trump Republican land. And again, this is just a tiny piece of what's going on in the last day or two, Trump is now claiming presidential immunity in a case where he paid

off porn star Stormy Daniels. This is not about national security. This is not about Trump's role deploying troops around the world to keep us safe. And thus he should be of we have the benefit of presidential immunity. This is the hush money case where he paid off a porn star that he had sex with. He wants presidential immunity. Ex-Trump employee Brian Butler says that anyone could access the areas of Mar-a-Lago where Trump was keeping those classified documents.

We're going to see video of Brian Butler being interviewed on CNN later. Blockbuster story, criminality evident here. This is a disaster for Trump's forthcoming criminal trial on the classified documents. We learned this in the last 24 hours and the other things that Brian Butler said. Absolutely stunning about the total lack of care, both in terms of Trump yapping and Trump showing documents at Mar-a-Lago. Again, news over the last 24 hours. Contrast is Biden's old. All right. Hungarian leader Viktor Orban, who recently met with Trump or bonds, a horrifying authoritarian, says that Trump told him, if I become president, I'll end the Russia Ukraine war by not giving Ukraine a penny, a single penny, meaning the way Trump will end that war.

He told us if I become president, it would be over in 24 hours. The way it would end is that Russia just takes everything because, according to Orban, Trump told him, if I win, Ukraine doesn't get another penny from the United States. That alone is a scandal. This is just the last 24 hours and it's scandal number three of five that I'm going to tell you today. Number four, Trump appears to have defamed E. Jean Carroll again one day after posting a ninety one million dollar bond. He's already had a judgment against him. He was found civilly liable of raping her, defamed her, ordered to pay 80 million, and

he appears to have defamed her again. They may sue again. This happened on a CNBC interview, which we will look at a little bit later. Number five, the RNC now being taken over by MAGA fired about 60 people. Sixty people at the RNC were told, you no longer work here, according to a person with direct knowledge, as reported by The Washington Post. Trump leadership has now taken over. The Republican Party is officially going full MAGA and clearing ranks so that they can just

give Trump all the money for his legal fees. And number six, folks, it's just the last 24 hours. Number six, Trump's former economic adviser, Peter Navarro, has been ordered to report to prison by March 19th. He was convicted on two counts of criminal contempt of Congress. He is now told, show up and go to prison and serve your sentence. When people say, I don't care who wins, when people say there's really no difference if it's not fill in the blanks, right?

If it's not who is, if it's not Bernie, by the way, they hate Bernie now to the litmus test left now hates Bernie because Bernie acknowledged Hamas is never going to stop trying to attack. Oh, Bernie's evil. Now, Bernie's got one point one million dollars as an 80 something year old because, you know, he's been making six figures for decades. Oh, Bernie now is sold out. It's getting bad, folks.

It's getting very, very bad. And the idea that it's just the same Trump Biden. Listen, if Hillary had become president in 2016, we'd have Roe v. Wade still. We don't. And so many other differences there would have been. So the point here is just the last 24 hours of scandals involving the Republican Party and Trump completely disqualified these people, including Trump, as viable leaders of any kind. And meanwhile, the story is Biden's old. He's too old. He's old.

And the border. To me, there's a big difference here in terms of what's at stake. If to you, you don't really see any important difference. I want to hear from you. Email me info at David Pakman dot com. Let's talk a little bit about polling, because as I've pointed out recently, polling is a concern. But all of a sudden, Joe Biden is leading Donald Trump in multiple polls. What's going on here? Well, I'll tell you why it's happening in a moment. Newsweek has a short write up about it. Joe Biden suddenly leads Donald Trump in multiple polls. A rematch between Trump and Biden has all but been confirmed. A series of polls have suggested Biden will narrowly beat Trump in a November vote. But

with eight months to go and the polls tight, this could change. And there are still polls that say Trump is winning. So listen, the data is not so much titillating. There's a Kaiser Family Foundation poll. It says Biden's up three forty seven forty four. There's an Emerson College poll. It says Biden 51, Trump 49. That was done a few days ago. There is a tip polling poll that says Biden 43, Trump 42. And then there are lots of polls that say that Trump is winning as well. When you look at polls that include third party candidates like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Cornell

West, etc., you get a variation of a couple of points. So let's break this down in sort of order of importance. Number one, the reason that Biden is increasingly doing better in some polls seems to be tied to the perception of how the economy is going. People are slowly realizing things are pretty good. It takes a while. The State of the Union speech helped. Numerous focus groups went in, not super confident that the country is heading in the right direction. After watching the Biden speech last week came out more likely to think the country

is going in the right direction. It takes a while to move those numbers as to think the country is going in the right direction. It takes a while to move those numbers as people believe the country is going in the right direction. They're more likely to say, well, give me four more years of this rather than going back to the orange guy. That's just the way that is. That's very simple. One of the things that's a very interesting artifact of this is often when people are asked, how do you think the country is doing? Is it going in the right direction or wrong direction? Some of the folks who say, I think wrong direction when you say, OK, how is your family doing? How is your household doing?

