The David Pakman Show - 4/19/23: Fox News lawsuit settled for $787 million, Biden releases taxes

Episode Date: April 19, 2023

-- On the Show: -- Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems settle their defamation lawsuit for $787 million and Fox News admits to lies in writing -- Fox News lawyers involved in the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit throw Donald Trump under the bus -- Fox News will not be forced to apologize on air as part of the $787 million settlement in their defamation lawsuit with Dominion Voting Systems -- The Bidens made $579,000 in 2022 and paid a completely expected tax rate -- Republicans are completely two-faced on "business freedom" and claiming to be for low regulations -- Republicans have completely abandoned policy and adopted a politics of fear and populist rhetoric -- Failed former President Donald Trump promises mandatory homeless camps in a bizarre new video -- Elon Musk and Tucker Carlson talk about the urge to impregnate women in part two of their deranged Fox News interview -- Voicemail caller isn't happy that David went to England -- On the Bonus Show: Mike Pompeo will not run in 2024, Biden signs executive order to improve access to child care, South Dakota Governor says 2-year-old grandchild has several guns, much more... 👍 Use code PAKMAN for 10% off the Füm Journey Pack at https://tryfum.com/PAKMAN 🚲 Lectric eBikes! Shop for your new electric bike at https://lectricebikes.com 🩳 SHEATH Underwear: Code PAKMAN for 20% OFF at https://sheathunderwear.com/pakman -- Become a Supporter: http://www.davidpakman.com/membership -- Subscribe on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/thedavidpakmanshow -- Subscribe to Pakman Live: https://www.youtube.com/pakmanlive -- Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/davidpakmanshow -- Like us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/davidpakmanshow -- Leave us a message at The David Pakman Show Voicemail Line (219)-2DAVIDP

Speaker 1 Wow. Fox News and Dominion voting systems have settled Dominion's one point six billion dollar defamation suit against Fox News. They have settled it at seven hundred and eighty seven million dollars just as the trial was starting. This will require and did require Fox News in writing to concede that they got some things wrong, a.k.a. lied. But it will not require them to make on air apologies. And

we're going to talk about that now, as we talked about yesterday and the news yesterday was there is not going to be a settlement within minutes of that episode going live. They reached a settlement. What we talked about yesterday was the to some degree lose lose aspect to this for Fox News. If you settle it, you're admitting wrongdoing. Whether you admit wrongdoing in writing or not, it's understood that you're not fighting for what you believe to be true to the end of the truck. You're settling. You're saying, yeah, OK, fine, we'll pay. We'll pay because we did the thing, at least to some degree that we are accused of doing. And of course, they can try to wash it by saying it's not that we believe we did anything wrong,

but it became clear that they were going to drag this out for political reasons. We're the victims. OK, fine. But you're saying we're going to pay. If you refuse and you go into a four or even six week trial, you see six weeks of headlines, including potentially more discovery elements, texts, phone calls, who knows what could come out. And it could be even more damaging potentially. So as Deadline reports, Fox News agrees to pay seven hundred and eighty seven million dollars to settle the Dominion false election claims case. Fox has admitted to telling lies, said the voting system's CEO. The Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis, overseeing the case, made an announcement that, quote, the parties have resolved their case, offering no additional

details. News of the settlement was strategically made public right before Wall Street ceased trading for the day. It is going to be seven hundred eighty seven million dollars, seven hundred eighty seven and a half million. In fact, Fox has admitted to telling lies about Dominion that caused enormous damage to my company, our employees and the customers we serve, said Dominion CEO John Polos. Nothing can make up for that. Fox News is not required to air an apology or retract retraction. However, Fox was quick to address the settlement in crafted language that softly walks back the claims made by hosts and guests that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump. There's a couple of different

aspects to this that I think are very, very important to talk about. One of them is that we have to distinguish free speech claims from defamation. This is not about free speech. This is about a responsibility for a public platform the size of Fox News not to defame others. And when we talk about defamation, we're talking about false claims damaging to one's reputation. Were it true that Dominion participated in rigging the election to steal it from Trump, it would be damaging to their reputation, but it would be accurate and therefore it would not be defamation. And so the crux of this is inextricably interwoven with the lies told about the 2020 election. Trump didn't win. Biden did.

And whatever story you had about cured ballots or sauteed ballots or grilled ballots and stuff to, you know, double double stuffed crust ballots or whatever. Or it was Dominion and Smartmatic that rigged it or whatever. It's all part of a bigger lie. Now we have video here of lawyers for Dominion who are taking the perspective that lies have consequences. And that is true. Whatever you think about 800 million dollars

nearly, is that the right amount? Lies have consequences is the perspective that they are taking. Today's settlement of seven hundred eighty seven million five hundred thousand dollars represents vindication and accountability. Lies have consequences. The truth does not know I want to also be really clear that this is not going to take down Fox News. There is a smart Matic defamation suit as well, and that could get settled for hundreds of millions as well. It's it's not going to take down Fox News financially. We then get to the question, is it going to take down Fox News in other ways? Yesterday, I told you that Fox has major negotiations coming up with three major cable providers. Fox, unlike most cable channels,

doesn't really depend on advertising so much as they have negotiated fees per cable subscriber. I have a cable subscription. I don't watch Fox News, but a couple bucks, I believe somewhere between two and four dollars of my monthly payment goes to Fox because that's the deal that Fox has negotiated. So there's the question of whether in in the under the black cloud of this settlement and future lawsuits that continue, whether Fox is going to be able to negotiate the same sort of deal that may hurt them. And then secondly, there's the question of, wow, now that they've paid nearly 800 million to settle a defamation claim in which they lied to their audience, maybe they will lose their audience.

