The David Pakman Show - 4/10/23: Republicans ready to charge Biden, Tennessee lawmakers ousted

Episode Date: April 10, 2023

-- On the Show: -- Producer Pat Ford fills in for David -- Republicans are calling for the arrest of Joe Biden for any reason they can come up with as a way to get revenge for Donald Trump's indictment -- Donald Trump is crushing Ron DeSantis in the latest poll from Reuters/Ipsos, 58% to 21% -- Republicans in the Tennessee state legislature oust two Democratic representatives, Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, for breaking the rules of decorum during a protest against gun violence -- Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez calls for the impeachment of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas over his latest corruption scandal -- Job creation is finally slowing down, with 236,000 jobs added last month as the Federal Reserve continues to fight inflation -- Right-wing U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk issues a nationwide injunction pausing the FDA's approval of the abortion pill mifepristone -- North Dakota lawmakers approve expanding free lunches for themselves, but not for K-12 students in the state -- There's no evidence to suggest the phrase "get woke go broke" is actually true -- Donald Trump is considering hiring right-wing lunatic Laura Loomer to his 2024 campaign staff -- On the Bonus Show: Biden says he plans to run in 2024, Bret Baier ignored at Fox News, more Republicans want to bomb Mexico to stop fentanyl, and much more... 🌞 Get 10% off your first month of BetterHelp online therapy: https://betterhelp.com/pakman 🛌 Helix Sleep: Get 20% OFF a mattress + 2 free pillows. Go to https://helixsleep.com/pakman 💻 Get Private Internet Access for 83% OFF + 4 months free at https://www.piavpn.com/David 🧻 Reel Paper: Code PAKMAN for 30% OFF + free shipping at https://reelpaper.com/pakman 🩳 SHEATH Underwear: Code PAKMAN for 20% OFF at https://sheathunderwear.com/pakman -- Become a Supporter: http://www.davidpakman.com/membership -- Subscribe on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/thedavidpakmanshow -- Subscribe to Pakman Live: https://www.youtube.com/pakmanlive -- Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/davidpakmanshow -- Like us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/davidpakmanshow -- Leave us a message at The David Pakman Show Voicemail Line (219)-2DAVIDP

Hey, everybody, welcome to the David Pakman show. I'm producer Pat Ford filling in for David today. David is on vacation for much of this week. He will be back on Friday. A number of Republicans are calling for the arrest of Joe Biden and also Hunter Biden and any other Democrats that they can possibly trump up charges against as a way to retaliate against Donald Trump getting indicted and then arrested last week in New York. Now, what issues do they want to arrest Biden and

these other Democrats over? That's not as important. They just want to do this because they see it as a way to get vindication, right? Because Donald Trump, for once in his entire life, is finally being held accountable to some degree, to some small degree, after his years and years of criminality. I spoke about this matter on last week's Friday bonus show, the award-winning, world-f famous bonus show, I might add. But there have since been more Republicans adding to this chorus of right wing calls to do something like this, to levy charges against Joe Biden and these other Democrats. First and foremost, we're hearing from Congressman James Comer, who chairs the House Oversight Committee. He went on Fox and Friends

late last week to comment on how there are these district attorneys in places like Kentucky and Tennessee who are trying to come up with some way to charge the Bidens, even though they don't know what issue they're going to do it over. Let's take a look at this clip. And I had two calls yesterday, one from a county attorney in Kentucky and one from a county attorney in Tennessee. They were Republican, obviously, that both states are heavily Republican. They want to know if there are ways they can go after the Bidens now. And they've opened up a can of worms. They've set precedents now that we can't go back on. And now we're going to see a judicial system that's already bogged down

with doing what they're supposed to do, and that's going after real criminals, people that are committing real crime. Now, what jurisdiction would these DAs have to indict Biden? There, of course, isn't any because the crime would have had to take place in one of those two states. Remember Donald Trump's hush money payment that took place in New York City. And where are the charges coming from about this? You guessed it, New York City. The issues that Republicans talk about potentially indicting Biden on have to do with his supposed corruption, even though they really can't articulate it all that well,

but they'll mention Ukraine or China or some other foreign country. Sometimes they'll talk about the classified documents scandal that implicated Joe Biden, even though Donald Trump is way more guilty on that topic. So if you're going to go after Biden on this, it stands to reason you'd also have to go after Donald Trump. If you do go after Biden on any of these topics, it would probably need to come from the federal governments or at least involve the states in question, like the supposed crime that

took place would have had to have taken place in one of these states. But the fact is that this has nothing to do with, you know, trying to stay consistent or trying to uphold the rule of law or trying to, you know, make sure that this is done in a proper way. It really is just about getting vindication. We're also now hearing from whiny, hysterical right wing talk show host Mark Levin about this topic. He's also trying to get someone, anyone to charge Joe Biden and the Democrats for what? Again, not important, but he just knows that it has to be done. Here's Mark Levin. And once again, for multiple times, this show's heard all over the country.