How are you doing? They'll say, oh, I'm actually doing fine. And a lot of that right direction, wrong direction thing is based on the perception of how everybody else is doing, because statistically, empirically, most people we have poverty, we have homelessness, we have inequality. OK, but most people are doing OK. And one of the realities is that the more people are hearing from Joe Biden, as evidenced by that State of the Union speech, the more they are inclined to support him, the more people are hearing from Trump, the less inclined they seem to support him because

every word from Trump is just dripping with the viscosity of narcissism and hubris. That's me mirroring the sort of stuff Vivek Ramaswamy said to me during our interview. On the other hand, Biden gave a pretty solid speech and things are sort of like pretty good overall. Now, there's so many caveats here that I think are important, important to remember. We are only now officially getting to where we know who the nominees will be. Now, people who follow this stuff closely, like most of you probably have known for what, a year that it's almost certainly going to be Trump versus Biden. But officially, it's still certainly going to be Trump versus Biden. But officially,

it's still not even really the case. Biden's won every primary so far. Trump has won all but one primary, but everybody's dropped out, including Nikki Haley. So we are now, even though it is still not official, it's finally becoming sort of official in the news cycle that it will be Trump versus Biden. That is going to make the polls more accurate. The other important thing to keep in mind is that many of these polls still have eight, 10, 12 percent of the electorate missing, either because they say they're going to vote third party or they just don't know yet. And so we I know that as a general concept, we would expect polling to be quite reflective of the situation in November by the middle of March.

I think it increasingly is that. But there are still some factors here that are different. All of that being said, it's going to be close and it'll come down to a few states. You know, Biden's going to win California. Trump's going to win Texas. What's really going to matter is what happens in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona, maybe Florida, even though increasingly Florida goes red and Democrats really don't need it to win. This is the situation. It is going to depend on me and on you and on everybody we know going out to vote and saying, I care enough about the

difference between these competing visions and platforms that I'm not going to stay home. I know most in my audience are not going to stay home about people out there who are not so tied into the daily progress of this race. We just don't know what turnout is going to be, but we will talk about it. Let's take a break. We're going to hear from Brian Butler. We're going to hear from so many of the other things that happened in the last 24 hours. Glad you're with me.

Make sure you're subscribed on YouTube. YouTube dot com slash the David Pakman show. We're about to go from two million. To two point one million subscribers, the first in an important step towards three million. Thank you. a THC Delta eight and nine. They have edibles. And now you can check out the brand new drink from Ounce of Hope for twenty twenty four. The very high five milligram THC seltzer. It's the only 16 ounce THC seltzer on the market. It's only five bucks, a price no one can beat at their cannabis farm in Memphis. Ounce of Hope sustainably raises fish to feed local homeless

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I had no idea about this. It is super interesting. I'm showing some more of my discoveries here. It just connects you to your roots, where you come from. It's also given me a lot of quality time with my family showing them these discoveries. You can try my heritage totally free for 14 days. Go to David Pakman dot com slash my heritage. During that two week free trial, there are a ton of amazing things you can find out about your family and where you come from. Go to David Pakman dot com slash MyHeritage. The link is in the podcast notes. A former Trump employee known as employee number five

in Donald Trump's criminal proceedings just made a devastating admission about Donald Trump's allegedly criminal handling of classified documents. This is incredible, stunning stuff. The guy's name is Brian Butler. He used to work at Mar-a-Lago, and he is a central witness in the investigation into Trump's handling of classified documents. He is now going public with his experiences. He wants to share the truth as he sees it. He in the indictment is referred to as Trump employee number five. He says this is not a witch hunt. He says this makes sense based on what he personally witnessed. He had a role in moving boxes of classified information, including onto planes. He saw firsthand what Trump, Trump's body man, Walt Nauda and others were doing.

Butler worked at Mar-a-Lago 20 years. He has now broken away from Trump's circle by paying for his own attorney. One of the the sort of mob like tactics of Trump is he'll get everybody attorneys, attorneys who, of course, will make sure that nobody tells any truths that might be inconvenient to the big boss. Well, Brian Butler has his own attorney. He's cooperating with investigators. His testimony evidence.

He has years of text messages. Photos are providing critical insights into what went on with these classified documents. And it is absolutely stunning. We know that while the DOJ was looking for items, boxes of documents, we know that they were moved. And one of the things that Brian Butler can tell us is that there was ready access to this stuff, that these documents were being moved at the direction of Trump and others. This is incredible. And if only a fraction of this makes it into evidence that Trump's criminal trial, he is toast, folks. If, of course, did who had access to the rooms where the documents were kept? I, you know, I don't know if a master key, but I mean, like I could

have went and got a master key to all the rooms, you know, for check ins. You know, I ever saw all the check ins with the valets, all of that. So, I mean, feasibly at night, anybody could. Who made the call where these boxes were kept? You know, the Pine Hall in the Pine Hall was always guard. Anybody, feasibly anybody these doc. Trump wants us to think everything was so secure it was all perfect. Anybody feasibly could have had access to the classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. We learned that they were just sort of lying around. They're just lying around. And tens of millions of people plan to vote for the guy again,

despite the complete and total irresponsibility with these documents. Here's more of this absolutely insane interview on CNN with CNN's Caitlin Collins. Listen to this. Evan Corcoran, Trump's attorney and members of the FBI, Jay Brat, which, you know, I come to realize now at the same time he's going in there, the boxes are going from somewhere into a vehicle which are eventually going to the plane, which I load with. You hear that?

