The David Pakman Show - 4/17/23: Multiple new Clarence Thomas scandals as GOP stages bogus hearings

Episode Date: April 17, 2023

-- On the Show: -- Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is involved in multiple new scandals, including claiming income from a company that has not existed for years -- Republicans stage absurd and ridiculous hearings in New York City about "violent crime" in order to attack Alvin Bragg over Donald Trump's arrest and indictment -- 2024 Republican Presidential candidate Nikki Haley is caught dramatically overstating her fundraising -- Donald Trump's indictment has supercharged his donations from the people he continues to scam and grift -- A pro-Ron DeSantis PAC publishes its first ad attacking Donald Trump in very ugly fashion -- Failed former President Donald Trump speaks at the NRA convention and delivers an extraordinarily dangerous speech -- Donald Trump absolutely explodes on Truth Social as his second arrest looms and the Fox News vs Dominion trial is about to start -- Republican Senator Ted Cruz says that police officers love him -- Former Trump propagandist Steve Bannon interviews a legitimately insane person on his show, "Mary Beth" -- A voicemail caller apparently believes David was kicked off of YouTube, and invokes the power of "Saintan" -- On the Bonus Show: David's stories from his vacation, including explosive confrontations at the airport, and much more 🌞 Get 10% off your first month of BetterHelp online therapy: https://betterhelp.com/pakman 💪 Athletic Greens is offering FREE year-supply of Vitamin D at https://athleticgreens.com/pakman 💻 Get Private Internet Access for 83% OFF + 4 months free at https://www.piavpn.com/David 🚲 Lectric eBikes! Shop for your new electric bike at https://lectricebikes.com 🧻 Reel Paper: Code PAKMAN for 30% OFF + free shipping at https://reelpaper.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

Speaker 1 Speaker 2 Speaker 3 Speaker 4 Speaker 5 Speaker 6 Speaker 7 Speaker 8 Speaker 10 Speaker 1 Speaker 1 Speaker 2 Speaker 3 Speaker 4 Speaker 5 Speaker 6 Speaker 7 Speaker 8 Speaker Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, we have now learned, has been for years claiming income from a company that did not actually exist when he said he earned income from that company. Now, is this simply a paperwork mistake or an innocent mix up? Or is it the latest in multiple new chapters of the questions surrounding Clarence Thomas? We are going to discuss all of it. Now, you may be saying, David, I just heard something about Clarence Thomas. We are going to discuss all of it. Now, you may be saying, David, I just heard something about Clarence Thomas a week and a half ago before you left. You told us about Clarence Thomas's financial relationship with a billionaire, vacations,

yachts, all sorts of different things. And yes, that is indeed true. But there are now multiple new allegations against Clarence Thomas. So let's jump into the first one. This is from a Washington Post investigation which says Clarence Thomas has for years claimed income from a defunct real estate firm. The misstatements which began when a family business transferred its holdings to another company are part of a pattern that has raised questions about how the Supreme Court justice views his obligation to accurately report details about his finances to the public. The details are actually relatively straightforward here. Over the last two decades, Clarence Thomas has reported on financial disclosure forms that his family was receiving

rental income to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars from a company called Ginger Limited Partnership. That company, which is a Nebraska real estate firm launched in the 1980s, has not existed since 2006. OK, that's 17 years that this company has not existed. That company was shut down and a separate firm was created. The similarly named firm assumed control of the shuttered company. But Clarence Thomas keeps reporting that he's making between 50 and 100000 dollars a year from that company. There is no mention of the actual company that exists. Ginger Holdings LLC. Now, could this just be

an innocent paperwork error? Well, the article addresses that. It says the previously unreported misstatement might be dismissed as a paperwork error, but it is among a series of errors and omissions that Thomas has made on these forms over the last many decades. And if you take them all together, there are a number of red flags here. Now, this is not the only new controversy involving Clarence Thomas. The Griot reports Thomas sold real estate to a donor and didn't report that he did that. This is this is yet another one of these. Oh, it's a mistake, which just by coincidence makes it seem as though Thomas has has fewer financial entanglements with donors and influence peddlers. The Griot reports the 2014 real estate deal

shines a new light on Thomas's decades old relationship with Harlan Crowe. That is the real estate magnate and financier for conservative causes, who I told you about a week and a half ago. And indeed, Harlan Crowe bought properties, three properties belonging to Clarence Thomas and his family in a transaction worth more than one hundred thousand dollars that Thomas did not ever report. So listen, Clarence Thomas should resign. The totality of the financial picture here is an absolute nightmare. Over the weekend, I read about something called the Abe Fortas president. Fortis is spelled F.O.R.T.A.S.

