The David Pakman Show - 3/15/23: Woke-shaming backfires badly, Trump lawyer lunges at host

Episode Date: March 15, 2023

-- On the Show: -- Alastair Smith, Professor of Politics at New York University and co-author of the book "The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics," joins David to discuss dictators, authoritarians, democracy, and much more. Get the book: https://amzn.to/3Z4i11T -- Republican author Bethany Mandel's brain short-circuits when asked to define "woke" during an interview -- Fox News host Brian Kilmeade brings up Donald Trump's lunch with white supremacists during a recent segment on Fox -- Donald Trump's defense lawyer Joe Tacopina melts down during an MSNBC interview with Ari Melber, lunging at the hots to try to take some papers from him -- Tudor Dixon, a failed 2022 Trump-endorsed Republican candidate, says she is struggling to properly flush her toilet -- Failed former President Donald Trump demands that prosecutors target Barack Obama and Joe Biden in a newly-released video -- A visibly scared Donald Trump demands cognitive tests for other politicians in a wacky new vide -- Voicemail caller is encouraging David to sue over his inaccurate portrayal in a recent documentary about Malaysian Airlines flight 370 -- On the Bonus Show: Electric car stores will be restricted in Mississippi, Oklahoma Republicans vote to let teacher hit disabled kids, South Carolina women who get abortions could face death penalty under proposed bill, much more... 💻 Stay protected! Try Aura FREE for 2 weeks: https://aura.com/pakman 🍷 Crunchy Red Fruit: Code PAKMAN saves you $20 at https://crunchyredfruit.com 🌳 Use code PAKMAN for 20% off HoldOn plant-based bags at https://holdonbags.com 👩‍❤️‍👨 Try the Paired App FREE for 7 days and get 25% OFF at https://paired.com/pakman 💻 Get Private Internet Access for 83% OFF + 3 months free at https://www.piavpn.com/David -- Become a Supporter: http://www.davidpakman.com/membership -- Subscribe on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/thedavidpakmanshow -- Subscribe to Pakman Live: https://www.youtube.com/pakmanlive -- Subscribe to Pakman Finance: https://www.youtube.com/pakmanfinance -- Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/davidpakmanshow -- Like us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/davidpakmanshow -- Leave us a message at The David Pakman Show Voicemail Line (219)-2DAVIDP

Let's look at a big time woke short circuit right wing author Bethany Mandel, who actually wrote a book about wokeness, was asked, what is woke? And she visibly short circuits. The interviewer is Brianna Joy Gray, who recently attacked me. But yet I am still praising her for asking this basic question because it is a question that should be asked. It's almost I mean, quite frankly, it's one of these things where it's like, who's the president right now? We use it as a as a sanity check for a lot of right wingers. What do you mean by woke? It's such an of some are calling it a gotcha, but it's not a gotcha in that it's so obvious. And if you're going to talk about woke ism and if you're going to attack

woke ism and talk about all of the reasons why woke ism is bad, you should be prepared to explain what it is. And here is Bethany Mandel asked about her book Stolen Youth, how radicals are erasing innocence and indoctrinating a generation. Sounds very scary. And it's scary because of woke. What is woke? Well, let's see if she can explain it.

You might be surprised by what she does or maybe better said, doesn't say far left. Only 7% of Americans consider themselves very liberal and probably fewer of them consider themselves to be woke. And so, you know, when we talk about traditional, would you mind defining woke? It's come up a couple of times that I just want to make sure we're on the same page. So, I mean, woke is sort of the idea that. I. This is going to be one of those moments that goes viral. I mean, well, yes, but for a different reason than she thinks is something that's very hard to define, and we've spent an entire chapter defining it. It is sort of guys, you've got to read a whole chapter to understand what it is.

The understanding that we need to totally reimagine and we reduce society in order to create hierarchies of oppression. To create hierarchies of oppression. What are you talking about, Bethany? Sorry, it's hard to explain in a 15 second soundbite. Yeah, look, your time. I mean, it's one of those things that I mean, everybody is weighing in. OK, so this other dude basically saves her. This is really, really wild. I mean, that is a short circuiting like I have never seen in a very long time in this sort of context. So a couple of different things. Anybody can lose their train of thought. Truly,

this isn't about it's you know, if somebody said to you, hey, when you say an apple, what exactly do you mean? And you might stumble because it might be like, well, you know, I mean, a round fruit that's green. Oh, like a lime. Well, no, it's it's a round fruit from an apple tree. Oh, but yeah, but you can't say from an apple tree to define it like you could you could have difficulty with definitions in this way. And you can also lose your train of thought. But the critical part when it comes to woke is, as I've been explaining to you for a long time, it used to mean one thing. Its meaning was perverted by the right. But many of those who attack woke ism don't actually understand what it is.

