The David Pakman Show - 3/28/23: Anti-trans explodes after mass shooting, Republicans slam Trump's Fox interview

Episode Date: March 28, 2023

-- On the Show: -- Tess Wilkinson-Ryan, Professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Law and author of the book "Fool Proof: How Fear of Playing the Sucker Shapes Our Selves and the Social Order―and What We Can Do About It," joins David to discuss the sucker narrative, societal norms around parenthood, and much more. Get the book: https://amzn.to/42NZZny -- Right-wingers immediately blame demons, transgender people, and gender-affirming care for the shooting at the Christian Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee -- A mother visiting Nashville, Tennessee hijacks a Fox News report about the recent mass shooting to call for gun safety regulations to be passed -- A visibly disoriented Donald Trump gives a confused and bizarre interview to Fox News propagandist Sean Hannity, focusing heavily on attacking Ron DeSantis -- Even Republicans, including former Republican Congressman Jason Chaffetz and Fox News hosts Brian Kilmeade, slam Donald Trump for his terrible interview with Sean Hannity -- Despite a concerted attack from the American right wing, it appears as though "wokeness" is actually winning out in the United States -- Donald Trump releases a bizarre video about parents loving, or not loving, their children -- Voicemail caller the Eggman suggests not even "wasting time" talking about mass shootings when there is no political will to actually change anything -- On the Bonus Show: Republicans looking for filthy rich Senate candidates, controversy erupts over Michelangelo's David, TV anchor taken off air after quoting Snoop Dogg, much more... 🌞 Get 10% off your first month of BetterHelp online therapy: https://betterhelp.com/pakman 💪 Athletic Greens is offering FREE year-supply of Vitamin D at https://athleticgreens.com/pakman 🛌 Helix Sleep: Get 20% OFF a mattress + 2 free pillows. Go to https://helixsleep.com/pakman 🥄 Use code PAKMAN for $5 off Magic Spoon at https://magicspoon.com/pakman -- Become a Supporter: http://www.davidpakman.com/membership -- Subscribe on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/thedavidpakmanshow -- Subscribe to Pakman Live: https://www.youtube.com/pakmanlive -- Subscribe to Pakman Finance: https://www.youtube.com/pakmanfinance -- Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/davidpakmanshow -- Like us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/davidpakmanshow -- Leave us a message at The David Pakman Show Voicemail Line (219)-2DAVIDP

Speaker 1 Well, it's another day in the United States and another several mass shootings. Remember, even when they don't make the news, there are typically a number of mass shootings every day in the United States. Yesterday, there was one that did make national news. It took place at the Covenant School, which is a Christian private school in Nashville, Tennessee. As of right now, we believe six people were killed as well as the shooter. Three children, three staff members were among the dead. The shooter has been identified as a 28 year old former student killed by responding police officers. And very quickly, the sum total of the narrative from the American right wing has become that the shooter was trans and thus everything from drag shows to gender affirming care are to blame.

Oh, and psychiatric medications as well are to blame for what took place. The shooter had no criminal record and had attended this school at an early age. According to the Tennessean, the shooter was a trans man who used male pronouns. And immediately this is the sort of reaction that we get from anti trans activist Matt Walsh. Always remember what happened at the Covenant School. Remember what happened to those innocent victims, to those children. We are facing a truly demonic evil. Never forget that radical Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene says, quote, How much hormones like

testosterone and medications for mental mental illness was the transgender Nashville school shooter taking? Everyone can stop blaming guns now. Candace Owens jumping into the mix, saying when you play Frankenstein with people's body parts, this is code for gender affirming care that sometimes includes surgery. When you play Frankenstein with people's body parts, you can't be surprised when they behave like monsters. A person willing to execute violence upon his or her own body will not hesitate to impart violence onto someone else's linking, I guess, gender dysphoria to being violent

against other people, which doesn't make any sense and has never been demonstrated empirically. Dan Bongino says, quote, Because it has rarely failed me, I'm going to wait until I have the details of the Nashville attack before offering detailed comments. However, after spending the past two hours reading the absolutely grotesque comments by leftists about this incident and the attack on Rand Paul Stafford, a sane person can only conclude that we're dealing with demons on the left. If you're sane, says Dan, you would blame demons. There's no other

explanation for their evil. None. That's a very, very interesting take. The now infamous cat turd right wing account, which has gotten the publicity of Donald Trump reposting their content, cat turd posts. They've been grooming your children and now they're shooting your children. Seriously, when are you going to stop being afraid and start speaking out against evil? At what point do you stop selling your soul to cave to this woke mob? Again, groomers to blame Benny Johnson from the right wing organization TP USA Turning Point USA tweeting three weeks ago, Tennessee banned child gender mutilation. Today, a transgender committed premeditated

mass murder hate crime against Christians killing six, including three little children. This was an act of demonic vengeance by a movement of mentally ill domestic terrorists. Enough. And then Laverne Spicer tweeting the anti-Christian rhetoric in our nation has now resulted in a school shooting in Nashville, Tennessee. So a couple of different things here. First and foremost, there is no evidence whatsoever that drag shows, gender affirming care,

demons or any of it are responsible for this particular shooting. Furthermore, it is abundantly clear that we aren't going to prevent shootings with things like the Stop Woke Act of Florida or banning drag shows or banning the amorphous CRT, which they seem unable to explain even what it is or whether it's even being taught in classes or any of it. We do have a whole bunch of different ideas with regard to gun safety, none of which the right wants to implement, which would certainly help reduce the number of these incidents. No one, as I've said before, no one policy would prevent every shooting.

