The David Pakman Show - 4/11/24: Betting markets suddenly say Biden '24, Trump trial delay rejected again

Episode Date: April 11, 2024

-- On the Show: -- Katherine Stewart, author of "The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism," joins David to discuss the origins and recent rise in Christian nationalism in the United States among the religious right and Republicans, and much more. Get the book: https://amzn.to/49AfqBT -- President Joe Biden is suddenly leading Donald Trump in recent polls and has also taken a lead in the financial betting markets -- Failed former President Donald Trump's third desperate attempt to delay his New York hush money trial fails, and unless something changes, the trial will start Monday -- Donald Trump explodes after his appeals are rejected, publishing fourteen unhinged vlogs to Truth Social -- MAGA is realizing that they are doing themselves in with the anti-abortion insanity -- Donald Trump says it would be okay for states to decide to imprison doctors who perform abortions, if that's what they want to do -- A reporter asks Donald Trump whether Arizona has gone to far with their 1864 abortion law, and Trump says both yes and no -- Alina Habba, Donald Trump's on-again-off-again lawyer, has been fired by Trump's former CFO Allen Weisselberg -- Fox News host Jesse Watters confusedly thinks that $20/hour is a "six figure" salary during his appearance on the Patrick Bet-David show -- Donald Trump's media stock, DJT, is crashing quickly -- On the Bonus Show: Trump hush money charges seen as serious by most voters, Tennessee Senate passes bill allowing teachers to carry guns, Kevin McCarthy says he was ousted as Speaker because Matt Gaetz "slept with a 17-year-old," much more... 🍽️ CookUnity: Get 50% OFF your 1st week with code PAKMAN at https://cookunity.com/pakman ⚠️ Try Ground News and get 40% OFF the Vantage plan at https://ground.news/pakman 🩳 SHEATH Underwear: Code PAKMAN for 20% OFF at https://sheathunderwear.com/pakman 💪 Athletic Greens is offering FREE year-supply of Vitamin D at https://athleticgreens.com/pakman -- Become a Supporter: http://www.davidpakman.com/membership -- Subscribe on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/thedavidpakmanshow -- Subscribe to Pakman Live: https://www.youtube.com/pakmanlive -- Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/davidpakmanshow -- Like us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/davidpakmanshow -- Leave us a message at The David Pakman Show Voicemail Line (219)-2DAVIDP

. Say what you want about the validity and importance of polls in April of an election year, the tone and the feel and the dynamics of this presidential race are changing. And we start with new polling in which things are looking pretty damn good for president Joe Biden. Nothing is a guarantee. More than likely, this is an election that will come down to about half a million votes in five states.

But if you have an option between it'll be close and the polls look bad for Biden or it'll be close and the polls look pretty good for Biden. If your goal is to prevent the potential downfall of democracy with four years of dangerous authoritarianism, you choose if you're a logical person, as I try to be, you choose the scenario in which the polls look better. And indeed, Joe Biden is now beating Donald Trump in a majority of polls. I'll be honest, it's a very slim majority, right? It's like 50 percent plus one polls. But also the betting markets have shifted for the first time towards Joe Biden in months.

And individually, none of it means anything. There are people who will write to me and say, David, those stupid prediction markets mean nothing. It's kids in their mom's basements playing on websites. All right, well, we can ignore the betting markets. Oh, and David, the polling also means nothing. Well, there is a momentum shift in the polling from a small lead by Trump to a small lead by Biden by itself. Maybe it doesn't tell us everything we need to know, but it all still together is a picture that rejects the notion that Biden can't win. That's the important takeaway. So many have fallen into this doom

and gloom. Biden simply cannot win. And there is no evidence whatsoever that Biden cannot win. He might not win. Right. That's true. But he certainly can win. So Newsweek reports Joe Biden is now beating Donald Trump in the majority of recent polls seven months before the election. Analysis has turned to who will come out on top. Polls have been evenly split with commentators suggesting the race is too close to call and it is too close to call. I mean, any election that will come down to half a million votes in five states and possibly a one or one and a half point margin separating the candidates in those critical states, it is too close to call. But we have data we can look at. And as the article points out, polls appear to be moving in Joe Biden's favor. And that is something we like

to see. So we look at a bunch of different polls here. One of the things is we really should divide the polls into the higher quality versus the lower quality polls. Some of those higher quality polls include The Economist, which has it as Trump plus one, but they previously had Trump further ahead. The Ipsos Reuters poll has Biden ahead among among active voter adults. I'm sorry, among adults by one and among registered voters by four. The Morning Consult poll has Trump plus one, but it previously had Trump leading by more. The Tip Insights poll says Biden plus three or even depending on which configuration you look at. And the RMG Research poll says Biden plus one YouGov economist

previously had it roughly tied. So that's number one. We then go to the betting markets. The betting markets are not who do you plan to vote for, but who do you bet is likely to win? And of course, these numbers are representative only of those who are participating on this particular website, predict it dot org. But it is still better to see Biden winning rather than losing. And as you can see now, Biden, the favorite over Trump, not by a ton, but the favorite on the betting market framework. Interestingly, Gavin Newsom, seen by the betting markets as just as likely to be the next president

of the United States as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Kennedy is running. Newsom insists he will not run. And somehow still the betting markets have that roughly even. So that's where we are right now. Nothing is dispositive. Nothing is definitive. The predictive value is subject to interpretation. But if you have an option between your guy is losing in the polls or your guy is gaining

to winning in the polls, I go with winning. That's where we are. And we are days away from the start of Donald Trump's first criminal trial. Let's discuss that next failed former president Donald Trump, a civilly liable rapist, has been desperately trying to postpone his first criminal trial scheduled for Monday. And a judge has shot down Donald Trump's third attempt to postpone the start of the Monday trial, probably the 10th or 11th attempt overall to postpone his trials in general.