But of course, I don't think that that's going to happen. The Fox News viewer actually sees Fox News as the victim here. By and large, I want to play a couple of interesting clips for you. Here is Fox media analyst Howard Kurtz appearing with Neil Cavuto just moments after the announcement of the settlement. And take a look at what he had to say. This had to do with the idea that Dominion voting machines and former President Trump and his allies made this case on Fox and elsewhere were somehow stealing votes from Donald Trump

and flipping them to Joe Biden. That's obviously false. Those were conspiracy theories. But the case would have revolved around, you know, whether Fox had done due diligence, whether it was reckless, whether it was simply reporting as the network contends on an extremely newsworthy matter argued by the former then president of the United States himself. So whether the amount of the settlement will leak, often it doesn't. Maybe that's part of the deal.

But at this point, that's what we know. OK, so a couple of different things. One reaction to that clip was, wow, look, that's Fox News admitting on Fox News that the stuff that they said was obviously untrue. Kurtz really downplays it significantly. He said, oh, you know, there were there were some statements made which were not true. This was months and months of coverage on both the news and opinion sides, giving voice to the wackiest of wacky, you know, Sidney Powell and Mike Pillow and all these other people. It was more than just as some things were said that weren't true.

That being said, Fox News is going to minimize this incredibly and eventually frame themselves as the victims. I want to show you an article that was published about the settlement yesterday. It's fewer than 200 words long. It mentions that the judge praised Fox's lawyers and it doesn't mention what the settlement amount was. The article is called Fox News Media Dominion Voting Systems Reach Agreement Over Defamation Lawsuit.

Dominion filed a one point six billion lawsuit against Fox in twenty twenty one. Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis praised both parties for the handling of their case. Quote, I've been on the bench since 2010. I think this is the best lawyering I've had ever. I would be proud to be your judge in the future. The settlement came as a trial was scheduled to launch this week with a jury selected earlier in the day. The lawsuit stemmed from coverage of

the post 2020 presidential election and it became media fodder. Then President Trump and his allies challenged Joe Biden's victory. Some of them, including members of his legal team, made false and unsubstantiated claims against Dominion voting systems and are the subject of separate defamation lawsuits. Done. End of story. You scroll down. It's just ads. OK, that's the full story. Not Fox News has admitted in writing that they signal boosted those claims. Fox News is going to pay nearly 800 million dollars to get this to go. None of that stuff is included. This is the summary, the nice, tidy summary of this by Fox News. So this is the way that it ends with dominion. Advantage to dominion of going this route also includes that rather than a drawn out

trial, potentially appeals and then trying to collect the settlement, they presumably will have a much more direct path to that seven hundred and eighty seven million dollars. Interestingly, just before the settlement was announced, Fox News lawyers through Trump and allies under the bus. I want to talk about that next. This is super interesting. In the moments before it became known that Fox News and Dominion voting systems settled the Dominion defamation suit, wherein Fox News will pay Dominion seven hundred and eighty seven point five million dollars when it looked like this was going to go to trial and continue to trial towards the end. The lawyers representing Fox News threw Trump and his allies under the bus, and this is absolutely fantastic. Newsweek reports Fox News throws Trump under the

bus and reads Fox News is legal defense appears to have taken on a new strategy in the company's fight against a defamation lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems for the network's alleged lies about the company during the 2020 election, blaming Donald Trump. Critical element to this, which is a quote from the article we will put up on the screen, quote, The night before the trial scheduled start, attorneys for Fox News filed documents imploring the judge overseeing the case to allow them to introduce evidence arguing the company's allegedly defamatory claims against Dominion voting machines were primarily inspired by Trump's own rhetoric that the election with Dominion's involvement was specifically rigged against

him. This is the similar idea that many of the January 6th rioters tried to invoke as their legal defense when their cases were adjudicated. It's Trump's fault. Trump told us to riot. Trump told us to be here, whatever. And then Trump says, I said peacefully. And you know, that's where the debate comes from.

It's a very similar argument that Fox News lawyers were going to make. Of course, the case ultimately ended up being settled. Now, I want to be really clear and honest with you about what this is versus what it is not. This strategy from Fox News saying Trump, it was Trump. Trump was leading this whole thing. This is not Fox News finding a moral compass or anything of the sort. Not even close. This is what Fox News always does. We've seen so many examples of it. And Alex Jones has done it, who's separate from Fox News and so have many others of these right wingers. The lawyers will try to come up with whatever legal argument is best when they need to do it in a court of law. It is totally separate from what happens on the air. For example, when lawyers

argued in court that Tucker Carlson is an entertainer, he's not a news person. He's an entertainer. He uses hyperbole. He uses exaggeration. You can't hold them legally accountable for the letter of everything he says. It might look like a news show, but fundamentally, Tucker is an entertainer. And it's not that he's lying. It's that he's using the stylistic tools of hyperbole and exaggeration. But the zoom out big picture takeaway here always is that we have to remember that they want to be seen as newsworthy and trustworthy in terms of their public presentation. When it becomes legally too hot, they step back and say, well, that's an opinion show and this is entertainment and whatever else the case may be.