And that mush mouth confetti word salad, whatever it was, doesn't get us any closer. So let me make it like abundantly clear to people what we're talking about. The original meaning of woke before Republicans perverted it. And we've done a segment on this, but it should be included here. What it first meant before being perverted by the right. The term woke simply meant I've become aware of causes of social justice that I can support through activism. That's all it means. Oh, I learned about the fact that, uh, uh, public transit can be used in a discriminatory way. I've become woke to that. Now I understand that that's an issue. Maybe I want to do something about it. That's what woke initially meant. We might challenge a status quo or we might fight

some kind of oppression and it's all to create a better world. That's what it meant. OK, now Republicans, when they say woke. It it's a shorthand for any idea or policy I don't like that's on the left. OK, that's one version of it. Or also, it's a sort of conversation stopper the same way that sometimes people say that's offensive. Oh, but that's woke nonsense. That's fundamentally what it is. Now, where Bethany Mandel gets into into a problem here is that she wants to define it as the horrible negative thing that the right wants to make wokeness out to be and her physical

struggle. I mean, she's having a physical struggle to actually spit it out comes from the fact that it's not what they claim it to be. What the right wants to claim wokeness to be is some kind of unfair, non-evidence based, capricious, far left, socialistic or communistic attempt to completely restructure the fundamentals of society in some kind of outrageous Marxist worldview, you know, some some combination of that. And it sounds crazy when you say it. And so Bethany Mandel is right. It's hard to distill her entire insane chapter about woke into a 15 second soundbite. But it's hard because their view of what wokeness is, is a fantasy land, imaginary piece of nonsense. So super interesting, super interesting. And I know, you know, that the framing is, oh, everybody's going to make fun of her because she stumbled. No, the stumbling on this

particular issue is representative of the way that the right has perverted wokeness, but also doesn't even really explain that perversion in an even remotely coherent way. That's what we saw here. And it is absolutely fascinating to see. And remember, check out my segment to two important segments on this. Number one, the Bill Maher segment where he's asked to define woke. And number two, my segment, they don't even know what woke means. Those two segments combined with this one tell us 80 to 90 percent of what we need to know about the right use of this term. Hey, this is very, very interesting. We are continuing to cover the soft about face happening on Fox News with regard to the failed former President Donald Trump's new candidacy in 2024.

And Fox and Friends host Brian Kilmeade is really at the center of a lot of this and what is taking place. You know, sometimes there's this feeling in when you do what I do that we have to explain a phenomenon in the absolute most extreme black and white terms. Fox has completely abandoned Trump and is now hostile to him and will do anything they can to prevent him from being president. No, that's not what happened. What is happening on Fox is that a number of hosts, Brian Kilmeade is certainly one of them, have done a soft turn away from Trump, where it seems pretty clear that even if it's not about personally what they want,

but as they're as they're the role that they play on their channel dictates, they want to be friendly to the idea of a dissent is a candidacy and presidency. If it doesn't happen, they're not going to completely cut Trump off such that they have no access to him. If Trump really is going to be president for another four years, Fox would be very poorly positioned if they lost access to Trump because of adversarial or antagonistic relationships. On the other hand, they do want to be there if indeed someone else takes control of the Republican Party and ultimately the presidency like Ron DeSantis. But and so we've seen Brian Kilmeade do a number of different things,

go out on the street and try to find DeSantis supporters or play catch with Ron DeSantis in a total softball interview. As we looked at yesterday, this sort of thing here is something that actually did surprise me a little bit, which is that Brian Kilmeade brings up Trump now seems more disciplined than he did at one point. Like, for example, compared to when he had lunch with white supremacists. It is genuinely surprising to me that Brian Kilmeade is even willing to acknowledge that. Take a look at this segment. Since he went and visited East Palestine, stopped having lunch with white supremacists

and has got a very disciplined message. According to the Emerson poll, he's got 73 percent approval rating among Republicans with high school, with high school degrees or below. And he's winning in almost every state outside California. And I'll add this to it. It would be interesting if he does not win Iowa and you go to and Governor Sununu gets into New Hampshire. And Governor Sununu is so popular winning three terms as governor there. He could be out and on a bit of a roll. This is the most disciplined I've ever seen him even compared to 2016. If you see his team, you get text messages every day. OK, so he said this is the most disciplined I've seen Trump since he stopped having lunch with

white supremacists or as Brian Kilmeade calls them, supremacists, which is a different word. But I totally understand what Brian Kilmeade means. This is the Trump pivot that remember is a conditional pivot. It's a tentative pivot. It's a sort of depending on what happens pivot. We'd kind of rather someone other than Trump be the nominee. But if it is Trump, we can't totally abandon him because we're going to want access for the next four years.

Now, this is quite a low bar for a presidential candidate, right? It's an understatement to call this a low bar. Trump has never seemed this disciplined, particularly since he stopped having lunches with white supremacists. You know, the mainstream media won't tell you. But guys, it's been months since Trump last dined with white supremacists, and we've got to give him credit for that. It is a stunningly low bar, but it is a little bit surprising to a degree that Brian Kilmeade is even talking about the white supremacist lunch.

And it does seem like another one of those subtle digs. We'd rather someone else. But I'm also framing this as a positive thing. We'd rather someone else. But Trump is looking pretty damn disciplined at this point in time. Super interesting. And Fox, of course, wants to host Republican primary debates when they get going, never mind presidential debates. And so to some degree, they have to do this. Now, if we look at the latest polling, what does the polling say about what's going on? It's really a mixed bag. There's a new morning consult poll rated B minus where Trump is winning over DeSantis by 24. That's a poll that includes a ton of other people,

including Pence and Haley and Liz Cheney and Abbott and a whole bunch of different people. There is a new CNN SSRS poll, not as well rated of a poll. That one's a C plus C plus B minus is pretty similar. That one has DeSantis ahead of Trump, even with the inclusion of Nikki Haley and Mike Pence and Tim Scott and a bunch of other people. These are two polls conducted essentially at the same time by very similarly ranked pollsters with a 26 point difference. Trump plus 24 versus DeSantis plus two. Very, very interesting. But it cannot be ignored that the vast majority of these polls, public policy polling premise, University of North Florida is an exception. And that's looking specifically at Florida. But in the national polling, Trump's winning most of them, even with this outlier CNN poll. So Fox News is doing what Fox News is most inclined to do.