But as far as the New York hush money trial scheduled for Monday, a New York appeals court has rejected Trump's third request to delay it. This is a report from the Associated Press reading. Trump is now over three in last minute attempts to get a New York appeals court to delay his looming hush money trial. An appeals court judge Wednesday swiftly rejected the latest salvo from Trump's lawyers who argued he should be on the campaign trail instead of in a courtroom defending himself. Trump's lawyers ask the state's mid-level appeals court, stop the case indefinitely while we fight to remove the trial judge and challenge his rulings because they say it's all unfair. He's the biggest victim in the world,

et cetera. And Justice Ellen Gessmer has ruled after a third straight day of emergency hearings on Trump's requests that the trial starts on Monday. So where we are as of today is that unless something changes, Donald Trump's first criminal trial will start on Monday. Trump will be in court. I believe the schedule is Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday. They have Wednesday off on this particular trial. Four days a week. Trump will be sitting in a court of criminal law. What else could he do? The speculation is, well, he could fire his lawyers. He could fire lawyers and say they weren't representing me adequately. I now need your honor. I now need some time, maybe three months, maybe six months to find new lawyers and to

get them up to speed when it comes to this trial. Could that potentially work? I don't know. It's unclear. You can look at five different legal opinions and get five different perspectives on that. But if Donald Trump cannot come up with anything for the first time in his life, it's not going to be lawyers in back rooms negotiating for him. It won't be a civil trial where it's only money that's at stake.

It will be Trump in front of a judge in a criminal courtroom for an all day trial starting on Monday. Couldn't happen to a nicer guy. And by the way, this news of Trump's imminently starting criminal trial wildly triggering him. Let's discuss that next. In conjunction with the decision from a judge that Trump's third desperate attempt to delay his first criminal trial starting

Monday was rejected. The trial will start Monday unless Trump comes up with something new. Trump spent the middle of the night posting erratic videos, 14 videos to truth central complaining about everything from illegal immigration, the abortion controversy, Roe v. Wade, presidential immunity. Are you better off than you were four years ago? Look at this. This is Trump's truth.

Social page scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. 11 p.m. midnight, 1 a.m. video after video after video. This is not normal. This is an unhinged individual. Trump as is often the case, looking confused and disoriented in the videos. Let's start with Trump's big explosion. Now that everyone's treating him so unfairly, Trump says they are weaponizing the justice system against him.

It's all so unfair. At what point are the actions of a sitting president using lawfare and weaponization against his opponent for purposes of election interference considered illegal? I believe, as do various highly respected legal scholars, that crooked Joe Biden has long since crossed over that very sacred threshold. He is a criminal. He is a horrible president. Now remember, Trump has a plan to prosecute Biden if he becomes president.

We'll talk about that a little bit later on in the show. But there is absolutely zero evidence linking Biden to even any element of any of Donald Trump's criminal prosecutions. Trump also in these troth central blogs arguing that four years ago, everything was great, including the border. And now everything's terrible because of Joe Biden. Four years ago, we had the strongest and safest border in U.S. history. Now we have the worst border anywhere in the world ever. There's never been a border like this. Our borders have completely collapsed and many criminals are pouring into our country.

We have them coming in from jails and prisons. We have them coming in from mental institutions. And remember, Trump continuing to insist that so-called mental institutions are being emptied out into the United States. No evidence of that. And as far as we had the best border in the world and now it's the worst, we have had undocumented immigration into this country for decades and decades. It ebbs and flows over time, but there is nothing particularly bad happening right now. Trump with more videos about Joe Biden and then going on to talk about Social Security and Medicare. This is interesting because Trump is now arguing that Democrats are killing Social Security and Medicare, a total red herring distraction from

the reality that reality that it is Trump who has often on toyed with. Maybe we do something about so-called entitlements. Unlike the Democrats who are killing Social Security and Medicare by allowing the invasion of migrants into our country, it's an absolute like a military invasion. I will not under any circumstances allow either of these two precious gems to be even touched under a Trump administration. Now it's important to understand that Trump's strategy, to the extent that it's a strategy, is take every position on every issue so people can pick the one they like.

Trump has previously said, you've got to look at doing something with entitlements, that Social Security and Medicare. But then now is saying, no, it's Democrats who are killing Social Security and Medicare. But then now is saying, no, it's Democrats who are killing Social Security and Medicare through undocumented immigration. I won't touch it. Well, it's like a choose your own adventure, whichever one you like. OK, Trump talking about how it is time to debate President Joe Biden, despite the fact that many times Trump has insisted he won't debate because the commission on presidential debates is so unfair to him.