It's heard all over the world, actually. I'm asking Republican prosecutors out there to take a very good look at your own statutes, local, state, and even federal, but particularly the state prosecutors, the DAs, the state prosecutors, and so forth. See if there's anything there that you can use to charge Biden or any senior Democrat official. I mean, if you're not 100 hundred percent certain you're eighty percent certain that it'll fly then do it it's the only way this will stop because otherwise

this will continue you'd be doing it for your country be doing it in the name of the law. It is a legitimate reply and response. It's the only way to at least begin the process of clawing us back from the abyss because we're already falling into the abyss. In addition to the DAs in Tennessee and Kentucky that Comer mentioned and Mark Levin talking about how we got to charge Biden, we're also hearing from Tom Fitton,

who is the president of the conservative legal group Judicial Watch. He said, quote, All bets are off. You can expect grand jury indictments of leftist politicians like Biden, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, as surely as night follows day. Mike Davis, a former chief counsel for nominations

on the Senate Judiciary Committee and president of the Article III Project, said that, quote, If New York can turn a routine settlement of a business dispute seven years ago into a felony, I think our Republican AGs and DAs should get creative. Get creative is what he says. Like he seems to admit there that there's no actual reason to charge the Bidens. It wouldn't be right to do so. But he wants them to get creative. He went out to say that two wrongs don't make a right, but it does make it even. And that's what this is about, getting even. So he's out and out saying, yeah, we're just going to make it up. We're just going to come up with whatever reason we can charge the Bidens on.

Hearing from these Republicans, you would think that Donald Trump just didn't get a pass like he did over and over again throughout the entire course of his political career, he did get a pass. And now he's finally, to the smallest degree, being held accountable for just one of these alleged crimes. This is the hush money payment, of course, the incident that took place back in 2016. His then fixer, Michael Cohen, who's since been a guest on this program, went to prison over this.

Donald Trump was a sitting president at the time, and he was protected by this idea that there's this longstanding precedent that you can't charge a sitting president. It hasn't actually been tested before, but that's long been the tradition here in this country. But that wasn't the only issue that you could have possibly gone after Trump on. Of course, there was the Russia scandal where Robert Mueller concluded in his report that Donald Trump should be charged for obstruction of justice. But since it was believed you couldn't indict a sitting president, he was saying that it's actually Congress's responsibility to hold him accountable. Congress should impeach Donald Trump. And of course, they ended up not doing that. Then there was the scandal in Ukraine, which would have been criminal if done by anyone else who was not a sitting president, you know, withholding

congressionally approved aid from a country, saying that he's not going to give that to him unless they dig up dirt on his political opponent. Then there's, of course, the fraudulent business practices that the Trump organization committed where he would inflate the value of his assets when it was time to take out a loan and he would deflate them when it was time to pay taxes. They chose not to go after Trump personally on this matter, just to hold the company accountable. There's obviously the phone call in Georgia where he pressured Brad Raffensperger to find him 11,280 votes that didn't exist when it was clear that he had lost the election. Hopefully there will be some accountability on that. Hopefully we eventually get some charges out

of Georgia, but thus far it hasn't happened. There's the January 6th insurrection where he sent his supporters to the Capitol to commit a coup, and then he didn't try to stop them once the coup was actually unfolding. There's the classified documents scandal, which I alluded to before, where he took sensitive information to Mar-a-Lago and then lied about giving the documents back when he actually didn't. It got to the point where the FBI had to actually conduct a search on his home and seize the documents to get them back to the National Archives. So all of these things and more. All of these things are indictable infractions. He's only so far being held accountable for one of them, just one of them. And it's probably the least serious of all of them.

And for whatever reason, Republicans feel as though this is grounds to go after Democrats on and, you know, make this a tit for tat sort of thing. So Trump has gotten away with so much. What would it take for Republicans to accept that he was actually worthy of prosecution without turning this into a political game? Like, would he actually have to shoot someone on Fifth Avenue, even if that happened, even if he did shoot someone on Fifth Avenue? I think they would still bring the conversation back to Hunter Biden and the laptop from hell. But that's the latest Republicans trying to muck up charges against Joe Biden and the other from hell. But that's the latest Republicans trying to muck up charges against Joe Biden and the other Democrats that they want to make their new political targets.

I hope that the American public sees through this. I hope that if Biden actually is indicted for some reason, then the American public will be able to understand that it's Republicans just trying to play dirty political games and Biden isn't actually worthy of being charged for anything. But that's what Republicans are doing right now. Once Donald Trump got indicted and then arrested as a result of the New York hush money payment investigation, the consensus among political wonks became that his approval numbers, at least among Republicans, would actually go up. And this is, of course, because Republicans love claiming to be the victim and they love to pacify Donald Trump when he plays the victim, when he goes around the country and acts like, oh, everyone's just trying to get me and every investigation into me isn't actually because I committed any wrongdoing. It's all just part of a Democratic hit piece.

It's a witch hunt and it's all very unfair. claiming to be the people who support rule of law, law and order, personal responsibility, not acting like a fragile, special snowflake, all these other things. They do make an exception to these rules when it comes to their dear leader, Donald Trump. So the prediction was that the indictment slash arrest news was actually going to help Donald Trump in the upcoming primary battle. And it seems like that's actually playing out because we now have a new poll from Reuters Ipsos, which shows that Donald Trump is at 58% support in the Republican primary with Ron DeSantis all the way down at 21%. That's 37% down, which is quite astounding. Now, we know that DeSantis tends to do better in these poll matchups when he's in a one

on one competition against Donald Trump, since his support doesn't get diluted amongst these other candidates who don't really have a chance realistically. But at least as it pertains to this poll, it doesn't seem to have that much of an effect because in this poll, we see Donald Trump at 58%. We see DeSantis at 21%. And then all the way down at the bottom of the list, we see Mike Pence at 4%. He probably shouldn't even just bother to run at this point. I don't see what reason he would want to get in this race for. Nikki Haley is at a pathetic 1%, even though she is officially running. We have Liz Cheney, who's at 3%. She may run, but my guess is that if she does decide to run, it would be as an independent to sabotage a