How do we maintain access for future profitability and ratings? That is, at the end of the day, the number one priority. That explains Fox hosts caught in text messages acknowledging that all of the election lies were indeed lies, but saying our viewers believe something else. And so we've got to keep going with that narrative on TV. Expect this to continue. And it is really wacky stuff. That Brian Kilmeade clip will be on my YouTube channel, which you can find at youtube.com slash the David Pakman show. And a Spanish version of this very story will be on the Spanish YouTube channel, which you can find at David Pakman dot com slash Spanish.

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It is a complete and total meltdown by attorney Joe Takapina, probably not the best idea to go on MSNBC to begin with. And it went just about as badly as you can imagine. The subject matter was, of course, the continued Stormy Daniels controversy. Now we are years into this controversy. Joe Takapina saying Trump didn't really lie when he said he didn't know anything about it because he would have violated the terms of the settlement. And so it's not really a lie. Take a look at this. And about a minute in, he's going to lunge for Ari Melber in a completely unhinged moment

for anybody, particularly for a defense lawyer. If all of what you say is true, it is. Then why was Trump hiding it and lying about it at the time? And I'll play that for your response. He lied about it. We all know that. Take a look.

Take a look. Let's see. Did you know about the $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels? The question was, did you know about the payment to Stormy Daniels? And Trump says no. Now, we all know Trump did know about the payment to Stormy Daniels? And Trump says no. Now, we all know Trump did know about it, but that's the sort of the core of this. If there was no truth around it. You have to ask Michael Cohen, Michael Cohen's attorney, and you'll have to ask Michael.

Ari, that is, that's what you're going to consider a lie. A lie to me is something material under oath in a proceeding. I didn't say perjury. I said a lie. Yeah, but that's not a lie. That's not a lie. Here's why it's not a lie. A lie to me is something material under oath in a procedure. I didn't say perjury. I said a lie. Yeah, but that's not a lie. That's that's not a lie. Here's why it's not a lie. That's not a lie. Here's why it's not a lie. Could you did you know about this? OK, so now he's lunging for the paperwork. He's lunging for Ari. But did you put that? Let me let me. Did you know about this? You know, I don't. We don't need that. And again, here's why it's not a lie. Yeah, because it was a confidential settlement. So if he acknowledged that he would be

violating the confidential settlement, doesn't make it not a lie. It could make it a legal problem, but that doesn't make it not a lie. Is it the truth? Of course, it's not the truth. It's of course not the truth, but it is not a lie. They say the left are the postmoderns where words have no meaning anymore. Post-Teleth truth, he would be in violation of the agreement if he told the truth. So by him doing that, by him doing that, he was abiding by not only his rights, but Stormy Daniels' rights. It seems like we're drawing some blood here because you're having a strong reaction. Yeah, strong reaction is an understatement. Did lie about it. And in a confidential settlement, you can easily say no comment or I'm not getting into it. He says, and the reason why I at this, he says, no, no, I didn't know about it.

He did know about it, didn't he? You know, but here's the thing. I don't know the timing of that video. I really don't. And I'm not trying to. Ah, so now we have a new argument. Maybe at the time, Trump really didn't know about it. Really Joe.

April, April 28. But I don't know the timing of that video in relation to the timing of the other video where he was speaking to Michael Cohen. What was the date of that other video? Do you know? Yeah, we have the Cohen recording. This was around the 2016 campaign pre-November. Right.

It was 2018. Later, the original conversations were in the fall of 2016. Yes, sir. So obviously he knew about it. But what he decided to do was not violate the confidentiality. So once pressed where, listen, the dates aren't going to get you out of this, Joe. Now he says, well, listen, OK, the dates do suggest he knew about it, but he was not acknowledging it in order to stay compliant with the confidentiality agreement clause and provision of that agreement,

which was the right thing to do. So he could have said no. He didn't lie and lying was the right thing to do. Oh, good. I hope that this comes to court at some point as an explanation. Or he could have said, I don't know anything about it, which is what he did. But that's the right. I would advise my client to do the same thing. He's speaking to some, whether it's a journalist or some young lady on the street. September 2016 is the exact date. But whether he's speaking to a journalist or some young lady on the street is shouting out a question that is not the form for him to go into detail question about a confidential settlement agreement. Right.

So, guys, he didn't lie and he was completely correct to lie based on the circumstances and because it might have been a young lady shouting at him on the street. This is the sort of legal representation, I guess, that you find when, uh, I don't know, you, you look at the back pages of a classified newspaper or something. I don't, this guy is actually relatively well-known Joe Takapina. And I know that is, I know he's come up on the show before, although I don't remember the exact context. This is ridiculous. This is, and if this is the type of argument that Trump's counsel is going to be making, if, and when indictments do come forward and I'm not saying they will, I'm not, but at

this point it's like either they will or they won't. But if they do, if this is the sort of legal counsel that Trump is going to be surrounding himself with, it doesn't look very good. Now, it is important to mention that Donald Trump has a history of having sort of like your TV lawyers and then your actual lawyers and the TV lawyers go on TV and they say certain things and your actual lawyers that are working on cases are usually different. Where we saw this come to a disastrous head was with Alina Haba, I believe her name was, where she was both talking about Trump as a lawyer on TV, but also filed some motions and very quickly got herself into hot water after the search warrant was served at Mar-a-Lago, where if I again, I'm going from memory, if I recall correctly, she put her name on something saying they gave back all the documents, even though they clearly hadn't.