Time for crooked Joe Biden, the worst president in the history of the United States and I to debate. We have to talk about what he's doing and where we're going. We owe it to our country. We owe it to all Americans anytime, anywhere, anyplace. Well, it sounds like anytime, anywhere and anyplace includes officially sanctioned debates from the Commission on presidential debates. Oh, no, those aren't good because the commission is reportedly unfair to Donald Trump. Trump then rehabilitating this entire are you better off now than you were four years

ago thing? Are you better off than you were four years ago thing? Are you better off than you were four years ago? I don't think so. A very powerful flog from Donald Trump. Are you better off than you were four years ago? I don't think so. Well, you know, I think individuals who benefit from the child tax credit that was expanded under Biden, they're better off today than there were four years ago. Inflation is way down. Those who own stocks are way better off than they were four years ago. All of those individuals who were unemployed four years ago but now have a job thanks to

record low unemployment. They're better off now than they were four years ago. As a country, we are not ridiculed globally because of Trump being in the Oval Office. In that sense, we are all sort of better off than we were four years ago. Those who are those who require insulin or those who work for companies that deal with infrastructure and now are getting all sorts of great new projects thanks to the infrastructure bill. I mean, we could go on on the millions and tens of millions of people who in their own

ways are indeed better off than they were four years ago. And then we're not going to look at all of these. But lastly, here is Trump again whining. He should have immunity. All of these trials should just go away because he should be immune, period. And this video apparently glitching. What is going on? All right. Well, that video is glitching, so we're going to be done with it. 14 videos in the middle of the night, all triggered, catalyzed by yet another rejection in an attempt to delay his criminal trial.

Unless something changes, the trial starts Monday. I don't know about you, but I'm looking forward to it. If you're a foodie, you know how expensive and time consuming it can be to explore your local food scene and find new things. And this is why I love our sponsor, Cook Unity. Unlike other meal subscriptions, Cook Unity is the first ever collective of award winning chefs delivering locally sourced culinary marvels to your door every week. The David Pakman Show David Pakman dot com. than many other meal subscriptions. There's no cooking. The food is ready to go. The food arrives fresh, never frozen. And I absolutely loved trying out the recent chili roasted shrimp.

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the polarizing events like the election season that we're in. If you're watching this on YouTube, Donald Trump and Joe Biden secured their party's nominations for a historic presidential rematch. So I'll be looking at Ground News's election page for minute to minute updates on the issues that matter most and the blind spots in the left and right's election coverage. So, for example, check out the breakdown on why the GOP's Biden impeachment appears to be falling apart. Ground News found more than 20 articles published on this, but I can see it's a near total blind spot for people only following right leaning news. I wonder why. And looking over here, many of these articles come

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states can do whatever they want. Arizona has now gone back to putting in force an 1864 abortion law with almost no exceptions whatsoever other than for life of the mother. And here is Charlie Kirk, hero of the young MAGA right wing saying that this decision from Arizona, it is the right decision on the merits, but it is not the right time acknowledging it. Listen, even for Charlie Kirk, he's acknowledging that politically this is damaging, which is funny that he's only just now realizing this. Take a listen to this and then we'll discuss it. I have received some pretty angry text messages in the last couple of days, really, because people say, Charlie, you're insufficiently

pro-life. And by the way, this is the beauty of this and the beauty, I mean, because we want it to destroy MAGA. This decision from Trump, this statement from Trump is angering the pro-life people who are furious because they go, wait a second, Trump's fine letting states have legal abortion. That's disgusting. And then on the other hand, the vast majority of the country that believes abortion should be legal in most circumstances is saying, wait a second, he's OK with what's happening in Arizona.

Going back to an 1864 law, it's angering everybody. And that is a delight. They say that, you know, you're you're you're not fighting for the unborn. I mean, this is this is silly rubbish to me, firstly. Secondly. If you don't have political power, then you're not going to be able to advance any of the issues that we care deeply about. Here's the other problem. And this is the sad reality. The Republican Party and many of our voters are not as pro-life as they say they are.

And that's just the reality of it. Many of them don't even claim to be pro-life in the way Charlie Kirk does. I mean, that that's the truth is most of them say, oh, abortion actually should be legal. And yesterday was the test. Yesterday was the stress test. Arizona comes forward at the Supreme Court and says, you know, no abortions, which was always the stated goal. And instead of saying celebrating. People immediately come out and say we're against the ruling. Unfortunately, there are millions and millions of people that go to church and they're Christians who secretly or not so secretly will say they want an abortion as an option in case if their daughter gets pregnant. Now, look, over time, we can start to win more people over. Over time, we could build consensus.

In some way, it's a proper ruling at an improper time. You need to make sure your laws fit with the will of the people. If the laws don't fit with the will of the people, you're going to get major political backlash. Yes. Yes, absolutely. And appropriate or first of all, the idea that a law from 1864 is the appropriate law for something on which the reality and the medical science has changed so much since 1864. The idea that that is the appropriate law for something on which the reality and the medical science has changed so much since 1864. The idea that that's the appropriate law in 2024 is laughable. But putting that aside, Charlie Kirk is more or less saying the Arizona law is great. And if you're really pro-life, you would love the law. But the timing of it, we should have waited until after

the election to ban all abortion because there's lots of supposedly pro-life Christians who aren't really pro-life because they want abortion to be an option in case their daughter gets pregnant. That's a pretty aggressive and wild perspective to put together. But it is not altogether untrue, at least as far as people like Charlie Kirk are concerned. And this is just one aspect, by the way, of the totally predictable outcome. This is what we when we go back to 2015, go back to my YouTube channel, 2015, 2016. What we expected to happen if Trump won was that he would get two or three Supreme Court picks when the opportunity presented itself. They would overturn Roe v. Wade. States would go back to or pass new, absolutely outrageous, restrictive abortion laws in an

environment where the country increasingly thinks abortion should be legal in most cases. So good for them for realizing that this is politically outrageous. He still says the laws are good, but they're just politically inconvenient. We now have to make sure that these laws and these rulings end up destroying them politically in November. Donald Trump was asked yesterday and essentially said, if states want to imprison doctors for performing abortions, then that's their prerogative. They should be allowed to do it while at the same time arguing that the Arizona law, which he completely defends their right to have, is the wrong law. This was in Atlanta, Georgia.