And I've talked about before and the gun show loophole, universal background checks, mandatory waiting periods, no high capacity weapons under age 25, mandatory gun insurance, required community support letters. If you're buying a gun and you're under 25, ban some weapons, periodic mental health evaluations, extensive licensing process, gun buyback program. All but David, the gun buyback program wouldn't have prevented that shooting or banning some weapons wouldn't have prevented this shooting. That's right. But all of these things would prevent some shootings. One other note about this. I posted a tweet yesterday

sort of calling out the fact that despite continuing to ask for thoughts and prayers and saying that part of the problem we have is God has been taken out of school. I pointed out this shooting happened at a Christian school. This was either deliberately or accidentally misinterpreted by some as me blaming the kids who were shot. And of course, I would never do that. Unfortunately, I took that tweet down because of the number of threats that came in, not only against me, but against members of my family, people finding my family's contact information and going after them. So I did delete the tweet.

The point I was making, of course, was that Republicans who offer nothing other than prayers are unwilling to implement any of the policies I just mentioned and continue saying the problem isn't guns. Clearly this was not an issue of that, given that it was a Christian school. That is what I meant. Unfortunately, the threats are raining down. And I did delete that tweet for those who are asking. We will continue talking about this. Let's briefly take a detour into a mom who was able to get in on a Fox News segment to say, when are we going to actually do something about the gun safety issue? So yesterday there was a press briefing from Nashville PD after the shooting at the Covenant

School, this horrible event in which six people were killed and the shooter also died. And a parent was actually able to get on air, which was fantastic. And as The Daily Beast writes, a mother visiting Nashville took to the Fox News airwaves to call out the country's lack of gun safety as yet another mass shooting unfolded at a Nashville school. This was as reporters and crews were waiting for a police press conference to start. The woman has been identified by local reporters as Ashby Beasley, who herself survived the July 4 parade in Highland Park, Illinois, and was a block away from the Covenant School

yesterday. Here she is jumping in and this is take a listen. Aren't you guys tired of covering this? Aren't you guys tired of being here and having to cover all of these mass shootings? I'm from Highland Park. The audio briefly cuts out, but then it comes back. Family vacation with my son visiting my sister in law. I have been lobbying in D.C. since we survived a mass shooting in July. I have met with over one hundred and thirty lawmakers. How is this still happening? How are our children still dying

and why are we failing them? Gun violence is the number one killer of children and teens. It has overtaken cars. Assault weapons are contributing to the border crisis and fentanyl. We are arming cartels with our guns and our goose loose gun laws. And these shootings and these mass shootings will continue to happen until our lawmakers step up and pass gun safety legislation. Yeah, but instead they want to pass laws about critical race theory, books that need to be banned, art that needs to be banned, history that can't be taught, sex education that can't be taught. They want to do everything other than actually deal with what is at issue here. Speaker 4 I'm pretty sure this was an unsecured weapon that this teenager got a hold of.

We can't even pass gun safety, safe storage laws in this country to protect kids from getting a hold of weapons that they shoot each other with. All right. So we're going to break away there because that reporter who was using that camera is obviously setting up to do a live report there. But the woman said it quite succinctly. Aren't you tired of this? Yes, we are tired of this. Speaker 1 Yeah. Of course, most of Fox News disagrees with what needs to be done in order to try to resolve the situation. Good for her. Sounds weird to say right place, right time, because the the right place is not

really being a block away from a shooting that's extremely dangerous, but the right place, right time to at least get that out on national television and absolutely good for her. They want to ban all sorts of stuff, but it's all the wrong things. And we're going to continue covering it. We'll take a break and be back with plenty more right after this. Facet memberships give you unbiased, personalized, affordable financial advice for any financial decision you may be facing. Real estate, tax benefits and equity, whatever the case may be. And they are fee only, as I have always said, one should seek a facet. Membership includes a dedicated CFP professional.

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We're going to look at the comments of Republicans in a moment. But let's first look at what happened in the interview. Again, the interview handled by Trump's, I guess, friend, at least at one point, friend to the extent Trump has friends, Fox News propagandist Sean Hannity. And Trump spent much of the interview equivocating about the threat of violence against Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg that he posted a few days ago and attacking Ron DeSantis, neither of which played particularly well with anybody here.

Sean Hannity asks Trump about that death and destruction post and then the other one showing him holding a bat next to Alvin Bragg. And Trump kind of plays dumb, but his explanation is also completely unintelligible. So all this information that came out in your favor, you talked about death and destruction and then you did the baseball bat picture next to Alvin Bragg. And you did take that down. And my only question is, why open yourself up to criticism? You have to understand that when the story was put up, I put up a story.

We didn't see pictures. We put up a story that was very exculpatory, very good story from the standpoint of what we're talking about. What? And they put up a picture of me. And you know where I was holding the baseball bat? It was at the White House. Make America buy America because they did a lot of buy America things. So I guess he's saying because the source photo of the bat wasn't actually him standing

next to Alvin Bragg. It's no big deal. And this is a company that makes baseball bats. Then they put next to that picture a picture of Alvin Bragg. I didn't do it. They did it. The the I guess the people that do the paper or somebody put pictures together, but I was holding a baseball.