As the FBI is looking for these documents. Brian Butler says they're going into boxes, they're going into a car, the car is going to the plane and he helps load the plane. This is a firsthand witness to the alleged criminality. I don't understand how there hasn't been a search warrant for Bedminster at this point, Trump's other resort and golf course, because we now have multiple individuals who say, oh, they were they as soon as they came looking for the documents, the FBI, that is, they started moving them around, including flying them from Florida up to Bedminster in New Jersey.

Random people were told classified information. Here is another anecdote from Brian Butler. And it's this refers to the Australian billionaire who we suspected it's been previously reported. Trump was just blabbing to to impress him. Listen to this story. It's unbelievable. Were there ever any instances when you were still working there that you witnessed where Trump was, in your view, carelessly throwing around national security information? You know, this really, you know, stood out to me. But in I believe it was April of 2021, there was a member, Anthony Pratt, who he was coming. He flew in the night before.

He's an Australian billionaire. He finishes his meeting with the former president, gets in the car, and his chief of staff says, how did the meeting go? Pratt, without saying, just says, he told me, and it would be U.S. military classified information of what he told them about Russian submarines and U.S. military, you know, classified information of what he told them about Russian submarines and U.S. submarines. And that's really all I remember hearing. And I went, what? You know, I'm thinking this. I'm in the car. I'm like, did I just hear that?

So it wasn't like, oh, the meeting went well. We talked about it. It was he went straight to the point. He told me that the U.S. subs and with the Russian subs and, you know, something that would more than likely, in my mind, be classified. So it was clear to you that he was basically seeking access to Trump? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, red flags went up in my mind years before that. So Anthony Pratt, this Australian billionaire that you're talking about, he would pay a lot of money to come and have these New Year's Eve parties. So it might cost $1,000, $1,500 per person.

He was giving $1 million. And I think at the height he had 30 or 40 people there. So something that would be $50,000. Let's just say max $50,000. Here's a guy that's just buying access. It's very easy to see. And it worked and it worked either for reasons of ego, carelessness. Who the hell knows? Trump would blab. And of course, this is not the first time we've heard about Australian billionaire Anthony Pratt being told stuff like this. This is what many people are ready to vote for. They're

ready to say, give me another four years, inject it right into my veins because I want it. I don't want it. This is a national security threat. This is a national security risk. Now, of course, let's hope on this show we don't go lock them up. We want due process. But this testimony from Brian Butler will hopefully be part of the criminal trial of Trump and the due process. And it certainly does not look good. Republican Congressman Byron Donald makes a hilarious admission to Maria Bartiromo on Fox News that confirms they still have absolutely nothing on President Joe Biden's supposed criminality.

These are almost becoming satirical at this point. Maria Bartiromo interviewed Byron Donald's and said, give me the most egregious evidence you have about Biden's criminality. And Byron Donald goes, well, we know he went to Cafe Milano and had dinner with his son. Is that a crime? These people are just so pathetic. This is all they have. It's all just slipping between their fingers.

They know it. You almost start to feel bad, except you don't because they've been carrying out an actual witch hunt for years at this point, and they still have nothing. Listen to this. I get your take on specifically what evidence you have. Yeah. The most egregious evidence that you may have that points to Joe Biden being involved in the influence peddling that you and your committee have laid out. What do you got? Speaker 4 Well, we have it with the fact that we now know that Hunter Biden did bring Joe

Biden to this. This dinner at Cafe Milano. It has been talked about in various deposition transcripts. We know he was there. And I looked at the menu at Cafe Cafe Milano, Maria. They have a dish called risotto Gucci. If anything screams criminal influence, peddling and bribery, it is a dish called risotto Gucci, which the Cafe Milano charges thirty three dollars for. And they will even make it for you gluten free if you want it.

I don't know that I've ever seen bribery until I saw that they can make the risotto Gucci gluten free for you. They have nothing. They have nothing. Let's listen to the rest. He's going to try to equivocate and it tells why that's reasonable evidence of anything. But it's not only Bobulinski to Devon Archer. When we asked Hunter Biden, he couldn't recall. You have the text message famously about requesting

money from Chairman Zell. The money showed up a week later. Hunter Biden under oath said he was high. Can't remember the text message, but photos. And of course, being high makes anything that anyone you know has done illegal from the laptop from hell demonstrate that he actually was at Joe Biden's house on the day that the text message was sent. So you have Hunter Biden contradicting himself. That's evidence piece number one. Evidence piece number two is that anybody follow that? That entire word salad is evidence piece number one, which, as I understand it, Hunter sent