Donald Trump was in Atlanta, Georgia yesterday, and he said states should be allowed to throw doctors in prison for providing reproductive care if that's what they want to do. Listen carefully to the question and to his answer. It's 2024, folks. It's not 1864. It's 2024. You answered some questions about abortion, but do you think a doctor should be punished who perform abortions? I'd let that be to the states. You know, everything we're doing now is states and states rights. And what we wanted to do is get it back to the states because for 53 years it's been a fight

and now the states are handling it and some have handled it very well and the others will end up handling it very well. So Trump doesn't say, listen, states rights, but no, we're not going to imprison doctors, imprison doctors for providing medical services. No, Trump is essentially saying it's in the hands of the states. Now, if the states want to imprison doctors, then they get to imprison doctors. Some states, if this is what happens, will soon have an even greater lack of qualified doctors. I've already told you how OBGYNs are fleeing from certain states in this hostile medical

context. And of course, if you're wondering, is Trump going to go to the next level and say it's OK for states to punish the women who have abortions? Remember that Trump already tried that during the 2016 campaign. Remember when Trump said this and then the next day walked it back after he was told by advisers, no, no, no, we don't punish the women. Remember this incredible moment from his interview with Chris Matthews? Do you believe in but you believe in punishment for abortion? Yes or no? As a principal.

The answer is that there has to be some form of punishment for the woman. Yeah, it has to be some form for the woman. Yeah, there has to be some form. Then of course, he walked that back when he was told, no, no, no, you're supposed to say punish the doctors, not punish the women. Trump also during this very strange press conversation in Atlanta saying that he may have done more for the black community even than Abraham Lincoln, who helped end slavery. I've done more for the black community than any other president since Abraham Lincoln

and maybe including Abraham Lincoln. That's right. Trump, where I struggle to name anything he has done for the black community, he says he has done as much as or more or more than Abraham Lincoln for the black community. So that was in Atlanta, Georgia. Let's discuss now what Trump said getting into or off of his plane. Yesterday, Donald Trump took more questions standing outside of his airplane about what's happening in Arizona with abortion. And it's completely unintelligible. It's just a mishmash. It's a verbal Rourke Rorschach test, an inkblot of sorts.

A reporter asks Trump, has Arizona gone too far with their abortion law? Arizona, of course, rehabilitating and putting in force an 1864 near total ban on abortion. And Trump seems to say, yes, Arizona went too far. But it's also OK and everything's fine because it states rights. But we're going to change the law. What? What do you think about Florida? Florida is probably maybe going to change. Also, she is all of what the will of the people. This is what I've been saying. It's a perfect system. The will of the people.

So Trump is saying his position is states should do whatever they want. And Arizona did whatever it wanted, but they went too far and we're going to get it changed. Well, rather than now having to work to get it changed, which suggests you don't really believe in the right of states to do whatever they want. Why not just say up front there are some minimum guidelines which all states should abide by on abortion, which, by the way, is what Roe v. Wade was, which Trump worked to get overturned by picking three anti-choice Supreme Court justices. It's it's completely incoherent. And I know there are people who are going to say, David, it's not incoherent.

Trump is being consistent. He's saying states should be able to do whatever they want, but then we should be able to weigh in and encourage them to change it. Well, why should Trump as a federal actor be working to get states to change the law if he says they should be able to do whatever they want? That's what Roe v. Wade did. If Trump's Trump's argument is internally incoherent because he says it should be up to the states, but I will work as president to get them to change it. Well, that's federal influence over what states are doing, which is what Roe v. Wade effectively was. It's it's a mess. It's a mess. And the bottom line is Trump saying what I want is for everybody to vote for me. Here is Trump in the same breath talking about

how great it was to overturn Roe v. Wade. Speaker 4 So for 52 years, people wanted to end Roe v. Wade to get it back to the states. We did that. It was an incredible thing, an incredible achievement. We did that. And now the states have it and the states are putting out what they want. Trump is saying Roe v. Wade was really bad because it was the federal government involved in abortion at the state level. So we got rid of Roe v. Wade, which was great. So now states can do whatever they want. Arizona did something that's bad. So I will work as the president who works at the federal government level to get Arizona to change it. Wouldn't it have been simpler not to

overturn Roe v. Wade to begin with? Well, yeah, but that ship has sailed stunning. And what this is evidence of is that Trump knows that he is in an increasingly untenable position here and he is potentially hemorrhaging voters, not only women voters, but anybody who understands how absurd this is. We've got to make sure that he ends up punished for this electorally in November. That's the key. If we let him get away with it, it will all be for nothing. People will suffer as a result of all of this.