potential Trump candidacy rather than to run as a Republican where she'd have no shot at the primary. We have Mike Pompeo, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Glenn Youngkin, who all have 1% support. And then Kristi Noem, Chris Christie, Tim Scott, and Chris Sununu all are at 0%. Now, this poll is particularly good for Trump. His 58% is up from the same poll that had him at 48% earlier this month and 44% from the middle of March. We, of course, can never glean too much from one poll, and we tend to see regression back to the mean. But it is important to remember that more charges may soon be coming against Donald Trump, particularly out of Georgia and maybe even from Washington, D.C. If that's the case, Donald Trump may be able to build up on

his momentum, and this race could be over before it even starts. The first primaries aren't until February of next year. So that's like 10 months away from now. And there's plenty of time remaining. But with DeSantis currently so far behind, he may get scared out of announcing altogether. He may assess that it's just better for him to wait until 2028 or 2032 if he wants a real shot at winning this thing, because at that point, Donald Trump is not going to be in the picture anymore. And as long as he can continue to stay relevant in the world of politics, keep doing what he's doing in Florida, maybe he'll be able to still be relevant and run a successful

campaign in a future election cycle. Of course, DeSantis seemed to have a real shot at winning this thing following the 2022 primaries when he way outperformed the Trumpian candidates. But I believe that his star may have peaked too early. And now it's Donald Trump's turn once again. We also don't suspect that DeSantis would do what it takes to take down Trump, which is to go at him forcefully and directly. He'd likely be tepid for as long as possible until he has absolutely no choice but to go after Donald Trump in desperation once it's already too late. That's what we saw took place in 2016 in the Republican

primary. I remember Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz at the very last minute tried to get into the dirt with Donald Trump, but it was far too late at that point. They should have tried to do earlier if they were going to take down the king in Republican circles. And if DeSantis decides not to run, if he announces he's not going to enter the race, we can just wrap this thing up, right? Donald Trump is going to have the nomination easily in 2024. Spare me if you think that Nikki Haley or Mike Pompeo or Asa Hutchinson is going to be able to put a stop to that. And of course, Republicans are only shooting themselves in the foot by doing this, by choosing Trump, since Trump does not match up very well against Biden or any other Democrat in

the general election. DeSantis does a lot better than Trump does against a Democrat in the general election. And Trump is going to have this stench of criminality now on him that he didn't necessarily have in prior election cycles. Plus, there's these other things that he has to worry about, like the Capitol insurrection. This will be the first time that Trump is on the ballot since January 6th, 2021. So that's probably not going to play well amongst general election voters. So there's this real Stockholm syndrome going on within the Republican Party, where even if other Republican figures and right wing voters know that he's bad for the party, he lost them elections in 2018 and 2020 and 2022. And he's probably poised to do it again in 2024. Even though they know all that stuff,

everyone's still too afraid to cross him. And I guess they just love his personality so much that they'll be willing to support him even when the evidence shows that he is a loser and he's only hurting the party. So that's the latest on the polling. Trump seems to be running away with this thing at the moment. And we'll see if Ron DeSantis even decides to get into this race because it's not looking so good for him at the moment. All right, we're going to go to a break right now. We'll be back with much more of the David Pakman Show David Pakman dot com. One of our sponsors is Helix Sleep. I have been sleeping on a Helix mattress at home for years now. I couldn't be more happy with it.

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The link is in for David today. He is on vacation and will be back at the end of the week. In response to the mass shooting that took place in Tennessee a couple of weeks back, Republicans who are in control of the state legislature have decided to take action, but not in any sort of substantive way, not by strengthening background checks or banning certain types of weapons. Instead, they've decided to expel two members of the legislative body who took part in the protest and essentially broke the rules of decorum in the legislative body in so doing. Tennessee lawmakers expelled two members from the state legislature, Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, after they and a third member, Gloria

Johnson, took part in a protest against gun violence from the floor of the chamber. The vote took place last Thursday with Johnson surviving expulsion by only a single vote. Notably, Jones and Pearson are black, whereas Johnson, the one who survived the expulsion vote, is white. I'll leave it up to you to decide whether that has anything to do with the results. Following the mass shooting, there was a protest at the legislative chamber to try to get lawmakers to do anything at all about this issue of gun violence and using their position as representatives to be actually inside the House chamber. These three lawmakers used a bullhorn and temporarily disrupted the official business of the legislative body, leading the Republican supermajority to call for a recess. Let's take a look at some of the legislative body, leading the Republican supermajority to call for a recess. Let's take a look at some of the video of the protests taking place. But the internet is on you, all right?

We will not stop you. We will not stop you. We will not stop you, Dr. Seuss. It's a thing you can make, isn't it? They call it a crime, so you can hear it. You are being heard, and we will not hear it. Now, after this happened, Republicans who hold a large majority of seats immediately pledged a rapid response. They stripped Johnson and Jones of committee assignments. I don't believe Pearson yet had any committee assignments. motions to expel the three from the legislature were introduced by three different members of the state legislature on April 3 of those were Confederates who were expelled in the 19th

century for refusing to affirm the citizenship of formerly enslaved black people. In the 20th century, a legislator was expelled after being convicted of bribery. And most recently, in 2016, a member was expelled for sexual misconduct. So this expulsion wasn't really about the merits. It only happened because Republicans had the votes to be able to do it and they took advantage of that. And in fact, Justin Jones, one of the two ousted members, highlighted in a speech that he gave on the floor some of the things that his fellow members of the legislature did over the years, or at least were accused of doing, that did ultimately not result in an expulsion. Let's take a look at him talking about that. Let's talk about expulsion. For years, one of your colleagues who was an admitted child molester sat in this chamber. No expulsion. One member sits in this chamber who was found guilty of domestic violence.