a text message from Joe Biden's house and also had dinner at Cafe Milano. Are there any crimes in there? Is is there anything even remotely illegal there? Fact that you have money that flows to Jim Biden on the same day checks are cut to Joe Biden and then they're calling it a loan. But there are no loan documents that exist. That's number two. And

so, by the way, evidence number two is Joe Biden gave his brother a loan and they didn't write up a document. Wow. I wonder how common that is among family members borrowing money without a contract. Now, there are many lawyers who would say, listen, even if you loan your brother money, you should get a contract in writing. It helps prevent problems in the future. But so many family members don't do that. It's certainly not evidence of a crime, despite the fact that Byron Donalds insists that this is some kind of smoking gun. Speaker 4 3. And most importantly, I think if you're talking impeachment, Joe Biden has willfully violated immigration law in the United States. Speaker 1 OK, so now they're just going to immigrate immigrants.

They have nothing. And they want to now say the fact that undocumented immigrants have entered the country under Biden means he should be impeached when they also entered the country under Trump. But Trump was great. So they have nothing. And Byron Donald's also took the opportunity on Maria's show to say that Joe Biden gave a disgusting State of the Union speech because Republicans didn't stand up. But of course, Republicans decided in advance we're not going to stand up. So it's sort of like a circular

reasoning on a whole. The State of the Union speech was disgusting. I've never seen a speech like this where the opposition party from the president's party did not stand for an hour in that speech. It was partisan. It was a campaign speech. It's so funny. He goes, listen, Maria, the evidence that the speech was bad is that I didn't stand up and clap during the speech. Right. But you Republicans decided we're going to try to make Biden look bad by not standing. Right. And that's the evidence that the speech was disgusting. But that's you decided that in advance. It's the evidence.

The speech was disgusting. Maria, I do not remember any time in covering American politics that, you know, everybody loves to say it's never been this partisan. It's been this partisan before, but it's never been this rapidly partisan. There was a time where it was hyper partisan based on actual issues on which there were disagreements. This is vapid partisanship. I've never seen vapid partisanship this bad.

Let's take a break. We've got a great interview coming up for you. And then later we will look at more defamation against E.G. and Carol. Could it be say it ain't so it is. Breaking a deeply ingrained habit is one of the toughest things to do. Our sponsor, Fume, can make it easier. Not everything in a bad habit is wrong. So instead of a drastic, uncomfortable change, remove the bad from the habit. And that's, quite frankly, what fume helps you do.

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Cal Newport, associate professor of computer science at Georgetown University, New York Times bestselling author, host of the Deep Questions with Cal Newport podcast. My first listen every week because the episodes come out on Monday and also the new book, Slow Productivity, The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout. Cal, it's so great to have you back on, you know, to start with. I don't know if you see it this way, but having read really, I think just about every book you've written, this one feels less tactical and more philosophical, in a sense, than a

world without email or some of the other books that you've written. And it's really sort of looking at a more overarching approach to the way we spend our time, the way we do things, etc. It is. Was that your intention? Am I wrongly interpreting it that way? And is there something about the place you are in your career right now that lends itself to that type of book versus the super tactical? Yeah, no, I think you're reading that right. Partially, it's where I am in my life and career. Partially, it's the topic. Productivity is something that is the focus of a lot of discussion right now. There's a lot of

debate about it. There's a lot of pushback about it. But it's really a philosophical issue, what we actually mean by productivity. And so I think that's why the book reads a little bit less tactical is that we actually have to tackle that bigger issue first of four people who are in knowledge works, this particular sector of work, where there's quite a bit of autonomy on how you approach your work and select your projects and schedule your days. What do we really mean by productivity? And to me, that's a big picture question. The small picture tactics come in later, but we have to actually tackle that question before the details make a difference.

The the three principles that you outline in the book and, of course, expand on significantly are do fewer things work at a natural pace and obsess over quality. Is there something what do you think over the last 10 years has made it the most difficult to maintain those three priorities? I know that depending on what you read, some people might assume you're going to say, well, it's social media. Others will say it's email culture and the constant requirement that many jobs to be regularly emailing about work rather than doing the work itself. But if I open it up completely, what over the last decade has has taken people away

from those principles? Well, it's a combination of two things. And actually, I would argue those principles have never been prioritized. Right. So so this is my my historical critique that I open the book with, is that when knowledge work emerges as a major economic sector in the 20th century, the existing definitions of productivity that we used in industrial manufacturing and that we use in agricultural production, they didn't fit, right?