Abe Fortis was a Supreme Court justice appointed by LBJ in 1965. He was nominated by LBJ to chief justice in 68. But that nomination was eventually withdrawn because of controversy related to his financial dealings. And the Fortis president precedent refers to this kind of tradition that has emerged since his nomination was withdrawn, which suggests Supreme Court nominees who have been the subject of significant controversy or opposition during their confirmation process may not be successful in their bid for appointment to the court. So in other words, the idea is if a Supreme Court nominee becomes too controversial, they ultimately are not going to succeed. And it's been cited a whole bunch of

different times. It came up with Brett Kavanaugh. We know Brett Kavanaugh ultimately did become a Supreme Court justice, et cetera. And the idea here is it's time to go. It's time to get out. Now, whether this actually is going to come to force when it comes to Clarence Thomas is unclear. But the argument that's being made is this all actually goes back to Clarence Thomas's start on the court. It goes back to those hearings where Clarence Thomas's start on the court. It goes back to those hearings where Clarence Thomas was accused of sexual harassment. And we should have known at the time that he was unfit to serve on the court that in a way telegraphed or predicted what ultimately is coming to pass with Clarence Thomas, which is a sort of 20 year record of endless forms of financial impropriety questions, which ultimately are going to

force him off the court. Now, do I believe Clarence Thomas is actually going to be forced off of the court? I really don't. I really don't. And one of the things that we have seen is that while on paper there are all sorts of different rules and conventions and stipulations and laws, when they are actually challenged just because a check or balance is there in writing does not mean it will actually be enforced. We've seen so many Hatch Act violations during the Trump administration, Kellyanne Conway and others. It all went nowhere. We've seen all sorts of violations of the way presidents are supposed to comport themselves during the Trump administration. And at least for the most part, there have been no consequences.

So do I believe that Thomas should resign? Of course. Do I believe that Clarence Thomas has violated those judicial canons which say that judges and justices should avoid not only actual impropriety, but even the appearance of impropriety? Of course, that's been violated by Clarence Thomas. But do I believe he will actually be held accountable for it? I don't. If you do, I want to hear from you, because if anything, we've learned over the last six years that unless we really have a system not only willing to have checks and balances, but to actually enforce them and hold people accountable for them, nothing happens. And that's been the greatest lesson of the last six years for me. Republicans are now staging ridiculous hearings in New York City on violent crime.

These are Republicans from the House of Representatives. And you might say, David, wait a second. House of Representatives, Washington, D.C., federal government. Why are they holding these hearings in New York City? The reason they are doing it is because they are trying to run interference for Donald Trump's indictment and arrest by attacking Alvin Bragg with the idea. Why is Bragg going after Trump when Bragg has violence in New York City to deal with? Now, of course, you and I probably see that and say, wait a second, prosecutors can do multiple things at once. One of the problems we have in the United

States, which I've pointed out, is that there is too much focus on street crime rather than corporate financial and white collar crime. That doesn't mean we ignore violent crime. It means that we have a system that at its systemic structural level focuses on one type of crime and not the other. And that leads to a disproportionate focus on wealthy people. I'm sorry, not on wealthy people, but rather on poor people. We've talked about this before. Low effort, low hanging fruit policing, for example, makes it much easier to just go to a poor neighborhood and, you know, harass people, stop and frisk, et cetera, and not actually partake in the other types of investigative work that we should be seeing. So Alvin Bragg is doing nothing wrong, but Republicans

want to make the case. There's violence in New York and Alvin Bragg is indicting Trump for nonsense. The other element to this is that we have a red state murder problem and a red city violent crime problem. But Republicans don't want you to know that they want you to believe, oh, it's liberal cities that are dangerous and that's it. So let's take this from the top. NBC News reports Trump allies take fight to Bragg's backyard with hearing on New York City crime. The Manhattan district attorney prosecuting Donald Trump highlights new police data that

shows murders and under other violent crimes have actually fallen in the borough since last year. There's a picture on the screen of Republican Congressman Jim Jordan because he is leading this these series of hearings as absurd as they are. The argument that Republicans want to make is Democrats are weak on crime as it is. Blue cities have a crime problem. And Alvin Bragg epitomizes this problem by going after Trump rather than going after the violent crime. Well, Eric Adams, the mayor of New York City, was on MSNBC this morning, and he accurately and rightly pointed out that not only is this a political stunt, but there is actually a bigger problem with violent crime in many Republican cities. Here's Eric Adams. Why? Let's bring in the mayor of New York City,

Eric Adams. By the way, what do you think of this field hearing in your city about crime? I think is the highest level of hypocrisy. We know that cities all across America are dealing with the issues around public safety, particularly the criminal justice system. And right in the largest city in Ohio, as reported today in one of the tabloids, the murders are up over 50 percent in the first quarter. And so while crime is going down, homicides are going down here, shooters are going down here, some of the major crimes are trending in the right direction.

Our subway system crime is going down. So I think coming here and highlighting DA Bragg is just really a political stunt. Speaker 1 now, is Eric Adams correct? Yes, he is. It is true that in New York City in 2022, there was a violent crime rate, a homicide rate of five point two per hundred thousand people, whereas in Columbus, Ohio, there was a homicide rate of fifteen point four per hundred thousand people. The homicide rate in twenty twenty two was nearly three times higher in Columbus, Ohio than it was in New York City. We've talked about both violent and property crime rates being higher in Oklahoma City, a red city in a red state than in New York City and New York State.