Some pictures together in order to promote made and wasn't on your post. The truth. So no, no. What they did is we posted the story, but they had a picture up and they then put a picture up or the picture was put up that nobody noticed or saw or that nobody thought was bad. These were two. Isn't this crystal clear? Separate pictures. I was promoting made in America. You make these baseball bats instead of sending over to Japan and China and all other places where they're made.

This was a company, good company that makes baseball bats and other things like that in America. They took that picture from the White House and they put it up and then they put a picture of Alvin Bragg up. OK, so, of course, we know nobody has alleged that Trump was actually next to Alvin Bragg holding a bat to his head. The issue is Trump publicized the compilation image of Trump holding a bat next to Alvin Bragg. Now, in this next clip, clip, Trump's Trump seems to say, well, when we published it, there was no picture. And later, the picture appeared. Let me be clear. So you did not post the picture of you with a baseball bat in the Oval Office next to the picture with Bragg. Somebody else did. I posted a very positive

article. And whatever picture they put up, they put up I posted a very positive article and whatever picture they put up, they put up. My people didn't put up the picture. I think the picture maybe was either in the article or was put in the article later. OK, so anyway, Trump posted it to Truth Central and he seems very much confused about how the Internet works. Trump then talked about his rally over the weekend, which we covered yesterday in Waco, Texas. Trump wildly claims that there were in reality 60,000 people there.

Now, there were thirty five hundred people there. But Trump says 60,000. Well, I deal with it. We're dealing with very dishonest people. We're dealing with thugs. We're dealing with people. I actually believe that hate our country. Right.

Last night, I had a rally with tens of thousands of people like the press admitted there were at least so he says tens of tens of thousands, 25 or 30,000 people that the press admitted there were 25 or 30. And then here's the whopper. You can double it, at least in Texas, Waco, Texas. Right. So the press admits there were 25 to 30,000. And so the real number is double,

which is sixty thousand. There were thirty five hundred people there, maybe five thousand. That's it. And this is a lie. As old as Trump's political career, you just make up numbers about the number of people at your events. And the truth, of course, is like you and I know that the number of people at an event doesn't actually tell us much about how much of the country supports Trump. Trump might have had 3000 or 20000 people. It happened to be 3500. But imagine that he had 20000. That still doesn't mean that he would win an election or that he won in 2020 or whatever the case may be. But Trump and people around him see the number of people at one rally as some kind of proxy to his totality of support in a country of

three hundred and forty million. Trump then claimed that he would solve the Russian invasion of Ukraine in a day, but he definitely can't explain how, because then his enemies would know his plan. World War One and World War Two looked like patty cakes. OK, this unbelievable because we have people that don't know what they're doing. But if it's not solved, I will have it solved in 24 hours with Zelensky and with Putin. Right. And there's a very easy negotiation to take place. But I don't want to tell you what it is, because then I can't use that negotiation.

It'll never work. But there's a very easy negotiation to take place. I will have it solved within one day. Right. First day in office, Trump. I mean, that's as realistic as he's going to solve the Israeli Palestinian conflict in the first term. He's going to build the Mexico wall where Mexico will pay for it. None of it's believable. This is as unbelievable as anything else. Then we get to what is for some people the crux of this

interview, DeSantis and Trump really going after DeSantis. And this is what a lot of Republicans didn't like. Starts with Hannity just asking, I thought you guysSantis. And this is what a lot of Republicans didn't like. Starts with Hannity just asking, I thought you guys were friends. And Trump says, no, we were never friends. The question I'm asked the most about about you of late is Ron DeSantis, right? This is the question. What happened? I thought they were friends.

What happened? Not friends. I didn't know him well, but he was on impeachment. OK, so Trump says and they cut these as we were not friends and I didn't really know the guy. Then we really get into the meat of it. And Trump again telling this story of when Ron DeSantis came to Trump with tears in his eyes. And again, I continue to be shocked at the number of grown men sobbing around Donald Trump. Something about Trump makes big, tough guys sob. So what happened with Ron is the following. He came to see me. He was getting killed. He was being crushed. Adam Putnam. It was over. I have many people that I know that work for Adam Putnam. They said it was like a new thing.

I hate to use this expression. It was like a nuclear weapon went off when you endorsed because they considered the race to be over. They had the race. He had millions and millions of dollars and he was way up in the polls. He was beating Ron by 30 points or so. It was over. Ron came to see me, tears in his eyes. He said, I need you to do me a big favor. Yeah. First he asked for the meeting. Then he asked me for the favor. Crying. I said, what's the favor? Would you endorse me? I fought for you. And, but again, he, a lot of people fought for me. You fought for me only rightfully, but you fought for me if you thought I was right. Right. A lot more than he did. But he said,

I need your endorsement. I said, Ron, you're so far behind. I can't imagine. Does anyone believe this story? If you got George Washington's endorsement combined with the great, great Abraham Lincoln, if you had their endorsements, I don't think you could win, Ron. But tell me about it. Go ahead. He said, I'm telling you, I think I could win if I could get your endorsement.

And he was, you'll have to check the records, but many, many, many points. It was over. Yep. And the nomination just. It was a very close race. The nomination was just, okay. I gave, I said, let's give it a shot. Okay.

You know, you defended me. Adam Putnam didn't, one way or the other. I think he's probably a nice guy. You know, I never met him until later. A year later, I met him. He said, when you did that, it was like a rocket went up. He said, my race was over. They were already buying furniture for the for the governor's mansion.