That's the same here. When they were doing the the, quote, reporting, I I'm using language that doesn't even make sense. It wasn't reporting when they were doing the propaganda and lies around Trump actually won and Dominion voting systems was part of the rigging and all these things they were doing it, yes, primarily for ratings, but by presenting it as if they really believe it, whether they did or didn't. It's a mixed bag. It seems that Tucker and Laura Ingraham and Hannity didn't believe it, but that Maria Bartiromo did. OK, it doesn't matter. They were presenting it as news. And then now they want to say, well, listen, I mean, we were just kind of repeating the stuff Trump said. It wasn't so much that we believed it or that we were trying to defame anybody.

End of the line here is seven hundred and eighty seven point five million dollars settlement agreed to by Dominion and Fox News. Fox News will pay. The smartmatic defamation lawsuit isn't over and continues after the break. I want to dig in specifically to this little detail that Fox News will not have to apologize on air for defamatory election lies. Make sure you're subscribed on the YouTube channel, YouTube dot com slash the David Pakman show. Quick break. Right back. One of our sponsors today is fume. Not everything in a bad habit is wrong. So instead of a drastic, uncomfortable change, why not just remove the bad part from your habit? Fume is an innovative, award winning device that does exactly that. Fume is not electronic.

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Pacman show does depend on the support of our podcast listeners, our YouTube viewers, people who listen on the radio or see a tick tock clip here and there. We primarily fund our program through the membership program. You can learn about that at join Pakman dot com. All right. We already talked about the Fox News defamation suit is not going to conclude with a with a trial verdict. The trial started and very quickly they settled it seven hundred and eighty seven and a half million dollars.

We also talked about the last minute strategy wherein Fox lawyers were trying to introduce evidence essentially blaming Donald Trump for the claims that were made on air. OK, we have now gotten beyond that. It has been settled. And in writing, Fox News did walk back the claims that they made. However, we have also learned for those of us waiting to see Sean Hannity grovel and apologize or Tucker Carlson say we were wrong. They are not going to have to do that. Part of the settlement is that Fox News will not have to apologize on air for broadcasting false claims about Dominion. Business Insider has a very precise write up about this. Dominion voting system settled its

major defamation lawsuit on Tuesday. Fox agreed to pay Dominion seven hundred eighty seven and a half million and acknowledged that the false claims were broadcast. Fox News hosts will not be required to issue apologies or retractions on air per a source speaking to Insider. This is part of the negotiation, which I'm sure was of critical importance to Fox News. Now, I know that many of you will say. What is the reason that Dominion would accept this if that is not going to be part of the settlement? Why wouldn't Dominion insist that there have to be on air apologies versus allowing Fox News out of that? Why wouldn't they say we're not settling? We're going to trial if you're not going to admit on air. And the reason is very simple.

And I spoke to a couple of trial attorneys, civil attorneys about this over the last 24 hours. Imagine that your dominion and you bring a one point six billion dollar lawsuit against Fox News and a whole bunch of time and resources and money have been spent just even getting to trial. And you're presented with two options. Option number one is you go through a four to six week trial. You might be confident that you'll get a verdict in your favor with a nice settlement, but you don't know that for sure. And even if you

do, you then have to collect it. And there can be appeals and there can be delays and there can be all sorts of different things. This could take years and then you get to collect whatever you're able to get in a trial or. Fox News just gives you half of what you asked for, and you probably were already inflating what you asked for at the beginning, knowing that the settlement might end up being less. But but but Fox won't have to apologize on air. The answer is it depends how ego driven this is. If Dominion is primarily concerned with the sort of punitive and humiliating nature of getting Hannity to apologize on air, then it would make sense to say, no, that can't be part of the settlement or we're going to trial or whatever. But my guess is and it doesn't sound like a crazy decision to make.

My guess is Dominion lawyers said, listen, this is a sure bet of nearly 800 million. And we wrap it up quickly and we move into collecting the 800 million. But they're not going to apologize on air. They will apologize in writing. And at least as far as your future business with states, the apology in writing is probably pretty good. Why not just take the 800 million and get the hell out of here rather than going forward for weeks and what could become months or years before you actually collect? I get it. I get it. Now, as a public person who just has an opinion as to the destructive

and corrosive nature of what Fox News did around the election on air. Obviously, I would love to get it sort of like the perp walk of sorts. Right. I would love to see Hannity, even if it's a short and tersely worded apology of some kind, have to make a statement on air. I would enjoy that. It would be great. It would be great for the lulls, as the kids like to say these days. But I understand why Dominion wouldn't hold out for that. So for those of you who are saying, well, we're now going to get that apology. The apology came in writing a fox. And the article mentions this. A Fox spokesperson said in email, we acknowledge the court's rulings, finding certain claims about Dominion to be false.

This settlement reflects Fox's continued commitment to the highest journalistic standards. That's hilarious. We are hopeful that our decision to resolve this dispute with Dominion amicably instead of the acrimony of a divisive trial allows the country to move forward from these issues. So listen, I would have liked to see the apology. We're not going to get it. And I completely understand why Dominion is not insisting on that. Joe Biden and Jill Biden have released their 2022 taxes. And even though right wingers are trying to make a controversy out of them, I have to tell you, there is nothing controversial about the Biden income nor the Biden taxes.