And it became a very, very quick mess. So the point here is Trump has TV lawyers and real lawyers. I don't know that he pays either of them, quite frankly. But if this is the sort of representation we expect him to have, it's going to be really, really wild if he does get himself indicted. I know, I know, I know that you're not going to believe this, but a Trump endorsed MAGA candidate who lost is saying she's having trouble flushing her toilet and getting it to properly flush with only one pull of the chain, for lack of a better term. If I told you that this was going to be a topic a few years ago, Trump obsessed with toilets and people he endorses obsessed with toilets.

I wouldn't have believed it and I wouldn't have expected you to believe it. But in a segment on Fox News, Leo Terrell and Tudor Dixon are on. Remember, Tudor Dixon was the failed MAGA candidate Trump endorsed who ran for governor in Michigan. Massive dumps of votes came in for her opponent, Gretchen Whitmer and Tudor, unfortunately for her, did not become the governor of Michigan. But no need to worry. She still is weighing in on the important political issues of our time. And those include stoves. Hannity is upset that they're coming for his stove soon. And Tudor isn't pleased with her toilet. This is considered political commentary in 2023. Listen to this.

I'm Michigan gubernatorial candidate Tudor Dixon. Tudor, I'll throw this to you first. First, they want my stove. Now they want my dishwasher. What's next? They're going to take away my iron next? I don't know. Yeah, well, look, I'm someone who does lots of laundry. I do laundry for six people every week. And so I know a little bit about this.

And the last thing I need is my laundry taking longer. I'm already dealing with a low flow shower head and my kids are coming out with conditioner smashed to their head like an old Seinfeld episode. And I have to tell them to get back in and rewash. I can't even flush my toilet one time to get toilet paper down because of the low flow toilets. I don't need a low flow washing machine. Folks, this is more a segment for a dietician or nutritionist. Tudor is missing some fiber in her diet. This isn't about low flow, low flow toilets whose regulations have not actually changed

for a very long time. How on earth did Republicans get obsessed with toilets? And remember, this all goes back. Why do right wingers have so many plumbing issues? You know, with left wing people, I know no one ever seems to have an issue with plumbing. Plumbing is working beautifully. I'm actually having some plumbing work done soon. I mean, I'm going to ask about this. I'm going to ask my plumber, do Republicans struggle with toilets more than Democrats? Here is the origin of this. When Donald Trump first said he's got to flush his toilet 10 to 15 times.

We have a situation where we're looking very strongly at sinks and showers and other elements of bathrooms where you turn the faucet on in areas where there's tremendous amounts of water, where the water rushes out to sea because you could never handle it. And you don't get any water. You turn on the faucet, you don't get any water. They take a shower and water comes dripping out. It's dripping out very quietly. Have you ever seen when you take a shower, the water drips out very quietly? People are flushing toilets 10 times, 15 times as opposed to once. It's just as funny today as it was however many years ago. This guy is out of his mind. People are flushing toilets 10 times, 15 times, as opposed to once.

It's just as funny today as it was however many years ago. This guy is out of his mind. They end up using more water. So EPA is looking at that very strongly, at my suggestion. Very strong. You go into a new building or a new house or a new home, and they have standards on where you don't get water. You can't wash your hands, practically. There's so little water coming out. You can't wash your hands. So let's add some reality to this. I think

that for most of these people, I mean, we know about Trump's diet. I don't know what Tudor is eating, but we could take some guesses. This is really an issue of diet and it's not actually an issue of plumbing. And sometimes it can be confusing, but it's really a diet issue to add reality about the regulations. What they are talking about when it comes to the shower heads is that the energy department under Biden decided to go back to the standard from 2013. OK, about shower heads. Now, the truth is, it's not really going to make a difference. Trump made a small modification that allowed for slightly higher flow shower heads based on how water per minute is measured, where instead of being per your total shower, it could be per device. So if you have like

a rain shower head and then a handheld, you could have a total of two point five gallons per. I'm sorry, you could have two point five gallons per minute for each each element, whereas the previous rules were two point five gallons per minute total. So it's basically going to change nothing what Biden did, because just about every showerhead on the market meets the 2013 requirements. It's not like Trump changed this. And then all of a sudden, every manufacturer changes what they're doing. And then now they're going to have to change it back. And everybody who installed is going to have to do it. This is just it's a made up issue, quite frankly. OK, the toilet stuff is even dumber because there's nothing going on with that other than I mean, listen, we know Trump was trying to flush documents down the toilet. That might have

been a factor in the trouble he was having. But this is wacky, wacky stuff. And where we are now is that Republicans go on Fox News and complain one flush just isn't doing it for me. I don't know about you, Sean. Plastic, it's everywhere we look and not enough is being done about it. One hundred billion plastic Thank you. bags and zip seal kitchen bags. They're just as strong and high quality as the plastic bags you're used to. Hold on bags are 100 percent plant based and home compostable, meaning they break down in just weeks, not decades. Their zip seal kitchen bags come in sandwich or gallon size to fit all of your needs, whether it's carrots or crayons at home. I put all of my food waste in a hold on to the Single use plastics harm the planet at every stage, production, disposal, decomposition. Join the growing movement away from single use plastic. These products are really great.