They were going to win. All right. So anyway, Trump saying DeSantis cried to him and then that's and the rest is history. And then lastly, Trump claiming that DeSantis would be making pizza if it weren't for Trump. Then I had him get him. I had to get him against the star of the Democrat party was going to be Stacey Abrams. And now we call him a crackhead because that's what he was a crackhead. His name Gillum Gillum. And there was no way Ron was going to be Gillum. So he got the nomination, but there was no way because this guy was going to be the future of the Democrat party.

And I said, Ron, you can beat this guy. Let's go. I got him the nomination. By the way, because this guy was going to be the future of the Democrat Party. And I said, Ron, you can beat this guy. Let's go. I got him the nomination, by the way, could never gotten the nomination. He would be working in either a pizza parlor place or a law office right now. OK, there you go. He would be either in a pizza parlor or a law office, which isn't that bad. I mean, I think that those are two very different careers, law officer, pizza parlor. But needless to say, Trump is responsible, deranged, visibly confused and disoriented

Trump. But most importantly, more and more Republicans don't like this. After Donald Trump gave this interview to Sean Hannity last night, a number of Republicans, including even on Fox News, said this is not so good. This is not so good. First example is former Republican Congressman Jason Chaffetz, also a current Fox contributor who says this was a very bad interview.

Trump gave a bad interview. Jason, you said overall you thought President Trump did a very poor job in the interview. Trump gave a bad interview. Jason, you said overall you thought President Trump did a very poor job in the interview. Why? I thought Sean Hannity did a good job, but I watched that and I thought, where is Donald Trump? I voted for Donald Trump twice. I have defended him countless times. I thought he was horrific. I think that was the worst interview I've seen the president do. He was whining, he was complaining. He does that in every interview, but it was particularly bad. The victim card time and time again. And then after that, he complained that somebody had endorsed was now running against him. And I thought he was absolutely horrific.

He's the former president of the United States. Act like it. He didn't in that interview. Wow. Wow. And then even Brian Kilmeade, when he weighed in about it, one of the hosts of Fox and Friends this morning saying, you know, he's kind of punching down and he really should not do that. And as far as Kilmeade goes, this is about as strong of a criticism of Trump as you will ever hear. Bob Dole and George Bush 41 want to tear each other's eyes out. John McCain and George W. Bush never really got over the personal animosity as a locked

horns. You could say that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, it got extremely personal and they've never been close since, even though they worked together for a short period of time. So this is not unusual. But a usual attack on Ron DeSantis would be, I respect him from what he's done, but I'm the one with international experience. I'm the one that did the Abraham Accords. I'm the one that made NATO pay up to 10%. I'm the one that made sure that Ukraine wasn't invaded. I'm the one- I mean, a lot of those things are lies, but okay.

Gave them weapons to defend themselves, not MREs. So you point out- Energy, independence. Yeah, it seems to me the tactic more traditionally would be, yeah, Ron, at 44 years old, he's done a lot. Well, look at what I have done in four years, and these are the same players. I like to go back and finish the job. And he's been very nice, Sticky Haley. I think he's been deferential to Mike Pompeo and Tim Scott. I can't imagine saying something bad about Tim Scott. But with Ron DeSantis, he sees a threat. But I think that his best offense as the front runner would be don't punch down.

Don't punch down, says Brian Kilmeade. So listen, this is the start. This is the start. And we will see if it continues of some Republicans saying this entire obsession with the Santas thing, the attacks, the criticisms, the punching down, as Brian Kilmeade calls it, the whining, as Jason Chaffetz called it. This isn't good for Trump. Now, I think the counterpoint to this is that Trump is so far ahead and despite allegedly facing an imminent arrest, he is polling more and more strongly against the Santas, who meanwhile is on a book tour and

getting tons of favorable press and softball interviews. And DeSantis is polling is decreasing. So while I agree with the criticism, I don't know that Republicans care about Trump whining and punching down and all of the things that he's doing. And also, it doesn't seem like they are flocking to DeSantis in the way that at one moment it was predicted that they would. The next step is, is Ron DeSantis going to run or isn't he? If anything, the recent polling over the last 10 to 14 days declining might get DeSantis to reconsider. But we're going to watch it. Some Republicans not at all pleased

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What We Can Do About It. Really great having you on today. I appreciate your time. Thank you so much for having me. So to start with, let's talk maybe about what is the sucker construct or or that idea that you talk about and elaborate in the book? Yeah, the sucker construct is the idea that there are a whole bunch of interactions or sort of dynamics transactions in our everyday lives that take the shape or can take the shape of a scam that feel like, wait a minute, I have a concern here that I'm about to, or I have, I'm about to sort of voluntarily enter into something that's going to leave me holding the bag. It's going to leave me with some unfair bad results, thus making me a sucker. And the reason for thinking about this as a construct

is that it can sort of be overlaid on a variety of situations. It's not always obvious that you have like a Ponzi scheme going on. What sorts of situations that might not be obvious, right? Like outside of actual Ponzi schemes, would this be relevant? Yeah, I think probably some of the ones that are like most intuitive are cases where you've gone to buy something and the price is higher than you thought it should be. So I give an example in the book of my sister going to buy a Gatorade from a place that she really realized when she went in was a tourist trap and sort of had this moment of being like, you know, I'm not one of these people who pays $6 for Gatorade, but she was like actually really thirsty and actually needed to get a Gatorade ASAP.