At minimum, we've got to make sure Trump suffers electorally as well. The weather is starting to warm up, which I love. But the downside of the warmer weather, as many of the guys know, is the sweating and the sticking that comes with traditional underwear. It's not pleasant. But our sponsor, Sheath, designs ergonomic underwear. They's not pleasant, but our sponsor, sheath designs ergonomic underwear. They've solved the problem. Instead of letting everything mash together and chafe, sheath underwear has separate compartments

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nationalism, et cetera. How far back can we trace it? And what are its origins as far as you're concerned? Well, there have long been strains of reactionary religion fused with identitarian nationalism in America. So, for example, in the 1920s, the American clergyman and far right populist Gerald Smith, he was a white supremacist, and he started a movement called the America First Party. He was a white supremacist, and he started a movement called the America First Party. He was a member of the KKK, so he's deeply racist. He appeared to be a supporter of Hitler's rise to power. He actually modeled one of his groups on the brown

shirts. He's very anti-Semitic, of course, arguing that America should not intervene in World War II. He eventually ran for president on a Christian nationalist ticket. He called himself the Christian Nationalist Party. He failed to win that bid, and he sort of faded into history. But Christian nationalism in its present form can really be traced to a movement in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It was called the New Right. There was this group of activists, including people like Paul Weyrich, Richard Vigery, Howard Phillips, and Phyllis Schlafly was part of it. They all sort of felt the Republican Party had become too liberal,

too soft on communism. And they also felt like religion in America was too liberal. They were upset with the influence of theologians like Paul Tillich and Niebuhr. These were Protestant theologians that were emphasizing the social justice aspect of Christianity and the social gospel. And they were also really deeply upset about the IRS's threat to revoke tax privilege status of segregated schools. And they really wanted to sort of ignite a hyper-conservative counter-revolution and draw the Republican Party off to the right. And so they, you know, they weren't all Protestant, by the way. They drew in ultra-conservative Catholics like George Weigel and Richard John Newhouse that shared some of their concerns. And they really landed on the abortion issue as a way to unite these sort of various strands of the movement.

They could draw in conservative Protestants, conservative Catholics, and also draw in some of the sort of Christian fundamentalists, as Howard Phillips called them. So over time, they really worked hard to purge pro-choice voices from the Republican Party. Today, we have an all anti-abortion Republican Party. Everybody thinks that the Republican Party has always been anti-abortion. It's absolutely not true. In fact, you know, I'm sorry going on for so long, but this is just like a really cool thing. If you're like a weird religion nerd like me, Phyllis Schlafly wrote a book called How the Republican Party Became Pro-Life. It really shows

over time, it took a tremendous amount of effort to purge those pro-choice voices. But they did that and kind of united their new movement. And now you see this sort of pro-life religion that we see uniting the Republican Party. It's a modern creation and it was created for political purposes. I'm curious about some of the methods that this movement uses to amplify its influence. You know, we understand that even though the country has moved more in the direction of being pro choice, arguably than ever before, certainly the most from the Roe v. Wade era, the majority of the United States now thinks abortion in most cases should be legal. And yet there's the sense that the anti abortion movement is still a pretty good way to raise money in certain parts of the

country if you're running for elected office. So there's like the fundraising aspect. The book Waves of Rancor talks about how AM radio and talk radio were used from a very early stage decades ago through church radio, et cetera, to disproportionately push these narratives onto the airwaves. So there's like the media component of this. What are the strongest areas of influence for the religious right today in the United States? You know, the religious right is more than an ideology.

It's more than the Christian nationalist ideology that says America is founded to be a conservative Christian nation. Our laws should be based on the Bible. That ideology is a tool for a leadership driven political machine that turns that story into political power. This is not really about grappling with scripture. This is about power. This is about politics. And what they have done over the last five decades, five plus decades, is invest a tremendous amount of money into a deep organizational infrastructure that works to transform our courts, transform the media system, and fracture America in these really important ways. So there are these, you know, I want to describe in brief, I, you know, describe this organizational infrastructure in detail in my book, The Power Worshippers, but you've got right-wing policy groups, you have advocacy organizations, legal advocacy organizations, you have networking organizations that bring together the leaders of the different organizations with deep-pocketed funders.

There are very sophisticated data initiatives. There are initiatives that draw pastors into networks, organizations like Watchmen on the Wall and Faith Wins and Nistros Hispanos. These are organizations that will, in the case of Watchmen on the Wall, they have tens of thousands of affiliated pastors. They hold events for these pastors. Look, movement leaders know very well if you can get people to vote on a single issue, you can control their vote. And pastors are often the most trusted voices in their communities. They draw these pastors into networks, give them messaging tools that they should use to turn out the vote, the conservative Christian vote. They, you know, they're told, they tell

their congregants, you need to vote your biblical values. They distribute very sophisticated voter guides that have like simple yes or no answers on questions of things like abortion, same-sex marriage, or what have you. These days, it's more broader LGBT stuff. They'll have issues, you know, that will always be a question. This sort of faux, sort of their definition of religious freedom, which is the freedom of people with the correct viewpoints to impose them on everybody else. Yes. So, I mean, these are the this is the machinery like much of it works as a as a giant voter

turnout machine in election cycles. They know if you can, again, you know, get people out to vote in disproportionate numbers, you can punch above your political weight. And so that's what they do. That's how they that's how they win elections. Without a doubt, abortion has had a central role in this entire movement. As you talk about, I want to mention a few other areas of focus that have kind of come up over the last five years, which I don't believe originated from the group you're talking about. But there

is now some overlap, and these include thevaccine stuff we saw during the pandemic. This includes concerns about books in public schools, be they about American history, slavery, LGBT issues, et cetera, an obsession with so-called DEI programs and diversity programs. There are all of these other semi overlapping things that the religious right seems to have gotten involved with, at least to some degree. Can you talk about how that happened, why those issues are interesting or mobilizing to the religious right? They needed other issues. Listen, let's be clear. Abortion rights are very popular in America. Both Democrats and Republicans support abortion rights in significant majorities. Even though the Republican Party casts itself as pro-life, a lot of people understand within the Republican Party that, you know, at the end of