But David, they made more than half a million dollars. Let's go through it. The the Bidens did indeed make five hundred and seventy nine thousand dollars last year as a household, and they paid a twenty three point eight percent federal tax rate, plus, of course, state tax as well. Now there are people seeing this and saying, oh, my goodness, this is just like Trump, super wealthy multimillionaires. No, guys, no. Without passing any value judgment over income.

It's very important to understand that Trump made like four hundred million dollars a year during his presidency. It was about one point six billion throughout the entire presidency, if I recall correctly, and is a multibillionaire, at least as far as we know. Joe Biden is a multimillionaire. That's true. So is Bernie Sanders. I've explained before, if you've been making six figures for 30 years, you should be a multimillionaire by the time you're 80. Even if you save only a modest amount of your income and put it in low cost index funds and wait for 30 years, if you're not a multimillionaire, you've messed up. You're really bad with money. That's not controversial.

Now, five hundred and seventy nine thousand dollar combined income. Presidents make four hundred grand a year. Is it four hundred or four forty? It's a it's around four hundred thousand dollars a year. That's the presidential salary. That's the vast majority of their income. Jill Biden also made what was it here? About eighty thousand dollars teaching and they ended up. Yeah. Eighty two thousand dollars teaching at Northern Virginia Community College.

Totally standard, uncontroversial salary. So that gets us to four hundred and eighty two thousand dollars. And then there was a little bit of income. I don't remember what it was for. They made some donations to some charities and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So what is the right saying about this? The best they have is Joe Biden is using an S corporation for his book profits. This is the best they have. And in fact, there's a Fox News article. They've they've gone at this before. This is a couple they have. And in fact, there's a Fox News article. They've they've gone at this

before. This is a couple of years old. Multi-millionaire Biden's use of S corporations draws scrutiny by Republican who sees hypocrisy. I even got emails from some in my audience who said that there are people on the left criticizing Biden for using an S corporation for his book. Listen, guys, I'm calling this stuff like it is. There is nothing controversial about Joe Biden running his book profits through an S corporation. I got emails about this being shady and just like Donald Trump. Give me a break. OK, only if you know nothing about taxes, could you come to the conclusion that simply having an S corporation is in any way sketchy. First of all, authors don't set up a C corp for a book. You just don't do it. If they did, then you have to pay

yourself via salary and dividends. It just doesn't make any sense. If you're a small business like the author of a book and you want to separate those revenues from just yourself as an individual sole proprietorship, the S corporation or a partnership might make perfect sense. There's nothing illegal. There's nothing shady. It's a standard practice. It's passed through income. It goes on your personal tax return. It's not evasive. It's not a loophole. It's a completely standard way that small businesses that don't want to just be sole proprietorships would set up revenue. In this case, you get some liability protection. You also I mean, listen, if you have a full time job in the case of Joe Biden, senator, vice president, president, it's very logical that if you have a

defined and distinct project like a book, that you would separate that and not run it as a sole proprietorship through your social security number. You would get an EIN and set it up as an S corporation. It lets you pay yourself a reasonable salary, take the remainder as distributions. You can potentially reduce your tax liability slightly because it can potentially reduce self-employment taxes. But Joe Biden's maxing out on that anyway because he makes 400 grand a year and the cap is in the mid 150s. This is like milk toast, milk toast stuff. And whether you're on the left or the right and you're saying Biden's just like Trump because his book profits run through an S corporation,

you're either arguing in bad faith or you just don't understand even the basics about small business taxes. So I don't think we need to entertain it any further. Five hundred and seventy nine K in income when you're the president and your wife works, that makes a lot of sense paid. We can say, well, the tax at that level of income should be higher. Fine. But an effective tax rate federally of 24 percent and then paying Delaware tax. Totally reasonable. Totally expected. I think that's a higher tax rate than Warren Buffett pays, by the way, even though the Biden's made a lot less. There's nothing controversial here. Biden paid his taxes. He released his tax returns.

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e-bikes dot com. The link is in the podcast notes. Today, I'm going to talk about the hypocrisy of Republicans when it comes to business freedom that they claim to espouse and low regulations which they claim to support. And this is all kind of coming on the heels of yesterday's Ron DeSantis Disney World. I'll build a prison next to Disney threat and controversy, which is really just one of dozens and dozens of data points of Republicans who claim to be about business, freedom and low regulation, immediately abandoning that principle to the extent that it's even a principle as soon as it's politically inconvenient. Now, in order to understand where this hypocrisy comes from and why it's so glaring today,

you really have to understand the history of the Republican Party as for decades and decades and decades claiming to be the party of business, freedom of low regulations, of economic freedom and pro-business and all of these things. They said for decades, excessive regulation is a burden on businesses and it hurts profits and it stifles economic growth and therefore it prevents hiring. And the best thing we can do for workers and for the economy and for investors, for everybody is to keep regulations low and stay out of the way of businesses. Let the market decide which businesses succeed and which businesses fail. The truth is so much more pathetic. It's we support business freedom in theory when it suits our interests and doesn't

conflict with personal vendettas, grievances or other inconvenient realities. Now, let's take a look at some examples and again, understand that there was a period even if you disagree with this obsessive focus on unburdening businesses or regulations, you might disagree with that. We can still acknowledge that at a certain point, conservatives, as they once were, were actually much more committed to that. I would still disagree with them in many cases and say, no, we need regulation. But there was a point at which when they said it, they meant it.