No expulsion. We had a former speaker sit in this chamber who is now under federal investigation. No expulsion. We have a member still under federal investigation. No expulsion. We had a member pee in another member's chair in this chamber. No expulsion. In fact, they're in leadership. will backfire on Republicans because not only has this brought the issue of gun violence more to the forefront and how members of Congress at the state and federal level aren't really doing anything about it, it's also made these three national figures, the Tennessee Three, as they're now

being called. Vice President Kamala Harris visited the lawmakers in Nashville on Friday, and President Biden also spoke with the three via conference call, inviting them to visit the White House. Now, to be clear, I don't know if disrupting proceedings and using a bullhorn is the right way to go about protesting this sort of matter, despite it being peaceful, of course, and despite it being clearly intended to only being to be a temporary disruption. And that's because if let's say the shoe was on the other foot, let's say, you know, at the Capitol, we saw Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert do this exact same thing on one of the issues that they care about. Would we be totally fine with it? I'm not sure. And I just want to stay consistent on this, right? Nevertheless, I think that expulsion would be

way too extreme if that was to take place. I think the most appropriate thing to do in that sort of instance would be maybe a censure, right? Because these people were duly elected to represent their constituents and barring some sort of extreme event, they should be able to serve out their terms. So I think censuring them, which is basically just an official condemnation, would have made a lot more sense for something like this, breaking the rules of decorum. But Republicans in this situation, they were just trying to abuse their power and be vindictive on this matter. And then final point I want to make on this, some on the right are comparing this to January 6th, when there's absolutely no comparison to be drawn here to the Capitol insurrection. On that day,

January 6th, 2021, we saw rioters beating up cops. We saw the Senate chamber get overtaken. We saw several people die based on, you know, because of what happened. It was directed and then not put a stop to by the then president of the United States. And the intent of the protest that became a riot was to overthrow the government, to end democracy in the United States. This, on the other hand, was a peaceful protest that was, yeah, sure, at times a little rowdy, but there was no intention of overthrowing the government. There was no clear acts of violence, and it was not intended to end democracy in the state of Tennessee.

So spare me those comparisons. It will be interesting to see what happens next. And Pearson and Jones, the two who are expelled from the legislature, will be able to run for their seats again. Let's hope that they're able to win back their seats and then all will be good. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is calling for the impeachment of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas over his failure to disclose luxury trips paid for by a Republican mega donor. We told you last week how ProPublica broke the story that Thomas has been in the pocket of right wing billionaire Harlan Crow for decades.

Thomas has vacationed on Crow's 162 foot super yacht and flown on his bombardier global 5000 jet, which would have cost half a million dollars if the money had come from Thomas and he had charted it himself. The trips put Thomas in contact with corporate executives and political activists violating federal disclosure laws and longstanding norms for judges conduct. This is a violation of his ethical obligations as a justice and he disregarded federal disclosure laws. We were wondering if Thomas was going to ever say anything at all about this because he so rarely comments on anything before the public, but I suppose this scandal was bad enough that he at least felt the need to say something about it. He said, Harlan and Kathy Crow are among our dearest friends, and we have been friends for over 25 years. As friends do, we have joined them on a number of family trips during the more than

quarter century we have known them. Early in my tenure at the court, I sought guidance from my colleagues and others in the judiciary and was advised that this sort of personal hospitality from close personal friends who did not have business before the court was not reportable. I have endeavored to follow that counsel throughout my tenure and have always sought to comply with the disclosure guidelines. These guidelines are now being changed as the committee of the Judicial Conference Responsible Financial Disclosure for the entire federal judiciary just this past month announced new guidance. And it is, of course, my intent to follow this guidance in the future. Now, if you're as jaded and skeptical when it comes to politics as I am, you may think that

this is where the story ends because Thomas is basically never held accountable for anything, including the Anita Hill allegations, including the conflicts of interest that he had with his wife, Ginny Thomas, being a far right activist and a complete Kool-Aid drinker when it comes to the conspiracy theories about voter fraud in the 2020 election. It seems like at this point, it's only Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who wants to do anything substantial to hold Thomas accountable for these ethical violations. She tweeted her support for impeaching Thomas late last week.