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I really appreciate your time. Great to have you on today. Very glad to be here. So let's start with this premise that bad behavior is good politics because it seems maybe to the layperson that sometimes bad behavior is actually bad politics. But it seems that may be more internationally and less so within the country wherein that is taking place. So is it important to distinguish when we say bad behavior is good politics, whether we're talking about international reaction or within a leader's country? Or does it does it not matter?

Does the principle hold true regardless? Well, I think we should stop worrying about what's good or bad. We should worry about what leaders choose to do and what leaders do is what's good for them. I want to emphasize them as the particular individual and not the country. So the president, United States does what is good for the president of the United States. Kim Jong-un does what is good for Kim Jong-un. And that typically means keeping those people happy that you need to stay in power. The difference between why we get much better governance in the United States is because the

U.S. president needs the support of tens of millions of people. And Kim Jong Un needs the support of tens or hundreds, but certainly no more than thousands of people. And it's that scale of how do you keep a lot that the appropriate people happy determines the kinds of policies that leaders have. That's interesting. So in the United States, the good politics are that which will get you reelected in the system we have, which includes 100 plus million people voting, obviously with the influence of lobbies and corporations and all of these other things in North Korea.

Similarly, the good politics that keep you in power are those immediately sort of around you who could try to depose you, but it is less about the population of North Korea. Right. You should never make the mistake of thinking leaders are out there to make life good for the people. And so the U.S., I don't think of the U.S. as behaving in a very particularly normatively good way with respect to overseas politics, which is, I think, where you started this conversation, is because the US president is not beholden to the people in other countries. So the president's job is to enrich and improve the welfare of the people that he needs to stay in power. And we shouldn't expect him to do anything else. So foreign aid,

military intervention is designed for promoting the interests of the people the president cares about and not the interests of the countries where aid is being delivered or intervention is taking place. If we look at a situation like Russia, which is being sanctioned heavily because of its incursion into Ukraine, there was an interesting NPR piece I heard about a week ago, which argued that despite whatever is being publicly said about the very limited impact of the sanctions, the sanctions are actually really disastrous for Russia at all levels. I guess we don't know definitively whether that's true or not, but let's let's imagine that it is the case that the sanctions are having a disastrous impact. How does that change or impact this balance of what is good to stay in power when you introduce an external force like a sanction? Well, you know, again,

why sanctions? I always think of whenever sanctions are applied, they've almost always failed before they start. If the sanction was going to be a big enough stick that it was going to get compliance, that the leader in the target state would have already complied with the threat. So the fact that they're being applied means that they're almost certainly not going to work. And why do they get applied? It's because it's domestically popular for Western Europe and North America to apply these sanctions. So it's good for the president to do it, keeping the constituents happy. It may actually be very helpful in Russia. One of the consequences,

the price of oil is higher. So there's more revenue. Also, the fact that there's now limited options for the oligarchs to trade and enrich themselves in another way. All the revenue, all the wealth, all the benefits that are coming politically now comes centrally through Putin because the sanctions have limited the access. And so in some sense, it's given Putin a little bit more power. This is a problem with sanctions. When the U.S. sanctioned Iraq against Saddam Hussein, one of the consequences was that the value of smuggling became much more valuable. Who controlled the smuggling? The cronies of Saddam Hussein, who became massively wealthy because the population suffered as a whole.

If we if we stick specifically with dictatorships and sort of pseudo dictatorships with authoritarian strongmen and those types of countries, what are the most effective strategies for weakening a dictator's coalition of supporters like we talked about that the general population can take? What works? What doesn't work? Well, the the real problem is dictators, once they are well established in power, they're very, very hard to bring down. So you need to look for moments of weakness in bringing about change. And we should recognize that we can't just bring down dictators because we feel like getting rid of them. You know, I think most people in the United States would like to see the North Korean regime replaced, but that's just wishful thinking unless the U.S. is willing to invade, which I

think would be a very poor policy. Just expecting that the people are going to rise up and bring it bring the regime down because it's a terrible regime. It's not going to happen. So you need to look for moments of weakness in regimes and in autocratic regimes such as North Korea. The times are actually much more likely to be health related than any other reason. Economic leaders can survive terrible economic crises. We can think of the sanctions in Iraq. Saddam Hussein survived those. It took US military intervention to remove him. We could look at Venezuela. The Maduro seems to have held onto power.