That's not the case anymore. Twitter. Twitter is a recent example. That's a glaring one. When it comes to Twitter. Many of these right wingers immediately abandoned their stated principles of getting rid of burdensome regulations and separating government from what private companies do and said, no, Twitter should be forced to publish my covid disinformation. Twitter should be forced to publish Hunter Biden nude pics, which violate their own terms of service. Twitter should be forced to let governments decide or the government decide what hateful ideology, ideology or hateful speech should be published rather than saying, let Twitter figure out what it wants to do. Let Twitter figure out what's good or bad for

business. Let Twitter make its decisions, assuming they're not illegal and let the market of ideas and the marketplace of people decide, oh, I don't like what Twitter is doing, so I'm not going to be on Twitter anymore. That's the way that they claim they operate. But as Twitter showed us, that's not actually the way they operate when they want to force their disinformation onto a private platform. Twitter Republicans at one point pushed a law that would have prevented states from enacting their own regulations on certain products. They would argue, oh, you know, we need to protect businesses from a patchwork of different regulations from state to state. It's burdensome to business to say, well, we're going to regulate

your product this way in Delaware. But in New York, it's going to be different. And then in Florida, it's going to be different. So then in Florida it's going to be different. So they pushed a law that said you can't do that. You can't just let states regulate products differently in each state. But when it comes to environmental regulations, Republicans don't care about a patchwork of regulations. They want to strip the EPA's federal power, for example, to regulate greenhouse gas emissions at the federal level. And listen, there are states that aren't worried about that. We don't let if a state isn't concerned

if you have a state like Montana, for example, Jared Diamond has written about this a lot. If Montana wants to let the, you know, the soil and the land and every water be ravaged by pollution or Wyoming or let them do it. You can't have this oppressive EPA come in and tell every state what they have to do. Well, that's the principle that you are now going against. You're against the patchwork of laws, but now you're OK with the patchwork of laws if it might prevent the regulation of greenhouse gases. They're willing to do it 50 different ways in each of the 50 states because they want to make it difficult to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Then we've got subsidies.

And this is, you know, each one of these things I'm mentioning is a category unto itself with many examples we could go into. But let's now talk about subsidies. The right claims to be against government intervention in the economy, picking winners and losers, etc. But they have no problem handing out billions of dollars in subsidies to certain industries, including oil and others, when they are politically convenient businesses. When it comes to labor regulations, Republicans suddenly are big fans of government intervention. They love the idea of how can we interfere with business to prevent workers from organizing and forming unions? For example, they support laws

that make it more difficult for workers to sue employers when there are workplace violations. You know, if you don't want to regulate the businesses because you claim, oh, they have a they have an incentive to regulate themselves. And if they put out a dangerous product, they'll get sued and they'll lose market share. And if they don't have good working conditions for their employees, their employees will sue or quit. Well, but then they also want to make it more difficult for the employees to sue because it's in their interests. The truth, as many of you have long suspected, is that Republicans only care about business freedom and unburdening from burdensome regulations when it serves their interests, when it comes to protecting the environment or protecting workers.

Suddenly regulations are a burden that need to be lifted. This or you need to put in a regulation. You need to put in a regulation that prevents others from putting in regulations. It's whatever is convenient at the time. And this, at the end of the day, is bad for the economy. It's bad for the sort of average health of people as they are affected by the lack of regulation or a very oppressive type of regulation, depending on who it is that benefits and who is hurt, the well-being of workers, the environment. I mean, you all know it. So we're going to be going through over the next several weeks each of these stated principles unburdened ourselves from

regulation, except when you want to force your will onto corporations. We're going to look at each of these. And there are so many of these stated principles that they claim but don't actually follow. This is the first one. Business freedom, low regulation. We'll get to others over the next few weeks. All right. Let's shift gears a little bit and talk about something else. Many of you have written to me and said, David, I came in with a sort of open mind and said, I want to figure out on policy. Do I agree more with Democrats or Republicans? Great approach. I think that that's a worthy thing to do. But then many of you who write to me say. It doesn't really seem like Republicans talk about policy anymore. Like, yeah, if you look at a campaign website, you'll see a policy section

for a Republican and it'll include a lot of buzzwords and seemingly kind of like focus group paragraphs that don't really say very much. But when it comes to the campaigns that they run, Republicans don't really seem to talk about policy anymore. And that's exactly what I want to talk about today. I want to talk about how the Republican Party has completely abandoned policy. It started before the Trump era,

but acutely since the Trump era, to the point where now, instead of actually talking about issues that affect Americans lives, the Republican Party has become focused on grievances, fear based politics based on lies about what Democrats or immigrants or others will do, and a resurgence in extremist social views focused primarily on abortion and anti-trans recently. Now, let's start with a recent example. After the 2020 election, Republicans refused to accept the results of the election, claiming that there was widespread fraud. They failed to win the hearts and minds of the voters based on policy. And when they lost, instead of saying, hey, we're going to put forward a policy

set of ideas, pillars that will be helpful to us in 2022. They spent two years and now it's been more than two years claiming that that election actually was rigged, that it was won by Donald Trump and not by Joe Biden. And despite multiple court rulings and recount audits, they continue to peddle that lie. And it is a way that they make voters afraid. They make voters afraid and angry, which are the main emotions at this point that are being utilized by Republicans to try to convince people to come to their side. And that is at the core of so much of the rhetoric that comes from the modern Republican Party. Another example is the focus on extremist social views.