And here she is yesterday on CNN's State of the Union with Dana Bash laying out why she believes that Thomas needs to be removed from his post over this. I believe that and it is the House's responsibility to pursue that investigation in the form of impeachment. Well, let me ask you, I mean, you know full well that the House is now run by Republicans. How are you going to move what you're calling for, articles of impeachment, through a House that is run by Republicans? You know, I think it's a, it's a, there is the question of the politics of what we are doing. And there's the question of the course and the accountability and the structures of what we are doing. And there's the question of the course and the accountability and the structures of what we are doing. I admit it is very difficult to see a path in a Republican

party that refuses to hold itself accountable and in fact breaches the law itself. Now, of course, we run into the reality that Republicans control the House of Representatives, and there's basically no world in which Kevin McCarthy decides to introduce articles of impeachment against Clarence Thomas, at least not over this issue. But I do believe it's good that there are calls for him to face an ethics violation, calls for him to step down, and this call for him to be impeached. I do wonder, however, if AOC is the right person to do this since she's such a polarizing figure and so many people are just going to write this off as a radical and saying, you know, if no one else is going to do it, no one else is going to bring articles impeachment forward, I'm going to be the one to do so. Honestly, this is probably the best that we can hope for, right? Because Republicans rarely ever hold their own accountable. You know, they're sticking by Donald Trump despite his criminality, despite the January 6th insurrection. They're sticking by George Santos despite him getting elected on the basis of countless, countless lies. And they're also going to let Clarence Thomas presumably get away with this because they don't actually care about integrity or rule of law or any of these other things that they claim to care about, any of these other supposed principles that they claim to espouse. I'm Pat Ford filling in for David Pakman today.

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show on Friday. Let's talk about the economy. The issue that has plagued President Biden throughout much of his presidency, especially during the year 2022, was the high inflation rate peaking at 9.1% in the summer. And of course, the reasons for the high inflation are numerous. There was the supply chain issues, the Russian war in Ukraine, and the economic stimulus programs that came in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. And for the past year, the Federal Reserve has been steadily hiking interest rates to cool that inflation number down. It does indeed appear to be working as inflation has been at a steady downtrend for eight or nine months now, with it

currently sitting at around 6%. However, there's still a ways to go before we get to that 2% to 3% rate that the Fed wants to see. We've talked in the past about how you want a little bit of inflation so that people are incentivized to spend money now rather than wait to purchase things in the future, because if people anticipate that things are going to be more expensive in the future, they're going to want to pay for them now. But of course, if the inflation rate is too high, then people's savings get depleted and things get way too expensive, as we've seen to some degree over the last year or two. Well, what will necessarily happen as a result of trying to tamp down on inflation and the higher interest rates that come with it is the slowing of job growth since

businesses will have less money to hire new people and as borrowing money becomes more expensive and that is finally what we're seeing it took a long time to get there but the latest job numbers from the month of march 2023 show that we are finally getting to a cooling down of the number of people getting hired it's still an increase, of course, month to month as the population increases, but the rate is slowing down now. Job creation slowed to 236,000 for the month, almost reaching the level that President Biden said would stabilize the economy and prices. More Americans joined the labor force and wage gains fell slightly, which could help to further cool inflation.

The lower wage gains is yet another necessary evil to calming down the rate of inflation. It's one of these unfortunate necessities that is seen by an economist as what you have to do to bring about a lower inflation rate. The unemployment rate currently sits at 3.5%, which is lower than what we saw under Trump, lower than what we saw under President Obama, lower than what we saw under President Bush. And given how Trump would endlessly brag about the economy, he would love to have seen these numbers during his tenure. Biden should be doing the exact same thing because 3.5% is essentially what we would call full employment. Biden is cautioning, however, that there is more work to do when it comes to the economy to bring down

high prices that are squeezing workers and families. Biden previously stated that monthly job creation needed to fall to around $150,000 of $150,000, 150,000 jobs. So there still is a ways to go. I understand that this is maybe not the most exciting story, but this come down from the high inflation rate we always thought would take some time. And indeed, it has taken some time. It's been eight or nine months at this point since inflation has peaked. And it was always going to come with some sacrifices when it comes to other economic indicators like jobs numbers slowing down, like wage growth slowing down. And as these months go on and job creation cools and as the inflation rate cools,

we're definitely hearing less and less from Republicans about the economy overall. Perhaps that's why they're so focused on these culture war issues these days, talking about trans people and drag shows and other topics like that, because they just can't seem to be making they can't seem to make salient points when it comes to gas prices anymore. They can't really talk about the stock market as that has recovered to some degree. Can't really talk about inflation since that's long since peaked. And, you know, over the last year, they've just been talking about nonsense because they really can't focus on these kitchen tables effect issues effectively like they were able to about a year ago. And it's, of course,

impossible to predict where the economy is going to go next. Right. We don't know if things are going to have a turnaround and we'll reverse course and go in the opposite direction of where we want to see things terribly difficult to to predict the economy short to midterm. But looking at the data, looking at the trajectories of these different things, my sense is that by the time the 2024 election rolls around, we could definitely have inflation under control with job numbers, maybe not quite as good as they are now, but still at a very healthy level. The Federal Reserve will then have the green light to start lowering interest rates again. And things could end up being in solid shape when it's time for voters to go to the polls in 2024. And not only is that good for us stakeholders who participate in the American economy, it could also be good for President Biden's reelection chances if he

decides to run. And it could make Republicans basically unable to speak effectively about these kitchen table issues. And we'll have to resort to talking about the culture war, whatever their new pet issue is for the day. So inflation cooling down, jobs numbers cooling down along with it. And of course, we'll continue to follow it. Federal judges in two states have issued contradictory decisions that could significantly impact access to a drug that is used in nearly all medication abortions here in the United States. U.S. District Judge Matthew Kazmarek in Texas ruled that the Food and Drug Administration, the FDA, improperly approved the abortion pill Mufipristone over 20 years ago, and he issued a nationwide injunction pausing the FDA's

approval of the drug, which is set to take effect in seven days from the time of the ruling. This marks the first time in history that a court has claimed the authority to single handedly pull a drug from the market. It's legally dubious that a judge has this sort of wide ranging power. Within hours of that decision, U.S. District Judge Thomas O. Rice issued a ruling in a separate case in Washington state that blocked the FDA from, quote, altering the status quo and rights as it relates to the availability of Muffet-Pristone. The problem, of course, is that the FDA cannot conceivably comply with both of these contradictory orders at once.