And then there is also something, as I mentioned earlier, called the red state murder problem. In 2020. Per capita, murder rates were 40 percent higher in states. Trump won than in states. Biden won 40 percent higher. If you look at 2020 at the 10 states with the highest murder rates, eight of them voted for the presidential nominee from the Republican Party in every election this century so far. Now, I don't want to do the thing that the right does on so many different issues, whether it's gas prices or debt and deficit and whatever, and pretend that the entire crime story is just a matter of when Republicans are in charge, it's more dangerous because that's actually not so clearly the case. And what I mean by that is crime is multidimensional and very complicated.

Crime can be influenced by many different factors. It often also fluctuates from year to year. When you look at crime, you have to look at poverty, inequality, which we know has a big impact on crime, education levels, per capita income. The relationship between political affiliation and crime rates is one element and it's not straightforward. But the reason I bring all of this up to you is that the right wing narrative of dangerous democratic cities or states or whatever, It's absolutely and completely bogus. Now, I do want to give you one other. I don't even know what this is. I want to advise you of one other way in which this conversation is often mishandled by many. There's a game that can be played, which is you can say, oh, you know what? Red states are far more dangerous on average than blue states. OK, so then Republicans will

come in and say, no, no, no, no, no. But the problem is, even within the red states, most of the violence is in the blue cities. But then you can come back and say, well, hold on a second. Just the fact that the violence is in the cities doesn't really mean it's because of Democrats, because much of this policy is set at the state level and the state legislature and the state Senate are Republican. And then you can go back and say, well, but within the cities, the crime is mostly within the districts that are from Democratic city councilors. OK, I think you get the point that this can be sliced and diced a whole bunch of different ways. So my message here isn't to say

it is because of Republicans necessarily in every case that violent crime and homicide and all these things are higher. The point is, the right wing story about crime in Democrat cities so-called is completely and totally wrong. But what this is all about. Is interference running interference for Trump and his indictment when Trump was arrested and indicted a week and a half ago, the strategy was very clear. What can Republicans in the House do to help Donald Trump? And one of the things Jim Jordan

has chosen to do is to have these absurd hearings in New York City rather than in Washington, D.C., where they should be in order to try to distract. I don't think it'll work. We'll be watching them closely and we'll have clips for you later this week. One of our sponsors is BetterHelp. I am a huge believer in therapy. Let's say you've been thinking for a while about getting into therapy. You know, it's the right move. You have things you'd like to talk to someone about. There is no better time than the present, but you don't have to drive across town every week and sit in a waiting room because of better help. Better help is the world's largest therapy service.

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Pacman, you'll get a free year supply of vitamin D. I've talked about vitamin D before and five free travel packs of AG one. That's athletic greens dot com slash Pacman. The link is in the podcast notes. The David Pacman show is independent media. We do depend on your support to do what we do. And the best and most direct way to support our work is simply to get a membership at join Pakman dot com. We do an extra show every day for our members today. I've got actually I think much of today's bonus show will be some stories from my trip. And it was quite a trip, including a an interesting confrontation with a customs officer, which I think will titillate many. All of that and more on the bonus show.

But you can sign up at join Pacman dot com and you can use the coupon code indict if you would like indict actually and indicted both work join Pacman dot com. As if you didn't already suspect that Nikki Haley's 2024 Republican presidential campaign was off to a bad start. We've learned that she has been dramatically overstating the amount of money she has raised. And the campaign looks to be, I don't want to say dead on arrival, but very, very close. So The Washington Post reporting Nikki Haley's campaign vastly overstating her fundraising. Listen to this.

Instead of the 11 million dollars touted by her campaign, Haley brought in about eight point three million, not all of which can even be used for the presidential campaign. They had been talking about 11 million in six weeks. But now that the filings have been made with the FEC, that was an over exaggeration. The campaign appears to have double counted money. It moved among various committees, committees. The filings covering the first three months of the year show that three committees affiliated with Haley collectively brought in eight point three million. Haley's joint fundraising committee raised about four point four million. The campaign committee's hall of five point one million included one point eight million

from that other committee. So a bunch of that money was double counted. And this is all being considered highly unusual. The Trump campaign Saturday said they brought in about 14 and a half million and then another four point three million into the leadership pack and on and on and on. Now, the funniest part of this is not all of that eight point three million can actually be used for the campaign because the leadership pack is typically only to boost allies or to promote a message, not directly to finance her own campaign. So listen, this is pretty bad.