the day, abortion rights are really critical for maternal safety, for instance. I mean, I described this incident, this really horrible incident in my book, where I actually had an abortion to save my life during a pregnancy that went very wrong. And I'm hardly alone. A lot of women experience challenges with their sort of efforts to have children. And so given the fact that, you know, we can return to that later if you want, but given the fact that abortion is not only critical for maternal care, but also very popular across the board in many ways, the religious right needed fresh issues in order to, you know, draw in people who were not on board with a total ban on all abortions from the quote, quote, moment of conception, whatever,

you know, that means, means different people, different things, different people. So what, so what they had to do is find these new issues and critical race theory first of all critical race theory is not taught in public k-12 schools it just simply isn't it was um a small issue that was taught in a you know little corners of some small law schools. But what it did is has the potential to activate these sort of racial anxieties that are critical to a large segment of the movement. And Christopher Ruffo said it best. I don't have his tweet in front of me, but he tweeted something to the effect of we're going to, I'm going to paraphrase, he said, we're going to de-link the term critical race theory from what it really means and attach to it everything that people

don't like. And then we're going to go after critical race theory. So they throw the teachings of slavery, you know, America's 250 year history of slavery, you know, from the first time into that sort of CRT bucket. They turn teaching about Jim Crow, which really happened, and its consequences into that CRT bucket. But it's interesting. This serves two purposes. Number one, it activates racial anxieties, and it also gets new people on board in the movement but this movement has a very long hostility to the institution of public education so a lot of these issues like d um crt and the book banning it's really intended to reduce people's faith in public education reason for that is it's all you got to follow the money. As a journalist, they tell you,

follow the money. It's always about the money. They really want to capture that public K-12 budget and redirect the funding to private religious schools, which can teach whatever they like, including contempt for people of different faiths or charter networks. There are quite a number of them that are have a very strong ideological and even religious sort of agenda within them. Can you talk a little bit in the time we have left about whether this may backfire this election cycle in this particular sense, which is Trump got his three Supreme Court justices. They overturned Roe v. Wade.

Predictably, laws from 64 and I mean 1864 are now going back in force in places like Arizona at a time when the country is, as you mentioned, really either overtly or implicitly more in favor of abortion, mostly being legal than ever before. Is there a chance this backfires in the 2024 election cycle? There's a chance. I mean, I don't make predictions, but we have to look at what Trump does, not what he says. He promised religious right leaders that he would appoint radical anti-abortion judges. He did that. Yes. What we're seeing in Arizona with this disgraceful law is a consequence of that.

He's repeatedly promised to end abortion. He's boasted over and over about overturning Roe versus Wade. We're seeing the consequences of this in red states. We're seeing the consequences of this in Alabama, where the chief justice, Tom Parker, banned IVF and cited scripture as he was doing so. And this logic would also ban many of the most popular and effective forms of birth control. And this movement has minted like real extremists. I mean, the movement just gets more

and more extreme as it sort of continues to operate in this disinformation bubble. So here's the thing. Trump needs the support of this movement to win the election. That means that if he does win, we can expect a more aggressive push for these extreme measures, an all-out assault on women's rights and reproductive rights, a war on public education, even more far-right justices in our courts, an attack on the rights of working people. It's interesting that some of the people, we haven't even spoken about the funders of the movement, but many of them that are funding these sort of culture war initiatives are

simultaneously funding an assault on workplace protections and rights for the workforce. So we can see a whole lot of that and basically a wholesale attack on the separation of church and state. I think we need to focus more on the operatives who are now lining up behind Trump because they're more radical and focused even than they were in the first term. I'm sure you have spoken on your podcast about Project 2025. Yes. The radical plan to remake the government as a sort of, you know, MAGA loyal, you know, loyal, loyalist MAGA government. But, you know, I think this will be the most consequential presidential election, certainly of my lifetime. That I agree with. We've been speaking about the book The Power Worshippers Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious

Nationalism, and we've been speaking with the book's author, Catherine Stewart. Catherine, really appreciate your time today. Thank you. Great to speak with you. Thank you. It's important to me with you. Thank you. and banned substances, while the industry standard is usually to test for only 10. AG1 is NSF certified for sport, one of the most rigorous independent quality and safety certifications out there. And the whole reason I drink AG1 is it just is simple. It simplifies

everything. It's a scoop a day. I get my vitamins and my minerals and that's all I need. And the probiotics in AG one are something I'm particularly glad is there. So AG one just replaces the vitamin bottles, the digestive aids, all of the things that you might otherwise be taking individually. It's quicker. It's more cost effective than buying everything individually. You can go to drink G1 dot com slash Pacman to get a free year supply of vitamin D and K plus five free age one travel packs. That's drink a G the number one dot com slash Pacman. The link is in the podcast notes. Donald Trump's former lawyer, Alina Haba, has been fired again.

Now you might be saying, David, I thought she was already fired. How could she be fired again? She was fired by someone else. This time, Trump's former CFO, the beleaguered Alan Weisselberg. Wow. It really couldn't happen to a nicer person, could it? Newsweek reports Alina Haba replaced in Weisselberg case. Alina Haba has been replaced by Armin Morian as the attorney representing

her quote, dear friend, Alan Weisselberg, the former CFO of the Trump organization, according to a new court filing. In recent times, Haba has emerged as a prominent Trump associate representing Trump in a number of his cases, becoming a regular at Mar-a-Lago. Morian is another longstanding Trump associate. We have the court filing filed with the New York County clerk. It is a consent to change attorneys, and it indeed says it is hereby consented that Morian law be substituted as counsel of record for defendant Allen Weisselberg instead of Habba, Medio and associates. And there you see Alina Habba's signature and Armin Morian's signature yet again, swing and a miss for Alina Habba.