And because Kosmarek's order is broader, covering all 50 states, it guarantees that Muffet-Pristone will be suspended in much of the country, at least temporarily. Only the Supreme Court can resolve this looming crisis. It has very little time to do so. The window is closing, and knowing how right-wing this Supreme Court is, particularly on the abortion issue, this could spell disaster. President Biden said about this, quote, If this ruling were to stand, then there will be virtually no prescription approved by the FDA that would be safe from these kinds of political ideological attacks. It is the next step

towards the national ban on abortion that Republican elected officials have vowed to make law in America. The Justice Department appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth District, which has a reputation for being conservative. Unfortunately, Mofepristone was approved by the FDA back in 2000 for use in a combination with a second drug called misoprostol. More than half of all abortions in the United States are done using a medication, and the two-drug combination has been used in 90% of them since 2020. So as David likes to say, this is shocking, but not surprising. We knew that when the conservative Supreme Court overturned Roe versus Wade last year, that Republicans were not going to be content with just that alone,

because, you know, the overturning of Roe versus Wade still allows for abortion to take place in the United States. It basically just kicks the issue back to the states. But to be clear, the use of Muffapristone cannot be compared to the medical procedure known as abortion at all. I mean, these are two different things. I think both should be legal, but the circumstances surrounding both of these issues are very different. The main difference, of course, is the timing, right? Because a regular abortion procedure will typically be performed after a couple of months of pregnancy, you know, maybe six to 12 weeks into the pregnancy, whereas an abortion pill can be taken up to about 11 weeks after the first day of the last menstrual period. The procedure, of course, is very different with one requiring a medical professional

to surgically remove the fetus from the uteruserus while the other is as simple as taking a pill. I understand that, you know, there's an ethical conundrum when you're talking about ending the pregnancy, when the fetus is at the end of the second trimester or the beginning of the third trimester, what have you. But this is not what this is. This is effectively a clump of cells that we're talking about just several weeks into a pregnancy. And effectively what you're doing by banning these abortion bills, by trying to ban them, is delaying when a woman can likely get the procedure done. And this will give the fetus more time to develop. Not to mention it'll add cost. It'll add stress to the woman who's going through the predicaments. But Republicans, they don't care about that sort of stuff. They see pregnancy as a punishment for having sex and they're not interested in real solutions. They're not interested in abortion pills or day after pills. They're not interested in this cycle of poverty since of course parenthood

is so incredibly expensive and often people who are considering abortions are doing so because they can't afford to have a child or another child obviously republicans aren't in support of social programs too that would help the babies once they're actually born so judge matthew kasmarek is digging up this matter from 20 years ago. That's so incredibly legally dubious so that he can play politics to enforce his strict father morality view. And it's sickening to see how much we've regressed in the year 2023. Good on District Judge Thomas O. Rice issuing a ruling in a separate case here and good on the Biden administration for trying to challenge this. Hey, get a load of this one. So North Dakota's Senate recently passed a bill to increase the amount of money that state

employees can collect for meals while they're traveling on the job, raised it from $35 to $45 a day. And this is a benefit that lawmakers, of course, will be able to enjoy as they are state employees themselves. So it's a nice little perk that they've passed for themselves. And in a vacuum, I really wouldn't see a big issue over this. The bill is going to cost taxpayers a million dollars over the next two years, and it's now waiting for the governor's signature to become law. Now, $45 a day for food may sound like a lot, sure, but you have to consider that if you're traveling, you're not really going to be able to cook. You're going to be eating out exclusively or almost exclusively. So you think, okay, well, $10 for breakfast, $15 maybe for lunch, 20 bucks for dinner. That adds up to 45. Okay, I think this makes sense. However, here is the rub.

Less than two weeks ago, the Senate in North Dakota rejected a separate bill that would have provided $6 million over the next two years to give free school lunches to all K through 12 students living at or below 200% of the federal poverty level. The bill failed by a single vote with 13 Republicans voting against it, despite how they backed this recent bill about reimbursement for state employees. Not surprisingly, the Democrats, of course, backed the free school lunch bill. The rejected school lunch bill aims to expand on an existing federal program that already provides meals to students living below 130 percent of the poverty level. We're hearing some reactions from North Dakota lawmakers about this, including Senate Minority Leader Kathy Hogan, who's a