This is pretty bad. And there's two ways to interpret this. One way to interpret it is the fact that Nikki even raised eight, even though she can only use a fraction of it. That's already amazing for a candidate who isn't doing that well in the polls. The counterpoint would be this is probably the most attention she will ever get. This was the big moment. And she still wasn't able to raise that much money. And it didn't do anything for her in the polling. And indeed, the polling doesn't look very good. Her best poll right now is a particular Iowa poll, which which has her in third place at 14 percent behind Trump

and a guy who's not even running yet, Ron DeSantis. That's her best showing. Most polling has Nikki Haley at two, three or four percent. For example, in the Kentucky primary, she's at four percent. In the Georgia primary, she is at four percent. So a couple of different thoughts here. One, I don't think we had to wait for these numbers from both polling and fundraising to be able to say this campaign's probably not going anywhere. At the same time, there's the perspective that the campaign doesn't really need to go anywhere in the sense that Nikki Haley. I mean, listen, you know, people have asked me before when someone like Nikki Haley announces, given what the polling is, does Nikki Haley

actually think she can win? I don't know the answer. I've never actually asked these candidates. Do you don't really think you can win? Do you? I'm sure she wouldn't admit it if she didn't think she could win. But there's a particularly unique situation in this in this 2024 Republican primary, which is Nikki Haley could be running as an audition for VP.

That's something that's been discussed and that I think should be considered and not ruled out. Sure, she might be running for VP. Trump certainly seems to think that she is. And also there is the usefulness of more candidates to Trump, because when you look at 2024 polling, one of the things that you'll notice is in head to head matchups between Trump and DeSantis. DeSantis does better, not better than Trump. He's still mostly losing to Trump, but he does better than when you have Trump, DeSantis,

Haley, Pence, Tim Scott, Vivek Ramaswamy and whoever else. The more candidates you have, the better it actually is for Trump. So there's also the speculation or the idea that Trump liked the idea of Nikki Haley running because it actually helps him. Needless to say, this is a campaign that as a presidential campaign was doomed from day one as a vice presidential audition remains to be seen. And we will indeed see that. Now, someone whose fundraising has been supercharged over the last couple of weeks is Donald Trump. Donald Trump's campaign grifting. I'm sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Fundraising has really been supercharged by his arrest, although I don't think that tells us anything about what this does for

him in a potential general election matchup. And my opinion is that the arrest is very bad for Trump. Politico is reporting indictment turbo charges Trump's fundraising. The former president's two political entities brought in eighteen point eight million during the first quarter of this year. Now, of course, that predates the arrest. But the article reads Trump raised a combined eighteen point eight million in the first quarter. But the campaign says and again, remember, until they make the FEC filing, the fact that they say they've raised this much money is it has not been proven. But let's give them the benefit of the doubt, even though they lie all the time and say we believe them. They say that they were able to raise fifteen point four million dollars in just two weeks after charges were filed against Trump,

which is a suggestion that Trump is growing his fundraising base. And it says nearly a quarter of those who contributed to Trump during that two week period after the arrest had never given to Trump before. I remain convinced that the arrest is good for Trump in the primary and not good for Trump in the general election, I believe. And it seems clear from the data, from the claims, we'll get the data at the end of the quarter. But it seems clear that when you see, wow, accelerated fundraising for Trump after the arrest and also a quarter of the donors never donated to Trump before, it certainly is feasible to believe from that that there are existing Republicans and likely Trump supporters who just never donated before, maybe because they couldn't afford to,

maybe because they can't really afford to now and still shouldn't be donating to Trump, who, after all, is a billionaire. Why does Trump need to fundraise if he's a billionaire? And the whole thing was, I don't need anybody's money. I can finance my own campaign. OK, put that aside. I don't doubt that the counter narrative and the propaganda that Trump and others are spreading about the arrest is helping Trump raise money from MAGA types. And I don't doubt that this may even help Trump's polling, which we will be looking at on tomorrow's program in the primary. But as far as the general election goes, if Trump is indeed the nominee, I don't think this gets him a single additional vote.

I don't see any way that it does. The folks who are actually connected to reality and look at things in a sane and sober way are overwhelmingly going to see Trump as a chaotic and beleaguered candidate because of the arrest. So I'm with many on the right who have been saying this seals Trump's primary victory. I don't disagree that that's an accurate interpretation of what is going on. I don't think this is good for Trump in the general. And of course, I'm making a prediction and we will have to wait and see.

The Trump versus the Santantis elements of the primary are getting ugly, even though Ron DeSantis still hasn't even announced that he is running a pro DeSantis pack has released an ad which ran for the first time on Fox News yesterday, directly attacking Donald Trump. Now remember, Trump has spent a bunch of time attacking DeSantis as well. And you could say that's just as silly or pathetic. Trump's going after a guy who hasn't even said that he's actually running. And I'm with you. But here is a pro DeSantis pack going after Trump already. And DeSantis hasn't announced that he's running for president.

This is fascinating. Take a look. Trump is being attacked by a Democrat prosecutor in New York. So why is he spending millions attacking the Republican governor of Florida? Trump's stealing pages from the Biden Pelosi playbook, repeating lies about Social Security. Here's the truth from Governor Ron DeSantis. We're not going to mess with Social Security as Republicans. What did Trump say? Entitlements ever be on your plate? At some point they will be.

We will take a look at the option by Democrats. I'm live. Governor DeSantis. What happened to Donald Trump? Never back down. He is responsible for the contents of. Yeah. OK, so I have to tell you, the ad itself is pretty lame from a factual standpoint.