The economy's been driven into the ground, but he made sure that he paid just the right number of people, just the right amount, so they stayed loyal. So the military are well fed and he survived in power. We can't just give instructions to people and say this is going to happen. You need to – we should accept that these regimes are going to survive in power. Speaker 1 When we look at instances in history where a regime has fallen, what are some of the most notable examples that were not health related that come to mind? Or are there any notable to come to mind? Speaker 2 Well, you know, failure to pay people the right amount of money and harming the

interests of those who keep you in power. So, you know, the Russian czar in World War One, he had this crazy tax. He used to tax vodka, but because he didn't want the troops being drunk, he sort of banned vodka during World War One. That cut off a huge amount of revenue, cut down on the amount of money he had to pay people. Then what did he do? He turned around and told the soldiers that were guarding him at the Winter Palace they were going

to get sent to the front line to fight the Germans. Well, they didn't want to go fight the Germans at the front line. And what did they do? They opened the gates and allowed the people to come in. And so the revolution succeeded. Generally, leaders are deposed because the people around them allow the masses to succeed or they take care of it in a coup themselves. It's very rare that the people will succeed. And so that's a case where quite simply the Russian czar didn't pay the right people, didn't reward them properly, and they turned on him. The classic case I like to think of is Julius Caesar. So Julius Caesar, we think of as, you know, if we follow our Shakespeare, we think of him as trying to be a tyrant. Well, he was already the dictator. He was already

effectively the king. The problem for him was he actually tried to enrich the people. There was huge debts from the wars that have been incurred and meant that a lot of regular Roman citizens were being sold into slavery because they couldn't settle their debts. And he tried to alleviate this debt burden. Unfortunately, the people who own the debt were the senators around him. So when he tried to get rid of the debt, he tried to help the people. And look what it got him. He got him stabbed by by his fellows in the Senate. If we go from the autocratic circumstances and dictators to democracies, one of the features or bugs, depending on your perspective about democracies, capitalist democracies, Western democracies, is that the very nature

of the economic circumstances of large swaths of people, we can think about the United States in this case, is that they are overwhelmingly in a position where they can't afford to coalesce and take the actions that might be most impactful in the sense of, well, mass rallies at urban centers and not going into work for a month and so on and trying to cripple the financial system. These are things which we can all imagine having an impact on the country and at least having the potential to achieve some change. But because health care is mostly tied to employment and because 40 percent of the population can't meet an unexpected four hundred dollar expense, the system itself creates a population that will find it more difficult

to activate in a way that is more likely to achieve change. Can you talk a little bit? Do you agree with that analysis? Can you talk a little bit about whether that does become its own impediment to activism? Well, I think I actually sort of a little bit disagree there. OK, most Americans don't want to bring down the American system of government is the American system of government is incredibly representative. And the government, by and large large generates huge numbers of public goods, a safe environment, law and order, transparent government, national defense, all these public health, these things are provided and these are precisely the things people want. So

we protest because we would like the government to work harder. But we actually have a system of government that we actually like. The very few people seem to want to. I mean, Trump's attempt to take over the government, the relatively few, it was thousands of people who thought that was a good idea. The vast majority of the people did not show up because they like the institutions that we have. You were discussing the inability to coordinate. It's the people who really want political change who don't have the ability. You and I, we have the right to free speech. We can say what we like.

We can meet with our friends. We can go where we like. We can publish. We can talk. We can speak. People in North Korea don't have those freedoms they have a terrible form of government yes they live in abject poverty they're not allowed to go anywhere they're allowed to say anything um economically they're terribly off they would

love to change their system of government but they don't have the ability to in the united states we have the ability to protest we just you States, we have the ability to protest. We just, you know, the system isn't perfect, but we shouldn't strive for perfection. The system is good. And therefore, most of the time, we don't want to bring it down. Well, I guess it's interesting to think about it with something like, for example, health care. And when you look at polling about health care, the polling seems pretty clear that even across the political spectrum, people generally believe that the government should provide some basic level of care regardless of ability to pay. Not everybody supports Medicare for all very clearly. And the more information you give about Medicare for all

support actually goes down a little bit, but some minimum level of care that would be something that you would think is OK. We have a functioning superstructure, but this is a pretty big program that we would like to see function differently. It doesn't happen. And different people point to different things. Well, the amount of influence that the health insurance lobby has or the Republican politicians don't want it or there's too much money to be made for the doctors under the system we have or whatever the case may be. How would the type of analysis you do look at something that is a pretty clear desire from

the people, but that doesn't seem to be getting any closer? Well, we should remember that the U.S., whilst it's a good system, isn't perfect. And winning a seat in Congress doesn't require like half the voters in your district. First of all, the districts are highly gerrymandered. Yes. Many of them are. And so often you just need to win the primary. Well, winning the primary, you can often win with five or 10 percent of the votes in the primary. So we're really now thinking that to win a seat, to get representation, we're looking at, let's say, 10% of the population, of the voting population in a district. Well, that's much smaller than thinking about the half

that we tend to think of as democratic. Right. And so if we want to produce changes that are going to produce more, what I always call public goods, things that benefit everybody, good public health care, national defense, things like that, then we want to always work to increase the number of people to whom politicians are holding. So, you know, to win the presidency and clean up the House and Senate, you only win, you need 25 million voters enough if you put them in the right seats. Because it's not, it's first past the post and the seats are extremely

unevenly distributed. And we got the Electoral College. So you don't need, you know, you sit there and think there's 360 million people odd in the US. So, you know, let's say there's 200 million. So you need 100 million voters, but you need a quarter of that because not everybody votes and things are disproportionately set up. more people they're interested in, the smaller the impact of specialist lobbies like doctors, healthcare lobbyists, healthcare insurance companies. If you've got to buy, you know, if you've got to buy a thousand votes, you're going to listen to them a lot. If you've got to buy a million votes, you're going to listen to them less. And so to me, that is always the solution to this is not legislative or anything like that. It's changing the institutions by which governments operate. And I'm trying to think through the math of like the congressional district.