Democrat. She criticized the Senate for voting for more free food for themselves while rejecting the bill to provide food to hungry children. However, we're also hearing from Republicans like Assistant Majority Leader Jerry Klein, who claims that he failed to see any correlation between the two bills, which is laughable, in my opinion, because they both literally have to do with paying for meals for people, one group of people being state for people. One group of people being state officials and the other group of people being students. And then get a load of this one. State Senator Mike Wilbama cited personal responsibility for why kids shouldn't get free

meals and blamed negligent parents for the problem. Yeah. So lack of personal responsibility among what kindergarteners, first graders, second graders. I mean, how does that make any sense whatsoever? Real galaxy brain take there. North Dakota has the second highest child poverty rate in the U.S. to put this in context. And over 30 percent of its K through 12 students qualify for free or reduced price lunches. So this state, more than almost every other state in the union is in need of a bill like this. Because we know the importance of providing lunches to kids, it of course ensures that they're going to have access to adequate nutrition regardless of their ability to pay. It will increase academic performance for kids because it helps them

focus on what they're learning in class instead of focusing on their stomach rumbling. It helps with their development as they're, of course, still growing. And it reduces stigma too. I remember when I was growing up in school, we had these yellow lunch tickets if you were paying full price for the lunch, the full $3.50 or whatever it was. But there were also students who had the reduced price lunch tickets, and those were a different color. Maybe it was orange. I don't exactly remember. And there was also the free lunch tickets, which I think were maybe red. And so other students would see students pay with the yellow tickets or the red tickets or the green tickets, and everyone would

kind of have an assessment as to the financial situation of the families of all these different kids. And if you're one of the students who are paying families of all these different kids. And, you know, if you're one of the students who are paying with a discounted or free lunch tickets, there could easily be some stigma there, right? There could be some self-esteem issues that results from that, some mental health troubles that results from that. And so in my mind, we should just do away with this altogether. School lunch is already incredibly subsidized, and it's something that we as a nation can easily afford. The pandemic era federal aid made the school meals available for free to all public school students that ended on September 30th of last year. However,

it's unfortunate that we were not able to keep this thing going and make it permanent. One of the longer lasting results of the pandemic that would have been nice to see to just set this in stone and not go back on it. But unfortunately, we are regressing on this issue and leaving it up to the states has not worked because we're seeing what transpired here in North Dakota. And it really is too bad, especially seeing the contradiction that we're seeing with them totally fine, approving, increasing the costs that they're able to spend when it comes to meals for themselves, but not when it comes to students and the most disadvantaged among us. All right. That's going to do it for this segment of The David Pakman Show. But stick around because

we have one more segment to go. We'll be back with much more right after this commercial break. Speaker 1 One of the best ways to support this show is by supporting our sponsors today. One of those sponsors is sheath underwear. It is spring. Temperatures are rising. Many of us know all too well about the sweating and the sticking and the chafing. But that's only when you use traditional underwear. When you use sheath underwear, it's no longer a problem. Sheath underwear is ergonomically designed with separate compartments in the front to keep everything dry, cool and separate and to keep you comfortable. They come in a zillion different designs, something for everybody. The quality is amazing. super long lasting. Put an end to the readjusting and the sweating and the shifting uncomfortably. Sheath underwear is really a

lifesaver. You will thank yourself. It's a unique product. You've got to try at least once to see for yourself. And my audience gets 20 percent off with code Pacman. Go to sheath underwear dot com Welcome back to The David Pakman Show. I'm producer Pat Ford filling in for David today. He'll be back on Friday. Right wingers love to boycott brands nowadays. Typically, they do so over the silliest of reasons, like they boycotted Nike a few years back over the brand supporting Colin Kaepernick. They boycotted Keurig because Keurig decided to pull its advertising from a Fox News program. They boycotted Starbucks because Starbucks decided to hire a bunch of refugees in response to Donald Trump's travel ban. They boycotted the NFL and Twitter and Coca-Cola and now Hershey's. Lately,

the big one, though, has been Bud Light because the company had the audacity, the temerity to make a specialty can that celebrated transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney. Of course, Disney has also been a big one because they've been butting heads with Ron DeSantis over the Don't Say Gay Bill and other issues in Florida. It's an exhaustive list, and it seems very difficult for conservatives to be able to keep track of all the different companies they're supposed to be boycotting. But every time they hear about a new one, they tell themselves, get woke, go broke. And this is the phrase they use to keep themselves going and to make themselves feel as though their boycott is

actually working. But the truth is that many of these companies aren't actually feeling the supposed pain that these boycotts are supposed to bring them. And this was highlighted in a recent piece from Rolling Stone. It turns out that many of these companies are actually doing better than ever. So for example, I mentioned Keurig. Since the boycott happens, they've acquired Dr. Pepper Snapple Group in a $18.7 billion deal. And the company's annual gross profits have swelled, reaching $7.3 billion in 2022. Another example is United Airlines. United Airlines was targeted by right-wingers because of all things, the airline decided to commit itself to having half

of its new pilot trainees be either women and or people of color. And since making that decision, since the boycott, the company recently reported a fourth quarter 2022 profit of $843 million, which well beat Wall Street's expectations. Carhartt is another one. I didn't even know about this boycott. You'd think that Carhartt would be a brand that conservatives would like because it's associated with these rugged blue color type jobs. But they did have a COVID vaccine requirement for employees, and that sparked a boycott. Now the company, it's private, so we don't know the profits and too much about the numbers. But they did announce an investment of $4.65 million to expand its Dearborn, Michigan campus. And it's planning on hiring 125 more workers at an average wage of $43.22 per hour.

So that is quite a good wage wage if I do say so myself. Also, Disney had a gross profit for 2022, which was $28 billion, a 27% increase from the previous year. We're hearing that Nike outperformed expectations and had a fourth quarter of 2022 reaching over a billion dollars. The NFL had a dip in recent years with the pandemic losing them some viewership but now the league is unbelievably prosperous and the individual teams are increasing in value there's record viewership among broadcast and streaming partners they're soaring in-person attendance so what i'm getting at here is that these right-wing boycotts aren't actually working and these companies who feel that they should send out an inclusive message or have a vaccine mandate or pay their workers a living wage, things that the left likes to champion, they should feel as though they have every they have the green light to do so because, you know, it's working.