Like the big thing that they're insisting on talking about is cuts to Social Security. And the way that it's going is is as follows. All of these Republicans likely at some point played coy with whether reforming by which they might mean cutting Social Security and Medicare is on the table. The ad accurately points out that Trump at one point said, well, I think that's something that we're going to look at. Trump has alleged that DeSantis tried to cut it. DeSantis voted in favor of a plan to reform, which might have included raising the Social

Security age of retirement age. But it was nonbinding. It's sort of like the factual story is very weak. They're all exaggerating about each other's desire to cut Social Security, although I have no doubt at all that if it was politically advantageous, they would do it. What's important about this is the fact that the attacks themselves are a major part of what's going on right now. The uglier the primary, the worse it is for Republicans and for

whoever is the eventual nominee. You will see some people argue that a spirited primary is a good thing for Republicans. And often they will argue when you have a tough primary, it's a test of the candidates strength and resilience and their ability to appeal to different segments of the Republican electorate. And the winner is going to come out battle tested. OK, that's the argument that they make. I've not seen evidence of that. What I have seen evidence of is that the type of Republican Party that exists today is a

resentful, grudge holding Republican Party with a particularly uninformed electorate who often only cares about one candidate. They don't really care about the Republican Party. And so what we've seen is that the more divisive the primary, it can lead to these irreparable fractures and factions within the Republican Party, supporters of different candidates who become disillusioned, disillusioned when their candidate loses, and they may not even end up voting in the general election. So I think in 2023, 2024. This ugly Republican primary is potentially going to turn Republican voters off altogether through the negativity and

the mudslinging and the fractured nature of the party. If these Republicans truly believe that an ugly primary is good for them, well, it looks like they're going to get one and we'll be able to figure out over the next 18 months or so. Is this actually a good thing for the eventual Republican nominee? I believe the answer is no. If you think this is good for the Republican Party, an ugly primary, let me know and we'll have the ad on our YouTube channel as well as on Instagram, as well as on the Spanish

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Failed former President Donald Trump spoke at the NRA convention over the weekend, and it was as insane as you can imagine. But the backdrop can't be ignored. A backdrop where we have mass shooting after mass shooting after mass shooting and the NRA continues to funnel money to those elected officials who are willing to insist we should do nothing about guns. The problem is something else. It's anything but guns. We're willing to talk about almost blood money at this point that these people are taking

from the NRA. And Trump shows up and cheerleads guns and instead says, what about trans and cannabis as explanations for shootings? And the back the backdrop of all of this is more and more mass shootings. If you look just the last few days, a mass shooting yesterday in Biloxi, Mississippi, and a whole bunch of them, more than five on Saturday in Kentucky, California, Alabama, mass shooting after mass shooting after mass shooting. And Donald Trump speaks to the NRA like they're anything short of. Quite frankly, I think we have to call it an evil

group at this point in time. I really am careful with the language. What evil? I mean, wow. What other word can we use at this point to characterize this organization? And Donald Trump shows up, says nothing about we might want to restrict some people's access to some guns and instead says we need a panel to look at whether trans and cannabis cause mass shootings to convene an independent outside panel to investigate whether transgender hormone treatments and ideology increase the risk of extreme depression, aggression and even violence. I think most of us already know the answer, don't we? Do we really know? That's one of those funny little takes. It's a throwaway line. I think most of us know the answer. You don't know the answer. No one in that room has data to say trans ideology causes mass shootings. But from that, we we should investigate it.

But like, we kind of know the answer already. We have to look at whether common psychiatric drugs as well as genetically engineered cannabis and other narcotics are causing psychotic breaks a lot of problems we're having problems that we've never seen before and people sort of think they understand why we must also be much better at detecting warning signs of evil disturbed young men like the one who murdered colleagues in Louisville. We cannot rest until we get to the bottom of all of the sickness that we're seeing in our country. I mean, listen, at least he's conceding that most of these events are carried out by young men. I guess that's something of an acknowledgement of reality. But he also raises this idea of psychiatric drugs as causing mass shootings.

This is usually these folks who talk about this are more specific and they'll actually say SSRIs. This is something that has been explored. And of course, the difficulty with looking at something like that is, first of all, there are so many people that are on those medications that it can be very difficult to find causality. But also, you have to be looking at the possibility if you were to find some correlation, you have to consider, well, it's the folks, the characteristics that got them put on the drugs are what could be responsible for their

actions rather than the drugs themselves. That's also extraordinarily difficult to study, but they don't care. That's not if you sit Trump down and try to explain that to him, you're not going to get any kind of good faith response. Trump then goes on a rant about refrigerators and air conditioners being shoplifted, I guess. When you see these gangs of hundreds of young, usually young people go and attack an apartment store, a department store in San Francisco and Los Angeles and Chicago, and they run in by the hundreds and they're running out carrying refrigerators

and carrying air conditioners and big stuff, big little everything for coats, non-fair coat, everything that can and non-fair coats or as we might call them coats carrying. And again, remember what you to really understand the sick and evil nature of this. You have to understand the entire context here. Oh, people in San Francisco, they're just shoplifting for fridges. The context is we need the guns. We need the guns to defend ourselves and others and so on and so forth. A crazy speech.