Republicans have now become fixated on pushing anti transgender legislation in multiple states, hundreds of bills arguing we need to protect women's sports and we need to protect kids in bathrooms and we need to protect the integrity of. But I don't know. We need to do of we can't have drag shows because it's bad and they're obsessed with that stuff. All of it is based on false premises like trans people are pedophiles or sexual predators. There aren't already laws to protect against harassment in bathrooms when in fact they are the reality that the concern even around sports is a slice of a slice of a slice of a slice of all that is going on within sports. And it's all about making people afraid and angry

that people like, for example, trans women who they say are really men are going to take they're either going to take your child's innocence or take your child's sports trophy or whatever the case may be. Fear. Anger. That's the person who I should be angry at on immigration. It's the fear of supposedly lazy brown people leeching off of social welfare programs, but also taking all of our jobs. And that's always a funny one. These insanely lazy people who are willing to abandon their families and everything they know, risk arrest and death to come to the United States

are then going to come here and work in jobs that you would actually be working. Oh, that's very confusing, but it doesn't matter. It's about the fear, as Tucker Carlson has said, of people coming into the country from Central and South America, making the country dirtier and poorer and taking jobs and being on social welfare and whatever the case may be. It's an insane juxtaposition, lazy welfare recipients who take our jobs. But it is about making you afraid and angry at those people rather than at the very corporations that have lobbied against regulations which would actually punish them more severely if they hire undocumented immigrants and on and on and on.

Republicans have also been obsessed with cancel culture and perceived threats to free speech. And again, it's all about fear and anger. They're going to take away your ability to even speak at a school board meeting. Are they? Or are they going to ask me to stop when I've ranted for 12 minutes about masks and I'm not letting anybody else speak? Well, it is true. I've said before, sometimes there can be an overreaction to someone's speech. But for the most part, the issue of cancel culture has been blown completely out of proportion by the Republican Party to distract from important policy discussions. I'm not going to redo my segment on do the victims of cancel culture actually end up canceled?

The answer is no. I've already talked about that. But the reason for the focus on all of these fear and anger based elements is really easy. You know, sometimes there's questions in politics which are very difficult answers. The answer for why Republicans have abandoned policy is because Republicans are losing most policy battles when it comes to the American public. The American public is as against most of what were the Republican policies today than they have been for a period of decades and decades and decades. There's so many examples of this. A majority of Americans support measures

like universal background checks for any gun purchase, even in between private people, gun show, whatever the case may be. Most Americans support raising the minimum wage. Most Americans support addressing climate change. Exactly how differs. But most Americans support doing something about climate change. Most Americans support abortion being legal in most cases. Most Americans now support gay marriage. Most Americans support using taxes on the very rich to reduce income inequality. Those are all positions espoused only by Democrats, for the most part, with a few exceptions in the Republican Party. So when you look at that and you realize, well, Republicans are opposed to all of that, or at least they were when they used to talk about policy. All they can do is focus on grievances, fear and anger.

And that brings me to the last part of this, which is populist rhetoric. I've explained to you before that populist rhetoric is not a set of policy ideas. It's not like, oh, populism means a higher minimum wage. Well, it might or it might mean keeping brown people out of the country. Right. Populist rhetoric is often used to pull people in and then you dump the policy on them and the policy can differ dramatically. The populist rhetoric is a tool that politicians use to rally supporters. And usually there is some bad actor, right? Is the bad actor corporations or is the bad actor Antifa? Well, I don't know. It depends, you know, what sort of point you're

trying to make. And populist rhetoric can be used to pull people into your movement without actually talking about policy. The Republican Party has been particularly adept at using populist rhetoric to appeal to its base. And much of that populist rhetoric uses fear and anger rather than actual proposed policy solutions. And so the totality of this is that we've seen a dangerous shift away from any substantive policy from Republicans and instead towards increasingly extremist views on social issues and focus on grievances and a focus on fear based politics and scapegoating. And at the core, it is driven by the fact that they have lost the country on average. Can you find anti-gay marriage people? Of course you can. Can you find anti-abortion people?

Absolutely. There's a ton of them. But at the top level, it's a country that has continued to move to the left economically and socially. Republicans have lost that. And instead of saying maybe we'll revisit our policies, maybe we'll change. No, we will use populist rhetoric to make people afraid and angry. We won't talk about policy. And when we lose, we'll claim we won and try to steal the election anyway. Extraordinarily dangerous. But it's where we are now as we approach mid 2023. Speaker 1 It's no longer a problem. Sheath underwear is ergonomically designed with separate compartments in the front to keep everything dry, cool and separate and to keep you comfortable. They come in a zillion different designs, something for everybody. The quality is amazing, super long lasting. Put an end to the readjusting and the sweating and the shifting uncomfortably.