And she realized, wait, what am I doing? There's no reason for me to think I'm a sucker here. I just need to buy this drink and move along. Other situations that come up in everyday life would be like deciding whether or not to believe somebody who's giving you an excuse for something, deciding whether or not to let someone cut in front of you in traffic. I think there's a lot of these little dynamics where people sort of get their hackles up and think like, what does it make me if I let you, you know, whatever, zoom down the breakdown lane and then pop in front of me on the highway.

And one of the arguments that you make, and that seems quite reasonable, is that this fear of being the sucker impacts personal choices, where if we had maybe a more default belief that getting suckered wasn't a possibility, we would behave differently than having this sort of guard up. What are the sorts of personal choices that people would make based on this fear of being suckered? Speaker 1 Yeah. Maybe I can give like give two examples from two different sort of sides of the kind of decisions you might make. So I think about this as impacting decisions that about that are about like getting ahead and then impacting decisions that are more like other regarding. So how you sort of do good rather than yeah or how you be

good in the world I guess so one example would be say personal investing so there's actually a really nice study that sort of asks people that asks people in two different conditions of an experiment how much money would you invest in this company if I gave you the stats of this company? And the stats of the company are either, look, there's an 80% chance that investors break even, 15% chance that investors double their money, or a 5% chance that they lose it all. And the 5% chance was described to half the subject as a 5% chance that the founders of the company didn't, they had underestimated, sorry, they'd overestimated consumer demand. They made a mistake. Honest mistake. Honest mistake. Exactly. Yeah. So you

can see where it's going, right? So the other half of the subjects are told there's a 5%, that 5% chance, that 5% downside risk, that's the risk that these guys are frauds. And, you know, the numbers there are the same, right? In both cases, there's a 95 percent chance of breaking even or doing better than breaking even. But people had really different responses to what to do in those situations. People were way less willing to invest in the maybe fraud situation, you know, only a 5 percent risk. I guess the difference, if you wanted to argue that there is some logic to that difference would be, well,

if they are frauds, then we're definitely not getting our return. Whereas if they're wrong, we might just get a different return or market conditions might change. I mean, I get like it's set up in a way where you're trying to eliminate that. But there are there are there would be some argument like that, I guess. No, And I think that that, that what you're describing is actually exactly how this works psychologically. Like I think you are, you're exactly right to think that the way it works is that once you invoke the fraud possibility, people basically have a whole bunch of ways that that sort of fraud reasoning affects the way they think about the numbers, right. They think, well, the fraud number is really bad.

That one's serious. The other number doesn't feel as serious for the kinds of reasons that you describe. And you can think about the ideas like how prone are people to fighting the hypo? What's happening is that you're sort of resisting the math, which is, I think, exactly what people are doing in the real world, saying, well, wait, the math doesn't feel as bad to me. Right. And part of the argument is like, that's exactly that's exactly the point. The math feels worse once you invoke the possibility of a scam rather than just a mistake. Yeah, that's an interesting one. What what was the other example

from a different area? Yeah. The other example is, which I think that a lot of people find pretty intuitive, is that people can get really nervous or wary about feeling like a sucker when they're engaging in basically like a charitable transaction. So if you've ever heard people sort of resisting donating money or resisting even giving money to somebody who's asking for money on the street for example and they say what are they going to spend it on right and there's a sort of what does it make me if they're going to spend this money on something that I don't approve of right that's that's sort of a consistent fear

and there's a whole bunch of sort of I mean well so there's a whole bunch of pleas, for example, from food banks. Yes. And the food banks say, we really appreciate donations, but please donate cash. Cash is what we need because we know what the needs are of the people who we're serving. We don't pay retail prices, right, we pay wholesale prices and we can buy things in bulk. And a lot of people really resist donating cash. It's a lot easier I think to raise, to do a charity drive where you're asking for in-kind donations, you know, toys, coats, food, cans of, you know, canned goods rather than cash. And there's some really interesting studies

that suggest that people basically feel like, well, cash is so easy to abuse. Cash is going to, you know, if I give cash, I'd be worried what people are going to do with it. Whereas if I give a can of beans, There's only so many things you can do with that. Yeah, exactly. It's kind of exploitation proof, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. So it's sort of exploitation proof. And I know it, I can see how people can sort of justify that in their minds, like what's going

on there. But actually, for any individual, if I was going to donate, let's say food to a food drive for me to take, to get into my car and drive to a store and pay retail prices for a bunch of rice and beans and then to bring them to the food bank is actually a huge waste of time and money. And for all I know, they need baby formula, right? Not rice and beans. And so it's actually a way of making this donation way less valuable and way less and way more costly for me. Speaker 1 when it comes to I mean, we're sort of kind of getting into some stereotyping of like,

what would the folks who are on the receiving end be likely to do if they received a versus B? Can you talk a little more generally about how stereotyping plays a role in the sucker construct? Speaker 1 Yeah, I think it plays like a really underappreciated role. Or I should say, actually, maybe I want to flip the question a little bit and argue that the ideas we have and the fears we have about playing the sucker are actually constitutive of a lot of intergroup stereotypes, of a lot of the most pernicious sort of avenues of bias in the culture. So if you think for example, the example I've raised about the donations, this is a place

where I think a lot of people can see that we live in a society where there are stereotypes, for example, about people living in poverty, right? That actually what they're doing is taking your taxpayer dollars and using them to avoid entering the workforce. Those kinds of stereotypes are leveraged to basically reduce solidarity, I would say, right? To sort of like to come between people who want to do the compassionate thing and the compassionate or the sensible or the humane or