And even I mean, listen, the audience at these things is pretty cuckoo. But even this audience was sort of lukewarm on the nonsense that was spilling out of Donald Trump's mouth. Another strange moment during Trump's NRA speech, he displayed tweets, displayed tweets which show him ahead of other Republican presidential candidates in a two way poll of Florida last week. It was Trump 47 and to Sanctus 32 percent to say there was another poll in Florida where Trump was at 80 and to Sanctus was at 50. And that's a Florida poll in Texas.

It's Trump. Fifty two percent to understand that Trump essentially brought a PowerPoint to the NRA convention. That's what we've got right now. It's a glorified PowerPoint to gun nuts. 20, Pence five, Haley four. You know, the only way we can lose is if we go prevent defense. Do you agree?

Do you know what that means? In football, where they're holding the team to no score and then they go prevent the last two minutes and they lose the game. We will never go prevent, but you can take a look. There you go. And Trump notably very, very familiarized with sports sports. He's a big sports guy. Trump also capping the completely unhinged, deranged and delusional and dangerous, I might add, NRA speech claiming that there is a Marxist revolution going on. And you may say, like, in what country he means here in the United States, Speaker 4 Congress has to step up and stop this Marxist revolution. And it strikes. We have a

Marxist revolution going on. And I think you're starting to see it. I think you're starting to see it. And we have to stop it fast. This is what we must do to save our country. So anyway, Mark, you know, the entire Marxist meme from the right, it's quite laughable. And to me, the funniest part about it is if you actually say to them, what is Marxism? They don't have a clue. They just don't have any idea. And anybody who knows what Marxism is, only if you had no clue what it was, might you think that there was Marxism in the United States in any kind of position of even any power influence whatsoever? But of course, there are no Marxists in positions of power in the House or Senate or federal

government. I mean, it's it's crazy. So top line. The most disturbing thing is that Trump is still going and speaking to the NRA like they're a good organization. That's the top line. Subsequent to that is the content and the subject matter from Trump's speech. And that's horrifying in and of itself. And they've gone fully in on we're not touching guns.

Mental health. I don't know. Yeah. Mental health. But we won't fund it. Let's look at mental health culture, Marxism, transgender, cannabis, SSRIs, but the guns certainly not a factor whatsoever. Dangerous. And it's not going to change anytime soon. Let me briefly mention to you that Donald Trump exploded yesterday and today on truth social as a second Trump arrest is now looming. And the Fox News Dominion trial is set to start, it was set to start today. It got pushed to tomorrow. But even that there's speculation that maybe Fox News is going to settle. And Fox News is sort of stuck between a rock and a hard place here, because on the one hand, if Fox News settles the Dominion lawsuit, even if they are not

literally admitting fault, they are admitting fault. You're settling it. If you were if you actually were right here, if you didn't do the things you're accused of, if you were right to air the things you aired and if Trump really did win 2020, then why are you settling? If they don't settle, they risk an even bigger, bigger loss, weeks of humiliating headlines. And it's I don't envy the position Fox News is in. It's, of course, their fault that they're in this position to

begin with. Trump's idea, which he posted to Truth Social, is Fox News should just insist that Trump really did win in 2020. Trump posting to Troth this morning in all capital letters. If Fox would finally admit that there was large scale cheating and irregularities in the 2020 presidential election, which would be a good thing for them and for America, the case against them, which should not have existed at all, would be greatly weakened. Back up, back up those patriots at Fox instead of throwing them under the bus. And they are right. There is so much proof, like mass ballot stuffing caught on government cameras, FBI colluding with Twitter and Facebook, state legislatures not used, et cetera. Now, Trump isn't wrong. Well, let me how do I even say this? A defense to defamation is that the things you said are true. That is accurate. You can defend

yourself against defamation by saying it's it can't be defamation because I stated truth or troth, depending on your preference. Of course, the idea that Fox News would try to get itself out of this by going and making a case that Trump actually won the 2020 election would be so humiliating and laughable that it could potentially be the worst possible outcome for Fox News of all of it. But that's Donald Trump's legal advice. Take it for what it's worth. And then yesterday, Trump trothing also in all capital letters, quote, So the Democrats are allowed to cheat on and rig. And he spells rig with two G's, which is interesting. Democrats are allowed to

cheat on and rig a presidential election and they want to indict Republicans for a campaign violation. This is classic. So the totality of this is Trump has been arrested and indicted. He thinks it's politically motivated. He thinks it's bogus. He thinks even if he did the thing he's accused of, it's very minor compared to the theft of an election that he actually won. And his legal advice to Fox on this issue is settle. Don't settle. Fight it by arguing that I really won, which is maybe the craziest legal advice that I've ever heard. I hope

Fox does not settle the lawsuit. And I hope that we get six weeks potentially of embarrassing, humiliating and insane headlines related to that trial, which, by the way, will have the sort of side benefit of being endlessly triggering to the failed former president. It's April, which means Earth Month is here. This is the time to consider the products you buy and the impact they have on our planet. So if you're still using conventional toilet paper in your home, there's no better time to switch to reals. One hundred percent bamboo toilet paper. Thirty million trees are destroyed every year for toilet paper in the US alone. Real paper makes toilet paper

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Use code Pacman for 30 percent off and free shipping. That's our E.L. Paper dot com slash Pacman. Coupon code Pacman gets you 30 percent off plus free shipping. The info is in the podcast notes. All right. So these right wing stories about people crying, they've become so ridiculous that they're essentially parodies of themselves.