Sheath underwear is really a lifesaver. You will thank yourself. It's a unique product. You've got to try at least once to see for yourself. And my audience gets 20 percent off with code Pacman. Go to sheath underwear dot com slash Pacman. That's S.H.E.A.T.H. underwear dot com slash Pacman. Use the code Pacman for 20 percent off. The link is in the podcast notes. In his latest orange rant, the failed former and want to be future president Donald Trump is promising mandatory homeless camps. He looks completely disoriented. He looks swollen as usual, his right eye almost completely shut. But he says that he will ban homelessness. Hey, who knew homelessness had such a simple solution? Just ban it, by the way, ban the virus while

you're at it. Let's get rid of everything. And he says that there will be tent camps for the homeless outside of cities. This is so deranged. We heard him talk about it at rallies, but it is now being put out as an actual idea of of policy, if you can call it policy for Trump's 2024 run. Let's take a look at this. Then I'm going to talk to you about the ugly dystopian history of camps for people. Ban urban camping wherever possible. Violators of these bans will be arrested, but they will be given the option to accept treatment and services if they're willing to be rehabilitated. Many of them don't want that. We'll give them the option. We will then open up large parcels of inexpensive land, bring in doctors, psychiatrists, social workers and drug

rehab specialists and create tent cities where the homeless can be relocated and their problems identified. But we'll open up our cities again, make them livable and make them beautiful. Speaker 1 Yeah, urban care. Speaker 2 So listen, pretending to take this seriously for a second, I'm not big on tent cities and there's a lot of historical precedent for these sorts of camps being some of the ugliest things that societies do. I mean, not only is it inhumane and violates basic human rights, it also doesn't work. And I always think it's important

when we talk about these things to talk to those who might support such a policy, not only ideologically, but also pragmatically. So the first problem is that banning homelessness in this way, it assumes that homelessness is a choice or a behavior that you can eliminate with the right punishment. And that's a eliminate with the right punishment. And that's a flawed assumption at its core. It ignores that homelessness has so many complex factors that causes it. Poverty is, of course, part of it. It's simple to say, well, poor homeless people are poor.

Poor people are more likely to become homeless. Yes, that's absolutely true. Mental illness is a component. Addiction is a component. Lack of affordable. Mental illness is a component. Addiction is a component. Lack of affordable housing in cities is a component. Lack of effective public transportation that can link lower income residential areas with areas where the jobs are is a factor. I could go on. There's so many different factors. But what it should the takeaway should be is if you just criminalize homelessness, it doesn't really solve anything. So when you try to ban homelessness and you try to force homeless people

to live in a tent camp outside of a city where I guess they would be bused to it once you're there, there's no jobs. You're in the middle of nowhere and there's a tent camp and that's it. You're doing nothing to address the underlying conditions that got people to be homeless in the first place. But what you do is you further marginalize them. You stigmatize the homeless population because you're actually separating them and say, oh, if you're homeless, you're being brought out there to the camp where you have no shot at getting a job. I mean, forget about it. And you actually perpetuate the problem and make it even worse. Now, if you want to look at some historical examples of this type of approach to homelessness,

there are many historical failures in the 20th century. Many countries implemented mandatory institutionalization programs for homeless people. And the idea was we're going to provide shelter and treatment, which is arguably a good a nice thing. Right. I mean, when Trump says we're going to get people things that they need, we'll get them shelter, we'll get them food, we'll get them treatment, at least on an interim basis. Once we've completely separated them from society, we know from the 20th century examples that they end up being overcrowded, unsanitary, abusive, very little effective treatment provided, stigmatizing and alienating and segregating. So it doesn't actually accomplish anything. And what you end up with is with many of

these homeless folks essentially trapped in these places for years with conditions they may have worsening chances of reintegrating into society, dramatically decreasing. And meanwhile, the homeless population continues to swell. Another example of this is looking specifically at tent cities to house homeless populations. In the early 2000s, there were cities in the Pacific Northwest that established some tent cities for homeless people. And the idea is temporary shelter, temporary shelter. And exactly what I just described to you is what took place. They became overcrowded. They became unsanitary. They weren't even properly funded. There was limited access to basic amenities. Running water was scarce. Sanitation facilities were leaving much to be desired.

And they actually became hotspots for crime and drug abuse, which only made the problem worse. Marginalized people stigmatize them. And you're not making it more likely that they will be what Republicans like to describe as productive members of society. So instead of punishing with further marginalizing programs for a population that's already vulnerable, we should instead be working towards what causes the homelessness. What imagine you say, hey, look, all these homeless people, let's not even think about

what made them homeless. Let's just ship them off in bus buses to the desert and have them live in tents indefinitely until what? Until what happens? So poverty, lack of affordable housing, lack of support for people in their communities rather than by separating them. These are the types of things that will help people reintegrate into society. And many of these programs that are proposed and often underfunded, they're actually quite revenue neutral because, yes, they're actually quite revenue neutral because, yes, they cost money. But if you care mostly about the finances, they eventually

generate government revenue by getting some fraction of those people back to work, paying taxes, spending money in the community. So there's even a fiscal conservatism argument to be made. Swollen Trump, though, I don't think he's ready to have this conversation. I am not going to do a full segment on part two of the Elon Musk, Tucker Carlson interview. Yesterday we looked at part one and we looked at a bunch of it. There are two clips that I am compelled to play for you, though. Oh, this was a this is so weird. Elon and Tucker talked about the urge to impregnate women. As the interview really took a strange turn, listen to this. I mean, the urge to have sex and to procreate is after breathing and eating the most basic urge how has it been subverted well it's just the in the past we could rely upon um you know simple uh limbic system rewards