Because these were very quantitative definitions. How many Model Ts are being produced per labor hour input? It was these ratios were very quantitative. That didn't work for knowledge work because people have diverse sets of projects they're working on. What you're doing right now might be different than what I'm working on. My workload might be different than yours. There's no set system of organizing our work we're all doing that can be improved. And so my argument is, if we look back, the solution that we came up with was, OK, why don't we focus on pseudo productivity? Like we'll use visible activity as a crude proxy for useful effort. And I'm saying by the mid 20th century onwards, pseudo productivity is actually how we have been organizing and evaluating our efforts and knowledge work. So the second factor that has created the current crisis is when pseudo productivity

crashed into the front office IT revolution. So when we got mobile computing and we got networks, we had laptops, we had smartphones, we had email, pseudo productivity plus that front office IT revolution is incompatible because now you can demonstrate visible activity at a very fine grain with email replies and slacks at any point anywhere. Pseudo productivity went off the rails once we introduced this new revolution in technology. And that's why we really see this burnout epidemic. I put it even a little bit earlier. We see it in the early 2000s in knowledge work emerge and then just get steadily worse year after year.

So it's the combination of these two things that has made knowledge work more recently, I think, feel more intolerable. I'm curious at this point after you've worked so much on writing about different aspects of this and you also are involved in a lot of different things. You're teaching at the university level and you're writing articles, you're writing books, you're doing the podcast, you're a father, et cetera. What is sort of the landscape of your week in terms of how many hours would you say qualify as work generally for you? And then how many hours have you carved out for deep work on a weekly basis or if if not every week is the same on whatever kind of timeline you could tell us? Well, so it's very seasonal, right? So first we have to differentiate.

Are we talking about the summer? Are we talking about a semester with a normal teaching load? Are we talking about a semester with a reduced teaching load? But let's just focus in on a sort of an average academic semester with normal Georgetown University obligations going on. Yes. Typically, I differentiate between teaching days and non teaching days. So from a context switching perspective, I like on teaching days to basically just be doing university admin and teaching related things. You know, I'm going to meet with my students. I'm going to teach. I'm going to prep lectures. I'm going to grade. I'm going to go to meetings. The exception will be I'll often start in the morning with some deep work, because if I don't write every day, I get cranky. But it would just be, hey, a burst in the morning, as psychological

as it is productive. And then those are teaching days, non-teaching days. I want the whole, you know, morning into mid-afternoon, if possible, doing deep work. And for me, that's almost always going to be writing. I'm writing all the time. The podcast, when I finally started a podcast after a decade of people telling me I should, my deal with myself is it gets a half day per week and that's it. And everything else has to work backwards from that constraint. If I want to add something new to the podcast, I have to figure out how to make that fit, which for me meant pretty slow growth. Okay, at first it was just me. And then when I wanted to expand the video or the format, I had to bring someone else on who could take that over so it could free up more time. It's not the right plan for hustling or getting after it, but I said it has to stay within this box. It gets one half day per week. And then the final constraint I have is I don't like to work past 5 or 5.30. Occasionally, I'll do a writing block in the evening. I'll sometimes do a writing block on

Sunday. But that's it. And so I work backwards from that constraint as well. And so I really rely on sometimes people look at what I'm producing and say that seems like a lot of things. But I think the key is it adds up to a lot of things over time. But I don't do a lot of things at the same time. Is it at all even interesting to you or something you think about to to potentially at some point get away from the structure of the teaching part and do the writing and the podcasting only? Well, I think I have a pretty good balance now. So at Georgetown, for example, I'm heavily involved in the new Center for Digital Ethics. I'm a director of the new Computer Science Ethics and Society academic major.

I see a lot of my work as really looking at technology and then how it impacts things like work or how it impacts things like our personal life. And my current setup actually is I have a reduced teaching load because the center buys out some of my courses. So my ideal year is I teach in one semester and then the other semester plus the summer that follows, I'm not teaching. And that's a good quanta of time to, let's say, write a draft of a book, for example, because I love being on campus. I love the academics. I really love being around students. So this has been a really good balance for me.

I sort of have academic semesters and more research oriented semesters. Going back a little more specifically to the book now, Slow Productivity, are you coming across as you're I think you're starting to do the in-person book events or maybe those are coming up. Maybe they haven't quite started yet. coming across as you're I think you're starting to do the in-person book events or maybe those are coming up. Maybe they haven't quite started yet. But as you talk to people about the book and you're hearing from people, what's the most common misconception about what you're saying in the book that you are hearing that might

be useful to explain or correct? Well, I mean, I would say the biggest tension is that there's two different discussions happening right now about productivity. And it's almost a little it's not tribal, but it does sort of balkanize people. Right. So there's one discourse on productivity right now is very much an anti productivity discourse. So it's it's less interested in interrogating what productivity means, tactically speaking, like what what does it mean to people? What what are we pursuing? And is more interested in seeing productivity as an effect, an epiphenomenon or side effect of some sort of capitalist agenda. Right. So it's sort of a left left anchored sort of traditional labor critique. Right. They're very unhappy with me because, you know,

I'm an intense pragmatist. Right. I'm often basing my books and writing directly in the experience and how that can get better and why it's that way. And as a technologist, I often see big determinants of things that are happening in the workplace, among other places. A lot of these big determinants are unplanned side effects of techno-social collisions. This is a big part of my program in my recent books is like understanding the way, you know, we introduced this tool to do this. And it really, in a dynamical way, shakes up the way these sort of social economic systems work. And, you know, the way email entered the scene, the way the front office IT revolution interacted with the sort of management theoretical concept of pseudo productivity. So I have this more technologist, pragmatic way of thinking this.