I'm not really going to show you one of those here from Republican Senator Ted Cruz, although it certainly reminded me of it. But this actually is one of these stories about people coming up to me. The prototypical one that Trump tells us, oh, you know, with the people that arrested last week, he said the people that arrested me were crying when they arrested me. OK, the the sort of subtext of this particular story from Ted Cruz is that whenever he lands at different airports, police just flock to him. Police flock to him and they just all support him so much. And this is again, it's dubious. It's always dubious. When Ted Cruz in this clip, he's going to say it's like dozens,

a dozen police officers or whatever. It's probably happened at some point that a police officer came up to Ted Cruz and gave him a patch or whatever. Cruz says here. But there's a very significant political utility to these particular types of stories. So listen to this one and then we're going to talk about it. The most striking place to fly into is Chicago. I land at Chicago O'Hare Airport.

I am with some regularity met by 10, 12, 15 uniformed police officers who come, they shake my hand, they give me patches. I've got my office patches of the Chicago PD that are displayed in my office because those cops are so under assault. But were they crying when they met you, sir? OK, so what is the point of these stories at this point in time? The point is that it would be extremely dangerous and damaging to Republicans for it to become known that there is plenty of military and law enforcement that supports Democrats.

And in fact, when you look at the 2020 presidential election, one of the interesting things about it, yes, the military leans right. There is no question about it. Yes, the military leans right. There is no question about that. But one of the interesting things about the military vote in 2020 is that it was one of the highest levels of support for the Democratic candidate that Joe Biden received from members of the military than had been seen by Democrats for a very long time. I don't remember the exact numbers. They don't really matter. But the point is, compared to past elections, it was a higher level of support. And this is all because Republicans want and to some degree have obtained a monopoly on certain elements of political discourse, law and order, or as Trump once called it, law and auto auto insurance. Very, very important issue, but something else altogether. Republicans use this law and order messaging. We are for law and order when it comes to immigration,

when it comes to street crime, when it comes to demonstrations, when it comes to all of these different things. And they portray themselves as the arbiters of law and order. And so they do that to appeal to voters who prioritize safety and who prioritize security. Now, understand that it's total BS. It's complete and total utter BS. The reality is law and order means we want our political enemies targeted, but we don't want to be targeted when we do the same things. Law and order means we support the police, except when it's the D.C. Capitol police trying to beat off rioters on January 6th of 2021 or we law and order, except when it's not law and order. No one is above the law, except when it's Trump. And then why isn't he above the law? He should be above the law. That's the messaging. And if it became known that they

aren't actually the party of law and order, it would be very damaging. Nationalism and patriotism, another element of this supposedly. So remember, it's supposedly pro-police narrative. The Republican Party often translates or utilizes stated support for police and the military as a point of national pride. They must love the country more because they support police and police support them. What that doesn't really make any sense or the military again, and particularly when there's a crisis or a conflict or a war, as we saw during the Iraq war under George W. Bush's presidency, that can actually be pretty useful. It taps into feelings of loyalty and duty among many in the country. And then thirdly, this narrative about how much police love Ted Cruz,

it's to draw a distinction with Democrats. You emphasize we have the support of police and members of the military. And that's because Democrats are weak or they're unpatriotic or whatever. And if Democrats are seen as being critical of law enforcement, then that contrast is even even more useful. So it's another one of these. They come up to me with tears in my eyes stories from Cancun, Ted Cruz. But it is part of a much larger political area of political strategy that if Republicans were to lose and they should lose it because it's all completely fabricated, would be very damaging to them. I'm going to show you an interview of former Trump propaganda, Steve Bannon, interviewing a crazy person. Now, I don't say that lightly. OK, one of the things in this clip that I'm going to show you, this this is bonkers stuff. I wouldn't

let children see this. It's so disturbing. Steve Bannon interviews a woman named Mary Beth. Is that her first name? Is that her first and middle name? Is that her first and last name? We have no idea. Her name is Mary Beth, supposedly. And Mary Beth says she believes that the Satanic Temple is secretly sending recruiters to school in after school programs to recruit and even grab children. Think about that for a second. And Steve Bannon, I guess, kind of pretends like Mary Beth is a sane person. And one of the what's the point here? Mental health, very serious issue not to be stigmatized. We want everybody to have access to mental health services. It's not a joke or any of it. OK, the point here is. Much of what the right has normalized as political discourse is the sort of stuff that really should be handled by mental health professionals.