So if you've got a very lopsided congressional district, let's just call it that there's 750,000 people per congressional district, although I think it varies a little bit. But let's say it's 750. If voter turnout in the general is 50 percent, but not everybody is even eligible, you're talking about a couple of hundred thousand total votes. But then the primary might only be a fraction of one party. So you're down to 80 to one hundred thousand. And if only 20 percent come out, that's 20000 votes and you need 51 percent of that to win the primary. You're talking about like 12000 votes might win you a congressional primary and that might

be all there is to it. That's exactly that's exactly the kind of math is how I like to think about political systems. I don't like to think of them as in some nominal terms of democracy or autocracy or whatever. I like to think of them in exactly that. That's exactly the kind of calculation I like to think about classifying political regimes. So let's think about how we can change those things like the resort loser laws. So if you lose a primary, yes, you can't run in the general election in six states.

Right. I don't think that that is everywhere. No, they they they the rules because the elect the constitution says the electoral rules are set by the, by the states, but in a lot of places you can't run again. It's makes it very hard, um, for a centrist candidate that might appeal broadly to actually get through the primary and then run in the general election. So these, these are the kind of changes that I think are useful for getting implementing health care. The book is The Dictator's Handbook, Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics. And we've been speaking with the book's co-author, Professor Alastair

Smith from New York University. So appreciate your time and your insights today. Very, very glad a VPN every time they connect to the Internet. No excuses. A VPN hides your IP address. It can keep your data private from these companies and even from hackers. That's why I reached out to private Internet access about being our sponsor. Private Internet access is the only VPN that has proven in court multiple times they don't log your browsing history. There are no log practices are also independently audited by Deloitte. No other VPN takes your privacy this seriously. Lightning fast for downloads.

Streaming content only available in other countries works as well. Works with all major streaming platforms with one account. You can use it on up to 10 devices and they have a 30 day money back guarantee and their 24 seven support is amazing. Go to PIA VPN dot com slash David to get 83 percent off. That's only two or three a month and you'll get four months free. The link is in the podcast notes. Donald Trump, looking as dark orange as he has ever looked, has put out a series of new statements that are absolutely chilling in terms of what they mean regarding freedom of the press, freedom, freedom of the justice system, the

ability of elected officials to be able to influence prosecution, which is something Trump really wants to do. Trump put out a statement in which he says he wants the psycho special counsel investigating him to go after Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Why he wants them to do that isn't completely clear. Take a look at this dangerous claim that dangerous statement that Trump is making. Mad Dog Psycho Prosecutor Jack Smith sounds like a very innocent name, doesn't it? Yeah.

Jack Smith, just so common. So, so pedestrian put there for only one reason by Biden and the weaponized Justice Department should stop this witch hunt altogether or at a minimum should give Biden, Obama and everybody else. He almost said Obama. Did you see that? He struggled with it and almost said Obama. It's all together or at a minimum should give Biden, Obama and everybody else the same treatment as they give me. Right now, of course, that's really weird. That's like if you're accused of murder and you go, hey, listen, you should give my high school bully the same treatment. Well, but that is is there reason to think that the high school bully committed murder? Because otherwise, why would we do that? Doesn't make sense because

we have two sets of justice in our country. That's true. But it's not Democrats and Republicans. It's wealthy elites versus everybody else. And the people won't stand for it. Oh, there you go. So a very powerful declaration from a confused looking Donald Trump. Trump also during this statement, and I've not seen him do this before. He positions himself almost like he's running against both the Democratic and Republican parties, which is very, very interesting. And he claims to be leading both parties. It's a confused statement. See if you can understand it.

Massive and unprecedented prosecutorial misconduct due to Trump derangement syndrome and very, very big leads against both parties in the polls. That's he's leading both parties. What's causing it? We can't let it happen. It's illegal as can be. We're going to stop it. We're not going to let them win elections by using the law illegally. Thank you. Right. You can't use the law illegally. And for people wondering, this does seem to be primarily a lighting issue that is afflicting Trump here. I don't know if Antifa is in charge of the lighting for these videos. But Trump says he's he's leading both parties. What does that even mean?

This this I struggled to get through this video without breaking out in uncontrollable laughter because it's so, so, so bizarre. Trump also calling out reverse racism in this very same video, which, you know, again, it's either racist or it's not. And they continue to be confused. Crooked Democrat prosecutors, many of them racist in reverse. They are absolute racists in reverse, in reverse, is being racist in reverse the same as being the victim of racism? Maybe that's what Trump means. Are trying to steal a second presidential election. They did it in 2020 and we're not going to let them do it again in 2024.