But those who are more on the anti productivity side, you know, this is like a base superstructure argument. And I'm just part of the superstructure trying to, you know, validate the validate the cultural systems that made the exploit labor or something like this. So that's probably the biggest tension I'm having is this pragmatist first theorist sort of anti productivity movement. In some sense, it would be like those who say the entire relationship of people to employers is the problem. And Cal's helping people figure out how can I organize my day to make it to the gym in the morning? And it's just not enough. He's too on the fringes and not getting at the root of the problem, which is some the way that the system is working in a capitalist structure. Right. And, you know, it's a good tension, right? Like you want to have that critique. This has always been the critique with any sort of more revolutionary project is you have a tension between the OK, what can we

do right now versus the what are the major changes to the system? You need both, right? So if you're just focusing on let's overthrow capitalism, that's probably not going to happen next week. And there's a lot of people right now who are completely overwhelmed with work and burning out. On the other hand, if you get just purely tactical, you have no long-term progress on the bigger underlying notion. So actually, this tension is not new. I think we've seen it in many revolutionary projects. And I think it's good.

It's a it's a good one to have. There's certainly you hear from the other side. Let's just put it that way. Is there a particular tool going back to thinking a little more tactically that when you hear someone say, hey, I use X tool and I don't mean X, the one that was Twitter. I'm just talking about like whatever to a whatever tool you're thinking of that you say, you know, really often when people are using that tool in the framework of the type

of writing that you're doing and sorting out the issues that you help people sort out, that tool is is usually not actually helping. It's often doing more damage than than it helps that you might be able to say to our audience, I would I would rethink whether you're really too into using this particular tool to solve the problems I identify. Well, I think the bigger problem people are having right now, and this is the message they're being sold by Silicon Valley, is that the tool should dictate how you work, that if you get the right productivity tool, it will fix your issues with overload or not getting things done, where I think that's the tail wagging the dog. You need to figure out essentially on paper, this is how I do my workload management. This is how I collaborate. This is the processes I use for

the different work I do most often. And then say, hey, what tools do I need to implement this thing I came up with? And here's the thing. Often the answer to that question is pretty boring. It's like I can use my email address and like a Google doc and I'm probably fine. That's like the answer nine times out of 10. So there's a revolution right now in productivity software. And I wrote a New Yorker piece about this a few months ago. What I like about the productivity software revolution, all these SaaS tools like Monday.com and Trello, et cetera, is I do like that it is a process oriented view of productivity. You know, the productivity software until about five or six years ago was just focused on making your tools faster, right? Microsoft Word has more features now, you can do more things with it.

And now we are switching towards a process-focused understanding of productivity that a tool like monday.com, you don't use it to do any work. It's all about how you organize your work and collaborate. I think that's good. But the problem is you can't just subscribe to that tool and expect things to be fixed. You still have to figure out what makes sense for me. How am I doing this? And then turn to use tools like I use Trello a lot. But it's not that I subscribe to Trello and that fix things. It was I figured out my systems and then it turned out, oh, Trello is a useful tool for

implementing parts of my system. So you don't want the tail to wag the dog with productivity tools. We're speaking with Cal Newport about his new book, Slow Productivity, The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout. The full interview will be on our YouTube channel, youtube.com slash the David Pakman show. Taking care of your health isn't always easy, but it really should be simple, simple. Take care. I want for the whole day. Each serving of AG1 gives me what I want in terms of vitamins, minerals and more. It's just a simple habit. I know that with AG1, I'm getting high quality nutrition. The ingredients are sourced for nutrient density and absorption. If you want

to take ownership of your health, start with AG1, try AG1 and get a free one year supply of vitamin and the David Pakman Show the number one dot com slash Pacman for free vitamin D3 and K2 and five free travel packs of AG1. The link is in the podcast notes. Failed former President Donald Trump apparently defaming E. Jean Carroll again for no reason whatsoever during a bonkers off the wall CNBC interview with Squawk Box and Joe Kernan yesterday, the guy just cannot help himself. We'll look at a few moments from the interview. Here is Trump unprompted as this interview winds down, just going after E. Jean Carroll.

There's no reason for this. It's potentially going to be another defamation suit for Trump. He can't stop. He just it's like he can't control himself. But these people sometimes wonder how to prioritize and you just keep talking. The issues aren't a joke. The legal issues are legal issues. They're Biden issues. Biden put Fannie, beautiful Fannie, who's turned out to be now a corrupt district attorney, but in my opinion, they're almost all corrupt. All of the stuff that you see is weaponized government. The DA in New York is being run by the DOJ. They put their top person into the DA's

office. All of this stuff. And frankly, I get a lot of credit for it. I think I'm much more popular now because they did it. It backfired on them. They've weaponized government. Think of it. They put Colangelo, one of their top people, like the top person, into the DA's office to go get Trump. They deal with Letitia James, a real lowlife.