however you want to describe it, to come between them and that instinct and sort of create rifts between people. And it does seem to follow from that belief that if you believe that you would say, well, by donating the cans rather than the money, I am acting logically based on this stereotype about the group that would receive it. Yeah, I think that that's right. That's I mean, I think that that's sort of exactly where people go. The more suspicious you are of the people to whom you are donating goods or money, right, the more you'll go out of your way to only make a very particular kind of donation. I mean, and I would sort of

still argue that that is still sort of at its core an inefficient donation, in part because there's not actually, I mean, in part because the the the stereotype content is we don't have reason to believe it's true. Right. I think it's you know, it's it's bringing in a bunch of sort of pernicious classism, basically. When we think about different types of so, you know, there's like hustles, scams, Ponzi schemes, business practices to some degree. You know, we were recently talking about the FTC now is looking at passing a law that says you have to be able to cancel a gym membership in the same way that you sign up for it. Right. So it can't be you sign up in 30 seconds online, but then you've got to go in in person with a notarized form in order to cancel it. If that's how you have to cancel it, then you've got to sign up that

way, which would never happen because the whole point is reduce friction for the sign up, increase fiction for the cancellation. That's like a business practice, which you can argue is a sort of hustle or scam. But people's sort of resistance to it is very different than someone on the street asking for money. What's happening psychologically there? Speaker 4 Yeah, it's a great question. So and I should say that the gym example is like very close to my heart, in part because my day job, I'm teaching contracts. And so I do a lot of my research is about consumer contracts and the way people interact

with this whole world of sort of clicking to clicking to agree. And one of my deep concerns about the way that consumer contracts operate in the world is that people do feel like they are bound to these deals and sort of don't perceive them as these as an exploitation in the way that you might expect, given how hard it is to get out of your gym membership, right? Right. So, so part of the argument that I'm that, that you're picking up on is the argument that it feels worse to be taken advantage of by someone who you thought was your subordinate or peer than someone who you already assumed had a bunch of power. So if you think that a scam is a power play, and I think it is, I think it's about power in part, right? If you feel like you've been scammed, one of the experiences you

have is a feeling sort of foolish and humiliated, right? It's sort of a low stat. It's a lowering of your sense of like, my belonging in this group, my sense of dignity and belonging, right? Okay. Being able to be made to feel that way by someone who you already assumed had power or or you feel I should say you feel less if you feel as acutely if it's coming from someone who you already thought was sort of making the world go around. Whereas if you think about it as people who you thought were who you assumed were sort of in positions of less power than you. And it feels like you've been kicked down further on the sort of social ladder in ways that feel really terrible, right? In ways that feel like destabilizing, like what is my

sense of status and belonging in the in this community? That's interesting. And that, you know, when I think about thirty five dollar overdraft fees on a checking account, which might add up to five hundred bucks versus someone suckered you out of five hundred dollars worth of Bitcoin, the latter is sort of someone just like you who figured out a way to get five hundred dollars in Bitcoin from you versus something that seems more systematic and sort of like a business oriented transaction where you could argue. I mean, I'm not saying that you're told the overdraft fees up front. Like I understand that it's not exactly the same, but the feeling would come away being dramatically different.

Yeah, I think that that's right. I think people feel like there's a there's a theory in psychology that I like that I like a lot called system justification. And it's just the idea basically is people are sort of motivated to explain that the system works, right? So you're motivated to say like, well, you know, the banks have to make their money somehow. And I think I knew, you know, I was alerted beforehand that I was going to hit the overdraft fee, even though, so even though just to be clear, my own, my argument is like, no, that's deeply problematic. Like, in fact, nobody can read all these terms and conditions.

It's right. This is having all of these sort of fines and fees be associated with this sort of culture of scolding people about reading the fine print, I think is super cynical. Yeah. But I think you're right that when it comes from like a, as you say, like a peer, like someone who's sort of like leverage their position to get one over on you, even though you're both just people out there in the crypto world, it feels like, yeah, I've been like I sort of have been like demoted in this social world. Last thing I want to ask you about in terms of like foolproofing ourselves so that

we can't be scammed in specific areas, You can always find tips when it comes to those phishing emails. Here's the way that you handle that. When you go to buy a car, don't let them make the conversation about your monthly payment. Like first talk about the sale price, then deal with fine. You know, there's within specific areas, there's all these ideas. Are there more overarching principles or are they really the types of principles that lend themselves to paranoia and are less useful, practically speaking? Yeah.

You know, in some ways I have this this deeply unsatisfying answer to that question, which is kind of like that part of the view of the part of my view is is to surrender more often to let it be that in that there are more cases in which you have thought through what would the consequences in this case be of being sort of a little bit duped or scammed or whatever and if they aren't that big to just let it go. So I think the context that you're describing, like buying a car, that's exactly the kind of context where you want to really have your antennae up. You want to be especially wary. The stakes are certainly higher.

The stakes are high, and you know the only goal is to get out of there with a car that you can afford. You don't have a goal of making friends with a car that you can afford. It's not like you, you don't have a goal of like making friends with a salesperson. Right. But there are all these other contexts in life where you can sort of get this kind of sucker prickle at the back, you know, like, oh, is this going to happen to me? That happened, I mean, so for example, in the life of a teacher, that's me, right? In the, in your life as a parent, as a friend, where you start to get that, that little prickle and it really helps to think, well, wait a minute, what actually is the risk here?