Now, I want to discuss the broader question here is getting attached to Trump good or bad for your career, because in some sense you get the note. I mean, let's just think about Alina Haba. You get the notoriety, you get the TV appearances, you hang out at Mar-a-Lago with Kimberly Guilfoyle and with Trump and with Rudy Giuliani and so on and so forth. There are certainly these kind of fringe benefits that come with it. You become part of an in crowd and you're flying back and forth from New York to Florida. And it's also so fun and prestigious and all of it. And at the same time, you get legal problems. You end up in situations

where it appears as though you are telling lies, sometimes under oath. You end up humiliated multiple times in court as judges have dressed down Alina Haba for her inappropriate procedural actions in court and told, sit down, stand up, talk to the court in the right way. You have professional humiliations where you have, despite the bluster and confidence that she presents on television, major, major financial losses secured for her client, Donald Trump. And then you end up in these very public firings. And to be totally clear, attorneys in high profile cases get replaced regularly for all sorts of different reasons. I have to be honest, I had no idea she was even representing Allen Weisselberg. And interestingly,

Trump and Weisselberg no longer even seem aligned. I mean, Weisselberg, who was an extreme Trump loyalist for a long time, now seems to be taking self preservation and his own family and his personal interests as the most important aspect of this. You know, we spoke with Ellie Honig yesterday, former prosecutor, about how one of the ways in which you sometimes see influence exerted over cronies and Weisselberg certainly for years was a crony of Trump's. One of the ways you see influence exerted is that the same lawyers represent the big boss. In this case, it's Trump. Sometimes it was a mob boss. In this case, it's Trump. The same lawyers represent the big boss and the underlings. And this is a way to indirectly apply pressure to handle those lower cases

in ways that are either beneficial or less damaging to the big boss. Weisselberg clearly is no longer participating in that from everything that I've read. So it would be weird for him to continue being represented by Haba, who has represented Trump in many of these cases. So Alina Haba fired again, maybe more competent counsel now will be able to assist Allen Weisselberg. Hey, this is so stupid what I'm going to show you. Or it's a representation of how, frankly, dumb a lot of the people are who are setting the agenda and framing the national conversation around major issues like wages and personal finance. Many of you might remember the PBD podcast. This is a podcast hosted by Patrick Bet David down in Florida.

I went down some months ago, close to a year. Maybe now it's been I went down there and appeared on the PBD podcast and we mixed it up and it was sort of interesting. Fox News host Jesse Waters, really a rising star on Fox News, appeared on the PBD podcast and they were talking about salaries and wages. Now, I really want to make sure I set this up correctly for you. One of the stories that Fox News hosts and other right wing media figures have been pushing is that the wages for fast food workers and the minimum wage in much of the country, it's just too high. It doesn't make sense that fast food workers and entry level workers be able to afford a reasonable standard of living for jobs that require, as far as Jesse Waters is concerned,

very little skill. And if you are going to make the case that fast food workers are being paid too much, one would hope that you understand what their annual wages are. And here is Jesse Waters when the topic of a twenty dollar an hour minimum wage for fast food workers came up. He goes, that's like six figures, isn't it? 20 bucks an hour. That's like six figures, isn't it? Listen to this and remember, this is the supposed a cultural critic and personal finance expert who in prime time on one of the three major cable networks is explaining what should and

shouldn't be minimum wages. And he seems to think that 20 bucks an hour is a six-figure annual salary. If you're making $20 an hour to work at a fast food restaurant, right, is that six figures? Are you making? No, no, no. 40 grand. 50 is just to exit and add a few zeros.

Okay, so. 40K a year, full time. 40K a year. And then if your husband or wife is also there, you're making $100,000 as a family. Nope, it's still only 80. Both working at McDonald's? 80 grand. Okay, that's crazy.

That is crazy because that job really doesn't require much. So it's inflating the entire, you know, labor sector. The thing, the labor sector is getting inflated, Patrick. And the Happy Meal. And the Happy Meal. OK, so I this level of disconnect. So let me first explain the math. There is I learned this when I was 14. OK, Jesse Waters is, I think, close to 50 years old. And he comments professionally about wages. OK, I learned this when I was 14. If you want to as a shorthand to convert an hourly wage to an annual salary, you double it and then add a thousand. You add three zeros. OK, and here's the math of it. There's 52 weeks in a year. If you want to assume on average

minimum wage workers get two weeks of vacation. And I know that there's details here, like are the vacation weeks paid or unpaid? But very generally speaking, 10 bucks an hour is 20 grand a year. Assuming you work 50 weeks, 40 hours a week. 20 bucks an hour is 40 grand a year. 25 bucks an hour is 50 grand a year. 50 bucks an hour is 100 grand a year. Are people is this simple enough? Is this simple enough for the 14 year olds in the audience? Because I knew this when I was 14. Jesse Waters, nearly 50 years old, goes is 20 bucks an hour, a six figure salary. So when we look at these, uh, I, you know, the talent on Fox news, there's a lot of talent lacking when we look at these talking heads on Fox news and they're reading their jokes off of a teleprompter like Greg Gutfeld does or off of notes or whatever, or they're making