They put people with her. They're dealing with her all the time to go get Trump. These are the Democrats. The prosecutors and judges in New York, our country could fall because of it. That's how bad it is. And companies are moving out of New York because of what they've done to me. And I'm going to end up winning on appeal. And if I didn't win on appeal on these ridiculous decisions, if I didn't win an appeal, the most ridiculous decisions, including the Miss Bergdorf Goodman, a person I never, I never met, I have no idea who she is, except one thing. I got sued from that point on. I said, wow, that's crazy what this is. I got charged. I was given a false accusation and had to post a $91 million bond and a false accusation.

People aren't moving into New York because of the kind of crap they're pulling on me. That is potentially the exact type of defamatory statement that he has previously made about E.G. and Carol, for which he even had to pay that. Understand that part of the defamation here is alleging that E.G. and Carol, for which he even had to pay that. Understand that part of the defamation here is alleging that E.G. and Carol made up all of the claims about Trump, except Trump has already been found civilly liable for those claims. He has been found civilly liable of sexual assault with the judge said met the characteristics

of rape. And so when Trump comes out, first of all, I think he thinks that by not referring to her as E.G. and Carol, by instead referring to her as Miss Bird or Goodman, he it's sort of like a get out of jail free card. I doubt that courts would see it that way. And I doubt that juries would see it that way when he then talks about the exact amount of the bond relative to the case. And we know exactly what he's referring to. That's allegedly defamatory.

And he's doing it again and potentially a critical mistake here. Now, what I'm going to show you next is a different moment from this interview. This is what I call a financial knowledge abortion. Trump tries to explain how his absurd tariffs, which are actually inflationary, won't generate inflation because he'll also give the rich tax cuts, which also generates inflation. Here he explains how inflation will be weighed down by telling us he will put in place multiple policies that actually increase inflation. Not a financial genius.

I think we can say dollars came in like clockwork. Obama, Bush, everybody else. They did absolutely nothing. Mr. President, I just wanted to ask you, though, you'd also talked about proposing a 10 percent tariff, if you will. I wanted to ask you about that because the center right. OK, get you prepare yourselves. I dare you to make heads or tails out of Trump's policy explanation here. American Action Forum, which is a think tank, said that they thought the plan would, quote, distort global trade, discourage economic activity and have broad negative consequences

for the US economy. Well they're wrong. It would distort international trade. It would bring it back to the United States. We have companies if you look at if you look at india you look at china you look at so many different countries they're smart much smarter than our country we were getting ready to do this and we were i had it just about set but you don't think it results in higher prices for for american families by some estimates it could be the

equivalent of two thousand,000 a family, according to economists. No, I think taxes could be cut. I think other things could happen to more than adjust that. But I'm a big believer in tariffs for two reasons. Number one, I fully believe in them economically when you're being taken advantage of by other countries. For instance, China was taking advantage of us on the steel. They were destroying our entire steel industry, which was never doing very well over the last 25 years anyway. But, you know, because it's been eaten alive by foreign competition and they were dumping steel. I put a 50 percent tax on China's steel coming in. And every person in the steel industry, when they see me, they started crying.

They would hug me. They would kiss me. Sir, you saved our industry. I put a very strong 50 percent tariff on on dumping steel on their dump steel. And by the way, nothing was perfect. Frankly, the tariff should have been higher. I was getting ready to do that, by the way. Mr. President, are you concerned at all that there is a hole?

There you go. So listen, tariffs on China, which are paid by American companies, which will cause inflation and tax cuts for the rich, which can also cause inflation. And that's what we're supposed to believe is going to reduce inflation. It's really not making a lot of sense. And then lastly, and I think this is so critical, Trump talks about cutting entitlements. Remember, cutting entitlements is code for starting to swipe at Medicare, for starting to swipe at Social Security. Trump speaking in a code that we all understand. He says these are never things I would do. But then he says, no, no, no entitlements.

We've got to look at. Here it is. His own words. Start policy differences, obviously, Mr. President. But one thing that I think that at least the perception is that there's not a whole lot of difference between what you think we should do with entitlements or non-discretionary spending and what President Biden is proposing. It's almost the third rail of politics. And we've got a what, a thirty three, thirty four trillion dollar total debt built up and in very little we can do in terms of cutting spending.

Discretionary is not going to help. Have you changed your outlook on how to handle entitlements, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Mr. President? It seems like something has to be done or else we're going to be stuck at 120% of debt to GDP forever. So first of all, there is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements, in terms of cutting and in terms of also the theft and the bad management of entitlements. There it is. There's a lot you can do in terms of cutting entitlements. He said it and then he denies it.

And he says it's actually Ron DeSanctimonious who wanted to do it or whatever. But when pressed, he has no problem saying, oh, no, no. Yeah, cutting. Sure, sure. We can look at that. We've got to remember that that needs to be used in a campaign ad because that's exactly what he plans to do if politically convenient.