Let's listen. If it isn't in your school system, it will be soon. So please be on the lookout for it. Like I said, it kind of snuck up on us. We had no idea. I've told people about it. They think I'm crazy when I talk about it. Yeah. But Google it, look for it, and definitely look for it in your school system. It goes to an after-school program, or you're one of the parents that have to work and they've got to stay after school on other things, and the satanic people are wandering around the school hall, because trust me, they'll be looking for it. They'll be looking to grab these kids and put them in there. So that's very concerning to me. Yeah.

The Satanic Temple has infiltrated after school programs. This is crazy stuff. And the fact that Steve Bannon has her on and sort of pretends like this is a real concern. This is that this is a normal thing fuels a crisis in this country. And I want to what's it's so difficult to address this topic. We don't I don't want to be disrespectful nor minimize mental illness. We also have to be clear that there are certain things that it's not just the difference of opinion. It's not it's it's it's something much more pernicious and more than that.

And we have to be able to say these people have lost connection with reality. We're not diagnosing any particular person, but there are paranoid delusions that are really, really common here. Let me give you an analogous situation, which is actually quite sad. A lot of people from different walks of life watch the David Pakman show, and so we get emails. I'm not looking at every email directly, but I'll be notified when certain concerning things come up. And we've had everything from people who said they were suicidal and we were fortunately able to get medical services involved and to help them. And we later heard from these people. I really appreciate that,

actually, that that, you know. That my emails just didn't go nowhere, that somebody's monitoring this stuff, even if it's not me. We all sorts of different situations. There are about 10 or so instances where people were writing to me. They, you know, they're writing to me as far as that they knew, at least with what are called in the mental health field ideas of reference, which is sort of like when people watch the show and I'm just speaking to the entire audience and people start to believe that I'm sending them a message specifically. And this is sometimes called ideas of reference. And the way it usually goes is we will get emails from folks who will say something along the lines of I was able to understand based on the way David's eyes looked while he was saying something that he

was signaling me. There was one which was really sad, which was someone thought that I was blinking messages in Morse code to them, totally unrelated to the subject matter about which I was speaking. OK, that's that's like a really, really sad thing. And oftentimes these emails will be completely intermixed with completely wacky political ideas. And I understand that it can be difficult to draw the line between where we just have a political idea and where we go over into some kind of mental illness. And again, without diagnosing any particular person with any particular condition, we can have a disagreement about what the tax rate should be. And we would like mostly say that these are these are sane

conversations and we could be right or wrong about what's the best tax rate for this, that or the other. That would be very clearly on one side of the spectrum. Very clearly on the other side of the spectrum would be like, David, you're you're blinking a message in Morse code to me. OK, but then you start to get into stuff like flat earth. And we've talked to experts about conspiracy theories and these sorts of things where flat earth. Yeah, it's it's an idea that's sort of like about the nature of our world. But it is it's so widely demonstrated that it's wrong, that it can start to kind of eke

into some. And then we go into some of the vaccine stuff. Well, this is all a plot by the deep state to inject some kind of dormant bioweapon. And then in twenty twenty nine, Bill Gates will flip a switch and all of the vaccine that's been injected into people will turn them into zombies. Geez, that that starts to be closer to David's blinking messages in Morse code to me. I don't know where the line is, but one of the real problems and challenges we have right now is that too much stuff that is at best gray area and at worst outright paranoid delusions has become acceptable political discussion among the American right wing. At this point in time, I don't know how we fix it.

This isn't about being anti religious. This isn't about being anti-religious. This isn't about any. It's about being anti insanity. And we have to stop the normalization of this stuff. And Mary Beth saying the satanic temples grabbing children at after school. It's pretty gray, if not on the far end of that spectrum to me. Let me know what you think. We have a voicemail number. That number is two one nine two. David P. Here is a caller who I think believes I really did lose my YouTube channel. I don't even know what that would mean, but this caller seems to believe I lost my YouTube channel and mentions not Satan, Satan, I've never heard this before. Listen. Hey, where you go? I mean, on YouTube, I seen that ring of fire.

Idiot, he got try to use your Pacman stuff on YouTube. What? So I think I think what the caller means is Farron filled in for me last week. Not even on there. You're going to have a ring of fire. It's called the lake of fire. And I hope you like swimming with Satan. Satan. OK, I I did not actually get kicked off of YouTube. It was an April Fool's gag on April 1st weeks ago. Everything's fine. And I don't know what to do about Satan, but I will certainly look into it. We've got a great bonus show for you today. Oh, the bonus show where you want to make money. Everybody else that makes money to fund themselves is bad. I'm going to tell you all about my trip last week.

Got recognized by some interesting folks over in the UK. Had a confrontation with a customs officer at JFK Airport on my way back. So many stories, some of which maybe are remotely interesting to you. On today's bonus show, producer Pat will join me. So much to discuss. Sign up at join Pacman dot com. Get instant access to the bonus show and use that. You can use the coupon code indicted or indicated, I'm David Pakman dot com.