Now understand what Trump means is I tried to steal a presidential election in 2024 in 2020 and I am going to try to steal another one in 2024. That's really what he means here. Make America great again. There you go. So Donald Trump putting out these strange there's he's almost like vlogging. They're almost like video blogs and none of it makes any sense. But this is increasingly the way that Trump apparently wants to be communicating with the followers that he has. And part of the advantage, I will admit, is that often these videos are done with in little pieces with tons of jump cuts. It's we've seen behind the scenes video of Trump

trying to record a longer narrative. And it's very glitchy and it doesn't it doesn't like go very well for him. So this may be a way that Trump can cut these things together to make them sound a little bit more coherent. So a really strange statement. And now I want to focus in more specifically about a couple other aspects of this very same speech. Donald Trump looks visibly scared in a new video wherein he demands cognitive tests for other elected officials. This is completely

and totally bonkers. And what's fascinating is in a way he's agreeing with Nikki Haley in that there should be cognitive tests for elected officials. But there is absolutely seemingly no understanding on Trump's behalf that many of the people calling for the tests are calling for them because they don't think Trump would pass them. Let's take a listen to this. In my mind, anybody running for the office of president of the United States should agree to take a full and complete mental competency test simultaneously or before with the announcement that he or she is running and likewise, but to a somewhat

lesser extent, agreed to a test which would prove that you are physically capable of doing the job as president. Yeah. Now understand in Trump's mind, he thinks that this full and comprehensive test would be the Montreal cognitive assessment where you identify a giraffe and draw arrows on a clock and remember five words, man, woman, person, camera, TV famously were Trump's examples. But that is not a full assessment.

I hate to tell you that is like a dementia and stroke screening, brain injury screening. Anyway, let's continue. Be an outstanding president requires great mental acuity and physical stamina and strength. If you don't have these qualities or traits, it is likely that you will not succeed and you will disappoint the entire world, let alone our own country. And that's what happened under Trump. Interestingly enough, this is like a very accurate diagnosis of exactly what happened. Trump couldn't do it. And everybody was indeed disappointed. We need to make America great again. Take a competency test. Let's see whether or not these people that are running for office are competent. I took the test two years ago and I

aced it. I'd love to take it again because I think I'd even do better. He aced it, but he would do better. He would get like X. It's like getting a four point four GPA. But he running for president where three hundred and fifty million people are relying on you, they're relying on your brain, they're relying on your competence. I think taking a competency test would be a good thing. There you go. Thank you. Thank you.

Wow. Just really incredible, incredible stuff. And then also really weird when it comes to videos released by Trump. He prays it. He is becoming so obsessed with Ron DeSantis that he actually in this video praises Democrat Charlie Crist and says Florida's been good from before DeSantis. This is a very interesting approach he's taking. For those of you that didn't notice, Florida was doing great long before Ron DeSantis got. I can't deal with the disank this thing. I can't tell if the sanctus is that Trump messed up saying to sanctimonious once. And so now he's he's sticking with the sanctus. But the serious

use of that is crazy. People are fleeing from New York to Florida and other places. Right. Because of high taxes and out of control crime. It's really bad. Yeah. Not because of the governor. Thank you, Mr. President, for doing that. But it's not because of the governor. Florida was doing fantastically. You had a governor named Rick Scott who did a very good job. Even Charlie Chris, the Democrat, did a good job and he had very good numbers. Sunshine and ocean are very alluring. It's not too hard to work.

It's like a travel video promo. Those factors. So just remember, Florida was doing really well long before Ron DeSantis got there. Yeah. A message from your president, Donald J. Trump. Listen, the one big takeaway there is for Trump to be willing to praise a Democratic Florida governor, Charlie Crist, he must be really desperate to attack DeSantis in any way possible. And I can only imagine if DeSantis does run, how ugly this is going to get. Now, over the last 24 hours, I received a few emails from people, people in the audience who said, you know, David, I'm actually wondering, is DeSantis setting himself up

to run in twenty twenty eight because DeSantis may genuinely not want this ugly primary against Trump? Trump's not going to run in twenty twenty eight no matter what. Either he'll have been president for four more years and that'll be it, or he'll lose and he'll be eighty two or however old he would be then. And he's not going to run. Then the way to do it would be for DeSantis to politely bow out or does not run and then be ready to go in 2028. DeSantis would be like 48 years old at the time. And that might be the absolute best way to go. It's an interesting idea. It is a quite an interesting idea. I just

don't know if DeSantis is going to be able to get away from the polling numbers that he has, despite the fact that he has he's not even running yet. So we're going to follow it. We will see. But Trump highly, highly triggered by DeSantis is mere existence in the state of Florida. We have a voicemail number. That number is two one nine two. David P. Many of you wrote in and called in and said, David, you got to sue them over that documentary where they make you seem like a conspiracy theorist.

If you don't know what I'm talking about yesterday, I talked about my inclusion in a documentary about Malaysia, Malaysian Airlines Flight 370, wherein a clip of me is used that makes me look like a conspiracy theorist, even though in the clip I'm debunking that conspiracy theory. Here's what one caller who says, sue the hell out of them. Hey, David, I just listened to your piece on the Malaysian flight conspiracy theory that you were on on Netflix. Just a quick comment.

You absolutely should sue. You should sue. Those people took your comments completely out of context. And although you're not inclined to do so, remember that, you know, this is how some of these places and people operate. And so there needs to be consequences. And you, I'm sure, have the resources to do it. So, yeah, 100 percent sue and make them pay. All right. Well, there is one demand that I sue. I'm just not very litigious by nature, you know, and it's partially my fault what happened, as I explained, but it would be great content for me to sue. So that

would be the one draw to it. We'll explore. All right. We've got a great bonus show for you today. Electric vehicle stores, I guess, is what we're calling them, are going to be restricted in the state of Mississippi. Oklahoma Republicans have voted to let teachers hit kids with disabilities in school. Yeah. And South Carolina who get abortions, South Carolina women who get abortions could face the death penalty under a proposed new bill. Yeah, it's insane what's happening. All of those stories and more on today's bonus show.

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