Remember, he doesn't really care about any of this stuff. Whatever someone says to him five minutes before Mike is shoved in front of his face, if he thinks it'll help him, then he'll say it. And in this moment, it was no entitlements cutting. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It all sounds great. Well, let me give you a contrast to this. Joe Biden spoke about housing policy yesterday. And let's take a look at what he had to say. I have been saying for how long one of the main ways that we are going to deal with the housing crisis in the United States, which is too expensive, not enough housing, is we have to build, build, build more housing.

Joe Biden is now saying this straight up. And it's a great thing to hear from the president. Joe Biden spoke yesterday to the National League of Cities, and he said we have to build, build, build to bring down the cost of housing. He's finally saying it. I've been saying it for a decade. Listen to what President Joe Biden had to say. Then we'll discuss what such a program might look like.

Well, I was seeking to buy their first home or trade up for a little more space. I propose the tax cut will provide $400 a month for the next two years. Because every family, every family deserves a place to call home and a place to have your American dreams come true. Look, millions of renters are also out there in trouble. We're also cracking down on those landlords who break the antitrust laws by price fixing those rents. Landlords should be competing to give folks the best deal, not conspiring to charge them higher rent. We also cut red tape so more builders can get federal financing, which is already helping construct a record 1.7 million new housing units nationwide.

Because of you. And the federal budget that I'm releasing today has a plan for 2 million more affordable homes, including housing and a housing innovation fund to help communities like yours build housing, renovate housing, and convert empty office space and hotels into housing. Housing for renters, for owners, middle-class families, and folks, folks struggling just to get by. Look, and we realize many of you are dealing with homeless encampments in your cities and

towns. Well, we're providing $8 dollars to allow you to provide alternatives to move on house people off the street, getting them to home. The bottom line, you have to build, build, build. That's how we bring housing costs down for good. You know, all this talk from the right with esoteric ideas for working around the fringes on housing. We fix the housing problem with a number of different policies. But a big chunk of that is build more housing. The more housing there is, we increase the supply. We relieve pressure on prices. And so the sort of framework I have will put up on the screen about 30 percent. These are rough numbers, but about 30 percent of the

path here is build more housing. It's supply and demand. Build it. Another 15 percent is tax incentives for affordable housing development. So, you know, we're not going to get the private sector out of real estate. We're just, you know, people call in, let's decommodify and all the we're not going to get the private sector out of housing. So let's encourage the private sector to build affordable housing through tax breaks. I've seen programs like this that have worked. That's another 15 percent, 10 percent streamline the regulatory processes to make it easier to get new housing projects approved in so many cities. I know developers, they say, I would love to do 30 units, 15 affordable.

It's years of legal work, permitting variances, years and years and years. I'll just bail and leave the lot empty. So we've got a streamline. Ten percent use prefab and modular housing. This is a way that we can bring down the building costs themselves. The prefab and modular housing is getting better and better. Five percent would be land value taxation. You can discourage landowners from speculating and leaving things empty to, say, build something by using taxation on lots that sit empty. Not every place does that. Five percent is rent control. For me, rent control

isn't the biggest thing. If we really build out the supply and streamline building, you don't have to do a lot of rent control. Also, in much of the country, rent control is kind of irrelevant, but you can use rent control with some targeted policies for tenants, tenants to provide immediate relief. It's not the long term solution, but it should be looked at. Ten percent government sponsored affordable housing projects. So just get the government directly involved in some places building higher, the higher the developer directly hired the builder directly. Rather, the government can probably local and state governments and then other little things that can be done. We've got to relax zoning laws so you can do higher density in a lot of places. You know, my my old Brooklyn neighborhood, a large part of it. I think you can't build anything

higher than three or four stories in such a dense area. And I get it that you want to preserve the look. And there's other considerations. But there are places where if you relax zoning laws, build up a little more, you can really increase the supply, encourage community land trusts and promote co-housing and shared housing models where it makes sense. That's a comprehensive housing plan. I love that Joe Biden is doing the lowest hanging fruit. You got to build, build, build, build. And you love to see it. Now, let's see if we can actually do something about it. We have a voicemail number. That number is two one nine two. David P. Here's a longtime listener who, after

seeing the pictures of me with the vice president, I don't know if you've seen them. They're on my social media is saying, I'm proud of you, David. You got out of your mom's basement. Finally, I remember you when you're on once a week from some basement, right? You had to listen to some other guy. Boy, you've come a long way from the basement, bro. You know, with the vice president, right? David, you're awesome, dude. I've been following your career enthusiastically for a while now. Boy, you. Give me the future. Thank you. All right. I'm glad to provide hope. And yes, we're finally out of the basement. You know, we were never actually in my mom's basement. We were in a basement at a community radio station, but it was never my mom's basement. Regardless,

it's good to be out of the basement. All right. We've got a great bonus show for you today. We will talk about the argument that Haley voters should be supporting Joe Biden. We'll talk about a vote on forcing the sale of tick tock. We'll talk about George Santos running again. Oh, he's like an STD. He just won't go away. Maybe not the right analogy. I don't know. George Santos is running again. We don't want it. All of those stories and more on today's bonus show. Sign up at join Pacman dot com. I'll see you then.