How big of a deal would it be if I gave a student an extension on a paper that they didn't technically need for the reason they said they needed, right? That would probably be to me a small deal. By contrast, it would feel like a really big deal if I treated a student callously who actually needed my help, right?

It's about like weighing the real risks in sort of going back to that investment example right of like asking yourself to talk through the math a little bit to say is it right do I really think that that my sort of focus on this you know risk of a fraudster is something that I believe in in some deeper way or is this a little mistake I'm making a sort of a way my attention's been been torn away from the place where it really belongs? Yeah. And the example about the paper and the extension also relates to an asymmetry in if I'm correctly assessing versus incorrectly assessing. And that certainly can be a big factor as well. The book is foolproof How fear of playing the sucker shapes ourselves and the

social order and what we can do about it. We've been speaking with the book's author, Professor Tess Wilkinson. Ryan, really appreciate your time and your insights today. Yeah, thank you so much for having me. This was great. If you're like me and you love the nostalgia of enjoying a bowl of cereal sometimes as an adult, check out our sponsor Magic Spoon. Magic Spoon is the breakfast cereal with the crunchy, sweet goodness you love, but with zero grams of sugar, more protein and only four to five net carbs. So it's perfect if you're doing low carb, if you're doing keto, if you're like me and you just don't want to eat a The David Pakman Show David Pakman dot com. Thank you so much for five dollars off. That's magic spoon dot com slash Pacman.

The link is in the podcast notes. You know, the last week or so I've been thinking to some degree, it seems as though so-called wokeness is actually the prevailing opinion. In a way, it seems as though wokeness is winning in the United States. And Eugene Robinson from The Washington Post wrote a really great piece yesterday called Wokeness is Winning, and it makes some excellent points backed by facts, which I'm going to get to in a moment. But when I started to suspect that this entire anti woke framing and campaign and obsession from the right, maybe a bit of an overplay of the hand that they are, that they are currently

playing was pulling out of Florida that a lot of Ron DeSantis is extreme anti woke stuff could potentially backfire because by and large, a majority of the country seems to sympathize with the woke perspectives, even when defined as woke. Now there's two different things here. Okay. Let me give you an analogy. When we talk about health care, you could say the government has a duty to provide a basic level of care to everybody, regardless of ability to pay very high support for that

claim. On the other hand, if you say there should be a government takeover of your health care, very low support for that claim. But when we actually dissect what do we mean here and accurately represent what things are, we see that people generally tend to agree more than they disagree with the left wing perspective on health care. The government does have a basic duty to provide an entry level of care at minimum to everybody. If you say to people, are you in favor of wokeness versus if you say, do you think that

it's important to promote equality of opportunity and accept people who are trans and businesses should take steps to promote diversity. When you ask people about those individual issues, there is significant support for them. But then you go, well, what about woke? Are you woke? Much lower level of support. Case in point in Eugene Robinson's piece in the Washington Post, he talks about a survey that was conducted by the nonpartisan research institute NORC at the University of Chicago. They do a lot of different opinion polling and we often cite them on the show.

They looked at actual so-called woke issues and found that the woke side of the equation is way more popular than you might think, based on what you see on Fox News or elsewhere on the issue of, quote, accepting people who are transgender. Fifty six percent of respondents said either society has been about right or hasn't gone far enough when it comes to accepting people who are trans. The woke positions are a majority. The minority thinks that acceptance of trans people has gone too far. Another example on the issue of promoting equality between men and women. Eighty six percent of respondents say that society is either where it should be or hasn't gone far enough to promote

equality between men and women. That's a woke country by their term. Now, of course, woke as a pejorative is used to criticize these positions. But the point here is when you ask people about their views on issues, they very much are in favor on, quote, accepting people who are gay, lesbian or bisexual. The poll found that 69 percent of respondents believe that society has been well calibrated on promoting acceptance or has not gone far enough. That is very woke. And then lastly, on businesses taking steps to promote racial and ethnic diversity, woke beats anti woke 70 to 28 percent. Even when you ask about schools and universities taking steps to promote racial and ethnic diversity. Again, wokeness wins 67 to 30. Last aspect to this

specifically about schools in the context of banning drag shows and banning books and all of it. When respondents were asked, which of these concerns you more about schools today, given the choice of two statements, are you more concerned about schools banning books and censoring topics of educational importance? Or are you more concerned about, uh, um, are, are you in favor of, uh, schools doing that and concerned that inappropriate things may be taught to your kids by an almost two to one margin? People are more concerned about the banning of books and the limiting of teaching in schools rather than, oh, my kid might be taught something inappropriate. So there's a couple of important takeaways from this. Number one,

as another reminder, Reddit and Twitter aren't real life in the sense that ideas can be over or underrepresented in those spheres. And when you actually talk to people just out there, you get dramatically different results. And number two, even the concerted effort of how has it been a year? Has it been two years, three years? It's kind of all the time work. But certainly we've seen one to three years of a concerted effort to go after a lot of these same elements. Despite all of that, it hasn't been that effective at actually convincing people to take so-called anti woke positions, which I would call in many cases just anti science positions. And so for someone like a Ron DeSantis who's about Florida is where woke comes to die and

on and on and on. It may help him in the Republican primary in some states, not necessarily even all, but it may not be super useful nationally if he were to win the nomination. Ron DeSantis, that is, in running against the eventual Democratic nominee, because it still seems that even after a blitz of one to three years just attacking these views in these positions, most Americans actually come down on what is often characterized as the woke position will be an interesting thing to see in 24 when it comes to strategy. I meant to play this earlier in the week and I wasn't able to get to it. And I don't want to skip over it because it is so strange and interesting. Donald Trump put out a

statement about how he helped the farmers avoid an estate tax. But in the discussion of it, he talks about how if you don't love your kids, you don't have to leave them your farm. And it has a very weird undertone where many people saw this and speculated and wrote to me, is this Trump signaling he doesn't love his kids and he's not leaving them his an inheritance? It is very strange. I want you to take a look at this and tell me what you think. And I made farmers happy and rich again, and they're doing a fantastic job. And you know what? Someday it'll become time for them to leave this beautiful earth and they'll be able to leave their farm without taxes. All right. Okay. So far, I understand the policy.