in order to procreate um but once you have birth control um and you know uh abortions and whatnot now now you now you can still satisfy the limbic instinct, but not procreate. So we haven't yet evolved to deal with that, because this is all fairly recent, you know, the last 50 years or so for birth control. I'm sort of worried that, hey, civilization, you know, if we don't make enough people to at least sustain our numbers, perhaps increase a little bit, then civilization is going to crumble. This is this is actually I mean, this is like wacky stuff. And you can tell from the look on Tucker Carlson's face that it's not even clear he really knows the direction this is going. There's a couple of interesting things here, because on the one hand,

what Elon Musk is saying is quite reminiscent of extreme right wing strict father morality ideology when it comes to birth control. And one of the things that some on the right don't like about birth control, you know, you do hear some of them say, well, it's kind of goes against the Bible. You're not supposed to. I don't even know which parts of scripture, but there's some religious claims that birth control violates the Bible. But for a lot of these right wingers. And again, I don't think Elon Musk is a right winger on so many different issues, but he's delving here into a view that is very, very prominent on the right wing. The opposition to birth control isn't so much

religious. It's that you shouldn't be able to engage in what they call non procreative sex and not have consequences. You should suffer the strict father. That's why we call it the strict father morality would say if you're going to engage in sexual intercourse, there should be the consequences of a pregnancy. And if there is, you should be forced to carry the baby, the baby to term. So he's kind of falling into that. Like it's dangerous that we've separated the limbic response from the procreation and now we have a low birth rate. He's kind of toying with that same stuff. And then there's the low birth rate thing, which has become a focus for Elon Musk. A question of like, will civilization end with a bang or a whimper? Well, it's currently

trying to end with a whimper in adult diapers. Yes. Which is depressing as hell. The most depressing. I mean, seriously. Yes. Which is depressing as hell. The most depressing. I mean, seriously. Yeah. War is less depressing. Yeah. I'd really go with a bang. Yeah. Your shoes on. Yeah. Not with your more exciting. There you go. So Tucker Carlson visibly sucking up to Elon Musk throughout the entire interview. All right. They did also talk about the topic of aliens, which was an interesting moment. Yeah. I love you. Ask me, you know, where are the aliens? And I think if anyone would know about aliens on Earth, it would probably be me. I would think, yeah, I'm, you know, very familiar with space stuff.

And I've seen no evidence of aliens. So there you go. I would I would immediately would immediately tweet it out. This is split second. I'd be like, I'd be like, well, all time. Probably a tough tweet of all time. I found one, guys. It's a jackpot.

It's 8 billion likes, you know, next level jackpot if you find it. There you go. So big reward on Twitter for whoever announces proof of aliens and every every aspect of this interview. Very, very strange. And this will certainly help to endear Elon Musk further with the right wing community, given the hero's welcome by Tucker Carlson. Let's call this long two night nightmare of the Elon Tucker interview over and we can move on from there. We have a voicemail number two one nine two.

David P. Here's someone who says it was wrong for me to go to England last week because there are there are poor people. This is this is tough. Listen to this. So in a recent email, I demonstrated my disappointment slash anger slash something else about the fact that you went to England. Yeah. I don't have an issue with England. I just have an issue with how do you actually relate to the poor people? Do you actually think I or the people that you supposedly care about can afford to go to England or France or Spain or all these places which are out of reach for many people.

So the point of being angry was, you know, couldn't you maybe subtract one of those trips and maybe donate it to a charity that actually helps the people that you claim to care about, which I'm sure you care about, but it's not very well demonstrated by the fact that, you know, since I've been following you, you've gone to, I don't know, maybe three or four or five or six trips that are pretty expensive. So listen, anyway, how I it's just like, should I Who who gets to go on trips? OK, I shouldn't go on any trips that not everybody can afford. I should donate all my money to charity. What about a lawyer who says, hey,

I care about poor people, so I'm going to do some pro bono work. But sometimes I'll go to London with my family. If that lawyer really cared about the poor people he does pro bono work for, he can't go to England either. I mean, this is this is really just kind of a weird path to go down. And, you know, I know that there are some people in my audience who are going to write to me and say, David, you don't have to justify anything to that guy. You do what you want to do. You do the show you want to do. If people find that you are not aligned because you went to England with thinking everybody should have health care, then they can choose not to listen. But it's just. What are we doing, guys? What are we doing and what what trips would be acceptable? Right. I mean, should I go to should I go to should I go to Hudson, New York instead

of England as the place I go because it's more accessible? I don't know. I don't know. But at least this person thinks I did something very, very wrong. All right. We have a great bonus show for you today. Mike Pompeo says he won't run in twenty twenty four. Joe Biden has signed an executive order to improve access to child care. And the South Dakota governor, Christie, Kirstie Noem, Christie Noem, says that her two year old grandchild has several guns. What the hell is going on in South Dakota? And by the way, I may soon be going to South Dakota. Speaking of trips, I'll talk about this on the bonus show today. Don't miss it.

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