a proud and defiant and confident declarations about what wages should be like Jesse Waters. Jesse Waters thought 20 bucks an hour was a six figure salary, and it is not. And then, by the way, if you have two people making 40 grand a year, it's still not six figures. And by the way, that's two people. So the more intelligent and nuanced way to think about this, of course, relates to what is the cost of living in the places where fast food workers make 20 bucks an hour. I don't know whether Jesse cares about this, but in the vast majority of places where minimum wage is going up and fast food minimum wage is going up, even working at that higher wage, 40 or even 50 hours a week, you still can't afford often a one bedroom apartment, never mind a two bedroom apartment, even with two people working at 20 bucks an hour together, making 80 grand a year. If you have one or two kids

and you need a two bedroom apartment where the two kids share a room in the median cost of living scenario in so many of these big cities, you still can't afford to have that basic standard of living in the city in which you work. So no, top line, 20 bucks an hour is nowhere close to six figures. Big picture. The idea that this is an outrageously high wage that's out of out of sync with cost of living also isn't true. This guy has a prime time show on one of the three major cable networks where he presents himself as an expert on these issues. And he

thinks 20 bucks an hour is not only too high, but it's also a six figure salary. This is where we are. And it is a scary, scary place to be. Donald Trump's media company is crashing like crazy. Now down 50 percent from its peak. This is wild, wild stuff. So first, let's start with the numbers. As you can see here, as of this moment, Trump's stock, as I record, this is down another 17 percent today. It is now down from its peak. Oh, the numbers have even expanded. It was a peak that 66 and now it's at 32. So we are now down 52%. Many articles written about this Trump media stock falls 10% as downward slide continues. Let's talk a little bit about what's going on here. Donald Trump's media company IPO. The only real asset

that the Trump media company has is the platform Truth Social, which lost nearly 50 million dollars over the recent reporting period. It makes sense that Trump's stock is down in this way because all of the different reasons that publicly traded companies have value don't exist when it comes to Trump's media company. So, for example, sometimes the value of a stock is based on valuable assets. Some companies have a lot of physical capital, so they might have a bunch of real estate. They might have really expensive equipment. They have tens or hundreds of millions or billions of dollars in inventory. Like take take Home Depot, for example. Part of the construction of the value of a share of Home Depot stock is that all of these stores have it's got to

be billions or tens of billions, huge amounts of inventory, all of the appliances and all of the nails and the drywall anchors and snow blowers and all of this stuff. Huge value assets, stores, real estate. McDonald's famously has tons of real estate. The Trump media company doesn't have that valuable intellectual property. If you have patents and trademarks and copyrights and trade secrets, even if you don't have a bunch of physical capital, your company might still be worth a lot of money. Truth Social doesn't have that. They have a cheap Twitter clone is what their platform is, and they don't have any unique intellectual property.

Well, some companies have really high revenue. They may not have intellectual property. They may not have physical capital, but they have extremely high revenue. Trump's company doesn't have that. Having a five billion dollar market cap on four million in revenue, by the way, at a loss doesn't justify the stock market price. Well, sometimes you don't have high revenue, but you have a high profit margin. You might only have five million in revenue, but it's 95 percent profit. Trump's

company doesn't have that. They made four million and lost 50 in the last nine months of 2023 or something like that. OK, well, what about growth potential? You might not have any of these things, but you are poised to grow because you have such a unique and explosively accelerating business model. Truth Social doesn't have that either. Well, maybe you have a valuable user base. There are companies that have no physical assets, no intellectual property, no revenue, no profitability, but their user base is so huge, hundreds of millions of people, for example, that the potential for monetizability is where the value comes from. Truth

social doesn't have that either. So it doesn't make sense that Trump's company had this market cap and there is all sorts of speculation. Were the origins of this market cap, a very brazen attempt to launder money or for people to buy the stock to then funnel it into Trump's pockets. Even though Trump is not allowed to sell his shares for six months, he could still maybe leverage the value and get a loan against it. We don't know. We don't know, but it doesn't make any sense that Trump's company is worth billions. The media company now we're talking about truth. Social is failing. Almost no revenue, negative profitability. What is it? Was it a grift all along? Was it a scam all along? Was it a way to attempt to funnel Trump money for legal fees? I don't know the answer, but the stock value should be

collapsing. And people who got tricked into investing in it. At some point, we can't save everyone. Right. It can't be conservative. Say the government can't go around saving anybody. You have the right to make bad financial decisions. While the people who invested in the DJ T stock have indeed made bad financial decisions, I guess by conservatives own principles, they're now going to have to deal with it. Sad.

Very, very sad. We've got a great bonus show for you today. We are going to talk about public opinion on the Trump hush money case. Most Americans think it is a very serious set of charges. We will talk about the Tennessee Senate passing a bill that allows teachers to carry guns in classrooms. What? Yes, they are doing it. And we will talk about former Speaker Kevin McCarthy's latest claims that the real reason

he was kicked out of speaker is because Matt Gaetz had sex with a 17 year old and McCarthy wasn't willing to help him cover it up. All of those stories and more on today's bonus show, the bonus show where you want to make money. Everybody else that makes money to fund themselves is bad. Sign up at join Pacman dot com. Remember that when the new website goes live Sunday, membership prices go up, but you can lock in today's rates forever by signing up at join Pacman dot com. And remember, you can get my latest children's book. Think like a voter.

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