To their children. I got rid of the death tax on farms so that when you do pass away on the assumption that you love your children, you can leave it to them and they won't have to pay tax. But if you don't love your children so much and there are some people that don't and maybe deservedly so, it won't matter because frankly, you don't have to leave them anything. Thank you very much. Have fun. Have fun with that, guys. Our friend Aaron Ruppar on Twitter said that he had to watch this two times merely to convince

himself that it wasn't some kind of deep fake AI prank because it's so bizarre. So a couple of different things here. First of all, it sort of seems like this is being written into Trump's scripts because he said something very similar on March 13th in Iowa, and he said it in an almost identical way. And then, of course, the bigger question that many of you are wondering about is, is this Donald Trump signaling something to his own children? Is this Donald Trump signaling that that maybe it is he who doesn't love his kids? It's absolutely bizarre and strange.

And the focus now multiple times on people who don't love their kids. Really strange stuff. I don't know what to make of it. Let me know in the comments what you think. We have a voicemail number. That number is 2 1 9 2. David P. In this voicemail, our longtime caller, the Eggman, has a suggestion for me, and I want you to weigh in on his suggestion. The Eggman says, David, don't even bother covering the shootings anymore. Just don't even bother

because nobody's willing to do anything. These Republicans won't do a damn thing about it. It's just a waste of your breath. Yes. Another one and another one. And they're tragic. But what else is there to do? Listen to the Eggman say it. Hey, Dave, regarding the shooting at the Nashville Christian private school, three children killed, three adults killed. Yeah. Don't even discuss it. Skip right over it. I think that liberals and Democrats are just wasting our time talking about all these gun violence and murders and trying to change gun laws. It's going to literally do nothing. I'm listening to the mayor speak, and he's acting like, oh, now things are going to change.

This is the same thing every time. Don't waste one second on this story. Focus on something that will actually help. We will never change guns. The murders will never stop. The only way they'll stop is when they kill themselves with their own guns. So it's a complete waste of time, in my opinion, to even discuss these shootings. We should act like they're not even happening. Shalom. What do you think? What do you think? Does the egg man have a point? I mean, what he's right about is it's a circle and it's an endless circle. And of course, this could just be a show about mass shootings. I mean, OK, yesterday we had the shooting in Nashville, Tennessee, which I covered, and there was a mass shooting in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. And then on Sunday there were mass shootings in Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Little Rock,

Arkansas, and Minden, Louisiana. And then on Saturday there were mass shootings in Hempstead, New York, Williamston, North Carolina, Macomb, Illinois, and Shreveport, Louisiana. And then Friday there was another mass shooting in Shreveport, Louisiana. And then Friday there was another mass shooting in Shreveport, Louisiana. So the point is every day we could be talking about these mass shootings. Eggman says, even if you don't talk about them at all or you do talk about them, nothing is going to change. So then what's the point? Asks the Eggman. I've laid out 10 to 12 bullet points. I talked about it at the top of the show of of rules and laws and policies that could be put in place to reduce the number of mass shootings.

There's no willingness whatsoever from Republicans to institute even a single one of them. So what is it that we are doing when we acknowledge these tragedies? And of course, we only acknowledge some of them. So what is it that we are doing when we acknowledge these tragedies? And of course, we only acknowledge some of them. Some of them make the national news and some of them don't. I don't have the answer, quite frankly. I'm not pretending to have the answer, but I understand and sympathize with the Eggman's frustration. My question to you is, should these be covered? Because it seems strange not to seem strange to pretend that there is no mass shooting problem in the United States. At the same time, I understand that we've been covering these things for over a decade and very little has changed. Let me know what you

think. We have a fantastic bonus show for you today. We are going to talk about the new overt. What would we call it? Recruiting campaign by Republicans for Senate candidates that are genuinely filthy rich. Why is this what they're doing and what way are they doing it? We'll talk about it. Secondly, is Michelangelo's David pornography? There are some Florida parents who say that it is and Italians are inviting the Florida parents to come check it out for themselves. And then lastly, a TV anchor named Barbie Bassett has been fired, taken off air, at least I believe maybe fired. We'll double check after quoting Snoop Dogg during a broadcast. And it was a quote of Snoop Dogg, should she have been taken off air?

What should the repercussions be? Did she do anything wrong? An uproar about this. And it is becoming another flashpoint in this contrived culture war. We will talk about all sides of it when producer Pat joins me on today's bonus show. Oh, the bonus show where you want to make money. Yep. Everybody else that makes money to fund themselves is bad. Speaker 1 Right. Let's go make some money on the bonus show. OK, you can sign up at join Pacman dot com

coupon code. Twenty four starts now for a discount every single day after this show. There's the bonus show and we can all be thankful.