And the boycotts that they could generate aren't actually going anywhere. Part of this is the fact that progressives and moderates outnumber conservatives in the United States by a wide margin. But I think it's more so that people really just don't have the patience for these sorts of boycotts and they forget about the boycotts after not that much time. It's just hard to keep track of all of it. I mean, listen to all these different companies that I've mentioned. It's what, you know, at least 10, 12, and people are eventually are just going to get sick of it and lose track and want to go back to buying the products that they like. And there's no reason really why conservatives shouldn't like Nike and Starbucks and Carhartt and Keurig like everyone else does. So it's just a big commitment that they're not even willing to

follow through with. And that's why we're seeing these boycotts really have no effect. And if they do want to boycott companies for whatever reason they want to come up with, they can do that, right? They have that right. They can start these mass media campaigns. They're free to do so. This is the free market that they claim to love so much. But it's time to stop pretending as though these boycotts are having any sort of measurable effect. And it's certainly time to retire the phrase get woke, go broke, because there doesn't seem to be any merit to it at all. Donald Trump wants to hire radical right wing activist Laura Loomer to his 2024 campaign staff. And Loomer is such a nutty person that even radical repugnant Marjorie Taylor Greene is

trying to get in the way of her hiring. Trump has told aides that he wants to hire Loomer. This is coming to us from a report from the New York Times through four anonymous sources. The Times says that Donald Trump met with Ms. Loomer recently and directed advisors to give her a role in support of his candidacy. Loomer was part of the peanut gallery that was at Trump's post-arrest speech in Mar-a-Lago last week. Of course, the Trump campaign staff is not happy with the idea of hiring Loomer, and that prompted her to send out the message saying, quote, The president knows I have always been a Trump loyalist and that I'm committed to helping him win reelection in 2024. He likes me very much and it's a shame that he's surrounded by some people that run to a

publication that is notorious for attacking him in order to try to cut me at the knees instead of being loyal to President Trump and respecting their confidentiality agreements. She also said, I know a lot of people don't like me and that's their problem, not mine. I have proven my loyalty She also said, who do not leak to the press. To give you a picture as to who Laura Loomer is, she's mainly known for her far-right and anti-Muslim activism. In November 2018, she was banned from Twitter for violating the platform's rules against hate speech. She had previously made controversial comments about Muslims, including calling for a non-Islamic Uber. Those were her words, non-Islamic Uber,

and accusing Muslims of supporting rape. Uber and Lyft decided to ban her from using the services over these comments. In 2017, she appeared on a white supremacist podcast. Loomer claims that Jewish privilege exists in the United States and that Jews control the media and politics. This is especially strange for her to say because she herself is Jewish. In 2018, Loomer showed up at the Twitter headquarters in New York City. I remember when this one happened. This was a wacky story. And she handcuffed herself to the building to protest her ban from the platform. She also supports white nationalism and has spread conspiracy theories about COVID-19 and the 2020 election.

But much of that is just par for the course when it comes to Republicans these days. To give you an idea as to how nuts Loomer is, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who, you know, again, at least at one time believed in QAnon and Jewish space lasers and thinks that Democrats are pedophiles and wearing a mask is somehow like the Holocaust. She tweeted about this idea to hire Laura Loomer, saying, quote, Laura Loomer is mentally unstable and a documented liar. She cannot be trusted. She spent months lying about me and attacking me just because I supported Kevin McCarthy for speaker

and after I had refused to endorse her last election cycle. That's the other thing Laura Loomer did run for Congress at least once. She loves the alleged FBI informant and weirdo Nick Fuentes. She tried to get hired on the Ye campaign after the infamous Mar-a-Lago dinner, but Kanye West refused to hire her, so now she's running to Trump. Never hire or do business with a liar. Liars are toxic and poisonous to everything they touch. I'll make sure he knows.

Okay, so clearly there's some personal animosity there between Marjorie Taylor Greene and Laura Loomer. But even so, when you're that crazy, when you're that far right, that conspiratorial, that bigoted, that even Marjorie Taylor Greene is denouncing you in this way and trying to get in the way of you getting hired by the Trump campaign, that is when you know that you are just completely off of the deep end. And Trump must be thinking, I don't really care about that stuff because I agree with her on a lot of these issues, namely the 2020 election conspiracy theories. And the most important thing to Donald Trump, after all, is loyalty. Loomer is loyal to Trump and arguably loyal than other people are on his campaign staff. And so that's enough for him. It may be enough to push him over the edge into

actually deciding to hire her. However, we've also seen Donald Trump acquiesce to the wishes of his campaign staff and his administration staff over the years. And so my sense is that maybe he'll be talked out of it. But just the fact that he was meeting with her, speaking to her at Mar-a-Lago, the fact that this idea has been floated and it's getting this attention and he's talking to insiders about it. That's how we know that this is a complete unserious person, as if we didn't already know that already from the years and years that we've been witnessing Donald Trump. But that's the latest Laura Loomer may just may be able to find herself a job in the Donald Trump campaign. All right, that's going to do it for today's episode of the David Pakman show. It's been a pleasure filling in for David today. I say I enjoy doing it more

and more every single time I do it. It's not the end, though, for those of you who are members. If you go to join Pakman.com and sign up for a membership you'll be able to join me on today's bonus show when we talk about a few more stories today to everyone else we'll see you next time